"Helplessness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... helplessness she thought of trusting herself to one of the women,—all creatures of her husband,—when, passing into her oratory, she found that the count had locked the only door that led to their apartments. This was a horrible discovery. Such precautions taken to isolate her showed a desire to proceed ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac
... was the unmistakable atmosphere that seemed to enter with him—an atmosphere that from one side produced a sense of great fear and helplessness, and on the other of a kind of security. In an instant Monsignor felt as a wounded child might feel in the presence of a surgeon. And, throughout the interview that ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... sad decay, When baffled hope has died away, And life becomes one long distress In pitiable helplessness. Methinks 'tis like a ship on shore, That once defied the Atlantic's roar, And gallantly through gale and storm Hath ventured her majestic form; But now in stranded ruin laid, By winds and dashing seas decayed, Forgetful of her ocean reign, Must ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... the wall, but lay huddled at the foot of it. Weariness and hunger had overcome her; she was in a faint, her lips colourless and her eyes closed. Nell dropped beside her, murmuring low, soft consolations. I stood by in awkward helplessness. These matters were beyond ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... his helplessness, swore under his breath and fell silent for awhile. Finally his face cleared a little. "Tell you what I'll do," he said. "I won't stop now and let them find me there. I'll drive on down to the point and fix my horses for the ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... sport and school, all these things come to us through men like Wilfrid and St. Patrick, St. Columba and St. Ninian, St. Augustine and others who in the days of long ago came to lift our fathers from the wretched, quarrelsome life, and from the starving helplessness of the Men of ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... fortune o' it," said Gabriel, in a distressed tone. "And it is because of that very helplessness that I feel bound to go. Good afternoon, ma'am" he concluded, in evident anxiety to get away, and at once went out of the churchyard by a path she could follow ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... done to you?" he said, in his prostrate helplessness, and he breathed hard like a stag at the water's edge. "What ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... the unreasonableness of women—some women," he corrected himself hastily, "she resented her enforced helplessness, and looking back I can recall very well how she used to scowl at ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... a thrust from a different quarter. In the open a man feels a sporting chance, at any rate, even if a bullet can beat him on the run; but cooped up within four walls he is paralyzed by his horrible helplessness. He feels that a military court reverses ordinary procedure, holding that it is better for nine innocent to suffer than for one guilty one to escape. He knows that his fate is in the hands of a tribunal from whose arbitrary decision there ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... Stangerson was like a madman, and truly, it was enough to make him one, for we heard Mademoiselle still calling "Help!—help!" Monsieur Stangerson showered terrible blows on the door, and wept with rage and sobbed with despair and helplessness. ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... most humiliating, an epoch-making, confession to come from the little Doctor. It was accompanied with a vague smile, intended to be cheering and just the thing for a sick-room. But the dominant note in this smile was bewildered and depressed helplessness, and at it the maternal instinct sprang full-grown in Fifi's thin little bosom. A passionate wish to mother the little Doctor tugged at ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... wheel quickly and start to support her, sought to evade him, failed—and as she felt his arms lift her, she cried aloud in anguished helplessness. ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... the Portuguese themselves were reconciled to the event, and rejoiced in their deliverance. We may infer from that the horror which they must have felt in the presence of their oppressors; and we may see in it to what a state of helplessness their bad government had reduced them. Our duty was to have treated them with respect as the representatives of suffering humanity beyond what they were likely to look for themselves, and as deserving greatly, in common with their Spanish brethren, for having been the first to rise ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... her—that was to her the whole story. She had been mortified by the misstep, but the misstep made, only one thought had occurred to her—to help him all she could. She had been appalled when she first saw the dusty shrinking mountain girl, but the helplessness and the loneliness of the tired little face touched her, and she was straightway responsive to the mute appeal in the dark eyes that were lifted to her own with such modest fear and wonder. Now her ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... without thought or faith or hope. Words are powerless to describe the desolation of that prison-house, or the joy of the soul that is delivered out of its captivity. When we compare the needs and helplessness of the blind before Dr. Howe began his work, with their present usefulness and independence, we realize that great things have been done in our midst. What if physical conditions have built up high walls about us? Thanks to our friend and helper, ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... needles and straight-standing trunks. Nature was in a gentle glow; the pure clear air of falling evening draped the earth in sweetness. Yet through it wound long lines of ghoulish men who felt it not, held to fiendish things by mistaken ambitions, by an unjustified bitterness that fed on its own helplessness. For, after all, the varying moods of nature are but constituents of a formula of which each man provides for himself the other half—else would the Eskimo be a ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... is abroad—and that New Knowledge is a fuller realisation that the new world is for all men and all women who work and do their duty, for all humanity, and not merely for the few who get rich upon the exploitation of poverty and helplessness of the masses. And this realisation carries with it the realisation that the governments of the future will be more really governments of the people for the people—and by people I do not mean merely those of Britain or France, or whichever nation men ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... season of leanness, Unkindness, and chill; Its whistle is ringing, An iciness bringing, Where the brown leaves are clinging In helplessness, still, And the snow-rush is ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... from the spot where the native had lain, the yellow, glittering, malevolent eyes, not of a man, but a tiger—a tiger thirsting for human blood. The shock was so great that for a second or two I was paralysed, and could only stare back at the thing in fascinated helplessness. Then a big bird close at hand screeched, and some small quadruped flew past me terrified; and with these awakenings of nature all my faculties revived, and I simply jumped on ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... out of window,' he wrote to Rogers, 'and break into Mrs. S.'s room and take me. For God's sake let me see you!' See him!—see one friend who could and would help him in his misery! Oh! happy may that man count himself who has never wanted that one friend, and felt the utter helplessness of that want! Poor Sheridan! had he ever asked, or hoped, or looked for that Friend out of this world it had been better; for 'the Lord thy God is a jealous God,' and we go on seeking human friendship and neglecting the divine till it is too ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... soon began to bring a general feeling of warmth to his chilled frame, and as the inward helplessness passed away it began to give place to an acute sense of fear, and his eyes wandered here and there in search of Sir James Danby, the doctor, and others more terrible, who would charge them with stealing the boat ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... "drift-wood of kings," the wrecks of nations and governments, you have discovered the one word emblazoned as an epitaph on each and every one, "Luxury, luxury, luxury!" You have hitherto placed a premium upon woman's idleness, helplessness, dependence. The children of most of our fashionable women are being educated by foreign nurses. How can you expect them to develop into patriotic American statesmen? For the sake of country I plead—for the sake of a responsible, exalted womanhood; for the sake of a purer womanhood; for ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... less a favorite with Jack than with the other members of the household. Rough as he is sometimes, Jack is always gentle with Ida. When she was just learning to walk, and in her helplessness needed the constant care of others, he used, from choice, to relieve his mother of much of the task of amusing the child. He had never had a little sister, and the care of a child as young as Ida was a novelty to him. It was, perhaps, this very office of guardian to the ...
— Timothy Crump's Ward - A Story of American Life • Horatio Alger
... with sinister meaning, that Kate dared not ask whether the "trouble" to which he suggestively referred would come to her through him or the inhabitants of Noumea. She thought that he looked capable of reducing her to helplessness by violence, if she showed signs of resisting his will, and she relapsed into silence. But she had not given up the hope of cabling to Loria. She ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... her husband or her visitor which caused both of them to sit still and give her her own way about such things. Indeed, Lavender had not as yet ever attempted to impress upon Sheila the necessity of cultivating the art of helplessness. That, with other social graces, would perhaps come in good time. She would soon acquire the habits and ways of her friends and acquaintances, without his trying to force upon her a series of affectations, which would only embarrass ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... but some at least of them went further. Those who had demanded political freedom themselves denied even personal freedom to others. They seized and carried away into slavery some of the unoffending natives, the Eskimos, who were freemen and whose only crime was their helplessness. One instance will suffice. The Minerva privateer of Boston, Captain John Grimes, Master, mounting 20 nine pounders and manned with 160 men landed on Sandwich Bay, Labrador, at Captain George Cartwright's station, took his brig, The Countess of Effingham, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... Catherine de' Medici; when she died, no one rejoiced, no one lamented. Wherever she had turned her eyes, she had seen nothing but occasions for uneasiness and sadness; she had retired from court, feeling her helplessness and disgrace as well as the decline in power of that son in whom her hopes were centred. She decided to reenter the scene of action and save Henry. The stormy scenes of the Barricades and the League and the murder of the Duke of Guise hastened her death, ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... quit before I let myself go." George paused and wiped his hot face. "You see how I was fixed? I could have bluffed a man into making a plain statement and then have knocked him out; but that cool, polite lady made me hate my helplessness." ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss
... idea of this intruder. She saw this in me. I denied it—but she knew. There was something in each of us the other grew to hate. And still we loved as never before, perhaps, for we grew to pity each other's helplessness. ...
— The First Man • Eugene O'Neill
... me," Lionel Varick had explained rather awkwardly on the only occasion when he had really talked of his late wife to Blanche Farrow, "was her helplessness, and, yes, a ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... and, what was tenfold worse, upon my mother's voluntary death. My horror of my only friend, my aversion for this son who was to marry me, my revolt against the whole current and conditions of my life, were now complete. I was sitting stupefied by my distress and helplessness, when, to my joy, a very pleasant lady offered me her conversation. I clutched at the relief; and I was soon glibly telling her the story in the doctor's letter: how I was a Miss Gould, of Nevada City, going to England to an uncle, what money I had, what family, my age, and so forth, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... seemed hard that his wife should be punished too. And then he went on miserably to figure first her slight surprise at his being gone so long; then her vague uneasiness and her conjectures; then her dawning apprehensions and her helplessness; her probable sending to the consulate to find out what had become of him; her dismay at learning nothing of him there; her waiting and waiting in wild dismay as the moments and hours went by; her frenzied running to the door at every step and her despair when it proved not his. He ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... sprang to his eyes—tears of rage and helplessness. With a sob he turned away and leaned his head ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... eyes that again I watched intently, and I saw that not only was this sylph drawn out of all natural form at the waist, but that she was attempting to walk in little shoes supported upon high pivots called heels under the centre of the feet. It was an ingenious combination of torture and helplessness, to which no social circle in my native land offers a parallel. It is a wonderful achievement, due, I have no doubt, Mr. Easy Chair, to the manifest superiority of your great country, and plainly a striking illustration of it. Yet it is interesting and touching that the maidens of your politer ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... the door, seems to have gone. All at once, there comes the sudden rattle of iron, at my feet. I glance down, quickly, and realize, with an unspeakable terror, that my foot is pushing back the lower bolt. An awful sense of helplessness assails me.... The bolt comes out of its hold, with a slight, ringing sound and I stagger on my feet, grasping at the great, central bolt, for support. A minute passes, an eternity; then another——My God, help me! I am being forced to work upon the last ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... acquisition. It was this state of things, with its accumulated results, which, a generation or so later, faced the few investigators who puzzled over the decadence of morals, the enfeebled physiques, the general helplessness of the young women who married, and the whole series of natural consequences. So startling were the facts developed, that it became at once evident that a change must be brought about, if only as a measure of wise political economy; and thus it has happened ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... two had recently disappeared. Smoke told of finding the two, and expressed surprise that none had gone that short distance down the trail to find out for themselves. What particularly struck him and Shorty was the helplessness of these people. Their cabins were littered and dirty. The dishes stood unwashed on the rough plank tables. There was no mutual aid. A cabin's troubles were its own troubles, and already they had ceased from the ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... suffered for many days in roaring helplessness, the while his foot, bound and swathed in many folds of red flannel, lay on the chair before him. In proportion as his gout increased and he bawled from pure physical discomfort, she became light-hearted, and moved about the shop ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... confused. Only the blind can know and understand my feeling of over-powering helplessness," declared Goddard, earnestly. "I stepped forward, tripped, and fell with all my weight, striking against the iron fender before I could save myself. I knew nothing more until I regained consciousness the next day and found myself in bed, with a ...
— The Lost Despatch • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... lowliness is an important element conducive to "unity of conduct." By this is not meant that general helplessness in the face of conditions, dangers and injuries because of ignorance of the methods of averting them. This is not humility but weakness. Nor do we mean that timidity and loss of countenance which one suffers before a superior in physical ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... while they yet remained at Mrs. Eastman's, very few events occurred which are worth recording. For one thing, Dotty's bird died. She had loved it for its helplessness; but Angeline said,— ...
— Dotty Dimple At Home • Sophie May
... to run away. Buck caught the dangling reins near the bit. Satan attempted to strike out with his forehoof. It was a movement as clumsy and slow as the blow of a child, and Buck easily avoided it. Realizing his helplessness Satan whinnied a heart-breaking appeal for help to his unfailing friend, Black Bart. The wail of the wolf answered ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... what with a three years' drouth and no hay in the country, and the railroads blocked so that no feed could be shipped in, even if we could have gotten to the cattle on the range—oh, well——" The cattleman dropped to his chair with a sigh of helplessness. ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... white as its 0wn whiteness. It had been there all the time! I sunk on my knees in the boat and gazed up. With a sudden sweep the clouds curtained the mighty window, and the Jungfrau withdrew into its Holy of Holies. I am painfully conscious of the helplessness of my speech. The vision vanishes from the words as it vanished from the bewildered eyes. But from the mind it glorified it has never vanished. I have been more ever since that sight. To have beheld a truth is an apotheosis. What the truth was I could not ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... Mediterranean, gets ashore at Cadiz or Gibraltar, takes a run through three or four of the principal Andalusian cities, perhaps has a letter of introduction, or else meets at a fonda with some good-natured Spaniard, who compassionates his "goose look" and evident helplessness, invites him to his house, and introduces him at a tertulia or two. The gosling picks up a few Spanish sentences, hears a few anecdotes from some lying valet-de-place, who has attached himself to the Senor ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... careless face in utter helplessness. This was a matter of life and death to her; to him ...
— Little Saint Elizabeth and Other Stories • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the Dutch of their helplessness when deprived of English help; and instructions were given to their envoys at Utrecht, on December 29, to give their assent to the terms agreed upon and indeed dictated by the governments of England and France. Making the best of the situation, the Dutch statesmen, ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... vaguely. There was no asperity in her voice now, only puzzled helplessness. It was the inevitable surrender of the commonplace in the light of a greater understanding—in the realization of an unknown law to the significance of which some never attain. She had come inadvertently to a marriage ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... not believe in a little child being an innocent thing. I think it means that we are to receive it in all our need and helplessness. A little child is the most dependent thing on earth. All its resources are in its parents' love: all it can do is to cry; and its necessities explain the meaning to the mother's heart. If we interpret its language, it means: "Mother, wash me; I cannot wash myself. Mother, clothe me; I am ...
— Sovereign Grace - Its Source, Its Nature and Its Effects • Dwight Moody
... little that for a time he underrated the effect of it upon other people. His affection rose clean above the unhappy fact, and it was some time before he began to appreciate the spectacle of Chris under the world's eye with the truth no longer hidden. Then a sense of his own helplessness overmastered him; he walked slowly, drew up at a gate and stood motionless, leaning over it. So silent did he stand, and so long, that a stoat hopped across the road within two ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... practical result or evidence, for the breath of slander went on steadily increasing with the violence of a hurricane. But our people remained silent, partly out of stupidity, partly out of a feeling of despairing helplessness, and partly because, being a pastoral people, they read no newspapers, and were thus unaware of the way in which the feeling of the whole world was being prejudiced against them by the efforts ...
— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz
... Dowager's grey hairs had barely saved her from outrage on that bitter day. It was only her utter helplessness and afflicted condition that prevailed upon the Parliamentary captain, and prevented him from carrying out his design, which was to haul her off to one of those London prisons at that time so gorged with Royalist captives that the devilish ingenuity of the Parliament ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... ropes to make sure that they were proof against twisting, straining muscles, and took an extra turn or two with the loose end, just to make doubly sure of the man's helplessness. ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... dread anxiety to the sounds of savage warfare echoing from crag to crag along the range, while every moment or two the elder turns to moisten the cloth she holds to a wounded trooper's burning, tossing head. Sergeant Wing is fevered indeed by this time, raging with misery at thought of his helplessness and the scant numbers of the defence. It is a bitter pill for the soldier to swallow, this of lying in hospital when every man is needed at the front. At nine o'clock this morning a veteran Indian fighter, crouching in his sheltered lookout above the caves and scanning with practised ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... them. The tip had passed along from lip to lip. They were like wild beasts roused by the presence of prey. Their eyes gleamed with relentless lust. They eyed the little creature with ravening eyes. Her helplessness ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... by the scent, but a long continued pouring rain makes it impossible for them to perceive, by that means, in which direction the river lies, and they are found bewildered on the land. The hunters take advantage of their helplessness on ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... only those nations whose civilisation has reached such a stage that the employment of complex instruments of labour is prevented, not by their ignorance, but simply by their social political helplessness. To such nations, however, applies in full the truth that they are poor simply because they cannot eat enough to satisfy themselves; and that the increase of their wealth is conditioned by nothing else than the degree of energy with which ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... massive and intolerable fact. His stories are not chronicles of men who conquer fate, nor of men who are unbent and undaunted by fate, but of men who are conquered and undone. Each protagonist is a new Prometheus, with a sardonic ignominy piled upon his helplessness. Each goes down a Greek route to defeat and disaster, leaving nothing behind him save an unanswered question. I can scarcely recall an exception. Kurtz, Lord Jim, Razumov, Nostromo, Captain Whalley, Yanko Goorall, Verloc, Heyst, Gaspar Ruiz, Almayer: one and all they are destroyed ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... Utilitarians and their antagonists were separated by a gulf which could not be bridged for the time. The men of common-sense, who had no philosophy at all, were shocked by the immediate practical applications of Utilitarianism, its hostility to the old order which they loved, its apparent helplessness in social questions, its relegation of all progress to the conflict of selfish interests, its indifference to all the virtues associated with patriotism and local ties. By more reflective minds, it was condemned as robbing the world of its poetry, stifling the religious emotions, and even quenching ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... him like one utterly mastered, and it was several seconds before she recovered from this helplessness. Subdued screams and struggles, audible from neighboring brakes, revealed that there had been other lurkers thereabout for a similar purpose. Grace, unlike most of these companions of hers, instead of gasping and writhing, said in a trembling voice, "Mr. ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... you do?" asked Emmy, ending the sentence on a hysterical note which brought tears and a fit of sobbing. She buried her head in her arms on the sofa-end, and her young shoulders shook convulsively. She was an odd mixture of bravado and baby helplessness. To leave her to fight her terrible battle with the aid only of a theater dresser was an impossibility. Septimus looked at her with mournful eyes, hating his futility. Of what use was he to any God-created being? Another man, strong and capable, ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... she whispered to herself, and looked around in the attic with an expression of complete helplessness. She longed for peace, and it seemed peaceful up where she was. She stayed a while, leaning up against one of the ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... matters, it was never permitted to sink again, for any length of time, into its former death-like slumber. And many things befel me that tended to make me feel, and feel most painfully at times, the helplessness and cheerlessness, the gloom and wretchedness, of the man who has lost his trust in God, and his hope of a blessed immortality. There is nothing in utter doubt and unbelief to satisfy a man with a heart. A man with a heart wants a Father in whose ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... thousands of years in that condition, Jiva then attains to the colour called Tawny (and becomes born as an intermediate creature). In that condition he dwells (for many long years), in perfect helplessness. At last when his sins are exhausted (in consequence of his having endured all the misery they are capable of bringing), his mind, casting off all attachments, cherishes Renunciation.[1372] When Jiva becomes endued with the quality of Sattwa, he then dispels everything connected with ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... strangely insolent, this woman, and the listener felt his helplessness; he had brought the young man there with such secrecy, he had so carefully provided for ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... he energetically. "It's going to take a lot of practice—a lot of time. But I'm game." His expression, its suggestion of helplessness and appeal, was a clear confession of a feeling that she ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... unlike as many another belonging to that particular branch of the genus homo—rooms in which we would probably receive a mild shock and be compelled to rebuild our entire structure of theories on the subject of the helplessness, uncomfortableness, and general miserableness of that specimen known as bachelor. To be sure, Steve Loveland was fortunate in the selection of his rookery, but that might be called an outcome of his genius—a ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... benefit. So far as we have been able to ascertain, the ordinary feeling among those who had been inmates of orphan institutions, and of their descendants, has been one of affection and gratitude to those who have watched over them and provided for them in their days of helplessness, and who have toiled and in many cases suffered to promote their temporal and spiritual good. When travelling we have met many of this class, and have been much gratified by the ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... belt, while his eyes gradually became vacant. Richard at that instant thrusting a mug before him, his features changed to the grin of idiocy, and seizing the vessel with both hands, he sank backward on the bench and drank until satiated, when he made an effort to lay aside the mug with the helplessness of total inebriety. ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... long alone in his helplessness, for in another moment James, the butler, and Grant's Aunt Annie came hurrying in. They both took in the situation at a glance, and while the first mentioned opened the window, in order to admit the fresh cold air, the latter bathed his ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... fumed in their helplessness when they learned that he was coming—coming, too, under the safe-conduct of the empire, coming to have a hearing before the Diet!—he whom the infallible Vicar of Heaven had condemned and anathematized! ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss
... which having no longer any utility continue to exist because we have inherited the tendency to make them; as funereal urns carved on memorial monuments. They were once real urns holding the ashes of the dead. We cannot stop making them, but we can give them a name that conceals our helplessness. ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... Elinor's excellence. "She is just the woman for a friend," he observed to himself, "and friends I trust we shall be, when the past is forgotten. But Jane, with her transcendant {sic} beauty, her gentle helplessness, is the very creature that fancy ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... was he of his rights, that when the captain's wife, who happened to be on board, offered to care for the little creatures, he, concealing his helplessness as a nurse, accepted her kindness with a lordly air and as though it were really a favor on his part. "Them twins is Quality," he would say, "and I can't have 'em meddled with till I find the grand folks they belong to. Wash their leetle ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... attended me at Wintenberg was not only discreet, but also indulgent; perhaps he had the sense to see that little benefit would come to a sick man from fretting in helplessness on his back, when he was on fire to be afoot. I fear he thought the baker's rolling-pin was in my mind, but at any rate I extorted a consent from him, and was on my way home from Wintenberg not much more than twelve hours after Rudolf Rassendyll left me. Thus I arrived at my own house ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... preparation with diagram, blackboard, plasticine, or sand-tray, will realise when the moment of free criticism comes, that in her nervousness she has omitted to make any use of that on which she had bestowed so much labour. Gradually, however, a new class emerges from utter helplessness into an encouraging self-confidence ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... pancake batter and molded it into the dynamite wrapping with a fragment of harmless fuse protruding from the opened end. When the thing was dry, Casey thought it would look very deadly and might be useful. After several days of helplessness for want of a weapon, Casey was in a mood ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... nature served rather to convert the ship into a prison. Storm and stress, whether of the elements or of the less candid foes who lurked unseen on the neighboring shores, made the Kansas a veritable fortress, a steel refuge seemingly impregnable. But the knowledge of the vessel's helplessness, and of the equally desperate hazard which beset her inmates, was rendered only more poignant by the smiling aspect ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... ridicule, somewhat subdued by the sense of her helplessness, broke suddenly loose. Bending over I offered her my arm, my head still uncovered. As the hand holding the white flag drooped from exhaustion, I took it, with the banner, into ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... helplessness came over me. I felt crushed, as if I could not fight any more, as if ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... self-possessed, as horsemen are, but he seemed constrained with the girl. They had no conversation, no topics in common. He kept his place beside her, often watching her in silence, but he did not obtrude himself. She appeared to have a certain power over him, even in her helplessness, but it was slipping from her. In her eyes, as they rested upon him in the hot daylight, your father believed that he saw a wild and gathering repulsion. So ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... over her whole body, was reflected in a dreamy languor in her pretty eyes. She was almost unable to work; her hands seem to fall naturally into her lap. She scarcely walked at all, and was constantly sighing and complaining with comic helplessness. ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... reckless murders in the Southern States, but to the riots in the most civilised cities, such as Boston, New York, and Baltimore, in which outrages and murders have been committed without the Government ever presuming to punish the perpetrators; but the strongest evidence of the helplessness of the Government, when opposed to the majority, has been in the late Canadian troubles, which, I fear, have only for the season subsided. If many have doubts of the sincerity of the President of the United States in his attempts to prevent ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... said Caspar reasonably. And he sat there with his air of stiff helplessness, as if not only this were true, but there were nothing else that ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... thought had blossomed into lovelier deed and shed its sweetness over her arid and colorless life. And now, under the magic spell of tender little hands and innocent lips, of luminous eyes that looked wistfully into hers for a welcome, and the touch of a groping helplessness that fastened upon her strength, the woman in her woke into life, and the beauty and fragrance of long-ago summers came back again as in ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... young face expressed a puerile helplessness. And it was with a maternal pity that she reassured him, using words such as mothers find for children ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... favor of his grandson, the Count de Paris, was disposed to leave the child-monarch with his mother in the palace. He flattered himself that the innocence of the child and the helplessness of the mother would prove their protection. But when the Duchess of Orleans perceived that no arrangements were being made for her escape and that of her ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... signs of considerable indignation were visible among the dupes of Mr. Scott's inventive skill. The Lady of Fashion recalled with blushing fury her supposed escapade with the absurd Courier. The Bureaucrat re-lived his angry helplessness behind the iron grille. Before, however, anger could break out, the tension gave way to the irrepressible humour of Peter Brown. Suddenly he began to laugh, and each moment he laughed more loudly and more shamelessly. One by one the others joined, until by the healthy ...
— The Tale Of Mr. Peter Brown - Chelsea Justice - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • V. Sackville West
... arrived near to Loss creek, a distance of but six miles, they found the body of Mrs. Grigsby and of her younger child, where they had recently been killed and scalped. The situation of this unfortunate woman (being near the hour of confinement,) and the entire helplessness of the child, were hindrances to a rapid retreat; and fearing pursuit, the Indians thus inhumanly rid themselves of those incumbrances to their flight and left them to accidental discovery, or to become food for the beasts of ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... the helplessness of his position grew upon him. He was deep in the foothills, many miles, as far as he knew, from the home of any settler. In daylight he could, no doubt, find his way back to town, but daylight might be too late. He did not know whether Allan was dying on his hands ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... which, in plain English, means his moral support to the South. Oh! that enemy to the whole human race. That Decembriseur.[1] Our military slowness, if nothing else is the matter, our administrative and governmental helplessness, and Seward's lying and all-confusing foreign policy have encouraged foreign impertinence and foreign meddling. I have all along anticipated them as an at least very possible result of the above mentioned ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... with unyielding eyes. There was not emotion in the glance, no aversion or remonstrance. It was the glance she had for Esther, for Rhoda Knox. "Here I am," it said, "flat, but not at your mercy. You can't make me do anything I don't want to do. I am in the last citadel of apparent helplessness. You can't any of you drag me out of my bed. You can't even make me speak." And she would not speak. Esther, creeping out on the landing to listen, was confident grandmother never said a word. What spirit it was, what indomitable pluck, thought ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... be cross with him. His simplicity was apparently so hopeless, his confidence in whomever he addressed so complete, that often even the man he was pursuing felt for him a pitying contempt. Now as he stood uncertainly in the hall of the hotel, his helplessness moved the proud lady clerk to shake her cylinders of false hair sympathetically, the German waiters to regard his predicament with respect; even the proprietor, Mr. Gerridge himself, was ill at ease. Ford returned to his room, on the second ...
— The Lost House • Richard Harding Davis
... discourses so pleasantly. On the other hand, the elision of the second syllable of the word music in the other line quoted above is equally faulty in another direction. But as we said when reviewing Mr. Bridges’s treatise on Milton’s prosody, nothing is more striking than the helplessness of most recent poets when confronted with ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... sufferings comes in such a questionable shape, that to the unimaginative she appears merely as an extremely self-confident young woman, wisely concerned first of all in securing her personal comfort, much given to complaints about her food and to helplessness where she should be helpful, possessing an extraordinary capacity for fancying herself slighted, or not regarded as the superior being she knows herself to be, morbidly anxious lest the servants should, by some mistake, treat her with offensive cordiality, pettish if ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... "The Kunbi," Mr. Forbes remarks, [42] "though frequently all submission and prostration when he makes his appearance in a revenue office, is sturdy and bold enough among his own people. He is fond of asserting his independence and the helplessness of others without his aid, on which subject he has several proverbs, as: 'Wherever it thunders there the Kunbi is a landholder,' and 'Tens of millions are dependent on the Kunbi, but the Kunbi depends on no ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... the gay lieutenant and myself; he to float along the stream of fashion in its most sparkling current—I to tread the twilight paths of the green park in helplessness and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... and he shook his fist in an invisible face. Involuntarily, from a sense of helplessness, she looked vaguely about ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell
... on Prescience and Freewill, with exception of the page or two borrowed from Skelton, displays an unacquaintance with the deeper philosophy, and a helplessness in the management of the particular question, which I know not how to reconcile with the steadiness and clearness of insight evinced in the earlier Discourses. I neither do nor ever could see any other ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... around in blank helplessness. She has named God so often, and so often promised in his name, the repetition is beginning to have a mocking effect upon herself. A shadow passes before her dimming the dim light, and she is brought down to think of death as very ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... tighter round the rail of the chair. Without witnesses, without means, without so much as a refuge—thanks to her own coarse cruelties of language and conduct—in the sympathies of others, the sense of her isolation and her helplessness was almost maddening at that final moment. A woman of finer sensibilities would have instantly left the room. Grace's impenetrably hard and narrow mind impelled her to meet the emergency in a very different way. A last base ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... overhanging mass of rocks trembles to its fall, the obstruction that a pitiless malice may have placed in your path, you think of these after the journey is done, but they seldom haunt your fancy while it lasts. The knowledge of your helplessness in any circumstances is so perfect that it begets a sense of irresponsibility, almost of security; and as you drowse upon the pallet of the sleeping car and feel yourself hurled forward through the obscurity, you are almost thankful ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... strike that ruffian a terrible blow which he knows should annihilate him, but then feels that his arm drops powerless and limp like a rag, and the horror of unavoidable destruction seizes him in his helplessness. ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... saddest spectacle I had ever seen. As I recall it after more than sixty years, the scene of silent grief, of unutterable helplessness, has still a haunting power over me, the oldest lad not eight years of age, the youngest a girl baby in arms, the young father aghast before the sudden tragedy which had come upon him. There must have been something in my sympathy ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... breast stirred in its sleep and threw up its tiny hands in the convulsive movement which is the human embryo's first unconscious protest against the helplessness of which it is born inheritor. Tom stood up, beating the air softly ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... complete helplessness and physical prostration, she ventured no allusion to the future, but waited patiently until renewed strength permitted the execution of designs now fully mapped out. Notwithstanding her feebleness, she rendered herself invaluable to Mrs. Wood, who praised her dexterity ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... used to tell myself at first that our acquaintance was a stroke of art, and that I was somehow fortifying Carthew. I told myself, I say; but I was no such fool as to believe it, even then. In these circumstances I displayed the two chief qualities of my character on the largest scale—my helplessness and my instinctive love of procrastination—and fell upon a course of action so ridiculous that I ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... as it were, look at him with the eyes of a wolf or fox,—must look up from that low level, and discern, so far above, this skilled and wondrous creature, who by ingenuity and self-schooling has converted his helplessness into power, and made himself the plume and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... it—!" he said, in a voice of helplessness and misery, and watched her till she disappeared from view. Then he turned, and, lifting up in his arms the man he had killed, carried him ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... had taken advantage of her helplessness, then, to force her to give up her barbaric cottage in Brougham Street and share permanently the splendid comfort of their home. She existed in their home like a philosophic prisoner-of-war at the court of conquerors, behaving faultlessly, behaving magnanimously in the melancholy ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... in a nutshell when an English deist inveighed bitterly against the rigid instruction of Christian homes. The deist said: "Consider the helplessness of a little child. Before it has wisdom or judgment to decide for itself, it is prejudiced in favour of Christianity. How selfish is the parent who stamps his religious ideas into a child's receptive nature, as a moulder stamps the ...
— Fifty-Two Story Talks To Boys And Girls • Howard J. Chidley
... at Clarissa, and thought again how lovely she was, and pitied her for her beauty and her helplessness—the daughter of such a father, the sister of such ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... helplessness, and, glancing about for further inspiration, caught sight of an inquiring yellow head peering furtively in ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... Schwartzmann cabin brought the information. It brought, too, continued reports of the menace in the upper air. It told of patrol-ships sent down to destruction with no trace of commander or crew; and a cruiser of the International Peace Enforcement Service came back with a story of horror and helplessness. ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... Margaret interrogatively. Margaret is undecided what to say, shrugs her shoulders in helplessness, and ...
— Theft - A Play In Four Acts • Jack London
... as he puffed thoughtfully at his pipe. Perhaps he was thinking of the night when Jones had threatened him with death and laughed at his helplessness. "According to the 'unwritten law' which is made to cover so many lawless acts, I have the power to deal with them as I think fit," he answered. "And I must confess I was sorely tempted to take the law into my own hands when I knew ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger
... The Greeks were in the midst of a hostile country, nearly 1200 miles from home, surrounded by enemies, blocked up by impassable mountains and rivers, without guides, without provisions, without cavalry to aid their retreat, without generals to give orders. A stupor of sorrow and conscious helplessness seized upon all. Few came to the evening muster; few lighted fires to cook their suppers; every man lay down to rest where he was; yet no man could sleep, for fear, anguish, and yearning after relatives whom he was never ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... "Bloody" from his vile companions. I felt very much cast down the more I considered the subject and the impossibility of delivery, as it seemed to me, at least for a long time to come. At last, in my feeling of utter helplessness, I prayed fervently to the Almighty that he would deliver me out of my miserable condition; and when I had done so I felt ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... daughter's love and with all the love a mother gives to a helpless baby, with the pity added that gray hairs and toothless gums must amount to added up over the sum of dimples and ivory and coral that makes up a baby's beautiful helplessness. ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... cannot help remembering that we are beyond the pale; that our ways are not their ways; and that the ways of John Law with us are different from his ways with other men. Poor lost souls, wailing for a crust in the dark, we know full well our helplessness and ignominy. And well may we repeat after a stricken brother over-seas: "Our pride it is to know no spur of pride." Man has forgotten us; God has forgotten us; only are we remembered by the harpies of justice, ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... held steadfast? Nay! He hath but permitted the oppression that we may have our fill of the glories of Egypt and be glad to turn our backs upon her. He will cure us of idols by showing forth their helplessness when they are cried unto; and when Israel is in its most grievous strait and therefore most prone to attach itself to whosoever helpeth it. He will prove Himself at last by His power. Aye, thou hast said. Israel can suffer little more ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... made me no reply, and sat there staring at the floor. She began to feel a sense of helplessness, like a creature caught in a net. It was more the man's personality than his words which made her feel as if he were pouring himself throughout her, taking possession of brain and every sense, as though he were a sort ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... opinion of the human race, don't you?" Chambers said. "You think you can beat them into a mire of helplessness and fear." ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... with. She desires her best love to you; she likes your pamphlet on "The Education of the People" very much, at the same time that it has not convinced her that instruction is wholesome for the lower orders; she thinks the dependence of helplessness and ignorance a better security (for them, or for those above them, I wonder?) than the power of reasoning rightly and a sense of duty, in which opinion, as you will believe, I do ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... of women, rather of the wholly loving; but the deep afflictions of the past few months, working down into the crevices and cells of her nature, had struck the impervious bed of piety, and so deluged it with sorrow and the lonely sense of helplessness that now a cry like an appeal to judgment broke from her, not despair nor accusation, but an appeal to the ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... hands. Perhaps at the outset such an alliance was rather repugnant to those of the old native type; but they got over the difficulty by the aid of that not particularly laudable propensity of Germans: namely, a timid feeling of jealousy which accompanies a sense of helplessness (die mit der Unbeholfenheit verbundenc Scheelsucht). This propensity spoilt the temper of one of the most eminent German musicians of later times, [Footnote: Robert Schumann.] led him to repudiate his true nature, and to submit to the regulations of the elegant and alien second ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)
... affirming that two pieces were not enough; and, though his mistress assured him that these were equal in value to six kreuzers, still he persisted in his refusal, and went on grumbling until the six kreuzers, one by one, were counted into his hand. This ignorance and helplessness his master was not slow to take advantage of, so that poor Mind never once thought of looking about him for a better place. From his entrance into Freudenberger's house up to the time of his death, there is nothing to tell of him except that he spent his whole life ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 333 - Vol. 12, Issue 333, September 27, 1828 • Various
... realised their utter helplessness, and saw that they, their wives an children, were completely at the mercy of their implacable enemy. They fell prostrate before the pacha, and with all the fervour which the utmost terror could inspire, implored him to grant ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... "Take not Thy holy spirit from me," and then there flashed across her trembling soul the horror and blackness of darkness in which souls "cast from God's presence" must dwell forever. Prostrate in utter helplessness, she cast herself upon the Eternal Father's mercy. If He would forgive her selfish rebellion against the removal of Martha, if He would give her back the joy of the first years of her espousal to her husband, if He would only forgive her, she could do without all the rest—and then ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... subsided into a chair by the door, covered his wretched pinched face with two bony hands, and burst into tears. I certainly never expected to see a swagger cry, and F—— declared the sight was quite as new to him as to me. However, the poor man's tears and helplessness gave fresh energy to my maids' treacherous nerves, and they even suggested dry clothes. Our good-natured cadet, who at this moment appeared on the scene, was only too happy to find some outlet for his superfluous benevolence, and hastened off, to return in a ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... America, places the negro element of the United States at least upon a level with the Malay race in natural powers, and from association, much the superior in practical intelligence. Notwithstanding the crushing laws designed by slaveholders to perpetuate the ignorance and helplessness of the negro, he would improve. Notwithstanding the brutal and studied policy of slaveholders to slander and disparage the negro capacity for improvement, all the arts of lying hypocrisy have occasionally been set at naught by some convincing exhibition of truth, springing from ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... tried to fight Greece and Servia together. She failed, in a strife quite as bloody as that against Turkey. The neighboring State of Roumania also took part against the Bulgars. So did the Turks, who, seeing the helplessness of their late tigerish opponent, began snatching back the land they had ceded to Bulgaria.[1] The exhausted Bulgars, defeated upon every side, yielded ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... questions—Good God! for what am I reserved!" He gazed on his father as he spoke, who, with clay-cold features rigidly fixed, and his arms extended in the most absolute helplessness, looked rather the image of death upon a monument, than a being in whom existence was only suspended. "Was my life spared," said Albert, raising his hands with a wild gesture to heaven, "only to witness ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... chill and dejected than before. My head swam with feverish emptiness. I seemed suddenly possessed by a feeling of wild independence—seeing nothing, fearing nothing. Presently, this died away, and I fell back in utter helplessness, ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... so suddenly and thoroughly betrayed her, that she was overwhelmed with a sense of helplessness and perplexity. The spoiled and flattered girl had always been accustomed to have her own way. Self-gratification had been the rule and habit of her life. If Van Berg had only admired and complimented her, if he had joined the honeyed chorus of flattery that had waited on her sensuous beauty, ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... should never see them. Might not his father be dead ere he could return?—if ever he did return. That twelve thousand miles of sea looked to him a gulf impassable. Oh, that he were safe at home! that he could start that moment! And for one minute a helplessness, as of a lost child, ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... with difficulties. Satan assails them with fierce temptations. The work which they have undertaken seems far beyond their ability to accomplish. They are threatened with destruction. The enthusiasm which animated them is gone; yet they cannot turn back. Then, feeling their utter helplessness, they flee to the Mighty One for strength. They remember that the words which they have spoken were not theirs, but His who bade them give the warning. God put the truth into their hearts, and they could ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... to them, they turned and twisted her between their hands, fumbling at neck and waist with black fingers, and brown fingers tattooed blue, until she, too, began to laugh. She laughed herself into helplessness, and encouraged by her wild merriment, and Lella M'Barka's smiles and exclamations punctuated with fits of coughing, they set to work at pulling out hairpins, and the tortoise-shell combs that kept the Roumia's red gold waves in place. At last down tumbled the thick curly ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... watching the water spurt back from the bows. She was very much in love with Siegmund. He was suggestive; he stimulated her. But to her mind he had not her own dark eyes of hesitation; he was swift and proud as the wind. She never realized his helplessness. ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... and blown after his chase, he sat down to rest, when to his surprise he saw the paddle in the fire, nearly burned in two. Hastily snatching it out, he found one blade utterly ruined and it was anything but cheerful to contemplate his helplessness in those wilds without the means of propelling himself; like a steamer without her wheel. He was not a man to be easily overcome by trifles, however, and he did not helplessly contemplate the situation for long; but seizing a hatchet, he chopped down a small sapling ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... caste members is permitted to help in the last sacred rites for the dead. Even at that moment, when one would expect the icy barriers to melt away, the heart of caste is as hard and its severity as rigid as ever. The helplessness of a family under these circumstances is, to any one who is not a slave to the whole accursed system, most pitiful ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... them at last—no! not them, for the Heir-to-Empire was not there—he had been stolen away! Roy could have leaned his head on Down's soft fur and cried his heart out in despair at his own helplessness, but he set his teeth instead and dug ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... Even in his helplessness he was compelling. The nurse went in search of Rupert, who had kept vigil in the kitchen, scoffing at the suggestion of bed while that battle was being waged ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... first time, I guess, I realized the awful helplessness that comes over the Psiless when a TK invokes his telekinetic power. I wanted no part of the future this corn-fed oracle had conjured up. But it might be the only future I'd ...
— Vigorish • Gordon Randall Garrett
... reflection showed him that he had no proofs whatever and that he was absolutely powerless to defend himself against any charges that they might bring. Wearied with his vain exertions and furious at his helplessness, he threw himself upon the sofa. As he became calmer he began to ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... resistance of his antagonist. A brilliant fencer is lost and confounded in playing with a novice; and the same thing takes place in playing at ball, or battledore, or in dancing, where a powerless partner does not enable you to shine the more, but reduces you to mere helplessness, and takes the wind altogether out of your sails. Now, if by some rare good luck the great talker, the protagonist, of the evening has been provided with a commensurate second, it is just possible that something like a brilliant "passage of arms" may be the ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... great numbers. It is called "Snowshoe" on account of the size of its feet, which, already large, are in snow time made larger by fringes of stiff bristles that give the creature such a broad area of support that it can skip on the surface of soft snow while all its kinsmen sink in helplessness. ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... the fire, and her brown face alight with all the hundred-and-one things she had yet to tell Daddy. On the threshold she paused, struck motionless by that amazing speech. She looked a little helplessly from one face to the other; and the two who loved her felt the same helplessness as they looked back. It was not an easy thing to pass sentence of exile from ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... was a Shakspeare enthusiast, and, withal, a very fine reader, as well as, from long study, quite pervaded with the Master's diction and style of thought. As he read on, he commented, in his brief, pointed way, upon the text, contrasting the Boatswain's practical usefulness with the shivering helplessness of the Courtiers. "Now this is your proper somatology," he added. "What our Bo's'un says to Gonzalo, the world will say to you, Clarian, when you propose to it any of your panaceas: Are you able to do ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... even in excess, was manifestly capable, if he had his way given him, of causing us great danger, and, indeed, of throwing the whole commonwealth into confusion. Then I reverted to that old fundamental notion of mine about the grand merit of our race being really our honesty; and the [75] very helplessness of our aristocratic or governing class in dealing with our perturbed social state gave me a sort of pride and satisfaction, because I saw they were, as a whole, too honest to try and manage a business for which they did ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... helplessness was complete. The ensemble of the vessel from captain to cabin boy was, to put it conservatively, average. None, I knew, save Throckmartin and myself had seen the first apparition of the Dweller. Had they witnessed the second? I did not know, nor ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... night was different from the others. The two previous nights she had been ill and half-unconscious: her very helplessness appealed to Bill's chivalry. To-night she stood on her own feet. Matters were down to a normal basis again, and for the first time she began to experience a certain embarrassment in her position. She was suddenly face to face with the fact that the night stretched before her,—and she in a snowswept ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... look came into the face of Miss Bordereau's niece—a kind of confession of helplessness, an appeal to me to deal fairly, generously with her. I had brought her to the Piazza, placed her among charming influences, paid her an attention she appreciated, and now I seemed to let her perceive that all this had been a bribe—a bribe to make her turn in some way against her ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... into the area in front of the Clerk's table. The Speaker instantly suggested that some gentleman move an adjournment, which being promptly done, the House adjourned. A sofa was brought, and Mr. Adams, in a state of perfect helplessness, though not of entire insensibility, was gently laid upon it. The sofa was then taken up and borne out of the Hall into the Rotunda, where it was set down, and the members of both Houses, and strangers, ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... condition of those collar laundry women but represents the utter helplessness of disfranchisement. The question with you, as men, is not whether you want your wives and daughters to vote, nor with you, as women, whether you yourselves want to vote; but whether you will help to put this power of the ballot into the ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... side of seventy-five. As the evening twilight of my earthly life advances, my spiritual sun shines with increased splendour. This has been my experience for the last year. With an increased sense of my own sinfulness, unworthiness, and helplessness, I have an increased sense of the blessedness of pardon, the indwelling of the Comforter, and the ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... palms with a blank gesture of helplessness. "It is useless!" she answered. "Nobody would believe me. Consider the situation. YOU know the needle I gave you was the one Sebastian meant to use—the one he dropped and I caught—BECAUSE you are a friend of mine, and because you have learned to trust me. But who else would credit ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... now, upon my thigh I halt till life's short journey end; All helplessness, all weakness, I On thee alone for strength depend; Nor have I power from thee to move: Thy nature and ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... confronted with a task so gigantic. Mobilized technology has revealed and demonstrated the fact that it is possible to generate almost unlimited power and has shown the way to do it; at the same time it has demonstrated the measureless potency of engineering and our utter helplessness without it. Technology is comparatively a new science; by some it is called a "semi-science" because it deals primarily with the application of science to practical issues. But when it became necessary "to do things," an engineer ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... gentle—as if the wildness of a momentary terror, or distraction, had been struggled with and overcome, that instant; and nothing but a celestial hope, and a beautiful sorrow, and a desolate earthly helplessness remained. Some stories say that Guido painted it, the night before her execution; some other stories, that he painted it from memory, after having seen her, on her way to the scaffold. I am willing to believe that, as you see her on ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... spectacles of anguish and risks of infection? How could she guess that such women are the spiritual sisters of poor heathen and savage Hottentot and Malay mothers and daughters, who, sooner than be burdened with the wailing helplessness of infancy and the mumbling fatuity of age, will expose the children dependent on these murderesses, and the hoary heads that once planned and prayed for the welfare of their slayers, to perish of ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... will, the whole substance and very core of their hearts is wholly corrupt and enslaved to sin. And thus it is that while their renewed and delivered will works out, so far, their salvation in their walk and conversation among men, the helplessness of their will in the cleansing and the keeping of their hearts is to the end the sorrow and the mystery of their sanctification. To will was present with Paul, and with Bunyan, and with Boston; but their heart—they could not with all their keeping ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... desire of his to browbeat her into a state which he defined as normal, Rachel had accepted in numb helplessness. She had given up commanding him to leave her alone. His presence frequently became a nausea. Her enfevered senses had come to perceive in the conventionally clothed and spoken figure of the young attorney, a concentration of the repugnant things before which she cowered. During ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... exchange at any moment the shimmer of publicity for a quiet, sunny happiness in distinguished seclusion? (Lulu makes no answer.) That you feel in yourself enough dignity and high rank to fetter a man to your feet—in order to enjoy his utter helplessness?... (Lulu makes no answer.) That in a comfortable, richly furnished villa you would feel in a more fitting place than here,—with unlimited means, to live completely as your own mistress? (Lulu steps forth in a short, bright, pleated petticoat and white satin bodice, black shoes and stockings, ...
— Erdgeist (Earth-Spirit) - A Tragedy in Four Acts • Frank Wedekind
... racket much longer, without a tow," chattered Joe. "I've had moments at the wheel, to-night, when, on account of our helplessness, I've felt sure we were ...
— The Motor Boat Club and The Wireless - The Dot, Dash and Dare Cruise • H. Irving Hancock
... not kill him. Thank God, as my fingers twisted toward the back of his throat, that mad desire suddenly left me. I stood still, while the old fellow, still unsuspecting, shuffled, away into the darkness. Then, dropping my hands with a sob of helplessness, I ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... following the outbreaks of temper which would have been of certain occurrence in the state of her health, would have made her aware in some degree of her moral condition; and, if her thoughts had not been centred upon herself, she would, in her care for others, have learned her own helplessness; and the devotion of her good husband, not then accepted merely as a natural homage to her worth, would have shown itself as a love beyond her deserts, and would have roused the longing to be worthy ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald |
