"Weakness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... said Paul, "what do you wish me to do? Shall I resign, now at the eleventh hour? If I do, it will be a sign of weakness. It will be a confession that every word in this circular is true. It will proclaim the fact that I am afraid to ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... heard before were now shouting and pounding the bar with their fists. The papers the next morning ran lurid accounts of these saloons and the open threats of violence there. They censured the mayor for his weakness and called for the militia. Why ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... of massed bands, and that's St. George's, Edinburgh. I just can't help it, Harry; when the first note of that tune comes rolling out, I am neither to hold nor to bind. Now I don't want to have it spoiled by see-sawing, that would be blasphemous. So you just tell the organist that I have a weakness comes over me when that tune is sung, and tell him to listen, and follow me. And you ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... first, but in the end she agreed, on the condition that I got her a spray of orange-blossom to wear at her breast. It's no business of yours, Polycarp, but I may tell you that this feminine trait, this almost childish weakness, in a woman of so superb and powerful a character, simply enchanted me. ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... of argument is often hazardous and occasionally profane. And in special reference to the points just {24} described, we may remark that St. Matthew in ch. xiv. 28-33 does not hesitate to record the weakness of even St. Peter's faith; and that St. John, although he gives the greatest prominence to the majesty of our Lord, does in ch. ix. 6 record His use of spittle in healing. And if St. Matthew thought it irreverent to record ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... health. Not gentle Master Simon, but a stern, iron-handed, iron-hearted man, from whom Margery and Alice shrank instinctively. The physician reported that the Lady Marnell had undoubtedly been very ill, but was now better, and ailed nothing but weakness; he accordingly recommended that the examination should take place, but that the prisoner, in consideration of her extreme debility, should be indulged with a seat. Master Simon tried hard to obtain a little further postponement; but this time the powerful ...
— Mistress Margery • Emily Sarah Holt
... own pen. In the compilation of the Laws of the Partidas from the Justinian and Wisigothic Codes, he had also a share,—how large a one must in like manner remain for ever unknown. On the whole, it may be said of him, that, like our James I., he was an extraordinary instance of weakness and learning. Of his vanity, the well known saying has been often adduced,—that if he had been consulted at the creation of the world, he could have advised some things for the better. If this saying were really uttered—which there are strong reasons to doubt—it is probable ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 553, June 23, 1832 • Various
... which she hung in jealousy, sympathy, fear, and alternate loyalty and disloyalty to either side. Now she was reincarnated in her niece, and now in Archie. Now she saw, through the girl's eyes, the youth on his knees to her, heard his persuasive instances with a deadly weakness, and received his overmastering caresses. Anon, with a revulsion, her temper raged to see such utmost favours of fortune and love squandered on a brat of a girl, one of her own house, using her own name—a deadly ingredient—and that "didna ken her ain mind an' was as black's ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the shade and rarely falling under 100 deg. F. at night. No digging was practicable between 7.30 A.M. and 4.30 P.M. The men rose before four in the morning for the day's work. Progress was necessarily slow, partly owing to constant silting, partly to the common weakness of the authorities for varying the sites and types of the trenches. Materials were often wanting. Nevertheless the Manchesters won unqualified praise. Their civil life had fitted many for the task of reveting trenches with hurdles. The defences of Ashton-in-Sinai were improved in ...
— With Manchesters in the East • Gerald B. Hurst
... with each other in their attentions to the sick leader, and after he had recovered from the fever and weakness, they furnished him with all the necessaries of life which he was unable to obtain by his own efforts. After a few months in the cave, Pomponio left it to be with the Indians in the forest near the mission; ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... snuff-box; and the game was enlivened by sundry brief ejaculations and pungent questions, which kept alive the wits of the party present. It was not "silent whist!" I do not remember whether, in common with Sarah Battle, Lamb had a weakness in favor of "Hearts." I suppose that it was at one of these meetings that he made that shrewd remark which has since escaped into notoriety: "Martin" (observed he), "if dirt were trumps, what a hand you would hold!" It is not known what ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... said to the major. "Coleman is doing his best, and is doing mighty well, but there is no heart in the boys, and it isn't entirely due to physical weakness. I wish we could start something that would wake them up before they leave. ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... of Radowitz was doomed to failure, not so much because of any inherent weakness in it, but because Prussia was not strong enough to defend herself against all the enemies she had called up. The other Courts of Germany were lukewarm, Austria was extremely hostile. The Kings of Hanover and Saxony retreated from the alliance on the ground that ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... his feet over the side and sat up. After so much time in bed, even a well man should be rendered weak and shaky. But there was no dizziness, no sign of weakness. He had made a most remarkable recovery, and Nema didn't even seem surprised. He tentatively touched foot to floor and half stood, propping himself against the ...
— The Sky Is Falling • Lester del Rey
... not chosen this destination. Once again another will than his own had determined his path for him. He resigned himself without a struggle; he allowed himself to be taken along like an obedient child. Was it weakness? Perhaps. Possibly, however, it was not. Possibly he did not think it worth the trouble to call his will into play. Why should he, after all? As long as he might not live in Berlin, what did it matter where he lived? and Paris was as good a place as ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... weakness of my country-people, that commonly, when abroad, during their residence in large cities, they almost live exclusively in company together; they must dine together, meet at the theatre, and see all the ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... Could it be supposed that he would all at once resign the dear one without a quiver or a pang? There is a tremor of the soul as well as of the body, when the knife is falling on the limb to sever it, and this he suffered, struggling for composure as a martyr, and yet with all the weakness of a man. I have watched him closely, and I have known his heart wringing with pain, as the eye of his child sparkled with joy at my approach, whilst the visible features of his face strove fiercely to suppress the rising selfishness. He has gazed upon her, as we have sat together ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... Lopez remained in the pathway, walking up and down by the side of the old military club, thinking of things. He certainly knew his friend, the younger Wharton, intimately, appreciating the man's good qualities, and being fully aware of the man's weakness. By his questions he had extracted quite enough to assure himself that Emily's father would be adverse to his proposition. He had not felt much doubt before, but now he was certain. "He doesn't know much about me," he said, musing to himself. "Well, no; he doesn't;—and ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... trader has got to do, is to be a "Devil man." They always kindly said they recognised me as one, which is a great compliment. He must betray no weakness, but a character which I should describe as a compound of the best parts of those of Cardinal Richelieu, Brutus, Julius Caesar, Prince Metternich, and Mezzofanti, the latter to carry on the native language part ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... Catholic, so far-reaching, so secure of herself in all climes and amid all nations of men. There were Jesuits, he knew, up yonder, beyond the rivers, beyond the forests. He would find that Church there, steadfast as these stars and, alone with them, bridging all this long gulf. In his momentary weakness the repose She offered came on him as a temptation. Had he but anchored himself upon her, all these leagues had been as nothing. But he had cut himself adrift; and now the world, too, had cut him off, and where was he ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... morning at work within him. It was the first time he and the dowager had met since the marriage, and she brought before him all too prominently the ill-omened past: her unjustifiable scheming—his own miserable weakness. If ever Lord Hartledon felt shame and repentance for his weak yielding, he felt it now—felt it in all its bitterness; and something very like rage against the dowager was bubbling up in his spirit, which he had some ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... salvation efficiently. For the efficient cause of our salvation is the greatness of the Divine power, according to Isa. 59:1: "Behold the hand of the Lord is not shortened that it cannot save." But "Christ was crucified through weakness," as it is written (2 Cor. 13:4). Therefore, Christ's Passion did not bring about our ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... of Burns, which usually displays a kindly and intuitive sympathy with human weakness. Tam o' Shanter, his greatest poem, keeps the reader smiling or laughing from beginning to end. When the Scottish Muse proudly placed on his brow the holly wreath, she happily emphasized two of his conspicuous qualities,—his love and mirth, when ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... in which she was placed, she could have expected. My Lords, I do not blame Denmark for the course she has thought fit to pursue. She has a right—I should be sorry to reproach her in any way in her present state of weakness—she has an undoubted right to refuse our propositions, but we on our side have also a right to take into consideration the duty, honour, and interests of this country, and not to make that duty, that honour, and those interests subordinate ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... your uncompromising rectitude, friend Martin. We were, you see, greatly desirous of obtaining that envelope you had in your pocket. We had hoped to discover some weakness, some vice, in your composition—a fondness for drink, or for women, or for cards—something we might use as a leverage to pry loose from you that envelope. We failed in our quest, and we had to abandon our safe scheme of cunning in favor of more ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... way rather than be separated from his Lord. We cannot doubt the earnestness of Peter's purpose nor the sincerity of his desire at that moment. In his bold avowal, however, he had reckoned with the willingness of his spirit only, and had failed to take into full account the weakness of his flesh. Jesus, who knew Peter better than the man knew himself, thus tenderly reproved his excess of self-confidence: "Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: but I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and when thou art converted, ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... this vast pile is gloomy and desolate. It seems as if the strong hand of the builder had been arrested in the midst of his task by the stronger hand of death; and the unfinished fabric stands a lasting monument both of the power and weakness of man—of his vast desires, his sanguine hopes, his ambitious purposes—and of the unlooked-for conclusion, where all these desires, and hopes, and purposes are so often arrested. There is also at Blois another ancient chateau, to which ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... against the laws of his kind to strike this woman of another, but being a bully, he had taken advantage of the weakness of the female's husband to chastise her because she had refused to give up to him a tender young rodent ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... thou glad likewise. Cast off thy gloomy fears. The God who made all the beautiful things by which thou art surrounded is not unmindful of thee. Oh, wondrous condescension! God is not forgetful of me. He gazes upon me with an eye of compassion; he pities my distress and my weakness. Amazing love! Oh, that I were more worthy of it; Oh, that I loved him as fervently as I ought! But my heart is callous, and I am nothing but a poor, cold, vile and helpless sinner: nothing but sin dwells hi my heart. It is the seat of every vice, every evil thought, and every depraved passion. ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson
... get out all right," he answered, easily, and now she felt a comfort in the fact that he was intentionally minimizing danger to give confidence to the supposed weakness of ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... of gold and fame, High station and accomplishments of skill, Yet of life's greatest conquest they are still, And deem it weakness, or an act of shame, To seem to place high value on the love Which first of all they ...
— The Path to Home • Edgar A. Guest
... earth—we might also say they are the most loving and the least lovable. The beggars wax glad when Jack lumbers their way with a gay painted galley in tow; but, alas, tomorrow Jack belongs to the poor. Charity in the past has been prompted by weakness and whim—the penance of rogues—and often we give to get rid of the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... excellent girl in most respects. But she had one small weakness, which expressed itself in a snobbish dislike of her neighbours, the Sugdens, whose social position she deemed beneath her own. In the end, however, the girl acknowledged her folly, with results which are sure to ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... Wednesday, the 27th, I wrote to Grant Duff: "A pretty pass you Whigs have brought this country to! I really think we Radicals ought to be allowed to try. We certainly could not do it worse. 'Poland' has been a byword, yet Poland is far less of a weakness to Russia than Ireland to us, and the Russians have now the Polish peasantry with them, if they have the towns and nobles against them. We have no friends in Ireland. All our policy has aimed at conciliating at least Ulster, and now Ulster is fast becoming as Nationalist as Cork. The Liberals ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... than Knight. His journal was as good, though without illustrations; but he contrived to mix up amusement with useful knowledge. It may be a weakness, but the public like to be entertained, even while they are feeding upon better food. Hence Chambers succeeded, while Knight failed. The 'Penny Magazine' was discontinued in 1845, whereas 'Chambers's Edinburgh Journal' has maintained its popularity ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... failure! I shall do nothing more in this world. You opened my eyes; and, though the truth is bitter, I bear you no grudge. Amen! I have been sitting here for a week, face to face with the truth, with the past, with my weakness and poverty and nullity. I shall never touch a brush! I believe I have neither eaten nor slept. Look at that canvas!" he went on, as I relieved my emotion in an urgent request that he would come home with me and dine. "That was ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... not only failed to take the fort, (30) spite of their numbers and the weakness of the garrison, but also to capture the small force that was encamped outside the town, and was, after some sharp fighting, ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott
... spent, it is true, in retirement from active work, but he has been with us in spirit all this time. Many of us know how closely, and with what a fatherly interest, he has followed all our later history. And now his life has closed, in great physical weakness, but happily unaccompanied by ...
— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan
... put it in the very forefront of our petitions. Even skeptical Dan prayed, his skepticism falling away from him like a discarded garment in this valley of the shadow, which sifts out hearts and tries souls, until we all, grown-up or children, realize our weakness, and, finding that our own puny strength is as a reed shaken in the wind, creep back humbly to the God we have vainly dreamed we could ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... departure—an unconquerable desire to speak to you once more. I came here overmastered by an irresistible desire to see you alone, to look at you, to tell you what I have almost sworn should never pass my lips—what you may consider unmanly weakness—nay, insanity, on my part. We are face to face at last, man and woman, with the golden bars of conventionality and worldly distinction snapped asunder. I am no longer the man whom society would fain flatter, in atonement for past injustice; and I choose to forget for the time, that ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... City gentleman who has been noticed lately going up to public telephones and getting immediate answers is now solved. It appears that he is a well-known ventriloquist with a weakness for practical jokes. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 1st, 1920 • Various
... there, embracing the empty box that had brought him to his death; and for many minutes I sat within a yard of him, detained by the fascination and grim mockery of the picture no less than by physical weakness and a numbness of my brain. My body refused to act, and my mind hardly urged its indolent servant. I was in sore distress for Marie Delhasse,—my vehement cry witnessed it,—yet I had not the will to move to her aid; will and power both seemed ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope
... him, have conceived an aversion for him, but he would not have sunk in my esteem.... He would have kept his prestige. Don Juan would have remained Don Juan! Very late in life, and only after many experiences, does a man learn, at the sight of a fellow-creature's real failing or weakness, to sympathise with him, and help him without a secret self-congratulation at his own virtue and strength, but on the contrary, with every humility and comprehension of the naturalness, almost the inevitableness, ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... who confidently affirm that her father said often to her, 'Behold now I am a man stricken in years, and the man Meadows is rich'; so the maiden gave her hand to the man, but whether to please the old man her father, or out of the folly and weakness of females, thou, O Isaac, son of Shadrach, shalt determine; seeing that I am young, and little versed in the ways of women, knowing this only by universal report, that they are fair to the eye but often bitter to ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... sir," said Hannah, "that this is the kind of weakness that ends in death. My little lady is all on the pine for something or some one, and unless she gets what she wants ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... he had not thought of this before was a proof of his usual self-contained isolation, that he thought of it now was an equal proof that he was becoming at last accessible to loneliness. He was angry with himself for what seemed to him a selfish weakness. ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... hysterical weakness of mine. It might have frustrated our hopes; that it did not do so was in no measure due to me. But in a sort of passionate whirl, the ensuing events ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... came to grief. As time went on matters became worse instead of better, and the town was split up into parties—Liberal or the reverse, Church or Dissent, but all of one mind as regards their views being correct; and as to the weakness or wickedness of persons who thought otherwise. The evil of this spirit knew no bounds, and the demoralizing effect it produced was especially apparent at election times. When Oldfield wrote his 'Origin of Parliaments,' the town, he ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... to London town or to old Rome, may success attend thee; yet strange fears assail me and misgivings on thy account. Thou canst not rest, thou say'st, till thou hast seen the picture in the chamber at old Rome hanging over against the wall; ay, and thus thou dost exemplify thy weakness—thy strength too, it may be—for the one idea, fantastic yet lovely, which now possesses thee, could only have originated in a genial and fervent brain. Well, go, if thou must go; yet it perhaps were ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... were cavalry and entitled to the same, they gave us BONNIE DUNDEE and the horses cantered to it; but some of us rolled from the saddle in sheer weakness. Then we halted in something like a line, and a general rode up to shake hands with Ranjoor Singh and to say things in our tongue that may not be repeated, for they were words from heart to heart. And I remember little more, for I, too, swooned and ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... and on the two Cibbers, father and son. The Ministry are ingeniously implied to have been damn'd by the public; to give places with no attention to the capacity of the recipient; and to laugh at the dupes by whose money they live. A like weakness for putting blockheads in office and for giving places to rogues, and a like contempt of the public, is allegorically conveyed in the third act, in which 'Apollo' casts the parts for a performance among sundry unworthy actors, and declares that the people may grumble 'as much as they please, ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... and blows it over the head and shoulders of the patient. Another of these, the Distai[']y[)i], or Turkey Pea, is described in the Dispensatory as having roots tonic and aperient. The Cherokees drink a decoction of the roots for a feeling of weakness and languor, from which it might be supposed that they understood the tonic properties of the plant had not the same decoction been used by the women as a hair wash, and by the ball players to bathe their limbs, under the impression that the toughness of the roots would thus ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... have little cause to be proud: we admire it much more in the greatest, the wisest, and the best; in those who have, humanly speaking, most cause to be proud. Whenever, on the other hand, we see in wise and good men any vanity, boasting, pompousness of any kind, we call it a weakness in them, and are sorry to see them lowering themselves by the least ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... had abundant cause for anxiety in regard to the philosophical experiments these young savages might try the reader will admit, when informed of some of their performances. Henry imagined himself possessed of rare powers of invention (an ancestral weakness for generations), and so made a life preserver of corks, and tested its virtues on his brother, who was about eighteen months old. Accompanied by a troop of expectant boys, the baby was drawn in his carriage to the banks of the Seneca, stripped, the string of corks tied under his arms, ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... as if she feared that the cause of her weakness might be surmised, withdrew her hand hastily, exclaiming: "Oh, no! Sir John is mistaken. Joy never causes illness. It is only joy at seeing my brother again which caused this slight indisposition, and it has already passed over." Then turning to Madame de Montrevel, she added ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... it was a little lump of snow," thought he. "Yet if ever I saw an egg, that looked like one. Jumping grasshoppers, how good an egg would taste right now!" You know Blacky has a weakness for eggs. The more he thought about it, the hungrier he grew. Several times he almost made up his mind to fly straight over there and make sure, but he didn't quite dare. If it were an egg, it must belong to somebody, and perhaps it would be best to find ...
— Blacky the Crow • Thornton W. Burgess
... aware that his aunt perceived that there was something amiss. She gave him opportunities of speaking to her, but he could not take them. He shrank with a painful dumbness from displaying his secret wound. It seemed to him undignified and humiliating to confess his weakness. He hoped vaguely that the situation would solve itself, and spare him the necessity ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... had been born to a higher culture, therefore was his degradation the deeper. His poverty was due to his weakness. Virginia was especially drawn toward him by reason of his inalienable politeness and his well-chosen words. He was always the gentleman—no matter how ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... familiar to practical agriculturists and breeders; and upon it rest all the methods of improving the breeds of domestic animals, which, for the last century, have been followed with so much success in England. Colour, form, size, texture of hair or wool, proportions of various parts, strength or weakness of constitution, tendency to fatten or to remain lean, to give much or little milk, speed, strength, temper, intelligence, special instincts; there is not one of these characters whose transmission is not an every-day occurrence within the ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... and friends, pretending that he was taking leave of them before his departure. They all congratulated him; but when he spoke of the expenses of the journey and asked for a loan, all, without exception, told him that they could do nothing. His friends knew the weakness of his character, and that he was besotted with love for some "Flower-in-the-Mist" or other. He had remained in Peking, up to that time, they knew, not daring to face his father's anger. Was this departure genuine, now, or but pretended? If he spent the borrowed money on "tinted ...
— Eastern Shame Girl • Charles Georges Souli
... feelings. Pathos must be relieved by dignity of treatment. If you wallow naked in the pathetic, like the author of "Home, sweet home," you make your hearers weep in an unmanly fashion; and even while yet they are moved, they despise themselves and hate the occasion of their weakness. It did not come to tears that night, for the experiment was interrupted. An elderly, hard-looking man, with a goatee beard and about as much appearance of sentiment an you would expect from a retired slaver, turned with a start and bade the performer stop that "damned thing." "I've ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... eminent Chandler, now no longer in a condition to take the field. They were a singular contrast, Mortimer and Scott, and it was in their differences that the secret of their close friendship lay. Each dovetailed into the other. The strength of each was in the other's weakness. Together they formed a perfect unit. Mortimer was Saxon—slow, conscientious, and deliberate; Scott was Celtic—quick, happy-go-lucky, and brilliant. Mortimer was the more solid, Scott the more attractive. ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... house, telling myself that the best thing for me would be to leave England again at once. I had been a fool to fancy myself homesick, and to come back—to this. So far my life had been lived contentedly enough apart from the influence or love of women. What strange weakness of the soul had seized me that I should thus have yielded without a struggle to a single glance from a pair ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... as we neared the fighting field of the great war, I grew more set upon seizing the first chance that might offer an honorable escape from all these heartburnings? 'Twas a weakness, if you choose; I set down here naught but the simple fact, which had by now gone as far beyond excusings as the underlying cause of it was ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... elders muster up divers exceptions against the alleging of Rom. xii. 8, for proof of the divine right of their office, the weakness of which is to be discovered ere we pass to another argument. Except. 1. This is an arguing from a general to a special affirmatively. It doth not follow, because the apostle here in general mentioneth him that ruleth, therefore ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... thought, and touch them just sufficiently to stimulate their action with gentlest suasion, while it carefully avoided all that might irritate or weary. And such help and healing was found for Burke, or, haply, from bodily debility, mental weakness might have developed itself into mental malady; and the irritability of weakness, to which cultivated minds are often most subjected, might have ended, even for a time, if not wisely treated, in the violence of lunacy. It was natural that the doctor's daughter should assist in ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... your duty indeed, under a sense of your own weakness, to pray daily against sin; but if you would effectually avoid it, you must also avoid temptation, and every dangerous opportunity. Set a double guard wheresoever you feel or suspect an enemy at hand. The world without, and the heart within, have so much flattery and deceit in them, that ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... imperceptibly thanked him, while two silent tears rolled down her cheeks. "Besides, sir," said Villefort, addressing himself to his future son-in-law, "excepting the loss of a portion of your hopes, this unexpected will need not personally wound you; M. Noirtier's weakness of mind sufficiently explains it. It is not because Mademoiselle Valentine is going to marry you that he is angry, but because she will marry, a union with any other would have caused him the same sorrow. Old age is selfish, sir, and Mademoiselle de Villefort has ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... calculi of the oxalates, the contained potassium oxalate is poisonous in doses of 25 to 30 grams. If a concentrated solution is taken, it operates as a corrosive poison, producing violent pains in the stomach, vomiting, faintness and great weakness. If the solution is dilute its absorption is rapid and it operates very energetically. When a patient is poisoned by a concentrated solution, the stomach-pump is contraindicated, because the mucous membrane of the organ is corroded ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera
... thy work abideth by life in its form, so much the better will it appear; and this is true. Wherefore never more imagine that thou either canst or shalt make anything better than God hath given power to His creatures to do. For thy power is weakness compared to God's creating hand. (See continuation of ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... could be seen, and through which ran a plantation road. Here was a wooden fence,—a most unusual thing,—and I lost no time in mounting it, to rest and look about me. It is one of the marks of a true Yankee, I suspect, to like such a perch. My own weakness in that direction is a frequent subject of mirth with chance fellow travelers. The attitude is comfortable and conducive to meditation; and now that I was seated and at my ease, I felt that this was one of the New England luxuries which, almost ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... historian whatever. That so many Englishmen are more familiar with the scenes and the men and women of the French Revolution than they are with the scenes and the men and women of their own history, is very largely the work of Carlyle. And as to the vices and weakness of the Old Regime, the electric contagion of the people of Paris, the indomitable elasticity of the French spirit, the magnetic power of the French genius, the famous furia francese, and the terrible rage into which it can be ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... slave who fears the whip. She never spoke in a natural tone, but annoyed Timea by always lowering her voice to the thin whining sound which gives an impression of servility; she stammered with affected weakness, and could not pronounce the ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... many were still strongly in favor of making the advance again. Warren says: "I was in favor of advancing, and urged it with more zeal than convincing argument." But Hooker held to his own opinion. He could not appreciate the weakness of assuming the defensive in the midst of the elan ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... the law to act against the law, of tradition to act against tradition, of established order to act against established order. It would be to require strength from weakness, life from suicide; and, besides, we should ask in vain of the monarchical power to accomplish these changes, in which very often all perish, and the king foremost. Such a course would be the contradiction to the monarchy: ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... fullness in herself; even so with me It fared that evening. Gently did my soul Put off her veil, and, self-transmuted, stood Naked, as in the presence of her God. While on I walked, a comfort seemed to touch A heart that had not been disconsolate: Strength came where weakness was not known to be, At least not felt; and restoration came Like an intruder knocking at the door Of unacknowledged weariness. I took The balance, and with firm hand weighted myself. —Of that external scene which round me lay, Little, in this ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various
... a general store at that time, but I had a little weakness for livestock, even then; and while I couldn't afford to plunge in it exactly, I managed to buy a likely little shoat that I reckoned on carrying through the Summer on credit and presenting with a bill for board in the ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... he could not help thinking of the possibility of a break occurring in the high wall of masonry which loomed ahead of him. If there should be any undiscovered weakness in the wall! Or if an enemy should sink a charge of dynamite, or some other high explosive, at the base of the dam and ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson
... be on it? Could they restore unity and peace to the country while there was neither unity nor peace within them? What had produced the helplessness of the people, the imbecility of the military, but inward helplessness, inward weakness? They were weak against Moors, because they were weak against enemies more deadly than Moors. How could they fight for God outwardly, while they were fighting against him inwardly? He would not go forth with their hosts. How could He, when He was not among their hosts? He, a spirit, must ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... opportunity for rising, to a fellow whose God says to him: "My grace is sufficient for thee; for my strength is made perfect in weakness!" ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... father might have been intelligent friends by this time, if the practice of the "contrary method" had not tainted the girl with habitual hypocrisy, and cultivated in the father the warped mind which results from the habit of resistance, and blind weakness which comes from the false idea that he is always having his ...
— Nerves and Common Sense • Annie Payson Call
... engagements to dine on beef, groaning over petty ailments and miseries, and greeting each other in true bon compagnon style. Mary's notes, like her letters to Imlay, are essentially feminine. Short as they are, they are full of womanly tenderness and weakness. Sometimes she wrote to invite Godwin to dinner or to notify him that she intended calling at his apartments, at the same time sending a bulletin of her health and of her plans for the day. At others she seems to have written simply because she could not wait, even a few hours, ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... depressed, inclined to curse the slowness of our advance and the thousand miseries of war, I need only do what I did that evening. I need only turn to my Chasseurs and look into their eyes without a word; there I read so many noble and touching things that I am ashamed to have felt a momentary weakness. ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... emboldened the Bishop to go further. He admitted Morales into minor orders, gave him the tonsure, and thus, having placed him above the temporal power, enabled him to brave the Governor openly. The Bishop's nephew, taking the Governor's kindness for weakness, broke publicly into insulting terms about him. The Governor's brother, Father Hinostrosa, pressed him to vindicate his dignity, but he refused, saying he wanted peace at any price. This policy the Bishop did not understand, for all concessions he set ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... agriculture and government service, which together employ about half of the work force. Moreover, the small, vulnerable economy has suffered because the Turkish lira is legal tender. To compensate for the economy's weakness, Turkey provides direct and indirect aid to nearly every sector. In January 1997, Turkey signed a $250 million economic cooperation accord with the Turkish Cypriot area to ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... of the best men to stay out in Melbourne and Sydney. There are a few exceptions, but very few, who make over L4,000 a year, and in New South Wales the Chief Justice only gets L3,000 a year. Hence a marked weakness in the colonial bench of every colony, except Victoria, where the salaries are higher. Here and there you see a first-rate judge, but for the most part judges are ex-attorney-generals of the administration which happened to be in office when the judgeships fell vacant. Political distinction ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... which dieth not. Who knoweth the mysteries of the will, with its vigor? For God is but a great will, pervading all things by nature of its intentness. Man doth not yield himself to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... her aside and with the touch on her arm Miss Mary's blood turned to water. "She knows about me!" she thought and nearly fell to the ground from weakness. ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... a mixture of sensations,—pity for her cousin, indignation at this mean persecution of which she was the victim, and withal a fine touch of scorn over the weakness which was so easily played upon. With all her country breeding and ignorance of the world and its ways, there was in our little maiden a large share of the strong, self-respecting pride of her ancestry. She would ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... the father at length admitted to himself, "and I am wrong. After striving with all my might during the whole of his brief little life to inculcate in him an absolute belief in the unalterable truth of God's promises, why should I now allow the weakness of my own faith to undermine his? My child is in the hands of a merciful God; there ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... a real leader of men. His habit of seeing two sides of every question is an incurable weakness in him. Mrs. Ascher does not suffer in that way. She saw no good whatever in Belfast, nor ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... evil, they have descended to us by tradition and custom as a legacy. They are sufficiently real to be of practical use, and they are used. It is by them that we set a time—alas, that we should have the necessity of doing it—to discard some vice, some sin, some weakness. We use them in the interest of procrastination—that we may put off the parting day with something our conscience, or our taste, or both, disapprove. By them we appoint a time when we shall say ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley
... to help or uplift mankind," said Spinoza mildly. "Men should be imbued with a sense of their strength, not of their weakness." ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... they are being prepared for something. The object is that they should apprehend something, and the channel through which it comes matters little. They do the necessary work of the world; they support themselves, and they support those who from infirmity, weakness, age, or youth cannot support themselves. There is room, I think, in the world for both kinds of individualist, though the contemplative individualists are in the minority; and perhaps it must be so, because a certain lassitude is characteristic of them. If they were in the majority in any nation, ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... isle does with your praises ring; But, above all, a nymph of your own train[2] Gives us your character in such a strain, As none but she, who in that Court did dwell, Could know such worth, or worth describe so well. So while we mortals here at heaven do guess, And more our weakness, than the place, express, Some angel, a domestic there, comes down, And tells the wonders he ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... cannot sleep, for the pain he suffers keeps him awake. If weakness or exhaustion overcome him, his slumber is ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... method of examination without its drawbacks, and the chief weakness of the English system is that it tends to excite a spirit of rivalry which is apt to resort for aid to cramming processes. As yet, however, the examinations have been conducted in such a manner that the special "cramming-schools"—of which there are not ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... hundreds of the poor people. Thus also with the forthcoming inquiries concerning malarial fever, which is spreading all over the country. Every Indian knows that, like the plague, this form of fever is due to the poverty and consequent physical weakness of the people. It is, however, to the mosquito that the authorities went for the causes of the disease, just as to the rats for the causes of plague. Different medicines and instruments were invented for extirpating the insect, doctors were also employed, and rewards ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... character, she resolved to cut the Gordian knot by leaving London, and, fearing lest her affianced husband's conscientiousness should induce him to sacrifice himself to her; dreading also, perhaps, her own weakness, she made the parting absolute, and the place of her refuge a mystery. A theory has been suggested which drags an honored name in the mire—a theory so superfluous that I shall only allude to it. That Arthur Constant could have seduced, or had any ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... "It couldn't well have been better! Wunsch and Dr. Archie, and Ray, and I,"—he told them off on his fingers,—"your whistling-posts! You haven't done so badly. We've backed you as we could, some in our weakness and some in our might. In your dark hours—and you'll have them—you may like to remember us." He smiled whimsically and dropped the score into the trunk. "You ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... silent a moment. "If it is a question of yielding to a weakness, of resenting an injury, I am afraid I am ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... of weakness I more than once expressed my passion in the language of earthly harmony. I even wrote some of those airs, just like geometrical patterns, which are so much admired in the world of fashion that you move in. But as soon as I made a little way I met with insuperable obstacles ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... Phil's wish to build a Seminary at Stone's Landing, our place in Missouri, when Col. Sellers insisted it should be a University. Phil appears to have a weakness for Seminaries." ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... orders or see the force of them. When he journeyed and crowds came to be confirmed themselves or to present their little ones, he would get off his horse at a suitable spot and perform that rite. Neither tiredness, weakness, haste, rough ground, nor rain would induce him to confirm from the saddle. A young bishop afterwards, with no possible excuse, would order the frightened children up among restive horses. They came ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... far as we seek any in our classical reading, we gather for our youth from ancient history? Surely this—that simplicity of life, of language, and of manners gives strength to a nation; and that luxuriousness of life, subtlety of language, and smoothness of manners bring weakness and destruction on a nation. While men possess little and desire less, they remain brave and noble: while they are scornful of all the arts of luxury, and are in the sight of other nations as barbarians, ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... the throne, but experience shows that in all the intimate relationships of life some stay from without the individual desire is needed to restrain from impulsive change and lessen frictional expression of temperamental weakness. On reason and a sense of obligation are based all successful human arrangements, and these need ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... about them the headless dead, festering in the sun and blackening, and over them the sky without a cloud, and always at their hearts the dread of Asi and the chiefs, returning to kill them both. At dusk it seemed as though O'olo could never get his father to his feet, so destroyed was the old man by weakness and disinclination, and he was as a sinking canoe, or a sting ray flopping on the reef, and abandoned by the tide. But O'olo persevered, dragging and supporting him until coconuts were reached, where he climbed a tree and threw down nui in abundance; and as ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... up the village place in the dusk, thinking of this deplorable weakness in men that the Faith is too great for them, and accepting it as an inevitable burden. I continued to muse with my ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... others. She would frequently receive a man whose wife she would not admit, and her power was great enough to induce certain ambitious men to submit to these hard conditions, such as two famous royalist bankers, M. de Nucingen and Ferdinand du Tillet. She had so thoroughly studied the strength and the weakness of Paris life, that her conduct had never given any man the smallest advantage over her. An enormous price might have been set on a note or letter by which she might have compromised herself, ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac
... Way (manner) kutimo, maniero. Way, Milky lakta vojo. Way, in that tiel, tiamaniere. Way out (exit) eliro. Wayfarer vojiranto. Waylay inside ataki. Wayward memvola. We ni. Weak malforta. Weak (to become) malfortigxi. Weaken malfortigi. Weakness malforteco. Weal felicxeco. Wealth ricxeco. Wealthy ricxega. Wean (a child) debrustigi. Wean (alienate) forigi, forigxi. Weapon batalilo. Wear (use as clothes) porti. Wear away (decay by use) eluzi. Wear away (to ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... and he described Her, even as Adam must have described to the newly named beasts the glory and tenderness and beauty of Eve. Incidentally I learned that She was a tobacconist's assistant with a weakness for pretty dress, and had told him four or five times already that She had never been kissed by ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... seemed to carry to the United Provinces conviction of the weakness as well as the atrocity of Spain; and the indecent joy excited among the royalists added to their courage. An immediate council was created, composed of eighteen members, at the head of which was unanimously placed Prince Maurice of Nassau (who even then gave striking ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... prominent features in the writings of the sixteenth century. Nothing could be more repugnant to the true spirit of philosophical inquiry, or more irreconcilable with rational criticism. Far from betraying such weakness, Ondegardo writes in a direct and business-like manner, estimating things for what they are worth by the plain rule of common-sense. He keeps the main object of his argument ever in view, without allowing himself, ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... The one weakness of our hero, that hung to him for life, was the idea that he could write poetry. The tragedian always thinks he can succeed in comedy; the comedian spends hours in his garret rehearsing tragedy; most preachers have an idea that they ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... such a matter a thought. She looked from the window a minute, her lips firmly compressed. Then she spoke slowly: "Well, for one thing, I should become that woman's bosom companion. About seven times a week I should uncover her most aggravating weakness all unintentionally before the man in the case, at the same time keeping myself, strictly myself. I should keep steadily on doing and being what he first fell in love with. Lastly, since eighteen years have brought you no fulfillment of the desire ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... the first and following centuries.... In the eyes of a Christian, sexual relations in marriage not only do not constitute a lawful, right, and happy state, as our society and our churches maintain, but, on the contrary, are always a fall, a weakness, ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... most important poetical products of Roman literature. It is the didactic poem of Titus Lucretius Carus (655-699) "Concerning the Nature of Things," whose author, belonging to the best circles of Roman society, but taking no part in public life whether from weakness of health or from disinclination, died in the prime of manhood shortly before the outbreak of the civil war. As a poet he attached himself decidedly to Ennius and thereby to the classical Greek literature. Indignantly he turns away from the "hollow Hellenism" ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... road in a hired brougham, and the journey seemed a long one; but it was an unspeakable relief to John Saltram to see the suburban roads and green fields after the long imprisonment of the Temple,—a relief that moved him almost to tears in his extreme weakness. ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... me, I told her to stop, after she had tried two flat-irons and the coal-scuttle. She paused for breath; but I kept bobbing around. Somehow I felt no inclination to sit down anywhere. "O Joshua," she cried, "I wish you had not killed the cat." Now I submit that the wish was born of the weakness of woman's intellect. How on earth did she suppose a cat could get where that mouse was?—rather have the mouse there alone, anyway, than to have a cat prowling around after it. I reminded Maria of the fact that she was a fool. Then she got the tea-kettle and wanted to ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... she did not know it then, that Napoleon had conspired with Russia to seize the Danish fleet and use it against England. Denmark, indeed, has better cause to complain that we gave her no assistance in 1864. That mistake—for it was a mistake of weakness, not deliberate treachery—has brought its own nemesis. We are still paying for that particular mistake, and we are not likely to forget the lesson. The case of Schleswig-Holstein shows how the losses of such a state as Denmark may react on ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History
... overcome by great weakness. Staggering, he held his hand to his sweat-dewed forehead. Erratically he waltzed across the floor, to crumple in a heap where Quirl and the girl were sitting. Moved by compassion, Lenore composed his body in a more ...
— In the Orbit of Saturn • Roman Frederick Starzl
... curs'd my birth, indeed, I have Blasphem'd the Gods, with unbecoming passion, Arraign'd their Justice, and defy'd their pow'r, In bitterness, because they had deny'd Thee to support the weakness of my age. But now no more I'll rail and rave at fate, All its decrees are just, complaints are impious, Whate'er short-sighted mortals feel, springs from Their blindness in the ways of Providence; Sufficient wisdom 'tis for man to know That the ...
— The Prince of Parthia - A Tragedy • Thomas Godfrey
... the room rang with it. John Baxter, whose weakness had hitherto been so great that he could not turn himself in bed, was leaning on his elbow and pointing with outstretched finger ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... feeble constitution and a tendency to melancholia, Deep sunken eyes are selfish, while eyes in which the whole iris shows indicate erraticism, if not lunacy. Round eyes are indicative of innocence; strongly protuberant eyes of weakness of both mind and body. Eyes small and close together typify cunning, while those far apart and open indicate frankness. The normal distance between the eyes is the width of one eye; a distance greater or less than this intensifies ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... one fell back upon a standing column, a moth-eaten collection of alleged jests which had been set up years ago to meet the worst emergencies. It was, however, considered a confession of weakness and a degradation to ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... He runs the risk of being misunderstood. Men in their stupidity constantly mistake strong patience for weakness or indifference or lack of a gripping purpose. And God is misunderstood in this, even by His trusting children. But, even so, the object to be gained is so great, and so near Christ's heart that He waits, strongly waits with a patience beyond our comprehension; waits just a bit longer, ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon
... league into which none are admitted except those who take the oath of allegiance; and, of course, to expose the weakness of the scientific doctrines of the time is equivalent to violating the oath of allegiance. Now, the man of science who has to earn his living by his science, has either to join the league or run the risk of starving. This explains ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... growing for nothing. Eddie walked more slowly to and from the office, and Pheeny took a longer time to set the table. She had to sit down a good deal between trips and suffered a lot of pain. She said nothing about it to Eddie of evenings, but it grew harder to conceal her weakness from him when he helped her with ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... plays her black suit and sets her bright eyes against the rich bachelor, elderly or young as may be. Here the artful practitioner, who has dealt in a thousand such games, engages the young simpleton with more money than wit; and knowing his weakness and her skill, we may safely take the odds, and back rouge et couleur to win. Here mamma, not having money, perhaps, but metal more attractive, stakes her virgin daughter against Count Fettacker's forests and meadows; or Lord Lackland plays his ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... daily life with such silent courage. We visited old friends to whom the war had brought irreparable bereavements, but never once heard the voice of self-pity, of murmur or complaint. To me it was an incredible England; an England purged of all weakness, stripped of flabbiness, regenerated by sacrifice. I had dreamed of no such transformation by anything I had read in American newspapers and magazines. I think no one can imagine the completeness of this rebirth of the soul ...
— Carry On • Coningsby Dawson
... husband, saw nothing and knew nothing, as usual. It was said that he lived apart from his wife on account of physical weakness, for which Madame d'Avancelles would not pardon him. He was a short, stout, bald man, with short arms, legs, neck, nose and everything else, while Madame d'Avancelles, on the contrary, was a tall, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... with me, and I blushed and stammered and said that I was coming back in a different spirit. She said that college was the finest place in the world for a girl to get acquainted with herself—that cowardice and weakness of purpose and meanness and pettiness stood out so clearly against the background of fineness and squareness; and that four years was long enough to see all sorts of faults in oneself, and change them according to one's new theories. As she said ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... daughters and Cordelia such sisters? Even character itself contributes to these feelings of fatality. How could men escape, we cry, such vehement propensities as drive Romeo, Antony, Coriolanus, to their doom? And why is it that a man's virtues help to destroy him, and that his weakness or defect is so intertwined with everything that is admirable in him that we can hardly separate them even ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... year, and in mistaken kindness the college decided to grant him the unusual compliment of keeping him in college through the vacation with a special mathematical tutor, gratis, to work with him, mathematics being considered his weakness. As his only chance of health lay in complete rest during the holiday, this plan of spending the summer in study was simply a death sentence. In July, while at work on logarithm tables, he was overtaken by a sudden fainting fit, evidently of an ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... these qualities, she said, came hurry, mistakes innumerable, heroic devotion to objects that were worthless, much weakness, tremendous disappointments." ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... days later the Squash put forth a new tendril. It had invaded his home, and now it invaded his pulpit, so to speak. Exacerbated by persecution, Dr. Gowdy had thrown off all restraint. His one real weakness, his inability to keep from talking when talking was going on, grew plainer every hour in exact proportion as his invective, his vituperation, grew stronger. He rushed into print, like some of the others, and his expressions were made matter for consideration at the monthly ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... abuse that trust by keeping this piece of our common affairs in the dark, and this other piece in the light, and again this other piece in the twilight, and so on, I should strengthen my strength, and weaken your weakness, day by day, until at last I found myself on the high road to fortune, and you left behind on some bare common, a hopeless number of miles ...
— Some Christmas Stories • Charles Dickens
... far as the section for which he was responsible was concerned. He was young, but there was some ground for his confidence; for he not only had studied all that text-books could teach him but he had the constructor's eye, which sees half-instinctively where strength or weakness lies. Brandon began his military career as a prize cadet and after getting his commission he was quickly promoted from subaltern rank. His advancement, however, caused no jealousy, for Dick Brandon ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... deprivation patiently, until one day he questioned his nurse, and very seriously demanded an explanation on this subject, which the good woman was unable to give, for she indulged him even to the point of spoiling him. He knew her weakness, and often took advantage of it, as in this instance for example. He became angry, and said to his nurse in a tone which had as much and even more effect on her than the Emperor or the King of Holland ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... death that will close your present lives and the birth that will open the portal of your next lives. You know that in the heavenly places you will be weaving into faculty, into capacity, every thought and every aspiration towards the higher life which in these days of your weakness you are generating, and are trying to cherish and cultivate. It is not you as you are who will make the future, but you as you shall be, self-created from your aspirations now. And just in proportion as each of you nourishes those ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant
... For a time he was inconsolable, then at length readjusted himself good-naturedly to suit the new order of things with as little compunction as before, when he had entered Harvard. He found that he could be contented in almost any environment, the weakness, the certain pliability of his character easily fitting itself into new grooves, reshaping itself to suit new circumstances. He prevailed upon his father to allow him to have a downtown studio. In a little while he was ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... populace were not such to the army. It was but rarely that the soldier participated in the emotions of the citizen. And thus, being effectually without check, the most vicious of the Csars went on without fear, presuming upon the weakness of one part of his subjects, and the indifference of the other, until he was tempted onwards to atrocities, which armed against him the common feelings of human nature, and all mankind, as it were, rose ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... good talker when in the humour, and an excellent listener when either myself or M'Allister are in the vein for airing our own particular views. He is rather fond of chaffing M'Allister, who has a quiet humour of his own, and takes it all in good part. John has only one weakness—he has become a most inveterate smoker, and we have learned by experience that in this matter his wishes must never be opposed. Both M'Allister and myself are also smokers, though to a much less extent; the former, indeed, more often prefers to chew navy plug-tobacco—a ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... humanely while keeping their time occupied in useful employment, still permitting each to enjoy the means of mental, moral and religious culture. Many, thus situated would, no doubt, live really good, pious lives, who, from their moral weakness, could not resist the temptations to crime which are met on every hand without. To such, the prison should act as ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... Sense-of-injury walks ever the weak sister-demon Self-pity, so dear, so sweet to many—both of them the children of Philautos, not of Agape. But there was no hate, no revenge, in Godfrey, and, I repeat, his weakness he kept concealed. It must have been in his eyes, but eyes are hard to read. For the rest, his was a strong poetic nature—a nature which half unconsciously turned ever toward the best, away from the mean judgments of common men, and with positive loathing from the ways of ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... himself free from the arms that held him. The fainting fit which had threatened him passed away as swiftly as it had come. His lust of hate and revenge was so keen at this moment that it conquered all his physical weakness. When he realised that it was Taurus Antinor who was supporting him, he contrived to smile benignly and placidly ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... comprehending that his movements were being directed by any one save himself. Truth was, Faith had come to her cross-roads in life. For the first time in her memory she had seen her father speak to an Eglington without harshness; and, as he weakened for a moment, she moved to take command of that weakness, though she meant it to seem like leading. While loving her and David profoundly, her father had ever been quietly imperious. If she could but gain ascendency even in a little, it might lead to a more open book of life for ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... ciii. 14, "He knoweth our frame; He remembereth that we are dust."—Our SHEPHERD knows our weakness. He never lays more upon us than we ...
— A Ribband of Blue - And Other Bible Studies • J. Hudson Taylor
... the category of broken idols. All this would have been as Sanscrit to the Rector of Carlingford; and the only resource he had was to make in his own mind certain half-pitying, half-affectionate remarks upon the inexplicable weakness of women, and to pick up the stocking which his wife was darning, and finally to stroke her hair, which was still as pretty and soft and brown as it had been ten years ago. Under such circumstances a man ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... public debt, substantially alleviated the country's amortization burden in the coming years and restored public confidence. The economy is expected to resume growth in 2004 (perhaps 4% or more) as a result of high commodity prices for Uruguayan exports, the weakness of the dollar against the euro, growth in the region, low international interest rates, and greater export competitiveness. On the negative side, in December 2003 the electorate voted to repeal the law permitting a cautious liberalization ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... have leaders; men may set up whatever form of government they will, they are always searching for a king. And this is no sign of weakness or credulity. Man's desire for leadership is only another proof of the vast future which he knows is before him, and into which he longs to be guided. The wiser a man is, the more he desires to be taught; the nobler ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler |
