"Enervated" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the bright sunshine, profoundly enervated and quite convinced, but still maintaining out of mere indolence a show ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... but with the firm knowing hand of the anatomist, demonstrating and making clear to others, that the knowledge may be applied to purpose. All this difficult task is achieved so that you may read till your own soul is before you, and you know it; but the enervated public complains that the work is obscure forsooth: so we are always looking for green grass—verdant meads, tall pines, vineyards, etc., as the essentials of poetry; these are all very pretty and very delicate, the dust blows not in your ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... much surprised to learn, that, in the exercise of his profession, he contracted an intimacy with a clergyman's wife, whom he attended as a physician, and whose conjugal virtue he subdued by a long and diligent exertion of his delusive arts, while her mind was enervated by sickness, and her husband abroad upon his necessary occasions. This unhappy patient, who was a woman of an agreeable person and lively conversation, fell a sacrifice to her own security and self-conceit; her want of health had confined her to ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... east by the Deserts of Khavir and Kirman, with a coast-line along the Persian Gulf between Bushire and Bunder Abbas. In ancient times the inhabitants, divided into tribes, led a simple, rustic life, superior in all respects to their neighbours the Medes, already enervated by civilisation. Between the ages of five and twenty, says Herodotus, the young Persians are taught three things: to mount the horse, to stretch the bow, and to speak the truth (Her., Clio, cxxxi.). It was amongst them, and amongst the Bactrians, ...
— Les Parsis • D. Menant
... day arrived, and with it dignitaries of city and countryside. It was a fearfully hot humid day in July, one of those days when to move about was torment, and to work was torture. Not a breath of air stirred. The clergymen were plainly enervated as they descended from the various vehicles which had conveyed them over from Little River. The Reverend Mr. Means mopped his face as the chauffeur assisted him from the Elder's limousine. He greeted every one with deep sonorous tones. His manner ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper
... option, or by the instigation of others. By this law the tenure and value of a Roman Catholic in his real property is not only rendered extremely limited and altogether precarious, but the paternal power is in all such families so enervated that it may well be considered as entirely taken away; even the principle upon which it is founded seems to be directly reversed. However, the legislature feared that enough was not yet done upon this head. The Roman Catholic parent, by ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... add in conclusion, that the Italians are not enervated by the climate to such a degree as to dislike work. A traveller who may happen to have seen some street porters asleep in the middle of the day, returns home and informs Europe that these lazy people snore from morning till night; that they have ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... such apprehensions as he mentioned have been sufficient to have restrained his joy at meeting with his Amelia. In fact, a reflection on the injury he had done her was the sole cause of his grief. This it was that enervated his heart, and threw him into agonies, which all that profusion of heroic tenderness that the most excellent of women intended for his comfort served only to heighten and aggravate; as the more she rose in his admiration, the more she quickened his sense of his own unworthiness. After ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... must have lost my head during the last few days! I must be the plaything of my enervated imagination, unless I am really a somnambulist, or I have been brought under the power of one of those influences—hypnotic suggestion, for example—which are known to exist, but have hitherto been inexplicable. In any case, ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... oppressively hot; in doors or out, little could be done but sit or lie in enervated attitudes, a state of things accordant with Nancy's mood. Till late at night she watched the blue starry sky from her open window, seeming to reflect, but in reality wafted on a stream of fancies and emotions. Jessica's explanation of the arrival of Lionel Tarrant had strangely ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... married. The man laughed often. The tropics had enervated him, though he made no such confession. He wanted drink and lights. To him, the present was relishable. Their chairs scraped the tiles before Bedient turned.... They had not risen. She caught his eyes. Hers were not eyes of one who would be lonely in Washington nor during a ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... that Sulla, in order to secure the attachment of the forces which he had commanded in Asia, had treated them, contrary to the practise of our ancestors, with extraordinary indulgence and exemption from discipline; and pleasant and luxurious quarters had easily, during seasons of idleness, enervated the minds of the soldiery. Then the armies of the Roman people first became habituated to licentiousness and intemperance, and began to admire statues, pictures, and sculptured vases; to seize such objects alike in public edifices and private dwellings; to spoil ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... manner. As it frequently happens that our senses can teach us nothing respecting this cause which so deeply interests us—which we seek with so much ardour, we have recourse to our imagination; this, disturbed with alarm, enervated by fear, becomes a suspicious, a fallacious guide: we create chimeras, fictitious causes, to whom we give the credit, to whom we ascribe the honour of those phenomena by which we have been so much alarmed. It is ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... as we can. But it must be real life too. Death is no life. The life of most men is a slow miserable death. There is no honor and no merit in maintaining a life that should more truly be called death. A bloodless, enervated, foul, rotten life. It is a shame that men do not yet know how to live, and even greater shame that they know still less how to die. I wanted to have you live. But I did not succeed and now I shall teach you to die. - Are ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... slumber. The mystery that wrapt the maiden of his homage, the rareness of their interviews, and the wild and poetical romance that made a very principle of the chivalry of the Spanish Moors, had imparted to Muza's love for Leila a passionate depth, which, at this day, and in more enervated climes, is unknown to the Mohammedan lover. His keenest inquiries had been unable to pierce the secret of her birth and station. Little of the inmates of that guarded and lonely house was known in the neighbourhood; the only one ever seen without its walls was an old man of ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book II. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... They were enervated, no doubt, as the Vandals had been in Africa, by the luxurious southern climate, with its gardens, palaces, and wines. But I have indicated a stronger reason already:—they perished because ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... blood relations must needs live in close touch with one another. Wherefore if they were not debarred from venereal union, opportunities of venereal intercourse would be very frequent and thus men's minds would be enervated by lust. Hence in the Old Law [*Lev. 18] the prohibition was apparently directed specially to those persons who ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... times to be loved, and to deserve the love; but happiest of all to enjoy it after sorrow and sin. But we must escape from this ordeal of prosperity, of flattering words and intoxicating fumes of praise, as soon as we can. Who would not soon be enervated in that tropical and luxurious atmosphere? If it be dangerous, happily it is not often that he or we shall breathe its heavy sweetness, but far other are the dangers we shall ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... was dreaming voluptuously how he would be off in an instant on his new-bought bicycle to the bungalow. He would undress quickly, and without waiting to cool, still bathed in sweat, would fling himself into the clear, cold, sweet-smelling sea. His whole body was enervated and tense, thrilled by the thought. Impatiently moving the papers before him, he ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... in obedience to a Master who will regard his endeavours, not his success, would have preserved him from trivial elations and discouragements, and enabled him to proceed with constancy and cheerfulness, neither enervated by commendation, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... languor which they occasion in commerce. But, how great soever they may be, it might, perhaps, be possible, by the aid of the paternal cares of your High Mightinesses, and by opposing a vigorous resistance to the enemy, already enervated, to repair in time all these losses, (without mentioning indemnifications) if this stagnation of commerce was only momentary, and if the industrious merchant did not see beforehand the sources of his future ...
— A Collection of State-Papers, Relative to the First Acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of the United States of America • John Adams
... disposition in other respects—was of opinion that the calmness and seclusion of a university were not best adapted for calling forth the efforts of genius; but that adversity and some struggling were necessary to bring out greatness of character. He thought that praise enervated the mind, and that to bear it required a much greater degree of fortitude than to withstand censure. The consequence of this would be, that the honours decreed in a university must be pernicious to youth. This cannot be ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... we manage our reading badly. We listlessly allow ourselves to be bullied by publishers' advertisements into reading the latest fatuity in fiction, without, in one case out of twenty, finding any of that pleasure we are ostensibly seeking. Instead, indeed, we are bored and enervated, where we might have been refreshed, either by romance or laughter. Such reading resembles the idle absorption of innocuous but interesting beverages, which cheer as little as they inebriate, and yet at the same time make frivolous ...
— The Guide to Reading - The Pocket University Volume XXIII • Edited by Dr. Lyman Abbott, Asa Don Dickenson, and Others
... the heat of the campfire was beating upon his back, and the hatred of Von Koren upon his breast and face: this hatred on the part of a decent, clever man, a feeling in which there probably lay hid a well-grounded reason, humiliated him and enervated him, and unable to stand up against it, he ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... close the volume. After I had finished about a hundred pages manuscript, in order, the question of African slavery in the United States suddenly thrust itself upon my mind with such force, that I found it somewhat difficult to investigate any other subject. My mind at the time was enervated by disease, and by no means well disciplined. Hence I could not control it. For this reason, I at once concluded to draw up a skeleton or outline of my essay on slavery; after which I contemplated resuming my work in regular order. ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... and goaded by the tongue-lashings of their wives, these enervated drudges were usually out of sorts. Bursts of ill temper, in the form of invective, hair-pulling, ear-pulling, pinching, caning, "nape-cracking," or "chin-smashing," were part of the routine, and very often I was ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... which are in the long run as destructive as any war. Tyrants and oppressors have many times made a wilderness and called it peace. Many times peoples who were slothful or timid or shortsighted, who had been enervated by ease or by luxury, or misled by false teachings, have shrunk in unmanly fashion from doing duty that was stern and that needed self-sacrifice, and have sought to hide from their own minds their shortcomings, their ignoble motives, by calling them love of peace. The peace of tyrannous terror, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... recreations which, like so much that was manly and English, were confined almost to the English squire pur et simple after the Hanoverian accession; when so much degeneracy for a while obscured the English character, debased its tone, enervated its best races, vilified its literature, corrupted its morals, changed its costume, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... was part chance, part common sense, part the pluck and luck of the devil. He had ever been a gambler in the way of taking chances; he had always possessed ballast even when the London life had enervated, had depressed him; and to men of his stamp pluck is a commonplace: it belongs as eyes and hands ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... erudition; and highly productive of risibility—ha, ha, ha. The old Constitution! A very shadow of a government—a perfect caput mortuum;—why, one of my schoolboys would make a better: 'tis grown as superannuated, embecilitated, valetudinarianated, invalidated, enervated and dislocated as an old man of ...
— The Politician Out-Witted • Samuel Low
... was heard within me that spoke of nobler aims. It reminded me of what I once was, of what I yet might be; and commanded imperatively a return to a healthier and more active life. But I had allowed myself to be enervated by this baneful languor, this insidious far niente; and my moral torpor was such that the mere thought of reappearing before a polished audience struck me as superlatively absurd. 'Where was the object?' I would ask myself. Moreover, it was too late; ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... be difficult to prove, that the mind of the country is much enervated since the days of her strength, and brought down from its moral dignity, it is not yet so forlorn of all good,—there is nothing in the face of the times so dark and saddening and repulsive—as to shock the first feelings of a generous spirit, and drive it at once ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... and sweets. For Gosset, the bold Chasseur appointed to preside over our mess arrangements, was a professional in the culinary art, and excelled in making everything out of nothing; so, with the help of Maman Cheveret, he accomplished wonders, and the result of it all was that we began to be enervated by the delights of this new Capua. And how thoroughly ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... of the Age to Genius. Their narrow selfishness leads them to betray the common cause, which it is their true interest to support. They persuade the credulous Many, with whom envy of superior talents increases their willingness to despise, that Imagination is become enervated; designing, however, to have it understood, that in their individual ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... his kinsfolk expressed itself in charity, self-denial and a noble decency of life, there was something stifling in the atmosphere of languishing pietism in which his mother's friends veiled the emptiness of their days. Under the instruction of the Countess's director the boy's conscience was enervated by the casuistries of Liguorianism and his devotion dulled by the imposition of interminable "pious practices." It was in his nature to grudge no sacrifice to his ideals, and he might have accomplished ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... approach of hot weather, and the action of the dews, when they begin to fall upon it, causes the miasmata to rise in dense and poisonous mists. Now these, of course, are as bad in country—except in very elevated localities—as in town; but they are only dangerous in crowded sections, or to the enervated constitutions that could as ill resist ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... same precautions as that of the former. Attention is less frequently drawn to the precautions required in the case of boys, mainly because such precautions are more frequently observed in regard to them. But besides, girls arrive at the period of adolescence already enervated by the senseless training of their childhood, on which distinctions of sex have been obtruded long before they are established by nature. Finally, since peculiarities relating to the sexual organs are inherited, if at all, from the parent of the same sex,[48] the germs ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... would last us less than three months. Our meals had to consist mainly of seal and penguin; and though this was valuable as an anti-scorbutic, so much so that not a single case of scurvy occurred amongst the party, yet it was a badly adjusted diet, and we felt rather weak and enervated in consequence. ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... pathetic, and yet withal so heart-stirring and passionate, that, despite himself, he listened with a strange, swooning sense of languor stealing insidiously over him,—a dreamy lassitude, that while it made him feel enervated and deprived of strength, was still not altogether unpleasing, . . a faint sigh escaped his lips,—and he kept his gaze fixed on the Silver Veil as pertinaciously as though behind it lay the mystery of ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... till he is more himself, or while we mean to serve, we shall only torment him. Sickness, sorrow, and poverty have all fallen heavily upon him, and they have all fallen at once: we must not, therefore, wonder to find him intractable, when his mind is as much depressed, as his body is enervated." ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... practice to the use of arms. How much greater difficulty should he find, at present, to subdue by violence a people inflamed with religious prejudices; while he could only oppose to them a nation enervated by long peace, and lukewarm in his service; or, what was more to be dreaded, many of them engaged in the same party ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... It always does. At length, one morning, as Dr. Sevier lay on his office lounge, fatigued after his attentions to callers, and much enervated by the prolonged summer heat, there entered a small female form, closely veiled. He rose to a ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... obedience and piety. The Council of Trent, held at this time, says, in its decree concerning indulgences, "In granting indulgences, the Church desires that moderation be observed, lest, by excessive facility, ecclesiastical discipline be enervated." Imposture became more cautious, threats less frequent and less terrible; the teeth of persecution were somewhat blunted; miracles grew rarer; the insufferable glare of purgatory and hell faded, and the open traffic in forgiveness of ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... loose and as dim as the green sea depths, that a wave never stirs. She struggled, but it was only as one in a dream strives to lift himself out of the power that holds; and when the conductor waved his stick for the last time, and the curtain came down amid deafening applause, irritated and enervated, she shrank from Hender, as if anxious not to be ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... this discipline. He had never trained his body to endure or his will to steadfastness. He was the perfect flower of academic study and leisure. At Magdalen he had been taught luxurious living, the delight of gratifying expensive tastes; he had been brought up and enervated so to speak in Capua. His vanity had been full-fed with cloistered triumphs; he was at once pleasure-loving, vainly self-confident and weak; he had been encouraged for years to give way to his emotions and to pamper ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... save the King with any drunken loyalist in the district; and, to shew his zeal in this way, he entered and served as a private, and dressed in the uniform, of the Everly troop of yeomanry Cavalry just raised. He was, however, too enervated and too emaciated to acquire any knowledge of the military exercise; and, what was rather remarkable, there was another young sprig of the Church to keep him in countenance, who was also a private in the same troop of yeomanry. Although I sometimes made one of the bacchanalian ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... in Europe. The Celts confined to the Western portion had been largely subjected by the Roman armies, but the largest portion of Europe held by the Germanic tribes was the seat from whence assault after assault was made on the Roman Empire, which at length, weakened by internal dissensions and enervated by luxury, split in twain, and the western, and most important part, fell ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... while others by mean and vicious actions, forfeit the advantages of their birth, and sink into ignominy and disgrace. How necessary that in early life useful habits should be formed, and turbulent passions restrained, so that when manhood and old age come, the mind be not enervated by the follies and vices of youth, but, supported and strengthened by the Divine Being, be enabled to say, "O God, thou hast taught me from my youth, and now when I am old and grey-headed, O God, thou wilt not ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... window-crack has been carefully calked to make it air-tight, where an air-tight stove keeps the atmosphere at a temperature between eighty and ninety, and the inmates sitting there with all their winter clothes on become enervated both by the heat and by the poisoned air, for which there is no escape but the occasional ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... air stirred the generous spruce and darkening pinewoods. The drooping, westering sun, already athwart the barren crown of the hill tops, left a false, velvety suggestion of twilight in the heart of the valley, while a depressing superheat enervated all life, except the profusion of vegetation which beautified the rugged slopes. For the most part the stillness was profound, only the most trifling sounds disturbing it. There was an uneasy shuffle of moving feet; there was the occasional crisp clip of a driven axe; then, too, weighty articles ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... told you, Nancy?" asks Barbara, who, enervated by the first hot day, is languishing in the rocking-chair, slowly see-sawing. "What could it have been that she might not as well have said before ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... personally; there was no wager too crazy for him to accept; but do evil to others, kill, fight, he could not, perhaps because he had a good heart,—and perhaps because his "cotton-wool" education (as he expressed it) had enervated him. He was ready to exterminate himself in any sort of way at any time.... But others—no. "The devil only can make him out," his comrades said of him:—"he's puny, a rag—-and what a reckless fellow he is—a regular dare-devil!"—I happened afterward to ask Misha what evil spirit ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... midst of the pampered and enervated over-refinement of Roman decay, Constantine did something more than merely turn the conquering eagle back, against the course of the heavens, for which Dante seems to blame him,[2] when he established his capital at Byzantium; ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... fine general, to be named worthily with our great Lee so far as military movements are concerned, after famous victories over greatly superior numbers of Romans, went into camp at Capua, crowded with beauty, wine and games, and the soldiers became enervated. Their fiber was weakened and their bodies softened. They were quicker to heed the call to a banquet ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... somewhere in the South among good, moral, and decent people, for antipathy to slavery,—human nature teaches us as much. And such people exist, not only among the hardy inhabitants of the inland districts, who are not enervated by wealth and 'exclusiveness,' but in ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... exert himself, and his teachers forebore to urge him. He was meagre and sickly from the first, and hence had the nickname of Batalus, given him, it is said, by the boys, in derision of his appearance; Batalus being a certain enervated flute-player, in ridicule of whom Antiphanes wrote ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... is owing to the felicity of our times, less fertile in great offences than those which have gone before us, or whether it is from a sluggish apathy which has dulled and enervated the public justice, I am not called upon to determine,—but, whatever may be the cause, it is now sixty-three years since any impeachment, grounded upon abuse of authority and misdemeanor in office, has come before this tribunal. The last is that of Lord Macclesfield, which happened in the year ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... connected the castle with the town. The Moors fought valiantly in their streets, from their windows, and from the tops of their houses. They were not equal to the Christians in bodily strength, for they were for the most part peaceful men, of industrious callings, and enervated by the frequent use of the warm bath; but they were superior in number and unconquerable in spirit; old and young, strong and weak, fought with the same desperation. The Moors fought for property, for liberty, for life. They fought at their thresholds and their ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... moment that you breathed the air of heaven, you have been accustomed to nothing else but hardships. The heroes of the American Revolution were never put upon harder fare, than a peck of corn, and a few herrings per week. You have not become enervated by the luxuries of life. Your sternest energies have been beaten out upon the anvil of severe trial. Slavery has done this, to make you subservient to its own purposes; but it has done more than this, it has prepared ...
— Walker's Appeal, with a Brief Sketch of His Life - And Also Garnet's Address to the Slaves of the United States of America • David Walker and Henry Highland Garnet
... Britain in this branch of commerce. To these arguments, all of which were plausible, and some of them unanswerable, it was replied, that malt-spirits might be considered as a fatal and bewitching poison which had actually debauched the minds, and enervated the bodies, of the common people to a very deplorable degree; that, without entering further into a comparison between the use and abuse of the two liquors, beer and geneva, it would be sufficient to observe, that the use of beer ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... the expedition as to have traced the lake to that important point, Magungo, which had been our clew to the discovery even so far away in time and place as the distant country of Latooka. We were both very weak and ill, and my knees trembled beneath me as we walked down the easy descent. I, in my enervated state, endeavoring to assist my wife, we were the "blind leading the blind;" but had life closed on that day we could have died most happily, for the hard fight through sickness and misery had ended in victory; ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... low wail the music ceases. Her swooning senses come back to life. Ah, must it be! Yes; her companion releases her from his embrace. Leaning wearily upon his arm, the rapture faded from her eye, the flush dying from her cheek—enervated, limp, listless, worn out—she is led to a seat, there to recover from her delirium and gather her energies as best she may in the space of five minutes, after which she must yield her ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... faults. It is from all these ideas that we are to look for regret and remorse, even in those who do not believe in the chimeras of another world. With regard to those whose reason is deranged, those who are enervated by their passions, or perhaps linked to vice by the chains of habit, even with the prospect of hell open before them, they will neither live less vicious nor less wicked. An avenging God will never inflict on any man such ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... only found some relief when beating Therese, at night. This brutality alone relieved him of his enervated anguish. ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... labor will endure more fatigue, than those of sedentary or enervated habits, needs no argument to prove. That the arm of the blacksmith acquires strength beyond the arm of the literary ...
— A Dissertation on the Medical Properties and Injurious Effects of the Habitual Use of Tobacco • A. McAllister
... pages of history for two short years, and dwell a moment on the picture presented to our eyes. A nation, enjoying to the utmost the substantial benefits belonging to fifty years of profound peace and unexampled prosperity, enervated by those habits of luxury which wealth easily accumulated always fosters, with a standing army hardly large enough to protect our Western frontier from the incursions of hostile Indians, and a navy ludicrously small in proportion to the extent of our sea-coast ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... which lies between the sea and the edge of the great interior plateau, and of the whole Zambesi Valley, up which most of the attempts at an advance had been made. Fever not only decimated the expeditions and the garrisons of the forts, but enervated the main body of settlers who remained on the coast, soon reducing whatever enterprise or vigour they had brought from Europe. The other was the tendency of the Portuguese to mingle their blood with that of the natives. Very few ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... are most favorable to the highest development; where the environment is neither too hard nor too indulgent; where man is neither enervated by heat and the absence of necessity to labor, nor stunted by cold and hardship and the ever-present necessity to search or labor for food and warmth; there will be the highest ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener
... judicially incurred by sin. It is the withdrawal of that divine unction which enriches the acquiescent soul with moral power and pleasure. The subtraction leaves the mind enervated, obscured, confused, degraded, and ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... death, on the surrender, I might say, of all their local pith; as having disowned their country, as having ceased to be the representative spirits of the nations. In order to receive them, indeed, Rome had performed on them a cruel operation: they were enervated, bleached. Those great centralized deities became in their official life the mournful functionaries of the Roman Empire. But the decline of that Olympian aristocracy had in no wise drawn down the host of home-born gods, the mob of deities still keeping hold of the boundless country-sides, ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... crashing, in the midst of a terrible chorus of lamentations and imprecations, and he thought that his last hour had come. There were other days, when the sea was calm and yellowish, of insupportable heat, of infinite tediousness; interminable and wretched hours, during which the enervated passengers, stretched motionless on the planks, seemed all dead. And the voyage was endless: sea and sky, sky and sea; to-day the same as yesterday, to-morrow like to-day, and ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... without your breakfast; and, being used to the warm liquid, you feel out of order for the want of it. If the slops were in fashion amongst ploughmen and carters, we must all be starved; for the food could never be raised. The mechanics are half-ruined by them. Many of them are become poor, enervated creatures; and chiefly from this cause. But is the positive cost nothing? At boarding-schools an additional price is given on account of the tea slops. Suppose you to be a clerk, in hired lodgings, and ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... guns upon the fort looked as though not intended to defend it; the sentinels looked parboiled; the very natives sauntered rather than walked; the very bullocks crawled along in the midday sun, listlessly dragging the native carts. Everything and everybody seemed enervated, except those frightfully active people in all countries and climates, "the custom-house officers:" these necessary plagues to society gave their usual amount ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... Arabian deserts through civilized lands, gathered seeds of knowledge and planted them so freely in the land of their adoption that their planting overspread the earth; who, like the Goths, became enervated when they became stationary, and were no longer able to resist the powerful foe who had from their entrance into Spain sworn their expulsion or their extermination, will be ready to weep when the final retribution comes. Yet come it did, when Ferdinand ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... battlefield or shattered country he had seen was as ugly as this world would be if men like his brother Bayliss controlled it altogether. Until the war broke out, he had supposed they did control it; his boyhood had been clouded and enervated by that belief. The Prussians had believed it, too, apparently. But the event had shown that there were a great many people left who ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... due precautions, hesitations, and restings, Dr Thompson reached his cabin, and I doubt not as he descended, enervated as he was, but that he placed, like O'Connell, a vow in heaven, that if ever Captain Reud fell under his surgical claws, the active operations of Dr Sangrado should be in their celerity even as the progress of the sloth, compared with the despatch and energy with which ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... declined. He wished to push on at once; whatever hardships lay before them, had better be combated as soon as possible. A lengthened stay here would be a bad preparation for the wilderness life; they could scarcely but be enervated ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... too feeble and insignificant to move the ship by so much as a single inch, may at least afford his fevered body the momentary relief of a suggestion of comparative coolness. And how often does the panting and perspiring officer of the deck drag his weary, enervated frame to the skylight in the almost despairing hope that he may detect a depression of the mercury in the barometric tube, giving the promise of a coming change, only to turn away again ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... chamber. She had not yet come to any conclusion with regard to Mrs. Kilroy's invitation, and she felt it was time she decided. She took her sewing, her accustomed aid to thought, and sat down on a high chair near the window. She always sat on a high chair, that she might not be enervated by lolling; that was one of her patient methods of self-discipline; and while she meditated, she did quantities of work for herself, making, mending, remodelling, that she might get all the wear possible out of her clothes, and not add a penny she could help to those terrible debts, the thought ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... to remain absolutely quiet and see no one on the day of the performance, so as not to be enervated by the effort of talking much, to say nothing of tiring the vocal chords. One prima donna of my acquaintance occupies herself in trimming hats on the day when she sings, believing that this provides a distraction and rests ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini
... car whizzed northward; the meows became wilder; mad scrambles agitated the basket; the lid bobbed and creaked; the girl turned a vivid pink and, bending close over the basket, attempted to soothe its enervated inmate. ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... dissatisfied, her attitude, weary and enervated, gave the idea of the title admirably, and I ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... what I thought. Mr. G——'s Wordsworthianism, however, is excellent; his beautiful simplicity of taste, and love of truth, have preserved him from any touch of that vague and imbecile enthusiasm, which has enervated almost all the exclusive and determined admirers of the great poet whom I have known in these parts. His reverence, his feeling, are thoroughly intelligent. Everything in his mind is well defined; and his horror of the vague, and false, nay, even (suppose ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... dependence. Age abates the vigor of the executive faculties, and old people manifest not only bodily infirmities, but the relaxing and enfeebling influences proceeding from the lower portions of the brain. They totter about in their second childhood, mentally and physically enervated. Those who become dissipated by the use of intoxicating beverages are not only weak, trifling, and foolish, but walk with an unsteadiness which betrays their condition. These illustrations show that this part of the brain ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... name can I give to such levities?—and let us lay the foundation of our happiness in the strength and greatness of our minds, in a contempt and disregard of all earthly things, and in the practice of every virtue. For at present we are enervated by the softness of our imaginations, so that, should we leave this world before the promises of our fortune-tellers are made good to us, we should think ourselves deprived of some great advantages, and seem disappointed and ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... bath is, they must have been on the hot plains of India, and known the luxury of having porous chatties of cool, delicious water dashed over them, and sending, as it were, life rushing through their enervated limbs. ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... was early in advance of other countries, because there the contest of races was exceedingly severe. Unlike most regions, it was a tempting part of the world, and yet not a corrupting part; those who did not possess it wanted it, and those who had it, not being enervated, could struggle hard to keep it. The conflict of nations is at first a main force ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... years after the temple of Solomon was finished, this sumptuous structure was doomed to destruction, like all the fading handiwork of man. Sin enervated the nation which should have protected it; while the immensity of its riches excited the cupidity of a neighbouring royal robber. It was plundered, and then set on fire; the truth of the declaration made by Job upon the perishable works of man was eminently displayed—'For ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... surrounding chieftains, but by intrigue and power perpetuated his supremacy. For about three hundred years the family of Clovis retained its precarious and oft-contested elevation. At last, this line, enervated by luxury, became extinct, and another family obtained the throne. This new dynasty, under Pepin, was called the Carlovingian. The crown descended generally from father to son for about two hundred years, when the last of the race was ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... drawing-room celebrity. Steinbock, emulating these emasculated but charming men, grew every day more averse to hard work. As soon as he began a thing, he was conscious of all its difficulties, and the discouragement that came over him enervated his will. Inspiration, the frenzy of intellectual procreation, flew swiftly away at the ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... have their own proper measures in the voice and singing, by some hidden correspondence wherewith they are stirred up. But this contentment of the flesh, to which the soul must not be given over to be enervated, doth oft beguile me, the sense not so waiting upon reason as patiently to follow her; but having been admitted merely for her sake, it strives even to run before her, and lead her. Thus in these things I unawares sin, but afterwards ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... of—perhaps more than she dare think of. She had always felt him her superior in practical cunning; and that morning had proved to her what she had long suspected, that he was possibly also her superior in that moral earnestness and strength of will for which she looked in vain among the enervated Greeks who surrounded her. And even in those matters in which he professed himself her pupil, she had long been alternately delighted by finding that he alone, of all her school, seemed thoroughly and instinctively to comprehend her every word, and chilled by the disagreeable suspicion ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... cover the whole system of Buddhism with a single epithet[FN5] 'pessimistic' or 'nihilistic,' because Buddhism, having been adopted by savage tribes as well as civilized nations, by quiet, enervated people as well as by warlike, sturdy hordes, during some twenty-five hundred years, has developed itself into beliefs widely divergent and even diametrically opposed. Even in Japan alone it has differentiated itself into ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... to climb. The springs of pride which lie in a great man's secret soul had been slackened in Victurnien. With such guardians as he had, such company as he kept, such a life as he led, he had suddenly became an enervated voluptuary at that turning-point in his life when a man most stands in need of the harsh discipline of misfortune and adversity which formed a Prince Eugene, a Frederick II., a Napoleon. Chesnel saw that Victurnien ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... again, distressed and vexed with herself. Was it the heat that had enervated her and robbed her of the presence of mind she usually had at her command? She herself could not understand how it was that she had not at once taken advantage of the opportunity to plead to Haschim ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the democratic element opposed to these leaders, and the battles they won from time to time within the walls of the city, which produced the safety of Rome and enabled the government to go on. Then by degrees the people became enervated and the leaders became corrupt, and by masterhood over foreign people and external subjects slaves were multiplied, and the work appertaining to every man could be done by another man's hand. Then the evils of oligarchy began. Plunder, rapine, and luxury took the place of duty ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... personally had to do, and must still do. Otherwise I would have been terrified and enervated when I saw the Pope, and bishops, emperors, kings and all the world, opposed to the doctrine they ought to sustain. I would have been overwhelmed, thinking, "They, too, are men and cannot all be followers of the devil." How could I comfort myself and stand firm unless ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... irritable, the body weak; when from that invisible weakness, little evils become great, the temper loses its equanimity, the spirits their elasticity, we scarcely know wherefore, and we reproach ourselves, and add to our uneasiness by thinking we are becoming pettish and ill-tempered, enervated and repining; we dare not confess such feelings, for our looks proclaim not failing health, and who would believe us? when the very struggle for cheerfulness fills the eye with tears, the heart with heaviness, and we feel provoked at our peevishness, ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... cannot boast, Yet now my years are eighty-four almost: And though from what it was my strength is far, Both in the first and second Punic war, Nor at Thermopylae, under Glabrio, Nor when I Consul into Spain did go; But yet I feel no weakness, nor hath length Of winters quite enervated my strength; 330 And I, my guest, my client, or my friend, Still in the courts of justice can defend: Neither must I that proverb's truth allow, 'Who would be ancient, must be early so.' I would be youthful still, and find no need To appear old, till I was so ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... here were fine-looking men, enjoying contentment and happiness within the precincts of their native woods. Their enjoyment seemed derived so directly from nature that it almost excited a feeling of regret that civilised men, enervated by luxury and all its concomitant diseases, should ever disturb the haunts of these rude ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... repute healthy and honest views of life. Aristophanes essayed the task both by criticism and example—by criticism, directing the shafts of his ridicule at over-emphasis and over-subtlety, by example, writing himself in inimitable perfection the beautiful Attic dialect, which was being enervated and effeminated and spoiled in the ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... great tragic actors from Garrick to Booth. He embodied a demoniac scoffer who, nevertheless, is a human being. The infernal wickedness of Richard was shown to be impelled by tremendous intellect but slowly enervated and ultimately thwarted and ruined by the cumulative operation of remorse—corroding at the heart and finally blasting the man with desolation and frenzy. That, undoubtedly, was Shakespeare's design. But Richard Mansfield's expression ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... fellow," he said in answer to my stammered suggestion that marriage was simpler and less fraught with perilous possibilities, "Ann and I are not in the least hoodwinked by marriage. It has enervated the whole race of womankind and led to their complete economic dependence upon a polygamous sex who abuse the trust. Now Ann believes firmly in the holiness of maternity, but she flatly refuses to take upon herself the responsibility of an unwelcome ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... Roosevelt, among other items of good advice which he bestowed so liberally on the European nations, advised us to populate the torrid parts of Australia with immigrants from the Latin races. In Natal the English families who are settled in the country are said to be enervated by the climate; and on the high plateaux of the interior our countrymen find it necessary to pay periodical visits to the coast, to be unbraced. The early deaths and not infrequent suicides of Rand magnates may indicate that the air of the Transvaal ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... English are clearly anxious that their officers shall not become enervated through overmuch luxury. I have been on board several of your ships, and saw but little to admire in the accommodation provided for and the arrangements made for the comfort of their officers. How long have you been on the West African ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... comes over our thoughts of the younger Jersey when we have done laughing at it. That broad, pale peninsula, built of shells and crystal-dust, which droops toward the south like some vast tropical leaf, and spreads its two edges toward the fresh and salt waters, enervated with drought and sunshine—that flat leaf of land has characteristics that are almost Oriental. To make it the sea heaved up her breast, and showed the whitened sides against which her tides were beating. To walk upon it is in a sense to walk upon ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... native courage cowed and daunted by the superior knowledge and power of their enlightened neighbors. Society has advanced upon them like one of those withering airs that will sometimes breed desolation over a whole region of fertility. It has enervated their strength, multiplied their diseases, and superinduced upon their original barbarity the low vices of artificial life. It has given them a thousand superfluous wants, whilst it has diminished their means of mere existence. It has driven ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... barbarous nations which joined in the destruction of the Roman empire, were invited to come within its precincts through the weakness or folly of successive sovereigns who recruited their armies from those hardy tribes, in preference to their own subjects, enervated by luxury and indolence. The grants of land, and the rich donations by which the emperors endeavoured to secure the fidelity of these dangerous auxiliaries, encouraged them to regard the Roman territories as their prey; and being alternately the objects ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... this splendor, and enervated by luxury, Solomon forgot his higher duties, and yielded to the fascination of oriental courts. In his harem were 700 wives, princesses, and 300 concubines, who turned his heart to idolatry. In punishment for his apostasy, God declared ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... more disgusting the love intrigues of the French Comedy, entered into with married women, merely from giddy vanity. Limits have been fixed by nature herself to sensual excess; but when vanity assumes the part of a sensuality already deadened and enervated, it gives birth to the most hollow corruption. And even if, in the constant ridicule of marriage by the petit-maitres, and in their moral scepticism especially with regard to female virtue, it was the intention of the poets to ridicule a prevailing depravity, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... predecessor Victor. His opponents deserved far greater credit for the sturdy independence with which they upheld their individual rights than for the scriptural skill with which they unmasked the sophistry of a delusive theory; for all their reasonings were enervated and vitiated by their stupid admission of the claims of the chair of Peter as the rock on which the Church was supposed to rest. [358:3] This second effort of Rome to establish her ascendancy was, indeed, a failure; but the misinterpretation of Holy Writ, by which it was ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... history of less than a century since the Revolutionary war has fully maintained the self-reliant character of Americans and demonstrated their military abilities; and if the commercial and manufacturing populations of particular sections were supposed to have become somewhat enervated by long exemption from the labors and perils of war, it was certain that our large agricultural regions and especially our frontier settlements were peopled with men inured to toil and familiar with danger, constituting the best material for armies to be ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Burton remarks, for the most part those are "aptest to love that are young and lusty, live at ease, stall-fed, free from cares, like cattle in a rank pasture"—whereas the Bushmen are nearly always thin, half-starved denizens of the African deserts, enervated by constant fears, and so unmanly that "a single musket shot," says Lichtenstein, "will put a hundred to flight, and whoever rushes upon them with only a good stick in his hand has no reason to fear any resistance from ever ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... can count as many Kings as ancestors in her pedigree, our army by Divine help is a terror to foreign nations. Being kept in a prudent equipoise it is neither worn away by continual fighting nor enervated by unbroken peace. In the very beginnings of the reign, when a new ruler's precarious power is apt to be most assailed, contrary to the wish of the Eastern Emperor she made the Danube a Roman stream. Well known is all that the invaders suffered, of which I therefore omit further ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... or reason preposterously (into which Absurdities, Prejudice, Pride, or Interest, will sometimes throw the wisest) I count it no Crime to rectifie their Reasoning, unless Conscience must truckle to Ceremony, and Truth fall a Sacrifice to Complaisance. The strongest Arguments are enervated, and the brightest Evidence disappears, before those tremendous Reasonings and dazling Discoveries of venerable old Age: You are young giddy-headed Fellows, you have not yet had Experience of the World. Thus we young Folks find our Ambition cramp'd, and our Laziness indulged, since, while ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... not to be supposed that men satiated with the brutal shows of the amphitheatre, even if enervated by their frequentation of the Suburra, could, on leaving the city, be always content with simple pleasures, rural occupations, or pleasure-sails. Habit demanded something more exciting; and the ready tragedy of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... unmanageable. One vessel after another deserted, and those that remained in nominal attendance on the flag-ship could not be brought under control. Lord Cochrane, who had made skilful sailors and brave warriors of enervated Chilians and Brazilians, found the Greeks utterly unmanageable. Up to the 2nd of July he tried vainly to bring them into order, and only succeeded in pursuing them from island to island until, on that day, they had drawn him back to the neighbourhood ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... were louder, and quite as bitter upon these inhospitable inmates. Finally, after half an hour's vigorous but ineffectual assault upon the portal, we retreated in despair, and betook ourselves to walk the streets. The night was beautifully clear, but too cool for the enervated frame of an African voyager. We were tired with dancing, and occasionally sat down; but the door-steps were all of stone, and, though we buttoned our coats closely, it was impossible to ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... an unarmed white man would have been tomahawked as he stood. The human aspect is also curious. Palmetto hats, light blouses, and white trowsers form the prevailing costume, even of the clergy, while Germans smoke chibouks and luxuriate in their shirt-sleeves—southerners, with the enervated look arising from residence in a hot climate, lounge about the streets—dark-browed Mexicans, in sombreras and high slashed boots, dash about on small active horses with Mamelouk bits—rovers and adventurers from California and the Far West, with massive rings ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... endeared by the self-possession and dignity with which they faced death, their whole life seems to have been lived for that one moment." The society which had brought on and stirred up the Revolution was enervated and febrile. Paris was one large kennel of libellers and pamphleteers and intriguers. The salon frequenters were trained conversationalists and brilliant beauties who danced and drank, discoursed and intrigued. It was a superficial elegance, with virtue only assumed. The art of pleasing ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... that there was reflected inevitably and logically in the work of the men on that staff the hatred, the lack of principle, the bigotry and intolerance of its proprietors; and this same lack of principle tainted and made meretricious his own work, and enervated the editorials so that the Telegraph, no matter how carefully edited or how dignified in typographical appearance, was, nevertheless, without real influence in ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... had risen from her knees. She stepped along by the side of Juliette among the crowd which was making its way out with difficulty. Her heart was full of tenderness, she felt languid and enervated, and her soul no longer rebelled at the other being so near. At one moment their bare hands came in contact and they smiled. They were almost stifling in the throng, and Helene would fain have had Juliette go first. All their old friendship seemed ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... the combatants were almost cleft asunder, and the battle raged. The birds fought in the air; and the wild beasts in the dust; and I contended with Ed-Dimiryat until he wearied me and I wearied him; after which my companions and troops were enervated, and my tribes were routed. I flew from before Ed-Dimiryat; but he followed me a journey of three months, until he overtook me. I had fallen down through fatigue, and he rushed upon me, and made me a prisoner. So I said to him: 'By Him who hath exalted thee and abased me, pity me, ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... port, where he could disembark reinforcements "which his great victories had wrung from the opposition at home." Hannibal judged it best to go into winter-quarters at Capua, where his army was in a measure enervated by pleasure and vice. Carthage made an alliance with Philip V. of Macedonia, and with Hiero of Syracuse. But fortune turned in favor of the Romans. At Nola, Hannibal was repulsed by Marcellus ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... humiliated satellite of France, and her once famous Bank had been bled pretty extensively by both belligerents. The Senate was helpless before the Austrian engineers in 1745, and the emancipation of the city was due wholly to a popular emeute. She had relapsed again into a completely enervated condition. Smollett thought she would have been happier under British protection. But it is a vicious alternative for a nation to choose a big protector. It was characteristic of the Republic that from 1790 to 1798 its "policy" was to remain neutral. The crisis ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... coins and statuettes, and some articles of personal ornament or domestic use—little more in fact, than what may be seen in the Museum attached to the Guildhall Library. The long subjection to Roman rule had one disastrous effect. It enervated the people and left them powerless to cope with those enemies who, as soon as the iron hand of the Roman legions was removed, came forth from their hiding places to harry ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... not in Paris? Nought but conjectures can be offered on this subject; and yet perhaps the republican spirit was more likely to manifest itself at Bordeaux than at Paris, where the presence and influence of a court had for ages past enervated the independence of character, and enfeebled the austerity of principle that form the basis of patriotism and liberty. The states of Languedoc, and the habits that necessarily result from the administration of a province governed by itself, ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... without the possibility of interception or obstruction from any foreign power, he finds it necessary to begin with an army of three hundred thousand men, to subdue a nation of five millions, brutalized by ignorance, and enervated by long peace, and should find constant reinforcements of thousands after thousands necessary to effect at last a conquest as doubtful as deprecated, what numbers would be necessary against eight millions of free Americans, spread ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... Enervated by the interruption, she calls sharply to the singer to be quiet—but Pippa does not hear, and Ottima then orders Sebald to call, for his voice ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... in other characters. The Greeks may have retrograded from a want of coherence between the many small states, from the small size of their whole country, from the practice of slavery, or from extreme sensuality; for they did not succumb until "they were enervated and corrupt to the very core." (27. Mr. Greg, 'Fraser's Magazine,' Sept. 1868, p. 357.) The western nations of Europe, who now so immeasurably surpass their former savage progenitors, and stand at the summit of ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... her slaves eat the bread of idleness till it palls upon the sense! I reproach myself with having yielded, as I have done of late, my opinions to the persuasions of friendship; my mind has become enervated, and I must fly from the fatal contagion. Thank Heaven, I have yet the power to fly: I have yet sufficient force to break my chains. I am not yet reduced to the mental degeneracy of the base monarch, who hugged his fetters because ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... extended as far as Antioch and Babylon. Under the next Ptolemy,—Philopater,—degeneracy set in; but the empire was not diminished, and the Syrian monarch Antiochus III., called the Great, was defeated at the battle of Raphia, 217. Under the successor of the enervated Egyptian king, Ptolemy V., a child five years old, Antiochus the Great retrieved the disaster at Raphia, and in 199 won a victory over Scopas the Egyptian general, in consequence of which Judaea, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... her small silk hand-bag and ran out toward the elevators. Down in Thirty-first Street a wave of heat met, almost overpowering her. New York, enervated from sleepless nights on fire-escapes and in bedrooms opening on areaways, moved through it at half-speed, hugging the narrow shade of buildings. Infant mortality climbed with the thermometer. In Fifth Avenue, cool, high bedrooms were boarded and empty. In First Avenue, babies lay ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst |
