"Enervate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... revealed a slender, enervate youth, of pallid beauty, reclining upon a crimson mat, near the festooned arch of the bower. His anointed head was resting against the bosom of a girl; another stirred the air, with a fan of Pintado plumes. The pupils ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... crest-tossing Hector then answered: "Bring me not genial wine, venerable mother, lest thou enervate me, and I forget my might and valour. But I dread to pour out dark-red wine to Jove with unwashed hands: nor is it by any means lawful for me, denied with blood and gore, to offer vows to the cloud-compelling ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... Even as I thought of it, a revolt rose in me. The revolt of all the higher instincts against enslavement by the lower. The rebellion of all the intellectual impulses against being ruled by the physical. What! weaken, enervate, starve, destroy the mental sinews to gratify the passion for a woman? Crush down the mental emotions to give reins to the physical? It would be the work of a fool. A rooting-up fruit trees to clear a space for weeds. And what of those twenty-six ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... What could have encouraged that demeanor your Lordships will, when you reflect seriously upon this matter, consider. God forbid that the authority either of the prosecutor or of the judge should dishearten the prisoner so as to circumscribe the means or enervate the vigor of his defence! God forbid that such a thing should even appear to be desired by anybody in any British tribunal! But, my Lords, there is a behavior which broadly displays a want of sense, a want of feeling, a want of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... therefore, and so were other friends of yours, to see you wasting the flower of your life on such things, and I feared lest that noble nature of yours should be brought to take pleasure in pursuits which only enervate the mind."[94] ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... early part of this article, regarding the speedy necessity of a new deluge. So far as these children are concerned, at any rate, it would be a blessing to the human race, which they will contribute to enervate and corrupt,—a greater blessing to themselves, who inherit no patrimony but disease and vice, and in whose souls, if there be a spark of God's life, this seems the only possible mode of keeping it aglow,—if ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... dereliction of honour and duty. This is the way that the British board of admiralty, the transport board, the parliament, and the people are deceived, and their nation disgraced; and this corruption, which more or less pervades the whole transport service, will enervate and debase their boasted navy. We cannot suppose that the British board of admiralty, or the transport board would justify the cruel system of starvation practised on the brave Americans who were taken in Canada, and conveyed in their floating dungeons down the river St. Lawrence ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... and her very tombs are but as the dust they were vainly intended to commemorate. So thought Palmyra; where is she? So thought the countries of Demosthenes and the Spartan; yet Leonidas is trampled by the timid slave, and Athens insulted by the servile, mindless, and enervate Ottoman. In his hurried march, Time has but looked at their imagined immortality, and all its vanities, from the palace to the tomb, have, with their ruins, erased the very impression of his footsteps. The ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... to nature in giving impress to character. The scenery by which a people is surrounded, will modify and almost control its mode of being. The soft, rich landscapes of Italy enervate, while the rough mountainous country of the North imparts force and vigor. Mountains and seas are nature's healthful stimulants. Man grows in their vastness and is energized in their strength. Whatever may be the scenery of a people, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Peter, the son of Alexis Michaelovitz, ascended the throne, in 1682—a boy, ten years of age. He early exhibited great sagacity and talent, but was addicted to gross pleasures. These, strangely, did not enervate him, or prevent him from making considerable attainments. But he was most distinguished for a military spirit, which was treated with contempt by the Regent Sophia, daughter of Alexis by a first marriage. As soon, however, as her eyes were open to his varied ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... weight to the project of a council, whose concurrence is made constitutionally necessary to the operations of the ostensible Executive. An artful cabal in that council would be able to distract and to enervate the whole system of administration. If no such cabal should exist, the mere diversity of views and opinions would alone be sufficient to tincture the exercise of the executive authority with a spirit of ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... philosophers, for now it is recognized as the people's demand. No longer can Civil Service reform be cried down by the so-called practical politicians as the nebulous dream of unpractical visionaries, for it has been grasped by the popular understanding as a practical necessity—not to enervate our political life, but to lift it to a higher moral plane; not to destroy political parties, but to restore them to their legitimate functions; not to make party government impossible, but to guard it against ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various |
