"Weak-kneed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that he ought to make his decision—that he will profit by it in many ways. He fully intends to make his decision some time, or else he would not ask the salesman to come back and see him again. But he is a little weak-kneed. He lacks something in decisiveness. Our friend treated practically all of these indecisive prospects of his ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... of the weak-kneed steamer against wind and current was very slow and uncertain, and we never knew when we should reach any given point. Even the mouths of the rivers were not so exciting or important in nature as they used ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... she, bringin' her hands up above her head. 'Thin what are you, ye lyin', schamin', weak-kneed, dhirty-souled son av a sutler? Am I shameless? Who put the open shame on me an' my child that we shud go beggin' through the lines in the broad daylight for the broken word of a man? Double portion of my shame be on you, Terence Mulvaney, that think yourself so strong! By Mary and ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... against this Berselius," said Adams to himself, "same as if we were dogs. That's the long and short of it. Yes, I can understand his meaning in part; he's afraid if Berselius engages some week-kneed individual, he'll give the weak-kneed individual more than he can take. He wants to stick a six-foot Yankee in the breach, instead of a five-foot froggie, all absinthe and cigarette ends. Well, he was frank, at all events. Hum, I don't like ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... drink, or ammunition. The end is sure against us. Our original agitation was just; our present obduracy is madness. This ship is suspected. It is believed by the rest of the fleet—by ships like the Invincible—that we're weak-kneed, selfish, and lacking in fidelity to the cause. That's not true; but we have either to fight or to run, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... could think or talk of little else than this outrage, and Blaze Jones, as befitted its leading citizen, was loudest in his criticism of the government's weak-kneed policy. ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... yet. The only people who shall declare peace will be the army—no politicians, no parliament, or government—for the army to-day is a citizen army and large enough to change any government that is weak-kneed, and they shall allow parliament to grant peace only when they are ready, and that shall not be until we have gained ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... not very extensive, but he puts himself to considerable pains to make the most of them. In The Lady Mother we find the same ornaments spread out before us, many of them very tawdry at their best. Glapthorne's editor has striven to show that the weak-kneed playwright was a fellow-pupil of John Milton's at St. Paul's. One cannot think of the two names together without calling to mind the "lean and flashy songs" and "scrannel pipes of wretched ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... own bank roll. Wal, I set it up—the notice o' reward—one night, an' next day got the news we was all yearnin' for. Bob Whitstone, as he called himself, brought it right along to me. I hadn't no use fer the feller up to then. He was weak-kneed. And, in a way, had fallen fer Ju Penrose's rye. He'd come to me once before on the subject o' these all-fired grazin' rights. Y'see, he'd been tryin' to git ahead raisin' wheat in a country where ther' was only a market fer cattle an' rye whisky. Anyway, he cut most ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... at that time President of the twelve apostles, and I think Brigham Young was second and Orson Hyde the third on the roll. The great opposition to our people and Church caused the two pillars, Marsh and Hyde, to become weak-kneed and turn over to the enemy. Col. G. M. Hinkle, Dr. Averard, Judge W. W. Phelps, and others of the "tall" men of the Church followed suit. I remember going with Brother Levi Stewart to some of those fallen angels (in the days of our prosperity they had looked ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... in bone and animal matter; close confinement; lack of exercise; over-heating in brooders. Symptoms: Chicks walk in a wobbly, weak-kneed fashion, often resting or hobbling along on the joints. Treatment: Feed young chicks on Pratts Baby Chick Food. Give fair amount of beef or fish scrap and bone meal. Afford opportunity for exercise, especially on the ground. Avoid bottom heat in ...
— Pratt's Practical Pointers on the Care of Livestock and Poultry • Pratt Food Co.
... of maize—just the same mixture of grit and sticky dough as the peasants in Pindus starve upon. Even this—enough in itself to inflame any English stomach—is reduced to 1/2 lb. a day. As I stood at the gate this afternoon taking my first breath of air, I watched the weak-kneed, lantern-jawed soldiers going round from house to house begging in vain for anything to eat. Yet they say the health of the camp as a whole has improved. This they ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... and carried at Nagpur stated bluntly that "the object of the Indian National Congress is the attainment of Swaraj by the people of India by all legitimate and peaceful means." Many of the members would have left out the last words which were intended to ease the scruples of the more weak-kneed brethren. But Mr. Jinna, a Mahomedan Extremist from Bombay, whose legal mind in spite of all his bitterness does not blink the cold light of reason, warned his audience that India could not achieve complete ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... has been a severe one on us all. We of the 'Dodger' have been through the same sort of thing before. You midshipmen have not. If you feel, therefore, that you would prefer to have me head about and return to the Naval Academy I give you my word that I shall not think you weak-kneed for ...
— Dave Darrin's Fourth Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... Conwell thus arrives early, the time is passed in singing. Often he utilizes these few minutes to learn new hymns. So that when the real prayer meeting is in progress, there will be no blundering through new tunes or weak-kneed renditions of them. The singing, Dr. Conwell wants done with the spirit. He will not sing a verse if the heart and mind cannot endorse it. After singing several hymns in this earnest, prayerful fashion, every one present is fully in tune for the services to follow. Prayer meeting opens ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... getting the Democratic vote. Accordingly, George Francis Train, then a most effective and popular speaker, was invited into the State to see what could be done to win the Democracy. He soon turned the tide, strengthened the weak-kneed Republicans and abolitionists, and secured a ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... knows our weak-kneed, white-livered bourgeois too well to be taken in by it. The League talks and Bismarck is silent. Oh, if I had a majority in the Chamber, as they have, I'd leave ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... herself growing weak-kneed. She looked apprehensively at Amarilly, who stepped bravely to the front with the air of one who feels that ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... that the children grow up into rotten adults, without virility or stamina, a weak-kneed, narrow-chested, listless breed, that crumples up and goes down in the brute struggle for life with the invading hordes from the country. The railway men, carriers, omnibus drivers, corn and timber porters, and ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... be cast for sticking it out; and if I know anything about Jud and Nuthin and Bluff, together with several more, the majority will want to stick. But I mean to give them a hint that we think that way. Several weak-kneed brothers are always ready to vote the way the leaders do. When the scout master takes snuff they start to sneezing ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... the intense anguish of trying to decide somebody else's quandary that might be a life or death matter which would surely involve them all. Damn, weak-kneed kid! How had he ever gotten ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... not pretend to be moral, the feeling they betray is in fact that of undissembled joy in all the successful artifices and tricks of the patriarchal rogue. Of the subordinate figures Esau is drawn with some liking for him, then Laban, and the weak-kneed saint, Lot. Ishmael is drawn as the prototype of the Bedouin, as a wild ass of a man, whose hand is against every man, and every ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... At this weak-kneed confession the Baron could hardly withhold an exclamation of contempt, but Essington, with more ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... to have clearly established, in this epistle, the doctrine that some are born to be saved, and others born to be lost. The ninth chapter especially has been the great storehouse of arguments for such as hold this view. The strong-minded and the weak-kneed have all resorted thither. They entrench themselves behind such passages as, "Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated;" "Hath not the potter power over the clay?" and think, by repeating them, that they have ...
— The Doctrines of Predestination, Reprobation, and Election • Robert Wallace
... was his answer, "is something hard to say. A man like Dunwody is pretty much his own party, although the Bentonites call him a 'soft Democrat.' Hardly soft he seems, when he gets in action at the state capital of Missouri yonder. Certainly Dunwody is for war and tumult. None of this late weak-kneed compromise for him! To have his own way—that is Dunwody's creed of life. I thank God he is not going with us now. He might want his own way with you, from the fashion of his glances. Did you see? My word!" Young Carlisle ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... a melancholy fact that, by reason of uncleanness, we have almost lost regard for the type of puritanic manhood which in the past held aloft the standard of a chaste and holy life; such men in this day are spoken of as "too slow" as "weak-kneed," and "goody-goody" men. Let me recall that word, the fast and indecently-dressed "things," the animals of easy virtue, the "respectable" courtesans that flirt, chaff, gamble, and waltz with well-known ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... lawyers called it. An' I says 'salt or sugar, I'm here, an' what air you goin' to do about it?' They fotch money again' me, an' the lawyers they jawed an' they palarvered; an' finally I got a chance to speak to that weak-kneed jedge, I did, an' I says, 'Look here, I've a longer knife, an' if you tell this jury to convict me, I'll put about a foot an' a half of it under yo' rusty ribs.' An' you better believe he smiled on me. Margaret, there ...
— The Starbucks • Opie Percival Read |
