"Vulnerable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with us? They must take what life brings them, like the rest of us. If the years Marise and I have passed together, if what we have been to each other, and are to each other, if that is not enough, then nothing is enough. That would be a trick to play on her . . . to use my knowledge of her vulnerable points to win. That is not what I want. What do I want? I want Marise ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... danger, and asked her if her lord had a weak place, that he might know and guard it for him. Kriemhild confided to him her husband's secret. When Siegfried was bathing in the dragon's blood, a leaf fell between his shoulders, and that spot was vulnerable. There she would embroider a cross on his vesture that Hagan might protect him in ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... this. I am sorry myself, if for no other reason than that it increases the friction of the daily working machine to an insupportable degree. As soon as a thing of this sort leaks out—and it does so fast enough—all enemies, male and female, rush in with renewed strength, making for the vulnerable point, in the hope of securing my overthrow. These good people are like carrion vultures—I myself am the carrion—they can scent from afar that there is something for them to do, and come flying to the spot. And the lies they invent and the intrigues they contrive, with a view to increasing ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... was so fallen into disrepair that he anticipated no difficulty in finding a gap through which to pass within the enclosure where the house was hidden; but he walked right round and found no such breach. Where the wall of rock proved vulnerable, the masonry, by some curious ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... something of the murderous in it—admiration that was almost brutal—feelings which I could not control though I despised myself for them while they lasted! There is a weak point in the strongest of us, and wicked women know well where we are most vulnerable. One dainty pin-prick well-aimed—and all the barriers of caution and reserve are broken down—we are ready to fling away our souls for a smile or a kiss. Surely at the last day when we are judged—and may be condemned—we can make our last excuse to the Creator in ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... to perceive the difference between the true and the false monster, and started back, so that he was forced to leap to the ground; but the two dogs were more staunch, and sprang at the animal, whilst their master struck at it with his sword, but still without reaching a vulnerable part, and a blow from the tail had thrown him down, and the dragon was turning upon him, when the movement left the undefended belly exposed. Both mastiffs fastened on it at once, and the knight, regaining his feet, thrust his sword into it. There was a death grapple, and finally the servants, ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... his vulnerable heel, and there are times in the lives of each of us when the arrow of accident, harmless at all other periods, can enter and ruin. Colonel Bancker had kept his secret, or believed that he had kept it, inviolate; ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... on that account. So that the blow is full upon my sore place. 'Tis on the side I could be the most easily penetrated. But Achilles could be touched only in his heel; and if he was to die by an enemy's hands, must not the arrow find out that only vulnerable place? My jealousy is that place with me, as your ladyship observes; but it is seated deeper than the heel: it is in my heart. The barbed dart has found that out, and there it sticks up to ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... with the badge of a special constable. The duties of a special constable were chiefly not to understand what was going on in the military sphere, and to do what he was told in the way of watching and warding conceivably vulnerable points. He had also to be available in the event of civil disorder. Mr. Britling was provided with a truncheon and sent out to guard various culverts, bridges, and fords in the hilly country to the north-westward of Matching's Easy. It was never very clear ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... post, that the besieged entertained apprehensions for its safety; and from the mustering of the assailants in a direction nearly opposite to the outwork, it seemed no less plain that it had been selected as a vulnerable ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... also realized that Germany held Constantinople and the Dardanelles—the gateway to the East. And the trend of German foreign policy and German strategy convinced me that it was in the Near East that the menace to our Empire lay. There was our most vulnerable part; while Germany held that gateway, the glamour of the East, with its possibilities of victories like those of Alexander, and an empire like that one which was the great Napoleon's early dream, would always be a great temptation ...
— At Ypres with Best-Dunkley • Thomas Hope Floyd
... fiend who seeks to entangle me in his meshes!" murmured Wagner to himself, as he paced the strand. "The demon has failed to tempt me as yet—thrice has he failed;—and now he musters all his force to assail me,—to assail me, too, in the most vulnerable points! But, O Heaven, give me strength to resist the dread influence thus brought to bear upon me! What course can I adopt? what plan pursue? If to-morrow must witness a renewal of that scene which occurred ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... I am entirely ignorant; and even if I were not, I should not presume to levy a tax upon it in discussions with you; for, however vulnerable you may possibly be, I regard an argumentum ad hominem as the weakest weapon in the armory of dialectics—a weapon too often dipped in the venom of personal malevolence. I merely gave expression to my belief ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... most rigid examination of her body, when I discovered under the hair in the nape of the neck, a minute spot, which, upon probing, I found to be the end of a small, thin point of steel. It had been thrust by a careful hand into the most vulnerable part of the body, and death must have ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... effect of so much unavoidable observation of young love had been fatal; he declared repeatedly that his faith in the human race was about gone. Furthermore, his physical constitution had proved pathetically vulnerable to nightly quartets, quintets, and even octets, on the porch below his bedchamber window, so that he was wont to tell his wife that never, never could he expect to be again the man he had been in the spring before Miss Pratt came to visit May. And, referring to conversations which he ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... felt a savage joy in the privation thus imposed upon his family. Mrs. Peak could not forgive her husband, and in this case, though she had but dim appreciation of the point of honour involved, her censures doubtless fell on Nicholas's vulnerable spot; it was the perversity of arrogance, at least as much as honesty, that impelled him to incur taxation. His wife's perseverance in complaint drove him to stern impatience, and for a long time the peace of the ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... blue yachting suit with the collar turned up, and no white showing except his face, and that in the gray light of the dawn was a sickly white, like the belly of a fish. After he had walked to his mark he never took his eyes from me. They seemed to be probing around under my uniform for the vulnerable spot. I had never before had anyone look at me, who seemed to so frankly ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... took it about a foot below the overhanging armor of the great back shell, and I could see that it penetrated some distance into the creature, the man having, by the aid of Providence, stricken it in a vulnerable part. Upon receiving this thrust, the mighty crab ceased at once its pursuit, and clipped at the haft of the spear with its great mandible, snapping the weapon more easily than I had done the same thing to a straw. By ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson
... on its back, though it did not materially injure the beast, for there the boar is nearly in vulnerable, annoyed it; and dashing off the fawn-coloured dog with great force, it turned on its new assailant. Now there are only two places in which the wild boar can be assailed with any effect; and these are just between the eyes and ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... had a Hull in Michigan; but now, thank God, we had a Lewis Cass, who would protect the border if war should come, which, in his opinion, would not come. There were millions on the lake frontier who would, in case of war, rush over into Canada—the vulnerable point that was exposed to us. He would pledge himself, that, upon a contract with the government, Michigan alone would take Canada in ninety days; and, if that would not do, they would give it up, and take it in ninety days again. The Government of the United States had only ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... place, recommended itself greatly to Lona—and to me also. The children were now so rapidly developing faculty, that I could see no serious obstacle to the success of the enterprise. For the terrible Lilith—woman or leopardess, I knew her one vulnerable point, her doom through her daughter, and the influence the ancient prophecy had upon the citizens: surely whatever in the enterprise could be called risk, was worth taking! Successful,—and who could doubt their success?—must not the Little Ones, from a crowd of children, ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... determined that the world bore her a grudge because she loved Foxy. Perhaps she had discovered that the world has a sharp sword for the vulnerable, and that ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... construction of a trunk or well impairs the solidity of the stern, renders it much more vulnerable, and weakens its defences, while it opposes to speed the very considerable resistance of the after stern-post.[*] Nevertheless, no modern ship of the British navy is without the means of raising her propeller, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the vulnerable point in the life-history, if one is to destroy the insects and to grow fair fruit; if poison is lodged on the erect open-topped little apple, the young larva will get it before he injures the fruit. ...
— The Apple-Tree - The Open Country Books—No. 1 • L. H. Bailey
... without difficulty; and the invaders, having the complete mastery of one of the Nile mouths, had it in their power to direct their attack to any point that might seem to them at once most important and most vulnerable. ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... three-decker battleships, the smart sailing frigates, were the main strength of navies. The paddle-steamer was a defective type of warship, because her paddle-boxes and paddle-wheels, and her high-placed engines, presented a huge target singularly vulnerable. A couple of shots might disable in a minute her means of propulsion. True she had masts and sails, but if she could not use her engines, the paddles would prove a drag upon ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... potential opium production of 1,278 metric tons; source of hashish; many narcotics-processing labs throughout the country; drug trade source of instability and some government groups profit from the trade; 80-90% of the heroin consumed in Europe comes from Afghan opium; vulnerable to narcotics money laundering through the ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... beginning away up toward the bows and quickly running down her whole length, jarring, raking, and venting their wrath in a very audible manner; or a wave would rake along the side with a sharp, ringing, metallic sound, like a huge spear-point seeking a vulnerable place; or some hard-backed monster would rise up from the deep and grate and bump the whole length of the keel, forcibly suggesting hidden rocks and consequent ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... touched by the letter, moved also in the hope that an arrow from the quiver of truth had found in the doctor a vulnerable spot. He answered that he should be welcome to see the child when he would; and that she should go to him when he pleased. He must promise, however, as the honest man every body knew him to be, not to teach her there was no God, or lead ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... relaxed its gravity. He even smiled. "You will agree, Count, that in a line of that extent a uniform strength is out of the question. It must perforce present many weak, many vulnerable, places." ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... stood at about 8% of the labor force and as the government followed prudent fiscal/monetary policies. The country is not self-sufficient in food, and a majority of the rural population subsists at the poverty level. Malaysia's high export dependence (merchandise exports are 63% of GDP) leaves it vulnerable to a recession in the OECD countries or a ...
— The 1990 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... the officer thus experimented on, and so render him deaf to the cries of innocence in distress. PUNCHINELLO suggests, then, that the policeman's shield should be a shield. Let it be made sufficiently large to cover the most vulnerable portion of the person, as shown in the annexed design. If made of gong-metal, so much the better, as the wearer could then ring out signals upon it with his locust far more effectively than by the ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 29, October 15, 1870 • Various
... encircling forts with a network of trenches, covered by an artillery force, supplemented by guns which were at once removed from the forts. Indeed, she no longer relied upon Verdun as a fortress; it was merely one point in that long four hundred miles of trenches stretching across the country, no more vulnerable than any other point, and, one may add, no more impregnable. And down below those trenches, under cover of the woods, for weeks past, while Henri and his friends were languishing in Ruhleben, the Germans had been concentrating a mighty army, ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... consideration of Lassiter's past actions, she believed he would return and forgive her. The man could not be hard to a woman, and she doubted that he could stay away from her. But at the point where she had hoped to find him vulnerable she now began to fear he was proof against all persuasion. The iron and stone quality that she had early suspected in him had actually cropped out as an impregnable barrier. Nevertheless, if Lassiter remained in Cottonwoods she would never give up her hope ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... and exaggerated gallantry suggests the vulnerable side of the Hotel de Rambouillet, and the side which its enemies have been disposed to make very prominent. Among those who tried to imitate this salon, Spanish chivalry doubtless degenerated into a thousand absurdities, and it must be admitted that the salon itself was ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... powder and ball, my boy. It is a great chance if we could hit a vulnerable part, and I don't like wounding ...
— The Rajah of Dah • George Manville Fenn
... Robert had taken a low foot-stool at her side. It came over him as he did so that it had been a favorite seat of his when a child. As for Cynthia, influenced by the appealing to the vulnerable place of her nature, she put her slim hands on her nephew's head, and actually seemed to feel his ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... backstairs method of getting on in the world. Medland thought that in all likelihood, if he gained his request, he would keep his word. That thought made the temptation stronger, but it forced itself on him when he remembered the number of years during which he had been even more vulnerable in one respect than he was now, and yet the man had left him alone. He could say ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... all its wild exaggerations, its reckless departures from truth, its conventional types of character, its endlessly-repeated incidents of romance—the child nourished by wild beasts, the combat of unrecognised father and son, the hero vulnerable only in one point, the vindication of the calumniated wife or maiden; and by the over-labour of fantasy, removed far from nature and reality, the epic material ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... historic relic of the more barbaric States on which these modern States were built. It might equally well be maintained that the duel is everywhere the sign of high civilisation; being the sign of its more delicate sense of honour, its more vulnerable vanity, or its greater dread of social disrepute. But whichever of the two views you take, you must concede that the essence of the duel is an armed equality. I should not, therefore, apply the word barbaric, as I am using it, to the duels of German officers, ...
— The Appetite of Tyranny - Including Letters to an Old Garibaldian • G.K. Chesterton
... the Indians, who, too crafty and too politic to manifest their feelings by overt acts declaratory of the hatred carefully instilled into their breasts, sought every opportunity to compass the destruction of the English, wherever they were most vulnerable to the effects of stratagem. Several inferior forts situated on the Ohio had already fallen into their hands, when they summoned all their address and cunning to accomplish the fall of the two important though remote ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... straightening her shoulders and drawing in her chin with a mock display of bravery. "I believe it was in an English novel that I read that any woman without a hump can get any man she sets out for. It is a matter of determination and concentration and a wise choice of vulnerable objects." ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... he nodded. "But he went further than that. What did he mean by the Keeper of the Cones—and that the Things—were vulnerable under the same law that orders us? And why did he command us to go back to the city? How could ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... invoking the aid of the Fates, uttered a magic incantation, which had the effect of throwing Talus into a deep sleep. He stretched himself at full length upon the ground, and in doing so grazed his vulnerable ankle against the point of a sharp rock, whereupon a mighty stream of blood gushed forth from the wound. Awakened by the pain, he tried to rise, but in vain, and with a mighty groan of anguish the giant fell dead, and his enormous body rolled heavily over into the deep. The ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... justly famous designer. There was a slip, with as much lace as could be put upon one garment; such white satin slippers as she had never hoped to wear; and the texture of the silk stockings almost made her shout for joy. Achilles was vulnerable in the heel: fly, O man, from the woman who is indifferent to the lure of a ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... instances of good fortune are not to be ascribed to the capacity of the existing government for the protection of those from whom it claims allegiance, but to causes that are fugitive and fallacious. If we except perhaps Virginia and Maryland, which are peculiarly vulnerable on their eastern frontiers, no part of the Union ought to feel more anxiety on this subject than New York. Her seacoast is extensive. A very important district of the State is an island. The State itself ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... Talbot was again sent ahead with five or six troopers and orderlies to a village in the front line. It was necessary for us to spend three or four days there before the attack commenced, in order to study out the vulnerable points in the German line. We were to decide also the best routes for the tanks to take in coming up to the line, and those to be taken later in crossing No Man's Land when the "show" was on. We rode along across fields denuded of ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh
... Lamarck is more vulnerable than either Erasmus Darwin or Buffon on the score of unwillingness to assign its full share to mere chance, but I do not for a moment believe his comparative reticence to have been caused by failure to see that the chapter of accidents is a fateful one. He saw that the cunning or functional ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... designed to test the truth of the hypothesis of pangenesis. My father, while giving all due credit to Mr. Galton for his ingenious experiments, does not allow that pangenesis has "as yet received its death-blow, though from presenting so many vulnerable points its life is always ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... case, it is evident that the author of "Vanity Fair," whose own pencil makes him grey-haired, has had the best of it, though his children may have had the worst, having, at all events, succeeded in hitting the vulnerable point in the Becky bosom, which it is our firm belief no man born of woman, from her Soho to her Ostend days, had ever so much as grazed. To this ingenious rumour the coincidence of the second edition of Jane Eyre being dedicated to Mr. Thackeray has probably given rise. For our parts, ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... these are considerations to be borne in mind with respect to this question of Denmark. It may be said that other combinations might be made—that although we could not ourselves attack the German Powers with any great amount of success, yet there are vulnerable points upon which they, and especially Austria, may be open to attack; that those doctrines and theories which Austria and Prussia have put forward, with regard to foreign nationalities, may be retorted upon them, and especially upon Austria with ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... State considerably. It was, in fact, the first of the doctrines offering to the lower classes, by way of helping them to bear their wretched misery, the ideal of happiness here below, lending a false semblance of religion to the desire for material well-being. George Sand had one vulnerable point, and that was her generosity. By making her believe that she was working for the outcasts of humanity, she could be led anywhere, and this ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... assailed her, she shot at them with her gun, but they answered with hellish merriment, and thenceforth she placed her trust in Heaven alone. There were foes around her of the upper, no less than of the nether world. Of these, the bears were the most redoubtable; yet, being vulnerable to mortal weapons, she killed three of them, all, says the story, "as ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... lips, "I have been able to foreshadow what is driving you about; I have seen what makes you so restless. You are not the man you pretend to be; you are not the cold, heartless creature you seem. In your breast there is a spot where you are vulnerable, and there you have been struck. You are bleeding, man! If we all, I and your daughter and your brothers and your friends and your cowardly creatures, are as indifferent and despicable to you as so many flies, there is one who has been able to wound you; this fact is gnawing at your heart. And ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... expression. It accorded only too well with her cousin's words in regard to Van Berg's estimate of herself, and greatly increased her resentment towards the one who had already wounded her vanity—the most vulnerable and sensitive trait in her character. The flush that deepened so suddenly upon her face was unmistakably that of anger. She promptly turned her back upon her critic, nor did she look towards him again until the close of the evening. That his ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... (but consider!) upon the disunion with Messrs. Longman, I will just observe that when persons have been intimate, they have discovered each other's vulnerable points; it therefore shows no great talent to direct at them shafts of resentment. It is easy both to write and to say ill-natured, harsh, and cutting things of each other. But remember that this power ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... enough to secure his revenge of mortification; and for that, with the power which he had acquired over Kate's sensitive nature, he drew her into the sphere of his flaunted triumph, and made her wound Alec to the root of his vulnerable being. Had Alec then seen his own face, he would have seen upon it the sneer that he hated so upon that of Beauchamp. For all wickedness tends to destroy individuality, and declining natures assimilate as ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... composedly fixed upon the fate that awaited him—a fate which he had marked out for himself, and resolved not to escape. He forced himself to regard the great Enemy of Man as his best friend—his only comforter and refuge. But just when he deemed himself well armed, least vulnerable, and most secure, the awful reality of death—its horrible accompaniments—dissolution, corruption, rottenness, decay, and its still more awful and obscure uncertainties, started suddenly before him, and sent a sickening ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... himself a follower of Love: but if so, he has hitherto followed at a most respectful distance. Yet he had not erred, when in the Italian sonnet, so finely rendered in Professor Masson's biography, he declared the heart his vulnerable point:— ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... directions are given for the action and control of everything involved in making tone except the mind of the student. The larynx seems to be particularly vulnerable and is subject to continuous attack. One says it should be held low throughout the compass. Another says it should rise as the pitch rises, and still another, that it should drop as the pitch rises. Instructions of this kind do ...
— The Head Voice and Other Problems - Practical Talks on Singing • D. A. Clippinger
... by a series of mutually supporting posts arranged chequerwise and in depth. This arrangement was intended to break up the enemy's attack formation, to stop parts of it and to allow other parts to advance, but to advance only in such places as would make them most vulnerable to counter-attack. This principle applied also down to the company and even the platoon. It is easily seen that a good deal of organisation was demanded from the battalion commander, while the smallest unit commander, perhaps a lance-corporal, was left with much responsibility. ...
— The Seventh Manchesters - July 1916 to March 1919 • S. J. Wilson
... her; she cannot keep her eyes on the terrible mandibles, which are capable of cutting her body in two with a single bite. Moreover, the Cetonia-grub, perceiving that the enemy is approaching, assumes its defensive posture, rolls itself up and makes a shield for its only vulnerable part, the ventral surface, with its convex back. No, it cannot be an easy operation to subdue the powerful larva in its underground retreat and to stab with the precision which immediate ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... lover. As was inevitable, the older woman seemed to lose something charming and intangible in this confession of definite weakness. To be adored by any man merely adds to her glory, but the instant she concedes him an inch, the Beauty throws down her halo, the whole affair becomes mundane and vulnerable. Harriet might have envied Isabelle once, now she saw her frail, forty, her woman's pride weakened by admitted passion, and was sorry for her. She had had all men at her feet, now she must feel herself fortunate if she could ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... impregnated with art, as yet he had not produced anything remarkable. Eager in the pursuit of pleasure and of love, he had never yet really loved or really enjoyed whole-heartedly. Tortured by aspirations after an Ideal, and abhorring pain both by nature and education, he was vulnerable on every side, accessible ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... dart insufficient in length to penetrate the hide and the true skin, seize it by the nose, and plug the nostrils with their fingers until it drowns. Here, too, the natives have discovered that the nose is the vulnerable part of the dugong, and having first harpooned it in any part of the body, await an opportunity of spearing it there, with ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... than is the acute, and there is more variation in the single conditions. The chronicity may be due to a number of conditions, as the persistence of a cause, or to incompleteness of repair which renders the part once affected more vulnerable, to such a degree even that the ordinary conditions to which it is subjected become injurious. A chronic inflammation may be little more than an almost continuous series of acute inflammations, with repair ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman
... woollen gloves and pin a bandanna handkerchief around my neck, besides buttoning up my coat collar. Even then I shivered. But would you believe it? The mosquitoes were as lively and active as if a balmy breeze were blowing from Arcady, puncturing me wherever they could find a vulnerable spot, and even thrusting their sabres through my thick woollen gloves into the flesh. They must be extremely hardy insects, for I am sure such arctic weather would send the mosquitoes of our lower altitudes into their winter hiding-places. ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... these frightful monsters are vulnerable in only one point—the head. Standing half naked in the water, his body lashed by the foul antennae of the devil-fish, Gilliatt looked at the devil-fish and the devilfish ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... Mr. Stephenson followed her for some distance and decided that she was going to recover, and so came back. In the meantime my elephant, with the two smaller ones, was moving off to the left, and with my small rifle I fired at its backbone, the only vulnerable spot visible. A spurt of dust rose, but the elephant did not stop. So, accompanied by Hassan and Sulimani, my two gunbearers, I started after the wounded elephant and the two younger ones. The big ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... that the vessel would be vulnerable to bombshells and hot shot, and that furthermore she could be boarded. The displacement of the ship, at service draft, was 1,450 tons, a figure Montgery obtained from a copy of the original plan given him ...
— Fulton's "Steam Battery": Blockship and Catamaran • Howard I. Chapelle
... all, however divine the King, Emperor or Kaiser may consider himself, he is but a vulnerable human being—and no accident of birth should give even a small number of people on this earth into the hands ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... important countries in Asia were already included within the Persian dominions. It was plain that if any future progress were to be made in extending the empire, the regions of Europe and Africa must be the theatre of it. Egypt seemed the most accessible and vulnerable point beyond the confines of Asia; and thus, though Cyrus himself, being advanced somewhat in years, and interested, moreover, in other projects, was not prepared to undertake an enterprise into ...
— Darius the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... frogs would live under this treatment four and five hours—sometimes longer, and while observing their agonies he enjoyed "that contented mind which is a perpetual feast." Now that he was a man, he delighted in torturing human beings after the same methods applied mentally, whenever he could find a vulnerable part through which to thrust a sharp ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... would be obvious ways of hurting him, he would stand forth in sufficient importance to make the swing of the tyrant's hand effective. But as it is, the man's poverty and friendlessness and meagerness of life render it difficult to find out vulnerable points of attack. He remains hidden (perdue) and, like the midge of the egg of an insect (nit), is safe ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... for a period of service of unusual length, found it was necessary to defend his reputation. Betrayed by the warmth of his temper into some irregular acts, which ill expressed the ordinary spirit of his government, he was vulnerable to his assailants. The flogging of freed men, notwithstanding the precedents left by his predecessors; the scandalous neglect of moral precautions, in the disposal of the women; and prominent instances of unjustifiable lenity; constituted serious deductions from his merit. ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... my vulnerable spot! She detests me, and she'd just enjoy prodding me up with pins. No, we must have something less painful than ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... It was kindness, but it was not wisdom. Few people are so constituted as to be able to stand praise and adulation without the character suffering thereby. Censure would have been much better for him. When the individual is attacked, when he is made to assume the defensive, he first discovers the vulnerable points in his armor, and as opportunity offers strengthens them. Beethoven's ungovernable temper and apparent ingratitude are frequently commented on, but the ingratitude was only apparent. When he came to ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... are, yet retain enough of the principles common to human nature, under every modification, to know where to plant their wounds. Like savage hackney coachmen, they know where there is a raw. And the instincts of human nature teach them that every man is vulnerable through his female connexions. There lies his honour; there his strength; there his weakness. In their keeping is the heaven of his happiness; in them and through them the earthy of its fragility. Many there are who do not feel the maternal relation to be one in which any excessive freight of ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... been going on, almost as wild—or would be if we were not so fatally accustomed to them—and quite as dangerous, as the idea of setting up a free and sovereign state in the Isle of Dogs. All the European empires are becoming vulnerable at every point. Surely the moral is obvious. The only wise course before the allied European powers now is to put their national conceit in their pockets and to combine to lock up their foreign policy, ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells
... we raced, and along a parallel avenue toward the tunnel. As we went I prayed that all the Quabos had centered their attention on the palace and left their vulnerable water-hoses unguarded. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... excellent; in front of an army their value is still problematical. Even down in Calvinia, where Burghers were scarce and main roads fair, they rarely carried a message as safely and as quickly as a mounted Kaffir. They are vulnerable all round from other causes than the hazards of war. Machine vulnerable, man vulnerable, and in a country like this, where the roads are not masked by hedgerows, they furnish a kind of 'running-deer' to every Burgher observation-post, and, as far as I can judge, an observation-post is ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... "Whatever's come to Jack?" he said; but seemed puzzled at the Maluka's answer that he was "only getting educated." The truth is, that every man has his vulnerable point, and ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... he was far from feeling, and disguising his unholy joy, Hagen bade Kriemhild sew a tiny cross on Siegfried's doublet over the vulnerable spot, that he might the better protect him in case of danger, and, after receiving her profuse thanks, returned to report the success of his ruse to the king. When Siegfried joined them on the morrow, wearing the fatal marked doublet, he was surprised to hear that the rebellion had been quelled ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... planks at both ends, and organized a plan of relieving the men who stood guard, he became homesick and exceedingly anxious to return to Pittsburgh. He had determined to take the night train and I was at a loss to know how to keep him with me until I thought of his one vulnerable point. I told him, during the day, how anxious I was to obtain a pair of horses for my sister. I wished to make her a present of a span, and I had heard that St. Louis was a noted place for them. Had he seen ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... recognized only by Turkey, it has had much difficulty arranging foreign financing, and foreign firms have hesitated to invest there. The economy remains heavily dependent on agriculture and government service, which together employ about half of the work force. Moreover, the small, vulnerable economy has suffered because the Turkish lira is legal tender. To compensate for the economy's weakness, Turkey provides direct and indirect aid to nearly every sector, e.g. tourism, education, ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... her not, false man! your heart and soul Are steep'd in science till not e'en the heel, Achilles-like, is vulnerable left. Ay! wear thus feeling's semblance as you will, Pale visionary! no more shall I pause, But with strong hand arrest your mad career! Soon we return arm'd with a father's power, To snatch our sister ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... female ear is the first declaration of an attachment, especially when urged by youth and merit!—it assails her heart in the most vulnerable part, and if it be not fortified unusually well, seldom fails of success. Happily for Julia, the image of Antonio presented itself to save her from infidelity to her old ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... "You have deliberated, you say, and you have decided. But unless your decision rests upon a wish to destroy my buccaneers, you will alter it when I tell you something of which I have knowledge. This city of Cartagena looks very vulnerable on the northern side, all open to the sea as it apparently stands. Ask yourself, M. le Baron, how came the Spaniards who built it where it is to have been at such trouble to fortify it to the south, if from the north it is so ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... situation, until a correct choice or combination of long point, short point, and jab, and the execution thereof, becomes a matter of instinct. 2. The point must always be directed at a definite target. The most vulnerable points of the body are: Lower abdomen, base of the neck, small of the back (on either side of the spine), chest, and thighs. Bony parts of the trunk must be avoided by accurate aim. 3. The use of the rifle as a club, swinging or striking, ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker
... view of the besieger, which is confirmed in large part by modern research.[2] On the southeast and west the city was unapproachable by reason of the sheer ravines of Kedron and Hinnom, overlooked by almost perpendicular precipices, which surrounded it. It was vulnerable therefore only on the north, where the two heights on which it was built were connected with the main ridge of the Judean hills; and here it was fortified with three walls. The outermost, which was built ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... say I should like the cooking in Paris better than any other," remarked Bertha, treacherously assailing her uncle in his vulnerable point. ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... not to know how women's hearts are wooed and won. To me they have always been matters of riddle and admiration. Some seem to have but one vulnerable point, or door of access; while others have a thousand avenues, and may be captured in a thousand different ways. It is a great triumph of skill to gain the former, but a still greater proof of generalship to maintain possession of the latter, for a man must ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... prune (Prunus Armeniaca). Without value for the fleshy part of the drupe, but with a nut like that of the apricot, highly prized for its kernel. The tree is hardy and thrifty, but rather vulnerable to a variety of ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... themselves, and, at once, taking a shape cognizable by public opinion, either in his actions or his words, either in the hasty letter of the moment, or the poem for all time, laid open such a range of vulnerable points before his judges, as no one individual perhaps ever before, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... guarded, it would be difficult for the forces with which we had been contending during the day to get in on our night encampment. At least they could not well take us by surprise. But this made the position all the more vulnerable from the north. It was idle to suppose that Stuart's cavalry was doing nothing. It was as certain as anything could be that his enterprising horsemen were gathering on our track, urging their steeds to the death in an endeavor to stop the audacious career ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... department has ever proved the vulnerable portion of false religions,—the portion which, if I may use the metaphor, their originators could not dip in the infernal river. The ability of drawing the line, in the early and ignorant ages of the world, between what man can of himself discover ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... easy mayst thou the intrenchant air With thy keen sword impress, as make me bleed: Let fall thy blade on vulnerable crests; I bear a charmed life, which must not yield To one of ...
— Macbeth • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... had resolved to challenge an England hardened by war and tremendously superior in military resources. It was not all madness, however, for the vast empire of Canada lay exposed to invasion, and in this quarter the enemy was singularly vulnerable. Henry Clay spoke for most of his countrymen beyond the boundaries of New England when he announced to Congress: "The conquest of Canada is in your power. I trust that I shall not be deemed presumptuous when I state that I verily believe that the militia of Kentucky ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... to look for his motor car. Standing as he was at the spot from which the balloon had ascended, he now faced a human barricade. With a shout of warning he charged at what seemed to be a vulnerable point in the files of wedged shoulders. The wall resisted. The throng was lost to all but the dimming view of the balloon. Harry swung right and left with his broad shoulders. He tore his ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... wooer, indeed!" thought the squire. "If the stone-clad fellow should not possess a vulnerable spot somewhere on his body I shall ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... humor frequently ran away with her sense of justice. A very naughty little girl, if she managed to be funny, might hope to escape; whereas an equally naughty little girl, who was not funny, paid the full penalty of her crime. Fortunately, however, the school at large had not discovered this vulnerable spot ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... men pressed valiantly, and several with bows discharged their missiles with fatal effect, sweeping away the Arabs one by one and apparently striking terror into the hearts of the others. Arabs are not so vulnerable by arrows as other people on account of their voluminous robes, which savage weapons seldom penetrate, it being only head, legs and hands that arrows can reach. Nevertheless so full were the quivers of our sable escort, that the flights were of sufficient ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... kinds of love," answered Maltravers,—"love and self-love; the wounds of the last are often most incurable in those who appear least vulnerable to the first. Ah, Lady Florence, were I privileged to play the monitor, I would venture on one warning, however much ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... for England these Scotch movements were in themselves: Queen Elizabeth thought herself most vulnerable on the side of Scotland: moreover she already saw herself directly threatened. A plan fell into her hands, in which the number of ships and men necessary for an invasion of England, the harbours where ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... caution made sense: on Wulcreston, he'd learned at the Academy, a whole Earth expedition had been slaughtered before contact because the natives mistook hand telescopes for weapons. And surely on any world a spacesuited man looked more like a monster than a man although he was vulnerable in a spacesuit, even more vulnerable than a naked man because he ...
— A World Called Crimson • Darius John Granger
... of Miletus took up the story of the Iliad. It told how Achilles, having slain the Amazon Penthesileia and Memnon, king of the Aethiopians, who had come to the assistance of the Trojans, was himself slain by Paris (Alexander), whose arrow was guided by Apollo to his vulnerable heel (Virgil, Aen. vi. 57; Ovid, Met. xii. 600). Again, it is said that Achilles, enamoured of Polyxena, the daughter of Priam, offered to join the Trojans on condition that he received her hand in marriage. This was ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... another, the upper portion of the body is called upon to make a right angle with the lower; even then, a projecting point of the rock above will sometimes prod you upon the upturned angle, in endeavouring to save which, by a too rapid act of humility, you knock all the skin off the more vulnerable knee. Emerging from this difficulty, and, perhaps, rising too hastily, a crack on the head closes your eyes, filling them with a vision of forked lightning. Recovering from this agreeable sensation, you find a gap like the edge of a razor, in going through which, you feel the buttons of your waistcoat ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... country. Great in so many fields, eminent as a soldier, as a navigator, as a poet, as a courtier, there was a limit even to Raleigh's versatility, and he was not a statesman. It was political ambition which was the vulnerable spot in this Achilles, and until he meddled with statecraft, his position was practically unassailed. It must not be overlooked, in this connection, that in spite of Raleigh's influence with the Queen, he never was admitted as a Privy Councillor, his ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... stones, and put them together as they happened to fit, and where mortar was needed, carried it on their backs for want of hods, stooping down to make it stay on, and clasping their hands together behind to prevent it falling off; sparing no effort to be able to complete the most vulnerable points before the arrival of the Lacedaemonians, most of the place being sufficiently strong by nature without ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... not produced a United Latin American front against a common Yankee menace, but a sturdy refusal even of the tiniest Latin American Republic to surrender or limit its sovereignty has pushed a thorn into the vulnerable side of Washington's Monroe Doctrine ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... discovered Pelle's vulnerable point, and used it for their own advantage; and Pelle had to give way and put up with things in order to keep his father out of their conversation. He did not always succeed, however. When they were in the mood, they said quite absurd things about one another's homes. They were not intended to be ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... vulnerable only in the stomach and between the thighs. Dick's ball hasn't even marked him; but should the ground strike me as favorable, we shall halt at the northern end of the lake, where Kennedy will find himself in the midst of a whole menagerie, and can make ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... that are not equal to it. With the fullest sense of the serious truthfulness of those who differ from us, of the real force of many of their objections and criticisms on our proceedings, our friends, and our ideas, it is far better to hold our peace, than from impatience at what we feel to be the vulnerable point of our own side, to rush into explanations before we are sure of our ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... paying back, with double interest, anyone who uses that name to her, as I know to my sorrow," said Gussie, with a shake of her head. "Yet, after all, I don't blame her much, either; but it is the one spot in her make-up that seems vulnerable." ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... and investing Wall Street looks for guidance. Whom that bank protects is as safe as was the medieval fugitive who laid hold of the altar in the sanctuary; whom that bank frowns upon in the hour of stress is lost indeed if he have so much as a pin's-point area of heel that is vulnerable. Melville, president of the National Industrial, was a fanatically religious man, with as keen a nose for heretics as for rotten spots in collateral. He was peculiarly savage in his hatred of all matrimonial ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... "polite"? 'Tis a little too meticulous—in you—and rather late, After giving Mr. GLADSTONE such a wholesome slashing "slate." Take heart of grace, dear DICEY, and don't let Sir WILLIAM's "point" In your tough (if tasteless) armour find a vulnerable joint. "Old Timbertoes" won't trouble, Sir, to wish that you were dead, And his taste (not point) forbids him ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 10, 1891 • Various
... the natural frontier of the Rhine, and that the grand conflict with Austria should be transferred to Italy. Germany was a nation of armed men, and was best let alone. In Italy, the Austrians would have only their own resources for war. Their most vulnerable point was the outlying principality of Belgium, so distant from Vienna and so near ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... Margaret lay still and gently assented; Ethel was silent at first, and only when the fabric became extremely airy and magnificent, put in her word with a vehement dash at the present abuses, which grieved her spirit above all, and, whether vulnerable or not, Norman was to dispose of, like so many giants ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... snapped and snapped his huge jaws with a sound which made the hills ring and ring again; but he failed to get the faithful Terence within the power of his grinders; at the same time, in vain the Squire sought a vulnerable point into which to thrust his trusty sword. The length of the monster's snout prevented him from reaching his eyes, and, as to getting a fair thrust at his shoulders, that ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston
... given to the tendon of the leg above the heel, so called as being the tendon by which Thetis held Achilles when she dipped him in the Styx, and where alone he was in consequence vulnerable. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... at the lower end of a haunch: not that this place is more vulnerable than any other thin-skinned part, but probably because it has a better flavour. The different webs which I inspect to study the food in the larder show me, among other joints, various Flies and small Butterflies and carcasses of almost-untouched Locusts, all deprived ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... an invasion of England, even the Germans admit that the probabilities of success would all be against Germany; whilst in the case of an invasion of France, the Germans claim that the probabilities are all in their favour. It is therefore in France and Belgium that the vulnerable point lies, the Achilles heel ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... the Stuart position was much more vulnerable on the side of secular policy, and especially of foreign policy. The aristocrats to whom power passed finally at the Revolution were already ceasing to have any supernatural faith in Protestantism as against Catholicism; but they had a very natural faith in England as against France; and even, ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... had acted because of the default of the States, it had practically been forced to exercise powers limited to the States because the States lapsed through neglect and inaction. Then the Government discovered the vulnerable spot in our great charter, the Achilles heel of the Constitution. It was just six innocent-looking words in section eight empowering Congress to "regulate commerce between the several States." It was ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... questioned uneasily of himself. "Why?" He had repeatedly told himself that any other man, in his position, would do as he had done, yet it was as though some one had slipped a stiletto under his armour and found a vulnerable spot. ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... in Egypt, endeavoring to assail England, the most formidable foe of France, in India, the only vulnerable point which could be reached. Fifty thousand Russians, in a single band, were marching through Germany to cooeperate with the Austrians on the French frontiers. The more polished Germans were astonished at the barbaric ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... and logical mind, the nature of the problem was plain. Deprived of a navy and unable to utilize his splendid army, he must attack Great Britain in what appeared to be her one vulnerable spot—in her commerce and industry. If he could prevent the importation of British goods into the Continent, he would deprive his rivals of the chief markets for their products, ruin British manufacturers, throw thousands of British workingmen out of employment, create such hard times in the ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... re-elected in National Convention, Gironde and, favourers of the, vulnerable points of, prevails, Danton, Duperret, after ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... of human culture were, however, peculiarly vulnerable to invading hosts of later comers. There were no natural protecting barriers like the narrow Nile valley or the Kong mountains or the forests below Lake Chad. Once the pathways to the valley were open and for hundreds of years the newcomers kept arriving, ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois
... his tactics with adroitness. If he failed now, it would be final. He thought he knew where she might be really vulnerable. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... with forgetful hand Held, as by Thetis erst her warrior son: 10 And with those recreant unbaptizd heels Thou'rt flying from thy bounden ministeries— So sore it seems and burthensome a task To weave unwithering flowers! But take thou heed: For thou art vulnerable, wild-eyed boy, 15 And I have arrows[159:1] mystically dipped Such as may stop thy speed. Is thy Burns dead? And shall he die unwept, and sink to earth 'Without the meed of one melodious tear'? Thy Burns, and Nature's ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... point of view of most cultivated and conservative Americans, admirable indeed were the restrained and conciliatory arguments of John Dickinson in support of the right of the colonies to be taxed only by their own representatives. But how vulnerable was his position in defending the existing government in Pennsylvania, by which the three Quaker counties, with less than half the population of the province, elected twenty-four of the thirty-six deputies in the assembly! "We apprehend," so runs a petition from the German and Scotch-Irish counties ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... loosest labour As easie may'st thou the intrenchant Ayre With thy keene Sword impresse, as make me bleed: Let fall thy blade on vulnerable Crests, I beare a charmed Life, which must not yeeld To one ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... parallel with Morgan's course. Lieutenant John O'Neil, afterward of Fenian fame, with a troop of Indiana cavalry, kept up the touch on Morgan's right flank by a running fight, stinging it at every vulnerable point, and reporting Morgan's course to Judah in the neck-and-neck race. Aided by the local militia, O'Neil now dashed ahead and fearlessly skirmished with the enemy's flankers from every coign of vantage. He reached the last descent to the river-bottom near ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... assigned the place of honour in the attack. All went well until July 2, when Don Gonzales de Cordova led a superior Spanish force from Germany, consisting of 18,000 foot and 6000 horse, to raise the siege, and encamped close to the Dutch lines on the south side of the river. Finding however no vulnerable spot, he awaited the arrival at the beginning of August of an Imperialist army of 12,000 foot and 4000 horse, under the renowned Pappenheim. This impetuous leader determined upon an assault, and the Dutch entrenchments were attacked suddenly with great vigour at a moment when ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... he walked his horse round the western side, where the torrent was replaced by a smooth arm of water, for which a cutting had been made to complete the isolation of the crag of Roccaleone. But here, where the castle might more easily have become vulnerable, a blank wall greeted him, broken by no more than a narrow slit or two midway below the battlements. He rode on towards the northern side, crossing a footbridge that spanned the river, and at last coming to a halt before the entrance tower. Here again the moat was formed by the torrential ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... chose: knowing that the more he took, the better for their purpose. And thus while the blundering cheat—gull that he was, for all his cunning—thought himself rolled up hedgehog fashion, with his sharpest points towards them, he was, in fact, betraying all his vulnerable parts to their ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... not even hear me, for the din of battle was loud. The pig dodged about so fast, that although F——'s bullets lodged in the palm tree at his back, not one struck a vulnerable part, and at last F——, casting his revolver behind him for me to pick up and reload, closed with his foe, armed only with the shear-spear. Pincher considered this too dangerous, and rushed in between them to distract the boar's attention. ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... of the supreme power; and this was a preliminary which doubtless they would have admitted and ratified with unanimous approbation. It therefore appears that he could be exposed to no inevitable danger on this account: but there was another quarter where his person was vulnerable, and where even the laws might not be sufficient to protect him against the efforts of private resentment. The bloody proscription of the Triumvirate no act of amnesty could ever erase from the minds of those who ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... his range of vision is extremely limited, and, on account of the low speed of his boat while submerged, he can operate over only a very limited area of water while the other vessels are moving many miles. Then, too, he is extremely vulnerable to the effect of enemy shells and to the ramming of enemy ships. Under these conditions the submersible commander is more or less forced to a policy of lying ambushed to surprise his enemy. It is said that the "Lusitania" ...
— The Journal of Submarine Commander von Forstner • Georg-Guenther von Forstner
... as nought in comparison with the fact that the motion of Mr. Gladstone deprived him of the opportunity of raising a debate on Railway Rates. Coldly, calmly, self-confidently, Dr. Hunter attacked the Government in its weakest place, and drove the dagger home through the vulnerable side. The weakness of the position was this: there was a strong, vehement, and widespread revolt in the House against the exactions of the railway companies. Liberal members had on the subject exactly the same feelings as Tories; ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... Hoodoo, had been subverted and destroyed in that brief spasm of anger of the powers of air. Everything, but a yard or two beyond the line of its passage, humble flower, lofty tree, and the poor vulnerable maid who now knelt to pay her gratitude to heaven, awoke unharmed in the crystal purity and peace ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... his motion, Lord North communicated some additional papers respecting Ireland, and gave notice, that he would, in about a week, move for a committee of the whole house to enter upon this subject. Opposition, however, seem to have considered Ireland a vulnerable point in the phalanx of the ministry; and before the time intimated by Lord North had expired, the Earl of Upper Ossory moved a vote of censure in the commons upon ministers for their neglect of the affairs of that country. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... what Timothy would have termed "dirt mean" of Miss Eliza to add this extra chapter to the thorough scolding for the afternoon which she had given Arethusa such a short while before. But Timothy was Miss Eliza's most vulnerable spot; ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... been more brilliant and frolicsome than at the breakfast-table that morning. Never had poor McAllister been more at his wits' end to know how to reply to her bewildering sallies of good-natured badinage. Every vulnerable point of Northern character received her delicate satire. Lane himself did not escape her light shafts. He made no defence, but smiled or laughed at every palpable hit. The girl's pallor troubled him, and something in her eyes that suggested suffering. There came a time when he could ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... century, at the end of the century it will have reached 250,000,000. By such a vast increase in population, the Professor complacently concludes, "Germany will be rendered invulnerable." We know what that means. The presence of an "invulnerable" nation among nations that are "vulnerable" means inevitable aggression and war, a perpetual menace to civilisation and humanity. It is not along that line that hope can be found for the world's future, or even Germany's future, and Gruber conveniently neglects ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... that the crabs were vulnerable between their overlapping plates, some of the Adamant's boats were fitted out with Gatling and machine guns, by which a shower of balls might be sent under the scales, through the glasses, and into the body of the crab. In addition to their ...
— The Great War Syndicate • Frank Stockton
... is vulnerable as well as other people, and I have yet to see the man whose heart will proudly withstand the allurements of flattery, provided the homage is delicately and gracefully offered. Thank Heaven! years have touched me lightly, ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... glance at the unfortunate black, who was endeavouring to crawl away along the ground. Again the elephant was about to seize him with his trunk, and in an instant would have crushed him to death, when Stanley, raising his gun, fired, and struck the creature in the most vulnerable part—behind the ear. The ball must have entered the brain, for, sinking down instantly, it rolled over, and, we thought, must have killed the black by its weight. We hurried down, hoping that there might yet be time to ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... teaching, I could only answer that I did not make my circumstances. I fully acknowledged the force and effectiveness of the genuine Anglican theory, and that it was all but proof against the disputants of Rome; but still like Achilles, it had a vulnerable point, and that St. Leo had found it out for me, and that I could not help it;—that, were it not for matter of fact, the theory would be great indeed; it would be irresistible, if it were only true. When I became a Catholic, the Editor of the Christian Observer, Mr. Wilkes, ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... these matters Brigham Young has supreme control. His power is the most despotic known to mankind. Here, by the way, is the constitutionally vulnerable point of Mormonism. If fear of establishing a bad precedent hinder the United States at any time from breaking up that nest of all disloyalty, because of its licentious marriage-institutions, Utah is still ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... man paced the room for a few moments in strong agitation, for he had been wounded at his most vulnerable point. The thought that his only son would ally himself with those whom he so detested, and whom for years he had sought to punish, almost maddened him. As we have seen before, there was a slumbering volcano in this old man's breast when adequate causes called ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... spanner and hammer. For some minutes he worked, tapping and readjusting, whilst she held the ricketty steps and stared at him from below, the shapeless bulk of his trousers. Strange the difference—she could not help thinking it—between the vulnerable hairy, and somehow childish leg of the real man, and the shapeless form of these workmen's trousers. The kernel, the man himself—seemed so tender—the covering ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... argument against the opposite political party at one time during a campaign, Lincoln said: "My opponent uses a figurative expression to the effect that 'the Democrats are vulnerable in the heel, but they are sound in the heart and head.' The first branch of the figure—that is the Democrats are vulnerable in the heel—I admit is not merely figuratively but literally true. Who that looks but for a moment at their hundreds of officials scampering away with the public ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... The modern world, it is true, has mistaken it for an argument, and has been cowed by it accordingly; but the mistake is a simple one, and can be readily accounted for. The dogmatism of denial was formerly a sort of crude rebellion, inconsistent with itself, and vulnerable in a thousand places. Nature, as then known, was, to all who could weigh the wonder of it, a thing inexplicable without some supernatural agency. Indeed, marks of such an agency seemed to meet men everywhere. But now all this has changed. ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... dissolution of the American army. He proceeded therefore slowly. His march was in close order, his encampments compact, and well guarded with artillery; and the utmost circumspection was used to leave no vulnerable point. ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... on his back I struck the alligator with all my force with my tomahawk, on what I considered the most vulnerable part of his head. So powerful was my stroke, that I found to my dismay that I could not get the weapon out of his head again. While I was in this extraordinary situation—standing on the back of an enormous alligator, and tugging ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... not exactly the place where one expects to find occasion for merriment. Yet listen to this from the Neueste Nachrichten: "Our foes ask themselves continuously, How can we best get at Germany's vital parts? What are her most vulnerable points? The answer is, her humanity—her trustful honesty." Here, on the other hand, thousands of people, by knocking months and years off their real age, have been telling good straightforward lies for their country. At the Front euphemism in describing ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... should be used against you in a political question by a man you call a public corruptionist. But I'm in a position where I can't take any chances against an antagonist that won't play the game my way. I had to find your vulnerable point to defend myself, and, in finding it, I find that there's no need to defend myself any longer, because it makes all your weapons ineffective. I believe the trouble with you, Mr. Knowles, is ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... decay. Michael Angelo and Beethoven decayed. Dante and Shakespeare were too wise to decay; Shelley and Giorgione died too young. But the sculptor's intellect must be reinforced by keen eyes and a steady hand: of all artists, Nature finds him most vulnerable. Donatello's last work shows the fatigue of hand and eye, though the intellect never lost its ardent and strenuous activity. There was no petulance or meanness in his old age, no decadence; he merely grew old, and his personality ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... ancient glories of her capital, and thereby lay his hand at last on the bauble which had once before so dazzled him? Besides, Great Britain, his hated rival, scorning the terms he had offered, disdaining the continental blockade, anchored in her strength by the control of Western seas, was vulnerable in India, and there alone. These considerations returned with overpowering allurement to his imagination, and four millions of francs were appropriated to improve the harbor and restore ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... grinned. "Because, Dad, he possessed a remarkably wily gift of always finding his enemies' one vulnerable spot." ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton
... within that no earthly effort can deprive me of, and that is that neither ambitions nor interested motives have influenced my conduct. The arrows of malevolence, therefore, however barbed and well pointed, can never reach the most vulnerable part of me; though, while I am set up as a mark they will ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold
... we should waste no time, and it was equally important that we should select the most vulnerable point for attack. It was self-evident, therefore, that our first duty would be to reconnoiter the surface of the planet and determine ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... is usually placed at the water line because it is this part of the ship which is the most vulnerable and open to attack and where a shell or projectile would do the most harm. If a hole were torn in the side at this place the vessel would quickly take in water and sink. On this account the armor is made thick ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... all; and if she did, he expected some extraordinary outburst, some pitiable exhibition of insanity. Corona, on the other hand, maintained a proud indifference, scorning to suppose that anything could possibly injure Giovanni in any way, loving him too entirely to admit that he was vulnerable at all, still less that he could possibly have done anything to give colour to the accusation brought against him. Giovanni alone of all the three foresaw that there would be trouble, and dimly guessed how the thing had been done; for he did not fall into his father's error ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... himself in a friar's lonely cell. On the north a small river skirted the town, on the south, where nothing intervened between the grassy plain and the wooded Alameda, the besiegers found the most vulnerable flank. ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... rebuke of her over-confident judgment, coming as it did from one who in the same breath appealed to that judgment as final? Ratcliffe, too, had a curious instinct for human weaknesses. No magnetic needle was ever truer than his finger when he touched the vulnerable spot in an opponent's mind. Mrs. Lee was not to be reached by an appeal to religious sentiment, to ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams |
