"Infirm" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... when I write these lines, old and infirm, my legs scarcely able to sustain me, my thoughts revert involuntarily to that epoch of my life when, young and vigorous, I bore the greatest fatigues, and walked day and night, in the mountainous countries which separate the kingdoms of Valencia and Catalonia from ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... he speaks mildly and remains by the facts. But I think, members of the Boule, that you clearly know what sort of men are apt to be insolent and what not. 16. For it is not likely that the poor and needy should be insolent, but those who have much more than they need; nor those who are infirm in body, but those who rely on their own strength; nor those well advanced in years, but those who are yet young and have youthful minds. 17. For the rich buy off dangers with their wealth, but the poor are forced to prudence by their lack of resources; and the young expect pardon from their ...
— The Orations of Lysias • Lysias
... apparently were, if well behaved, allowed to take exercise in the corridors, where sometimes they had opportunities of converse with each other, and with the outside world. This privilege was ordered to be given to the aged and infirm by the cardinals who investigated the prison of Carcassonne, and took measures to alleviate its rigors. In the harsher confinement, or murus strictus, the prisoner was thrust into the smallest, darkest, and most noisome of cells, with chains on his feet,—in some ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard
... of labor upon every competent person. The Pauline injunction, "If any man will not work, neither shall he eat," would be applied in the Socialist state to all except the incompetent to labor. The immature child, the aged, the sick and infirm members of society, would alone be exempted from labor. The result of this would be that instead of a large unemployed army, vainly seeking the right to work, on the one hand, accompanied by the excessive overwork of the great mass ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... to retire. He was not infirm. With him too the life on board ship seemed to agree; but from a sense of duty, of affection, or to placate his hidden fury, his daughter always accompanied him to his state-room "to make him comfortable." ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... prisoners, which had hitherto appeared to be insuperable; and made repeated, but ineffectual efforts to remove it. General Howe had uniformly refused to proceed with any cartel, unless his right to claim for all the diseased and infirm, whom he had liberated, should ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... considerable sacrifices for the sake of it, and causing them the acutest misery when not reciprocated. In so far as profligates are selfish brutal natures, as they often are, it is true; but that is not the case with half of them. They are not unfrequently people of infirm will, strong affections, and a violent animal nature. It is selfishness, regard to personal comfort at all hazards, which is the hopeless nature, and can not be raised except ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... immense amount; and on the banker showing reluctance to accept the challenge, the stranger sternly demanded compliance with the laws of the game. The card soon turned up which decided the ruin of the banker. 'Heaven!' exclaimed an old infirm Austrian officer, who had sat next to the stranger—'the twentieth part of your gains would make me the happiest man in the universe!' The stranger briskly answered—'You shall have it, then;' and quitted the room. A servant speedily returned, and presented the officer with the twentieth part ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... industry vulgarly entitled "holidays," indolence which characterizes the present period, was left to the aged or infirm. The writer whom we have before quoted says "The youths are exercised in the summer holidays in leaping, dancing, wrestling, casting the hammer, the stone, and in practising their shields; and in winter holidays the boars prepared for brawn are set to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 553, June 23, 1832 • Various
... looked upon her two lovely daughters in the early bloom of womanhood, the babe sleeping upon her breast, the little ones clinging to her skirts, her aged and infirm parents, all apparently doomed to a speedy, violent death—and worse than death. Her own danger was well-nigh ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... relief from the trudging anxiety of her search for work, that she went on for a whole week as if she was still living at home. Then a third secretarial opening occurred and renewed her hopes again: a position as amanuensis—with which some of the lighter duties of a nurse were combined—to an infirm gentleman of means living at Twickenham, and engaged upon a great literary research to prove that the "Faery Queen" was really a treatise upon molecular chemistry written in a peculiar and ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... deterred by the gulphs that yawn beneath his feet, or the mountains that may oppose themselves to his progress. He knows that the adventurer of timid mind, and that is infirm of purpose, will never make himself master of those points which it would be most honourable to him to subdue. But he who undertakes to commit to writing the result of his researches, and to communicate his discoveries to mankind, ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... advanced into the island, I saw an old man, who appeared very weak and infirm. He was sitting on the bank of a stream, and at first I took him to be one who had been shipwrecked like myself. I went toward him and saluted him, but he only slightly bowed his head. I asked him why he sat so still; but instead of answering me, he made a ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... surely protect them. Savage declared that they should trust, also, to such common sense as the Lord had given them. From his certain knowledge, the company, containing as it did so large a number of the aged and infirm, of women and children, could not cross the mountains thus late in the season without much suffering, sickness, and death. He was overruled and rebuked for want of faith. "Brethren and sisters," ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... repeated the Commandments he had reverenced as a child, and forgotten as a man. He approached the old seat; it looked cold and desolate. The cushion had been removed, and the Bible was not there. Perhaps his mother now occupied a poorer seat, or possibly she had grown infirm and could not reach the church alone. He dared not think of what he feared. A cold feeling crept over him, and he trembled violently as he turned away. 'An old man entered the porch just as he reached it. Edmunds started back, for he knew him well; many a time he had watched him digging graves in ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... means of a friend in the town, (for they were not all devils at Orange, as he emphatically assured us), he was enabled to procure a few common necessaries, to improve the scanty prison allowance of some of the more infirm; but his charitable labour soon ceased, for all were successively dispatched by the guillotine in a short space of time. In the course of three months, 378 persons perished by decree of the miscreants composing ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... lie in the coldly reasoned conclusion that the most valuable relief to a people so stricken by catastrophe that its very existence as a human group is threatened, is to let whatever mortality is unavoidable fall chiefly to the old and the adult infirm for the sake of saving the next generation on which alone the future existence of the group depends. This actual fact Hoover always clearly saw; but the thing that those close to him saw quite as clearly was that this alone accounted for but a ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg
... frightened. Then her courage came back the higher for its interruption. She could have escaped from her own room into the passage, easily enough, and so alarmed the house; but when she reflected that its fighting garrison consisted only of an infirm old butler—for the footman was absent on leave—there seemed little to be gained by such a proceeding, if violence or robbery were really intended. Besides, she rather scorned the idea of summoning assistance till she had ascertained ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... should have been so silly as to go a-wooing. Infirm and tottering as he is, it was the height of insanity. Down he dropped on his bended knees before the object of his love; out he poured his touching addresses, lisped in the blandest, most persuasive tones; and what was his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 14, 1841 • Various
... is coming to us, who I know is a favourite of yours. Or is it the other way, and are you a favourite of hers? I did ask Lady Hartletop, but she cannot get away from the poor marquis, who is, you know, so very infirm. The duke isn't at Gatherum at present, but, of course, I don't mean that that has anything to do with dear Lady Hartletop coming to us. I believe we shall have the house full, and shall not want for nymphs either, though I fear they will not be of the ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... when I'll need a lift and a little help that you could give. Sometimes we have to move the Sunday-school organ about and there are windows that stick and all manner of things about a church that only a practiced mover and driver could do. You know the janitor is rather old and infirm and as for me—well, Hank, when you come down to it, that's about all we ministers are, just movers. Our business is to help find just the right and happiest places for people, to show them their part in ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... him a rambling,) in danger of being benighted, made the best of his way to a house he saw at some distance, where he was hospitably received by the master of it. Cremes, for that was the master's name, though but a young man, was infirm and sickly. Of several dishes served up to supper, Cremes observed that his guest ate but of one, and that the most simple; nor could all his intreaties prevail upon him to do otherwise. He was, notwithstanding, highly ...
— A Lecture on the Preservation of Health • Thomas Garnett, M.D.
... sweat broke out on his forehead and, snatching the whip from its stalk on the dashboard, he belabored his aged and infirm mare into a rickety effort ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... her throat all drawn into strings and cords, hung with a dozen rows of perfect precious stones glittering in the glare of the lights with the constant shaking of her palsied head. [This lady continued to frequent the gayest assemblies in London when she had become so old and infirm that, though still persisting daily in her favorite exercise on horseback, she used to be tied into her saddle in such a manner as to prevent her falling out of it. She had been one of the finest riders in England, ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... the marching column and would ward it off. Others climbed little twigs or tufts of grass and scanned the surrounding country from these elevated and commanding positions. Others hurried up the laggards and stragglers, and even carried the weak and infirm. ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... think, that, because I lived at a plain widow-woman's plain table, I was of course more or less infirm in point of worldly fortune. You may not be sorry to learn, that, though not what GREAT MERCHANTS call very rich, I was comfortable, —comfortable,—so that most of those moderate luxuries I described in my verses on CONTENTMENT—MOST of them, I say—were within our ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... aged and infirm and my memory not having failed me as yet," said Grant solemnly, "I ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and Simon's Mine • Ross Kay
... the house, she found the old woman making a cup of tea. There did not seem to be much of anything but tea and bread-and-butter for her dinner. She was very deaf and infirm, all her joints shook when she tried to use them, and her voice quavered when she talked. She took the plate, and her hands trembled so that the tin dish played on the plate like a clapper. "Why," said she, overjoyed, ...
— Young Lucretia and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... away by the holidays. Her sole resource was in Modeste's society. Modeste—who, by the way, had never been ill, and who suffered from nothing but old age—was delighted to receive her dear young lady in her little room far up under the roof, where, though quite infirm, she lived comfortably, on her savings. Jacqueline, sitting beside her as she sewed, was soothed by her old nursery tales, or by anecdotes of former days. Her own relatives were often the old woman's theme. She knew the history of Jacqueline's family ...
— Jacqueline, v3 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... to 18 years of age, and sickly and infirm Negro men, five dollars per month, one ration, and ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... him of ten to fifty at a time. In three months he had not 4,000 men and these could by no means be termed effective. Not less than 500 horses perished from want and the severity of the season. He had often not three days' provisions in his camp and at times not enough for one day. In this infirm and dangerous state he continued from December to May, during all which time every person expected that General Howe would have stormed or besieged his camp, the situation of which equally invited either attempt. To have posted 2,000 men on a commanding ground near the bridge, ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... generally known. Mr. Maule was aware, however, that there could be no success for him as long as the Duke lived. Whatever might be the nature of the alliance, it was too strong to admit of any other while it lasted. But the Duke was a very old,—or, at least, a very infirm man. And now the Duke was dying. Of course it was only a chance. Mr. Maule knew the world too well to lay out any great portion of his hopes on a prospect so doubtful. But it was worth a struggle, and he would so struggle that he might enjoy success, should success ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... the safety enjoyed by the Athenaeum editor—the poverty of the press may protect him. If, however, he and other influential wizards of the broad sheet, succeed in making loyalty not a rational principle, but a mania—if, day by day, and week by week, they insist upon deifying poor infirm humanity, exalting themselves in their own conceit, in their very self-abasement—they may escape an individual accusation in the general folly. When we are all mad alike—when we all, with the editor of the Athenaeum, take our half-day's watch at the little Prince's cradle—when ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... the Minister of Col, whom we found in a hut, that is, a house of only one floor, but with windows and chimney, and not inelegantly furnished. Mr. Maclean has the reputation of great learning: he is seventy-seven years old, but not infirm, with a look of venerable dignity, excelling what I remember ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... RESPECTED SIRS,—- The infirm state of my bodily health would be a sufficient apology for not taking up the pen at this time, wholesome as I deem it for the mind to apricate in the shelter of epistolary confidence, were it not that a considerable, I might even say a large, number of individuals in this parish ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... voluntarily and PARAMOUNTLY, when they wish to be the final end, and not a means along with other means. Among men, as among all other animals, there is a surplus of defective, diseased, degenerating, infirm, and necessarily suffering individuals; the successful cases, among men also, are always the exception; and in view of the fact that man is THE ANIMAL NOT YET PROPERLY ADAPTED TO HIS ENVIRONMENT, ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... solid earth of Newfoundland for his bed, but danger often lurks where least expected. Oliver Trench was not an architect either by nature or training. His bower had been erected on several false principles. The bouncing of a big man inside was too much for its infirm constitution. Its weak points were discovered by the captain. A bounce into one of its salient supports proved fatal, and the structure finally collapsed, burying its family in a compost of ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne
... liken the wedding-ring to an ancient circus, in which wild animals clawed one another for the sport of lookers-on. Perish the hyperbole! We would rather compare it to an elfin ring, in which dancing fairies made the sweetest music for infirm humanity. ...
— Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures • Douglas Jerrold
... equal this in beauty and grace. A few weeks before the appointed time for the wedding a malignant disease stole on, spreading sorrow and anxiety over the greater part of the land. Young girls were principally its victims. It seemed to pass scornfully over the aged and infirm. Veile's daughter was also laid hold upon by it. Before three days had passed there was a corpse in ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... as the smoke went up, he prayed and said, "Thou, image, hear'st me not, nor wilt thou speak, But I perchance shall know when I am dead, If this has been some goddess' sport, to seek A wretch, and in his heart infirm and weak To set her glorious image, so that he, ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... Presidency. He took care, in his Message vetoing the recharter of the Bank, to employ some of the arguments which Clay had used in opposing the recharter of the United States Bank in 1811. Miserably sick and infirm as he was, he consented to stand for reelection, because there was no other candidate strong enough to defeat Henry Clay; and he employed all his art, and the whole power of the administration, during his second term, to smooth ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... to a warder who was an old acquaintance there, "how do you? I am come to be your neighbour again." Sir Thomas Palmer's rooms in the garden were assigned for his lodging. In the winter he was left without a fire, and, growing infirm, he sent a message to the Lieutenant of the Tower to look better after him, or he should give him the ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... approbation of the said Jonathan Sewell; that Jonathan Sewell had advised the arrest of Messrs. Bedard, Blanchet and Taschereau, upon an unfounded pretext; that Jonathan Sewell had instigated the oppression of the old and infirm Francois Corbeil, by which the old man lost his life; that Jonathan Sewell had instigated Sir James Henry Craig to issue a proclamation causing the public to believe that Mr. Bedard had been guilty of treason, and that the province was in a state approaching to open rebellion; that Jonathan ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... the missive which Mendel handed to her. It was a flattering invitation from the congregation of Odessa. "Our Rabbi is old and infirm," stated the letter, "and desires a staff in his declining years. Your reputation as a scholar has reached our people and we would consider it an honor ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... idle persons at all, that cannot give an account of their lives how they [651]maintain themselves. If they be impotent, lame, blind, and single, they shall be sufficiently maintained in several hospitals, built for that purpose; if married and infirm, past work, or by inevitable loss, or some such like misfortune cast behind, by distribution of [652]corn, house-rent free, annual pensions or money, they shall be relieved, and highly rewarded for their good service they have formerly done; if able, they shall be enforced ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... had he heard that I related my dream to any one. In after years, when I was better able to form a judgment on these matters, I thought it useless to renew the grief of my poor mother, then becoming old and infirm, by a communication of what I had witnessed on that memorable night, or by inspiring her with doubts as to the real cause of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... brain-pictures flashed out with torturing clearness, and Dale saw the criminal renewing the outrage after long years. He was quite old, shaky, infirm, and yet strong enough to consummate the final act of his infinite wickedness. And Dale saw those yellow-white hands, with their nauseating blotches, their glistening blue knobs, and their jeweled rings, as they took possession ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... the Great Sun, and for all the other families, round the granary, that of the Great Sun being raised upon a mount of earth about two feet high. On the feast-day the whole nation set out from their village at sun-rising, leaving behind only the aged and infirm that are not able to travel, and a few warriors, who are to carry the Great Sun on a litter upon their shoulders. The seat of this litter is covered with several deer skins, and to its four sides are fastened four bars which cross each other, and are supported by eight men, ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... suggestion; she only stood there with a dim, though not a languid smile, and with an effect of irresponsible, incompetent youth which was almost comically at variance with the faded facts of her person. She was not infirm, like her aunt, but she struck me as still more helpless, because her inefficiency was spiritual, which was not the case with Miss Bordereau's. I waited to see if she would offer to show me the rest of the house, but I did not precipitate the question, inasmuch as my plan was ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... very infirm I went with him, more out of charity than with any hopes of profit. We pulled with the tide till we arrived a little above Deptford, where several ships were lying, and he went close to one and lowered down his grapnels. He dragged for a ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... literally frantic on finding himself frustrated in expectations which formed the leading interest of his declining years. For the progress of time which had made me a man and a landed proprietor, had converted the stout active squire into an infirm old man; and it was his absorbing wish to die sole owner of the whole property to which the baronets of the Altham ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... Saxish men in their communing together: "Take we six knights, wise men and active, and skilful spies, and send we to the court, in almsman's guise, and dwell in the court, with the high king, and every day pass through all the people; and go to the king's dole, as if they were infirm, and among the poor people hearken studiously if man might with craft, by day or by night, in Winchester's town come to Uther Pendragon, and kill the king with murder;"—then were (would be) their will wholly accomplished, then were they careless of Constanine's kin. Now went forth the knights ...
— Brut • Layamon
... the daughter came out, followed by her aged and infirm mother. The sight of me naturally brought to recollection the grave at which we had before met. Tears of affection mingled with the smile of satisfaction with which I was received by these worthy cottagers. I dismounted and was conducted through a ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond
... well as ever. Not one whole or handsome one among them, all were outcasts till Beth took them in, for when her sisters outgrew these idols, they passed to her because Amy would have nothing old or ugly. Beth cherished them all the more tenderly for that very reason, and set up a hospital for infirm dolls. No pins were ever stuck into their cotton vitals, no harsh words or blows were ever given them, no neglect ever saddened the heart of the most repulsive, but all were fed and clothed, nursed and caressed with an affection which never failed. One forlorn fragment of dollanity had ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... taking place in the court-yard of the prison, while without the prison stood the usual armed soldier, about two dozen trucks for the baggage, and the infirm convicts, and on the corner a crowd of relatives and friends of the convicts, waiting for a chance to see the exiles as they emerged from the prison, and, if possible, to have a last few words with them, or deliver ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... she said, in a voice totally different to that in which she had spoken to the factor. "Best quiet in your hut. The old and infirm must be sheltered and fed; of that there is no doubt; but let the evil-doer and idle beware. On them I shall have no mercy. Sandy Redland, mark me: I will have no cruelty or oppression—remember that. The instant you receive information respecting the strange ship, let me know through ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... he should be cynical, more than other men. And the bride, in whose eyes this elderly gentleman with the tight boots appeared a rosy winged Cupid, waved her handkerchief until the vehicle had sidled round the hill, resembling in its progress a very infirm crab ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Infirm and languid visitors should get it clearly into their heads (1) that the tour of the Uffizi means a long walk and (2) that there is a lift. You find it in the umbrella room—at every Florentine gallery and museum is ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... the way up the infirm staircase. At the fourth floor she pushed open a door and showed them into a long loft-like room with high ceiling and mansard windows. There came a squawking and fluttering from somewhere above as ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... broken, a coat or two torn or bespattered with mud, a cockade rudely snatched from the wearer, little harm was done. The voters knew each other, and had come to vote, and had stayed to see the fun. For the timid, the infirm, the old, the day was a trying one; but there was an excitement and a life about the affair one misses now that the ballot has come into play, and has made the voter less of a man than ever. Of course the shops were shut up. All who could afford to ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... attracted me, as it happened to be one which was much in my mind during my week's stay at Norton. That remote little village without a squire or any person of means or education in or near it capable of feeling the slightest interest in the people, except the parson, an old infirm man who was never seen but once a week—how wanting in some essential thing it appeared! It seemed to me that the one thing which might be done in these small centres of rural life to brighten and beautify existence ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... his own rings, And struck his victim, shrieking ere it went Down his strain'd throat, that open sepulchre. Amphibious monsters haunted the lagoon; The hippopotamus, amidst the flood, Flexile and active as the smallest swimmer; But on the bank, ill balanced and infirm, He grazed the herbage, with huge, head declined, Or lean'd to rest against some ancient tree. The crocodile, the dragon of the waters, In iron panoply, fell as the plague, And merciless as famine, cranch'd his prey, While, from ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 286, December 8, 1827 • Various
... their old people on their hunting excurtions; but in justice to these people I must observe that it appeared to me at their vilages, that they provided tolerably well for their aged persons, and several of their feasts appear to have principally for their object a contribution for their aged and infirm persons. ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... better or more full of fight in my life, sir. The scoundrels! Oh, if I had been there! But I feel hurt, Nic—cruelly hurt. You and that salt-soaked old villain, Bill Sally, hatch up these things between you. Want to make out I'm infirm. I'll discharge ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... some arrangement which their party might support, but, while Federalists waited, the threatened Republican bolt wasted itself in a fruitless endeavour to unite upon a candidate for first place. Monroe's friends would not have George Clinton, whom they pronounced too old and too infirm, and Clinton's friends declined to accept Monroe, who was objectionable, if for no other reason, because he was a Virginian. Finally, the Federalists nominated Charles C. Pinckney of South Carolina for President ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... had grown so old and infirm that one day they sent for Abe to come and put an end to his misery. Every man on the farm loved the old dog and not one of them would raise a hand to kill him. Hope and I heard what Abe was coming to do, and ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... the mad, seditious cry of faction—employed to forestall public opinion, and defeat the noble and humane intentions of the government. The Democratic Societies, though infirm and tottering, joined in the clamor. One of these in Virginia exclaimed, "Shall we Americans, who have kindled the spark of liberty, stand aloof and see it extinguished when burning a bright flame in France, which hath caught it from us? If all tyrants unite against a ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... will go with me? Thank you: I shall be glad of someone to carry the lantern. We may have to do some scrambling: Narracott is infirm, and Roger,"—this was the footman—"is a chicken-hearted ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... step, smiling, and evidently full of cheerful, charitable thoughts, and on good deeds intent, kissing the little children, giving a rosy apple to one, and a playful tap to another; offering a sly word of hope to the young girls, and a few kind ones to the aged and infirm,—all the village is elated; and the old maids fail not to present him with a fat fowl, or some such substantial expression of their respect. But if, alas! the good cure should appear walking with a slow and solemn step, his hands behind his back, his eyes fixed upon the ground, ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... would be so solicitous for their dogs and horses as to exert interest and pay money to procure fine breeding, and yet kept their wives shut up, to be made mothers only by themselves, who might be foolish, infirm, or diseased; as if it were not apparent that children of a bad breed would prove their bad qualities first upon those who kept and were rearing them, and well-born children, in like manner, their good qualities. These regulations, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... lamentation so strangely mixed that it might have been difficult to have said which passion preponderated. None, however, was idle. Some bore their choicest articles, others their young, and some their aged and infirm, into the forest, which spread itself like a verdant carpet of bright green against the side of the mountain. Thither Tamenund also retired, with calm composure, after a short and touching interview with Uncas; from whom the sage separated with ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... the winter at the house of his son. That he might be prepared for journeying, as he proposed to do in the spring, he took with him his light wagon, and for the winter his sleigh, which he fastened behind the wagon. He was, as I have just told you, very old and infirm. His temples were covered with thinned locks which the frosts of eighty years had whitened. His sight, and hearing, too, were somewhat blunted by age, as yours will be should you live ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... man seldom offers a woman his arm nowadays, unless she is so elderly or infirm that she needs the support. For a couple to walk arm in arm in daylight is decidedly provincial. For a man to take a woman's arm is a liberty not permissible unless she is a member of his family. He should offer his arm if holding an ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... and Wealth the vine, Stanch and strong the tendrils twine; Through the frail ringlets thee deceive, None from its stock that vine can reave. Fear not, then, thou child infirm, There's no god dare wrong a worm. Laurel crowns cleave to deserts, And power to him who power exerts; Hast not thy share? On winged feet, Lo! it rushes thee to meet; And all that Nature made thy own, Floating in air or pent in stone, Will rive the hills and swim ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... that he fears they will sacrifice the Church, and that the King will take any thing (and so he holds up his head a little longer), and then break in pieces. But Sir W. Coventry did to- day mightily magnify my late Lord Treasurer for a wise and solid, though infirm man: and among other things, that when he hath said it was impossible in nature to find this or that sum of money, and my Lord Chancellor hath made sport of it, and told the King that when my Lord ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... away the Governor and some of the other leading Egyptian officials first. I think he suspected they would intrigue; he always had more confidence in the people than in the ruling Turks or Egyptians. The oldest soldiers, the very infirm, the wounded (from Hicks's battles) were sent next, and a ghastly crew they were. But the precautions he took for their comfort were very complete, and although immediately before reaching me they had to cross a very ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... ancient Rome, Antioch, or Alexandria much exceeded what our great modern capitals can show, During this period, moreover, many remarkable improvements took place in social life and manners. There was an increasing kindliness and charity. The weak and the infirm were better treated. The education of the poor was encouraged by the founding of free schools. Wealthy citizens of the various towns lavished their fortunes on such public works as baths, aqueducts, ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... them that he was going back to his village, his friends and people, whereupon the two white-headed old men very heartily wished him a good journey and abundance of comfort in seeing his friends once more. They even arose, old and infirm as they were, and tottering with exceeding difficulty to the door, were at great pains to point out to him the exact course he should take; and they called his attention to the circumstance that it was much shorter and more ...
— The Indian Fairy Book - From the Original Legends • Cornelius Mathews
... trust to that very suspicious sort of merit which constitutes an exception in the history of mankind, and recommends itself as the total abolitionist of all previous claims on our confidence. You are not greatly surprised at the infirm logic of the coachman who would persuade you to engage him by insisting that any other would be sure to rob you in the matter of hay and corn, thus demanding a difficult belief in him as the sole exception from the frailties of his calling; but it is rather astonishing that the ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... the wool and cotton which they wove and manufactured into cloth with which to clothe the family. The old people not over active and strong, like your grandmother," she would add with a smile, "together with the infirm and invalids, braided the straw with which we manufactured our hats; so that you see, petiots, we had no drones, no useless loungers in our villages, and every one ...
— Acadian Reminiscences - The True Story of Evangeline • Felix Voorhies
... intoxicated, inveigled into a so-called marriage with a young but notorious girl, whose only claim was her pretty face, while her situation was hopelessly degraded. This creature, Minnie Merle, had an infirm grandmother, who, in order to save the reputation of the unfortunate girl, appealed so adroitly to Cuthbert's high sense of honour, that her arguments, emphasized by the girl's beauty and helplessness, prevailed over reason, and—I may add—decency and one day when almost mad with brandy ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... cheer up and come and see his papa. Give my love to Mrs. Cocke, Miss Mary, etc., etc. Tell Agnes, if she thinks Sallie is IN EXTREMIS, to go to her. I do not want her to pass away, but it is a great disappointment to me not to have her with me. I am getting very old and infirm now, and she had better come to her papa and ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... in the room and with equal severity reprimanded Von Buelow, and sat down at the keyboard and gave an interpretation that was infinitely superior to that of Von Buelow. It was simply a case of superiority of talent that enabled the aged and somewhat infirm Liszt to excel his ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... us a sweeper at a crossing would tolerate a rival broom. Several of these waiters upon charity might be termed literary beggars; their function is to read aloud from a large book in the hearing of the passers-by. They are often infirm, and occasionally blind, but they read just the same. Another class may be called the incurables; in England they would be kept out of sight, but here in Russia, running sores, mutilated hands and legs, are valuable as stock-in-trade. Loathsome diseases are thrust forward as a threat, distorted ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... stood to the north, and at eleven o'clock the next day, August 5th, we saw land again, at about ten leagues distant. This noon we were in latitude 25 degrees 30 minutes, and in the afternoon our cook died, an old man, who had been sick a great while, being infirm before ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton
... It was dark in that office when Mr. Newt first occupied the rooms, and Thomas Tray, the book-keeper, who had the lightest place, said that the eyes of Venables, the youngest clerk, were giving out. Young Venables, a lad of sixteen, supported a mother and sister and infirm father upon his ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... while they are young before they become unable to grasp the promises. I feel the more impressed to sound a warning because there are some in the home with whom we have labored again and again, but who are so aged and infirm that seemingly they can not reach a decision to seek until they find. Their unsaved condition, in view of their extreme age, puts them in a very ...
— Trials and Triumphs of Faith • Mary Cole
... Only the infirm and the ill of the town failed to run to look as the little procession passed down the street. There were boys in khaki, the town band playing its best, volunteer firemen clad in vivid red shirts, a low, hand-drawn wagon filled with flowers, an old cannon, also hand-drawn, whose shots over ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... the people, if all restraints on violence and ambition were thus removed, and a full scope given to the attempts of every turbulent innovator: that time indeed might bestow solidity on a government whose first foundations were the most infirm; but it required both a long course of time to produce this effect, and the total extinction of those claimants whose title was built on the original principles of the constitution: that the deposition of Richard II., and the advancement ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... busy antennae into everything, tumbling over the brown mould for sheer enjoyment, and running home at last without the little white paper parcel in their mouths which gives them so respectable an air. Doubtless the poor things are scolded by their infirm parents, who sit sunning themselves at the door of the house. . . . Beetles seem to me to have a pleasant life, because they, who have fed for two or three years underground upon the roots, come forth ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... in the person of this king, the same infirm and emaciated old man, that came on board the Resolution when we were off the north-east side of the island of Mowee; and we soon discovered amongst his attendants, most of the persons who at that ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... of flannel could not be afforded? What do you think of a family of women and girls getting their own firing out of the woods, cutting it and backing it home, and that by the year together? What do you think of an old minister supported by the handiwork of an infirm and herself not young daughter? And I could tell you of living without books, without paper for writing, in want of calico for dresses, and muslin for underclothing, without pocket-handkerchiefs, without yarn to knit stockings or a penny to ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... son's death was a thing to be desired, for God does all justly, wisely, and lovingly? He lets me stand as an example to show others that a good and upright man cannot be altogether wretched. I am poor, infirm, and old; bereaved by a cruel wrong of my best-loved son, a youth of the fairest promise, and left only with the faintest hope of any ray of future good fortune, or of seeing my race perpetuated after my death, for my daughter, who has been ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... at work, and disgruntled military chiefs found a willing leader in the minister of war, General Desiderio Arias, a chronic revolutionist from Monte Cristi, who had for years used the popularity of Jimenez as a cloak for his own aspirations. The president, aged and infirm, was unable to meet the situation with energy, and disinclined to ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... feed! Me, lenient mallows from the simple mead! Son of Latona, grant the blessing, That, a cloudless mind possessing, And not infirm of frame, in soft decay, Cheer'd by the breathing lyre, my life ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... of terrified women, the infirm condition of the aged, and the helplessness of childhood; such as strove to provide for themselves and those who labored to assist others; these dragging the feeble, those waiting for them; some hurrying, others lingering; altogether created a ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... approval from the people who voluntarily chose him as their leader in battle,—their utmost Head of affairs. Progress has demolished this ideal, with many others equally fine and inspiring; and now all kings are so, by right of descent merely. Whether they be infirm or palsied, weak or wise, sane or crazed, still are they as of old elected; only no more as the Strongest, but simply as the Sign-posts of a traditional bygone authority. This King however, here written of, was not deficient in either mental or physical attributes. His outward ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... generally express an earnest desire to be taken to their birthplace, that they may die and be buried there. If possible, these wishes are always complied with by the relatives and friends. Parents will point out the spot where they were born, so that when they become old and infirm, their children may know where they wish their bodies to be disposed of."[249] Again, some tribes in the north and north-east of Victoria "are said to be more than ordinarily scrupulous in interring the dead. ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... and mutterings and had seemed indeed, the only understanding companion that the old man had ever had. The woman was, he saw, the arms-akimbo ferocious cook of the old days, but now how wrinkled and infirm!—separated by so many more years than the lapse of time allowed her from the woman of his past appearance there. There was more in her than the mere crumbling of her body, there was also the crumbling of her spirit, and he saw ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... for instance, or the fluids of a magnet which sends to a distant subject an order to traverse all Paris to rejoin it. Science has no call to contest these phenomena. On the other hand, Dr. Brown-Sequard rejuvenates infirm old men and revitalizes the impotent with distillations from the parts of rabbits and cavies. Were not the elixirs of life and the love philtres which the witches sold to the senile and impotent composed of similar or analogous substances? Human semen entered ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... this is a sanctuary into which womankind, with her tools of magic, the broom and mop, has very infrequent access. In the way of furniture, there is a stove with a voluminous funnel; an old pine desk with a three-legged stool beside it; two or three wooden-bottom chairs, exceedingly decrepit and infirm; and—not to forget the library—on some shelves, a score or two of volumes of the Acts of Congress, and a bulky Digest of the Revenue laws. A tin pipe ascends through the ceiling, and forms a medium ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... his troubled eyes to hers. "You?" he asked. And then he tried to approach her, but he had become too infirm. ...
— Everychild - A Story Which The Old May Interpret to the Young and Which the Young May Interpret to the Old • Louis Dodge
... Had been enroll'd in such a list of heroes! If I was too infirm to serve my country, I might have prov'd my love ...
— Percy - A Tragedy • Hannah More
... very infirm. No one knows her exact age, but she cannot be much, if any younger than Aunt Wealthy, who has just passed her hundredth birthday; and I believe her to be, ...
— The Two Elsies - A Sequel to Elsie at Nantucket, Book 10 • Martha Finley
... was thus established. Each house was taxed to pay a small basket of corn every full moon. All old and infirm people and also strangers were exempted from taxation. The headman of each village was responsible for the tax, and he delivered a bundle of small pieces of reed, the size of drawing pencils which represented the number of houses belonging to able-bodied ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... always was in discussions and unbelievably youthful and beautiful still, and finished in quite another key—"that you're getting positively lovelier with each ridiculous birthday—and your aged and infirm spouse more and more besottedly in love ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... young friend some interesting but not agitating distraction from certain ideas which, however admirable and transcendently important, are nevertheless too high and profound to permit their constant contemplation with impunity to our infirm natures. Besides," he added, in a lower, but still distinct tone, "I was myself unwilling to visit in a mere casual manner the scene of what I must consider the greatest event of ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... some delay, through a mistake of Sherman's which the authorities in Washington reversed, but in a few days all was settled and the whole of the forces under Johnston's command laid down their arms. Twenty years later, as an old man and infirm, their leader left his Southern home to be present at Sherman's funeral, where he caught a chill from which he died soon after. Jefferson Davis was captured on May 10, near the borders of Florida. He was, not without plausible grounds but quite unjustly, suspected ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... in balancing themselves with different movements, one canting to the right, while the other canted to the left. And three worthy women showed themselves, limping, dragging their legs behind them, crippled by illness and deformed through old age, three infirm old women, past service, the only three pensioners in the establishment which Sister Saint-Benedict managed, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... man's nobility! I never shall account it marvelous, That our infirm affection here below Thou mov'st to boasting, when I could not choose, E'en in that region of unwarp'd desire, In heav'n itself, but make my vaunt in thee! Yet cloak thou art soon shorten'd, for that time, Unless thou be eked out from ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... married without confiding that step to the father to whom he owed so much. This must have been almost as trying as the awkward, ungraceful deportment of him whom he mourned. The world now left Chesterfield ere he had left the world. He and his contemporary Lord Tyrawley were now old and infirm. 'The fact is,' Chesterfield wittily said, 'Tyrawley and I have been dead these two years, but we don't choose to ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... outrage on the representative of the British government, under whose protection he was; thus losing his territory, and bringing English troops so near the Tibet frontier. The Rajah answered that he never did anything of the kind; that he was old and infirm, and unable to transact all his affairs; that the mischief had arisen out of the acts and ignorance of others, and finally begged the Commissioner to investigate the whole affair, and satisfy himself about it. During the inquiry that followed, the Dewan threw all ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker |
