"Feebleness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... after long suffering. The blow to Lamb was stunning in its severity; and the loss of this earliest and best-loved friend possibly accelerated his own decease. Towards the close of the year a fall while walking caused a trifling wound. No harm was expected to result; but the general feebleness of his health brought on erysipelas, and upon Saturday, January 3, 1835, he was borne to his rest in a quiet corner of Edmonton Church-yard, there to await the coming, twelve years later, of the sister ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... was wildly irritating to me. I knew myself infinitely superior to them; I knew the long creature's novel was worthless; I knew that I had fifty books in me immeasurably better than it, and savagely and sullenly I desired to trample upon them, to rub their noses in their feebleness; but oh, it was I who was feeble! and full of visions of a wider world I raged up and down the cold walls of impassable mental limitations. Above me there was a barred window, and, but for my manacles, I would have sprung at it and torn it with my teeth. Then passion ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... kingdom. Arjuna, O king, is invincible in battle, if Bhima protecteth him from behind. Without Bhima, Arjuna is not equal to even a fourth part of Radheya. Indeed, O king, the Pandavas conscious of their own feebleness without Bhima and of our strength would not really strive to recover the kingdom. Or, if, O monarch, coming hither, they prove docile and obedient to us, we would then seek to repress them according to the dictates of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... unconscious at sunset and did not recover till it reappeared on the horizon. The celebrated Chancellor Bacon, according to Mead, was very delicate, and was accustomed to fall into a state of great feebleness at every moon-set without any other imaginable cause. He never recovered from his ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... had sin living and working in himself. But all the resources of the Greek language, that most resourceful of languages, utterly failed Paul for his pressing purpose. And thus it is that, as if in scorn of the feebleness and futility of that boasted tongue, he tramples its grammars and its dictionaries under his feet, and makes new and unheard-of words and combinations of words on the spot for himself and for his subject. He heaps up a hyperbole the like of which no orator or rhetorician of Greece ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... of the country, owing to the feebleness of the Confederation, was in a most unsatisfactory condition. The conduct of the British government in relation to trade with the United States had been, since the conclusion of the war, not only ungenerous, but insolent and oppressive; and at the same time, the corsairs of the Barbary ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... MARTINEAU is one of the cleverest women of our time; deafness and ugliness have induced her to cultivate to the utmost degree her intellectual faculties, and several of her books are illustrations of a mind even masculine in its power and activity; but the constitutional feebleness, waywardness, and wilfulness of woman is nevertheless not unfrequently evinced by her, and as she grows older the infirmities of her nature are more and more conspicuous; vexed with neglect, without the kindly influences of home or friendship, without the consolations ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... a mob, hooting, and pelting him with stones. At last they left him, and in the shadow of some trees he betook himself to prayer. His words have been preserved, it is believed by the Moslems, and are as follows: "O Lord! I make my complaint unto thee of the feebleness of my strength, and the weakness of my plans. I am insignificant in the sight of men. O thou most merciful! Lord of the weak! Thou art my Lord! Do not abandon me. Leave me not a prey to these strangers, nor to my foes. If thou art not ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... the pleasantest recollections of my life is of a journey made by him, at considerable personal inconvenience, only about a year ago, to visit a former parishioner who had not seen him for years, and who in his old age and feebleness desired to talk with him. His visit brought sunshine and mental and spiritual comfort, and will ever be gratefully remembered by ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 54, No. 3, July, 1900 • Various
... with cruel badinage, and to these censures Turner was morbidly sensitive. But even Ruskin admits that the pictures of his last five years are of "wholly inferior value," with unsatisfactory foliage, chalky faces, and general indications of feebleness ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture - Painting • Clara Erskine Clement
... if I could hear it; but we are now so miserably off in voices, that I hardly ever attempt to listen to a song, without fancying myself deaf from the feebleness of the performers. I hate everything that requires attention. Nothing gives pleasure that does not force its ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... male sex as in the female. A pure and healthy offspring must be preceded by a pure and healthy parentage. A rottening tree never produces luscious fruit. "Like begets like." An enfeebled father means not only feebleness in the next generation, but also perpetuated misery and vice and crime. Marriage is sacred and necessary and obligatory, but not all marriages are so. There are some marriages from which woman should recoil ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... gold in whitening flame Burning, we know your lovely name— Daisies, that little children pull! Like all weak things, over the strong Ye do not know your power for wrong, And much abuse your feebleness. Daisies, that little children pull, As ye are weak, be merciful! O hide your eyes! they are to me Beautiful insupportably. Or be but conscious ye are fair, And I your loveliness could bear, But, being fair so without art, Ye vex the silted ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... understood but little of it. She said that at Cowan Bridge she used to stand in the burn, on a stone, to watch the water flow by. I told her she should have gone fishing; she said she never wanted. She always showed physical feebleness in everything. She ate no animal food at school. It was about this time I told her she was very ugly. Some years afterwards, I told her I thought I had been very impertinent. She replied, 'You did me a great deal of good, Polly, so don't repent ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... the reign of Christian II, a king in whom one knows not which rivets the attention, the multiplied undertakings he commenced and abandoned in a career so often stained with blood, his audacity, his feebleness, or that misery of many years by which he was to expiate a short and ill-used tenure of power. There are men who, like the storm birds before the tempest, appear in history as foretokens of the approaching outburst of great convulsions. Of such a nature was ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... days of record. I was happy when tea came. Such, I take it, is the state of those who live in the country. Meals are wished for from the cravings of vacuity of mind, as well as from the desire of eating. I was hurt to find even such a temporary feebleness, and that I was so far from being that robust wise man who is sufficient for his own happiness. I felt a kind of lethargy of indolence. I did not exert myself to get Dr. Johnson to talk, that I might not have the labour of writing down his conversation. He enquired here ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... must tingle with red pepper in order to enjoy the simple fare of life. But my determination was, never to do my duty with frantic impetuosity, helped on by the fiery liquor of excitement. I know Bimala finds it difficult to respect me for this, taking my scruples for feebleness—and she is quite angry with me because I am not ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... diet, but rises early for the business of the field, and transacts it before ten o'clock, and then retreats to the house or shade during the melting heat of the day, until the coolness of the evening again invites him to the field. Such is his feebleness of body and languor of spirit at noon, that the greatest pleasure of life consists in being entirely at rest. Even during the night he is often restless and depressed, insomuch that refreshing sleep is kept a stranger to his eyes. If unfortunately the poor labourer is taken sick in such ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 2 • Alexander Hewatt
... Hatty. She had always been her particular charge. All Hatty's failures, her miserable derelictions of duty, her morbid self-accusations and nervous fancies, bred of a sickly body and over-anxious temperament, were breathed into Bessie's sympathizing ear. Hatty's feebleness borrowed strength and courage from Bessie's vigorous counsels. She felt braced by mere contact with such a strong, healthy organization. She was always less fretful and impatient when Bessie was near; her ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... very frequent during the witch-trials. How would it rejoice me if, upon contemplating this present age, I could exclaim with my whole heart, "What progression—infinite progression—in manners and humanity!" But, alas! our modern laws, with their womanish feebleness, and sentimental whimperings, sin quite as much against a lofty and noble justice as those of earlier times by their tyrannical and cannibal ferocity. And yet now, as then, conscience is appealed to as the excuse for all. O conscience, conscience! how wilt thou answer for all ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... habit of writing verses? Then the presumption is that he is an inferior person. For, look you, there are at least nine chances in ten that he writes POOR verses. Now the habit of chewing on rhymes without sense and soul to match them is, like that of using any other narcotic, at once a proof of feebleness and a debilitating agent. A young man can get rid of the presumption against him afforded by his writing verses only by convincing us that ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... managers and their like, peddling itself from one noisy Russian office to another, wearing thin its panoply of innocence upon evil speech and vile intention. There were the dregs of manhood in him, for all his narrowness and feebleness, and the prospect offended him ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... with ostentatious feebleness, and forcing a conventional smile upon his wan face, duly made his unexpected appearance at the trustees' meeting in one of the smaller classrooms. He received their congratulations gravely, and shook hands with all three. It required an effort to do this impartially, because, ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... made to me personally by the king, I found the utmost difficulty in escaping. Indeed, he would receive no excuse. When I declined on account of the damsel's youth, he laughed incredulously. If I urged the feebleness of my health and tardy convalescence, he insisted that a regular life of matrimony was the best cordial for an impaired constitution. In fact, the paternal solicitude of his majesty for my doubloons was so urgent that I was ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... to distinguish. Both were spare, both erect, with the least inclination to bottle shoulders, but Charles Pendyce brushed his hair, both before and behind, away from a central parting, and about the back of his still active knees there was a look of feebleness. Seen from the front they could readily be differentiated, for the General's whiskers broadened down his cheeks till they reached his moustaches, and there was in his face and manner a sort of formal, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... feet. render neglectful &c. adj.; put off one's guard, throw off one's guard; distract, divert. Adj. neglecting &c. v.; unmindful, negligent, neglectful; heedless, careless, thoughtless; perfunctory, remiss; feebleness &c. 575. inconsiderate; uncircumspect[obs3], incircumspect[obs3]; off one's guard; unwary, unwatchful[obs3], unguarded; offhand. supine &c. (inactive) 683; inattentive &c. 458; insouciant &c. (indifferent) 823; imprudent, reckless &c. 863; slovenly &c. (disorderly) 59, (dirty) 653; inexact &c. (erroneous) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... claims, and brute force must be the final resort; in which case, the strongest would have the best of every thing. The democratic rule, then, is, that superiors in age, station, or office have precedence of subordinates; age and feebleness, of youth and strength; and the feebler sex, of more vigorous man. [Footnote: The universal practice of this nation, in thus giving precedence to woman has been severely commented on by foreigners, and by some who would transfer all the business of the other ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... parties should remember that in our harsh climate maternity is beset by much feebleness as to nerves in both mother and child; therefore a long seclusion in the nursery is advised before the dangerous period of entertaining one's friends begins. Let the caudle party wait, and the christening be done quietly in one's ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... New York for Arizona, your housemaid will perhaps ask you to deliver a message to her brother in Manitoba. Nowhere more than in the history of geography do we need to keep before us, at every step, the limitations of the untutored mind and its feebleness in grasping ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... rack all the details of the conspiracy as they were afterwards embodied in the sentences and have been stated in the preceding narrative. Groeneveld was not tortured. His answers to the interrogatories were so vague as to excite amazement at his general ignorance of the foul transaction or at the feebleness of his memory, while there was no attempt on his part to exculpate himself from the damning charge. That it was he who had furnished funds for the proposed murder and mutiny, knowing the purpose to which ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... at once so reposeful and so free. But it was the eyes principally that set them dreaming of vanished youth, abandoned hopes, and lost opportunities. Nowadays Mavis could meet the unduly interested regard of male investigators with a candid unvacillating outlook; there came no hint of feebleness in resistance, too ready submission, or temperamental proneness to surrender; but her eyes, whether she wished it or not, still served as messengers between all that was feminine in her and all that was masculine outside her; and, with no reason not ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... rather dreaded the comments her father might be pleased to pass on it. But her kinsman, Lord Meadshire, Lord-Lieutenant of the county, a great magnate in the eyes of the world, was to her just a very kind and playful old man, whose jokes only, because of their inherent feebleness, caused her any discomfort. Cousin Humphrey would preserve her from the results of her fault ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... in the concessions to France made for the sake of peace," and to have made proposals which "would not be tolerated for an instant if any of the other ten self-governing colonies were in question," and were only considered because of the "poverty and feebleness of Newfoundland." Lord Salisbury was, in his eyes, no worse a sinner in this respect than the Liberal Government of 1893, except that Lord Salisbury had also made concessions in giving up the existing situation ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... may be possible that an occasional twinge or pang may have concentrated the terse narrative, or pointed the sharp and shrewd moralizings of these pages; for there is an amazing conciseness and a keen epigrammatic sagacity in them. But there is no languor, no feebleness, no sleepy prosiness, to indicate where vivacity flagged, and where an episode or paragraph was finished after the glow ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... the mother injured, instead of being benefited by such a practice, but great injury, sometimes life-long in its consequences, is inflicted upon the babe at her breast who takes the intoxicating poison at second hand, and is influenced in a fourfold degree from its feebleness ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... the greatest in genius of the instrumental writers of his day. His works have lived by virtue of the superiority, i.e., the greater spontaneity and vitality, of their contents. He should be called the 'foster-father,' rather than the father of the symphony and quartet for he raised them from feebleness to strength and authority." To him must be given the honor of establishing the types of instrumental composition which became the foundations of modern music. Haydn, moreover, was the first musician since Sebastian Bach who had a real personality which may be felt in his works. To ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... Sometimes they made little excursions into the suburbs, which did them all good. Mrs. Penn became a really useful member of the household, and waited on Mrs. Beaton with careful attention. Andrew, who had been troubled about his mother's increasing feebleness, was no longer afraid to see her go out of doors. Mrs. Penn was by her side, a trustworthy companion nowadays, with a stout arm which ...
— A Vanished Hand • Sarah Doudney
... preliminaries of peace, and they say everywhere that, after having gloriously sailed past the rocks that Bonaparte's cunning had placed in its track, the British Ministry has completely foundered at the mouth of the harbour. People blame the whole structure of the peace as betraying marks of feebleness in all that concerns the dignity and the interests of the King; ... and we cannot excuse its neglect of the royalists, whose interests are entirely set aside in the preliminaries. Men are especially astonished at ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... across his arm, altho the sun was very hot. He was followed by a servant bearing a camp-stool. He did not look to me like a well man; ah no, far from it: his stooping form, the sallowness of his complexion, the feebleness of his movements, all indicated him to be in a very bad way. I was not surprized; for the druggist at Mouzon, when he recommended me to drive on to Baybel, told me that an aide-de-camp had just been in his shop to get some medicine—you ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... to sea. The feeblest and least powerful of civilized nations, with the present means of fighting, and the knowledge of the present day, would defeat an ancient army of the most powerful description. Power then is entirely relative; and what is feebleness now, would, at a certain time, have been force ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... the bar was doing a good business, the door opened and in staggered Busted Blake. His staggering on this occasion was manifestly not due to drink. His face had the hideous concavities of a starved man and the uncertainty of his gait was the token of a mortal feebleness. His emaciation was painful to behold. His eyes glowed like ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... should blush for the position in which they had placed their Sovereign. MR. BERNAL, Jun., retorted upon MR. DISRAELI for inveighing against the Whigs, with whom he had formerly been associated. SIR ROBERT PEEL, in a speech of great eloquence, condemned the inactivity and feebleness of the existing Government, and promised that, should he displace it, and take office, it should be by walking in the open light, and in the direct paths of the constitution. He would only accept power upon ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... made him perfectly ready to believe, then the sooner they three were out of it the better. So, disregarding the unfortunate doctor's protestations and entreaties, he raised him in his arms and, notwithstanding the increasing sensation of feebleness and numbness which oppressed him, staggered with his burden into the outer air of the court-yard, closely followed of course by Mrs Henderson. But it was a most trying business altogether, for no sooner did Gaunt lay hands upon the sufferer, though he did it ever so gently, than the poor fellow ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... fault wholly on his side. His father was very harsh and severe in his treatment of him, and perhaps, in the beginning, made too little allowance for the feebleness of his constitution. Neither of the two were sincere in what they said about Alexis becoming a monk. Peter, in threatening to send him to a monastery, only meant to frighten him; and Alexis, in saying that he wished to ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... abilities, look down on all who waste their lives over books, as a race of inferior beings, condemned by nature to perpetual pupilage, and fruitlessly endeavouring to remedy their barrenness by incessant cultivation, or succour their feebleness by subsidiary strength. They presume that none would be more industrious than they, if they were not more sensible of deficiencies; and readily conclude, that he who places no confidence in his own powers, owes his modesty only ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... either: but one could easily see that in his feebleness, in his anxious look, in the dark, circles about his eyes. His shirt-front was all rumpled, and his cuffs were far from clean. Carried away by the course of events, the mind had forgotten the body. Noel's well-shaved ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... to alarm his mother by informing her of his illness—without Valentine to console him, or Mat to amuse him, Zack's spirits now sank to a far lower ebb than they had ever fallen to before. In his present state of depression, feebleness, and solitude, there were moments when he doubted of his own recovery, in spite of all that the doctor could tell him. While in this frame of mind, the remembrance of the last sad report he had heard of his father's ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... especially in cases of urgency: either because there is a great number to be baptized, as was clearly the case in Acts 2 and 4, where we read that on one day three thousand believed, and on another five thousand: or through there being but a small supply of water, or through feebleness of the minister, who cannot hold up the candidate for Baptism; or through feebleness of the candidate, whose life might be endangered by immersion. We must therefore conclude that immersion is not necessary ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... whose powers of life are all exhausted by unnoticed labors and unseen cares,—or those prematurely old with duties and dangers, heroes of thought and action, whose very names evoke the passion and the pride of a hundred thousand hearts. There is a tottering feebleness of old age, also, nobler than any prime of strength; we all know aged men who are floating on, in stately serenity, towards their last harbor, like Turner's Old Temeraire, with quiet tides around them, and the blessed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... where'er they rov'd, With pillage and conflagration; Nor them old age's feebleness ...
— Targum • George Borrow
... constructed to show us Hotspur's courage: here, if anywhere, the hot blood should surprise us and make of danger the springboard of leaping hardihood. But this is the best Shakespeare can reach—this fainting, palefaced "Yet all goes well, yet all our joints are whole." The inadequacy, the feebleness of the whole thing is astounding. Milton had not the courage of the soldier, but he had more than this: he found better words for his Satan after defeat than Shakespeare found for ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... die to the flesh and self, will reveal in power. Not a Christ such as your little thoughts can frame a conception of, but a Christ according to the greatness of the heart and the love of God. Oh, come and accept this Christ, and rejoice in Him! Be content now to leave all your feebleness, and foolishness, and faithlessness to Him, in the quiet confidence that He will do for you more than you can think. And so let it henceforth be, as it is written, He that glorieth, let him ...
— Holy in Christ - Thoughts on the Calling of God's Children to be Holy as He is Holy • Andrew Murray
... Happiness of the Christian Dignity of the Christian The family in heaven and earth Feebleness of the Christian The Christian under a sense of guilt—Bunyan's experience Sin and the Saviour The Christian in darkness The valley of the shadow of death The Christian doubting Indwelling sin Mr. Fearing Encouragement for the doubting Christian ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... an unpoetical one, and two of the finest poetical minds of the nation were so dwarfed and weakened by the ungenial atmosphere as to bequeath to posterity nothing more than a few lyrical fragments. In the age which admired the smooth feebleness of Shenstone's pastorals and elegies, and which closed when the libels of Churchill were held to be good examples of poetical satire, Gray turned aside from the unrequited labors of verse to idle in his study, and Collins lived and died almost unknown. Gray (1716-1771) ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... unconsciousness. What wonder that his flesh had sunk away from his bones, and that his frame had lost its elasticity! For some hours every day he had lain prostrate on the bed in his cell, in a state of feebleness pitiful to behold, unable to speak or move, and hardly able to breathe. "One morning," he writes, "while gasping for breath, I besought the gaoler to let me have more air, by throwing up the window. 'You are no gentleman,' said he; 'you gave that letter[14] out of the window, and ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... of this production, or who will deny the imperfections, (mostly of affectation, though some of tastelessness) which obscure it? Who will wonder at our confessed wavering when they have read this course of alternate power, occasionally extravagant, and feebleness as in the long account of the emeute? Of the extravagant, the description of the princess, on receiving the declaration of war, is ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... cedar seems to make a tomb For fallen ambition. Prone the mortal lies Who dared mad warfare with the unpitying skies, But lo! as buried in the waving ferns, The baffled giant for oblivion yearns, Cursing his human feebleness, he feels A sudden impulse of new strength, which heals His angry wounds; his vigor he regains— His blood is dancing gayly through his veins. Fresh power, fresh life is his who lay at rest On bounteous Hertha's kind creative breast. [Footnote: Hertha, a goddess of the ancient ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... dependeth upon virtue. There is nothing higher than virtue. And virtue, O king, is attainable by one that hath plenty of wealth. Wealth cannot be earned by leading a mendicant life, nor by a life of feebleness. Wealth, however, can be earned by intelligence directed by virtue. In thy case, O king, begging, which is successful with Brahmanas, hath been forbidden. Therefore, O bull amongst men, strive for the acquisition of wealth ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... never be forgotten. The last time we saw her, was about two years ago—in Bristol—at her brother's, Dr. Porter's, house in Portland Square: then she could hardly stand without assistance, yet she never complained of her own suffering or feebleness, all her anxiety was about the brother—then dangerously ill, and now the last of "his race." Major Porter, it will be remembered, left five children, and these have left only one descendant—the daughter of Sir Robert Ker Porter ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various
... acquainted with its own strength; the nation, disgusted with the nature of the American war, refused its sympathy; without that sympathy ministers could do nothing effectual, and never can do any thing effectual. The character of the cabinet was feebleness, the spirit of the metropolis was faction; the king, though one of the best of men, was singularly unpopular; and the war became a system of feeble defence against arrogant and increasing hostilities. France, powerful as she was, became more powerful by the national exultation—the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... purpose than a flirtation. But the dark, vicinity, the young girl's prettiness, the apparent freshness and reliance on his sympathy from which her frankness came, were too much: he tried to congeal again, and ended in some feebleness about the scenery, which was indeed very lonely and wild, after the boat started up the Saguenay, leaving the few lights of Tadoussac to blink and fail behind her. He had an absurd sense of being alone in the world there with the young lady; and he ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... neither of them had realized when. But the certainty that they had done so had had its effect upon Isabel. Her energies had flagged from the moment that it had dawned upon her. A deadly tiredness had come over her, a feebleness so complete that Dinah had had difficulty in getting her into the shelter. Return was utterly out of the question. They were hopelessly lost, and to wander in that densely falling ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... continued drinking through the whole course of the lecture, he often seemed to labour under an almost paralytic inability to raise the upper jaw from the lower" [i.e. I suppose to move the lower jaw]. "In such a state it is clear that nothing could save the lecture itself from reflecting his own feebleness and exhaustion except the advantage of having been precomposed in some happier mood. But that never happened: most unfortunately, he relied on his extempore ability to carry him through. Now, had he been in spirits, or had he gathered animation and kindled ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... young, I lay there, and the heart that I had strung up to bear all things because of the fellowship of men and the blessed saints and the angels and those that are, and those that are to be, this heart, that I had strung up like a strong bow, fell into feebleness, so that I lay there a-longing for the green fields and the white-thorn bushes and the lark singing over the corn, and the talk of good fellows round the ale-house bench, and the babble of the little children, and the team on the road ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris
... flower of his age, surrounded with all the elements of happiness, and with no drawback but that of weak health, which until within the last few months was not sufficiently important to counterbalance the good, and only amounted to feebleness and delicacy of constitution; and it is the breaking up of a house replete with social enjoyment, six or seven children deprived of their father, and a young wife and his old father overwhelmed with a grief which ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... beard streaked with gray, and sharp blue eyes set deep under tufted white eyebrows. He seemed a friendly old man whose interest in life remained keen as in his youth, despite the feebleness of his body. He showed Bud where to turn the horses, and went to work on the pack rope, his crooked old fingers moving with the sureness of lifelong habit. He was eager to know all the news that Bud ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... smaller cavities are formed in the lungs; finally the cavities may even take more space than the remaining lung tissue. When cavities have already been formed, coughing comes easy and with abundant expectoration. Toward the end of life the coughing and spitting stops as a result of the extreme feebleness and weakness. ...
— Prof. Koch's Method to Cure Tuberculosis Popularly Treated • Max Birnbaum
... in the countenance of Father d'Aigrigny, his pale cheek, and the feebleness of his walk, one might see that the terrible scene in the square of Notre-Dame, had violently reacted upon his health. Yet his face was radiant and triumphant, as he entered Rodin's chamber, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... to say into a few lines—her love, thanks, longing to see papa, Gracie's feebleness, and her own belief that it was all because she did not get enough to eat; an acknowledgment that she was saucy to "Aunt Beulah," and sometimes helped herself to food, but excusing it on the plea that otherwise she too would be half starved; and that poor Max ...
— Grandmother Elsie • Martha Finley
... other meeting, in which the aid of the Chairwoman's husband and brothers had to be sought, in order to eject a solitary derisive man, who successfully defied the assembled emancipated females to move him from his position; but neither of these stories seems to me to illustrate the inherent feebleness of women, when unaided by the ruder sex, quite as forcibly as does the pleasant story of Tungku Aminah and ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... a higher power of resistance than the most robust men. This frail, sickly Guynemer, twice refused by the army because of feebleness of constitution, never gave up. In proportion as the requirements of aviation became more severe, as the higher altitudes reached made it more exhausting, Guynemer seemed to prolong his flights ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... feebleness he utters these words, accompanying them with a glance of utter devotion. How can she mistake this glance, so full of love and rapture? Perplexed in the extreme, she turns from him, as though to leave him, but by a gesture he ...
— The Haunted Chamber - A Novel • "The Duchess"
... find peculiar manifestations of family devotion exemplifying that touching affection which rises to unusual sacrifice because it is close to pity and feebleness. "My cousin and his family had to go back to Italy. He got to Ellis Island with his wife and five children, but they wouldn't let in the feeble-minded boy, so of course they all went back with him. My cousin ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams
... Ezekiel was a dramatist; he acted his prophecies and his preachings on a stage. The warnings were in this form clearly articulated, and forcefully driven home; if they failed to produce the ultimate result of repentance, the obstacle lay not in the feebleness of the instrument, but in the wilful hardness of the subject whereon the instrument was plied. Dramatic representation in the simplicity of its infancy was a golden vessel of the sanctuary, employed in the service of God; long ago it was carried away into Babylon, and profanely used ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... were easily shaken. "We have not for so many years discarded all the servile laws of others, to be the abject slaves of our own weaknesses. Come, my dear fellow, rouse yourself. Heaven knows, were I to succumb to the feebleness of my own heart, I should be lost indeed. And perhaps, wrestle I ever so stoutly, I do not wrestle away that which clings within me, and will kill me, though by inches. But let us not be cravens, and suffer ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... implements, such as hand guides, gymnasiums, wires and pulleys, and placed them around the odd, lifeless looking mass on the chair. Then a solemn looking individual came forth and announced to the audience that the soloist, owing to his extreme feebleness, had been hypnotized previous to the concert, as it was the only manner in which to get him to play, and that he would be restored to consciousness at once and the program ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... long hours I'd spend in viewing The elemental strife, My soul the while subduing With the littleness of life; Of life, with all its paltry plans, Its conflicts and its cares— The feebleness of all that's man's— The might that's God's ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... the hereditary aristocracy of the country, and comparative feebleness, on some occasions at least, of the authority of the most despotic sovereign whom England had yet seen on the throne, we discern at once the excuse which Henry would make to himself for his severities against the nobility, and the motive of that extreme popularity of manners by which Elizabeth ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... the country, to give the people the pleasure of seeing their great man, to give himself the pleasure of their admiration, and to help on the Congressional campaign, the result of which would be the preliminary popular verdict upon his administration. The thinness of the crowds, the feebleness of the enthusiasm, the newspaper sneers and flings at that oratory once hailed as a model of dignity and eloquence—even he could not accept the smooth explanations of his flatterers. And in November came the party's memorable overwhelming defeat—reducing our majority in the Senate ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... John Adams's appeal to Patrick Henry and its result. The appeal to him from Washington—an appeal which he could not resist, and which induced him, even in his extreme feebleness of body, to make one last and noble exertion of his genius—happened in this wise. On the 15th of January, 1799, from Mount Vernon, Washington wrote to his friend a long letter, marked "confidential," in which he stated with great frankness his own anxieties respecting the dangers then threatening ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... unselfishness. She was anxious on Mr. Carlyon's account. Dinah was right when she told Malcolm that he was much aged and broken. "I have lost my Benjamin, the son of my right hand," he had said to her—"God's hand is heavy upon me;" and though he strove to bear his sorrow with resignation, his feebleness alarmed them all. Theo, as usual, was undisciplined in her grief. "He will die too," she lamented. "Elizabeth, David has gone, and now poor father will follow him. I have never seen him look so ill. David and he ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Its consequences were to deny to the United States Government the right to tax incomes, to restrict it still further to customs duties as virtually its sole source of revenue, to deprive it of a power that might one day be vital to the safety of the Union, and to exhibit it in a condition of feebleness that was altogether incompatible with any rational conception of a sovereign State. It is true that the Supreme Court has changed not only its personnel, but its spirit, and its whole attitude toward questions of public ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... walk two hundred paces,' says another 'without resting myself; my feebleness is extreme; I have constant pains in every part of the body, but particularly in the shoulders and chest. My appetite is good, but this is a misfortune, since what I eat causes pains in my stomach, and is vomited up. If I read a page or two, my eyes are filled with ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... the clear-sighted children of the Republic be cajoled into a friendly attitude towards this blood-thirsty dastard, because that, in the feebleness and fear that have now overtaken her, she essays to gloze over the infamous acts of which she stands convicted before the nations, and assumes an air of friendship towards them. Had the Union fallen, through her infernal machinations, not a city throughout ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... nor thus seek to cloak the savage force Which triumphs o'er a woman's feebleness. Though woman, I am born as free as man. Did Agamemnon's son before thee stand, And thou requiredst what became him not, His arm and trusty weapon would defend His bosom's freedom. I have only words But it becomes a noble-minded man To treat with due respect ...
— Iphigenia in Tauris • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... and a flat iron bar two and one-half inches wide and five-eighths of an inch thick. The worthlessness and danger of such a railroad was soon demonstrated by innumerable accidents caused by the spreading of rails, the "snaking" of the flat bars of iron through the cars, and the feebleness of the engines. Both road and engines soon had to be replaced. In every case which I recall the original investment in the early railroads ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... freely, a predisposition to intemperance, insanity, and various diseases of both body and mind, which, if the cause is continued, becomes hereditary, and is transmitted from generation to generation; occasioning a diminution of size, strength, and energy, a feebleness of vision, a feebleness and imbecility of purpose, an obtuseness of intellect, a depravation of moral taste, a premature old age, and a general deterioration of the whole character. This is the case in every country, and in ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... last sad darkness, I began again to tremble for him; but I need not have done so; for he walked on so straight through it, that it seemed scarcely to make any difference to him at all. In the best part of the road his feebleness had taught him to lean altogether upon Him who had so mercifully helped him on the bank, and who had held up his fainting steps hitherto; and this strength could hold him up as well even in this extreme darkness. I heard him, as he parsed along, say, "When I am weak, then am I strong;" ...
— The Rocky Island - and Other Similitudes • Samuel Wilberforce
... either from the feebleness of age or from the infirmity I have mentioned, had great difficulty in walking, he had brought with him a small boy, whose business it was to direct his tottering ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... that point. Until you are enough of a master of your brush to get an effect in this way, do not meddle with the more complex methods of after-painting. You will never do good work by subsequent manipulation, if you have a groundwork of feebleness and indecision. Direct painting is the fundamental process of all ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... last. And there are similar historic riddles to be unpicked in the similar forms of social address. There is something singularly forlorn about the modern word "Mister." Even in sound it has a simpering feebleness which marks the shrivelling of the strong word from which it came. Nor, indeed, is the symbol of the mere sound inaccurate. I remember seeing a German story of Samson in which he bore the unassuming name of Simson, which surely shows Samson very much shorn. ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... they were worthy to be called, discovered only feebleness of mind, when in the attempt to make themselves acquainted with his principles, they professed, either through ignorance, or indolence, not to understand him. When his mental powers had so far advanced, he felt a conviction of the truth ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... which the assailants of this passage seem to be furnished. Their evidence is mostly negative—a proceeding which is constantly observed to attend a bad cause: and they are prone to make up for the feebleness of their facts by the strength of their assertions. But my experience, as one who has given a considerable amount of attention to such subjects, tells me that the narrative before us carries on its front the impress of Divine origin. I venture to think that it vindicates for ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... feebleness of the grey-haired child, contrasted with the keen and cunning looks of those in whose hands he was, smote upon the little listener's heart. But she constrained herself to attend to all that passed, and to note ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... While he executed vast engineering works to supply the city with water, he also amused the people with gladiatorial shows. In all things he showed the force of the old Roman character, in spite of bodily feebleness. ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... are instantly grasped by the mind are said to be understood [intelligi]; hence "intellect" is defined as the habit of first principles. But human souls which acquire knowledge of truth by the discursive method are called "rational"; and this comes of the feebleness of their intellectual light. For if they possessed the fulness of intellectual light, like the angels, then in the first aspect of principles they would at once comprehend their whole range, by perceiving whatever could ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... that the strings of his moccasins and his beaded garters are well tied, and tightening his sash belt around his leathern shirt, the swift runner would be off like an arrow; making straight for the far away wigwam, where, in age and feebleness, is one of the grandmothers of the tribe, now loved by all; but who would have been put to death years ago, if the blessed Gospel had not come among this people and wrought its marvellous transformations in their hearts. Six miles would that fleet Indian runner have ...
— On the Indian Trail - Stories of Missionary Work among Cree and Salteaux Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... the British officers and men at seeing the splendid opportunities of crushing the enemy—opportunities gained by the skill and science of their general, and by their own rapid and fatiguing marches—thrown away by the feebleness and timidity of the Dutch deputies. When the siege of Venloo began the main body of the army was again condemned to inactivity, and the cavalry had of course nothing to ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... is a grievous error. Instead of being more frail in body, and less firm in mind, or thorough in morals and piety, than in past ages, she should be endowed with new force of character. Amid the increased dangers of society, what is to protect her, and lift her from feebleness and degradation, if not personal character? Man is to be educated for a vigorous encounter with the world; in him the stronger qualities, tempered by sensibility and affection, should predominate. Woman should be prepared to co-operate with ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... lamp-light. Euphra held out a pale little hand to Hugh, and before she withdrew it, led Hugh's towards Margaret. Their hands joined. How different to Hugh was the touch of the two hands! Life, strength, persistency in the one: languor, feebleness, and fading in ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... but one vast scene of triumph for his reason, there is as large a scene of exertion left for his faith. That faith he ordinarily yields; he sees it is justified by those proofs of the great truth he can appreciate, and which he will not allow to be controlled by the difficulties his conscious feebleness cannot solve; and the rather, that he sees that if he does not accept that evidence, he has equally incomprehensible difficulties to encounter, and two or three stark contradictions into the bargain. His reason, therefore, triumphs ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... the more that they upheld her from the absolute feebleness of sickened reverie, beguiled her from the gnawing torture of unsatisfied conjecture. She did comply with Madame de Grantmesnil's command—did pass from the dusty beaten road of life into green fields and along flowery river-banks, and did ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the temples the hair was perfectly white, though still abundant. A certain military precision of manner was attached to the whole bearing of the man,—his thin figure was well-built and upright, showing no tendency to feebleness,—his shoulders were set square, and his head was poised in a manner that might have been called uncompromising, if not obstinate. Even the hand that rested on the balcony, attenuated and deeply wrinkled as it was, suggested strength in its shape and character, and a passing thought of this ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... great museum of the arts were to be provided, by way of decoration, with a species of verandah enclosed on one side by a series of small-paned windows draped in dirty linen, and furnished on the other with an array of pictorial feebleness, the place being surmounted by a thinly-painted wooden roof, strongly suggestive of summer heat, of winter cold, of frequent leakage, those amateurs who had had the advantage of foreign travel would be at small pains to conceal their contempt. Contemptible ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... of this apparent feebleness and want of spunk in Russia's ruling class one must study a peculiarity of her history, namely, the complete dominance of Russia's development by organized government. Where the historian of the Western countries must take account of several independent forces, each standing ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... lost a true poet and a scholar of very varied accomplishments. His friends have lost much more. Since his last attack of influenza, those who knew him and loved him had been much concerned about him. The pallor of his complexion had greatly increased; so had his feebleness. As long ago as May last, when I called upon him at the Athenæum Club in order to join him at a luncheon he was giving at the Café Royal, I found that he had engaged a four-wheeled cab to take us over those few yards. The expression in his kind and wistful blue-grey ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... Greece. And the tropical nations, too, of your own continent, the Peruvians, were more improved than those who inhabited the temperate regions. Besides, though the climate had instilled softness and feebleness of character, it might also have permitted the cultivation of the arts, as has been the case with us in Asia. On the whole, without our being able to pronounce with certainty on the subject, it does seem probable that some organic difference exists in the various races of mankind, to which ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... great. The world rightly seeing must fear it; and fear is the highest homage the world ever gives. But he is penniless; and he has many foes; and jealousy can with so much ease thrust aside the greatness which it fears into obscurity, when that greatness is marred by the failures and the feebleness of poverty. Genius scorns the power of gold: it is wrong; gold is the war-scythe on its chariot, which mows down the millions of its foes and gives free passage to the sun-coursers with which it leaves those heavenly fields of light for the ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... different from other meets. As for the Roman mountains, they are so totally unlike any other hills in the world, and so extremely beautiful in their own peculiar way, that to describe them would be an idle and a useless task, which could only serve to exhibit the vanity of the writer and the feebleness of his pen. ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... made, thick-set, with a face large, and very stern; he wore a loose, black velvet coat and waistcoat. It was, however, the figure of an elderly rather than an old man—though he was then past seventy—but firm, and with no sign of feebleness. ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... toys and animate pets, his early playful adventures in authorship, and other garrulities with which, late in life when the work, as it remains, was incompletely put together, he beguiled the weariness and feebleness of old age. But we are anticipating, for we are writing of Ruskin when his hand was yet on the plough, and the plough was still in the furrow, and half a long life's arduous work was yet before him. At this era, no brain could well have been more active or fuller of philanthropies than his, for ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... of order in the French army's line of march as it went through Prussia was due principally to the ineptitude of Murat, who had assumed command after the departure of the Emperor, and later to the feebleness of Prince Eugne de Beauharnais, ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... appeared before the multitude to make addresses to them. One of them made a speech in respect to Henry, denouncing the crimes, and the acts of treachery and of oppression which his government had committed. He dilated long on the feebleness and incapacity of the king, and his total inability to exercise any control in the management of public affairs. After he had finished, he called out to the people in a loud voice to declare whether they would submit any longer to have such ...
— Richard III - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... seasons of much discouragement, with the sore sense upon us of our abject feebleness, we do confer with ourselves, insisting for the thousandth time, "My soul, wait thou only upon God." But, the lesson is soon forgotten. The strength supplied we speedily credit to our own achievement; and even the temporary success is mistaken for a symptom ...
— Beautiful Thoughts • Henry Drummond
... and what would happen to Mrs. Fenton if he were beaten helpless. Surely if aid were coming it must have arrived long ago. He had been fighting for hours. He kept striking on, but he felt his strength failing, and he could have laughed wildly at the pitiful feebleness of his blows. He was knocked down, and scrambled up again, amazed that he was not killed or disabled. His one hope lay in the fact that the man was evidently much the worse for drink, and often struck as blindly as himself. If he could but occupy the brute's attention until help came, ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... important incident of taking Ghuzni by storm on the way. Our positions at and about Cabul were not seriously molested until late in 1841, when the paralysis of demoralisation struck our soldiers because of the crass follies of a wrong-headed civilian chief and the feebleness of a decrepit general. Nott throughout held Candahar firmly; the Khyber Pass remained open until faith was broken with the hillmen; Jellalabad held out until the "Retribution Column" camped under its walls. But for the awful catastrophe which befell ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes |
