"Feeble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... used to visit his stable every morning, until he became feeble, and he paid especial attention to the manner in which his horses were shod. He never, after he became President, played cards or billiards, nor did he read anything except the Daily Globe and his private correspondence. When he received a letter that he ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... laggard raiders might swoop down upon them, and the choice of roles offered to him was to seem to them a moonshiner, or to the moonshiners an informer. The first was far the safer, for the clutches of the law were indeed feeble as contrasted with the popular fury that would pursue him unwearied for years until its vengeance was accomplished. From the one, escape was to the last degree improbable; ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... and was distracted at the thought of being implicated in some villanous or rash design. When, therefore, the man whose rivalry Vargrave most feared was almost established at her house, she made but a feeble resistance; she thought that, if Legard should become a welcome and accepted suitor before Lumley arrived, the latter would be forced to forego whatever hopes he yet cherished, and that she should be delivered from a dilemma, the prospect of which ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... as the feeble light permitted, he made out the room to contain the furnishings of an office, and by degrees, as his mind cleared, he recalled with ...
— A Royal Prisoner • Pierre Souvestre
... attempt, and managed to grasp the ledge, but her hold was so feeble that Tom dared not withdraw his support He was powerless to act, and they would both ...
— Grace Harlowe's Sophomore Year at High School • Jessie Graham Flower
... escorting Armand Gervase through several narrow by-streets, talking to him as well as he knew how and trying in his feeble way to "draw him out," in which task he met with ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... his horse, treated with much official roughness, and finally lodged in the townhouse awaiting his removal to the gaol of Wigton. He began to think that the fifty pounds which had been paid down by Eben of Stonykirk constituted but a feeble consolation for losses such as his. The Duke could not see him. My Lord of Wargrove would not, and Captain Laurence, to whom in desperation he made his plea, consigned him with extreme conciseness of speech to the deepest and hottest pit ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... wall where the relic stood, tried vainly to lift the cross. Its weight mocked his efforts, and he turned, gasping and trembling, to Hieronymus. "Father, I cannot. The sinews of the fool are too feeble to lift it." ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... her, as if he were full of something to say; but perhaps he guessed at her reference, or perhaps he saw her too feeble to be attacked with exciting topics. He shut his mouth and said nothing; and just then the servant entered bearing the tray with Matilda's supper. That made a nice diversion. I think David was glad of it. At any rate he made himself ...
— Trading • Susan Warner
... seat, because she saw at a glance that the young boy occupying that seat was more feeble than herself. The name of this little boy was Edwin. Emma had met him frequently in the woods, and down by the brook where he went to fish. They had thus become pretty well acquainted, and from him Emma had learned the name of the pretty girl who sat in the pew in front of ...
— Be Courteous • Mrs. M. H. Maxwell
... Christ, without exactly knowing why. The philosophers did not teach it him, for they adapted Christianity to their philosophy. Celsus' feeble attack on Christianity had not misled Julian's ripe and cultured intelligence. Eusebius explained his pupil's hatred of Christ in the following way: "He has heathen blood in him, for he comes of Illyrian stock; he does not belong to this sheepfold. Or is ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... mistress, drawn together by one common interest, became really attached to each other; the baby's crumpled red hand, which could just hold one of Biddy's fingers, kept her a willing prisoner in its feeble yet mighty grasp, and all went on well. For Mrs Roy was not disappointed in her hope of finding her little nurse a support and comfort, and valued her opinion highly with regard to the baby's ailments; true, it was sometimes rather ...
— A Pair of Clogs • Amy Walton
... dear Aylmer," said she, with a feeble attempt at a smile, "have you any recollection of a dream last night about this ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... and quietly, for his horse was old and feeble, like his owner. His thoughts reverted to the scenes of his youth, when he had periled his life in fighting for the liberties of his country; to the scenes of his manhood, when he had preached the gospel of his divine Master ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... number of men with penetrating, broadened vision, had beheld the fair exterior of Kaiserism, even while they recognized in the background, the slimy abode of the serpent. For years they had sounded the warning until at last their feeble voices attracted attention. ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... towards Blake, who lay with half-closed eyes, breathing with apparent difficulty and making feeble restless movements. Stooping beside him, he took out a very small bottle, and after carefully letting a few drops fall into a spoon, with some trouble got the sick man to swallow them. Then he sat down and turned ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... male, the hallmarks of the unpolluted masculine, are at the same time the hall-marks of the Schalskopf. The caveman is all muscles and mush. Without a woman to rule him and think for him, he is a truly lamentable spectacle: a baby with whiskers, a rabbit with the frame of an aurochs, a feeble and preposterous ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... to go down because there is not vitality enough in it to stand. For you know it is low vitality that catches all the diseases that are going; and it is out of the sick sheep's eyeholes that the ravens peck the eyes. And it will be the feeble types of spiritual life, the inconsistent Christianities of our churches, that will yield the crop of apostates and heretics and renegades, and that ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... and call to mind the effects of the lightning not one half-hour since. When the Almighty appears in all his wrath, in all his tremendous majesty, is it a time for us poor mortals to be at strife? What is our feeble artillery, what is the roar of our cannon, compared to the withering and consuming artillery of Heaven? Has he not told us so?—and do not the ship's company, by their dispirited conduct since the vessel was struck, acknowledge it? The officers all feel ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... replied Katharine, "but three millions of English-speaking liberty-loving people are not to be blotted out by a wave of the hand; they are not so easily exterminated, as you will find. Besides, it is easy to speak in general terms; but thousands and thousands are young and helpless, or old and feeble,—grandsires or women or children,—how about them? As long as there is a woman left or a child, your task is yet unfulfilled. Make a personal application of it; I am one of them. Do you wish to exterminate me, sir?" she said, looking up at him brilliantly, with her glorious ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... feeble from illness he had given her all the money he could spare, and for years the blackmail had continued. Then, at last, after he had been a year in England, the worm ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... Catholic prince commit a great sin on the brink of the grave? And what could be a greater sin than, from an unreasonable attachment to a family name, from an unchristian antipathy to a rival house, to set aside the rightful heir of an immense monarchy? The tender conscience and the feeble intellect of Charles were strongly wrought upon by these appeals. At length Porto Carrero ventured on a master-stroke. He advised Charles to apply for counsel to the Pope. The King, who, in the simplicity of his heart, considered the successor of St. Peter as an infallible guide in spiritual ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of it, and that in nowise prepossessed him in favor of this singular claimant of hospitality. The cheeks were livid and quivering, the features dreadfully contorted. Under the shadow of the hat-brim a pair of eyes gleamed out like flames; the feeble candle-light looked almost dim in comparison. Some sort of answer ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... I did. As I reached the top of the bluff I saw, marching up, in well dressed lines, the advance of General Nelson's division of Buell's army, then being ferried across the river. They moved up the bluff and took part in repulsing the last, rather feeble assault made at dark by a small portion of the enemy, though the main defense was made by brave men collected from every quarter of the field, determined ...
— "Shiloh" as Seen by a Private Soldier - With Some Personal Reminiscences • Warren Olney
... here," said James. "Neither of you—nor Martha—have any idea of how stultifying it can be to be forced into school under the supervision of teachers who cannot understand, and among classmates whose grasp of any subject is no stronger than a feeble grope in ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... use in discovery, and a use in tuition. They were long ago defined as the investigator's language addressed to Nature, to which she sends intelligible replies. These replies, however, usually reach the questioner in whispers too feeble for the public ear. But after the investigator comes the teacher, whose function it is so to exalt and modify the experiments of his predecessor, as to render them fit for public presentation. This secondary function I shall endeavour, in the ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... appearance which, if not architecturally imposing, was at least sufficiently venerable. At the present time the aisles were full of heaped-up holly and wreaths; a few lamps and a considerable number of tallow candles shed a rather feeble light amongst the pillars; a crowd of school children, not yet washed for the morrow, were busy under the directions of the schoolmistress in decorating the chancel; Mr. Thomas Reid the conservative sexton was at the top of a tall ladder, ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... had not spoken too loud, that nobody appeared to have noticed anything, and that none were looking their way. He added a feeble question as to whether Halliday, if he felt so bad, could not report himself as sick or something and escape having to ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... blast. 'Stay,' said the mighty Connal, 'stay, my dark-red friend. Lay by that beam of heaven, son of the windy Cromla! What cave is thy lonely house? What green-headed hill the place of thy repose? Shall we not hear thee in the storm? in the noise of the mountain stream? when the feeble sons of the wind come forth, and, scarcely seen, pass over ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... delay to untie knots, but began cutting her pack-lashings. Smoke cut his, and, with a last look at the fiery death-mist and the mockery of suns, they covered themselves over with the sleeping-furs and crouched in each other's arms. They felt a body stumble over them and fall, then heard feeble whimpering and blaspheming drowned in a violent coughing fit, and knew it was McCan who huddled against them as he ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... youth fired his piece into the ground at half-cock such guffawing and delight, such rolling over and over on the grass, such dances of ecstasy, as made the "Ethiopian minstrelsy" of the stage appear a feeble imitation. ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... that he will. But he's very feeble to-night, very feeble. I noticed that he gave the boy fewer kisses than usual. Perhaps he was put out because the child was brought in a half-hour earlier than the stated time. He don't like changes; you know that, Mr. Roger; he don't like changes. I hardly dared to tell him that the servants were ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... evergreen mosses and ferns that supply in winter the places of the absent flowers, in like manner there are chattering birds that linger in the wintry woods; and Nature has multiplied the echoes at this season, that their few and feeble voices may be repeated by their lively responses ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... was warning the world against him. Jolyon gave his special whistle. Even at that distance of a hundred yards and more he could see the dawning recognition in the obese brown-white body. The old dog got off his haunches, and his tail, close-curled over his back, began a feeble, excited fluttering; he came waddling forward, gathered momentum, and disappeared over the edge of the fernery. Jolyon expected to meet him at the wicket gate, but Balthasar was not there, and, rather alarmed, he turned into the fernery. On his fat side, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... clergy begged him to shut the gates against the crowds still gathering; but he refused, saying none should go empty away, and some gifts from his rich friends arrived opportunely to supply the need. The Bishop sat in the midst as feasting with them, now grown too feeble to wait on them, as he had always ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... Amid the lilies floats the moth, The mole along his galleries goeth In the dark earth; the summer moon Looks like a shepherd through the pane Seeking his feeble lamp again— ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume II. • Walter de la Mare
... accompany us through our course, and which necessarily follow our absence from the chief good. Doubtless there is not such a thing as grief and sorrow known there; nor is there such a thing as a pale face, a languid body, feeble joints, unable infancy, decrepit age, peccant humours, dolorous sickness, griping fears, consuming care, nor whatsoever deserveth the name of evil. Indeed, a gale of groans and sighs, a stream of tears accompanied ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... took hold of the dog's muzzle, when the poor brute whined softly, looked at him with its half-closed eyes, and made a feeble effort to ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... fear, the temper of the times was propitious to the corruptors of taste and liberal science. The dignity of composition was no longer of use. It had no power to stop the torrent of vice which deluged the city of Rome, and virtue found it a feeble protection. In such a conjuncture it was not safe to speak the sentiments of the heart. To be obscure, abrupt, and dark, was the best expedient. Then it was that the affected sententious brevity came into vogue. To speak concisely, and with ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... lights showing aboard the transport; all ports remained screened. Arrows, painted on the decks in luminous paint, pointed out the way. Below decks, a blue globe here and there emitted a feeble glimmer, marking corridors which pierced a ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... Gentiles shall say to each other in wonder, "Who believed what we heard concerning them? And to whom was the interest the Lord took in them made known? For it was a dispised people, feeble, and wretched, like a tender plant springing up out of a thirsty soil. Their appearance was abject, and there was nothing ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... "so the parsons have twisted your feeble senses round at last. Go your own way henceforward, young man; wisdom, I now well see, is too lofty a prize for you. Your head is too weak for this fare; and you are longing again for the pap you were wont to get from the former fathers of your soul. You will do better to stay ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... Some feeble idea of it may perhaps be obtained by comparing it with electricity, which, though the cause of various phenomena: heat, movement, chemical action, light, is not, per se, any one of these phenomena, undergoes no modification from their existence, ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... which it was the capital vanished with it. The new Babylonian empire, the Empires of the Medes and of the Persians followed each other with such rapidity that the Assyrian heroes and their prowess might well have been forgotten. The feeble recollections they left in men's minds became tinged with the colours of romance. The Greeks took pleasure in the fable of Sardanapalus: they developed it into a moral tale with elaborate conceits and telling contrasts, but they did not invent it from the foundation. ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... rasping scrape of a lucifer match, by the feeble light of which the man's face was seen bending over the lantern which he was endeavouring ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... seriously affected by this measure, which will take a very great sum of money annually out of their pockets. How did you give your vote upon that occasion?" Mr. Goddard hesitated, and stammered out, in a very feeble voice, "I have been incapacitated by old age and ill-health from attending my duty in Parliament, for the LAST TWO YEARS. I have never been in the House during that time, and, I fear I shall never be able to ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... temples of worship. Every provision was made for the entertainment of the people, and for their political and intellectual needs. But nowhere do we find the ruins of structures, belonging either to the public or to private individuals, indicating that any attempt was ever made to care for the feeble-minded, the insane, the deaf, the blind, the sick, or the aged; those that in every nation of modern times are the wards of the State and the definite ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... through France and Italy, like Cook's excursionists, just to hunt up something fresh to chatter about. It's my belief that a person who can't find anything new to say about the every-day world around her won't discover much suggestive matter for conversation in a Continental Bradshaw. It's like that feeble watery lady I met at the table d'hote at Geneva. From something she said I gathered she'd been in India, and I asked her how she liked it. "Oh," she said, "it's very hot." I told her I had heard so before. Presently she said something ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... to take care of her feeble parents, and he to take care of his invalid mother and ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... Sieglinde had grown old and feeble, and after her little grandson had been born she grew still more weak until one day she passed ...
— Stories of Siegfried - Told to the Children • Mary MacGregor
... the side of good nature in her criticism. All she can say of Dr. Sayers is: 'I always heard of him as a genuine scholar, and I have no doubt he was superior to his neighbours in modesty and manners. Dr. Enfield, a feeble and superficial man of letters, was gone also from the literary supper-table before my time. There was Sir James Smith, the botanist, made much of and really not pedantic and vulgar like the rest, but weak and irritable. There was ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... and utterly absurd picture here, or in any other gallery, is a head of the Eternal Father, by Carlo Dolce; it looks like a feeble saint, on the eve of martyrdom, and very doubtful how he shall be able to bear it; very finely and ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... only his, for it was the gentle, passionless, refined nature of the recluse which stamped itself there. Angelico's angels are unearthly, not so much in form as in sentiment; and superhuman, not in power but in purity. In other hands, any imitation of his soft ethereal grace would become feeble and insipid. With their long robes falling round their feet, and drooping many-coloured wings, they seem not to fly or to walk, but to float along, "smooth sliding without step." Blessed blessed creatures! love us, only love us! for we dare not ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... upon those feeble old men and imagine that they were once full of vigor and fire; that they held their old flintlocks with arms of iron when the British cavalry rushed upon their bayonets; that their keen eyes flashed a deadly aim along their rusty rifle-barrels; that, with their good swords quivering in their ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... an innate conception revealed by consciousness; for why should good and intellectual men, trained to study and reflection all their lives, gain no clearer or more inspiring notions of the Being of infinite love and power, or of the happiness which He is able and willing to impart? What a feeble conception of God is a being without the oversight of the worlds that he created, without volition or purpose or benevolence, or anything corresponding to our notion of personality! What a poor conception of supernal bliss, without love or action or thought or holy companionship,—only ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... not enough to help the feeble up,/But to support him after] This thought is better expressed by Dr. Madden in his elegy on ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... Marjorie entered a small low bedroom, clean enough, though rather faded and shabby. In a cot bed by the window lay Eric, white as his pillow, a frail ethereal being all dark eyes and shining golden curls. He stretched out two feeble ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... they injured none but themselves! Would there were no generations yet unborn to suffer by inheriting feeble constitutions, or actual disease, from ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... the most painful thing that we have witnessed lately, that the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act has become so common that it causes almost no remark. The measure is introduced into the House. An Irish Member makes a feeble protest against it, and it is passed, and we suspend the liberties of one of the three kingdoms from year to year. And the Prime Minister has the courage—I might almost use another word—he has the courage to say there is no crisis, and that things ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... why should they not also fall from Parnassus?" said the artist, finally, with a triumphant air. "Say what you will, Bergenheim, your feeble opposition will not prevail against the instincts of the age. The future is ours, let me tell you, and we are the high priests of the new religion; is it not ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... Jaded, feeble, he rose to meet another day. He drove down town, trying not to hear the beat of his horses' hoofs. Dizzy and stupefied, he gained Gretry's office, and alone with his terrors sat in the chair before his ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... fame; Their swords, their shields, their surcoats were the same. Close by each other laid, they press'd the ground, Their manly bosoms pierced with many a grisly wound; 150 Nor well alive, nor wholly dead they were, But some faint signs of feeble life appear: The wandering breath was on the wing to part, Weak was the pulse, and hardly heaved the heart. These two were sisters' sons; and Arcite one Much famed in fields, with valiant Palamon. From these ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... men and women whom the operating table seems to fascinate; half-alive people who through vanity, or hypochondria, or a craving to be the constant objects of anxious attention or what not, lose such feeble sense as they ever had of the value of their own organs and limbs. They seem to care as little for mutilation as lobsters or lizards, which at least have the excuse that they grow new claws and new tails if they lose the old ones. Whilst ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... over heels, topsy-turvy. tastin', small quantity. tatties, potatoes. tauld, told. tel't, told. teuch, tough. thae, those. thee, thigh. thocht, thought, worry, care. thole, endure. thowless, thewless, inactive, feeble. thrang, busy. tick, credit. till, to. timmer, timber. tinkler, tinker. tint, lost. tirravee, fit of passion. tow, rope. trailin', walking slowly. traivelled, walked. trampin', walking. tribbles, troubles. trokit, done business in a small way. tryst, appointment, make an appointment. tuggit, tugged. ...
— The Auld Doctor and other Poems and Songs in Scots • David Rorie
... much about these two friends—lovers that may be, or might have been—because they never would have done it themselves. Neither was given to much speaking. Indeed, I fear their conversation this day, if recorded, would have been of the most feeble kind—brief, fragmentary, mere comments on the things about them, or abstract remarks not particularly clever or brilliant. They were neither of them what you would call brilliant people; yet they were happy, and the hours flew by like a few ...
— The Laurel Bush • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... thou, my sister?" asked a familiar voice, though feeble and hollow in its tones. The girl sprang ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... believers as we were, should have entertained the idea that, in course of time, he would pass away, and that we two should be left to comfort each other as well as we might. But I, who had heard my friend speak of the coming years, could not forget the picture he had drawn of two aged and feeble people, looked up to in love and veneration by a fresh and hearty man ...
— The Vizier of the Two-Horned Alexander • Frank R. Stockton
... which are supposed to be less charged with carbonic acid, we meet only with plants of an inferior organization, as lichens, lecideas, and the brightly-colored, dust-like lepraria, scattered around in circular patches. Islets of fresh-fallen snow, varying in form and extent, arrest the last feeble traces of vegetable development, and to these succeeds the region of perpetual snow, whose elevation undergoes but little change, and may be easily determined. It is but rarely that the elastic forces at work within ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... could but have died a tyrant's death, and should have left an avenger behind me. And now I die childless: I have not so much as a murderer at my need.' Even as he speaks, with trembling hand he plunges the sword into his breast: he is in haste to die; but that feeble hand lacks strength ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... and he's thought a great deal, and when it comes to talking, I never heard any one express themselves better. The other night, we were out looking at the stars—I came part of the way home with him; I didn't like to let him go alone, he seemed so feeble and he got to showing me Mars. He thinks it's inhabited, and he's read all that the astronomers say about it, and the seas and the canals that they've found on it. He spoke very beautifully about the other life, and then he spoke about death." ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... my heroic fathers, if this feeble arm cannot redeem your heritage; if the foul boar must still wallow in thy sweet vineyard, Israel, at least I will not disgrace you. No! let me perish. The house of David is no more; no more our sacred seed shall lurk and linger, like a blighted ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... Seaton walked with feeble steps, and leaning on two men, to the infirmary; and General Rolleston ordered a cup of coffee, lighted a cigar and sat cogitating over this strange business and asking himself how he could get rid of this young madman and yet befriend him. As for ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... information in most cases. Hence his extravagant misappraisement of Knolles, the Turkish historian, which is exposed so severely by Spittler, the German, who, again, is himself miserably superficial in his analysis of English history. Hence the feeble credulity which Dr. Johnson showed with respect to the forgery of De Foe (under the masque of Captain Carleton) upon the Catalonian campaign of Lord Peterborough. But it is singular that a literature, so unrivalled as ours in its compass and variety, should not have produced ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... not yet know the poor weakness of even maturest manhood, and the feeble gropings of the soul toward a soul's paradise in the best of the world! You do not yet know either, that ignorance and fear will be thrusting their untruth and false show into ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... "I never can go through with it! Never, never, never! I wish I were dead in the old family tomb with all my forefathers—yes, and with my brother, who had far better find me there than here! I am too old, too feeble, and too hopeless! If old Maule's ghost, or a descendant of his, could see me behind the counter to-day, he would call it the fulfilment of his worst wishes. But I thank you for your kindness, Mr. Holgrave, and will do my utmost ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... dark dismay Disquieted thy closing day, But, evermore, thy soul could say, "My Father careth still for me!" Called from thy hearth and home,—from her, The last bud on thy household tree, The last dear one to minister In duty and in love to thee, From all which nature holdeth dear, Feeble with years and worn with pain, To seek our distant land again, Bound in the spirit, yet unknowing The things which should befall thee here, Whether for labor or for death, In childlike trust serenely ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... felt anew the impulse to early rising for purposes of devotional communion. At Halle he had been an early riser, influenced by zeal for excellence in study. Afterwards, when his weak head and feeble nerves made more sleep seem needful, he judged that, even when he rose late, the day would be long enough to exhaust his little fund of strength; and so often he lay in bed till six or even seven o'clock, ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... so feeble we have to reach our country through the actual country lying nearest. Don't you do that yourself, Claire? Reach your country through ...
— Plays • Susan Glaspell
... by, the Pensioner's eyes grew dim. He became weak and feeble. "The Pensioner won't stand it long," the ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... girl felt her strength give way. Her hands fell powerless, her face became fearfully pale, all her limbs trembled, and sinking upon her knees, and casting a terrified glance at the strait waistcoat she was just able to falter in a feeble voice, "Oh, no:—not that—for pity's sake, madame. I will do—whatever you wish." And, her strength quite failing, she would have fallen upon the ground if the two women had not run towards her, and received her fainting into ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... supposed from these facts that the Jews were a robust race, but no one who has come much in contact with them will share this delusion. Nothing is more conspicuous among them than their unhealthy colouring, their frail, bent, and feeble bodies. They develop early, but they have very little of the spring and buoyancy of youth and they have everywhere a low average of physical strength. Malformations and deformities are common among them; their nervous organisation ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... last the Sun! I write these lines, Here on my knees, with feeble, fumbling hand. Look! in yon mountain cleft a radiance shines, Gleam of a primrose — see it thrill, expand, Grow glorious. Dear God be praised! it streams Into the cabin in a gush of gold. Look! there she stands, the angel of my dreams, All in ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... rocks in vain, Nor Edward's walls the weighty shock sustain; Deep George's loaded lake reluctant guides Their bounding barges o'er his sacred tides. State after state the splendid pomp appalls, Each town surrenders, every fortress falls; Sinclair retires; and with his feeble train, In slow retreat o'er many a fatal plain, Allures their march; wide moves their furious force, And flaming hamlets mark their wasting course; Thro fortless realms their spreading ranks are wheel'd, On Mohawk's wrestern wave, ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... know that he was with Cherubini would think him stern and reserved, so well did the composer know how to conceal everything, if only to avoid ostentation. He truly shunned brag or speaking of himself. Cherubini's voice was feeble, probably from narrow-chestedness, and somewhat hoarse, but was otherwise soft and agreeable. His French was Italianized.... His head was bent forward, his nose was large and aquiline; his eyebrows were thick, ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... continues Professor Mivart, "it is freely conceded that the destructive agencies in nature do succeed in preventing the perpetuation of monstrous, abortive, and feeble attempts at the performance of the evolutionary process, that they rapidly remove antecedent forms when new ones are evolved more in harmony with surrounding conditions, and that their action results in the formation of ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... to them, and the like, because it makes them realize that the same may happen to themselves. This also explains why the old and the wise who consider that they may fall upon evil times, as also feeble and timorous persons, are more inclined to pity: whereas those who deem themselves happy, and so far powerful as to think themselves in no danger of suffering any hurt, are not so ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... buried among the raven tresses, was gazing fixedly into the depths of the clear sky, as if she sought to penetrate that azure veil, and find some hope realized among the mysteries of the space beyond. The neglected volume had fallen from her lap, and lay among the bluebells at her feet. Arthur's feeble steps were unheard upon the sward, and he had taken his seat beside her, before, conscious of an intruder, ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... policy in saying in "an article" all that could be said in "a debate," and showing, after all, how little it comes to. Even the feeble grievance-mongers grow ashamed at retailing the review and the newspapers; but, what is better still, if the article be smartly written, they are sure to mistake the peculiarities of style for points in the argument. I have seen some splendid blunders of that kind when I sat in the Lower House! I ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... regiment, in which Messieurs Dobbin and Osborne had companies, was an old General who had made his first campaign under Wolfe at Quebec, and was long since quite too old and feeble for command; but he took some interest in the regiment of which he was the nominal head, and made certain of his young officers welcome at his table, a kind of hospitality which I believe is not now common amongst his brethren. Captain Dobbin was an especial favourite ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and too feeble to pursue the dreadful beast. He could only wring his hands and rend his grey hairs in grief and terror; but his lamentations would not restore the child to life. A band of hunters and lumberers, armed with rifles and knives, turned out to beat the woods, and were not long in tracking ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill
... on the strength of the imagination." Over that vast inquiry of the influence of mind over matter, — an inquiry which the embodied intellect of mankind will never be able to fathom completely, — it will, at least, have thrown a feeble and imperfect light. It will have afforded an additional proof of the strength of the unconquerable will, and the weakness of matter as compared with it; another illustration of the words of the inspired Psalmist, that "we are fearfully and ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... a castle by royalty's grace, Forgot I was bashful, and feeble, and base. For stepping to music I dreamt of a siege, A vow to my mistress, a fight for my liege. The first sound of trumpets that fell on mine ear Set warriors around me and made me their peer. Meseemed we were arming, the bold for the fair, In joyous devotion and haughty despair: ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... This feeble attack appears to have convinced Jackson that his danger was not pressing. It was evident that the enemy had as yet no idea of his strength. Stuart's cavalry watched every road; Ewell held a strong position on Broad Run, barring ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... nearly impossible to form an estimate of the proportion of the slaves included in a number of these classes, such as the old, the worn out, the incurably diseased, maimed and deformed, idiots, feeble infants, incorrigible slaves, &c. More or less of this description are to be found on all the considerable plantations, and often, many on the same plantation; though we have no accurate data for an estimate, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... older than herself); sometimes it does not, remaining purely sex feeling. Sometimes it is for some other man she has this curious self-obliterating maternal feeling. It is not necessarily connected with sex intercourse. A prostitute, who has relations with dozens of men, may have it for some feeble drunken fool, who perhaps goes after other women. I once saw the change from sex feeling to mother feeling, as I call it, come almost suddenly over a woman after she had lived about four years with ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... 169. With it, the bees often swarm too much. With the improved hive this is avoided. Disadvantages of returning after-swarms. Third objection, inability to strengthen small late swarms, 170. Evils of feeble stocks. Fourth objection, loss of queen irreparable. By the new hive her loss is easily supplied, 171. Fifth, common hives inconvenient when bees do not swarm. This objection removed by the new hive. Sixth, the ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... an awful crisis. This is brought about by a mere trifle. John Kurt, failing to humble his wife, strikes her. The baleful forces that lurk in the depths of the Kurt temperament rise to the surface; the whole terrible heritage of savagery overwhelms the feeble civilization which the last scion has acquired. If Thomasine had been weak, she would have been killed; but she defends herself with fierce persistency, and though it seems as if she must succumb, her compact frame, strengthened by generations of healthful toil, possesses an endurance which ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... my breath, for we were there. There in the parlor, and Marget standing looking at us, astonished. She was feeble and pale, but I knew that those conditions would not last in Satan's atmosphere, and it turned out so. I introduced Satan—that is, Philip Traum—and we sat down and talked. There was no constraint. We were simple folk, in our village, and when a stranger was a pleasant person we were ...
— The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... and brake the horse's back. Fair knight, said Sir Palomides, ye have overmuch on hand, therefore I pray you let me joust, for ye had need to be reposed. Why sir, said the knight, seem ye that I am weak and feeble? and sir, methinketh ye proffer me wrong, and to me shame, when I do well enough. I tell you now as I told you erst; for an they were twenty knights I shall beat them, and if I be beaten or slain then may ye revenge me. And if ye think that I be weary, and ye have ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... demoniacal cause of disease, exorcism by relics gradually grew in importance until it was firmly established and a preferred form in the sixth and subsequent centuries. Down to this time there still existed a feeble recognition of a possible system adapted to the cure of maladies, so far, perhaps, as the practice was restricted to municipalities. The rapid advancement of saintly remedies, consecrated oils, and other puissant articles of ecclesiastical ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... community, regardless of race, if it were completely cut off from all outside help and influence. The civilised Romans who conquered Britain in the early Christian era, no doubt, looked upon the primitive Britons as a feeble folk when compared with themselves, but the erstwhile slaves have since demonstrated their capacity for developing a civilisation utterly beyond the imagination of their foreign masters. Rome was not built in a day. The rearing of Western civilisation required many centuries, and it can hardly ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen
... Briton's col'ny here. (Enter Quezox) Francos: But Bonset, list! 'Twere well to let them wait: To quick respond will lower dignity. The British mind doth breed a rev'rence deep For form and etiquette which swift cognition Might debase, and thus we on their mental Vision might mayhap but feeble impress Make as envoys by most noble Caesar sent To rule these Isles with gravity and state. Quezox: Most noble Sire! If I might but suggest, 'Twere well for Bonset to inquire each name And mental picture stamp upon his mind That he may fluent ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... with intense curiosity upon the calm face of the stranger, who, in his turn, looked upon him with the air of one who was surveying from a superior height some feeble ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... scandal. Their dull and deep potations excused the brisk intemperance of youth, and their constitutional toasts were not expressive of the most lively loyalty to the House of Hanover." Some Oxonians perhaps could still partly realise the truth of this original picture by their recollections of faint and feeble copies of it drawn from their experience in youthful days. It seems to be certain that the universities, far from setting a model of good living, were really below the average standard of the morals and manners ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... dead bodies, which remained without burial during the general consternation. The despair of the citizens was sometimes converted into fury; and whenever the Barbarians were provoked by opposition, they extended the promiscuous massacre to the feeble, the innocent and the helpless. The private revenge of forty thousand slaves was exercised without pity or remorse; and the ignominious lashes which they had formerly received were washed away in the blood of the guilty or obnoxious families. The matrons and virgins ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... Johnson might be supposed playfully to have anticipated this attack. He is giving an account of Blackmore's imaginary Literary Club of Lay Monks, of which the hero was 'one Mr. Johnson.' 'The rest of the Lay Monks,' he writes, 'seem to be but feeble mortals, in comparison with the gigantick Johnson.' See also post, Oct. 16, 1769. Horace Walpole (Letters, v. 458) spoke no less scornfully than Sheridan of Johnson and his contemporaries. On April 27, 1773, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... kind of giddiness, for that dreadful scent of death had touched me again. She, too, halted with a little cry of dismay, and a feeble motion of the hands, ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... And wherever her power is not cramped, she still exercises that power to the destruction of all who oppose her unrighteous usurpation. All the blood shed by all other christian sects, is no more in comparison to that shed by the papacy, than the short lived flow of a feeble rill, raised by the passing tempest, to the deep overwhelming tide of a mighty river, which receives as tributaries, the waters of ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... exist, and I cannot fairly expect you to commit suicide, however much I may desire it. Moreover, your subjects—for, to be candid, you are a despot—seem to like you. You minister so craftily to their self-esteem, you flatter their vanity with an adroitness so remarkable, that, after a few feeble struggles, they resign themselves, body and soul, to your thrall. Even then you proceed warily. Your first labour is to collect, with patient care, all the little elements of dissatisfaction that are latent in every nature, and to blend them with the petty disappointments ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 11, 1891 • Various
... The skies were dark and lowering, and ominous of tempest; for it was a sirocco, and the welkin was overcast with sheets of vapory cloud, not very dense, indeed, or solid, but still sufficient to intercept the feeble twinkling of the stars, which alone held dominion in the firmament; since the young crescent of the moon had sunk long ago beneath ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... imagine but that the foundations of all knowledge—secular or sacred—were laid when intelligence dawned, though the superstructure remained for long ages so slight and feeble as to be compatible with the existence of almost any general view respecting the mode of governance of the universe. No doubt, from the first, there were certain phenomena which, to the rudest mind, presented a constancy of occurrence, and suggested that a fixed order ruled, at any rate, ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... cold ashes I attest, and call To witness for myself, that in their fall No foes, no death, nor danger I declin'd, 420 Did, and deserv'd no less, my fate to find. Now Iphitus with me, and Pelias Slowly retire; the one retarded was By feeble age, the other by a wound; To court the cry directs us, where we found Th' assault so hot, as if 'twere only there, And all the rest secure from foes or fear: The Greeks the gates approach'd, their targets cast Over ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... against one feeble woman! Verily, you have a brave set of fellows under a brave commander! But you dare not call upon your men; I could make forty friends of the number in quick time; but, even if I should fail, you are too ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... was only at single rapier; but the weapon soon failed; for it was always observed, that the Amazons had a sort of enchantment about them, which made the blade of the weapon, though of never so good metal, at every home push, lose its edge and grow feeble. The Roman Bear Garden was abundantly more magnificent than anything Greece could boast of; it flourished most under those delights of mankind, Nero and Domitian: at one time it is recorded, four ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... gracious child. But that child Mr. Badman could not abide, he would seldom afford it a pleasant word, but would scowl and frown upon it, speak churlishly and doggedly to it, and though as to Nature it was the most feeble of the seven, yet it oftenest felt the weight of its Fathers fingers. Three of his Children did directly follow his steps, and began to be as vile as (in his youth) he was himself. The other that remained became a kind of mungrel Professors, not so bad as their Father, nor so good ...
— The Life and Death of Mr. Badman • John Bunyan |
