"Weakling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it pounded with something akin to fear. The old foreboding of his father's letter had come upon him, the mysterious thread of that elusive, intangible Thing, great enough to break the will and resistance of a strong man and turn him into a weakling—silent, white-haired—sitting by a window, waiting for death. What had it been? Why had it come upon his father? How could it be fought? All so suddenly, Robert Fairchild had realized that he was in the country of the invisible enemy, there to struggle against it without the slightest ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... wife was his niece Mariana, another Austrian archduchess, but this marriage was a vain hope so far as his earthly happiness was concerned. The wished-for son was born, and duly christened Charles, but he was ever a weakling; and when the father died in 1665, preceding Maria de Agreda to the tomb by a few months only, the government was left in charge of Mariana as regent, and all Spain was soon in a turmoil as the result of the countless intrigues which were now being begun ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... man, Moses or another, who wrote the Book of Genesis was a man of literary genius. He was no child, no weakling. If God had said to him: "I made the world out of the fiery nebula, and I made the sea to bring forth the staple of life, and I caused all living things to develop from that seed or staple of life, and I drew man ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... directing our energies. We have developed a new and clever school of Irish dramatists who say they are holding up the mirror to Irish peasant nature, but they reflect nothing but decadence. They delight in the broken lights of insanity, the ruffian who beats his wife, the weakling who is unfortunate in love and who goes and drinks himself to death, while the little decaying country towns are seized on with avidity and exhibited on the stage in every kind of decay and human futility and meanness. Well, it is good to be chastened in spirit, but it is ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... table, furious. No living being had ever spoken to him like that before. He swung the flat of his hand toward Carmichael's face. The latter caught the hand by the wrist and bore down upon it. The king was no weakling. There was a struggle, and Carmichael found himself well occupied for a time. But his age and build were in his favor, and presently he jammed the king to the wall and pinioned ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... when one feels the horse holding his bit as a man might hold a child by the fingers. No slave this, but a giant ally, leading the way up into the enemy's country. Out of the road, weakling! ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... wearing to a state she knew would be misery. Glenn not only seemed content; he was happy. "This is great," he said. His coat was open, his hands uncovered, and he watched the storm and listened with manifest delight. Carley hated to betray what a weakling she was, so she resigned herself to her fate, and imagined she felt her fingers numbing into ice, and her sensitive ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... rage of furious seas, Tossing high wild menaces, Nor the flames from smoky forges That Vesuvius disgorges, Nor the bolt that from the sky Smites the tower, can terrify. Why, then, shouldst thou feel affright At the tyrant's weakling might? Dread him not, nor fear no harm, And thou shall his rage disarm; But who to hope or fear gives way— Lost his bosom's rightful sway— He hath cast away his shield, Like a coward fled the field; He hath forged all unaware Fetters his ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... tyrant and an irresponsible weakling, unfit to govern a great people. Of course, we want Russia to be free. The people of Russia are entitled to ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 3, May 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... temperature and frequency of the bath must be determined and regulated by the necessity and idiosyncrasies of each case. The amount of bathing that a strong, full-blooded person could endure would mop out the life of a thin, bloodless weakling. ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... this conversation, which aroused her curiosity, Lady Kew sent a letter that night to Lady Ann Newcome, desiring that Ethel should be sent to see her grandmother; Ethel, who was no weakling in character despite her youth, and who always rebelled against her grandmother and always fought on her Aunt Julia's side when that amiable invalid lady, who lived with her mother, was oppressed by the dominating ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... of wind and ocean. And now some morning at the corner of the field stand the black men with hooks and whetstones. The hook, a keen, straight blade, bent at right angles to the handle two feet from the hand. Let these men be the strongest; no weakling can handle the hemp from seed to seed again. A heart, the doors and walls of which are in perfect order, through which flows freely the full stream of a healthy man's red blood; lungs deep, clear, easily filled, easily emptied; a body that can bend and twist and be straightened again in ceaseless ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... children had a chance, at least, With none begotten idly of weakling fathers. A Spartan test for fatherhood! Should they miss Their hoop, 'twas death, and childless. You have still Six lives to take unending hoops for you, And you yourself are ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... tenderness she stooped from her fair height and laid her arm around the shoulders of the youth, drew his head against the beadwork of McElroy's gift, and kissed him upon the lips,—once, twice, yearningly, as a mother kisses a weakling child. ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... disappeared. The crack of the postilion's whip told Victurnien that the fair romance of his first love was over. While peril lasted, Diane could still see her lover in the young Count; but out of danger, she despised him for the weakling that he was. ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... and annoying to feel that one must explain everything; but this impossible fellow was not an actual fool on all points, and he did not seem to be a weakling. He might learn certain things in time, and at all events one was no further personally responsible for him and his impossibilities than the business concerns of his estate would oblige any legal firm to be. Clients, whether highly desirable or otherwise, were no more than clients. They were ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... lung-bursting struggles, he came out upon the bare summit of the ridge, his tongue was like a dry stick in his mouth, refusing to shape the curses that his soul was heaping upon the alcohol which had made him a wind-broken, gasping weakling in the prime of ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... private ever get in here?" asked a corporal of a captain as he looked at a boy who seemed to be a physical weakling. ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... "I'm not a weakling, thank you," retorted Mr. Prescott. "I'll do my share, and I recommend you to proclaim that any man who doesn't do his share doesn't eat to-night. But as for you, Sergeant Overton, I shall have a bad opinion of this outfit if they let you carry anything more than your rifle ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... everything he prayed for would be done. Hence I do not doubt that his prayer will prove a great help in the desperately bad affair of this Diet. And you, my teacher, would do far better to imitate our father, the Doctor, also in this point. For with your miserable cares and your weakling tears you will accomplish nothing, but prepare a sad destruction for yourself and us all, who take pleasure in, and are benefited by nothing more than your welfare." (C. R. 2, 158f.; ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... her—why not? All the world knew that she was a weakling. And if it didn't kill her, it would make it infinitely less likely that she would marry Farrell—in any reasonable time. Nelly was not like other people. She was all feelings. Actually to see George die—and ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... walked the streets with pallid face and downcast eyes. The coarser-grained men with whom he was thrown in contact had no conception of the mental tortures he suffered, and their rude jests stung him to the quick. He despised himself as a weakling and a coward, but he did not get more than a transient victory over his enemy. The spark had struck a sensitive organization, and the fire of hell, smothered for the time, would blaze out again. He was fast becoming a common drunkard, the accursed appetite growing ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... as a cavern lit With smoky burning brandons of thy fear, But as a day shining with my new joy. Thou canst not fight with me for the coming heart Of man,—fear cannot fight with joy. And I Am setting such a war of joy against thee, It shall be as man's heart became a god Murdering thy mind of weakling darkness. All the hot happiness of being wroth And seeing a stroke leave behind it wound, The pleasures of wily hunting, and a feast After long famine, and the dancing stored Within the must of berries,—these, and all Gladdenings that make thrill ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... eyes turned inquiringly toward Cavendish, but the survey brought with it no encouragement. The man meant well, no doubt, and would fight valiantly on occasion; he was no coward, no weakling—equally clear his was not the stuff from which leaders are made. There was uncertainty in his eyes, a lack of force in his face which told the story. Whatever was decided upon, or accomplished, must be by her volition; she could trust him to obey, but that was all. Her body straightened ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... the raft toward them, then, as the waters receded, the current sucked it out again. But the fisherman was strong and Larry was no weakling. They hauled until they had the raft out of reach of the rollers. Then, while there came a wilder burst of the storm, and a dash of spray from the waves, ...
— Larry Dexter's Great Search - or, The Hunt for the Missing Millionaire • Howard R. Garis
... young and unlearned in many things. He was completely enthralled and under her dominion—but he was naturally no weakling of body or mind. And this was more ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... strong man can, of course, be dangerous, but he doesn't approach the vicious deadliness of a weakling—with a weapon! ...
— The Weakling • Everett B. Cole
... oracles are fulfilled, for long ago there came to this land one Telemus, a prophet, and dwelt among us even to old age. This man foretold me that one Ulysses would rob me of my sight. But I looked for a great man and a strong, who should subdue me by force, and now a weakling has done the deed, having cheated me with wine. But come thou hither, Ulysses, and I will be a host indeed to thee. Or, at least, may Poseidon give thee such a voyage to thy home as I would wish thee to have. For know that Poseidon ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... new activities, and his Parliamentary prospects, that had been his predominant mood in London seemed to him at this moment of depression mere folly. What he really felt, he declared to himself, was a sort of cowardly shrinking from life and its tests—the recognition that at bottom he was a weakling, without ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a gross impropriety to divert it from the path of destiny into so futile an effort as hooking up a mere bit of fuss, feathers and fallals. You might just as well hitch up a pair of thoroughbred elephants to a milk wagon. It will do, as Adam says, for the Mollycoddle and the meticulous weakling, but never for a real man worthy of the name. But after all that is no reason why woman should be shorn of one of her chief glories, and I totally disagree with him in his condemnation of all clothes just because some of them are conceived in foolishness. Dresses can be made to button up ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... for his sake spare me: Thyself art mighty; for thine own sake leave me: Myself a weakling; do not then ensnare me: Thou look'st not like deceit; do not deceive me. My sighs, like whirlwinds, labour hence to heave thee: If ever man were moved with woman's moans, Be moved with my tears, ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... enough?—and yet Alexander was a little man, and the Petit Caporal, and Nelson, and Caesar, too; and so was Saul of Tarsus, and weakly he was into the bargain. AEsop was a dwarf, and so was Attila; Shakspeare was lame; Alfred, a rickety weakling; Byron, clubfooted;—so much for body ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... severely. He'd never read Clausewitz. To him, war wasn't an 'Instrument of National Policy'. It was a chance for the individual warrior to demonstrate his skill and bravery. His code put a high premium on individual courage in combat, and the weakling or coward was crushed contemptuously. I don't even attempt to justify the Indian treatment of captured civilians and noncombatants, but nevertheless, I absorbed quite a few of my grandfather's ideals and views about war, and it's ...
— Pushbutton War • Joseph P. Martino
... without a shred of generosity. The hard problem is to be affectionate, human, and conquer every-day battles by remaining actively honest, when your rivals are not straight. The born crook is safer from prison than the weakling of the first class." He looked down at the coffee, ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... Borrow looked at the weakling child with the deepest interest, and said, "This chavo ought not to look like that—with such a mother as ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... shoulders, trying to decide whether he would have a hard fight with him, if they met either during the war, or in single combat. He concluded that it would not be difficult to conquer the German. The Krzyzak's shoulder bones appeared quite large under his dress of grey broadcloth; but he was only a weakling compared with Powala or with Paszko Zlodziej of Biskupice, or with both of the most famous Sulimczyks, or with Krzon of Kozieglowy or with many of the other knights, sitting at the ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... such occasions—but this time, it so happened, he was singularly right. Before one thing only his ready invention stopped every time. This vileness, this notion of unworthiness in Vance, could not be negative merely. A man with that face was no inactive weakling. The motive he was at such pains to conceal, betraying its existence by that very fact, moved, surely, towards aggressive action. Disguised, it never slept. Vance was sharply on the alert. He had a plan deep out ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... futile by being mixed with "reward of shortening term for good behavior in prison." Good behavior inside prison walls gives no proof of ability to take good care of one's self outside those walls; it may be only a proof that the moral weakling has to have an external conscience and a strict watch in order to be amenable to even simple rules. The parole system is also liable to great misunderstanding and serious social dangers when it is used without the most scientific knowledge of the mental power of the man or woman concerned, ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... endure, when it came to the point, that Rachel Henderson should vanish unscathed into the future of a happy marriage, while he remained the doomed failure and outcast he knew himself to be. Rachel's implied confession rankled in him like a burn. Tanner!—that wretched weakling, with his miserable daubs that nobody wanted to buy. So Rachel had gone to him, as soon as she had driven her husband away, no doubt to complain of her ill-treatment, to air her woes. The fellow had philandered round her some time, and had shown an insolent and interfering ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... there is little virtue in what I do, since on the whole I prefer that prospect and am willing to take the risk of being hurried from an evil world. Hearken," he added, with a change of tone and gesture. "You think me a fool and a weakling; a dreamer also, you, the clear-eyed, hard-brained stateswoman who look to the glittering gain of the moment for which you are ready to pay in blood, and guess nothing of what lies beyond. I am none of these things, except, perchance, the ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... scoundrelism. Burleigh, whom the ex-captain had "bled" and blackmailed, had passed beyond the bar of human arraignment, "dying like a gentleman" even while captive in the hands of the authorities; and so did Nevins impress his uncontradicted tale of loyal service to the State on the old weakling in command, that Stevens had declared that there was no evidence on which to hold him, had ordered his release from custody on parole, unless the civil authorities desired to prosecute him for "personating an officer," and had ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... But no weakling broke off that bedpost in Henry M. Gillespie's room. I assumed the theory that the phenomena of that night were symptomatic rather than accidental. Therefore, I set out to find in what other places the mysterious H. ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... path, and his sound right arm leaped to Ray's throat in a death grip. For that one instant his old-time strength returned to him,—as to Samson as his arms went about the pillars of the temple. They found him no weakling, in that first instant, but a deadly, fighting beast, the "Wolf" Darby of the provinces,—his finger nails sinking ever deeper into the flesh of Ray's throat, his body braced against Chan's attack. And for ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... lad—he was little more—was encased, to the fashionable bowler that contrasted with his own tweed cap, to the umbrella that protected the bowler from the dripping rain—ay, even to the comforter. It was as he had feared. Garstin was an office-desk weakling, and a mere boy into the bargain. The Works Committee had added insult to the injury ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... prolong it here, Even here where I may feed upon it; Not send him hence beyond my reach. Aye! I'll fight with death to keep him for mine own. But, now— O, I must calm myself or miss my aim! For, like a hunter when first he sees the buck, My nerves are all unstrung. This weakling trick Of overearnestness betrays the fool In me; and yet we know it, though we profit not, The eager hand doth ever spill the cup That lifted carefully would quench our thirst. I must assume a wise placidity; As he puts ...
— The Scarlet Stigma - A Drama in Four Acts • James Edgar Smith
... He was hearing on all sides that he had been here too long; and candidly, I think he was beginning to feel Louise a drag on him. I know of late they were not getting on well together. But to be such a coward and a weakling! To slink off in this fashion! Of course, when it came to the last, he was simply afraid of her, and of the scene she would make him. Bravery has as little room in his soul as honesty or manliness. He would always ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... reign was not only one of the longest, but that it was considered also "one of the most glorious that occurs in the annals of our nation" (vol. ii., p. 297). It is important to remember, further, that Edward was no timid weakling, ready to yield to others through weakness or fear. Quite the contrary. He was strong, war-like, and courageous. Hume informs us that "he curbed the licentiousness of the great; that he made his foremost ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan
... down the savage impulse that threatened to manifest itself in profanity whenever he thought of Honey's mother and his weakling brother-in-law. ...
— Skinner's Dress Suit • Henry Irving Dodge
... second place, it was not the man who was to blame, nor the woman so much, as Sharpe himself. Indeed, Bobby somehow gained the impression that the others flouted and despised Sharpe and held him as a weakling. ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... Yemameh,[FN64] dishevelled widows plain! How many a weakling orphan unsuccoured doth remain, For whom is thy departure even as a father's loss! To fly or creep, like nestlings, alone, they strive in vain. Now that the clouds have broken their promise to our hope, We trust the Khalif's bounty will stand ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... old Osmanli. He is a branch of the ethnographical tree that will not flourish in European atmosphere: though the same exuberance of vigour that first sent forth the mighty shoot from central Asia, has prevailed to pass through the feeble defences of the West. It is as an overgrown weakling that he exists in our quarter of the world. His eyes are without fire, his manners without the stamp of originality. He succumbs beneath the presence of the Frank,—the hated and despised, and yet the feared and the envied. The better feelings ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... never be a memory: it would be consciousness, ever-living, ever present; a compulsion not to be controlled because it was not his own; and never to be quenched because it burned within. If he had been a weakling, the seal would have been a seal to self; but because an elemental war for right was winnowing the self out of him, he knew it was a ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... agreed the captain. "Yet I heard from one sealing captain the story of a young fellow whom it turned from a weak coward into a brave man. This lad, who was regarded as a weakling, saved himself and two companions from a terrible death simply by an act of almost sublime courage. Would you ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... England and France were at this period endeavoring to lure the whalemen from the United Colonies by promise of special concessions in trade, or more effective protection on the high seas than their own weakling governments could assure them. Some Nantucket whalemen were indeed enticed to the new English whaling town at Dartmouth, near Halifax, or to the French town of Dunkirk. But the effort to transplant the industry did not succeed, and the ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... fought as well as he was able, but to no avail. Timotheus was simple and he was clumsy, but he was no weakling. Maguffin led the horse back into the stable, spread his litter, and replaced the bridle on the wall. Then he came out quite unruffled, and asked Timotheus if he would like him to use his new boots on the prisoner, to which that worthy replied with a ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... and, like the others who have finally arrived, you must overcome them one at a time as they appear, by sheer force of willpower, determination, pluck or whatever you desire to call it. If you are a weakling and lack strength of character do not ever take up a stage career, for you will get many a bump; so be prepared to stand it. For only those who are determined to succeed will ever reach the top, where there is ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... Mrs. Lancaster was no weakling. The spark roused as though it had touched and scorched her. She cleared her mind for action. No useless hampering thoughts littered it now. Her intelligence reckoned nothing save the work on hand; its details she ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... efforts, he never produces anything but a half-dead child. The talented actor animates, nurses, consolidates, fortifies and clothes it, suggests the proper gestures and attitudes, infuses his own health and strength into this weakling, gives it blood and, so to speak, makes it live. The playwright contributes the soul, it is true; but, the soul being intangible, it is only a pitiable gift so far as the ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... baleful unto you, and worthy of an evil death, ye shall suffer them to abide with you; ye shall make them become children of the Bears, if they be goodly enough and worthy, and they shall be my children as ye be; otherwise, if they be ill-favoured and weakling, let them live and be thralls to you, but not join with you, man to woman. Now depart ...
— The Wood Beyond the World • William Morris
... majesty! Give a captaincy of dragoons to that poor little weakling? Why, he would not survive one single campaign." As he uttered these careless words, he glanced at the marquise, ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... "Touch me not," said she, "you do not deserve my love. You are a weakling, as all men are. You can only coo like a pigeon, but when it comes to action, then sinks your arm, and you are powerless. Ah, the woman whom you profess to love begs of you a trifling service, the performance of which is of the highest importance to her, the greatest ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... history there ran stories of terrible crime, cruelties, infamies, immoralities and degradation. Following the death of Ivan the Terrible came Fedor, one of his sons, who was a weakling in the hands of the Duma of five, one of whom was Boris Godounoff. Fedor reigned but a few years, and Godounoff was elected Czar. He was ambitious, and was founder of the system of serfdom, and also of the Russian State Church, and like many of ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... he looked at the ruin of his building. Hopelessly he recalled his dreams. Despairingly he looked upon his fruitless labor. With his fine manhood's strength dead within him, he bitterly felt himself to be but a weakling; fit only to be pushed aside by the stronger, better, men among whom he went, now, with lifeless step and downcast face. There was left in his heart no courage and no hope. He saw himself a most miserable coward, and, ashamed and disgraced in his own sight, he shrank from the eyes ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright
... poor, misused gentleman, are you not planning in your black heart how you shall rob him of that which, if he is a man at all, must be more to him than his liberty, or even his honour? Shame on you for a miserable weakling! Have done with these philanderings and keep your covenants like a gentleman—or, at least, ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... treasure story, is it?" came a deep voice from the side of the car. There stepped into view a man whom Glen had not seen before. He was evidently associated with Mr. Jervice, but he did not in the least resemble him, for instead of being a cringy weakling, he was big and strong ...
— The Boy Scout Treasure Hunters - The Lost Treasure of Buffalo Hollow • Charles Henry Lerrigo
... with baneful eye, Even as mine arm descended, baffled me, And hurled upon my soul a frenzied plague, To stain my hand with these dumb victims' blood. And those mine enemies exult in safety,— Not with my will; but where a God misguides, Strong arms are thwarted and the weakling lives. Now, what remains? Heaven hates me, 'tis too clear: The Grecian host abhor me: Troy, with all This country round our camp, is my sworn foe. Shall I, across the Aegean sailing home, Leave these Atridae and their fleet forlorn? ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... only one member of the Council who did not belong to the Band—Councillor Weakling, a retired physician; but unfortunately he also was a respectable man. When he saw something going forwards that he did not think was right, he protested and voted against it and then—he collapsed! There was nothing of the low agitator about HIM. ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... son, was born on the 26th of February, 1802, at Besancon, France. Though a weakling, he was carried, with his boy-brothers, in the train of their father through the south of France, in pursuit of Fra Diavolo, the Italian brigand, ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... really believed that it was silly, but she knew also that there was an aspect of it which was not silly. She was reminded by it that she had found no solution of the problem which had distracted her in Hornsey. 'What is your present condition?' Her present condition was still that of a weakling and a coward who had sunk down inertly before the great problem of sin. And now, in the growing strength of her moral convalescence, she was raising her eyes again to meet the problem. Her future seemed to be bound ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... Drunkard and weakling as he was, Selim had his ambitions. He wished to signalise his reign by some great conquest, such as had added lustre to the rule of his father; and in consequence he laid claim to the island of Cyprus, then belonging to Venice, The Venetians, having strengthened the fortifications ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... the patricians are seized by the guards; Rienzi shows himself unhurt, being protected by a breastplate; the conspirators are condemned to die and are led away. Then Adriano and Irene plead for Colonna; at first Rienzi is obdurate; then he, too, turns weakling and promises pardon. He pleads for his enemies with the people; in spite of two citizens who see nothing but danger, he prevails, and the act ends with another huge chorus. There is much very Italian stuff ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... weather-beaten face—a typical soldier of the United States Army, and such as he, the prisoner inside might have become in time. Our house is separated from the guardhouse by a little park only, and I could plainly see the whole thing—the strong man and the weakling. ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... where Bethlehem blest appears. We bring the best of news; be not dismayed: A Saviour there is born more old than years, Amidst heaven's rolling heights this earth who stayed. In a poor cottage inned, a virgin maid, A weakling did him bear, who all upbears; There is he poorly swaddled, in manger laid, To whom too narrow swaddlings are our spheres: Run, shepherds, run, and solemnize his birth. This is that night—no, day, grown great with bliss, In which the power of Satan broken is: In heaven be glory, peace unto the ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... of women to ask of men this little labour, which is a harder task than ever Hercules, that mighty-muscled king of heathenry, achieved. Nay, I, for all my sinews, am an attested weakling. The craft of other men I do not fear, for I have encountered no formidable enemy save myself; but that same midnight stabber unhorsed me long ago. I had wallowed in the mire contentedly enough until you came.... Ah, child, child! why needed you to trouble me! for to-night I want to be clean ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... school life did not suit your independent character." Thus did Mr. Jarvice gracefully paraphrase the single word "expelled" which was written on his slip of paper. "Ah, Mr. Hine," he cried, smiling indulgently at the sullen, bemused weakling who sat before him, stale with his last night's drink. "You and Shelley! Rebels, sir, rebels both! Well, well! After you left school, at the age of sixteen, you pursued your studies in a desultory fashion at home. Your ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... he tasted the joy of supreme power, that delight which titillated even his marrow, and after having rested all day, the prey of a convenient neuralgia, he experienced the unlimited pleasure of force overcoming mind, the blow of a fist crushing a weakling, as with a white cravat he appeared in some salon, in the greenroom of the ballet, or in the dressing-room of a premiere, saying with the mocking smile of triumph and the assurance ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... was awry: Boston was a failure; Claude was a weakling and a flirt; her turquoise ring was lying on the river-bank; Stephen did not love her any longer; her flower-beds were ploughed up and planted in corn; and the cottage that Stephen had built and she had furnished, that beloved ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... arousing from this unmanly despair which played me for a weakling. "You must be protected also. You can't go to that ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... she proudly. "I am no weakling that I should fear. Dost thou not know the motto of the Staffords: A l'outrance? (To the utmost) I am a Stafford. Therefore will I ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... a weakling because I come from off-world. Realize though, that this is also my strength. I can see things that are hidden from you by long association. You know, the old business of not being able to see the forest for the ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison
... shall I rehearse the story, How a weakling faint and worn, Was o'er rocks and through deep waters, To eternal glory borne: Jesus wholly, Shall absorb the songs ...
— Favourite Welsh Hymns - Translated into English • Joseph Morris
... this girl," went on Hough, relentlessly. Scorn and a taunting dare and an insidious persuasion mingled with the passion of his offer. He knew how to inflame. Durade, as a gambler, was a weakling in the grasp of a giant. "Come! ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... waiting, minor wailing! The mind and the soul must be as quick and definite and certain as the body. Nor was the spirit made alone for immortal dreaming. Like the flesh, it must strive and toil. It must be workaday as well as idle day. She could understand a weakling singing sweetly and even greatly, and in so far she could love him for his sweetness and greatness; but her love would have fuller measure were he strong of body as well. She believed she was just. She gave the flesh its due and the spirit its due; but she had, over and above, her ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... you don't. He was no true man, but a weakling. I am glad I have never been thrown with ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... and still like pools of water, and yet with a sort of clear light that seemed to come from within, and you would understand at once that here was one who knew his own mind, and would stand to it immovably. Marjory herself was no weakling by her looks, with strong, steady eyes and a resolute and quiet bearing. It might be a question whether she was not Will's match in steadfastness, after all, or which of them would rule the roast in marriage. But Marjory had never given it a thought, and accompanied ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was not un esprit puissant. Other and younger critics, who have attained to a cock-certain mood of negation, are apt to blame him because, in fact, he did not finally agree with their opinions. If a man is necessarily a weakling or a hypocrite because, after trying all things, he is not an atheist or a materialist, then the reproach of insincerity or of feebleness of mind must rest upon Tennyson. But it is manifest that, almost in boyhood, he ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... note a deficiency in the man whose life is lived for the present, for immediate enjoyment: in him we see the typical pleasure-seeker, peculiarly prone to temptation, to break the rules of life, to indulge himself at the expense of others or of his own future. He is characteristically the weakling, the wrongdoer. And we contrast him with the man of character, who stands superior to an immediate environment, who will not disregard the distant future, the absent neighbor, the invisible God. And so in the economic world it is the whole life period which is to be regarded when aims are ...
— Creating Capital - Money-making as an aim in business • Frederick L. Lipman
... enough with his wife. The case of the boy was very different. Himself a man of much bodily and mental vigour, Mr. Upton expected his own qualities of his own children; he had always resented their apparent absence in his youngest born. The others were good specimens; why should Tony be a weakling? Was he such a weakling as was made out? Mr. Upton was often sceptical on the point; but then he had always heard more about the asthma than he had seen for himself. If the boy was not down to breakfast in the holidays, he was supposed to have had a bad ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... another; the sort of creatures who loafed in the saloons of the little villages and amused them selves by running amuck and shooting up the town. These men, and indeed nearly all of the pioneers, held the man from the civilized East, the "tenderfoot," in scorn. They took it for granted that he was a weakling, that he had soft ideas of life and was stuck-up or affected. Now Roosevelt saw that in order to win their trust and respect, he must show himself equal to their tasks, a true comrade, who accepted their code of ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... tight together as though he were afraid he should take mine, and he said the dearest things a man could say to a woman—how the stress of the situation last night had forced from him an avowal of his love for me. "I never meant to tell you, my sweet lady," he said. "I am no weakling, I hope, to go snivelling over what is not for me; and when I comprehended you were married, on the Lusitania, I just faced up the situation and vowed I'd be a ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... woman, Ollie Stewart appeared but a weakling. His shoulders were too narrow and he stooped; his limbs were thin; his hair black and straight; and ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright
... a cold can infect a whole class or family, thus depriving the class and family of the top of their vitality and efficiency without their consent. Because a person is thought a weakling who lies up for a "mere cold," one is inclined to wish that colds were as prostrating as typhoid, in which case there would be ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... through the snow they ploughed, panting, grappling, straining. Mr. Magee soon realized that his adversary was no weakling. He was forced to call into play muscles he had not used in what seemed ages—not since he sported of an afternoon in a rather odorous college gymnasium. In moonlight and shadow, up and down, they reeled, staggered, stumbled, the sole jarring notes in that ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... bring him friends ... true-blue friends, who will excuse all other shortcomings because of his honesty. It gives him the unadulterated trust of his employer and it arouses a certain admiration among his narrow circle of acquaintances. If this is true with the dullard, the weakling, then what must it mean when possessed by the great? We know, for instance, how the nation instinctively turned to General Washington when it came to choosing their President after the Revolutionary War. He may have been gifted, he may have been one ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... that they must overtake those they chased long before such utter weariness seized upon them. He knew that Hen Condit himself, although no weakling, could not stand hours upon hours of continual walking, especially when it consisted of such uncertain footing as fell to their portion under ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... "Maynard was a man who got his marriages inextricably entangled. It was not altogether his fault: his first wife should have been more open with him. If she had not been a bigamist, he would not have been a bigamist.... He was a self-indulgent weakling of the most despicable kind; and Mr. Flowerdew has worked out his character with ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... public demonstrations were made against America. The life of Consul General Lee was threatened. The Spanish Minister at Washington, Senor de Lome, was exposed for having written to a friend a most insulting letter, describing President McKinley as a low politician and a weakling. For this he was recalled by Spain at the request of ...
— History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and Other Items of Interest • Edward A. Johnson
... spectator; you must not think that you have to do with men who care anything for their lives, and who therefore are making a sacrifice—no indeed! They have nothing in common with such a weakling as you. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... her servants in our pain, If she have fought with Death and dulled his sword, If she have given back our sick again And to the breast the weakling lips restored, Is it a little thing that she has wrought? Then Life and Death and Motherhood ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren
... receiving the office of kwanryo. Eleven years later, on his return to the south, he was followed by many nobles from Kyoto, and his chief provincial town, Yamaguchi, on the Shimonoseki Strait, prospered greatly. But his son Yoshitaka proved a weakling, and being defeated by his vassal, Suye Harukata—called also Zenkyo—he committed suicide, having conjured another vassal, Mori Motonari, to ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... time and in the right frame of mind man is capable of stoic endurances that excite wonder and admiration. Mr Pickering was no weakling. He had once upset his automobile in a ditch, and had waited for twenty minutes until help came to relieve a broken arm, and he had done it without a murmur. But on the present occasion there was a difference. His mind was not adjusted for the occurrence. There are ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... conviction. They believed, therefore they spake, therefore they fought, therefore they bled and died. The man of strong conviction is the strong man all the world over. If a man wants that, he will be but a feeble character, a poor weakling to the end of the chapter. Shakespeare says that "conscience makes cowards of us all"; but it does something else when it makes us fear evil—it lifts us above all other fear. So it raised Peter, who had shortly ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees
... she had laid in silent grief and watched them for long and mourned as a wild mother can mourn for its young. But from that time she came no more to the ruined den, for now she surely knew that her little ones were dead. Tip the captive, the weakling of the brood, was now the heir to all her love. The dogs were loosed to guard the hens. The hired man had orders to shoot the old fox on sight—so had I but was resolved never to see her. Chicken-heads, that a fox loves and a dog ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... must be pretty strong!" he thought, with the genuine admiration of the weakling for the athlete. In fact, he began to speak to Sanine but the latter, leaning against the window- sill, was looking out at the garden. Volochine stopped short; the very sound of his own squeaky voice ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... shortsighted consul Octavius at their head, perseveringly opposed all concession, Metellus more experienced in war and more judicious attempted to bring about a compromise; but his conference with Cinna excited the wrath of the extreme men on both sides: Cinna was called by Marius a weakling, Metellus was called by Octavius a traitor. The soldiers, unsettled otherwise and not without cause distrusting the leadership of the untried Octavius, suggested to Metellus that he should assume the chief command, and, when he refused, began in crowds to throw away their arms or even ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... and still the obstinate buckle declined to be coerced. The more it resisted, the more determined he was to make it obey. Go in it must, if sheer strength would do it. The vice-president of the Americo-African Mining Company was no weakling. A six-foot athlete and captain of the Varsity football team in his college days, his muscles had been toughened in a thousand lively scrimmages and in later life plenty of golf, rowing and other out-of-door sports had ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... the cause of anarchy and riot, while the cause of the district attorney and of Guffey's secret service was the cause of law and order. Peter was doing his best in this great cause, he was following the instructions of those above him, and how could he be blamed because one poor weakling of a girl had got in the way of the great chariot of ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... proclaimed Gonfaloniere of the city. Then they will troop by more splendid than princes, the universal bankers, lords of Florence: Cosimo the hard old man, Pater Patriae, the greatest of his race; Piero, the weakling; Lorenzo il Magnifico, tyrant and artist; and over his shoulder I shall see the devilish, sensual face of Savonarola. And there will go by Giuliano, the lover of Simonetta; Piero the exile; Giovanni the mighty pope, Leo X; Giulio the son of Guiliano, Clement ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... His head over such talk, and said: "No, My Peter is not a coward, but he is still somewhat unstable for a rock. No one who, at his age, can train himself for the Kingdom of God could be a weakling." ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... the night we played Barberine? You were splendid. You said: "Marry me all the same, in spite of my poverty." [She makes a movement to stop him] Oh, let me—please let me go on! I was only a miserable weakling then, I was frightened about the future. But you roused me and set me going. If I'm a man now, it's to you I owe it. Thanks to you I know how splendid it is to trust one's self and struggle, and hope, and succeed. Now I can ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux
... seen that if a person happens to be unfortunate, he fails to acquire wealth, how great so ever his strength. On the other hand, if one happens to be fortunate, he comes to the possession of wealth, even if he be a weakling or a fool. When, again, the time does not come for acquisition, one cannot make an acquisition with even one's best exertion. When, however, the time comes for acquisition, one wins great wealth without any exertion. Hundreds of men may be seen who ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... used to contend With tempests, scarce from the low earth ascend. He knows his time is out! and doth provide New principles of life; herbs he brings dried From the hot hills, and with rich spices frames A pile, shall burn, and hatch him with its flames. On this the weakling sits; salutes the sun With pleasant noise, and prays and begs for some Of his own fire, that quickly may restore The youth and vigour, which he had before. Whom, soon as Ph[oe]bus spies, stopping his reins, He makes ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... weakling who could amuse himself with a hundred imitation love affairs. In his veins ran the fierce, red blood of a strong race that had ruled by the simple strength of manhood their half-wild mountain wilderness. ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... took a chair opposite the wan one. The young man straightened. His face was even more familiar, but I could not place him. His lips were set; in their grim line—determination; whatever his exhaustion there was still a will. Somehow one had a respect for this weak one; he was not a mere weakling. Yet I was not so sure that he was not afraid of the Rhamda. He spoke to the waiter. The Rhamda began talking. I noted the poise in his manner; it was not evil, rather was it calm—and calculating. He made an indication. The young man drew back. ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... ours for the taking. If we let our arms rest idle for a long time, they become weak and useless; if a boy takes no exercise he cannot expect to be a strong man. So, if he reads nothing that makes him exert his mind, he becomes a weakling in intellect and never feels the pure delight that the man has who can read in a masterful ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... die. My wages were fifteen dollars a month, and every cent of it had been levied against by my Wall Street creditors. Not until I was seventy years old would any of the money I earned be coming to me. The other hired men looked on me as a weakling, and laughed at the torn golf suit in which I ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... her rise and her fall depended upon causes of such a nature that not even her womanly charms could have increased her power or retarded her ruin. All hearts were therefore filled with hope when they saw this respectable, active, and energetic woman take her place at the side of Claudius the weakling, for she brought back the memory of the most venerated personages of ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero
... in England. In the latter country I was sure, with its traditions and the Athenaeum and the Saturday Review, it would be adequately appreciated. Imagine my surprise to find that the English reviews were almost uniformly contemptuous and critical on moral and social grounds. The hero was a weakling, not for a moment to be tolerated by sound, right-thinking men. On the other hand, in America the reviewers for the most part have seen its true merits and stated them. Need I say, however, that the New York World finds it 'the sentimental servitude of a poor fool,' or that the ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... no nervous weakling. He snatched the pot of grease from the woman's hands, daubed gobs of the stuff liberally on his face and hands, and sat up—resembling an unknown kind of angry animal with his eyebrows and mustache burned off except for a stray, outstanding whisker ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy |
