"Weakness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... remembering in what a position we left M. de Charny, will not dislike to return with us to that little ante-chamber at Versailles into which this brave seaman, who feared neither men nor elements, had fled, lest he should show his weakness to the queen. Once arrived there, he felt it impossible to go further; he stretched out his arms, and was only saved from falling to the ground by the aid of those around. He then fainted, and was totally ignorant ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... vulnerable economy has suffered because the Turkish lira is legal tender. Economic growth sharply dropped during 1994 because of the severe economic crisis affecting the mainland, and inflation soared to 215%. To compensate for the economy's weakness, Turkey provides direct and indirect aid to nearly every sector; financial support has risen and now equals in value about one-third of Turkish ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... the Samarahan River, with an average breadth of fifty miles inland;"[10] but from time to time the Sultan entreated Sir James Brooke to take the rule of one river after another beyond this province towards Borneo Proper, for, owing to his own weakness, and the rapacity of his nobles who governed in his name, no revenue came to him from those rivers, nor could he protect native trade, or secure the lives of his subjects from the extortions and covetousness of ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... days' sickness, and I am crawling at your feet and begging you to take compassion on me! And you'd do it!—yes, I know what you meant when you said that the man would try for the diamonds again!—out of womanly pity you would! Oh, shame on me for a cur to take advantage of my weakness!" ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... is with a man's body when he rises from the dead. It is sown a perishable thing, it is raised imperishable; it is sown without honor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman
... his reign Darius bridged the Hellespont and undertook the conquest of the western world. Later, under the reign of his son Xerxes, the mighty hordes of eastern warriors were turned back, and the growing weakness of the great Persian Empire was revealed. In 486 Egypt rebelled, and Persian armies marched along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, probably levying heavy taxes for their support upon the Jews as well as upon the other peoples of Palestine. The suppression ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... banter, this pitiful endeavor to be oblivious of their common misery; but like the look she gave him, her words rang in his head like potent fumes of wine. He turned away, utterly disconcerted for the time, knowing only that he must overcome his weakness. ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... so. Where is the high-soul'd Stratford?—The same weakness That yielded there is obstinacy now, To the last drop of the pride-tainted blood That through the melancholy Stuart's ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... found which possesses the property of elasticity to such an extent that it may be bent like a thin piece of steel. When a blast is made in the new form of hole the stone is under high tension, and being elastic it will naturally pull apart on such lines of weakness as grooves, especially when they are made, as is usually the case in this system, in a direction at right angles with the lines of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 832, December 12, 1891 • Various
... that. But to-day everything is changed. The man, to whom you cannot deny genius, has seen his sycophants abandon and betray him; he has seen that his strength lies in the people, and that those alliances of which he had the weakness to be so proud, were the cause of his ruin. He has come now to rid us of the others, and I ...
— Waterloo - A sequel to The Conscript of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... am I desirous to purge him where I find him guilty: but mob-stories or Lancastrian forgeries ought to be rejected from sober history; nor can they be repeated, without exposing the writer to the imputation of weakness and vulgar credulity. ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... The weakness caused by the miscellaneous character of the army was so much felt, that Marlborough was urged to draw off, and not to tempt fortune under ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... increasing the amount of their knowledge and fidelity. Although moral conditions are not the sole causes, they are principal causes, of the poverty of the working classes throughout the world. It is their misfortune as well as their fault; but it is the reason why they do not rise. Weakness does not rise; ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... surrender their members. The Peers showed no inclination to usurp the unconstitutional jurisdiction which the King attempted to force on them. A contest began, in which violence and weakness were on the one side, law and resolution on the other. Charles sent an officer to seal up the lodgings and trunks of the accused members. The Commons sent their sergeant to break the seals. The tyrant resolved to follow up one outrage by another. In making the charge, he ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... never expect to make a great figure in life; that painters and poets ought to cultivate no wives but the Muses; or, if they are by the accidents of fortune encumbered with families, they should carefully guard against that pernicious weakness, falsely honoured with the appellation of natural affection, and pay no manner of regard to the impertinent customs of the world. "Granting that you had been for a short time deemed a lunatic," said he, "you might have acquitted yourself honourably of that imputation, by some performance ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... your lyric poet, who more than any other artist stands or sings alone, falls easily into mere lyric eccentricity if he is not bound to his fellows by wholesome and normal ties. In fact, this lyric eccentricity, weakness, wistfulness, is one of the notable defects of American poetry. We have always been lacking in the more objective forms of literary art, like epic and drama. Poe, and the imitators of Poe, have been regarded too often by our people as the normal type of poet. One must not forget the silent ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... an almost angelic nature. In reality, just about that time, the angelic man was endeavouring to get into the good graces of the wife of his best friend, and was writing his Livre d'Amour, and divulging to the world a weakness of which he had taken advantage. This certainly was the most villainous thing a man could do. But then he, too, was in love and was struggling and praying. George Sand declares her veneration for him, and she constituted herself ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... there, spoke of tortured lives and enslaved millions and of the fetid streets of great towns and of the slower anguish of the plundered country side, spoke of an Old Order based on the robbery of those who labour and on their weakness and on their ignorant sloth, spoke of virtue trampled down and little children weeping and Humanity bleeding at every pore and womanhood shamed and motherhood made a curse, spoke of all he hated and all he loved, pilloried the Wrong in front of him and bade him—to arms, to arms. "To arms!" with ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... out again: "Just go, the very minute your little boy comes back from school. Hughs 'll never find you. It 'll serve him right. No woman ought to put up with what you have; it's simply weakness, Mrs. Hughs." ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... banisters. Traddles and I were separated at table, being billeted in two remote corners: he in the glare of a red velvet lady; I, in the gloom of Hamlet's aunt. The dinner was very long, and the conversation was about the Aristocracy—and Blood. Mrs. Waterbrook repeatedly told us, that if she had a weakness, it ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... desire for the welfare of the natives, can assert that we have not gone far enough. We have gone to the very verge of safety in hastening the process. To have taken a single step farther or faster in advance would have been folly and weakness, and might well have been crime. We are extremely anxious that the natives shall show the power of governing themselves. We are anxious, first for their sakes, and next, because it relieves us of a great burden. There ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... contention lasted the monk rubb'd his horn box upon the sleeve of his tunic; and as soon as it had acquired a little air of brightness by the friction, he made a low bow, and said 'twas too late to say whether it was the weakness or goodness of our tempers which had involved us in this contest. But be it as it would, he begg'd we might exchange boxes. In saying this, he presented his to me with one hand, as he took mine from me in the other; and having kissed it, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... fond of her," he went on, "that I can refuse her nothing. She would end in making me give it up. The instant her back was turned, I should repent my own weakness, and return to the medicine. Here is a perpetual struggle in prospect, for a man who is already worn out. Is it desirable, after what you have just seen, to expose ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... repeated the name of the Deity till it appeared to him in the form of a Dry Light or glory. Though connected with the affairs of life, that is, with affairs belonging to a body containing blood, bones, and impurities; to organs which are blind, palsied, and full of weakness and error; to a mind filled with thirst, hunger, sorrow, infatuation; to confirmed habits, and to the fruits of former births: still he strove not to view these things as realities. He made a companion of a dog, honouring ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... with one prayer upon the heart of every Federal freeman, it would be to implore him in this hour of trial not to withold his warmest support from the Administration and to fall into the common weakness of fault-finding and despairing. Such enormous wars as this never have been ended in a few months; wars especially which involve the deepest antagonism of social principles in existence. And our winnings have been neither few nor light. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... prudent as beautiful, appeared completely free from the weakness of conduct which seemed to give him some authority over her, but her views of policy, if less practicable, were so much more direct and noble than his own, as led him to question whether he had not compromised himself too rashly with Cromwell, ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... but too true. Cursed weakness! It seems to me that I was unwise in making him my agent; for what is there in common between the General of an army and the poor owner of ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... Telea polyphemus I only obtained three pairings, which I attribute solely to the weakness of the moths, as the weather was all that could be desired for the pairings. The moths emerged from the 1st of June to the 20th of July. One male moth emerged on the 7th September. This latter was one from a small number of cocoons received from Alabama; the other cocoons of the same race had emerged ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... the ingenuity of that symbol. Its very helplessness forbade to Emily the exultation of revilement. Good Heavens! It is bad enough to be tied by your own weakness to a face that you hate, but to be chained forever to that thing, to rise up with it and lie down with it, to talk to it, to insult it, to listen to it, and yet never see your sarcasms strike home! Think of hating a ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Siouxes was left on the hunting grounds he was obliged to traverse, and of course the journey of Middleton's party was as peaceful as if made in the bosom of the States. The marches were timed to meet the weakness of the females. In short, the victors seemed to have lost every trace of ferocity with their success, and appeared disposed to consult the most trifling of the wants of that engrossing people, who were daily encroaching on their rights, and reducing the Red-men of the ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Curly immensely, as he stood a little aside and watched his followers. His eyes seldom left the captive's face, but he looked in vain for any show of weakness on Reynolds' part. This was not altogether to his liking. He wished to see his victim show signs of fear, to cry aloud and plead for mercy. He had done so himself, and he longed to find it in Reynolds that he might taunt ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... after a brief silence, during which she was striving for the mastery over her weakness. As she spoke, she leaned over the sick man, and looked at him lovingly, and with the smile of an angel ...
— True Riches - Or, Wealth Without Wings • T.S. Arthur
... of unrest. They had been subdued by Bouquet, [footnote: See The War Chief of the Ottawas in this Series.] but the leniency of that humane leader, in merely exacting that they should return their white prisoners and remain at peace, was looked on by the tribes as a mark of weakness; and, while no open war broke out, young warriors occasionally attacked traders and settlers. By the Treaty of Fort Stanwix, in 1768, the Six Nations had ceded to the whites the land between the Ohio and the Tennessee. But this was the common hunting-ground of all the tribes, and the Indians ...
— Tecumseh - A Chronicle of the Last Great Leader of His People; Vol. - 17 of Chronicles of Canada • Ethel T. Raymond
... could not be doubted but the King was in a condition of continuing the war with honour, so it could not be looked on as a mark of weakness in His Majesty to break the silence he had kept since the conferences at Gertruydenberg; and that, before the opening of the campaign, he now gives farther proof of the desire he always had to procure the repose of Europe. But after what he hath found, by experience, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... which Stephen could be carried, since fortunately there were plenty of bearers, and our other simple preparations were quickly completed. Mrs. Eversley and Hope were mounted on the two donkeys; Brother John, whose hurt leg showed signs of renewed weakness, rode his white ox, which was now quite fat again; the wounded hero, Stephen, as I have said, was carried; and I walked, comparing notes with old Babemba on the Pongo, their manners, which I am bound to say were good, and their customs, that, as the ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... heard enough to know that there had been a strong difference of opinion, a sharp quarrel probably, and that Lady Claire had not spared her sister at this fresh exhibition of ridiculous weakness. ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... which thoroughly penetrates the pores of the skin. The bathers are then rubbed over with towels and brushes, and a profuse perspiration ensues, which continues till all superfluous moisture has exuded from the body. There is then, it must be understood, no lassitude, no weakness, such as is produced by physical exertion, while also perspiration has in reality ceased. The frame, therefore, is not liable to receive a chill, but is, on the contrary, strengthened to resist it. Consequently, a person ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... harquebusses, but with the cross and patience; even as their general, Christ, does not wield the sword, but hangs upon the cross. Hence their victory does not lie in conquest and dominion or power, but in defeat and weakness, as St. Paul says: 'The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but in God,' and again, 'His strength shall be made perfect in our weakness.' According to the Scripture, it is not proper for any one, who will be a Christian, to set himself up against the authority, which God has ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... David Brainerd, having no thought beyond devotion to the Indians, and thinking his allowance enough for his wants, gave up the whole of his inheritance to support a scholar at the University, and set forth, undaunted by such weakness of health as in ordinary eyes would have fitted him for nothing but to be carefully nursed; for even then he was continually suffering from pain and dizziness, and weakness so great that he could often ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... birth, indeed, I have Blasphem'd the Gods, with unbecoming passion, Arraign'd their Justice, and defy'd their pow'r, In bitterness, because they had deny'd Thee to support the weakness of my age. But now no more I'll rail and rave at fate, All its decrees are just, complaints are impious, Whate'er short-sighted mortals feel, springs from Their blindness in the ways of Providence; Sufficient wisdom 'tis for man to ...
— The Prince of Parthia - A Tragedy • Thomas Godfrey
... most dangerous; and foes spring even from within households. Intensified disorder and confusion! When she who was so clearly intended by her strength of affection to call into rightful play the affections of man's heart, whose very weakness and dependence should call forth his strength—alas, our writer has found that that heart is too often a snare and a net, and those hands drag down to ruin the one to whom they cling. It is the clearest sign of God's judgment to be taken by those nets and ...
— Old Groans and New Songs - Being Meditations on the Book of Ecclesiastes • F. C. Jennings
... outside to stay the pillage. As for himself, though he was not a "marked man," his hand trembled at the scenes he had witnessed. There can be little doubt that the magistrates from the first acted with culpable weakness, as Whitbread proved in the House of Commons, for they did not enrol special constables until the rioters had got the upper hand. Dundas, as Home Secretary, seems to have done his duty. The news of the riot of the 14th reached him at 10 a.m. on ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... says John Duke of Buckingham, "I will expose my weakness: I am oftener missing a pretty gallery in the old house I pulled down, than pleased with a saloon which I built in its stead, though a thousand times better in all respects." See his Letter to the D. ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... encyclopedia. Both experiments in the art of making a living were failures, increasing paternal dissatisfaction. The desperate young man then enlisted in the army, and after a few weeks' of drilling was rejected on the score of physical weakness. ...
— The Hound of Heaven • Francis Thompson
... had not thought of it: and as but few locusts fell in the trails where the animals had been confined, they had therefore been without food since the previous day. The oxen in particular showed symptoms of weakness, and drew the wagon sluggishly; so that Swartboy's voice and long whip ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... patronised the infancy of their state, and continued our guardianship till it was grown up to maturity, and enabled to support itself by its own strength, yet we afterwards made very vigorous attempts to reduce it to its original weakness, and to sink it into pupillage again; that we attempted to invade the most essential part of its rights, and to prescribe the number of ships that it should maintain. They know, likewise, my lords, that by the natural rotation of human ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... sit down, and talked to him. Rudolf had not failed to notice that the Count of Luzau-Rischenheim had been a little surprised at the sound of his voice; in this conversation he studiously kept his tones low, affecting a certain weakness and huskiness such as he had detected in the king's utterances, as he listened behind the curtain in Sapt's room at the castle. The part was played as completely and triumphantly as in the old days when he ran the ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... understanding, prepossesses on the first appearance, which is frequently decisive; and indeed we may form some opinion of a man's sense and character from his dress. Any exceeding of the fashion, or any affectation in dress whatever, argues a weakness of understanding, and nine times out of ten it will be ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... bridal chamber. Go, we feel to-day as young and strong as in our best and happiest days, and the young queen shall see that it is no decrepit graybeard, tottering with age, who woos her, but a strong man rejuvenated by love. Think not, Kate, that I use my car because of weakness. No, it was only my longing for you which made me wish to be with ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... era—remembering that its literary manifestation was only a surface disease, and recognizing fully the value of the great moral movement in purifying the national life—because many regard its literary weakness as a legitimate outgrowth of the Knickerbocker School, and hold Irving in a manner responsible for it. But I find nothing in the manly sentiment and true tenderness of Irving to warrant the sentimental gush of his followers, who missed his corrective humor ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... flutter that shook her fragile figure, and the consuming fire which was destroying the appealing prettiness of her face. Then he looked deeper still to the naked terrified soul of her, caught in a web from which, because of her weakness, there ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... again become my friend. She had scarce been civil to me for a fortnight last past, yet now she commended me to the skies, and as severely blamed her sister, whom she arraigned of the most contemptible weakness in preferring my safety to my honour: she said many ill-natured things on the occasion, which I shall not ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... of the garrison of Chioggia, at the sight of the retreat of their fleet, was in proportion to the joy with which they had hailed its approach. Their supply of fresh water was all but exhausted. Their rations had become so scanty that, from sheer weakness, they were unable, after the first week in June, to ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... authority— When I was hale, and ruled the English land— I ever did my utmost to promote The welfare of my people, body and soul! Right many a morn and night I have prayed and mused How I could bring them to a better way. So much of me you surely know, my friends, And will not hurt me in my weakness here! [He trembles.] ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... asked him to come Christmas! But how could I have known? I only thought he would be lonely. He cares for so few people and with all his wisdom has so little understanding of many things in life. He is so intolerant of weakness and meanness, of sham and show and pretence and make-believe that—that that's why you like him, and you know it, Claudia Keith! You shouldn't have asked him. You didn't know—but you knew before he went away. And he is coming back." Slowly she got up. "No. He is not coming back. That is, ...
— The Man in Lonely Land • Kate Langley Bosher
... with me, and I blushed and stammered and said that I was coming back in a different spirit. She said that college was the finest place in the world for a girl to get acquainted with herself—that cowardice and weakness of purpose and meanness and pettiness stood out so clearly against the background of fineness and squareness; and that four years was long enough to see all sorts of faults in oneself, and change them according to one's new theories. As she said ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... the "Hymn to Ares", which is Orphic in character. The writer, after lauding the god by detailing his attributes, prays to be delivered from feebleness and weakness of soul, as also from impulses ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... which he was confined being very damp, the boy having nothing to lie on but a coat, caught so great a cold in his limbs that he almost lost the use of them before his death, and continued in a state of great pain and weakness; insomuch that when he was told he must prepare for his execution, he determined with himself to forestall it, and for that purpose desired one of the prisoners to lend him a penknife, but the man, it seems, had more grace than to grant ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... went out and gripped Jules's sleeve, while the two came to a halt at once, sitting up on their haunches, as it were, and peered into the darkness and listened—peered till Henri's bloodshot eyes positively ached, until tears of weakness dribbled down his face and splashed on to the pavement. As for his head, it throbbed as if a giant hammer were within it, and some demon were rattling the interior of his skull and were dancing a tattoo upon ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... an English divine, born at Newark; was bishop of Gloucester; was author of the famous "Divine Legation of Moses," characterised by Gibbon as a "monument of the vigour and weakness of the human mind"; is a distracted waste of misapplied logic and learning; a singular friendship subsisted between the author and ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... that weary journey his old rifle had not banged once, although few eyes save those of timber-wolf and lynx were sharper in the hunt than Sacobie's. The Indian was reeling with hunger and weakness, ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... of her presence, she sat disconsolately on a trunk and watched him, and from time to time, as if ashamed to let him see her weakness, she turned her head aside to furtively wipe away a tear. No doubt her misgivings were foolish. Husbands left their wives on business trips every day. Sensible women were not so silly as to cry over it. ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... the space thus given to one of the least important of his books but that the illustration goes farther than the little tale it refers to, and is a picture of him in his moods of writing, with their weakness as well as strength upon him, of a perfect truth and applicability to every period of his life. Movement and change while he was working were not mere restlessness, as we have seen; it was no impatience of labour, or desire of pleasure, that led ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... weakness, it is for fine under things, with ribbon of a pale pink and everything maching. Although I spent but fifty-eight dollars and sixty-five cents on the TROUSEAU that day, I felt uneasy, especialy as, just afterwards, I saw in a window ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... him with all her soul, such as it was (a delicate conscience and a collection of principles are not enough to make a great lover), and again he acknowledged to himself that he could give her only friendship. It had been but an ephemeral tenderness which drew him to her for the second time, due to weakness of body and to gratitude. If he ever thought it was love, he knew by now that he had been mistaken. Still, what did it matter? He supposed they would get along very well—as well as most people; better even than if they adored one another; for passion is ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... about him, it appeared to be with difficulty that he recalled any recollection of the place, and the people around him; for a few seconds he fixed his eyes steadily upon the doctor, and with a lip pale and bloodless, and a voice quivering from weakness, said, ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... weakness. Reuben's eyes were round. Six hundred pounds! Who'd have thought it of Sandy?—after that bad lot of a wife, and ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... providing for his wife and children. "The following day Weber was somewhat better. He was still supported by the hopes of his benefit; he still found sufficient strength to write to his wife in such wise as to place in its least painful light his cruel disappointment. As yet, in spite of his bodily weakness, his handwriting had remained distinct and clear. In this letter, it displays the utter ruin of his strength. 'Writing is somewhat painful to me,' runs one phrase of it; 'my hands tremble so.' Fuerstenau ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... the horses, which only subsisted on grass, and were consequently faint and unable to withstand such long marches as they could in regions where oats could be easily procured. Hlawa neither spared himself, nor took into consideration the advanced age and weakness of Zygfried. The old knight suffered terribly, especially because the sinewy Macko had previously wrenched his bones. But still worse were the mosquitoes which swarmed in the humid wilderness, and as his hands were bound and his legs fastened ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... Britain's peril. Yet the fact is that the high rate of exchange and the depredatory U-boat represented almost identically the same danger. The prospect that so darkened the horizon in the spring of 1917 was the possible isolation of Great Britain. England's weakness, as always, consisted in the fact that she was an island, that she could not feed herself with her own resources and that she had only about six weeks' supply of food ahead of her at any one time. If Germany could cut the lines of communication and so prevent ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... and ripe pollen, and flecks of withered bracken and moss. I heard trees falling for hours at the rate of one every two or three minutes; some uprooted, partly on account of the loose, water-soaked condition of the ground; others broken straight across, where some weakness caused by fire had determined the spot. The gestures of the various trees made a delightful study. Young Sugar Pines, light and feathery as squirrel-tails, were bowing almost to the ground; while the grand ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... occasions to be frozen, angered and to endure much hardship, so that with the attacks received time and again from all sides, he unconsciously soon contracted an organic disease. In his heart inflammation set in; his mouth lost the sense of taste; his feet got as soft as cotton from weakness; his eyes stung, as if there were vinegar in them. At night, he burnt with fever. During the day, he was repeatedly under the effects of lassitude. Perspiration was profuse, while with his expectorations of phlegm, he brought up blood. The whole number of these several ailments came ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... you're a Conservative to-night and don't let your rank Liberal views crop out, or you'll queer me for all time with the great and only Mark. He doesn't talk politics at his dinners, though, so you're not likely to have trouble on that score. Mrs. Kennedy has a weakness for beer mugs. Her collection is considered very fine. Scandal whispers that Miss Harvey has a budding interest in ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... were married in the spring, by which time he was as well and strong as ever. For years I feared lest his severe wound should have left some permanent source of weakness, but happily my fears were ill-founded. Jack, having had enough of soldiering, took to business at Master Freake's suggestion. He has developed all his father's shrewdness while retaining all his own boyish charm. He is now Master Freake's right hand, ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... ought to be the main object of existence. Yet there are thousands all round us, yes, many among our friends or acquaintances, who live and die without ever having known it, because in their egotism and folly they conceive of close relations as founded on personal power, interest or the weakness of others. The only fascination which such people can ever exercise is that of the low and devilish kind, the influence of the cat on the mouse, the eye of the snake on the bird, which in the end degrades them into deeper evil. That there are such people, and that they really make ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... assumed the care of Piney. Only Mother Shipton—once the strongest of the party—seemed to sicken and fade. At midnight on the tenth day she called Oakhurst to her side. "I'm going," she said, in a voice of querulous weakness, "but don't say anything about it. Don't waken the kids. Take the bundle from under my head and open it." Mr. Oakhurst did so. It contained Mother Shipton's rations for the last week, untouched. "Give 'em to the child," she said, pointing to the sleeping ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... or ill luck is all fate with them. So of their national misfortunes; they shrug up their shoulders, and ascribe all to the inevitable decrees of fate. This is very different from the Americans, who ascribe every thing to prudence or imprudence, strength or weakness. Our men say, that if the game was wrestling, playing at ball, or foot-ball, or firing at a mark, or rowing, or running a race, they should be on fair ground with them.—Our fellows offered to institute this game with them; that there should ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... this war brings upon us, it is making us wiser, and, we trust, better. Wiser, for we are learning our weakness, our narrowness, our selfishness, our ignorance, in lessons of sorrow and shame. Better, because all that is noble in men and women is demanded by the time, and our people are rising to the standard the time calls for. For this is the question the hour is putting to each of us: Are you ready, ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the spoon. He was too famished for that. Seizing the bowl with hands that trembled from weakness and excitement, he drained ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... stared at him with a surprise which had eclipsed her anger, while she pulled on her gloves with little sharp twitches. This was a new Frank Crosse to her. As long as a woman gets on very well with a man, she is apt, at the back of her soul, to suspect him of weakness. It is only when she differs from him that she can see the other side, and it always comes as a surprise. She liked him better ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... Holy Ghost born of the Virgin Mary, suffered, was crucified, died, and rose again, etc. If one small part is lacking, then all parts are lacking. For faith shall and must be complete in every particular. While it may indeed be weak and subject to afflictions, yet it must be entire and not false. Weakness [of faith] does not work the harm but false faith—that is eternal death." (St. L. ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... even you had loved your neighbour, you would have known me, neighbour to the deepest and best in you.' If the Lord were to appear this day in England as once in Palestine, he would not come in the halo of the painters, or with that wintry shine of effeminate beauty, of sweet weakness, in which it is their helpless custom to represent him. Neither would he probably come as carpenter, or mason, or gardener. He would come in such form and condition as might bear to the present England, Scotland, and Ireland, a relation like that ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... times. She understood very well, on the contrary. She knew her brother thoroughly, and liked him as he was. Moreover, the scorn and loathing of mankind were the lot of the Jacobin Fouche, who, exploiting for his own advantage every weakness, every virtue, every generous illusion of mankind, made dupes of his whole generation, and died obscurely as Duke ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... better than by pursuing this policy of silence. To a man of Mr. Flint's temperament and training, it was impossible to have such an opponent within reach without attempting to hector him into an acknowledgment of the weakness of his position. Further than this, Austen had touched him too often on the quick merely to be considered in the light of a young man who held opposite and unfortunate views—although it was Mr. Flint's endeavour to put him in this light. The list of injuries ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... unknown, unacknowledged vagrant; and without money I could hardly run much risk, except of breaking my neck. The perils, the pains, the pleasures, or the obligations, of the world, scarcely exist in a proper sense for him who has no funds. Perfect weakness is often secure; it is by imperfect power, turned against its master, that men are snared and decoyed. Here in Oxford I should be called upon to commence a sort of establishment upon the splendid English scale; ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... Apostle's condemnation: "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." It was written on the last Sunday of September, and, after this long outpouring of confession, longing, and weakness, the diary was not again resumed for nearly a month. The desire expressed in its second paragraph for the kind of spiritual refreshment which in after years he so often enjoyed under the name of a "retreat," ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... the wicked endeavours of sinful men against virtue, but I exceedingly marvel to see that they have brought to pass the things they hoped to do. For the desire of doing evil may be attributed to our weakness, but that in the sight of God the wicked should be able to compass whatsoever they contrive against the innocent, is altogether monstrous. Whence not without cause one of thy familiar friends[95] demanded: 'If,' saith he, 'there be a God, from whence proceed so many evils? And if there ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... captured, and the horrors, the barbarities, and indignities to which the captives on board were exposed. He pictured to himself the terrible journey from the interior, the lash of the brutal driver descending on her shoulders as she tottered on with her infant in her arms, her knees bending from weakness, her feet torn with thorns and hard rocks—she who had been so tenderly cared for—whom he loved so dearly;—the thought was more than he could bear. He looked over the side of the ship, and gazed at the blue waters, ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston
... absorbing objects, detrimental to his own. Beyond that was danger, but the course was clear towards obtaining from the greater assembly what he would have extracted from the less if he had held office in 1787. That is the secret of Necker's unforeseen weakness in the midst of so much power, and of his sterility when the crisis broke and it was discovered that the force which had been calculated equal to the carrying of a modest and obvious reform was as the rush of Niagara, and that France was ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... the more appetizin' it strikes me! Now I'll take it for granted that this man's got no strong points. All right—that's nothin' but a detail! You've told me a lot of hard things about him, but you ain't said he ain't human—and if he's human he's got a weakness! A well-developed weakness in a man has often been turned into glitterin' ...
— Alex the Great • H. C. Witwer
... of church, her mother fainted. That was the beginning of her illness, February, eighteen eighty-three. First came the long months of weakness; then the months and months of sickness; then the pain; the pain she had been hiding, that she couldn't ...
— Life and Death of Harriett Frean • May Sinclair
... maternal love for the girl and an intense jealousy of the woman who realizes that the man she loves has met what appears to be the final passion of his life. She was divided between an intense disgust for Edward's weakness in conceiving this passion, an intense pity for the miseries that he was enduring, and a feeling equally intense, but one that she hid from herself—a feeling of respect for Edward's determination to keep himself, in this particular ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... a mere obstacle in the road of Prussian greatness, and had to be swept away. Against him all the resources of diplomacy were now directed. His influence must be destroyed, but not by force, for his strength came from his very weakness; the task was to undermine the regard which the German people had for him and their enthusiasm for his cause—work to be properly assigned to the ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... This was not the first horrible unsigned letter he had received, and he could never prevail on himself to throw them in the fire, unopened. He read them through, two or three times, then, angered by their contents and by his own weakness, tore them to fragments. But the hints and aspersions they contained, remained imprinted on his mind. In this case, Madeleine's distracting appearance had enfeebled his memory, and he worked long and patiently until the sheet lay fitted together ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... rains but it pours," saith the proverb. We are fond of proverbs. We confess to a weakness that way. There is a depth of meaning in them which courts investigation from the strongest intellects. Even when they are nonsensical, which is not unfrequently the case, their nonsense is unfathomable, and, therefore, invested ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... nor was her return to the village strand on any previous occasion, whether baptismal, or hymeneal, more numerously attended than on that day; for men, women, naked children, and snarling dogs came to the water's side to greet her, without any reference to numerical force, or moral weakness. ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... itself very weak in prosecuting Miss Anthony. No astute lawyer could be found on a side so pregnant of flaws as this one, were not the plaintiff in the case, the sovereign United States. The very fact of the prosecution is at one and the same time weakness on the part of the government, and an act of unauthorized authority. It is weakness, because by it, the United States comes onto the ground of the defendant, and, at once admits voting is an United States right, because United States rights are citizens' ...
— An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony • Anonymous
... tomb to hand his name down to posterity, the remembrance of them perished with their contemporaries. By dint of such frequent changes in the succession, the royal authority became enfeebled, and its weakness favoured the growing influence of the feudal families and encouraged their ambition. The descendants of those great lords, who under Papi I. and II. made such magnificent tombs for themselves, were only nominally subject to the supremacy of the reigning sovereign; many of ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... little affectation of greater weakness and lassitude than she really felt. But she wished to be weak, so that her Roberto might be strong—to be quite dependent on his care and tenderness. And she let her daughters embrace her so prettily, and then offered her hand to Dare and Luis with ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... a tremendous effort to conquer his weakness, and turned away from the tree with his lips compressed, his eyes half closed, and ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... ourselves—that what makes our trade so profitable is the superstition, weakness, and vanity of parties. We can't disguise this fact from ourselves, and I only wish we may be able to conceal it much longer from others. As enlightened undertakers, we must admit that we are of no more use on earth than scavengers. All the good we ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... Everard pleaded. "Prove it by abandoning this weakness where my Lord Ostermore is concerned. Remember only the wrong he has done. You are the incarnation of that wrong, and by your hand must he be destroyed." He rose, and caught the younger man's hands again in his own, forced Mr. Caryll to confront him. "He shall know when the time comes ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... were put into a corrugated iron shed near the station, the floors of which were four inches deep with torn railway forms and account books. Here we flung ourselves down exhausted, and what with the shame, the disappointment, the excitement of the morning, the misery of the present, and physical weakness, it seemed that love of life was gone, and I thought almost with envy of a soldier I had seen during the fight lying quite still on the embankment, secure in the calm philosophy of death from 'the slings and arrows of ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... which judicious people everywhere, who were friendly to us, could not choose but lament to see us exercise at such large discretion. It has brought us face to face with realities the most terrible the world has ever beheld. It has measured our strength and our weakness, and has developed within us the mightiest intellectual and physical resources. All the wit and virtue which go to make up a great people have been proven in a hundred times and ways during the war, to exist in us. Courage, forethought, endurance, self-sacrifice, magnaminity, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... form as may be best believed, and not as may be best examined; and he that receiveth knowledge, desireth rather present satisfaction than expectant inquiry; and so rather not to doubt, than not to err; glory making the author not to lay open his weakness, and sloth making the disciple not to know ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... he was appointed to preach upon his old constant day, the first Friday in Lent: he had notice of it, and had in his sickness so prepared for that employment, that as he had long thirsted for it, so he resolved his weakness should not hinder his journey; he came therefore to London some few days before his appointed day of preaching. At his coming thither, many of his friends—who with sorrow saw his sickness had left him but so much flesh ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... can expect to reproduce, perhaps even to perceive in the most quintessential moment, is a partially faithful, partially deceptive silhouette. As no human being has ever seen his or her own soul, in all its rounded completeness of good and evil, of strength and weakness, of what is temporal and perishable and what is germinal and essential, how can we expect even the subtlest analyst to adequately depict other souls than his own. It is Browning's high distinction that he has this soul-depictive faculty—restricted ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... wrongs had been resented and resisted in the first instance the present war might have been avoided. One outrage, however, permitted to pass with impunity almost necessarily encouraged the perpetration of another, until at last Mexico seemed to attribute to weakness and indecision on our part a forbearance which was the offspring of magnanimity and of a sincere desire to preserve friendly ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Polk • James Polk
... pay, if animated by enthusiasm for a sacred cause. That patriotic fire, says he, burned as brightly in his own country: the Polish soldier, the Polish citizen, were equally ready to sacrifice all. "The spirit was everywhere, but no use was made of their enthusiasm and patriotism. ... The weakness of the King without military genius, without character or love of his country, has now plunged our country, perhaps for ever, into anarchy and ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... universe by links of indissoluble attachment and established between them so perfect a fellowship and harmony that the most distant, in spite of their distance, appeared united in one universal sympathy. Let those men, therefore, renounce their fabulous imaginations, who in spite of the weakness of their argument, pretend to measure a power as incomprehensible to man's reason as it ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various
... motive and its attainment, is a lesson we are slow to learn. Peter had not learned this lesson when, confident in his own strength, he declared that he would not forsake the Lord. It is this sense of our own weakness that leads us to pray. Prayer must proceed from the heart. Otherwise it is not prayer, but a mere form of words. The Lord will never help any one spiritually who does not feel the need of divine help. Saul was struck down when the divine light flashed upon ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... to be complete or adequate which neglects any one of them or the possibilities of their permutations and combinations. And it is precisely here that many treatments of the rhythm of language have revealed their weakness: they have excluded pitch usually, and often either stress or time. They have tried to build up a whole system of prosody sometimes on a foundation of stress alone, sometimes of time alone. The reason for this failure is simple, and it is also a warning. Any attempt ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... think of it—she and I have agreed that I must not," said he, steadily. "It's my weakness—my hobby, you know. But—no hobbies now. Above all, I must not, for a mere fancy, give up the work that lies under my hand. What ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... I should show up all my friends. I should like to know if all story-tellers do not do this? Now I am afraid all my friends would not bear showing up very well; for they have an average share of the common weakness of humanity, which I am pretty certain would come out. Of all that have told stories among us there is hardly one I can recall that has not drawn too faithfully some living portrait that might better ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... we may advise bleeding under certain conditions. The quantity removed must be moderate (7 to 8 pints), and the pulse and other conditions must show no signs of weakness or collapse. ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... such indications as came under our personal notice, the native races, so far from being a source of weakness, are a great strength to the colony. The Indians in North America, the Maoris in New Zealand, the aborigines of Australia, have disappeared or dwindled away before the white man. The Zulus and ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... critical appreciation of the Hellenistic Jewish culture by a rabbinic scholar. He knew no Greek, but he studied the works of German writers, and in his account of Philo gives a summary of the remarks of the theologian Neander, himself a baptized Jew. In his own criticism he discerns the weakness and strength of Philo from the Jewish aspect. "There are," he says, "many strange things in Philo's exegesis, not only because he draws far-fetched allegories from the text, but also because he interprets single words without a sure foundation in ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... children themselves, and with little chance for observation or for experience in life, it would be strange if they did. They have had no opportunity for professional study, and psychology and the science of education are unknown to them. The attempts made to remedy this fatal weakness by the desultory reading of a volume or two in a voluntary reading-circle course do not serve the purpose. The teacher needs a thorough course of instruction in general and applied psychology, under the tutelage of an enthusiastic expert who not only knows ...
— New Ideals in Rural Schools • George Herbert Betts |
