"Debilitating" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... instances it follows from a usual dose of physic and where every precaution has been taken, it is most likely to result under the following circumstances: Too large a dose of physic; giving physics to horses suffering from pneumonia, influenza, or other debilitating diseases; riding or driving a horse when purging; exposure or drafts of cold air; or giving large quantities of cold water while the physic is operating. There is always danger of superpurgation if a physic is given to a horse ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... years: so that today, if an Italian is engulfed in a passion of self-sacrifice, he naturally thinks first of asceticism as the method. Among Northern races a similar religious experience does not suggest hair shirts and debilitating pious orgies (except among Puseyites and similar survivals from a different epoch); it suggests active work, like that of General Booth of ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... few days, but on the night after we doubled the cape woke up from a calm sleep in wild delirium, and in a brief period died from the bursting of an aneurism; an effect which the surgeon attributed to the abrupt increase of heat. I may add that, though dry, the air was felt by us to be debilitating. During the ten days passed in the gulf, young as I then was, I was indisposed to any unusual bodily or mental effort. What breeze reached us, coming over desert from every direction, was like the blast of a furnace, ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... or that man who, with the best intentions for the SUCCESS of the magazine in his charge, and a keen enough perception of the unworthy in literature, had most likely no special love for the truth, or care to teach it, and was besides under the incapacitating influence, the deadening, debilitating, stupefying effect of having continually to judge—not to mention the enervating hopelessness that at length falls, I presume, upon every editor of a popular magazine, of finding one pearl among the cartloads of oysters sent him by unknown ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... relationship with them. They will not accept as true what much of the world believes: that Old England is in her decadence, and that her only hope is in those sons who have left her and who, away from the debilitating influence of the poisonous vapours arising from the ruins of her glory, are developing the ancient spirit of their ancestors and are returning to her assistance in ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... of the movement known as "The Higher Thought" consists precisely in this—that it sets itself rigorously to combat this debilitating doctrine of submission. It can see as well as others the beauty of weakness leaning upon strength; but it sees that the real source of the beauty lies in the strong element of the combination. The true beauty ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... how well and hearty you may be, if you are in Rome, in summer, when the scirocco blows, you will feel as if convalescent from some debilitating fever; in winter, however, this gentle-breathing south-east wind will act more mildly; it will woo you to the country, induce you to sit down in a shady place, smoke, and 'muse.' That incarnate essence of enterprise, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... stamped on. I said so should I be if I returned without exchanging them. He was a very dense person, and didn't see my joke at all, but then, it is true, there were thirteen men in line behind me, with the train starting in three minutes, and there is nothing so debilitating to a naturally weak sense of humor as selling tickets behind a grating, so I am not really vexed with him. There! we are quite comfortable, pending the arrival of the babies, the dog, and the fish, and certainly no vender of periodic literature ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... their real sanction from the economic pressure behind them. When a man allows his wife to turn him from the best work he is capable of doing, and to sell his soul at the highest commercial prices obtainable; when he allows her to entangle him in a social routine that is wearisome and debilitating to him, or tie him to her apron strings when he needs that occasional solitude which is one of the most sacred of human rights, he does so because he has no right to impose eccentric standards of expenditure and unsocial habits on her, and because these conditions have ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... MISS WOOLER,—I was truly sorry to hear that when Ellen called at the Parsonage you were suffering from influenza. I know that an attack of this debilitating complaint is no trifle in your case, as its effects linger with you long. It has been very prevalent in this neighbourhood. I did not escape, but the sickness and fever only lasted a few days and the cough was not severe. Papa, I am thankful to say, continues ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... these debilitating influences, it was through no particular virtue of my own: it was rather through what I may call a kind of earth-hunger. I had an obstinate craving for fresh air, unimpeded movement, outdoor life. I wanted the earth, and I wanted to ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... retrospects, that disturb our tranquillity, avoid occasions of stumbling. We can undertake small responsibilities, which we shall be ashamed to neglect; we can, so to speak, diet our minds and hearts, avoiding unwholesome food and debilitating excesses. To a certain extent, I say, for the old fault has a horrid pertinacity, and even when felled in fair fight, has a vile trick of recovering its energies and leaping on us from some ambush by the way, as we ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... best in her this quality of independence and self-reliance, and perhaps her possession of it imparted to her that slight foreign air which he so often noticed. He thought the civilization of the South somewhat debilitating, so far as women were concerned. It wished to divide the population into just two classes—women of beautiful meekness and men ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... is moved by fish-eating, and that it is rather irritating than plethoric and substantial. I am inclined to maintain this opinion the more, because Doctor Bailly has recently proved, by many instances, that when ever the number of female children exceeds the male, the circumstance is due to some debilitating circumstances. This will account to us for the jests made from the beginning of time, whenever a man's wife bears him a daughter instead ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... purple shores. At this airy height, and open to every breeze, its inhabitants enjoy a delicious temperature; and I could well understand how it was that Doa Maria, notwithstanding the difficulties of the ascent, often came up here to escape the debilitating heats of the port, and enjoy the magnificent prospect. The dwellers on this mountain-perch consisted of an old man with his two sons and their wives, and a consequent round dozen of children, all of whom ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... the Quality whatsoever: For tho' there is indeed nothing more wholsome than Lettuce and Mustard for the Head and Eyes; yet either of them eaten in excess, were highly prejudicial to them both: Too much of the first extreamly debilitating and weakning the Ventricle, and hastning the further decay of sickly Teeth; and of the second the Optic Nerves, and Sight it self; the like may be said of all the rest. I conceive therefore, ...
— Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets • John Evelyn
... with her daily labors, also abbreviate her "lying-in-period," which not only weakens her physically, but deprives her newly-born offspring of its natural food—thus consigning it to an infant's grave, or so debilitating it that it succumbs to the first disease with which it becomes affected. It is bad enough to be bottle-fed, physiologists tell us, but it is infinitely worse to be hand-fed. The majority of the Negroes in the Southland ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... Tanqueray had known her, had refused to be pathetic; she had clenched her small fists to repel the debilitating touch of sympathy. She was always breaking loose from the hands that tried to restrain her, always facing things in spite of her terror, always plunging, armoured, indomitable, into the thick of the ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... not due to the African fever, because science had been able to prepare his system to resist that debilitating agency. ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... And then we found some pictures by our favourite artist, Coles Phillips, with that lovely shimmer around the ankles, and we resolved to be strong and brave and have pointed finger-nails. But still, in the back of our mind, the debilitating influence of fall fever was at work. We said to ourself, without the slightest thought of printing it (for it seemed to put us in a false light), that the one triumphant and unanswerable epigram of mankind, ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... Sufferers from venereal diseases should not attempt to beget children till they have been given a clean bill of health. Nor should children be begotten when the body is weakened by temporary disease or during the stage of debilitating after-effects. For disease and fatigue affect sex cells unfavorably. So do mental strain, depression and overexcitement. Unhealthy physical and mental states in the parents lead to debilitated or deficient offspring. They open the way to the operation of ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... arthropod hosts—insects, ticks, and nematode worms—which more than in other continents (excepting Negroid Asia) convey to the skin, veins, intestines, and spinal marrow of men and other vertebrates the microorganisms which cause deadly, disfiguring, or debilitating diseases, or themselves create the morbid condition of the persecuted human being, beasts, bird, reptile, frog, or fish."[2] The inhabitants of this land have had a sheer fight for physical survival comparable with that in no other great ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois
... one should be led to suppose that there would be no sensible diversity in their operation on the living body; but the fact is otherwise: green tea is much more sedative and relaxant than bohea; and the finer the species of tea, the more debilitating and pernicious are its effects, as I have frequently observed in others, and experienced in myself. This seems to be a proof that the mischiefs ascribed to this oriental vegetable do not arise from the warm ...
— A Treatise on Foreign Teas - Abstracted From An Ingenious Work, Lately Published, - Entitled An Essay On the Nerves • Hugh Smith
... said that the climate is an excellent one for consumptives, and physicians here point to numerous instances of the kindly and healing effect of the mild air. At the same time, I suspect it must in the long-run be a little debilitating to Americans. It is a charming climate for children; and as sea-bathing is possible and pleasant at all times, those who derive benefit from this may here enjoy it to the fullest extent during all the winter months as well as in ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... actually smiled; for his own brain was softening under the debilitating influence. He would not be surprised at anything he might do himself; he might even sink into that sickly state in which people see puns in everything and everything in puns; it would be the effect of ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... make affirmative response. Like himself, they too are fatigued—dead done up by being all night in the saddle,—to say nought about the debilitating effects of their debauch, and riding rapidly with beard upon the shoulder, under the apprehension that a sheriff and posse may be coming on behind. For, during the period of their sojourn in Natchitoches, nearly every one of them has ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... described by his friends and pupils, were in marked keeping with his whole career. On Monday, the 8th of July, at 11 o'clock, he lectured at the University. But he had been for some time back much feebler than usual, the weather was sultry and debilitating, and his system was out of tune. His voice failed him two or three times in the course of the lecture, and it was only by a desperate struggle that he got to the end; his strength barely sufficing to bring him home. The impression upon his class was such, that one of the ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... struggles, its possible failures, and not feel the cold touch of dread gripping our hearts, though strong and brave? Surely he has had little experience, or has learned little wisdom from the experience he has had, who has yet to discover his own weakness. But the consciousness of weakness is by itself debilitating, and but increases the weakness of which it is painfully aware. There is no surer way to sap what strength we have than to tell ourselves what poor creatures we are. The purpose and end of self-contemplation which becomes aware ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... soporous frame. Her cousin having fallen down one day in a fainting fit, she abruptly picked him up and carried him—an effort of strength that turned her cheeks scarlet. The cloistered life she led, the debilitating regimen to which she found herself subjected, failed to weaken her thin, robust form. Only her face took a pale, and even a slightly yellowish tint, making her look almost ugly in the shade. Ever and anon she went to the window, and contemplated the opposite ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... is debilitating, and very bad for the complexion," retorted her father. "Ice-cold water is what you need. And if you don't get out o' there in five minutes I'll dowse you with ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... the worst habits were not intermittent and the most useless agitations exhausting. Some respite will therefore ensue upon pain, but no magic cure. Madness, in like manner, if pronounced, is precarious, but when speculative enough to be harmless or not strong enough to be debilitating, it too ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... has its root in the bird's passion for its young, and intense solicitude in the presence of any danger threatening them, which is so universal in this class of creatures, and which expresses itself so variously in different kinds. This must be in all cases a painful and debilitating emotion, and when the bird drops down to the earth its pain has caused it to fall as surely as if it had received a wound or had been suddenly attacked by some grievous malady; and when it flutters on ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... into the kitchens of the Hotel to order soup for me, and into the chemist's shop in the Place d'Armes to get my medicine, and ran back again to give it me, before I knew where I was (such is the debilitating influence of malaria), instead of forgiving him, I found myself, in abject contrition, actually asking him to ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... work is more remunerative, even at a lower rate of wages, than shop or factory work, because it is better for the health. All sorts of sedentary employment, pursued by numbers of persons together in one apartment, are more or less debilitating and unhealthy, through foul air ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... throughout the winter season. Office-workers and others employed indoors are, during the greater part of the day, living in a summer temperature. The wearing of heavy underclothing under such conditions is debilitating to the skin and ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... alimentary power of a body is in connection with the amount of azote it contains, and without entering into considerations which would carry us too wide of the subject, we shall simply state that if the flesh of young animals, as, for instance, the calf, has a debilitating action, while the developed flesh of full-grown animals—of a heifer, for example—has really nourishing properties, although the flesh of each animal contains the same quantity of azote, we must conclude ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... makes the fur trader their modern exploiter, whether he be the Cossack tribute-gatherer of the lower Lena River, or the factor of the Hudson Bay Company. The assimilation tends to be ethnic as well as economic, because the severity of the climate excludes the white woman. The debilitating effects of heat and humidity, aided by tropical diseases, soon reduce intruding peoples to the dead level of economic inefficiency characteristic of the native races. These, as the fittest, survive and tend to absorb the ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... to the mutual satisfaction of all parties, and their offspring is afterwards provided for according to circumstances. These young women usually receive the elements of a good education, and constitute the only female society which an Englishman can enjoy here, as the climate is so debilitating to English ladies that they cannot reside in the place for any length of time. This, indeed, is the only excuse that can be offered for a custom, which it must be granted does not admit of an apology beyond the mere necessity of the case. The girls are excellent managers in domestic concerns, ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... has not yet recovered from the debilitating influence of his books. Admiration of his fantastic heroes and their grotesque "chivalry" doings and romantic juvenilities still survives here, in an atmosphere in which is already perceptible the wholesome and practical nineteenth century ...
— Sir Walter Scott - A Lecture at the Sorbonne • William Paton Ker
... get no benefit from the bracing breezes, and then, bursting suddenly from winter to summer, as is often the way with our ill-ordered, turbulent, defiant, and generally indescribable climate, came the first day of moisture-laden heat, depressing, debilitating,—a day when the tide of his affairs swept Elmendorf from his moorings at Cranston's and sent the freeholder thereof in search of a stenographer,—the day when poor Jenny begged to be excused from having even to write ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... tropics, perhaps, inclines to indolence and languor, particularly if the atmosphere is humid, but in a dry climate like that of Arizona the heat, although sometimes great, is never oppressive or debilitating. It has its lazy people like any other country and for the same reason that there are always some who were born tired and never outgrow the tired feeling, but Arizona climate is more ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... bit," said Bert, finding the stare debilitating. "Look 'ere!" he said at last, with an air of great explicitness, ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... inhabitants,"[78:1] and for all these there were six ministers. The six soon dribbled away to three, and for ten years these three continued without reinforcement. This extreme feebleness of the clergy, the absence of any vigorous church life among the laity, and the debilitating notion that the power and the right to preach the gospel must be imported from Holland, put the Dutch church at such a disadvantage as to invite aggression. Later English governors showed no scruple in violating the spirit ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... words bore no reference whatsoever. She neither knew what to do nor what to say under this terrible and permeating gaze; it was in vain she turned away her eyes; she knew—she felt—that his was upon her—that it was drinking up her strength—that, in fact, the evil influence was; mingling with and debilitating her frame, and operating upon all her faculties. There was still, however, a worse symptom, and one which gave that gaze a significance that appalled her—this was the smile of triumph which she had seen playing coldly but triumphantly ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... advance entered with my pickets, whom he had charged and badly stampeded, without, on their part, the pretense of a fight in behalf of those whom it was their duty to protect until proper dispositions for defense could be made. The day was excessively hot, one of those sultry debilitating days that had caused the suspending of all military exercises; and as most of the men were lounging or sleeping in their tents, we were literally caught napping. The alarm spread instantly through the camp, and in a moment the command turned out for action, somewhat in ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... that I may render up my soul to GOD unclouded.' In this resolution he persevered, and, at the same time, used only the weakest kinds of sustenance. Being pressed by Mr. Windham to take somewhat more generous nourishment, lest too low a diet should have the very effect which he dreaded, by debilitating his mind, he said, 'I will take any thing ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell |
