"Infirmity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... scent, or something about Antonet, might disoblige him; but having called the maid, conjuring her to tell her whether any thing passed between her and Octavio; she again told her lady the whole truth, in which there could be no discovery of infirmity there; she embraced her, she kissed her bosom, and found her touches soft, her breath and bosom sweet as any thing in nature could be; and now lost almost in a confusion of thought, she could not tell what to imagine; at last she being ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... a bell rang and then a spring released the door of the cage immediately over the hole which your ball had entered, so that it swung open. The little pig within, after watching the previous infirmity of your aim with dejection, if not contempt, had pricked up his ears on the sound of the bell, and now smiled a gratified smile, irresistible in infectiousness, and trotted out, and, with the smile dissolving into an expression of absolute beatitude, ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... resurrection of heroism, his vision of the superman was that of an ardent soul, steeled by sufferings, meditating a tragic conception of life with serenity, and in his solitary individualism surmounting the infirmity of man and his own by the insistent ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... said Damian. "That men grow old, I know; and if with infirmity of body comes infirmity of temper and mind, their case the more strongly claims the dutiful observance of those who are bound to them ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... needlessly, by speaking of her. Little Mila, the only personal attendant with whom she could converse, had been warned not to mention the arrival of Ada and her attendant; and for some time she kept the secret which was burning on her tongue; but as she suffered somewhat from that infirmity which is said, I suspect unjustly, to be peculiar to her sex, she at last began to think that she had kept it long enough. She did not, however, at once announce the information she had to communicate, but reserved to herself the pleasure of giving ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... grown into a revolting and self-sufficient pride. It is so vain to struggle against these fetters and restraints; God knows what we need, and it may be ever the mightiest souls that are curbed while on earth by some physical infirmity. ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... sugar-plums and flowers. But my mother was exhausted by her ceaseless vigils in the sick-room, and my father, as I have before intimated, never recovered from the long-drawn fear; it sapped his energies at the root, and the continued infirmity of Una's health prevented what chance there might have been of his recuperation. Yet for the moment he could find fun and pleasure in the carnival, and he felt as never before the searching beauty of the Borghese, the Pincian, and the galleries. He was also comforted by the companionship ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... failed to catch, and Moina obeyed, but with so bad a grace, the Mme. d'Aiglemont had never permitted herself to make her modest request again. Ever since that day when Moina was talking or retailing a piece of news, her mother was careful to come near to listen; but this infirmity of deafness appeared to put the Countess out of patience, and she would grumble thoughtlessly about it. This instance is one from among very many that must have gone to the mother's heart; and yet nearly all of them might have escaped a close observer, they consisted in faint shades ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... cannot have been usual for man to have knowledge of his grandparents; as a rule he did not know his own parents after he had passed the adolescent stage and had been turned out upon the world to care for himself. If, then, certain of his fellow-beings showed those evidences of infirmity which we ascribe to age, it did not necessarily follow that he saw any association between such infirmities and the length of time which those persons had lived. The very fact that some barbaric nations retain the custom of killing the aged and infirm, in itself suggests the possibility ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... and other disorders of the brain, are all produced by the nerves being thus disarranged and debilitated. If the digestive faculty of the stomach be weakened, the body, failing of recruiting juices, must tend to emaciation, and the whole frame be rendered one system of distress and infirmity. The nerves, being thus deprived of a sufficiency of their animal spirits, must become languid, and leave every sense void of the first means of conveying to the mind the only ...
— A Treatise on Foreign Teas - Abstracted From An Ingenious Work, Lately Published, - Entitled An Essay On the Nerves • Hugh Smith
... and irreproachable intellectual capacity, who, far from admitting the few little weaknesses they have, conceal them with care, and show themselves very sensitive to any suggestion of their existence; and this, just because their whole merit consists in being free from error and infirmity. If these people are found to have done anything wrong, their reputation ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer
... imagine, for in addition to his green turban he wears a broad green kammer bund and a green undergarment; he is in fact very green indeed. Then a crazy person pushes his way forward and wants me to cure him of his mental infirmity; at all events I cannot imagine what else he wants; the man is crazy as a loon, he cannot even give utterance to his own mother-tongue, but tries to express himself in a series of disjointed grunts beside which the soul-harrowing efforts of a broken-winded donkey are quite melodious. Someone has ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... unless it be for the purpose of illustrating some general principle. Women and weak men are all addicted to the vice. If a person of this description begins to annoy a company with his or her twaddle, the only cure for it is to affect deafness—a very convenient infirmity at times. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 583 - Volume 20, Number 583, Saturday, December 29, 1832 • Various
... no doubt they could laugh at it themselves. But there is always a danger that we shall be enslaved by it; and it is the business of criticism to free us from that slavery, to make us aware of this last infirmity of great artists. We are on our guard easily enough against a professionalism that is out of fashion. The Wagnerian of a generation ago could sneer at the professionalism of Mozart; but the professionalism of Wagner ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... can't help it, you are in an abnormal condition, you have lost self-control,—it is a mild type of mental derangement. You must attack your bad habit of worrying as you would a disease. It is definitely something to be overcome, an infirmity that you ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden
... for our little friend, whose whims and weaknesses had interested us, perhaps, as much as his better traits, to make ready for that long journey which is easier to the cripple than to the strong man, and on which none enters so willingly as he who has borne the life-long load of infirmity during his earthly pilgrimage. At this point, under most circumstances, I would close the doors and draw the veil of privacy over the chamber where the birth which we call death, out of life into the unknown world, is working ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... servant befitted the occasion: "The simplest words are best where all words are vain. Ten days ago a great artist in the noon of life, and with his glorious mental faculties in full power, but with the shade of physical infirmity darkening upon him, took his accustomed place among friends who have this day held his pall. Some of them had been fellow-workers with him for a quarter of a century, others for fewer years; but to know him well was to love him dearly, and all in whose name these lines ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... an article which stands by itself on the firm foundation of Faith, I shall render joyous praise for the finished work to Him from whom the invitation comes. But if human nature has failed to reach beyond its limits, whatever is lost through my infirmity must be made ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... happy," she murmured. "I love you, but I cannot be your wife with my infirmity. No, I cannot be so selfish; I will not put upon you a burden. I love you, but let us live as we do now, for you must never tire of me and still feel bound to me for life. I shall be blind. I love ...
— The Beautiful Eyes of Ysidria • Charles A. Gunnison
... Almighty God, that we who among so many adversities from our own infirmity fail, the passion of thy only begotten Son interceding for ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... all the workhouses on any day is about 40,000, of whom about one-third are sick, one-third aged and infirm, one-seventh children, one-twentieth mothers of illegitimate children, and one-twelfth insane and epileptic. This awful confusion of infirmity and vice, this Purgatory perpetuating itself to the exclusion of all hope of Paradise, presents the vital problem of ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... Flesh, why dost thou fade? All Gold, no earthly Dross, why look'st thou pale? Sickness, how dar'st thou one so fair invade? Too base Infirmity to work her Bale. Heaven be distempered since she grieved pines, Never be dry ...
— The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) • William Winstanley
... life. Christianity not only rescued a part of the population of the Roman empire from degradation and ruin; it not only had glorious witnesses or its transcendent power and beauty in every land, thus triumphing over human infirmity and misery as no other religion ever did; but it has also proved itself to be a progressively conquering power by the great and beneficent ideas which were planted in the minds of barbarians, as well ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... my infirmity? Neither I nor my companion can tell. Don Benigno, who comes to offer me his condolences, attributes the cause of my complaint to confinement in the close, vaporous dungeon of the Morro Castle, and his medical adviser, ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... the old man, his face crimsoning up to the very roots of his hair, and struggling vainly with his infirmity. ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... like geology, it reaches into the vast, undefined past; and like biology, it comprehends all life science; but unlike each, it has no limitation to any sphere. It is equally at home with living forms and with dead matter—equally at home in the humbler spheres of human life and human infirmity, and in the higher spheres of the spirit world, which we call heaven. It grasps all of biology, all of history, all of geology and astronomy, and far more than telescopes have revealed. It has no parallel in any science, for sciences are limited and defined in their scope, while psychometry is unlimited, ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, April 1887 - Volume 1, Number 3 • Various
... servile condition, a life of austerity and mortification, nay, even religious observances, for the Pharisee sinned in an act of worship, by boasting himself to be righteous, and despising others. "It must ever be," said he, "while the Christian priesthood is filled by men subject to infirmity, that in prosperous times the ministry will, in numerous instances, be formed of worldly-minded persons, who follow their Lord for the bread he distributes, and care little for the bread of life. Such persons being active, ambitious, practised in those habits which bring ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... classification of sins that has often been borrowed by our Protestant and Puritan divines. His classification is made, as will be seen, on an ascending scale of guilt and aggravation. In the world of sin, he says, there are, first, sins of ignorance; next, there are sins of infirmity; and then, at the top, there are sins of presumption. And this, it will be remembered, was the Psalmist's inventory and estimate of sins also. His last and his most earnest prayer was, that he might be kept back from all presumptuous sin. Now you know ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... the latter is somewhat recovered, and continues to be great friends with the Duke: this is very pleasant to the Duc de Conti, and makes him behave so strangely that his infirmity is observed by the people. It is fortunate for us that Law is so great a coward, otherwise he would be very troublesome to my son, who, learning that he was joining in a cabal against him, told his wife of it. "Well, Monsieur," said she, "what would you have him do? He ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... efficient naval officer, was anything but "captainish"; he was simply a clean-shaven, clean-cut young fellow, with a face that mirrored every emotion of his soul. Knowing this infirmity—if such it is—he resolutely put down the jealous thoughts that surged through his brain; and when the visitors, guests of the captain, reached the deck, he met them, and was introduced to Mr. Foster with as pleasant a face as the girl had ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... and the beady black eyes, was very like some of those wild gipsy folk he had seen from time to time in the forest. Was it not just possible that she might be one of their tribe, who for some reason or some physical infirmity had abandoned the wandering life, and had set up for a wise woman in the heart of the great city? Was there not some strange community of knowledge and interest amongst all these wandering people? and might she not in any ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... peculiarities in Mr Sudberry's character, he was afflicted with a chronic tendency to dab his pen into the ink-bottle and split it to the feather, or double up its point so as to render it unserviceable. This infirmity, coupled with an uncommon capacity for upsetting ink-bottles, had induced him to hire a small clerk, whose principal duties were to mend pens, wipe up ink, and, generally, to attend to the removal ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... and gave no heed to all they could say, while he addressed it with distracted words, yet so significant that his queen, fearing the dreadful secret would be disclosed, in great haste dismissed the guests, excusing the infirmity of Macbeth as disorder ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... be put down to the fault of the Septuagint or the allegorists or Philo that the Alexandrian development of Judaism led on to Roman Christianity. It is to be ascribed rather to the infirmity of human nature, which requires the ideas of its inspired teachers and peoples to be brought down to the common understanding, and causes the progress towards universal religion to be a slow growth. The masses of the Alexandrian Jews in his own day cannot have grasped his teaching; ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... days afterwards the little girl, my remaining child, was taken ill, and so feeble was she, that she soon joined her brother in the better land. I seemed to be overwhelmed with misfortunes, but the greatest of all was yet to come. I have hinted that Yamba was beginning to show signs of infirmity through advancing years. I could not help noticing, with a vague feeling of helpless horror and sickening foreboding, that she had lost her high spirits and keen perception—to say nothing about the elasticity of her tread and her wonderful ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... nerve every better faculty of his head and heart, to invest the chequered vicissitudes of his fortune with a dignity derived from himself. The zeal of his nature overcame the temptations to that loitering and indecision, that fluctuation between sloth and consuming toil, that infirmity of resolution, with all its tormenting and enfeebling consequences, to which a literary man, working as he does at a solitary task, uncalled for by any pressing tangible demand, and to be recompensed by distant and dubious advantage, ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... see the destinies of half Europe and Asia, and the lives of scores of thousands of brave men, hanging on the will of an irresolute young man, depressed by the consciousness of his own infirmity, and desperately seeking for some stronger mind on which to lean. Had I not been placed by my Polish sentiment in a position of antagonism to the Czardom, perhaps—but it is useless to indulge in ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... upon the breakfast-table and began to wash her face and hands. Evidently, these companions were all three on intimate terms, as was natural enough, since a great many childish impulses were softly creeping back on the simple-minded old man; insomuch that, if no worldly necessities nor painful infirmity had disturbed him, his remnant of life might have been as cheaply and cheerily enjoyed as the early playtime of the kitten and the child. Old Dr. Dolliver and his great-granddaughter (a ponderous title, which seemed quite to overwhelm the tiny figure of Pansie) had met one another at the two extremities ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... we went to New Orleans Barracks, the 4th infantry was commanded by Colonel Vose, then an old gentleman who had not commanded on drill for a number of years. He was not a man to discover infirmity in the presence of danger. It now appeared that war was imminent, and he felt that it was his duty to brush up his tactics. Accordingly, when we got settled down at our new post, he took command of the regiment at a battalion drill. Only two or three evolutions had been gone through ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... of the devil was named Captain Cochegrue; and his creditors, the blockheads, citizens, and others, whose pockets he slit, called him the Mau-cinge, since he was as mischievous as strong; but he had moreover his back spoilt by the natural infirmity of a hump, and it would have been unwise to attempt to mount thereon to get a good view, for he would incontestably have ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... still further reducing them, since the less I have to distract me the happier I shall be. For the soul, like the body, goes lightly clad when in good health; weakness wraps itself up, and it is a sure sign of infirmity to have many wants. We live, just as we swim, all the better for being but lightly burdened. For in this stormy life as on the stormy ocean heavy things sink us and light things buoy us up. It is in this respect, I find, that the gods more especially ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... determined to shadow her and ascertaining her residence, find some means of restoring the ring without the knowledge of her friends, as he had no desire to do anything which might cause them to learn of her unfortunate infirmity, especially, as this last experience might have worked a cure. She did indeed enter a stately mansion of the Lake Shore Drive—but by the ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... Merritt's about the trees. They had been repeated, because people thought such ideas queer and showing lack of common-sense. He had heard them unthinkingly, but now, standing on Squire Merritt's door-step, looking at his old tree pensioners, whom he would not desert in their infirmity, he remembered, and the great man's love for his trees gave him reason, with a sudden leap of faith, to believe in his kindness towards him. "I'm better than an old tree," reasoned Jerome, and raised ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... world will fill and satisfy the heart. Even earth's friendships are priceless. Yet the best and truest of them are only fragments of the perfect friendship. They bring us only little cupfuls of blessing. Their gentleness is marred by human infirmity, and sometimes turns to harshness. Their helpfulness at best is impulsive and uncertain, and ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... oxygen on exposure to light, air, or moisture, and becoming what is called peroxidized, may, by consequence, change or fade. In like manner, lakes and carmines thrown down upon a base, may owe some of their fugacity to the oxidation of that base, as well as to the natural infirmity of their colouring matter. On the other hand, pigments and bases are subject to deoxidation, or to a loss of oxygen, in which case the colour is apt to deepen. Pigments generally are more affected by oxidation and fading in a water vehicle, ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... defence!' Was that a 'petty affair,' which drove families from their homes; which assembled women and children in crowds, without shelter, at places of common refuge, in every condition of weakness and infirmity, under every suffering which want and terror could inflict, yet willing to endure all, willing to meet death from famine, death from climate, death from hardships, preferring any thing rather than the horrors ...
— An Account of Some of the Principal Slave Insurrections, • Joshua Coffin
... martyrs to discipline, marched over the sea-wall into three feet of water. Had the water been deeper, they might have been less literal. Despite his military training, his bearing and carriage had not the strong soldierly stamp which might redeem his infirmity, and even in the class-room a certain whimsical atmosphere seemed borne from the drill-ground. He, I believe, was the central figure of one of the most humorous scenes in Herman Melville's White Jacket, a book which, despite ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... same, July 28.-Reflections on loss of youth. Entrance into old age through the gate Of infirmity. A month's confinement to a sick ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... reception. Her young husband is tall and fair, with a pleasant, distinguished face; he loves his wife, and is only moderately beloved in return. Is she wrong or is she right? Now, I will tell you. The monarch is well-made, but a childish infirmity has left one whole side of him somewhat weak, and he limps. Mademoiselle d'Aumale, or to speak more correctly, the Queen of Portugal, writes letter upon letter to me, describing her situation. She believed herself pregnant, and had even announced the news to Madame de Vendome, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... was still a bachelor, and on the shady side of sixty, retained much of the fire and energy of his earlier years, although at times subject to an infirmity which the medical faculty describe as emanating from disease of the heart. He had served with great distinction during the Peninsular war, under the iron Duke, but, on succeeding to the Baronetcy, left the service ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... was pure and free from any Mixture, and he beheld by it the necessarily self-existent Being: But then again the Corporeal Faculties would return upon him, and spoil his Contemplation, and bring him down to the lowest Degree where he was before. Now, when he had any Infirmity upon him which interrupted his Design, he took some kind of Meat, but still according to the aforemention'd Rules; and then remov'd again to that State of Imitation of the Heavenly Bodies, in these three Respects which we have mention'd; and thus he continued for some ...
— The Improvement of Human Reason - Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan • Ibn Tufail
... malady, in the moral condition of Berenice, would afford me many objects for the exercise of that intense and abnormal meditation whose nature I have been at some trouble in explaining, yet such was not in any degree the case. In the lucid intervals of my infirmity, her calamity, indeed, gave me pain, and, taking deeply to heart that total wreck of her fair and gentle life, I did not fall to ponder, frequently and bitterly, upon the wonder-working means by which so strange a revolution had been so suddenly brought to pass. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... impossible to say whether any one was well or ill till after an intimate acquaintance of months or years. Even then the shrewdest were constantly mistaken in their judgements, and marriages were often contracted with most deplorable results, owing to the art with which infirmity had been concealed. ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... to worship success. From his earliest years a boy learns from his surroundings, if not by actual precept, to strive not so much to be something as somebody. The love of power rather than fame may be the "last infirmity of noble minds," but it is probably the first infirmity of many ignoble ones. Herein lies the justification of the criticism of a friendly alien. "You pride yourselves on your incorruptibility, and quite rightly; for in England there is probably less actual bribery by means ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... with the least pain to themselves. I am one of these, and I hit upon this relief for my infirmities for the long journeys I am obliged to take. 11. It is easy to learn, members of the Boule, what is the best proof that I ride on account of my infirmity and not from arrogance. For if I had wealth, I should ride on a cushioned saddle, and not on other people's horses; but now since I cannot buy such a one, I have to use other people's horses often. 12. Now is it not inconsistent, members of the Boule, that this very man if he had seen me on a ...
— The Orations of Lysias • Lysias
... magnetic about the suggestion. Tilden was able, rich, and known to everybody as the foe of the Tweed ring. Besides he was capable, notwithstanding his infirmity, of making a forceful speech, full of fire, logic and facts, his quick, retentive memory enabling him to enter easily into political controversy. As a powerful reasoner it was admitted that he had few equals at the bar. Indeed, the press, crediting him with ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... of unfeathered bipeds, he is often disposed to indulge his selfishness, and summons his flock only to see him devour the morsel. Even in old age, however, the males of the varieties which are nearest the parent stock maintain their helpful motives and will struggle with infirmity to beat ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... as a defect or shortcoming, a missing of the mark, as the Greek word hamartia implies, others treat it as a disease, or infirmity of the flesh—a malady affecting the physical constitution which may be {29} incurred by heredity or induced by environment. In both cases it is regarded as a misfortune, rather than a fault, or even as a ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... was worldly—who among us is not so? He was ambitious—who among us is ashamed to own that 'last infirmity of noble minds!' He was avaricious, my readers will say. No—it was not for love of lucre that he wished to be bishop of Barchester. He was his father's only child, and his father had left him great wealth. His preferment brought him in nearly three thousand ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... refreshment, when the hard life from which her marriage released her allowed them a few days' respite by the rocks and sands and breakers of the Northumberland shore. The Duke of Devonshire, whose infirmity of deafness did not interfere with his enjoyment of music, was an enthusiastic admirer of Mrs. Arkwright, and her constant and affectionate friend. Their proximity of residence in Derbyshire made their opportunities of meeting very frequent, and when the Arkwrights visited London, Devonshire ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... is the first sovereign of the House of Hanover who, having children, has not pained the world by quarrelling with them. A model sovereign, she has not allowed an infirmity supposed to be peculiar to her illustrious House to control her clear and just mind, so that her career as a mother is as pleasing as her career as a sovereign is splendid. About the time of the death of Prince Albert, a leading British journal published some articles in which it was insinuated, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... his constitution, as Stockmar had perceived from the first, was ill-adapted to meet a serious strain. He was easily upset; he constantly suffered from minor ailments. His appearance in itself was enough to indicate the infirmity of his physical powers. The handsome youth of twenty years since with the flashing eyes and the soft complexion had grown into a sallow, tired-looking man, whose body, in its stoop and its loose fleshiness, betrayed the sedentary labourer, and whose head was quite bald on the ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... "La fourbe!" said he. "Miss Maitland, accept my compliments; you possess the key to a sex no fellow can unlock. And, now I have found an interpreter, I begin to be interested in this little comedy. The first act is just over. There will be half an hour's wait till the simulatrix of infirmity comes running back with the pilgrims of the Rhine. Are they 'the pilgrims of the Rhine' or 'the pilgrims of Love?' Time will show. Play to recommence with a verbal encounter; you will be one against three; for all that, I don't ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... of Down, three or four miles from the Orpington railway station, was near enough to London for convenient access, yet greatly secluded and thoroughly rural. The traveller's roving days were over, and his infirmity of health prevented him from undertaking very fatiguing journeys. After the cessation of his active work for the Geological Society, Darwin's chief public appearance was when he spoke at the Oxford meeting of the British ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... Jack Straw's at four. . . . In the very improbable (surely impossible?) case of your not coming, we will call on you at a quarter before eight, to go to the ragged school." The next (5th of March) shows him in yielding mood, and pitying himself for his infirmity of compliance. "Sir, I will—he—he—he—he—he—he—I will NOT eat with you, either at your own house or the club. But the morning looks bright, and a walk to Hampstead would suit me marvellously. If you should present yourself at my gate (bringing the R. A.'s along with you) I shall ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... but I didn't follow all of the conversation because of my infirmity." He touched his ears as he spoke. "I gathered some remarks of Mr. Glenthorpe's, because he told me to stand opposite him and watch his lips for orders, but I didn't get much of what the young gentleman said, because I was standing behind ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... entrance hovers an enormous specimen of the American eagle, with outspread wings, a shield before her breast, and, if I recollect aright, a bunch of intermingled thunderbolts and barbed arrows in each claw. With the customary infirmity of temper that characterizes this unhappy fowl, she appears, by the fierceness of her beak and eye, and the general truculency of her attitude, to threaten mischief to the inoffensive community; and especially to warn all citizens, careful of their safety, against intruding on the ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the Gull's Nest. His first inquiries were concerning the boy who had contrived to steal a passage on board the Fire-fly from France to England, and who had pretended dumbness. How the youth got on board his vessel, Dalton could not imagine; although, when the discovery was made, his feigning the infirmity we have mentioned succeeded so well, that the Buccaneer absolutely believed he could neither hear nor speak, and sympathised with him accordingly. The indignation of Dalton was quickly roused by the outrage described by Robin Hays: he was, moreover, much exasperated that such a deception should ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... And so here we may see the weak Christ, the limited Christ, the true human Christ. But side by side, as is ever the case, with this manifestation of weakness, there comes an apocalypse of power. Wherever you have, in the history of our Lord, some signal exemplification of human infirmity, you have flashed out through 'the veil, that is, His flesh,' some beam of His glory. Thus this hungry Man could say, 'No fruit grow on thee henceforward for ever'; and His bare word, the mere forth-putting and manifestation of His will, had power on material things. That ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... lingering, end. "The introduction of Christianity," says a medical writer, "had an undoubted influence on the course of medical science; for the Christian was taught to recognise, in every bodily infirmity, the dispensation of the Almighty, and in the calm, abstracted pursuits of those holy men who passed their time in prayer and meditation, a propitiation: hence medicine fell into the hands of monks and anchorites, who assumed to themselves, exclusively, the power of interpreting ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... sorely difficult; but after many failures and relapses, the words of another who had sinned and suffered three thousand years ago, and who, after many a struggle, had discovered the true secret, came home to Kenrick and whispered to him the message—"Then I said, It is mine own infirmity: but I will remember the years of the right-hand ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... this low-spirited air to my letter. No, it is the prospect of what is to come, not the sensation of what is passing, that affects me. The loss of youth is melancholy enough; but to enter into old age through the gate of infirmity is most disheartening. My health and spirits make me take but slight notice of the transition, and under the persuasion of temperance being a talisman, I marched boldly on towards the descent of the hill, knowing I must fall at last, but not suspecting ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... the eye, a pearle, or any humour that comes out of the head. My father laboured under this infirmity, and our learned men of Salisbury could doe him no good. At last one goodwife Holly, a poore woman of Chalke, cured him in a little time. My father gave her a broad piece of gold for the receipt, which is this:-Take about halfe a pint of the best white wine vinegar; put it in a pewter dish, ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey
... of accomplishing this was soon found. One of the Principal Clerks of Session, as they are called, (official persons who occupy an important and responsible situation, and enjoy a considerable income,) who had served upwards of thirty years, felt himself, from age, and the infirmity of deafness with which it was accompanied, desirous of retiring from his official situation. As the law then stood, such official persons were entitled to bargain with their successors, either for a sum of money, which was ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... to take the night train for New York, and the time of its departure was near at hand. At last Mr. Sidney bade the host good-night, saying he should see him again before many days, but hoped he would soon recover from the infirmity in his eyes. Mr. Malcolm was ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... length an unfortunate administration, had many political opponents, almost without a personal enemy; who has retained, in his fall from power, many faithful and disinterested friends; and who, under the pressure of severe infirmity, enjoys the lively vigor of his mind, and the felicity of his incomparable temper. Lord North will permit me to express the feelings of friendship in the language of truth: but even truth and friendship should be silent, if he still dispensed ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... that, as the world is aging, man's nature is gradually growing weaker, it is well to guard that no more vices steal into Germany. Furthermore, God ordained marriage to be a help against human infirmity. The old canons themselves say that the old rigor ought now and then, in the latter times, to be relaxed because of the weakness of men; which, it is to be devoutly wished, were also done in this matter. And it is to be expected that the churches shall at length lack pastors, if marriage ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... converted his Republic into a religious order. Neither in the Laws, when the daylight of common sense breaks in upon him, does he retract his error. In the state of which he would be the founder, there is no marrying or giving in marriage: but because of the infirmity of mankind, he condescends to allow the law of nature ...
— The Republic • Plato
... now when the Captain almost regretted the old bachelor's bequest. The familiar scenes of her old home sharpened his wife's grief. To see her father every Sunday in church, with marks of age and infirmity upon him, but with not a look of tenderness for his only ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... clerk in the Post Office. To be known as somebody,—to be Anthony Trollope if it be no more,—is to me much. The feeling is a very general one, and I think beneficent. It is that which has been called the "last infirmity of noble mind." The infirmity is so human that the man who lacks it is either above or below humanity. I own to the infirmity. But I confess that my first object in taking to literature as a profession was that which ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... sad spectacle, that of the great man knocking at preferment's door, and knocking in vain. Howe was a statesman, with his head full of ideas of Imperial consolidation. His was a great wild heart, deeply touched indeed with ambition, 'the last infirmity of noble minds,' but deeply conscious also of great powers, emotional and intellectual. Small wonder that he raged as he felt that to reach his goal he had to crawl through so narrow a portal, had to abase himself before well-meaning ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... been aware of her friend's infirmity, and more than once had sought with delicacy and yet with faithfulness to open her eyes to the consequences of her indulgence. But Mrs. Haldane, unfortunately, was incapable of taking a broad, and therefore correct, view of anything. She was governed far more by her ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... possess, and the perfection of true friendship thou hast reached; and likewise I see and confess that if I am not guided by thy opinion, but follow my own, I am flying from the good and pursuing the evil. This being so, thou must remember that I am now labouring under that infirmity which women sometimes suffer from, when the craving seizes them to eat clay, plaster, charcoal, and things even worse, disgusting to look at, much more to eat; so that it will be necessary to have recourse to some artifice to cure ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... superiority to more natural and generous feelings. Our ardent and dauntless reformer followed out the moral of the parable of the Good Samaritan into its most rigid and repulsive consequences with a pen of steel, and let fall his "trenchant blade" on every vulnerable point of human infirmity; but there is a want in his system of the mild and persuasive tone of the Gospel, where "all is conscience and tender heart." Man was indeed screwed up, by mood and figure, into a logical machine, that was to forward the public good with the utmost punctuality and effect, ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... circumstances. In some instances the younger men and women were bound out to service for periods varying from three to twelve weeks. In others they were left free to maintain themselves by their own efforts, the state to provide for such as were incapable, through age or infirmity, of performing manual labour. Hundreds of those who were placed under control escaped and wandered, footsore and half clad, from town to town in the hope of meeting their relatives or of finding means to return to their former homes. Little record has been ...
— The Acadian Exiles - A Chronicle of the Land of Evangeline • Arthur G. Doughty
... was promptly shot off at me in a brief tone of voice. I made with my head and my hand a courteous gesture, by which I seemed to sympathize gently with the infirmity that was thus revealed to me, after which I sat down, feeling more easy. I had drawn my adversary's fire. Honor ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... them, he knew, but he hardly guessed whom until he marked the paternal pride and content that had made unwontedly placid the brow of the irate miller while the ovation was in progress. Nehemiah greatly preferred the adult specimen of the race, and looked upon youth as an infirmity which would mend only with time. He was easily confused by a stir; the gurglings, the ticklings, the loud laughter both in the deep bass of the hosts and the keen treble of the guest had a befuddling effect upon him; his powers of observation were numbed. As the great, burly forms shifted ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... is finished, the second begun, to be perfected in the third. O Lord, I hang on thy promises, which with Christ are all mine, though I have not at all times the savor of them; this is mine infirmity, and often my sin. O keep me looking ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... that there is one Being who sees the suffering heart as it is, and not as it manifests itself through the repellances of outward infirmity, and who, perhaps, feels more for the stern and wayward than for those whose gentler feelings win for them human sympathy. With all his singularities, there was in the heart of Uncle Lot a depth of religious sincerity; but there are few characters where ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... will supply instances. The following may he stated as one serving to show by what slender accidents the human ear may be imposed upon. The author was walking, about two years since, in a wild and solitary scene with a young friend, who laboured under the infirmity of a severe deafness, when he heard what he conceived to be the cry of a distant pack of hounds, sounding intermittedly. As the season was summer, this, on a moment's reflection, satisfied the hearer that it could not be the clamour of an ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... Christ's brethren, was willing to give up his home, his ancestral estates, his fortune, his title of nobility, his patrician family name, his office of bishop in the ancient Moravian church, and even (last infirmity of zealous spirits) his interest in promoting specially that order of consecrated men and women in the church catholic which he had done and sacrificed so much to save from extinction, and to which his "cares and toils were given." He hastened ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... never come to a declaration of love between them; and, besides, she would not have known which way to turn. After receiving the Lord of Ringstetten's message, that Bertalda was with them, the old Fisherman had traced a few lines, scarcely legible, from infirmity and long disuse, saying, "I am now a poor old widower; for my dear good wife is dead. But, lonely as I am by my fireside, I had rather Bertalda stayed away than come here. Provided she does not harm my dear Undine! My curse be ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... Physiology of Art,"(9) I shall have an opportunity of showing more thoroughly how this transformation of art as a whole into histrionics is just as much a sign of physiological degeneration (or more precisely a form of hysteria), as any other individual corruption, and infirmity peculiar to the art which Wagner inaugurated: for instance the restlessness of its optics, which makes it necessary to change one's attitude to it every second. They understand nothing of Wagner who see in ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... can exist which is not liable to collapses. Two-fold infirmity, alike for him who judges, and for him who suffers judgment, will not allow it to be otherwise. Sir Robert Peel, a minister more popular by his tenure of office than any whom this generation will perhaps ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... controversial divinity; as I firmly believe, that every honest upright man, of whatever sect, will be accepted of the Deity. If your verses, as you seem to hint, contain censure, except you want an occasion to break with me, don't send them. I have a little infirmity in my disposition, that where I fondly love, or highly esteem, I cannot ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... in with several tribes, but did not see our old friend, although, from the inquiries we made, it was evident he was well known among them. It would disgust my readers were I to describe the miserable state of disease and infirmity to which these tribes were reduced. Leprosy of the most loathsome description, the most violent cutaneous eruptions, and glandular affections, absolutely raged through the whole of them; yet we could not escape from the persecuting examination ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... in the formation of his limbs; his slight infirmity was nothing but the result of weakness of one ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... as already stated, attracted Pope's notice, who made a curious note on a scrap of paper sent with it to a friend. Johnson is described as "a man afflicted with an infirmity of the convulsive kind, that attacks him sometimes so as to make him a sad spectacle." This seems to have been the chief information obtained by Pope about the anonymous author, of whom he had said, on first reading the poem, this man will ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... justified in concealing, without falsehood, the fact of a bodily lack or infirmity on his part which concerned himself alone, he would not be justified in concealing the fact that he was sick of a contagious disease, or that his house was infected by a disease that might be given to a caller ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull
... distressed by his infirmity, he came out of France in the Queen's litter, carried by her magnificent mules. Of England he had only ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... The Fighting Sheeney, then rapidly convalescing from syphilis, bided his time. The Young Pole moreover had a way of jesting upon the subject of The Sheeney's infirmity. He would, particularly during the afternoon promenade, shout various none too subtle allusions to Moshki's physical condition for the benefit of les femmes. And in response would come peals of laughter from the girls' windows, shrill peals and deep guttural ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... the grade of general officers, might be somewhat extended with benefit to the public service. Observance of the rule of seniority sometimes leads, especially in time of peace, to the promotion of officers who, after meritorious and even distinguished service, may have been rendered by age or infirmity incapable of performing active duty, and whose advancement, therefore, would tend to impair the efficiency of the Army. Suitable provision for this class of officers, by the creation of a retired list, would remedy the ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin Pierce • Franklin Pierce
... of men, because of the infirmity of your flesh: for as ye have yielded your members servants to uncleanness, and to iniquity, unto iniquity; even so now yield your members servants to righteousness, unto holiness. For when ye were the servants of sin, ye were free ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England
... Such is the infirmity of human nature that few individuals can be safely trusted with despotic power; accordingly we find no Captain-General whose administration will bear the test of rigid examination. Indeed, the venality of a majority of these officials has been so gross as to have ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... which reduces the poet to such an abject condition of mind, as finally results in his laying aside all counterfeiting. Portinari, the father, now dies, and witnessing the tenderness with which the beautiful Beatrice mourns him, Dante becomes affected with a painful infirmity, wherein his mind broods over his enfeebled body, and, perceiving how frail a thing life is, even though health keep with it, his brain begins to travail in many imaginings, and he says within himself, "Certainly it must some time come to pass that the very gentle Beatrice will die." Feeling ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... was by no means hopeless. Certain events of October and November were encouraging. They not unnaturally argued that the withdrawal of their two chief opponents, Lord Roberts and Sir Redvers Buller, indicated infirmity of purpose on the part of the British Government. The idea was mistaken, as the recall of these leaders, or at least of one of them, was due to the fact that the British Government was of opinion that the war was practically over. Again, they were relieved of the inconvenient ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... Greek, that staff had sufficed to conduct the poor blind girl from corner to corner of Pompeii. Every street, every turning in the more frequented parts, was familiar to her; and as the inhabitants entertained a tender and half-superstitious veneration for those subject to her infirmity, the passengers had always given way to her timid steps. Poor girl, she little dreamed that she should, ere many days were passed, find her blindness her protection, and a guide far safer than the ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... Lorenzino, or Lorenzaccio, as his most intimate acquaintances called him, was destined to murder Alessandro; and it is worthy of notice that the Duke had received frequent warnings of his fate. A Perugian page, for instance, who suffered from some infirmity, saw in a dream that Lorenzino would kill his master. Astrologers predicted that the Duke must die by having his throat cut. One of them is said to have named Lorenzo de' Medici as the assassin; and another described ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... have knocked down a hundred beggarly pandours who respect neither sex nor infirmity. For the benefit of those who are not satisfied, I will state that I call myself colonel Fougas of the ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... probably that two and two make five, they branch off and begin to adduce arguments which do not go to prove that, but to prove that the man who maintains that two and two make four is a fool, or even a ruffian. Some good men are subject to this infirmity—that if you differ from them on any point whatever, they regard the fact of your differing from them as proof, not merely that you are intellectually stupid, but that you are morally depraved. Some really ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... health; though Emily, who had been so constantly with him, was almost the last person who observed it. His constitution had never recovered from the late attack of the fever, and the succeeding shock it received from Madame St. Aubert's death had produced its present infirmity. His physician now ordered him to travel; for it was perceptible that sorrow had seized upon his nerves, weakened as they had been by the preceding illness; and variety of scene, it was probable, would, by amusing his mind, restore them to their ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... when several people were talking at once, or when he was at the theatre; and he developed a habit of saying over and over again: "Does so-and-so speak indistinctly? Or am I getting deaf, I wonder?" which wore on her nerves by its suggestion of a corresponding mental infirmity. ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... is ordinarily in regard to the outcome of something already done or decided; hesitation, indecision, and irresolution have reference to something that remains to be decided or done, and are due oftener to infirmity of will than to lack of knowledge. Distrust and suspicion apply especially to the motives, character, etc., of others, and are more decidedly adverse than doubt. Scruple relates to matters of conscience ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... his chair quite still, as indeed he always was, but now it was a deathlike quietness, without the least sign of the wonderful mobility of feature and cheerfulness of voice and manner which made people so soon grow used to his infirmity—sat until his room was prepared. Then he suffered himself to be carried to his bed, which, for the first time in his life, he refused to leave ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... fancy therefore must be good for something if one knew it. But Gerarde, who calls the plant Red Rattle, (it having indeed much in common with the Yellow Rattle), says, "It groweth in moist and moorish meadows; the herbe is not only unprofitable, but likewise hurtful, and an infirmity of the meadows." ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... auto-martyr went out to walk before breakfast, scornfully rejecting all offers of furs and extra wrappings. O dear, no! She never thought of muffs, tippets, snow-boots, but as encumbrances fit for extreme old age and infirmity. She always walked fast, and the more the wind blew, the warmer she felt, I might be assured. As soon as she had gone, I established myself in comfort by the side of a glowing grate, happy but for dreading her return. She came in dreadfully fresh and breezy from the outer ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... in many things," said The Master gently, "but not in all. Remember that you have much to learn, hijo mio. I have taught you to prepare my little medicine, it is true. That is so you can take my place if age infirmity shall carry me away." The Master folded his hands with an air of pious resignation. "But you must learn policy. The Senorita Canalejas belongs to the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... been an artistic as well as a financial success. It had been a "Standing Room Only" audience, and the proceeds were to be given to the Sanford Hospital for Children. Laurie had decreed this as a quiet memento to Constance's devotion to little Charlie during his days of infirmity. The audience had not been chary of their applause. The principals had received numerous curtain calls, Constance had received an enthusiastic ovation, and many beautiful floral tokens from her admiring friends. Laurie had been assailed with cries of "Composer! ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... unsatisfactory amusements, do the great mass of the maturer man sink those feelings; divested of which, we become mere plodders on the earth, mere creatures of materialism: nor is it until after age and infirmity have overtaken them, they look back with regret to that real and substantial, but unenjoyed happiness, which the occupied heart and the soul's communion alone can bestow. Then indeed, when too late, are they ready to acknowledge the futility of those pursuits, the ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... sight and vision of the Holy One, for there you shall see him as he is. There also you shall serve him continually with praise, with shouting, and thanksgiving, whom you desired to serve in the World, though with much difficulty, because of the infirmity of your flesh. There your eyes shall be delighted with seeing, and your ears with hearing the pleasant voice of the Mighty One. There you shall enjoy your friends again, that are gone thither before you; and there you shall with joy receive even every one that follows into ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... basis of consciousness, is completely destroyed, and all that is left to the sufferer as the substratum of his individual continuity, which has now ceased to be personal, is the physical organism. For the subject who suffers it, such an infirmity is equivalent to death—it is not equivalent to death only for those who expect to inherit his fortune, if he possesses one! And this infirmity is nothing less than a revolution, ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... was careful not by fierce opposition to push doubt into error. When a drunkard died, he remembered that "his mother was an habitual drinker, and he was nursed on milk-punch, and the thirst was in his constitution"; so he hoped "that God saw it was a constitutional infirmity, like any other disease." He reduced the dogma of Total Depravity to the simple proposition, "that men by nature do not love God supremely, and their neighbor as themselves." He stoutly resisted the attempt to overawe belief, either his own or another's. He refused to expend his strength ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... in a negotiable shape. For five years I hid myself in Madrid, then in 1770 I came to Paris with a Spanish name, and led as brilliant a life as may be. Then in the midst of my pleasures, as I enjoyed a fortune of six millions, I was smitten with blindness. I do not doubt but that my infirmity was brought on by my sojourn in the cell and my work in the stone, if, indeed, my peculiar faculty for 'seeing' gold was not an abuse of the power of sight which predestined me to lose ...
— Facino Cane • Honore de Balzac
... has in the outcome been reduced to the simplest and clearest terms; where the result presented is a scientific work of art, which, in the words of Schiller, has risen above the limitations of human infirmity and moves with such ease and freedom as to give the impression that it offers but the free play of the auditor's own unfolding thought; to decide with confidence whether you have to deal with a scientific work ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... died; Helen died; Leda, the beloved of Jupiter, went before. It is better to repose in the earth betimes than to sit up late; better, than to cling pertinaciously to what we feel crumbling under us, and to protract an inevitable fall. We may enjoy the present while we are insensible of infirmity and decay: but the present, like a note in music, is nothing but as it appertains to what is past and what is to come. There are no fields of amaranth on this aide of the grave; there are no voices, O Rhodope! that are not soon mute, however tuneful; there is no ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... man put his hand to his forehead, and then thought reverted to himself, and he recalled the days when his head was subject to his will and did not, with painful persistency, nod and tremble the long day through. The infirmity of age was strong upon him; seventy years is a long time to have lived and toiled as French-Canadian farmers toil in eastern Canada. He thought, too, how much he had aged the last seven years, and of the one who had caused those years to be fraught with ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... is all American, with the exception of a glass eye. The substitute optic is alien. Gary tried to enlist in the U. S. Marine Corps at their recruiting station in Louisville, Ky., but was rejected when his infirmity was discovered by Sergeant ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... a place where the trees have been cleared and the snow mountains spread themselves for the feast of the eyes of those who can see. He put his milk-can and his staff on the ground, and stood for a moment with head bowed as if crushed by his infirmity. Then he threw up his hands and raised his head, as though a sudden vision had come to him—his whole body tense and expectant, like that of a man who strains every nerve to catch a message from the hills across the valley. For a minute he remained still, as if receiving something in his hands ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... sense and touches of pathos in some of his most tory passages. As he was delivering in the House one of his emphatic predictions of the certain failure of our experiment of freedom on this continent, he broke into an apology for so doing, that brought tears to many eyes. "It is an infirmity ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... lucky, that is, in the opinion of these people, of having a familiar spirit more powerful, or more inclined to do good, they never fail to make him keep near him who holds the dish, they even go a great way to fetch him; and, if through age or any infirmity he cannot walk, they will carry him on ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... magic of youth. The sober fact is that the life was a hard one, with few rational pleasures, few wholesome appliances. The strong ones lived, and some even attained great length of years; but to the many age came early and was full of infirmity and pain. If we could go back to what our fore-fathers endured in clearing the Western wilderness, we could then better appreciate our obligations to them. It is detracting from the honor which is their due to say that their lives ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... regulation most of them had complied; and that it were now unjust, when they had become old and worn out, and were encumbered with wives and families, to deprive them of their substance, when they looked to enjoy repose after all their fatigues and dangers; being unable from age and infirmity to go in search of new countries and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... this year with so much infirmity of body, and such strong impressions of the fragility of life, that death, whenever it appears, fills me with melancholy; and I cannot hear without emotion, of the removal of any one, whom I have known, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... breaking out of the parliament's separation from the royal party, when the public mind, full of consternation in that new anarchy, shook with the infirmity of childish terrors, the most extravagant reports were as eagerly caught up as the most probable, and served much better the purposes of their inventors. They had daily discoveries of new conspiracies, which appeared ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... ministers sustained by our Heavenly Father in a painful experience, expressly for the good of those around them. This appreciation of their ministry and usefulness will greatly lessen their trials and impart consolation. If in hours of weariness and infirmity they wonder why they are kept in a useless and helpless state to burden others around, they should be assured that they are not useless; and this is not only by word, but, better still, by the manifestation of those virtues which such ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... deformed, we will seek everywhere, even in the darkness of a religion we have ceased to practise, for some God whose intention to question; but if the child be born poor—a calamity, as a rule, no less capable than the gravest infirmity of degrading a creature's destiny—we do not dream of interrogating the God who is wherever we are, since he is made of our own desires. Before we demand an ideal judge, we shall do well to purify our ideas, for whatever blemish there is in these will surely be in the judge. Before we complain ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... "it is the infirmity of our nature always to believe ourselves much more unhappy than those ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... momentary sight of it in a passing crowd, affects us like a sudden puff of icy-cold air—the revelation of a singular and powerful personality. Yet she was only a poor old broken-down woman in a Wiltshire village, held fast in her chair by a hopeless infirmity. With her legs paralysed she was like that prince in the Eastern tale on whom an evil spell had been cast, turning the lower half of his body into marble. But she did not, like the prince, shed incessant tears and lament her miserable destiny with a loud voice. She was patient and cheerful always, ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... flagrantly and even ludicrously false, in order to carry his point? It is partly to be attributed to his controversial ardor, which is not only a heat, but a blaze, and frequently dazzles the eye of his understanding; but partly it is attributable also to an infirmity in the understanding itself. He shows, indeed, a singular combination of intellectual qualities. He has great external precision, and great inward looseness and slipperiness of mind: so that, if you follow ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... supposing that he suffered from some trouble of sexual potency. At once admirers rushed forward to "defend" Carlyle from this "disgraceful" charge; they were more shocked than if it had been alleged that he was a syphilitic. Yet impotence is, at the most, an infirmity, whether due to some congenital anatomical defect or to a disturbance of nervous balance in the delicate sexual mechanism, such as is apt to occur in men of abnormally sensitive temperament. It is no more disgraceful to suffer ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... of art for Cervantes to maintain the dignity of his hero's character in the midst of the whimsical and ridiculous distresses in which he has perpetually involved him. His infirmity leads us to distinguish between his character and his conduct, and to absolve him from all responsibility for the latter. The author's art is no less shown in regard to the other principal figure in the piece, Sancho Panza, who, with the most contemptible qualities, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... elevation, Neddy, which no truly wise man, conscious of human infirmity, would ever ...
— The Rambles of a Rat • A. L. O. E.
... to advance the reputation of Dr. Goldsmith. He loved him, though he knew his failings, and particularly the leaven of envy, which corroded the mind of that elegant writer, and made him impatient, without disguise, of the praises bestowed on any person whatever. Of this infirmity, which marked Goldsmith's character, Johnson gave a remarkable instance. It happened that he went with sir Joshua Reynolds and Goldsmith, to see the fantoccini, which were exhibited, some years ago, in or near the Haymarket. They admired the curious mechanism by which the puppets ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... that season when the rains had swollen the rivers and destroyed the mountain roads. It is significant that throughout the life of Las Casas in America, he is never once mentioned as being ill or obliged on account of any infirmity to defer or alter his plans. His constitution was evidently one of steel. In spite of his seventy-one years, he reached his destination in due time, where he met the bishops of Guatemala and Nicaragua, the ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... their infirmities in order to display them, who pretended poverty, troubled themselves about nothing, and yet wished to live in comfort. The prophet liked to deprive them of their begging tool, namely, the infirmity, so that they were compelled to work. He healed the man's rheumatic leg, and said; "Take up thy bed and walk." And the sick man was much astounded over the turn things had taken; the bed had carried him there, but he must carry the ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... whose names are underwritten—can testify, if called to it, that Goody Nurse hath been troubled with an infirmity of body for many years, which the jury of women seem to be afraid ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... of disease or death as necessities; never as the will of God. It is Satan, not God, who binds the woman with a spirit of infirmity. It is not the will of our Father in heaven that one little one should perish. Indeed, we do not sufficiently appreciate the abhorrence with which the whole of Scripture speaks of disease and death: because we are in the habit of interpreting many texts which speak of the disease and death of ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... the assertion that the poor must always be with us. The productive capacity of society is now so great that none need want, and all are able to earn their livelihood, and more, except where they are prevented from doing so by sickness, infirmity, or by the existence of laws and customs which the individual cannot himself, acting alone, remove."[196] "There is a demand for the labour of every man under any well-ordered social system. If there is a waste ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... Northern Nigeria an official who bore the title of Killer of the Elephant throttled the king "as soon as he showed signs of failing health or growing infirmity". The king-elect was afterwards conducted to the centre of the town, called Head of the Elephant, where he was made to lie down on a bed. Then a black ox was slaughtered and its blood allowed to pour all over his body. Next the ox was flayed, and the remains ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... has planned to betray—that they should pretend to be absolutely deaf to his observation, the manifest gravity of its bearing upon their interests and future happiness notwithstanding. Moreover, we who are among the spectators are bound to credit this curious auricular infirmity on the part of the lover and the lady. We can of course hear perfectly well the speech of their playfellow, and are thoroughly aware that from their position they must of necessity hear it at least as distinctly as we do. Yet it is incumbent upon us to ignore our convictions and ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... please, Ma'am," replied the son—not of this happy mother, thank Heaven! not of this proud, elegant lady, oh, no!—but of some no less human-hearted mother, I suppose, who had likewise loved her boy, perhaps all the more fondly for his infirmity,—who had hugged him to her bosom so many, many times, with wild and sorrowful love,—and who, be sure, would not have kept him standing there, ragged and shivering, in ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... iron-grey hair fell across his forehead, and it was apparently one of his life's labours to get it to lie amid the mass, for his hand rarely ceased to be in motion without an impulsive stroke at the refractory forelock. He peered through his eyelashes ordinarily, but from no infirmity of sight. The truth was, that the man's nature counteracted his spirit's intenser eagerness and restlessness by alternating a state of repose that resembled dormancy, and so preserved him. Rosamund was obliged to give him credit for ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... excuse, so often repeated by the lovers of tobacco, that they have been advised to use it by physicians, for the mitigation or removal of some bodily infirmity, may be urged with equal force and propriety by the tippler and the sot; for many, very many, have been advised by members of the Faculty, to drink the deadly draught, in some form or other, either to ease the pains ...
— A Dissertation on the Medical Properties and Injurious Effects of the Habitual Use of Tobacco • A. McAllister
... up against the wood-box and looked at that seat, as a boy looks at a jar of peppermint-drops in a candy-store window. After a while I reflected that these people were all strangers, and, of course, unaware of my infirmity; this gave me a certain degree of courage. I left the support of the wood-box and made my way along the aisle until I came ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... another infirmity of the mind to which my attention has been called by an able paper read this spring to the Cambridge Moral Science Club by my friend Miss Amber Reeves. In this she has developed a suggestion of Mr. F.C.S. Schiller's. The current ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... 'Clearly,' the Time Traveller proceeded, 'any real body must have extension in four directions: it must have Length, Breadth, Thickness, and—Duration. But through a natural infirmity of the flesh, which I will explain to you in a moment, we incline to overlook this fact. There are really four dimensions, three which we call the three planes of Space, and a fourth, Time. There is, however, a tendency to draw an unreal distinction between ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... find misspelled words in this note, you will remember my infirmity and not hold me responsible. Affectionately yours, LIVY ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... from other people without exciting suspicion. I went myself to Mrs. Vesey to ascertain if Laura's impression of having slept there was correct or not. In this case, from consideration for Mrs. Vesey's age and infirmity, and in all subsequent cases of the same kind from considerations of caution, I kept our real position a secret, and was always careful to speak of Laura as "the ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... has been worthless as a student when a boy. To take these exceptions as examples would be as unsafe as it would be to advocate blindness because some blind men have won undying honor by triumphing over their physical infirmity and accomplishing great results in the world. I am no advocate of senseless and excessive cramming in studies, but a boy should work, and should work hard, at his lessons—in the first place, for the sake of what ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... manifestly capable of religion and of the religious life as any other intelligent persons during the lucid interludes that make up nine-tenths perhaps of their lives. . . . Suppose now one of these cases, and suppose that the infirmity takes the form of some cruel, disgusting, or destructive disposition that may become at times overwhelming, and you have our universal trouble with sinful tendency, as it were magnified for examination. It is clear that the ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... were, in the time of Charles the Second, generally conveyed from place to place by stage waggons. In the straw of these vehicles nestled a crowd of passengers, who could not afford to travel by coach or on horseback, and who were prevented by infirmity, or by the weight of their luggage, from going on foot. The expense of transmitting heavy goods in this way was enormous. From London to Birmingham the charge was seven pounds a ton; from London to Exeter twelve pounds a ton. [144] This was about fifteen pence a ton for every mile, more by ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of one of the gentlemen we met at this table. It is that English sporting men are often deaf on one side, in consequence of the noise of the frequent discharge of their guns affecting the right ear. This is a very convenient infirmity for gentlemen who indulge in slightly aggressive remarks, but when they are hit back never seem to be conscious at all of the riposte,—the return thrust ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... are Kalou, but all things that are Kalou are not Gods. Gods are Kalou vu; deified ghosts are Kalou yalo. The former are eternal, without beginning of days or end of years; the latter are subject to infirmity ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... only, we hear of at this point in his life. His dislike of early rising amounted, we are told, 'almost to a constitutional infirmity'. This weakness too he overcame, yet not quite so successfully as his doubts upon the doctrine of the Trinity. For in afterlife, the Doctor would often declare 'that early rising continued to be a daily effort to him and that in this instance he never found ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... Paris this winter with the idea of collecting some; but if my horrible cold continues, my stay here will be useless! Am I going to become like the canon of Poitiers, of whom Montaigne speaks, who for thirty years did not leave his room "because of his melancholic infirmity," but who, however, was very well "except for a cold which had settled on his stomach." This is to tell you that I am seeing very few people. Moreover whom could I see? The war has opened many abysses. I have not been able to get your article on Badinguet. ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... of body; for a tottering dancer can never plant his steps so as to afford a pleasing execution. It may sound a little odd, but, the truth is, that in dancing, sprightliness and agility are principally produced by bodily strength; while on the contrary, weakness, or infirmity, must give every step and spring, not only a tottering, but a heavy air. The legs that bear with the most ease the weight of the body, will naturally make it seem ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... similar depression of spirits, have found their way into the thoughts of some of the gallantest hearts that ever breathed;—but then, untold and unremembered, even by the sufferer himself, they passed off with the passing infirmity that produced them, leaving neither to truth to record them as proofs of want of health, nor to calumny to fasten upon them a suspicion of want of bravery. The assertion of some one that all men are by nature cowardly would seem to be countenanced by the readiness with which most men believe others ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... surprised that he could not hide it. He had expected to see a miserable-looking invalid, with imbecile writ large all over him; instead of whom he was confronted by a dignified, courteous gentleman, whose infirmity was only hinted at by a certain languor of movement ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... be: things will be better." Her attention was attracted at length by voices below; she looked down, and saw there, in one of the yards, a poor deformed child, whom she had often noticed before, and always with sorrowful interest. Besides his bodily infirmity, he had a further claim on her sympathy, in having lost his mother within a few months. Ellen's heart was easily touched this morning; she felt for him very much. "Poor, poor little fellow!" she thought; "he's a great deal worse off than I am. His ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell |
