"Weaken" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... themselves all day, indulged in this sort of silent observation. Their window was narrow, and the mother, whose eyes were beginning to weaken as the result of hard usage, sat near the light against the drawn muslin curtain; her daughter's large armchair was a little farther away. She announced the approach of their daily passers-by. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... which slew, Sennacherib's Assyrian crew, Of him who's traitor hand shall dare To furl one fold that flutters there! And palsied be the traitor tongue, And from its root uptorn and wrung, That dares to utter but one word To weaken the soul-anchored cord, Which binds Canadians heart and hand In love to the old Mother Land! Bob Boyle, "I thank thee" that thy name Hath stirred the patriotic flame, In days like these, when treason's ...
— Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants • William Pittman Lett
... though you will not understand, that all laws weaken in a small and hidden community where there is no public opinion. When a man is absolutely alone in a Station he runs a certain risk of falling into evil ways. The risk is multiplied by every addition ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... one direction culture seems to weaken the moral fibre. The kind of courage which leads to quick heroic action in great emergencies is apt to be lost by the habit of balancing arguments for and against action. The gentleness which comes from quiet study ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... sensation to feel for the first time that you are in Granada. No amount of travelling can weaken the romantic interest which clings about this storied place, or take away aught from the freshness of that emotion with which you first behold it, I sit almost at the foot of the Alhambra, whose walls I can see from my window, quite satisfied for to-day with ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... the culture of piano music, with the result that he not only became the first pianist himself, but produced a set of compositions that had the effect of raising the art to the highest pitch of perfection; he was a zealous Catholic, and took holy orders, but this did not damp his ardour or weaken his power as a musician; he spent the greater part of his life at Weimar, but he practised his art far and wide, and his last visit to England in 1886, the year on which he died, created quite a flutter ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... forces in the recovery, from some diseases, at least, is the development in the body of a substance which acts as an antidote to the bacterial poison. So long as this antitoxine is not present the poisons produced by the disease will have their full effect to weaken the body and prevent the revival of its resisting powers to drive off the bacteria. Plainly, if it is possible to obtain this antitoxine in quantity and then inoculate it into the body when the toxic poisons are present, we have a means for decidedly ...
— The Story Of Germ Life • H. W. Conn
... while putting up the stovepipe. He had set his lip to bleeding because he forgot that it was cut, and drew it sharply between his teeth when the stovepipe fell apart just when he was sure it was up to stay. He had invented two new cuss-words. What he had not done was weaken in his determination to make that small schoolhouse a ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... the United States Marine Hospital authorities had stood back of their men. Now they began to weaken. The findings of the Federal Commission were kept out of the weekly service reports, and data of the epidemic were edited out of the public health bulletins, in disregard of the law. Even this subserviency ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... . . . . . . she eagerly heartened him: "Lo, the work of Weland shall not weaken or fail For the man who the mighty Mimming can wield, The frightful brand. Oft in battle have fallen 5 Sword-wounded warriors one after the other. 6 Vanguard of Attila, thy valor must ever Endure the conflict! The day is now come, 9 When fate shall award you ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various
... and Mr. Boston had been planned, she said, by the Malay; and when he and his native friends found that they could not induce Mr. Wright to further weaken his ship's company by sending another boat's crew on shore, so that the Union might the more easily be captured, she was ordered under the most awful threats to act as decoy. Resolved to upset their diabolical ...
— The Adventure Of Elizabeth Morey, of New York - 1901 • Louis Becke
... retain most accurately what you see? Can you reproduce either exactly or in correct substance what you read to yourself without any supporting aids to stimulate your memory? If you have this kind of mind develop it along that line. Do not weaken its power by letting it lean on any supports at all. If you find you can do without them, do not get into the habit of taking notes. If you can remember to do everything you should do during a trip downtown don't make a list of ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... appropriateness of the title, which is now inseparably linked with his baptismal name. He inherited the throne at the age of three years, and his early education was carefully attended to by his faithful guardians, who snubbed and scared him, in the hope that they might so far weaken his intellect as to secure a permanent control over him, and through him govern Russia as they pleased. They made a footstool of him sometimes, and a football at others, and, under their system of training, the development of those qualities of mind and heart for ...
— Strange Stories from History for Young People • George Cary Eggleston
... the force which he required, and Tostig set sail. William had not, apparently, much confidence in the power of Tostig to produce any great effect, but his efforts, he thought, might cause some alarm in England, and occasion sudden and fatiguing marches to the troops, and thus distract and weaken King Harold's forces. William would not, therefore, accompany Tostig himself, but, dismissing him with such force as he could readily raise on so sudden a call, he remained himself in Normandy, and commenced ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... character of John, and the little Henry of Winchester could have had no share in the crimes of his father. But the dead king had lately shown such rare energy that there was a danger lest the accession of a boy of nine might not weaken the cause of monarchy. The barons were largely out of hand. The war was assuming the character of the civil war of Stephen's days, and John's mercenaries were aspiring to play the part of feudal potentates. It was significant that so many of John's principal supporters were possessors of extensive ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... Charles Darwin among eminent Englishmen, was the son of a blacksmith and a farmer's daughter. Such pedigrees are striking; and yet, as Frederick Adams Woods has remarked, they ought to strengthen rather than to weaken one's belief in the force of heredity. When it is considered how rarely such an ancestry produces a great man, it must be fairly evident that his greatness is due to an accidental conjunction of ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... prone to fancies and superstitions in the night-time, and something in the sentiment saddened her. The unknown musician did not weaken the effect by playing another air; and Cecil towards morning fell into an unrefreshing slumber, in which her dreams seemed to parody the ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... father's feeling that it hasn't much to do with real life: especially now that he's got to make a speech in connection with the founding of this Missionary College. He may think that any hint of internecine strife will weaken his prestige. Mightn't you have ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... brought her, Proud she stood and calm and marvellously fair; Yet I saw her spirit—truth cannot dissemble— Saw her pure as gold, staunch and keen and brave, For she knows my worth and her heart was all atremble, Lest her will should weaken and make her ...
— Lundy's Lane and Other Poems • Duncan Campbell Scott
... to me so plain that, besides our religionists, our American education is playing in with the Kaiser's plans. It tends to weaken faith in our government. It makes unpatriotic citizens. Our colleges turn out young men who feel no political duties. We teach them to look for benefits without responsibilities. How different with the German universities! Our school histories, too, nurse active hatred of England, ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... China into Burmah, but among some of the wilder and more remote districts of Northern Szchuen, afforded reason to believe that henceforth traveling would be safer in China, and nothing that has since happened is calculated to weaken ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... great theologians ... Not that I want the kind of theology which is customary in the schools nowadays consigned to oblivion; I wish it to be rendered more trustworthy and more correct by the accession of the old, true learning. It will not weaken the authority of the Scriptures or theologians if certain passages hitherto considered corrupt are henceforth read in an emended form, or if passages are more correctly understood on which up till now the mass of theologians have entertained delusions: ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... and difficulties of life have more gradually and gently taught the lessons of endurance and silent courage that probably have to be learnt by all who are destined to develop and gather force as they go, and not to dwindle and weaken, as seems to be the lot of those less fortunate in circumstance or less well-equipped at birth for the struggles that in one form or another present themselves in ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... complete a masterpiece that its author probably did not care to weaken its effect by continuing at the time to bring out any of the supplementary treatises on Roman oratory for which his library, and still more his memory, had accumulated immense quantities of material. In the treatise De Republica, which was begun in 54 B.C., though not published till three ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... patients in bed and forbid them to rise or to make use of their muscles, we at once lessen appetite, weaken digestion in many cases, constipate ...
— Fat and Blood - An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria • S. Weir Mitchell
... When those floating bodies are disengaged from each other by the thaw, they sail away separately, maintaining their balance; but by degrees, as they near the south, where the water is relatively warmer, their base, shaken by the collision with other icebergs, begins to melt and weaken; it then happens that their centre of gravity is displaced, and, naturally, they overturn. Only, if that one had turned over two minutes later, it would have ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... grasp, and slackly hold, that which is good. Such energy of moral recoil from evil is perfectly consistent with honest love, for it is things, not men, that we are to hate; and it is needful as the completion and guardian of love itself. There is always danger that love shall weaken the condemnation of wrong, and modern liberality, both in the field of opinion and in regard to practical life, has so far condoned evil as largely to have lost its hold upon good. The criminal is pitied rather than blamed, and a multitude ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... almost if not quite at the same time as we had discovered them. I most fervently hoped it might be as I surmised, for, if so, I should have the fellow at advantage, inasmuch as he would doubtless have put a fairly strong prize crew on board the ship, which would proportionately weaken his own crew. Full of the hope that this Ishmael of the sea might be about to place himself within my power, I caused all hands to be called, and, having first made sail, sent them to quarters, the gunner at the same time descending to the magazine and sending up a plentiful supply ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... I was born either in Germany or Austria. That's all I know. And to tell you the honest truth, boy, it's the reason I've placed my woman-ideal so high. So long as I place her over my head I'm not foolish enough to weaken into thinking I can have her. What woman wants a man ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... distinction between the man and the scientist. It was no ordinary misanthropy that kept Captain Nemo and his companions sequestered inside the Nautilus's plating, but a hate so monstrous or so sublime that the passing years could never weaken it. ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... debate in the tribunate by a motion on the subject. He dwelt on the same motives as the senators had done. His proposition was carried with enthusiasm. Carnot alone had the courage to oppose the empire: "I am far," said he, "from wishing to weaken the praises bestowed on the first consul; but whatever services a citizen may have done to his country, there are bounds which honour, as well as reason, imposes on national gratitude. If this citizen has restored public ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... how my unhappiness increased in proportion as the social spheres on which I entered widened. God knows what efforts I made to weaken the decree which condemned me to live within myself! What hopes, long cherished with eagerness of soul, were doomed to perish in a day! To persuade my parents to come and see me, I wrote them letters full of feeling, too emphatically worded, it may be; but surely such ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... black strength if a rapid and uncontrolled increase in the number of black troops was to be avoided. And it had to be avoided, they believed, lest it create a disproportionately large pool of black career soldiers with low aptitudes that would weaken the Army. Using the quota to limit the number of black troops, they maintained, was not necessarily discriminatory. It could be defended as a logical reading of the Gillem Board's declaration that "the proportion of Negro to white ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... continual scolding and punishment in childhood, through its worriments and nocturnal enuresis; later on, beginning to affect him with all kinds of physical distortions and ailments, nocturnal pollutions, and other conditions calculated to weaken him physically, mentally, and morally; to land him, perchance, in the jail, or even in a lunatic asylum. Man's whole life is subject to the capricious dispensations and whims of this Job's-comforts-dispensing ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... proceeded on his way, halting every little while to catch his breath. When he turned a corner into a side street, recognizing every tree and gate and house, there came a gathering and swelling of his emotions and he began to weaken and shake. He was afraid he could not make it half way up the street. But he kept on. The torture now was more a mingled rapture and grief than the physical protest of his racked body. At last he saw the modest little house—and then he stood at the gate, quivering. ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... mentioned in Chap. III, Sec. 1, to all the ideas of descent, development and selection. That main objection is the permanence of species, observed through thousands of years; and the defense with which the descent and evolution theories successfully weaken it, is the statement of the fact that, since man appeared, no new species has originated, and that therefore the principle of the generation of species seems to have come to a stand-still. Now this fact is no ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... intellect than ordinarily falls to the share of human beings, and his education among Indians had taught him to treat those who were thus afflicted by Providence with more than common tenderness. Nor was there any thing in Hetty Hutter's appearance, as so often happens, to weaken the interest her situation excited. An idiot she could not properly be termed, her mind being just enough enfeebled to lose most of those traits that are connected with the more artful qualities, and to retain its ingenuousness and love of truth. It had often been remarked of ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... sent into Egypt? Could it be done? To do so; it would be necessary to send with them a numerous escort, which would too much weaken our little army in the enemy's country. How, besides, could they and the escort be supported till they reached Cairo, having no provisions to give them on setting out, and their route being through a hostile territory, ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... judgment was reversed, for now he knew that the jungle god would slay Simba and the old black was even more terrified of his own impending fate at the hands of the victor than he had been by the sure and sudden death which the triumphant lion would have meted out to him. He saw the lion weaken from loss of blood. He saw the mighty limbs tremble and stagger and at last he saw the beast sink down to rise no more. He saw the forest god or demon rise from the vanquished foe, and placing a foot upon the still quivering carcass, raise ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... a letter[373] which he addressed to the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, May 1, 1812, when he had received the recent British Order. He pointed out how astutely this step was calculated to undo the effect of Champagny's letter, and to weaken the American Administration at the critical moment when it was known to be preparing for war. He urged that the French Government should now make and publish an authentic Act, declaring the Berlin and Milan Decrees, as relative to the United States, to have ceased in November, 1810. "Such an act ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... was still clinging to him, with the ardent fervour of her own passion, she felt the rigid tension of his arms relax, the power of his embrace weaken, the wild love-light become dim ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... but it had upset her stomach. No doubt the thunder had shaken her stomach's confidence in the soundness of its opinions, so as to weaken its proselytising power. By and by, seeing that she ate a ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... withdraw a single man from here. They say it is so close to all those who have sought the shelter of the British Legation, so close to the women and children and those who are afraid, that it would be a crime to weaken this front. And yet there has been hardly a casualty among those sixty men during four weeks' siege, while elsewhere about one hundred and twenty have been killed ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... firm believer that the right use of hypnotism by intelligent persons does not weaken the will. Says he: "I do not believe there is any danger whatever in this. I have no evidence (and I have studied a large number of hypnotized subjects) that hypnotism will render a subject less capable of exercising his will when he is relieved from the ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... "rushed" and "snatched" lose rather than gain force by adding "hurriedly" and "hastily." Look up definitions of "rush" and "snatch." When we wish to express strong emotion or to describe action resulting from excitement, we only weaken the impression by using unnecessary words. Simple, direct sentences are most forceful. In aiming to secure sentence emphasis, then, we should avoid circumlocution, redundancy, tautology, and verbosity. (Look up these ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... major, "if our numbers were double; but it would weaken our attack by half—oh, by far more than half. No, Roby, I shall keep to the original plan. We don't know enough of the kopje, and in the darkness we could not ensure making the attack at the same moment, nor yet in the weakest places. ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... instructed by the leaders to make no effort to check it; it was deemed better strategy to tire out the opposition; it was decided to vote down every proposition to adjourn, and so continue the sitting into the night; opponents might desert, then, one by one and weaken their party, for they had no personal ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... history hitherto proves, however, that the popular form is practicable, and that with wisdom and knowledge men may govern themselves; and the duty incumbent on us is, to preserve the consistency of this cheering example, and take care that nothing may weaken its authority with the world. If, in our case, the representative system ultimately fail, popular governments must be pronounced impossible. No combination of circumstances more favorable to the experiment can ever be expected to occur. The last hopes of mankind, therefore, ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... well-merited compliment, that "it contained the ablest expositions of the true principles of finance ever delivered by an English statesman." Since that memorable defeat, Disraeli has lost no opportunity of attacking the member for Oxford University. To weaken his wonderful ascendency over the House has seemed to be the wish nearest his heart, and the signal failure which has thus far attended all his efforts only gives a keener edge to his sarcasm and increases the bitterness ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... just above which they remain, a little below the surface of the ground, with the head towards the root of the plant. Here they imbibe the sap by suction alone, and, by the simple pressure of their bodies become imbedded in the side of the stem. Two or three larvae thus imbedded serve to weaken the plant and cause it to wither and die. The second brood of larvae remains through the winter in the flax-seed, or puparium. By turning the stubble with the plough in the autumn and early spring, its imago may be destroyed, and thus its ravages may be checked. (Figure 237 represents ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... with a gloomy and despotic disposition to generate an unmitigated hostility to all innovations in religion; a feeling which the thought that his most formidable political opponents were also the enemies of his faith was not calculated to weaken. As his European possessions, scattered as they were over so many countries, were on all sides exposed to the seductions of foreign opinions, the progress of the Reformation in other quarters could not well be a matter of indifference to him. His immediate interests, therefore, ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... reached England in the beginning of 1787, from which period may be dated the commencement of her literary career. On her arrival in London she was affectionately received by the few friends whose attachment neither detraction nor adverse fortunes could weaken or estrange. During an absence of five years death had made inroads in the little circle of her connections; many of those whose idea had been her solace in affliction, and whose welcome she had delighted to anticipate, were ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... of milk, and hence its quality, is seriously affected by its adulteration. By this is meant the extraction of any of the food substances from whole milk; the addition of anything that tends to weaken or lower its quality or strength; the use of coloring matter to make it appear of greater value than it actually is; or the use of preservatives to prevent it from souring as soon as it ordinarily would. It is, of course, ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 2 - Volume 2: Milk, Butter and Cheese; Eggs; Vegetables • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... it was impossible ever to compassionate, and Hugh could not compassionate her now. She would have had no sort of tolerance for any melancholy or brooding grief; she would desire to be tenderly remembered, but she would have been utterly impatient of the thought that any grief for her should weaken or darken the outlook of her friends upon the world. Hugh resolved, with a great flood of strong love for his friend, that he would grieve for her as she would have had him grieve, as though they were but separated ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... my brave comrades. When I review these circumstances, I feel a secret and internal consolation which no reverse of fortune, no sentence in the power of this court to inflict, can deprive me of, or weaken in any degree. Under the flag of the French Republic I originally engaged with a view to save and liberate my own country. For that purpose I have encountered the chances of war amongst strangers; for that purpose ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... commanded at Boston, and to Sullivan and Greene, who commanded at Rhode Island. In his letter to General Heath he stated his fears "that the departure of the French fleet from Rhode Island at so critical a moment, would not only weaken the confidence of the people in their new allies, but produce such prejudice and resentment as might prevent their giving the fleet, in its present distress, such zealous and effectual assistance as was demanded by the exigency of affairs and the true interests of America;" and added "that it would ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... will be a just ground for reproach that we sacrificed their interests in a cause that was already hopeless. Moreover, if we refused the proposal which the British Government now makes to us, I am afraid that we shall considerably weaken our position in the eyes of the world, and thus lose much of the sympathy which to-day it ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... each spur. But I have watched the cultivators during the process, and observed the usual neglect; sometimes the spurs were shaved off completely, without a bud for next year's shoot, and at others too many buds were left, that would weaken and disfigure the parent stem. The instrument for pruning was similar to a very small reaping-hook, with a handle about a foot in length, and the delicate operation was conducted with a rapidity that rendered the necessary ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... that the whole group of concerns became insolvent (Oct. 1892), and the Liberator depositors and shareholders were defrauded of every penny of their investments. Many of them suffered great distress from the loss of their savings, and some were absolutely ruined. The result was to weaken confidence in building societies generally, and this was very marked in the rapid decline of the amount of the capital of the incorporated building societies. From its highest point (nearly 54 millions) reached in 1887, it fell to below 43 millions in 1895. On some societies, which ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... should be killed. That did not lessen the number of murders, and seems rather to have increased them; for the impulse to murder is commonly a very strong impulse, producing a brain condition in which consequences are not weighed. Also, when the community takes life for life, it appears to weaken the general respect for life, and men can be hired to do a killing job for small sums. Sentimental persons, too, insist on making heroes of convicted murderers, which in a degree, perhaps, counteracts the depressing conditions ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... custom. He therefore urgently begged Oberlin would go to his house, and conjure the ghost, for the purpose of either putting him in possession of the treasure, or of discontinuing its visits. Oberlin replied, that he did not trouble himself with the conjuration of ghosts, and endeavoured to weaken the notion of an apparition in the man's mind, exhorting him at the same time to seek for worldly wealth by application to his business, prayer, and industry. Observing, however, that his efforts were unavailing, he promised to comply with the man's request. On arriving ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 482, March 26, 1831 • Various
... and I make it with all my heart. Your brother favours me to the utmost, and it is likely that we might live and work together; anyhow, it is certain that he would have my best influence and support. I don't know what I could say more if I tried. I might only weaken what is ill enough said as it is. I only add that if it is any claim on you to be in earnest, I am in ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... is about to take an inspiration, he is sure to make a (previous) expiration; when he is going to weaken another, he will first strengthen him; when he is going to overthrow another, he will first have raised him up; when he is going to despoil another, he will first have made gifts to him:—this is called 'Hiding ...
— Tao Teh King • Lao-Tze
... do not hasten back we shall starve. Harry Powers has come to our rescue several times, but is beginning to weaken, and the outlook is very dreary. If you cannot come yourself, please ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... to the editors of a newspaper which had traduced him, with his name at full length. But after two nights' sleepless deliberation, the hopelessness of serving his friend, with a horror and disdain of being mistaken as one who would lend any arms to weaken government at this crisis, made him consent to repress it. I was dreadfully uneasy during the conflict, knowing, far better than I can make him conceive, the mischiefs that might follow any interference at this moment, in ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... helmets as the water poured into his suit. They saw him writhe and struggle desperately in the remorseless grip which held him. The two huge eyes of the cuttlefish surveyed his death throes minutely; watched his agonized struggles gradually weaken; watched his legs and arms relax, his head sink lower.... And then the tentacle let a lifeless body float ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... from stick to stick, which was notched at the ends to hold it; sometimes the sticks were held with a tack at the point of crossing, and sometimes they were mortised into one another; but this was apt to weaken them. The frame was laid down on a sheet of paper, and the paper was cut an inch or two larger, and then pasted and folded over the string. Most of the boys used a paste made of flour and cold water; but my boy and his brother could usually ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... he speaks of the air of Devon as "very healthy, temperate, sweet, and pure," and giving long life to the inhabitants, more particularly in the good old times, when men were content to live temperately and frugally, and did not weaken themselves with delicacies, but subsisted on the bare sustenance afforded by the earth. Indeed, in the most ancient times they lived on bark and roots, and on a certain "confection," of which if they took a small ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... is to say, if these two new lines do not too much lengthen out and weaken the amiability of the original thought and expression. You have a discretionary power about showing. I should think that Croker would not disrelish a sight of these light little humorous things, and may be ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... National Church in this its supreme hour, is that of assisting and sustaining it, if it be in our power, in the interest of dogmatic truth. I should wish to avoid everything, except under the direct call of duty, which went to weaken its hold upon the public mind, or to unsettle its establishment, or to embarrass and lessen its maintenance of those great Christian and Catholic principles and doctrines which it has up to this time ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... the same error, lad," said the captain, kindly. "The blame, if any, belongs to us all. Forget it, Charley, and don't let it weaken your self-confidence. Now what do you think of the plan ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... sacrifices for God and the salvation of the world. O fools and blind, not to see, that selfishness, idleness, luxury, pride, worldliness, slavery to fashion, neglect of the Bible, ignorance and lukewarmness are the things which disgrace and weaken the Church, and hinder ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... makes him eat the linen which envelops him. This reviving being, or oupire, comes out of his grave, or a demon in his likeness, goes by night to embrace and hug violently his near relations or his friends, and sucks their blood so much as to weaken and attenuate them, and at last cause their death. This persecution does not stop at one single person; it extends to the last person of the family, if the course be not interrupted by cutting off the head or opening the heart of the ghost, whose corpse is found in his coffin, ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... companies to call for hundreds of officers; it was merely a commando, whether it had ten men or ten thousand, and neither the subdivision nor the augmentation of a force affected the list of officers in any way. Nor would such a multiplication of officers weaken the fighting strength of a force, for every officer, from Commandant-General to corporal, carried and used ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas
... always as easy to give an account of it as to give an account what it is that shall keep together a material and immaterial substance. And yet the difficulty that there is to give an account of that, I hope, does not, with your lordship, weaken the credibility of the inseparable union of soul and body to eternity; and I persuade myself that the men of sense, to whom your lordship appeals in this case, do not find their belief of this fundamental point much weakened by that difficulty.... ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... Godhead He might have done, that he should not tempt Him, but permitted him to spend all his artillery, and received the strokes and assaults of Satan's temptations in His own body, to the end He might weaken and enfeeble the strength and tyrannous power of our adversary by His long suffering. For thus, methinks, our Master and Champion, Jesus Christ, provoked our enemy to battle: "Satan, thou gloriest ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various
... thick, and antiently wasted to a great depth: The Colliers, some Weeks agoe, having wrought as deep as they could, and being to remove into new Rooms (as they call them) did, by taking off, as they retired, part of the Coal that was left as Pillars to support the Roof and Earth over it, so much weaken them, that within a short space, after they were gone out of the Pitt, the Pillars falling, the Earth above them filled up the whole Space, where the Colliers had lately wrought, with its ruins. The Colliers being here-by out of work, some of them adventured to work upon old remains ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... twelve hundred and forty-three tons register, laden with sugar and rum. She was therefore a valuable recapture. She carried thirty-two passengers, and by great good luck her own British crew was also on board. It was not necessary, therefore, for me to weaken my own force by putting a prize crew on board her; my chief mate being quite sufficient to represent and watch over the interests of the Sword Fish and her owners. The individual who had been put on board her as prize-master, when she ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... orgasm, of turgescence in the fleshy envelopes, in the muscular layers which protect and inclose the abdomen, the thorax, the principal vascular trunks, and the bony surfaces, must essentially contribute to weaken, to deaden, to nullify, the effect of the blows. Is it not by means of an analogous state of orgasm, which an over-excited will produces, that boxers and athletes find themselves in a condition to brave, to a certain point, the dangers of their profession? In fine, it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... price controls and subsidies, but economic growth has remained sluggish. Sao Tome is also optimistic that significant petroleum discoveries are forthcoming in its territorial waters in the oil-rich waters of the Gulf of Guinea. Corruption scandals continue to weaken the economy. At the same time, progress in the economic reform program has attracted international financial institutions' support, and GDP growth will likely rise to at ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... should be tempted to waste their substance on white kids and "all-rounds," or to insist on becoming millionnaires at once, by anything I have said, I will give them references to some of the class referred to, well known to the public as literary diluents, who will weaken any truth so that there is not an old woman in the land who cannot take it with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... a pity," he murmured, with a sigh, "that men cannot select their mothers. My young friend John has builded, whether wisely or not, very well; but he has come back into the old life and carried away a part of it, and I fear that this addition will weaken the structure." ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... her reproachful eyes to Peg, and finished with a swipe at her offending nose with her sleeve, she had never looked more beautiful, and Peggy glanced away, fearing she might weaken. ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... up and turned on the light, and took refuge in a novel I had in my bag. Presently I grew calmer. I had chosen. I had succeeded. And now that I had my finger at last on the nerve of power, it was no time to weaken. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... and resolved to fulfil the object of his mission, or perish in the attempt. Whatever might be his own misgivings and apprehensions, he concealed them from his comrades, resolved that no disclosure of them should damp their confidence, or weaken ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... implanted gratitude in all living creatures. The lion, mentioned by Aulus Gellius, had it. [Footnote: Aul. Gellius, Lib. v. c. xiv.] It appears to me that culture, which brings luxury and selfishness with it, has a tendency rather to weaken than ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... charges on the grid. Since the stream of charged particles emitted by the filament must pass through the grid to reach the plate, the charges which the radio waves produce on the grid strengthen or weaken the stream of electrons emitted by the filament, and thus vary the current flowing in the telephone receiver circuit. The changes in this current cause the receiver diaphragm to vibrate, the vibrations causing sounds to be heard. Since the variation in the telephone receiver circuit is caused by ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte
... still in despair, breathing hard, but perfectly powerless. Its effects on him, too, were of a peculiar kind. They were not brutifying or blackguardizing. He was never intoxicated with the drug in his life; nay, he denies its power to intoxicate. Nor did it at all weaken his intellectual faculties any more than it strengthened them. We have heard poor creatures consoling themselves for their inferiority by saying, "Coleridge would not have written so well but for opium." "No thanks to De Quincey for his subtlety—he ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... be free, tho my name were accurst! What care I that I am called 'a blood-drinker!'" Well, let us drink the blood of the enemies of humanity, if needful; but let us struggle, let us achieve freedom. Some fear the departure of the commissioners may weaken one or the other section of this Convention. Vain fears! Carry your energy everywhere. The pleasantest declaration will be to announce to the people that the terrible debt weighing upon them will be wrested ...
— Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser
... of this was to weaken a little the friendship that had grown between Billy and Pete. Also Honey pulled a little way from Ralph and slipped nearer to his old place in ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... I am sure it is our duty to love it. I am sure we weaken ourselves if we do not. If I did not, I should be looking on mist, hearing a perpetual boom instead of music. I remember hearing Mr. Whitford say that cynicism is intellectual dandyism without the coxcomb's feathers; and it seems ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Divine care, is almost irresistibly driven to the belief that the soul's career is not completed with the present life upon the earth. Difficulties on theory he will naturally expect to meet in many quarters; but these will not weaken his faith, especially when he remembers that upon the alternative view the difficulties are at least as great. We live in a world of mystery, at all events, and there is not a problem in the simplest and most exact departments ...
— The Destiny of Man - Viewed in the Light of His Origin • John Fiske
... instructions on a matter so delicate as that "involving the rights and duties of sovereign and subject." He then declared that there was in England a strong desire for peace and for ending a contest in which the "two countries could only tease and weaken each other without any practical result," and at a time when England desired to carry her resources into the "more important field of European contest." He then gave Castlereagh's assurance, that the cartel-ship, the Neptune, should be respected, and expressed his own personal hope ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... Travis raged at it in the silent hours of his one-man watch; and the report had gone up the line now, three times since he had taken hold, of breaks on his division. And the engineer would by no means "weaken" on a question of the work, nor did the loyal watchman ask that any one should weaken, to spare him. He was all eyes and ears; he watched by daylight, he listened by dark, and the sounds that he heard in his dreams were sounds of water searching the banks, ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... think I've been in an incubator, don't ye?" snorted Harding. "Don't weaken! Don't be a coward, Jim! There's the line; toe it!" and he marked a crease in ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... cottage with Belinda, apprehensive that the talkative old dame might weaken the effect of her good sense and experience by a ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... with a view to what their neighbors think of them. When life resolves itself into a struggle for a bare existence, it makes for cowardice and selfishness. In time the strongest characters deteriorate with inferior associates and only small interests to occupy their minds. Wills weaken, standards lower unconsciously, ideals grow misty or vanish. Youth, enthusiasm, hope, die together. Ambition turns to bitterness or stolid resignation. Suspicion, meanness, cruelty, are the natural offspring of small intelligences ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... different from that which they had worn five years earlier. More and more France was drawn into the actual conflict of the Thirty Years' War, impelled by a sense of new and unparalleled opportunity to weaken the House of Hapsburg. This, in turn, meant the preoccupation of Richelieu with European affairs, and a heavy drain upon the resources of France in order to meet the cost of her more ambitious foreign ...
— The Founder of New France - A Chronicle of Champlain • Charles W. Colby
... who have ears to hear, what are the real enemies of love which can weaken it in its conflict with death. The Thracian women, those drunken bacchanals that own no law but their desires, stand for the lawless claim and attack of the lower life upon the higher. They but repeat, in exaggerated and delirious ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... bear the strain of the Mutiny, and to prove a source of strength and not of weakness. He put the right men in the right places and supported them with all his power. He broke up the old Sikh army, and reorganized the forces in such a way as to weaken tribal feeling and make it less easy for them to combine against us. He so administered justice that the natives came to know that an English official's word was as good as his bond. And, with the aid of Robert Napier and others, ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... passion for her will be stilled, but otherwise I cannot answer for myself. I shall fly, but flight will not bring me happiness. Leonilda charms me still more by her intelligence than by her beauty. I was sure that she loved me so well that I did not attempt to seduce her, lest thereby I should weaken my hold on her affections; and as I wanted to make her happy I wished to deserve her esteem. I longed to possess her, but in a lawful manner, so that our rights should have been equal. We have created an angel, Lucrezia, and I cannot imagine how the ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... into foreign countries; a proceeding which naturally tends to weaken their nursery, prejudice in favour of the Religion in which they were bred, and by removing them from all means of public worship, to relax their practical habits of Religion. They return home, and commonly are either hurried ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... my mission here may ensure the victory of freedom; may prevent torrents of martyrs' blood; may weaken the earthquake of impending war; and restore a solid peace. But be sure, the certainty of the European struggle does not depend upon your generous support; nor would my failure here even retard the outbreak ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... responsible for Viviette. That risk of horror he could not let her run. He had hoped, with a great agony of hope, that Dick would have seen it for himself. To formulate it had been torture. But he could not weaken. The barrier between Dick and Viviette was not of his making. It was composed of the grim psychological laws that govern the abnormal. To have disregarded it would have been a crime from which his soul shrank. All the despair in Dick's face, though it wrung his heart, could not move him. ...
— Viviette • William J. Locke
... President, who was against removing to Montargis and at the same time very averse to a civil war, embraced him, and, without giving the members time to consider what was urged by Broussel, Viole, and others to the contrary, caused him to be declared General, with a design merely to divide and weaken the party. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... with God? then live in prayer. Do you love to feel the holy flame of love burning in all its intensity in your soul? then enkindle it often at the golden altar of prayer. Without prayer the soul will weaken, famish, and die, the fountain of love dry up and become as a thirsty and parched desert. Do you admire the character Jesus? Behold his lowliness and humility, his gentleness and tender compassion. Have they any beauty and do you desire them to grace your soul? then draw them down from the skies ...
— How to Live a Holy Life • C. E. Orr
... universal to say that their sons, whose blood mingled so often upon the same field during the War of 1812 and who have more recently borne in triumph the flag of the country upon a foreign soil, will never permit alienation of feeling to weaken the power of their united efforts nor internal dissensions to paralyze the great arm of freedom, uplifted for the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 5: Franklin Pierce • James D. Richardson
... upon streets, upon public buildings, upon parks or almshouses or whatever the municipal government is concerned with. The head of a department is more or less dependent upon his committee, and in practice this is found to divide and weaken responsibility. The heads of departments are apt to be independent of one another, and to owe no allegiance in common to any one. The mayor, when he appoints them, usually does so subject to the approval, of the city council or of ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... quite as strongly as the moderate use of alcoholic liquors, to weaken and disturb the balance of action between the secerning and excerning systems of vessels, by which some persons become leaner and others ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... more than the diversion which such threats caused, by forcing Louis to take troops from the field for coast defence. It may be said generally of all these enterprises against the French coast, in this and later wars, that they effected little, and even as a diversion did not weaken the French armies to any great extent. If the French ports had been less well defended, or French water-ways open into the heart of the country, like our own Chesapeake and Delaware bays and the Southern sounds, the ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... England has raised the interest on * * * *'s mortgage one-third per cent., making an additional annual charge of L1,500 a year to him. I am very sorry for him, but I know nothing so likely to rouse the landed aristocracy from their apathy, and to weaken their idolatry of Peel so much as this warning note of the joint operation of his free trade and ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli
... to weaken me where I needed sail most and he succeeded. Why, Elsa, that topm'st must have been sawed a quarter of the way through and that mainstay as much again. I don't really believe he did anything to the foregaff; it appeared to be the natural ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... intriguers and sycophants,—of persons who understand the art of managing minds which are at once arbitrary and weak, by allowing them to retain unity of will amid the most palpable inconsistencies of opinion, so that inconstancy to principle shall not weaken force of purpose, nor the emphasis be at all abated with which they may bless to-day what yesterday they cursed. Thus the abhorrer of traitors has now become their tool. Thus the denouncer of Copperheads has now sunk into dependence on their support. Thus the imposer of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... for Potemkin?" said he. "Spare your tears. He loves no one but himself, and his only aim in life is to enervate and weaken YOUR mind, that he may reign in ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... "That which tends to weaken life is the only evil, that which strengthens life the only good, and the result of this puritanical Catholicism ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... not weaken; rather, it grew firmer with the passage of the hours. Of course, I did not take the crew into my confidence (there might be, I thought, another Cockney among them), but I laid down the law to Boston and Blackie, and they promised ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... I was at our neighbor's and as a reward was presented with a little wooden cuckoo. Up to half past seven I was in good spirits and played with our pug-dog, at quarter to eight I began to weaken, but toward eight I was a man again, because Meta entered with a face full of malicious enjoyment, and I sat out courageously, the new primer, with John Ballhorn's egg-laying cock under my arm. My mother went with me in ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... was to weaken the armies invading Virginia, by harassing their rear. As a line is only as strong as its weakest point, it was necessary for it to be stronger than I was at every point, in order to resist my attacks.... It is just as legitimate to fight an enemy in the rear as in front. ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head
... United States.—'I do not fear bolshevism in this country. I do not mean that in congested centers foreigners and agitators will not have influence. But Americans as a whole have a deep love for America. It is a vital love that the sensational appeals of bolshevists and agitators cannot weaken'." ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... time, the invaders charged that wall of living horn. And two at a time they were swept against the walls, or slashed in two by the enormous mandibles. One against an army; but it was a full minute or so before the one began to weaken. ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst
... powers of endurance, but as a rule no Indian is the equal of his white brother, due as much perhaps to lack of mental force as to generations of insufficient clothing and inanition, so it was not surprising that as the long afternoon dragged to a close the Aleut guide began to weaken. He paused with more frequency, and it required more effort to start him; he fell oftener and rose with more difficulty, but the others were dependent upon his knowledge of the trail, and ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... the rest? Nay, the very torpor of the reasoning faculty has often kindled the imaginative. Lucretius composed his sublime poem under the influence of a delirium. The susceptibilities that we create or refine by the pursuit of one object, weaken our general reason; and I may compare with some justice the powers of the mind to the faculties of the body, in which squinting is occasioned by an inequality of strength in the eyes, and discordance of voice by the same inequality in ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... in the same manner in the Philippines, a similar bad result would ensue; the pressure of mill rollers would discolour the fibre, and the soaking with 48 per cent. of pulp, before being sun-dried, would weaken it. ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... place in the flooded cabin. Others landed, the whole story was told and knives were returned to their sheaths. The skipper, the seriously injured and the dead woman remained on the deck. The skipper was in a black mood. He knew his people well enough to see that this unfortunate affair would weaken his power among them. They would say that the saints were against his enterprises and ambitions; that his luck was gone; that he was a bungler and so not fit to give orders to full-grown men. He understood all this as if he could hear their grumbled words—nay, ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... things would be more distasteful to me than any attempt to laugh at Mr. Darwin; but I must own that I have myself to thank for the misconception, for I felt sure that my intention would be missed, but preferred not to weaken the chapters by explanation, and knew very well that Mr. Darwin's theory would take no harm. The only question in my mind was how far I could afford to be misrepresented as laughing at that for which ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... several Western States. In 1896 Democrats and Populists combined to nominate William Jennings Bryan as their candidate, with a programme the main plank of which was the free coinage of silver, which, it was thought, would weaken the hold of the moneyed interests of the East upon the industries of the Continent. The Eastern States, however, voted solid for the gold standard, and were joined, in the main, by those Southern States ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... the mendicant friars in the vigorous verse of the 'Franciscanus.' He encouraged by his presence the public performance of a play" which, by its exposure of the vices of the clergy, contributed greatly to weaken their influence. "He enforced the object of that remarkable drama by exhorting the bishops to reform their lives, under a threat if they neglected his warning that he would deal with them after the fashion of his uncle of England" or his cousin of Denmark. "He repeated the exhortation ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... the lecture. All that I could have said on this point has been so much more ably stated by one whose enlightened view of geological science has taken away some difficulties from its cultivators, and, I hope, removed a stumbling-block from many respectable individuals, that I should only weaken by adding to the argument. [I allude to the critique of Dr. Ure's Geology in the British Review, for July, 1829; an Essay, equally worthy of a ...
— Decline of Science in England • Charles Babbage
... the composition may seem superficially, you may treat it simply. You will control it by not considering any part as of any importance in itself, but only as it helps the whole; and you may strengthen or weaken that part as you need to. Don't cut the thing up too much. Let a half a dozen objects count as one in the whole. Mass things, simplify the masses, and make the elements of the masses hold as only parts of ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... avoid her mad rushes, the terrible tension of my nervous system produced by the spectacle of such exquisite and prolonged suffering, were weakening me beyond what I should have thought it possible an hour before for anything to weaken me. In fact, I felt my strength leaving me. A terror such as I had never yet felt was taking possession of my mind. I sickened at the sight before me, and at the thought of agonies yet to come. 'My God I exclaimed, 'must I be killed by my own horse in this miserable car!' ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... the nation to make the loan popular, treating it as sacred, and thus save twenty or thirty millions in interest annually by reducing interest one per cent, than to attempt to save two thirds that amount by taxes, which would inspire lenders with distrust, injure the credit of the nation, and weaken its resources ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... face. When his bedtime came, Mr Benson told him of the hour, although he feared that Leonard would have but another sorrowful crying of himself to sleep; but he was anxious to accustom the boy to cheerful movement within the limits of domestic law, and by no disobedience to it to weaken the power of glad submission to the Supreme; to begin the new life that lay before him, where strength to look up to God as the Law-giver and Ruler of events would be pre-eminently required. When Leonard had gone upstairs, Mr Benson went immediately to Ruth, ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... alone," she insisted, one morning of the last week. "What can you do by speaking to her about it? Don't you see that she is making the best fight she can? You will weaken her if you interfere. It's less than a week now, and if you can only hold out, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... savage fury of Swift, watch with a prophet's indignation the heedless waste of faculty and opportunity, the triumph of paltry motive and paltry aim, as if we were the flies of a summer noon, which do more than any active malignity to distort the noble lines, and to weaken or to frustrate the strong and healthy parts, of human nature. For practical purposes all these complaints of man are of as little avail as Johnson found the complaint that of the globe so large a space should be occupied by the uninhabitable ocean, ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... were often meant. (4) "Well fit". In this passage "wert", the reading of A and D, has been followed, instead of unwert of B and C, as it seems more appropriate to the sense. (5) "Dight", 'arrayed'; used by Milton. (6) "Brunhild". The following words are evidently a late interpolation, and weaken the ending, but have been translated for the sake of completeness. ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... Here Taine indicates how subversive parties may proceed to weaken a nation prior to ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... all to the periphery. Something has happened within the soul which can never be obliterated. As Eucken says: "The contradiction is now removed from the centre to the periphery of life; it can therefore only touch us from without, and is not able to overthrow what is within; it will not so much weaken as strengthen the certainty, because it calls life to a perpetual renewal and brings to fruition ...
— An Interpretation of Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy • W. Tudor Jones
... and internal dissensions in the leagues of cities helped to weaken the towns as guarantors of the trade of their citizens. As a result of these political influences, before the fifteenth century was over the distribution of commerce was much changed and municipal ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... by the process of unceasing elections. The spirit of the age and country is to accumulate power in the hands of the multitude: to shorten terms of service in high public places; to multiply elections, and diminish executive power; to weaken all agencies protective of property, or repressive of crime; to abolish capital punishments and imprisonment for debt. Slavery, intemperance, land-jobbing, bankruptcy, and sundry controversies with Great Britain, constitute ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... patriot army,—was distinguished by a remarkable dignity of manners and deportment: the style of his sentiments, naturally lofty, was now exalted by love: and finally he had in all probability saved Miss Walladmor's life. These were strong appeals to a young heart: doubtless it did not weaken them that the noble expression of his countenance was then embellished by the graces of early youth (for he was not twenty), and yet unsaddened by internal suffering—which has since given him the ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... expansions, new departments and publicity will compel the command of about that much money," Mr. Trimmer patiently explained; "and while we could appropriate that amount from our respective concerns, we ought not to weaken our capital, particularly as financial affairs throughout the country are so unsettled. This is not a brisk commercial year, nor ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... Caciques' idea that the Turk was to lose the strangers there, or to weaken them beyond resistance by thirst and hunger and hostile tribes. But the buffalo had come south that winter for the early grass. They were so thick they looked like trees walking, to the Spaniards as they lay on the ground and saw ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... we should examine the chances and changes which each man is likely to meet in marriage, and which may weaken him in that struggle from which our champion should ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... at Suzanna. The reaction from her days of hard and continuous work was setting in. She merely said: "Suzanna, we must make that dress last a long time. I made it so that it can be lengthened five inches. We can't weaken it by cutting the goods away from under the lace. Now, dear, go and see that the children aren't in ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... first demanded reinforcements as a right, that he must shift for himself. Then he would have kept these boats by him, and triumphantly fought his way in them to the Equator. But his trust in the Government, notwithstanding all his experience, led him to weaken his own position in the hope of facilitating their movements, and he found their aid a broken reed. In only one passage of his journal does Gordon give expression to this view, although it was always present to his mind:—"Truly the indecision of our Government has been, from a ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... his friends. If you have trouble with him, his friends will be against you when we want to nominate you for a second term. The county is getting close. If we go to conwention without your home delegation it would weaken you, and if we nominate you, every piece of trouble like this cuts down your wote. You ought to line him up and have him ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... the whole, and for the interest of us all, that it should be so: nor would I willingly in my own person manifest a disregard of such salutary feelings, nor in act or word do anything to weaken them; but, on the one hand, as my self-accusation does not amount to a confession of guilt, so, on the other, it is possible that, if it did, the benefit resulting to others from the record of an experience purchased at so heavy a price might compensate, by a vast overbalance, for any violence ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... although he would not gratify it: he loved me too well to sacrifise me to this inclination, and that he had now visited this house that by reviving the memory of my mother whom he so passionately adored he might weaken the present impression. This was possible; but it was a mere conjecture unfounded on any fact. Could there be guilt in it? He was too upright and noble to do aught that his conscience would not approve; I did not yet know of the crime there may be in involuntary feeling and ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... service. I was brought into communication with people of different nations, different characters, and different modes of thinking; of different politics, philosophy, and religion; all of which has a tendency to eradicate or weaken early prejudices, liberalize opinions, and inculcate charitable views of human nature. While such a relation with people of other countries can never diminish the feeling of patriotism in a well-balanced mind, it will lead a persons to discover, acknowledge, and respect, ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... rather depends upon it. But now I realised, if never before, that to betray the slightest sign of gentleness would be to forever forfeit my standing as master in my own house. Conrad saw no twinkle. He began to weaken. ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... institutions, the solitary dissociation of America from the history and the achievements of the Old World, the melancholy absence of monuments of past greatness and worth,—these and many other circumstances peculiar to our position all serve to weaken the general interest in what are called classical studies, and to direct the attention of the most ambitious and active minds far too exclusively to the pursuits of science. And when to these circumstances peculiar to ourselves is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... hammer was struck, by some inconceivable fortuity, at the moment when the Duchesse de Fontanges expired. Her death did not weaken my resolutions nor slacken my ardour. I got away quite often to cast an eye over the work, and ordered my architect to second my impatience and spur ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... the softness of the bones, induced by want of exercise, together with tight dressing, which tends to weaken the muscles that are thus thrown out of use. Improper and long continued positions in drawing, writing, and sleeping, which throw the weight of the body on one part of the spine, induce the same evil. This distortion is usually accompanied with some consequent disease ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... alternative of an early marriage presented itself. He might hasten the wedding, and then take Phillida to Europe, where the sight of a religious life quite different from her own would tend to widen her views and weaken the ardor of her enthusiasm. He wondered what would be the effect upon her, for instance, of the stack of crutches built up in monumental fashion in one of the chapels of the Church of St. Germain des Pres at Paris—the ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... African home, was almost completely destroyed, and in its place in America arose sexual promiscuity, a weak community life, with common dwelling, meals, and child nurseries. The internal slave trade tended further to weaken natural ties. A small number of favored house servants and artisans were raised above this—had their private homes, came in contact with the culture of the master class, and assimilated much of American civilization. ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois
... Grimm better than you do," she argued. "You think he will weaken; I know he will not. I am not arguing for him, nor for myself; I am arguing against the frightful loss that will come here in this room if the compact is ...
— Elusive Isabel • Jacques Futrelle
... he said, "Sir, you talk the language of a savage. What! sir, would you prevent any people from feeding themselves, if by any honest means they can do it?" It was "better to hang or drown people at once," than weaken them by unrelenting persecution. He felt some tenderness for Catholics, especially when oppressed, and a hearty antipathy towards prosperous Presbyterians. The Lowland Scotch were typified by John Knox, in regard to whom he expressed a hope, after viewing the ruins ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... the performer stands, and extracts a succession of soft tones, by striking on the gongs with two small sticks. Another circular instrument (the boundah) serves as a bass; it contains an equal number of different-sized drums, on which the musician strikes with violence, with a view perhaps to weaken the shrill, discordant notes of a very rude species of flageolet, and of an equally imperfect kind of trumpet, which are usually played with a total disregard of time, tune, or harmony. Two or three other instruments, similar in principle to the violin, complete the orchestra. To Europeans, there ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... go after them with the rifle," he said, "but they must now be very far away, and soon the night will fall and the tracks will be invisible. The buffalo is badly wounded, and I have a hope that he will fall. In any case he will weaken through loss of blood, and if he should rush at Saba, Saba will be able to run away. Yes! he may return during the night, ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... or vessels necessary to protect the landing, either real or pretended, of the Americans, should anchor in those channels. The enemy would then be obliged either to disperse among the forts, and thereby to weaken their lines, or else to leave the field open to the Americans, who, by a diversion upon the lines, would force the enemy to have them fully manned, and prevent them attending ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... the very reason that they are so elaborately explained. Printer's ink, when used as a pigment or pencil, should be used sparingly, with a few, sharp, clear, bold touches, and without painful finish or niggling. What amplification would not weaken instead of heightening the effect of "the copse-wood gray that waved and wept on Loch Achray"? Breadth, distance and atmosphere are obscured by H. H.'s carefully itemized foregrounds. But the itemizing is done admirably and con amore by one who is a botanist, a poet and an observer. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... They replied that they were from the Mountain of the Holy Priest, from the Hill of Tollan. When Quetzalcoatl heard this, he ordered them to be admitted, and asked their business. They offered him the pulque, but he refused, saying that he was sick, and, moreover, that it would weaken his judgment and might cause his death. They urged him to dip but the tip of his finger in it to taste it; he complied, but even so little of the magic liquor overthrew his self control, and taking the bowl he quaffed a full draught and ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... the trade routes from India to the Levant, he demonstrated that the Arabs were enriched at the expense of Christian Europe. Yet beyond the narrow confines of Syria were the Mongols, well disposed toward Christians, but enemies of Mohammedan Arab and Turk. First weaken the Moslem powers, said Sanuto, by an embargo on all exports of provisions and munitions of war to Syria and Egypt, and then overthrow them by a combined attack of Christian and Mongol armies. The great end would thus be attained: a Christian fleet on the Indian Ocean, ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker |
