"Impotent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... contrary, we had been taught to regard them as most unfortunate in the circumstances under which [11] they so gloriously conquered their merited freedom. We saw them free, but perfectly illiterate barbarians, impotent to use the intellectual resources of which their valour had made them possessors, in the shape of books on the spirit and technical details of a highly developed national existence. We had learnt also, until this new interpreter of history had contradicted the accepted record, ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... at her for a minute or two, then, with a smothered oath upon his lips, he turned slowly to the door and opened it. Before leaving the room, however, he said, in a voice half-stifled by impotent passion— ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... the morning the storm was furious; but the Major declared that his weather-glass had turned, which proved that the gale was breaking. The top of the tide would be at one o'clock, and after church we should behold a sight he was rather proud of—the impotent wrath of the wind and tide against ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... at that instant rushed by him—pale, haggard, breathless—towards the house which he had quitted, and the door of which he left open, as he had found it—open, as the physician had left it when hurrying, ten minutes before the arrival of Mr. Beaufort, from the spot where his skill was impotent. Wrapped in gloomy thought, alone, and on foot-at that dreary hour, and in that remote suburb—the heir of the Beauforts sought his splendid home. Anxious, fearful, hoping, the outcast orphan flew on to the ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... machine is impotent against my will. I could have defied it a hundred years ago, when I was barely a grown man. Know you, American, that we supermen of the Fenachrone are as far above any of the other and lesser breeds of beings who spawn in their millions in their countless myriads of races upon ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... was that she went mad. A screaming, gibbering maniac writhed in my grasp. It bit and clawed and scratched in impotent fury. And then it laughed a weird and terrible laughter that froze the blood. The slave girls upon the dais shrieked and cowered away. And the thing jumped at them and gnashed its teeth and then spat upon them from frothing lips. God, but it was a ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... would appear on the face of it that the efforts of the Government are absolutely impotent, the notices so much waste paper, and the 'rights of liberty' mere empty phrases of no meaning or significance to the Chinese mind ... A Chinawoman would never dream of effecting her escape for the ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell
... it with your life," was his reply. "If you attempt it, you shall never cease to rue your folly as long as you exist. Do not imagine I am afraid of you! I wear an armour against which all your weapons are impotent. Do you not know, miserable wretch, that I have sworn to preserve my reputation, whatever it cost? I have dug a pit for you, and whichever way you move it is ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... When they passed the Scorpion and only just missed destruction from its menacing fangs, fear entered into the boy's heart. His mother had spoken truth. He was only partly a god, and he was very, very young. In impotent horror he tugged at the reins to try to check the horses' descent, then, forgetful of Apollo's warning, he smote them angrily. But anger met anger, and the fury of the immortal steeds had scorn for the wrath of a mortal boy. With a great toss of their mighty heads they had torn the guiding reins ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... therewithal, to win me, if you please (Without the which I am not to be won), You shall this twelvemonth term from day to day Visit the speechless sick, and still converse With groaning wretches; and your talk shall be, With all the fierce endeavour of your wit, To enforce the pained impotent ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... prominent characteristic. As a people, these mountaineers have ever been accessible to gentleness and truth, so far as I have known them; but excite suspicion or resentment, and they give emphatic and not impotent resistance. Compulsion they defy. ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... ships, the trade of the North stagnate at the wharves, and the manufacturers starve at their looms, while the whole people shall pay tribute to foreign industry to be clad in a foreign garb; that the Congress of the Union are impotent to restore the balance in favor of native industry destroyed by the statutes ...
— State of the Union Addresses of John Quincy Adams • John Quincy Adams
... ultra-elegant, and wily-weak court and dynasty have lately been expelled from precarious sovereignty at Changan in the North to Nankin south of the Yangtse; there to abide a little while un-overturned, looking down in lofty impotent contempt on the uncouth Wether Huns, Tunguses, and Tibetans who are sharing and quarreling over the ancient seats of the Black-haired People in the Hoangho basin, after driving this same precious House of Tsin into the south.—Persia is on the back of the Wave, something lower ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... He felt maddeningly impotent. In another world entirely, a mob of half-naked renegades had made a prisoner. He was not dead, that solely surviving man from the Golden City. He was bound, and the Ragged Men guarded him closely, and his guards were diverting themselves unspeakably ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... to about seventeen hundred effectives. That of Lord Cornwallis is understood to have been still less numerous. So impotent were the means employed for the conquest and defence of states which were of immense extent ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 3 (of 5) • John Marshall
... dead—and I'll fly, and I'll go abroad out of the reach of the confounded hells, and I'll bury myself in a forest, by Gad! and hang myself up to a tree—and, oh—I'm the most miserable beggar in all England!" And so with more tears, shrieks, and curses, the impotent wretch vented his grief and deplored his unhappy fate; and, in the midst of groans and despair and blasphemy, ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... discoveries of science. The church has impeded, but it has not and it cannot stop the onward march of the human race. Heresy can not be burned, nor imprisoned, nor starved. It laughs at presbyteries and synods, at Ecumenical councils and the impotent thunders of Sinai. Heresy is the eternal dawn, the morning star, the glittering herald of the day. Heresy is the last and best thought. It is the perpetual new world; the unknown sea, toward which ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... herself with a little cry of impotent despair. How could she say the sharp, cruel speeches that were struggling to reach her tongue now? It was no use; she was a coward; she simply had not the courage to undeceive him here, on the very first ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... German places above everything else, Method and Power. Elected by Nature to command the impotent races, he possesses all the qualifications that distinguish the superior leader. The French Revolution was merely a clash between Teutons and Celts. The nobility of France were descended from Germanic warriors established in the country after the so-called invasion ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Jehuda, Emek ha-Bacha, etc. The art of printing, even then developed to a considerable degree of perfection, became for the dispersed Jews the strongest bond of spiritual union. The papal index librorum prohibitorum was impotent in the face of the all-pervading propaganda for thought and feeling carried on by ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow
... is itself a surprise. The characters are generally strongly conceived, skilfully discriminated, and happily combined. The delineation of Mr. Westervelt, the father of the heroine, is especially excellent. Irresolute in thought, impotent in will, and only occasionally fretted by circumstances into a feeble activity, he is an almost painfully accurate representation of a class of men who drift through life without any power of self-direction. Mrs. Westervelt has equal moral feebleness with less brain, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... you, and that you left me, in a rather awkward position, to explain matters to your mother?" he said coldly. He had formulated the sentence in his mind some moments before, but now that it was uttered, it appeared singularly weak and impotent. ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... defaced with horrid blackness: black ashes of Chateaus, black bodies of gibetted Men! Industry has ceased in it; not sounds of the hammer and saw, but of the tocsin and alarm-drum. The sceptre has departed, whither one knows not;—breaking itself in pieces: here impotent, there tyrannous. National Guards are unskilful, and of doubtful purpose; Soldiers are inclined to mutiny: there is danger that they two may quarrel, danger that they may agree. Strasburg has seen riots: a Townhall torn to shreds, its ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... fully complied with. In Wurtemberg, the duke, Charles, had been succeeded, A.D. 1793, by his brother, Louis Eugene, who banished license from his court, but, a foe to enlightenment, closed the Charles college, placed monks around his person, was extremely bigoted, and a zealous but impotent friend to France. He expired, A.D. 1795, and was succeeded by the third brother, Frederick Eugene, who had been during his youth a canon at Salzburg, but afterward became a general in the Prussian service, ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... unaware that the Covenant would be inserted in the Peace Treaty, but he was strongly of the opinion, as indeed were M. Pichon and others, that the two instruments were incompatible. He also apparently inclined to the belief that spiritual and moral agencies, if not wholly impotent to bring about the requisite changes in the politico-social world, could not effect the transformation for a long while to come, and that in the interval it behooved the governments to fall back upon the old system of so-called equilibrium, which, after Germany's collapse, meant ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... my sympathy with you was not wholly unselfish, but that I felt that, if I had ever written anything which has a chance of a prolonged existence, I should wish it to be read, not by any distracted and impotent communities of British race, but by America, one and indivisible. And, gentlemen, this is not unnatural, for amid all the divisions or distractions of your history, your literature has ever been patriotic and ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... where the empty tomato tin lay by the rotten plantain cast over by some nigger child. He knew what it was to lie and hear the flies buzzing and wonder what tune of the devil it was they were trying to imitate. He knew what it was to think of death with the impotent craving of a sick child for ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... quotas in their paper money, which was not received at par outside the States. Congress had no power of coercion. According to the second of the Articles, each State in the Confederation retained its sovereignty, freedom, and independence. Congress could only make impotent appeals. Governor Randolph, of Virginia, pictured the Congress as saying to his State: "May it please your high mightinesses of Virginia to pay your just proportionate quota of the national debt; we humbly supplicate that it may please you to comply with your federal duties. We implore, ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... is loss of both physical and mental power. Not only the voluntary muscles become impotent, but the involuntary ones lose in effectiveness. Digestion is partly or wholly suspended. "Scared stiff" is a popular and truthful expression. The bodily rhythm is lost, the breathing becomes jerky and the heart beats out ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... second time he had been caught by Fadakar, the chief of animal control, before he could lock up the delinquents. And the memory of the resulting interview still had the power to make him flush with impotent anger. Shann's explanation had been contemptuously brushed aside, and he had been delivered an ultimatum. If his carelessness occurred again, he would be sent back on the next supply ship, to be dismissed without an official sign-off on his work record, ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... tent; ransacking bags, portmanteaux and boxes, shaking out clothing and blankets, and prying into every conceivable article in a vain endeavor to find the stones; whilst the indignant quartette under examination broke out again and again in a storm of impotent wrath. ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... imagine for the fraction of a second, Walt Wagner, that if I was back twenty years and sound like you are, I'd be asking another man why he didn't do the job?" Terrible, almost ghastly, he stood there before them, the picture of bitter rage, of impotent, distorted senility. "Have you got the last spark of manhood left in you, and ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... Cudgel her wearied brain as she would, it could not make pace to the goal she sought. When, after a sleepless night, she rose, it was with the maze of disaster still unthreaded. Her usual ingenuity of resource was become impotent. Raging against her own supineness, she was yet ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... an involuntary and impotent gesture, such as mad men and wise men can both be forced into giving, he shook his fist in the direction in which he had caught sight of ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... important that deduction should be so impotent in biology. Still more impotent is it perhaps in matters of art or religion; whilst, on the contrary, it works marvels so long as it has only to foresee movements or transformations in bodies. What does this mean, if not ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy
... and the old system. We often smile ourselves, and seek to make others smile, when we revert to the discussions, rival pretensions, projects, hopes, and fears which agitated this small knot of exiles, gathered round an impotent and throneless monarch. Such an indulgence is neither rational nor dignified. What matters it whether the theatre be great or small, whether the actors fail or succeed, or whether the casualties ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... at Dale, but he had forgotten her existence and was poring over the battles of Pompey. Such indifference did not hurt her now:—it was the emptiness of that door! Still staring, silently beating her hands together in impotent rage, her face burning with mortification, two big tears rolled down her cheeks and fell upon the rug. Mac whined. He did not ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... brandishing their weapons or feebly calling their adversaries to come on, while the soldiers prodded them from behind with spears, and urged them into the close quarters they so anxiously desired to avoid. Plotinus, helpless with his bonds and gag, looked on in impotent horror. Gallienus was often cruel, but could he intend such a revolting massacre? There must be ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... his old age in his second son, Christopher, about to marry and reside with him. "Lycidas" had appeared meanwhile, or was to appear, and its bold denunciation of the Romanizing clergy might well offend the ruling powers. The atmosphere at home was, at all events, difficult breathing for an impotent patriot; and Milton may have come to see what we so clearly see in "Comus," that his asperities and limitations needed contact with the world. Why speak of the charms of Italy, in themselves sufficient allurement to a poet and scholar? His father, trustful ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... Piccadilly. Her husband had had the luxuries of wealth, and here he was living like a Spartan on his hill— and alone; though he had a wife whom men had beseiged both before and after marriage. A feeling of impotent indignation suddenly took possession of her. Here he was with two women, unattached,—one interesting and good and agreeable and good-looking, and the other almost a beauty,—who were part of the whole rustic scheme in which he lived. They ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... which operated so effectually, that when his army was beaten by the powerful Damel, they uniformly retired behind their exorcised heap of stones, which in a moment stopt their enemy's career, and struck them with such dread, that they immediately retired to their country, leaving their impotent enemy in quiet possession of his usurped territory; whom otherwise they might have annihilated with the greatest facility. Superstition is a delusion very prevalent in Africa; and its powerful influence upon the human mind is forcibly ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... found a panic. The Russian detachment of Colonel Kazagrandi, after having twice defeated the Bolsheviki and well on its march against Irkutsk, was suddenly rendered impotent and scattered through internal strife among the officers. The Bolsheviki took advantage of this situation, increased their forces to one thousand men and began a forward movement to recover what they had lost, while the remnants of Colonel Kazagrandi's detachment were retreating ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... nearly $500,000,000, or over $8.00 per annum for every man, woman, and child in the country. Surely, then, the statement which we make at the outset, that the coal trade of the United States is in the hands of monopolists; and that competition, where not killed, is almost impotent to keep down prices, is one ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker
... blow on the hoary skull was in their eyes an act of filial piety. The Necrophori have their share of these ancient barbarities. Full of days and henceforth useless, dragging out a weary existence, they mutually exterminate one another. Why prolong the agony of the impotent and ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... Who live (though why, yourselves alone can guess) In hope deferred, ambitious still to shine By hating me at half a cent a line— Like drones among the bees of brighter wing, Sunless to shine and impotent to sting. To estimate in easy verse I'll try The controversial value of a lie. So lend your ears—God knows you have enough!— I mean to teach, and ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... three faced each other in that flaming room, then with a sound of impotent fury, Kerissen turned and darted out the door. But as Billy turned to follow, his hand on Arlee's, there was a ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... wrote him characts and incensed him with Nadd and aloes-wood and ambergris three days' space; but his malady persisted three months, till King Asim was wroth with the leaches and said to them, "Woe to you, O dogs! What? Are all of you impotent to cure my son? Except ye heal him forthright, I will put the whole of you to death." The Archiater replied, "O King of the Age, in very sooth we know that this is thy son and thou wottest that we fail not of diligence in ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... infallibly gets into high society, she has the triumph of refusing many matches and securing the best, and she wears some family jewels or other as a sort of crown of righteousness at the end. Rakish men either bite their lips in impotent confusion at her repartees, or are touched to penitence by her reproofs, which, on appropriate occasions, rise to a lofty strain of rhetoric; indeed, there is a general propensity in her to make speeches, ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... the swells, the automobiles come, like gigantic bugs coming after the wicked. With a sucking rush of wind and dust and an odour of gasoline they are past. Stray pieces of paper at the roadside arise and fly after them, then, further on, sink impotent, exhausted. ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... family papers) this scandalous litigation had to be ended by a compromise lest worse should befall. It was settled finally by a surrender, out of the disputed estate, in full satisfaction of all claims, of two villages with the names of which I do not intend to trouble my readers. After this lame and impotent conclusion neither the wife nor the stepsons had anything to say to the man who had presented the world with such a successful example of self-help based on character, determination, and industry; and my great-grandmother, her ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... reason to feel secure than Carbo, who had so lately tested the suffrages of the people as electors and as judges; yet no man was in greater peril. It seems that, while exposed on the side of his former associates to the impotent rage which is excited by the success of the convert, who is believed to have been rewarded for his treachery, he had not won the confidence, or at least could not arouse the whole-hearted support, of his new associates and their following in the assembly. Perhaps the ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... always—and there is an extra-distinctness in your images and thoughts, from the midst of which, crossing each other infinitely, the general significance seems to escape. So that to talk of a 'mist,' when you are obscurest, is an impotent thing to do. Indeed ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... swear:—when bleeding Greece again Shall call Achilles, she shall call in vain. When, flush'd with slaughter, Hector comes to spread The purpled shore with mountains of the dead, Then shall thou mourn the affront thy madness gave, Forced to deplore when impotent to save: Then rage in bitterness of soul to know This act has made the bravest ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... and Peter's impotent ragings were repeated; then once more they brought bread and water, and Peter wondered, was it twice a day they brought it, or was this a new day? And how long did they mean to keep him here? Did they mean to drive him mad? He asked these questions of the man who ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... failed—you have tried honourably and failed. Isn't the sting of impotent failure enough to meet without striving against a hopeless love?" He approached her and said softly: "I love you Shirley—don't drive me to desperation. Must I be punished because you have failed? It's unfair. The sins of ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... and breathless, wrapped in her rusty black shawl, with her shadow flitting far out over the level bog amid the slanted beams, she looked a not inappropriate messenger of woe, symbolically impotent and insignificant; a little dark speck in the wide westering light; a feeble stir of life creeping on the verge of a vast silent solitude; and full, withal, of baseless fears and futile plots, concerning the withered shred of existence that remained to her. She was just ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... the power," responded Demetrius; "but the Florentine authorities must be completely impotent in respect to such a formidable horde of lawless men. The remainder of my narrative is soon told, my lord," returned the young Greek. "I returned to my lodgings in safety, but determined not to remain there a single hour longer than necessary. For ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... regeneration is a creative act on the part of God, not a reforming process on the part of man. It is not brought about by natural descent, for all we get from that is "flesh." It is not by natural choice, for the human will is impotent. Nor is it by self-effort, or any human generative principle. Nor is it by the blood of any ceremonial sacrifices. It is not by pedigree or natural generation. It is altogether and absolutely the work of God. Practically ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans
... the rector became more involved, more hesitating, more impotent. The sweat ran down his face. Even his fine voice was affected. It grew husky. It seemed to be failing. Yet he would not cease. To Malling he gave the impression of a man governed by a secret obstinacy, fighting on though he knew it was no use, that he had lost the combat. ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens
... 1801 he snatched from the rude hand of usurpation the violated Constitution of his country, and that is his crime. He preserved that instrument, in form, and substance, and spirit, a precious inheritance for generations to come, and for this he can never be forgiven. How vain and impotent is party rage, directed against such a man. He is not more elevated by his lofty residence, upon the summit of his own favorite mountain, than he is lifted, by the serenity of his mind, and the consciousness of a well-spent life, above the malignant passions and bitter feelings ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... new joy, against which she was powerless to fight, was filling her life. It was absurd, impossible, not to be thought of, and yet all the time his insistence delighted her. He had so much the air of one who has always his own way. She felt her powers of resistance becoming almost impotent, and she watched their dissipation with secret joy. How was it possible to resist a lover so confident, so authoritative, especially when her whole heart was filled with a passionate longing to throw ...
— The Governors • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... which, with wings unclipt, children fasten to a stake. The birds seek to fly, and are pulled back before their wings are well spread; till, at last, they either perpetually strain at the end of their short tether, exciting only ridicule by their anguish and their impotent impatience; or, sullen and despondent, they remain on the ground, without any attempt to fly, nor creep, even to the full limit which their fetters will allow. Thus it is with the feelings of the keen, wild nature I speak ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... is published by the Secretary of the American Iron-Association, and by authority of the same. This Association—now four years old—is not a common trades-union, nor any impotent combination to resist the law of supply and demand. Its general objects, as stated in the constitution, are "to procure regularly the statistics of the trade, both at home and abroad; to provide for the mutual interchange of information and experience, both scientific and practical; to collect and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... to settle. For two years a great part of the island had been in open and determined revolt against Spanish rule. Though the forces of the King had been able to hold the seaports, thus cutting off the insurgents from regular communication with the outer world and making impotent their efforts to secure recognition from foreign powers, the patriots under Maceo and Gomez held control of the interior, established a government of their own, enforced order, and levied taxes. Enormous sacrifices were made by the Spanish people to re-establish ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... has to serve a Lady in your Circumstances; and I have that compassion for your Suffering that I would gladly lend my helping hand to bring so good a work as that about, that you might reap that Satisfaction which your Youth and Beauty calls for, and which your Husband is too impotent to give you. ...
— The London-Bawd: With Her Character and Life - Discovering the Various and Subtle Intrigues of Lewd Women • Anonymous
... no match. The small boy was at the mercy of the big one. The latter was indeed taken aback for a moment at the fury of his young assailant, impotent as it was, but that was all. He might have defended himself with a single hand; he might have carried the boy under one arm out into the passage. But the evil spirit had been roused within him, and that spirit knew no mercy. He struck out and fought his little foeman as if he had been one of his ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... was cursing yet, and smiting his broad chest, and gnashing his teeth in impotent malignity, suddenly a quick step became audible at a distance. The sound fell on his ear sharpened by the stimulus of fiery passions and of conscious fear, long ere it could have been perceived ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... man he hated, tearing its way through the stiff collar, felt the demoniacal strength shooting down his arm, the fever at his finger tips. He saw the terrified face of his victim, a strong man but impotent in his grasp; heard the splash of the turgid waters; saw himself, his lust for vengeance unsatisfied, peering downwards through the dim and murky gloom. It was not only a physical nightmare which seized him. His brain, too, ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... been a terrible blow to Harold; when he had first realised the permanent nature of his injuries, he had cursed his fate; his impotent rage had been pitiful to behold. This travail occurred in the first year of his affliction; later, he discovered, as so many others have done in a like extremity, that time accustoms the mind to anything: he was now resigned to his misfortune. His sufferings had endowed ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... on the one side, and poverty and ignorance on the other. After an honourable career of eight hundred years the monastery was overthrown. Even this great abbey, with its wealth and power and integrity, was impotent to withstand the popular prejudice aroused by the exposure of the degradation and vice prevailing in so many kindred institutions, the greed of Henry VIII., and the ruthless energy of Thomas Cromwell. In a few years it was swept away, leaving only a few beautiful fragments ...
— Evesham • Edmund H. New
... with cold and cautious steps (giving 4s. a month, sometimes, to fathers and mothers of families) through the Southern and middle regions of Scotland, becomes in the Highlands nearly petrified: at "the utmost" is only able to divide amongst "the impotent poor about 3s. 6d. a-head for the whole year." I dare say many things may be urged against this, as against all other evidence—a bit picked off here, another pruned off there—this statement modified, ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps
... manoeuvres are practiced to-day. You must shatter the weapon in your enemies' hands, which they use against you."—Durand-Maillane, 154. "The simple execution of constitutional laws," said Bazire, "made for peaceable times, would be impotent among the conspiracies that surround ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... familiar haunts of his boyish days, it seemed as if he could perceive the figure of his grandmother sitting by the roadside and throwing stones at the procession as it went by. He could almost fancy the old woman aiming, in her impotent wrath, at that baneful influence which had trampled down her life, and with it, all she had gathered round her to make ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... the impotent ravings of the heroic tragedies we may measure the progress which the mind of Dryden had made. He had learned to avoid a too audacious competition with higher natures, to keep at a distance from the verge of bombast or nonsense, to venture on no expression which did not convey ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... professing a general regard for religion, and avowedly possessed of consciences exquisitely tender, and of charity unbounded, should, notwithstanding, object to the conscientious and charitable efforts in the cause of religion of which we have just been speaking! However, these impotent struggles have signally failed, and now there are clergy both of the English and Roman Church in Norfolk Island, while the moral condition of the prisoners there is stated to have improved greatly. In 1837 the Rev. Mr. Sharpe was removed thither, at his own request, from Pitt Town in New South ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... notion of civic purity, of honesty of administration make against this big manifestation of human friendliness, this stalking survival of village kindness? The notions of the civic reformer are negative and impotent before it. Such an alderman will keep a standing account with an undertaker, and telephone every week, and sometimes more than once, the kind of funeral he wishes provided for a bereaved constituent, ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... did not come from Peggy's lips. Like a flash, the girl had sprung forward, and caught the snake's neck under her crotched stick, just as he was raising himself to strike. Pinned firmly to the earth, the creature could only twist and wriggle in impotent rage. Looking around coolly, Peggy saw Lobelia's face peering around the trunk of a tree, ...
— Peggy • Laura E. Richards
... with the lights still gleaming as if to mock the celebration of victory, the crowds swayed in impotent rage through the streets, while the telegraph bore on the wings of lightning the awe-inspiring news. Men caught it from the wires, and stood in silent groups weeping, and their wrath against the fallen South began to rise as the moaning of the sea ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... an ass," he admitted bitterly, as he glanced in impotent contempt at the handful of weather-stained buildings which on the map bore the name of a town; "an ass, an ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... indehiscent nature of the latter. Again, the pollen-tube of the abnormal grains cracked, in its turn, on mere exposure to the air, and liberated the fovilla, so that the pollen of these atrophied anthers was necessarily impotent, because it opened before it could be applied to the stigma, even had that been rendered possible by ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters
... hope to divide us, to make of us a Russia, torn by Maximalists and Minimalists, by Militarists and Bolsheviki and, consequently, impotent for war. ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... peopled empire of China has scarcely begun. As yet it is but a small stream, but it will by-and-by pour over all the tropical countries of the East in one mighty torrent, completely destroying all such minor obstacles as jealous interference and impotent ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... they'll go to the wharves...stealing quietly through the darkness. Then there'll be the muffled dip of oars...and then——Oh, would that I could aid them in this hour! But I am impotent, impotent! ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... when steel doors clang behind them. Free spirits are as free behind the bars as they are under the open sky. The jail, as a gag, is impotent. While it may master the body, it cannot ...
— Bars and Shadows • Ralph Chaplin
... attainment by those that are wanting in Exertion. The Brahmana attains to prosperity by holy living, the Kshatriya by prowess, the Vaisya by manly exertion, and the Sudra by service. Riches and other objects of enjoyment do not follow the stingy, nor the impotent, nor the idler. Nor are these ever attained by the man that is not active or manly or devoted to the exercise of religious austerities. Even he, the adorable Vishnu, who created the three worlds with the Daityas and all the gods, even ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... man into a book as you put a sponge into a bucket. You take him out and squeeze him, and he returns the stream uncoloured. He is a sort of Half Hours with the Best Authors, bound in man's skin; he is intellectually impotent, he ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... received Bernadotte's letter on the occupation of Swedish Pomerania. When Bonaparte read it I was informed that he flew into a violent rage, and even exclaimed, "You shall submit to your degradation, or die sword in hand!" But his rage was impotent. The unexpected occupation of Swedish Pomerania obliged the King of Sweden to come to a decided rupture with France, and to seek other allies, for Sweden was not strong enough in herself to maintain neutrality in the midst of the general conflagration ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... Who weighs the wind and water with a weight, To Whom the world is neither small nor great, Whose knowledge foreknew every plan we planned. Searching my heart for all that touches you, I find there only love and love's goodwill Helpless to help and impotent to do, Of understanding dull, of sight most dim; And therefore I commend you back to Him Whose love your ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... reparation she had obtained in her enemy's absence, and clearly foreseeing that against the Duke of Burgundy, flushed with victory and present in person, she would obtain nothing of what she had asked. For spirits of the best mettle, and especially for a woman's heart, impotent passion is a heavy burden to bear; and Valentine Visconti, beautiful, amiable, and unhappy even in her best days through the fault of the husband she loved, sank under this trial. At the close of ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... had made no comment in his presence, it was a different matter after his departure. Loud indignation broke out, and fierce, if impotent, protest passed from lip to lip. It was only for a few moments, however, and presently anger gave place to a realization of the absurdity ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... leaped on the rear platform and began to speak, the Slav conductor regarding him stupidly, pulling the bellcord the while. Three or four policemen fought their way to the spot, striving to clear the tracks, bewildered and impotent in the face of the alien horde momentarily growing more ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... June the President sent to Congress what is usually denominated a war message; yet it contained no positive recommendation of war. "Congress must decide," said the President, "whether the United States shall continue passive" or oppose force to force. Prefaced to this impotent conclusion was a long recital of "progressive usurpations" and "accumulating wrongs"—a recital which had become so familiar in state papers as almost to lose its power to provoke popular resentment. It was significant, however, ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... with impotent rage. This range-rider always had interfered with his affairs from the first moment he had met him. If ever he got the chance again to stamp him out—! The strong fingers of the man worked with the nervous longing ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... had been yesterday, need he—together with this sting of passion—have felt also this impotent and angry despair? Before his eyes had seen that figure lying on the straw of Mrs. Ginnell's outhouse, could he ever have dreamed it possible that Elizabeth Merton ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... capable and intelligent chiefs of departments, and where I saw a body of artificers quite out of the common, but all of them misplaced in a badly situated establishment, the original plan of which was utterly defective, and in which they were forced to vegetate uselessly in spite of their own impotent efforts and endeavours. Thence we took our way across the Morbihan to Vannes, which during the whole of my father's reign was administered by the same prefect, and that with the esteem of every party. An exceptional case this (especially when the state of latent civil ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... dark passage shun —, plain Communion sweet, quaff Companions, I have had Comparisons are odorous —are odious Compass, a narrow Compulsion, give you a reason on Concealment, like a worm in the bud Conceals, the maid who modestly Conceits, be not wise in your own Conclusion, most lame and impotent —, denoted a foregone Concord of sweet sounds Confirmations strong Conflict, dire was the noise of Conclusion, worse confounded Congregate, merchants most do Conjectures. I am weary of Conquer love, they, that run away Conquerors, ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various
... Accordingly the impotent, insolent Donothingism in Practice and Saynothingism in Speech, which we have to witness on that side of our affairs, is altogether amazing. A Corn-Law demonstrating itself openly, for ten years or more, with 'arguments' to make the angels, and some other classes of creatures, weep! For ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... waited for the moment, too surely to come at last, when it should be openly recognized. In such circumstances the Mamiani ministry rapidly lost ground. Now in its death agony, and impotent for good, it persisted, with a degree of perverseness which nothing could moderate, in reiterating its declarations of war against Austria. This only added to the confusion which prevailed. The ministers and their more ardent adherents were ready, as became patriots and heroes, to fight for ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... very brilliant circle. The whole court of Charles Dix can afford none more amusing. For the rest, what matters? One learns to take things as they seem, without peering below the surface. One wearies of impotent Quixotism against unconquerable evils." ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... 1915, this time with decisive results. Should such a nation possess a monopoly in the means of rapid production, the world is practically at her mercy. Should she be prepared to break her word, the usual means of controlling disarmament are impotent against ...
— by Victor LeFebure • J. Walker McSpadden
... 'Neutral' sits becomingly On lips of weaklings. But the men whose brains Find fuel in their blood, the men whose minds Hold sympathetic converse with their hearts, Such men are never neutral. That word stands Unsexed and impotent in Realms of Speech. When mighty problems face a startled world No virile man is neutral. Right or wrong His thoughts go forth, assertive, unafraid To stand by his convictions, and to do Their part in shaping issues to an end. Silence may guard the door of useless words, At dictate of Discretion; ...
— Poems of Optimism • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... the Parliament beganne and holden at Westminster, the 8th daie of Maye, in the 14th yeare of the raigne of the Queen's Majesty that nowe is, one Acte was made intytuled, 'An Acte for the punishment of Vacabonds and for releife of the Pooere and Impotent'; and whereas at a Session of the Parliament, holden by prorogacon at Westminster, the eight daie of February, in the 28th yeare of Her Majesties raigne, an other Acte was made and intytuled, 'An Act for settinge of the Poore to work and for the avoydinge of idleness'; ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... in white; great lilies in vases, wreaths of stephanotis; and, above all, roses—great garlands of white roses had been woven, and they hung along and across. A blossom fell, a sob sounded in the stillness; and how trivial it all seemed, and how impotent to assuage the bitter burning of human sorrow: how paltry and circumscribed the old grey church, with its little graveyard full of forgotten griefs and aspirations! This hour of beautiful sorrow and roses, how long will ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... uttering wild screams, flapping her wings against his very beak, and endeavouring to distract his attention from the chase. It was to no purpose, however, as the eagle full well knew her object, and disregarding her impotent attempts, kept on in steady flight after her mate. This continued until the birds had reached a high elevation, and the ospreys, from their less bulk, were nearly out of sight. But the voyageurs could see that the eagle was on the point of overtaking ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... an occasion of offence. But finding no just grounds for their unbounded fury, they attacked him upon the score of religion; which was their common way of terrifying those they did not wish well to. Thus, whilst they indulged their impotent malice, they made him, who was not well affected to them before, a greater enemy to their licentiousness, and rendered him more inclinable to the Lutheran cause. In the mean time, the king, with Magdalen his wife, came from France, not without the resentment of the priesthood; who were afraid that ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... be no exhausting effort or hopeless sighing, 'Who shall ascend into heaven, that is, to bring Christ down from above?' It is a life that is meant for the sinful and the weary, for the unworthy and the impotent. It is a life that is the gift of the Father's love, and that He Himself will reveal in each one who comes in childlike trust to Him. It is a life that is meant for our every-day life, that in every ...
— Holy in Christ - Thoughts on the Calling of God's Children to be Holy as He is Holy • Andrew Murray
... I asked for reasons. They had none, and yet a thousand to give me. When I think of the miserable stories that were raked up against him,—the misconstruction of everything he did, or said, or left undone,—my own impotent indignation, and my poor brother's senseless rage, and the insulting way in which I was watched, and taunted, and tortured,—oh, Nelly! it is agony to write. I did the only thing left to me—I gave him up, and prayed for ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... * * Today I am full of grief to feel myself impotent before the murderous conflicts now going on in Belgium and at a number of points on our northern and eastern frontiers, while awaiting the great battles and hecatombs which will follow; my thought is full of these terrible calamities willfully brought about; so many precious ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... was an insignificant little hausfrau); but when she was in her room after midnight she realized grimly that if she had not done her work so well during that terrible month in New York and buried her sex heart, she should once more be beating the floor or the wall with her impotent hands. But the knowledge of her immunity ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... shrinking, for she checked herself, and, slowly turning her lifeless screen, hid behind it. It was impotent deprecation translated into flesh,—at once ludicrous and painful. The young man found so much difficulty in restraining the manifestation of his distaste, that he blushed in the twilight at his own rudeness. He would do his ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... rate, some persons seem to have opened more eyes than others, they see with such force and distinctness; their vision penetrates the tangle and obscurity where that of others fails like a spent or impotent bullet. How many eyes did Gilbert White open? how many did Henry Thoreau? how many did Audubon? how many does the hunter, matching his sight against the keen and alert sense of a deer or a moose, or fox or a wolf? Not outward eyes, ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... the horrid yell of malignancy which arose, and echoed through the black chamber of that region of wickedness and misery, it would have made you shrink into nothingness with terror. They fairly gnashed on me with their teeth in impotent rage. At length old Adams got upon a whiskey-still—they have such things in hell—the pattern was got from there when introduced here, and made a speech to his associates. From what he said, I found that he had minute information of all that was ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... the plantation road, but Zora could not speak. She pushed them slowly on, and turned aside to let the anger, the impotent, futile anger, rage itself out. Alone in the great broad spaces, she knew she could fight it down, and come back again, cool and in calm and deadly earnest, to lead these ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... bubbles burst in havoc and ruin she smiled and counted her gains, turning a deaf ear to the storm of execration that raged against her outside the palace walls. She knew that she had played her cards so skilfully that all the popular rage was impotent to harm her. Only one of her many puppets—Knight, the Treasurer of the South Sea Company—could be the means of doing her harm. If he were arrested and told all he knew, impeachment would probably follow, with a sentence of imprisonment ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... frequently fail than succeed in their direct object, and as the alternative of considering them impotent is not open to the votary, some other explanation of their failure was taught in very early day. At first, it was that the god was angered, and refused the petition out of revenge. Later, the indirect purpose of such ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... an earnest study of English ecclesiastical ornament, reduced his art to something a little lower than English alabasters? The danger is there always; and unless our able young men make a grand struggle, they too will find themselves sucked into the backwater, impotent, insignificant, ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... pages of the book which Amzi had given him. It was a late study of the art of Henry Irving, and its bestowal had been a conscious flattery on Amzi's part. Still, it touched unhappy chords in Hastings's bosom. Who was better equipped than he to catch up the fallen mantle of Irving? And here he lay impotent in the hands of the fates that had set him down in a dull village, without means even to hang a moving-picture screen upon the deserted ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... would have delighted the most martinet of inspectors at Okehampton. Bang came another, and another, and another, right into the heart of the battery. The six little guns lay back at their extremest angle, and all barked together in impotent fury. Another shell pitched over them, and the officer in command lowered his field-glass in despair as he saw his own shells bursting far short upon the hillside. Jameson's defeat does not seem to have been due to any defect in his artillery. French, peering and pondering, ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... in the Kingdom; and his Malice is greatest where Worth and Virtue are most conspicuous; this of Course must engage him to vent a very large Portion of his Rage against the Family and Person of the greatest Man this Nation ever produced. But how vain is the Attempt here? How impotent, as well as base the Malice? There is no immediate Fence indeed against an infamous Tongue, and must often be for some Time submitted to; but in this Case 'tis otherwise; what the Doctor asserts of this Person and his Family is so universally known to be false, and condemned ...
— A Letter From a Clergyman to his Friend, - with an Account of the Travels of Captain Lemuel Gulliver • Anonymous
... over. The Maid received the blessing of the Abbe, who, if not convinced of the sacredness of her mission, was yet impotent to prove aught against her. It is strange to me, looking back at those days, how far less ready of heart the ecclesiastics were to receive her testimony and recognise in her the messenger of the Most High than were the soldiers, whether the generals whom she afterwards came to ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... measures, that of local responsibility for local distress, and that of a distinction between the pauper and the vagabond, were more clearly defined in a statute of 1572. By this Act the justices in the country districts, and mayors and other officers in towns, were directed to register the impotent poor, to settle them in fitting habitations and to assess all inhabitants for their support. Overseers were appointed to enforce and superintend their labour, for which wool, hemp, flax, or other stuff was to be provided ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... leave me, I must be alone. Another time I may be able to converse, but now"—she broke off abruptly, wringing her hands in impotent despair, while the great tears fell over them, like the last heavy drops of a spent shower. "Leave me, Ralph, leave me!" she exclaimed, with a ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... "Matter?" A sharp, impotent oath broke from him. Then he checked his impulse to rave. "Yes. See here, Nita," he went on, with a restraint which added deep impressiveness, "we've got to quit. We've got to get out—quick. Steve's hard on our trail. I've seen him ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... forward. The sensation of absolute physical fear by which he was oppressed was a revelation to him. He found himself wishing almost feverishly that he was armed. The physical strength in which he had trusted seemed to him at that instant a valueless and impotent thing. There was a splash of spray or raindrops against the window and through the crack in the door. The lamp chimney hissed and spluttered and finally the light went out. The room was in sudden darkness. Hamel sprang then to his feet. Silence had become an intolerable thing. He felt ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... more brilliant than I had ever seen it, in the light of the lamp that stood on the table by us; and the duke looked at it as a magician might at the amulet which had failed him, or a warrior at the talisman that had proved impotent. And I, moved to a sudden anger with him for tempting the girl with such a bribe, said bitterly and scornfully, with ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope
... human passions and designs, the promptings of instinct and nature; but to the eye of the poet how sublime and august! These tiny creatures could be dominated by emotions—love, honour, patriotism, liberty—which could enable them, frail and impotent as they were, to rise majestically above the darkest and saddest limitations of immortality. They could be racked with pain, crushed, tormented, silenced; but nothing could make them submit, nothing could ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... self-love forever? But he has a wife and family. You respect their feelings, smile and smile, and are villain enough to be civil with your lips, and hide the poison of asps under your tongue, till you have a chance to relieve your o'ercharged heart by shaking your fist in impotent wrath at his retreating form. You will receive the reward of your hypocrisy, as you richly deserve, for ten to one he will drop in again when he comes back from his office, and arrest you wandering in Dreamland in the beautiful twilight. Delighted ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... flitted desperately around the room, along the shelves laden with those countless figures—all white and finely slender, all upturned of face. Again a little impotent gasp choked her; then, eyes filling hotly at that poignantly wistful smile which edged the lips of each, she stooped and patted reassuringly the trembling hands before she stepped a pace away ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... that they might live in peace with a lover. I have seen women teaching the child of their marriage such tastes as must bring it to the grave in order to benefit the child of an illicit affection. I could not tell you all I have seen, for I have seen crimes against which justice is impotent. In short, all the horrors that romancers suppose they have invented are still below the truth. You will know something of these pretty things; as for me, I am going to live in the country with my wife. I have a ...
— Colonel Chabert • Honore de Balzac
... the world's progress may not go. With thrift, and wealth, and comfort, I daily race neck and neck. Be kind to me if you want me to be useful to you. And near be the day when the red horse of war shall be hocked and impotent, and the pale horse of death shall be hurled back on his haunches, but the white horse of peace, and joy, and triumph shall pass on, its rider with face like the sun, ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... Theodore's face became distorted and dreadful with pain. He raised two impotent, shaking arms high above his head. "That's just it! That's just it! You don't know what love is. You don't know what hate is. You don't know how I hate myself. Loathe myself. She's all that's miserable, all ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... the possibility that democracy may govern badly and oppressively; Maine has warned us that the dominance of the commonalty may end in the triumph of the mediocre, and a more than Chinese stagnation; Carlyle has denounced democracy as powerful for destruction, but impotent for building up, as helpless in the face of great emergencies, as incapable of choosing good leaders; Lecky has demonstrated the danger of the corruption of the democracy by evil politicians; Belloc has shown how it tends to develop, and then ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw
... The next moment, as she stooped to look at the nearest of the two traps, another slim yellow creature, larger than the first, leaped up, with a vicious cry, and almost reached her face. But, fortunately for her, it was held fast by both hind legs in the trap, and fell back impotent. ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... that the unfortunate might perish, reflecting that "The live man hath no murtherer."[FN99] Secondly, he did so with the design that, as Alaeddin could not come forth from underground, he would also be impotent to bring out the Lamp from the souterrain. So presently he wended his ways and retired to his own land, Africa, a sadder man and disappointed of all his expectations. Such was the case with the Wizard; but as regards Alaeddin when the earth was heaped over him, he began shouting to the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... VENGEANCE! He employed lawyers and spent considerable money in the expectation not only of setting the divorce aside, but in bringing the lady and her paramour to condign punishment. His efforts, however, proved perfectly impotent. The lawyer, resident at the court, remembered nothing of the evidence, and the court remembered the case only so far as that it ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... day were sicklied by cold night, When sentries froze and muttered; when beyond the wire Blank shadows crawled and tumbled, shaking, tricking the sight, When impotent hatred of Life stifled desire, Then soared the sudden rocket, broke in blanching showers. O lagging watch! O dawn! ...
— Country Sentiment • Robert Graves
... I retrace the impression left upon me by that walk under the waters? Words are impotent to relate such wonders. Captain Nemo walked in front, his companion followed some steps behind. Conseil and I remained near each other, as if an exchange of words had been possible through our metallic cases. I no longer felt the weight of my clothing, ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... ambition had combined to rear. A brilliant alliance that insured great wealth, that promised a secure stepping-stone to political preferment, was apparently a substantial bulwark against the swelling billows of an unaccountable whim; yet he was impotent to resist the yearning tenderness which impelled him to forget all else, in one determined effort to rescue and shelter the life he had been the chief agent in imperilling. Clear eyed, keen witted, he did not for an instant deceive himself; and he knew that neither compassion for ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... leant forward in his chair, and placed his hand upon his friend's arm. The effect was magical. His fit of impotent rage died down as suddenly as it had sprung up, and immediately he became again the quiet, suave, smoothspoken individual who had first entered ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... gambling houses. During the carnival season of 1777 the gambling which went on in the royal apartments became notorious for even that profligate time: in one night the Duc de Chartres lost eight thousand livres. Louis XVI, honest man, took all due precautions to reduce this extravagance, but was impotent. ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... overpowered by half a dozen men, and re-bound. Then two men sat down beside him, each with a small stick, with which they beat the muscles of his arms and legs, until their power was completely taken away. This done, they left him, a living heap of impotent flesh in the bottom of the boat, and a salutary warning to ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... 1410; that is to say, exactly two years before Joan of Arc was born in Domremy. My family had fled to those distant regions from the neighborhood of Paris in the first years of the century. In politics they were Armagnacs—patriots; they were for our own French King, crazy and impotent as he was. The Burgundian party, who were for the English, had stripped them, and done it well. They took everything but my father's small nobility, and when he reached Neufchateau he reached it in poverty and with a broken spirit. But the political atmosphere there was ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... matter of course. Naturally! He still kept a hold on common sense. He would not only refrain, but be civil. If Claude were in need of anything or were short of cash he would probably write him a check. It was the irony of this kind of rage that it was so impotent. It was impotent and absurd. It might shake him to the foundations of his being, but it would come to nothing in the end. It both relieved and embittered him to ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... money. I reached Bologna a few minutes after Catinella, and put up at the same hotel, where I found an opportunity of telling her all her lover had said. I arrived in Reggio before her, but I could not speak to her in that city, for she was always in the company of her potent and impotent lord. After the fair, during which nothing of importance occurred to me, I left Reggio with my friend Baletti and we proceeded to Turin, which I wanted to see, for the first time I had gone to that city with Henriette I had ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... and omnipotent, materia [25] medica, hygiene, and animal magnetism are impotent; and their only supposed efficacy is in apparently delud- ing reason, denying revelation, and dethroning Deity. The tendency of mental healing is to uplift mankind; but this method perverted, is "Satan let loose." Hence the [30] deep demand for ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... that they cannot produce, it is a source of unspeakable regret to them both. In such cases, the inherent desire for parenthood will "cry aloud and spare not." A "barren" woman greatly mourns her inability, and will shed bitter tears over the fact, if she be truly human; and an "impotent" man will be practically despised by all who are aware ...
— Sane Sex Life and Sane Sex Living • H.W. Long
... who bore the name of Ottoboni, had only married her to obtain an heir, but the poor devil turned out to be what the Romans call 'babilano', and we impotent. The duchess told me as much on the occasion of my third visit. She did not give me the information in a complaining tone, or as if she was fain to be consoled, but merely to defy her confessor, who had threatened her with excommunication if she went on telling people about her ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... was, that she had taken impotent rage for strength of purpose. Mr. Nash was aware that he had neglected his daughter, and was anxious to stifle the thought by laying the blame on every one else. And Bertie was quicker than Judith was in reading character when it was on his ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various |
