"Enervated" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... years De Stancy had been an easy, melancholy, unaspiring officer, enervated and depressed by a parental affection quite beyond his control for the graceless lad Dare—the obtrusive memento of a shadowy period in De Stancy's youth, who threatened to be the curse of his old age. Throughout a long space he had persevered in his system ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... to hard labor will endure more fatigue, than those of sedentary or enervated habits, needs no argument to prove. That the arm of the blacksmith acquires strength beyond the arm of the literary recluse, is ...
— A Dissertation on the Medical Properties and Injurious Effects of the Habitual Use of Tobacco • A. McAllister
... must have lost my head during the last few days! I must be the plaything of my enervated imagination, unless I am really a somnambulist, or that I have been brought under the power of one of those influences which have been proved to exist, but which have hitherto been inexplicable, which are called suggestions. In any ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... of the great glaciers in the north, possessed the insight and coolness of a mountain explorer; and all the third woman lacked in physical endurance was more than made up in courage. The man, though enervated by over-indulgence, had the brute force, the animal instinct of self-preservation, to carry him through. So presently, when the buttress was passed, and the prospector uncoiled his rope, it was to Mrs. Feversham he gave the other end, placing Morganstein next, with Elizabeth ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... them. For example, it had suppressed provincial governments (etats) over three-quarters of the territory in all the electoral districts; nothing remained of the old province but its name and an administrative circumscription. At another time, without mutilating the corporate body, it had enervated and deformed it, or dislocated ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... appearances of such a relaxation; and a relaxation somewhat below the natural tone seems to me to be the cause of all positive pleasure. Who is a stranger to that manner of expression so common in all times and in all countries, of being softened, relaxed, enervated, dissolved, melted away by pleasure? The universal voice of mankind, faithful to their feelings, concurs in affirming this uniform and general effect: and although some odd and particular instance may perhaps be found, wherein there appears a considerable degree of positive pleasure, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... be not enervated by luxury; if she be not led astray from the paths of true policy by windy talk about "splendid isolation"; if also she can retain the loyal support of the various peoples of India,—she may face the contingency of such an invasion with firmness and equanimity. That it will come ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... history for two short years, and dwell a moment on the picture presented to our eyes. A nation, enjoying to the utmost the substantial benefits belonging to fifty years of profound peace and unexampled prosperity, enervated by those habits of luxury which wealth easily accumulated always fosters, with a standing army hardly large enough to protect our Western frontier from the incursions of hostile Indians, and a navy ludicrously small in proportion to the extent of our sea-coast ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... to me, to take up the pen, and write you a line; for I have had, about four o'clock this morning, one of my dreadful spasms, which has almost enervated me. ...
— The Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton, Vol II. - With A Supplement Of Interesting Letters By Distinguished Characters • Horatio Nelson
... in the meanwhile, wrapped in his glory, continued to rule the world and mould it to his image; he skilfully enervated the conquered nations, instructed them in the arts, inoculated them with his vices, and weakened in them the spring of their formerly strong will. They called civilisation, humanitas, Tacitus said of the Britons, what was actually "servitude."[27] The frontiers of the empire were now ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... Christ, fights best under the banner of the Cross—for we are of the Church militant here on earth: give us brave men;' and such are the descendants of the old Daimios and two-sworded Samurai of Japan. 'Give us an industrial race, not idlers nor loungers, enervated by a luxurious climate, but men who delight in toil, laborious husbandmen, persevering craftsmen, shrewd men of business;' and such are the Japanese agriculturists, who win two harvests a year from ...
— Religion in Japan • George A. Cobbold, B.A.
... crisped them. Suddenly the forest was still. The great, brooding silence, composed of a thousand lesser woods voices, flowed away like a vapour to be succeeded by a fragile, deathly suspension of sound. Dead leaves depended motionless from the trees. The air hung inert. A soft sunlight lay enervated across the world. ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... persons, 4,000 of these being free colored and blacks.[53] Later others came from Cuba, Guadaloupe and neighboring islands until they amounted to 10,000. The first American governor of Louisiana certainly had no easy task before him. Into the disorganized and undisciplined city, enervated by frequent changes and corruption of government, torn by dissensions, uncertain whether its allegiance was to Spain or to France, reflecting the spirit of upheaval and uncertainty which made Europe one huge brawl—into this cosmopolitan city swarmed ten thousand white, yellow and ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... is because blood relations must needs live in close touch with one another. Wherefore if they were not debarred from venereal union, opportunities of venereal intercourse would be very frequent and thus men's minds would be enervated by lust. Hence in the Old Law [*Lev. 18] the prohibition was apparently directed specially to those persons who must ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... sharp and rugged peak, reached for a moment but soon quitted, for mountain-peaks are not inhabitable. To-day it is a boundless plain, as uninhabitable as the peaks; but we are not permitted to descend from it. And so, at the very moment when man appeared most exhausted and enervated by the comforts and vices of civilization, at the moment when he was happiest and therefore most selfish, when, possessing the minimum of faith and vainly seeking a new ideal, he seemed least capable of sacrificing himself for an idea of any kind, he finds himself suddenly ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... yet have perished from failing in other characters. The Greeks may have retrograded from a want of coherence between the many small states, from the small size of their whole country, from the practice of slavery, or from extreme sensuality; for they did not succumb until "they were enervated and corrupt to the very core." (27. Mr. Greg, 'Fraser's Magazine,' Sept. 1868, p. 357.) The western nations of Europe, who now so immeasurably surpass their former savage progenitors, and stand at the summit of civilisation, ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... upon the fact that civilizations on different planes of material prosperity and progress, with different spiritual ideals, and with very different political capacities, are fast closing together. It is a condition not unprecedented in the history of the world. When it befell a great united empire, enervated by long years of unwarlike habits among its chief citizens, it entailed ruin, but ruin deferred through centuries, thanks to the provision made beforehand by a great general and statesman. The Saracenic and Turkish invasions, on the contrary, after generations of advance, were first checked, ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... picture. Let the mind of the most devout Catholic feed on the writings of the Protestant or sensualist and mark the transformation. See how his soul becomes enervated, his judgment warped and his heart invaded by every temptation. His Catholic principles insensibly vanish, and the standards of paganism replace them. The light of the supernatural dies in his eyes, a film of clay overspreads his vision; he looks on the Church through coloured lenses, ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... within the grasp of his own family. In both respects it proved successful. A second important step was taken by Iyemitsu, his grandson, and after him the ablest of the family. By this time many of the noted warriors among the daimios were dead, and their sons, enervated by peace and luxury, could be dealt with more vigorously than would have been safe to do ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... are in the long run as destructive as any war. Tyrants and oppressors have many times made a wilderness and called it peace. Many times peoples who were slothful or timid or shortsighted, who had been enervated by ease or by luxury, or misled by false teachings, have shrunk in unmanly fashion from doing duty that was stern and that needed self-sacrifice, and have sought to hide from their own minds their shortcomings, their ignoble motives, by calling them love of peace. The peace of tyrannous terror, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... hammer of Thor? Is genius the child of blood and tears? Are wars the tidal waves in the mighty social sea, ordained by the Deity to prevent putrefaction? Was the Phoenix of the ancients but an old civilization, enervated by luxury and corrupted by peace, that could only be purified of its foul dross and infused with new energy by fire? Was that poet inspired who declared that, "Whatever is, is right?" I do ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... and resolute adversaries among the Mexicans, who opposed almost insurmountable difficulties to his progress, Pizarro had no trouble in vanquishing the Peruvians, who were timid and enervated, and who never made any serious resistance to his arms. Of the conquests of Peru and Mexico, the less difficult produced the greater metallurgic advantage to Spain, and thus it was the ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... Rocdiane and the Comte Landa sympathized with him. Both were older than he, though even a keen eye could not guess their age; clubmen, horsemen, swordsmen, whose incessant exercise had given them bodies of steel, they boasted of being younger in every way than the enervated ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... stirred the generous spruce and darkening pinewoods. The drooping, westering sun, already athwart the barren crown of the hill tops, left a false, velvety suggestion of twilight in the heart of the valley, while a depressing superheat enervated all life, except the profusion of vegetation which beautified the rugged slopes. For the most part the stillness was profound, only the most trifling sounds disturbing it. There was an uneasy shuffle of moving feet; there was the occasional crisp clip of a driven axe; ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... go to one of lower temperature, the pores of his skin are suddenly closed, and either a severe cold or an inflammation of the lungs, or an attack of bronchitis, is likely to ensue. Moreover, the child is both weakened and enervated by the heat, and thus readily ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... and fleeting attractions, Lord Byron had been led to squander the powers of youth, to wish to extinguish his senses in order to open out a more vast horizon to his intelligence; if, thus mistaking the means, he had, nevertheless, weakened, enervated, degraded himself, would not his heart have been the first victim sacrificed on the ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... miseries in sleep. But the cold was too intense to allow us to do so, for I am convinced that at this great altitude the thermometer cannot have marked less than fourteen or fifteen degrees below freezing point. What such a temperature meant to us, enervated as we were by hardship, want of food, and the great heat of the desert, the reader may imagine better than I can describe. Suffice it to say that it was something as near death from exposure as I have ever felt. There we sat hour after hour through the still and bitter night, feeling the ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... proper cultivation, is the foundation of all human prosperity, and from it is derived the main wealth of the community. From the farm chiefly springs that energetic class of men, who replace the enervated and physically decaying multitude continually thrown off in the waste-weir of our great commercial and manufacturing cities and towns, whose population, without the infusion—and that continually—of the strong, substantial, and vigorous life blood of the country, ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... therefore useless; but with the firm knowing hand of the anatomist, demonstrating and making clear to others, that the knowledge may be applied to purpose. All this difficult task is achieved so that you may read till your own soul is before you, and you know it; but the enervated public complains that the work is obscure forsooth: so we are always looking for green grass—verdant meads, tall pines, vineyards, etc., as the essentials of poetry; these are all very pretty and very delicate, the dust blows not in your eyes, but Chaucer has told us all ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... as slowly as I could, to give the Governor every possible chance to recruit his enervated frame by change of air; but, as I looked in at New Sestros in passing, I found three trading vessels with cargoes of merchandise to my consignment, so that I was obliged to abandon my trip and return to business. I left the Governor, however, in excellent ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... Lucania at the mercy of the gladiators. Spartacus now established posts at Metapontum and at Thurii. Here he labored, with unceasing energy and industry, to organize and discipline his men. Adopting various measures to prevent them from becoming enervated through the abundance in which they were revelling, he prohibited the use of money among them, and gave all that he himself had to relieve those who had suffered from the war. Some of his officers are said to have followed his example in making so great a sacrifice ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... splendor, and enervated by luxury, Solomon forgot his higher duties, and yielded to the fascination of oriental courts. In his harem were 700 wives, princesses, and 300 concubines, who turned his heart to idolatry. In punishment for his apostasy, God declared that his kingdom should be divided, and that his son should ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... the self-reliant character of Americans and demonstrated their military abilities; and if the commercial and manufacturing populations of particular sections were supposed to have become somewhat enervated by long exemption from the labors and perils of war, it was certain that our large agricultural regions and especially our frontier settlements were peopled with men inured to toil and familiar with danger, constituting the best material for ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... tutors), who are also attendants, and sent off to the school of some teacher to be taught "grammar," "music," and the concerns of the palestra. (2) Besides this they are given shoes (3) to wear which tend to make their feet tender, and their bodies are enervated by various changes of clothing. And as for food, the only measure recognised is that which is ...
— The Polity of the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians • Xenophon
... those are "aptest to love that are young and lusty, live at ease, stall-fed, free from cares, like cattle in a rank pasture"—whereas the Bushmen are nearly always thin, half-starved denizens of the African deserts, enervated by constant fears, and so unmanly that "a single musket shot," says Lichtenstein, "will put a hundred to flight, and whoever rushes upon them with only a good stick in his hand has no reason to fear any resistance from ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... again, distressed and vexed with herself. Was it the heat that had enervated her and robbed her of the presence of mind she usually had at her command? She herself could not understand how it was that she had not at once taken advantage of the opportunity to plead to Haschim for her faithful retainer. The merchant might ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... kitchen, all his acerbity and determination melted away. That peaceable evening, with the odour of the black-pudding and the lard, and the sight of plump little Pauline slumbering on his knee, had so enervated him that he found himself wishing for a succession of such evenings—endless ones ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... called Caracalla, [Footnote: A word of Celtic origin, signifying a long, ulster-like tunic plus a hood. This was a Gallic dress.] and he prescribed it by preference as the dress for the soldiers. The barbarians saw what sort of person he was and also heard that his men were enervated through their previous luxury; for, to give an instance of their behavior, the Romans passed the winter in houses, making use of everything belonging to their entertainers as if it were their own. [They further perceived that their opponents had become so physically worn and so dejected in spirit ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... friend, who was distinguished for his rare early promise, his ripe and manifold accomplishments, and a strange, magnetic affinity with the genius of the author, these exquisite poems are the gushing expression of a heart touched and softened, but not enervated by deep sorrow. The poet takes a pensive delight in gathering up every memorial of the brother of his affections; his fancy teems with all sweet and beautiful images to show the tenderness of his grief; every object in external nature recalls the lost treasure; until, after reveling in ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... subjected by the Roman armies, but the largest portion of Europe held by the Germanic tribes was the seat from whence assault after assault was made on the Roman Empire, which at length, weakened by internal dissensions and enervated by luxury, split in twain, and the western, and most important part, fell before its ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... of your friends—only a small proportion—which, however, connects your circle with that deadly, idle, brainless bunch—the insolent chatterers at the opera, the gorged dowagers, the worn-out, passionless men, the enervated matrons of the summer capital, the chlorotic squatters on huge yachts, the speed-mad fugitives from the furies of ennui, the neurotic victims of mental cirrhosis, the jewelled animals whose moral code is the code of ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... the road to Brussels, nothing could look vapid to me. My sense of enjoyment possessed an edge whetted to the finest, untouched, keen, exquisite. I was young; I had good health; pleasure and I had never met; no indulgence of hers had enervated or sated one faculty of my nature. Liberty I clasped in my arms for the first time, and the influence of her smile and embrace revived my life like the sun and the west wind. Yes, at that epoch I felt like a morning traveller who doubts not ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... occasion in commerce. But, how great soever they may be, it might, perhaps, be possible, by the aid of the paternal cares of your High Mightinesses, and by opposing a vigorous resistance to the enemy, already enervated, to repair in time all these losses, (without mentioning indemnifications) if this stagnation of commerce was only momentary, and if the industrious merchant did not see beforehand the sources of his future felicity dried up. It is this gloomy foresight which, in ...
— A Collection of State-Papers, Relative to the First Acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of the United States of America • John Adams
... him exert himself, and his teachers forbore to urge him. He was meager and sickly from the first, and hence had his nickname of Batalus, given him, it is said, by the boys, in derision of his appearance; Batalus being, as some tell us, a certain enervated flute-player, in ridicule of whom Antiphanes wrote a play. Others speak of Batalus as a writer of wanton verses and drinking songs. And it would seem that some part of the body, not decent to be named, was at that time called batalus by the ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... the felicity of our times, less fertile in great offences than those which have gone before us, or whether it is from a sluggish apathy which has dulled and enervated the public justice, I am not called upon to determine,—but, whatever may be the cause, it is now sixty-three years since any impeachment, grounded upon abuse of authority and misdemeanor in office, has come ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... not breathe any passion, but seems to be only a triumphal march, an expression of chivalrous and polite manners. A solemn gravity presides always at the polonaise, which, perhaps, alone recalls neither the fire of primitive manners nor the gallantry of more civilised but more enervated ages. Besides these principal characteristics, the polonaise bears a singularly national and historical impress; for its laws recall an aristocratic republic with a disposition to anarchy, flowing less from the character of the people than from its particular legislation. ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... because they had the advantage in strength, against the Sidicinians, the weaker party being obliged to have recourse to the aid of the more powerful, unite themselves to the Campanians. As the Campanians brought to the relief of their allies rather a name than strength, enervated as they were by luxury, they were beaten in the Sidicinian territory by men who were inured to the use of arms, and then brought on themselves the entire burthen of the war. For the Samnites, taking no further notice of the Sidicinians, having attacked the Campanians as being the chief of the neighbouring ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... obscurely, or reason preposterously (into which Absurdities, Prejudice, Pride, or Interest, will sometimes throw the wisest) I count it no Crime to rectifie their Reasoning, unless Conscience must truckle to Ceremony, and Truth fall a Sacrifice to Complaisance. The strongest Arguments are enervated, and the brightest Evidence disappears, before those tremendous Reasonings and dazling Discoveries of venerable old Age: You are young giddy-headed Fellows, you have not yet had Experience of the World. Thus we young Folks find our Ambition cramp'd, and ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... Saint-Beuve finds with the spirit of the society she formed, and governed so long with her irresistible sceptre, is that there was too much of complaisance and charity in it. Stern truth suffered, and character was enervated, while courtesy and taste flourished: "The personality or self-love of all who came into the charmed circle was too much caressed." One can scarcely help lamenting that so gracious a fault is not oftener to be met in ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... are facilitated by atmospheric conditions which make evaporation from the skin and lungs rapid. That weak persons whose variations of health furnish good tests, are worse when the air is surcharged with water, and better when the weather is fine; and that commonly such persons are enervated by residence in moist localities but invigorated by residence in dry ones, are facts generally recognized. And this relation of cause and effect, manifest in individuals, doubtless holds in races."—Herbert Spencer, Principles of Sociology, ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... not judge hastily of my motives for persisting in the life of retirement which I have led for so many years past. Do not think that calamity has chilled my heart, or enervated my mind. Past suffering may have changed, but it has not deteriorated me. It has fortified my spirit with an abiding strength; it has told me plainly, much that was but dimly revealed to me before; ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... beds and David was asleep. No battlefield or shattered country he had seen was as ugly as this world would be if men like his brother Bayliss controlled it altogether. Until the war broke out, he had supposed they did control it; his boyhood had been clouded and enervated by that belief. The Prussians had believed it, too, apparently. But the event had shown that there were a great many people left who cared ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... credit for the sturdy independence with which they upheld their individual rights than for the scriptural skill with which they unmasked the sophistry of a delusive theory; for all their reasonings were enervated and vitiated by their stupid admission of the claims of the chair of Peter as the rock on which the Church was supposed to rest. [358:3] This second effort of Rome to establish her ascendancy was, indeed, a failure; but the misinterpretation of Holy ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... heard that legions of turbaned troops had poured into the land from Africa, he called to mind the visions and predictions of the necromantic tower, and great fear came upon him. But, though sunk from his former hardihood and virtue, though enervated by indulgence, and degraded in spirit by a consciousness of crime, he was resolute of soul, and roused himself to meet the coming danger. He summoned a hasty levy of horse and foot, amounting to forty ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... male and female. And thus he did with leviathan, the piercing serpent, and leviathan the crooked serpent. He created them male and female; but if they had been joined together they would have desolated the whole world. What then did the Holy One do? He enervated the male leviathan, and slew the female, and salted her for the righteous in the time to come, for it is said, 'And He shall slay the dragon that is in the sea' (Isa. xxvii. 1). Likewise, with regard to behemoth upon a thousand mountains, He created them male and female; ...
— Hebrew Literature
... me during the night? Was I still under the influence of the philter poured into the wine? No, my torpor had gone. I found myself active of body, and in sound mind, but in character and heart I found myself softened, enervated, timid,—and, why not say the word?—cowardly! Aye, cowardly! I, Guilhern, son of Joel, the brenn of the tribe of Karnak. I looked timidly around me. Every minute my heart seemed to sink, and tears came to my eyes, as formerly the flush of anger and pride had mantled my forehead. ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue
... energy of the camp, the deep impersonal hatred, the cold-bloodedness of murder with a good conscience, the general ardour of the system in the destruction of the enemy ... can be as forcibly and certainly communicated to enervated nations as is done by every great war. Kultur can by no means dispense with passions, vices and malignities.—FR. NIETZSCHE, H.T.H., ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... should become acquainted with the cause that has affected us in so lively a manner. As it frequently happens that our senses can teach us nothing respecting this cause which so deeply interests us—which we seek with so much ardour, we have recourse to our imagination; this, disturbed with alarm, enervated by fear, becomes a suspicious, a fallacious guide: we create chimeras, fictitious causes, to whom we give the credit, to whom we ascribe the honour of those phenomena by which we have been so much alarmed. It is to this disposition of the human mind that must be attributed, as will be seen in the ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... common cause, which it is their true interest to support. They persuade the credulous Many, with whom envy of superior talents increases their willingness to despise, that Imagination is become enervated; designing, however, to have it understood, that in their individual ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... were, indeed, when a voice was heard within me that spoke of nobler aims. It reminded me of what I once was, of what I yet might be, and commanded imperatively a return to a healthier and more active life. But I had allowed myself to be enervated by this baneful languor, this insidious far niente, and my moral torpor was such that the mere thought of reappearing before a polished audience struck me as superlatively absurd. "Where was the object?" I would ask myself. Moreover, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... and facetious, upon my erudition; and highly productive of risibility—ha, ha, ha. The old Constitution! A very shadow of a government—a perfect caput mortuum;—why, one of my schoolboys would make a better: 'tis grown as superannuated, embecilitated, valetudinarianated, invalidated, enervated and dislocated as an old man of ...
— The Politician Out-Witted • Samuel Low
... now that sold in Indian bazaars is so highly valued for its fine qualities that most extravagant prices are paid for it by wealthy Orientals. Also in Persia and Turkey it is in great repute for recruiting the exhausted vitality of aged, and enervated persons. In this country it may be purchased as a powder, but not readily miscible with water, so that many persons fail in making the decoction. The powder should be first stirred with a little ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... business houses; poor in courage, because you have robbed the rightful magistrates of the authority which was constitutionally theirs, and diverted the citizens from the double path of military and civil life, wherein, before they were enervated by your luxuries, they had displayed the virtues of the ancients; and therefore, when the day shall dawn which is not far distant," continued the mark, his eyes fixed and glowing as if he were reading in the future, ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Horace expresses a similar view of this people. Nitzsch in Commentary (ad loc.) defends the Phaeacians warmly against the charge, and the view that Arete and Nausicaa cannot be products of a corrupt society holds good. An idyllic people, not by any means enervated, though pleasure-loving—so we must regard them. That lay of the bard, rightly looked into, does not tell against them as strongly as is sometimes supposed. Still Heraclides touched upon a limitation of Phaeacia in his criticism, it refused to join the family of nations, it sought ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... said Lady Ethelrida gently—she never laid down the law—"that the reason why the wonderful Greeks came to an end was not really because their system of government was not a good one, but because the mosquitoes came and gave them malaria, and enervated them and made them feeble, and so they could not stand against the stronger peoples of the North. Perhaps," she went on, "England has got some moral malarial mosquitoes and the scientists have not yet discovered the proper ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... provided they paid their tribute. The Turks cared only for war and pleasure, and spent their time in alternate excitement and lazy repose. They disdained labor, which they bought with tribute-money or secured from slaves taken in war. Like the Romans, they were warriors and conquerors, but became enervated by luxury. They were hard masters, but their conquered subjects ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... the old Goldoni entertained his guests in his Venetian palace and country-house. Venice at that date was certainly the proper birthplace for a comic poet. The splendour of the Renaissance had thoroughly habituated her nobles to pleasures of the sense, and had enervated their proud, maritime character, while the great name of the republic robbed them of the caution for which they used to be conspicuous. Yet the real strength of Venice was almost spent, and nothing remained but outward insolence and prestige. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... tender and pathetic, and yet withal so heart-stirring and passionate, that, despite himself, he listened with a strange, swooning sense of languor stealing insidiously over him,—a dreamy lassitude, that while it made him feel enervated and deprived of strength, was still not altogether unpleasing, . . a faint sigh escaped his lips,—and he kept his gaze fixed on the Silver Veil as pertinaciously as though behind it lay the mystery of his ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... add in conclusion, that the Italians are not enervated by the climate to such a degree as to dislike work. A traveller who may happen to have seen some street porters asleep in the middle of the day, returns home and informs Europe that these lazy people snore from morning ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... accounted especially decorous and well-bred to dance as rigidly as possible, keeping the arms hanging down, while the heads were raised high and inclined to one side with a certain proud, and, at the same time, tired and enervated air. In the intermissions, between the figures of the dance, it was necessary to fan one's self with a handkerchief, with a bored and negligent air ... In a word, they all made believe that they belonged to the choicest society, and that if they do dance, they only do it out of condescension, ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... darkness, and of drifting, drifting, over the black water in the fine soundless rain, with its illusion of permanence, and of the extinction of to-morrow—and the retributions and adjustments in which to-morrow is so frequently and inconveniently fertile—enervated him, rendering him a comparatively easy prey to impulse, should impulse chance to be stirred by some adventitious circumstance. The Devil, it may be presumed, is very much on the watch for such weakenings of moral fibre, ready to pounce, at the very shortest notice, ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... as the arts. The arch-heretics of the Middle Ages had already made large incisions into Catholicism. The sixteenth century breaks religious unity. Before the invention of printing, reform would have been merely a schism; printing converted it into a revolution. Take away the press; heresy is enervated. Whether it be Providence or Fate, Gutenburg is the ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... the adornment of the handsome parlor, stood the delicate person of Mr. Armstrong, with cropped hair and close-shaven face, in a suit of fine black cloth and muslin cravat of spotless white, representing a refined, perhaps enervated phase of civilization; on the other, the stately and vigorous form of Holden, in a clean but coarse gray frock, girt around the waist with a sash, with long hair falling on his neck, and unshorn beard, looking like one better acquainted with the northern blast than with ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... banks of the Theiss and the Danube, commenced their assaults upon the frontiers of the Roman empire. This was the signal for that war of centuries, which terminated in the overthrow of the throne of the Caesars. The Roman Senate, enervated by luxury, condescended to purchase peace of these barbarians, and nations of savages, whose names are now forgotten, exacted tribute, under guise of payment for alliance, from the proud empire. But neither bribes, nor alliances, nor the sword in the ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... built around our inner selves; built until you and I and our neighbour have been metamorphosed through the ages from that mighty thing which went forth and took exactly what it wanted, to the almost shapeless slug form which, in the peace times of the present enervated century, contentedly eats lettuce in the damp seclusion ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... interviews, and the wild and poetical romance that made a very principle of the chivalry of the Spanish Moors, had imparted to Muza's love for Leila a passionate depth, which, at this day, and in more enervated climes, is unknown to the Mohammedan lover. His keenest inquiries had been unable to pierce the secret of her birth and station. Little of the inmates of that guarded and lonely house was known in the neighbourhood; ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book II. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... of the thinking powers which arises from too great a degree of excitement: but let us see what happens the next day; the animal spirits are exhausted, and the person thus situated, finds himself languid and enervated to a great degree; for it seems a law of the human body, that the spirits are never artificially raised, without being afterwards proportionably depressed; and to shew clearly that in this state the excitability is exhausted, the ordinary powers which in general support life, will ...
— A Lecture on the Preservation of Health • Thomas Garnett, M.D.
... of the local government to the subject; and on the report of Surgeon Redfern, great improvements were adopted.[69] The dispatch of vessels without regard to the season, brought the prisoners within the cold latitudes, and exposed them to the southern winds in the winter; and thinly clad, and enervated by the heat of the tropics, they were crowded below, or shivering on the deck. A supply of warm clothing, and the choice of the proper period of sailing, greatly mitigated the voyage; and the constant examination of the diet, samples of which were preserved, checked ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... check industry, to oppose improvement, to preach up the heroism of his ancestors, who never stooped to the meannesses of commerce, but made themselves famous by martial deeds. "Never," thus argued the chieftain, "had those brave men enervated their bodies and debased their minds by labours fit only for beasts or stupid drudges. Should not the generous blood which flowed in their veins still animate the brave Frasers to deeds ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... is Eastern. Its system of espionage, its secret tribunals, its swift and silent blows,—these are all Oriental traits, and the East entering into her whole life from without found a natural home awaiting it. We should be mistaken, however, in thinking that the Venetians in their great days were enervated and lapped in the sensuality which we are apt to associate with Eastern ideals. Sensuality did in the end drain the life out of her. "It is the disease which attacks sensuousness, but it is not the ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... the tongue-lashings of their wives, these enervated drudges were usually out of sorts. Bursts of ill temper, in the form of invective, hair-pulling, ear-pulling, pinching, caning, "nape-cracking," or "chin-smashing," were part of the routine, and very often I was the scapegoat for the sins of ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... had finished about a hundred pages manuscript, in order, the question of African slavery in the United States suddenly thrust itself upon my mind with such force, that I found it somewhat difficult to investigate any other subject. My mind at the time was enervated by disease, and by no means well disciplined. Hence I could not control it. For this reason, I at once concluded to draw up a skeleton or outline of my essay on slavery; after which I contemplated resuming ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... wail the music ceases. Her swooning senses come back to life. Ah, must it be! Yes; her companion releases her from his embrace. Leaning wearily upon his arm, the rapture faded from her eye, the flush dying from her cheek—enervated, limp, listless, worn out—she is led to a seat, there to recover from her delirium and gather her energies as best she may in the space of five minutes, after which she must yield her ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... courage to be soldiers, controlled the statesmen, and disposed of all emoluments; any of the rest was happy to receive from the people his share of honor, office, or advantage. Now, contrariwise, the statesmen dispose of emoluments; through them every thing is done; you the people, enervated, stripped of treasure and allies, are become as underlings and hangers-on, happy if these persons dole you out show-money or send you paltry beeves; [Footnote: Entertainments were frequently given to the people after sacrifices, at which a very small part of the victim was devoted ...
— The Olynthiacs and the Phillippics of Demosthenes • Demosthenes
... the barbaric nations were, of course, not susceptible of this influence; and when they burst over the Alps, appear, like the Huns, as scourges only, or mix, as the Ostrogoths, with the enervated Italians, and give physical strength to the mass with which they mingle, without materially affecting its intellectual character. But others, both south and north of the empire, had felt its influence, back to the beach of the Indian Ocean on the one hand, and to the ice creeks ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... notwithstanding the abiding smart of Richard's deformity, had been so very exquisite to her. Upon the happier side of all that she had not dared to dwell during this prolonged period of estrangement. It was too poignant, too deep-seated in the springs of her physical being. To dwell on it enervated and unnerved her. But now, Richard the grown man dying, she gave herself back to Richard the little child. It solaced her to do so. Then he had been wholly hers. And he was wholly hers still, in respect of that early time. The man she had lost—so it seemed, how far through ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... Colony settled here after the Deluge, were so contented with the spontaneous Produce of its Fertility, that they forbore to cultivate and improve it. This Moderation which, since the Sin of Sultan Adam, has ceased to be a Virtue, so enervated their Courage, that they became slothful and timorous. The Manoris, tho' their own Country, wanted for nothing, envied the more fruitful Possessions of their Neighbours, and invaded them Sword in ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon
... all poverties, that which keeps up an appearance above its means. "Her cheerfulness, her industry, her goodness, have all been noted," he continued. "She has proved herself capable of accommodating herself to her circumstances; the most difficult of all things to a young girl enervated by luxury and indulgence. And if my friend can establish an interest in her affections, he has no higher views of earthly happiness, and I think he ought to have no other. You will, I am sure, forgive me for having counselled the trial. If deep adversity ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... be told that the entire history of nations confirms this rule. The greatest nations are those which have found life most difficult, and they have thriven on their difficulties. The soft climate, which reduces toil to a minimum, invariably means the enervated race. Under the harsh skies of Britain a great race has been trained to great exploits; but what part have the islands of the South Pacific ever played in human history? Give man a difficulty to overcome, and he at once puts forth ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... though not intended to defend it; the sentinels looked parboiled; the very natives sauntered rather than walked; the very bullocks crawled along in the midday sun, listlessly dragging the native carts. Everything and everybody seemed enervated, except those frightfully active people in all countries and climates, "the custom-house officers:" these necessary plagues to society gave their usual amount ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... Mrs. Kilroy's invitation, and she felt it was time she decided. She took her sewing, her accustomed aid to thought, and sat down on a high chair near the window. She always sat on a high chair, that she might not be enervated by lolling; that was one of her patient methods of self-discipline; and while she meditated, she did quantities of work for herself, making, mending, remodelling, that she might get all the wear possible out of her clothes, and ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... the wide welkin and the grand religion of the human heart. Oh!" continued the Earl, kindling into an enthusiasm, rare to his even moods, but wrung as much from his broad sense as from his strong affection, "when I compare the Saxon of our land and day, all enervated and decrepit by priestly superstition, with his forefathers in the first Christian era, yielding to the religion they adopted in its simple truths, but not to that rot of social happiness and free manhood which this cold ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Patuxent, the land forces, enervated by a long sea-voyage, marched the first day to Nottingham, the second to Upper Marlborough. At the latter place, a town of some importance, certain British officers were entertained by Dr. Beanes, the principal physician of that neighborhood; and a man well-known ...
— The Star-Spangled Banner • John A. Carpenter
... She was enervated by melancholy, scorched by impatience, then chilled by an indefinable foreboding, just as her father had been. Putting on a figured veil to blur her blush of shame, she slipped away to visit the soothsayers that fashionable women patronized. In a shadowy room ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... comedy had come to adapt itself to the tastes of the class which, instead of representing the national movement, was composed of the more disreputable part of the town. The society unable to develop it in the direction of refinement left it to second-rate writers. It became enervated instead of elevated. The epic and the tragic poetry, ceasing to reflect the really powerful impulses of the day, were left to the connoisseur and dilettante man of taste, and though they could write with ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... other hand, stood as if turned to stone. From his enervated fingers the letter fluttered to the ground, and on his pale, thin face was to be read a displeasure ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... transformation is absolute. All that In be asserted is: "This is a white Creole; this is a black Creole";—or, "This is a European white; this is an African black";—and furthermore, after a certain number of years passed in the tropics, the enervated and discolored aspect of the European may create uncertainty, as to his origin. But with very few exceptions the primitive African, or, as he is termed here, the "Coast Black" (le noir de la Cote), can be recognized ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... whizzed northward; the meows became wilder; mad scrambles agitated the basket; the lid bobbed and creaked; the girl turned a vivid pink and, bending close over the basket, attempted to soothe its enervated inmate. ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... Magungo, which had been our clew to the discovery even so far away in time and place as the distant country of Latooka. We were both very weak and ill, and my knees trembled beneath me as we walked down the easy descent. I, in my enervated state, endeavoring to assist my wife, we were the "blind leading the blind;" but had life closed on that day we could have died most happily, for the hard fight through sickness and misery had ended in victory; and although I looked to home as a paradise never to be regained, I could have lain down ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... last us less than three months. Our meals had to consist mainly of seal and penguin; and though this was valuable as an anti-scorbutic, so much so that not a single case of scurvy occurred amongst the party, yet it was a badly adjusted diet, and we felt rather weak and enervated in consequence. ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... proper way of ending a dispute, and one acceptable to God: one in which the justice of the quarrel decided, more than the strength or skill of the combatants. We have proved that there could have been no grounds for Henry's supposing that he was sending a challenge to a youth enervated by sickness; and the difference of age alleged now, at length, in disparagement of Henry's valour, would have been scouted by all the good knights of Christendom, had it been pleaded as an apology for ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... Israel and in Hellas, the foremost representatives of ancient civilization. Had the one united with the other, what celestial harmonies might have resulted! But later, in the time of Macedonian imperialism, when Alexandria and Jerusalem met, the one stood for enervated paganism, the other for a Judaism of compromise, and a union of such tones produces no ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... reverence for several minutes as my mind expanded with wonder at the magnificent panorama, while my nostrils inhaled a most delicious fragrance from the innumerable plants which seemed to put new life into my enervated body. ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... friends, in portraying my parents, and recounting domestic incidents, when I first told you my story. What had no connection with the history of Welbeck and with the part that I have acted upon this stage I thought it proper to omit. My omission was likewise prompted by other reasons. My mind is enervated and feeble, like my body. I cannot look upon the sufferings of those I love without exquisite pain. I cannot steel my heart by the force of reason, and by submission to necessity; and, therefore, too frequently employ the cowardly expedient ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... and a grandson of Henry the Great. At that stirring epoch of French history—the interval between the League and the Fronde—energy and strength were the distinctive traits of the French aristocracy. Neither court life nor a corrupting opulence had yet enervated it. Everything was then in extremes, in vice as in virtue. Men attacked and defended one another with the same weapons. The Marshal d'Ancre had been massacred; more than one attempt had been made to assassinate Richelieu; whilst he, on his side, had not been backward ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... he only found some relief when beating Therese, at night. This brutality alone relieved him of his enervated anguish. ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... enervated by the love and favour of Narcissa, or awed by the superior station of my antagonist, I know not, but I never had less inclination to fight than at this time. However, finding there was a necessity for vindicating the reputation of my mistress, as well as for asserting my own honour, I forthwith ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... God avert the omen!) the same ruin may be accomplished still earlier, and by more potent causes. Her nobles enervated by luxury, her lower classes sunk in vice and ignorance, and both the one and the other decaying in piety and religion (a sure result of neglecting that Bible which has directly and indirectly formed her strength), she may have fallen a victim to the consequences of her own degeneracy, or to an ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... chair. He was dreaming voluptuously how he would be off in an instant on his new-bought bicycle to the bungalow. He would undress quickly, and without waiting to cool, still bathed in sweat, would fling himself into the clear, cold, sweet-smelling sea. His whole body was enervated and tense, thrilled by the thought. Impatiently moving the papers before him, he ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... to-day has little inclination to devote his leisure time to study. Light frothy literature removes his thoughts from worldly cares, and by a complete change of subject stimulates a mind that has been enervated by concentration for hours on one particular theme. No effort is required, and, more important still, it does not ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... words upon his lips, he remembered Brother Archangias's final rebuke, as he might have remembered words of blasphemy. The Brother often reproved him for his devotion to the Virgin, which he declared was veritable robbery of devotion due to God. In the Brother's opinion it enervated the soul, put religion into petticoats, created and fostered a state of sentimentalism quite unworthy of the strong. He bore the Virgin a grudge for her womanhood, her beauty, her maternity; he was ever on his guard against her, possessed by a covert fear of feeling tempted by her gracious ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... ligament, or nerve, by which abnormal pressure is maintained upon a blood vessel or a nerve, would be like trying to operate a machine with an important cog out of gear. To cure it involves the reduction of a dislocation; the breaking up of adhesions, and the arousing of the enervated organ or organs partially or wholly failing ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... so occupied are compelled to expend a vast amount of energy and even a low intelligence in their callings; and, however injurious to their societies, they run no personal risk of handing down effete and enervated constitutions to their race. Whether beneficially or unbeneficially, the human male must, generally speaking, employ his intellect, or ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... a disease, it has enervated my people until they have lost everything, and still they are among us. They are children raised by a secret cult on my own world, trained into strange practices. It is somewhat like a witch or sorcerer would be to ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... they begin to fall upon it, causes the miasmata to rise in dense and poisonous mists. Now these, of course, are as bad in country—except in very elevated localities—as in town; but they are only dangerous in crowded sections, or to the enervated constitutions that could as ill ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... Marybone and the Mall, and shrinking from the athletic and social recreations which, like so much that was manly and English, were confined almost to the English squire pur et simple after the Hanoverian accession; when so much degeneracy for a while obscured the English character, debased its tone, enervated its best races, vilified its literature, corrupted its morals, changed its costume, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... Whether enervated by the heat or giving way to pent up irritation the professor surrendered himself to the mood ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... one and the same time to oppose the invasion of Russia, and to put down the rebellion of the Pashas, who were raising their pashalicks into sovereignties, Mahmood gave proofs, during several years, of a force of character almost inconceivable in a man enervated from his childhood by the pleasures of the harem. Unfortunately his intellect was unequal to his obstinacy: every abuse he put down gave rise to or made way for new abuses, which he could not foresee, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... of reality. Yet absurd as it is, and even was, it obtained credit; and the more it spread, the greater injury was done to the cause of virtue. Instead of the exercise of prudence and wise precautions, it substituted superstitious forms and childish practices; it enervated the courage of the brave by apprehensions grounded on puns, and encouraged the wicked, by making them lay to the charge of a planet those evils which only proceeded from their ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... old people manifest not only bodily infirmities, but the relaxing and enfeebling influences proceeding from the lower portions of the brain. They totter about in their second childhood, mentally and physically enervated. Those who become dissipated by the use of intoxicating beverages are not only weak, trifling, and foolish, but walk with an unsteadiness which betrays their condition. These illustrations show that ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... the winter at Barbadoes; but the very mildness of the climate relaxed and enervated him. He felt the want of the bracing winter weather to which he had been accustomed. Even the invariable beauty of the climate; the perpetual summer, wearied the restless invalid. "This is the finest island of the West ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... a thin brunette, with an Oriental, languid type of face, and—as everyone used to say—exquisite enigmatic eyes. The tone of her dark dress (Anna immediately observed and appreciated the fact) was in perfect harmony with her style of beauty. Liza was as soft and enervated as Sappho ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... colourless lips, and gasped, for he might make an outcry, but he saw that Dicky would be quicker. He had been too long enervated by ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... perhaps, to an untoward disposition in other respects—was of opinion that the calmness and seclusion of a university were not best adapted for calling forth the efforts of genius; but that adversity and some struggling were necessary to bring out greatness of character. He thought that praise enervated the mind, and that to bear it required a much greater degree of fortitude than to withstand censure. The consequence of this would be, that the honours decreed in a university must be pernicious to youth. This cannot be ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... coast-line along the Persian Gulf between Bushire and Bunder Abbas. In ancient times the inhabitants, divided into tribes, led a simple, rustic life, superior in all respects to their neighbours the Medes, already enervated by civilisation. Between the ages of five and twenty, says Herodotus, the young Persians are taught three things: to mount the horse, to stretch the bow, and to speak the truth (Her., Clio, cxxxi.). It was amongst them, and amongst the Bactrians, that the principles of the Zoroastrian ...
— Les Parsis • D. Menant
... years after the temple of Solomon was finished, this sumptuous structure was doomed to destruction, like all the fading handiwork of man. Sin enervated the nation which should have protected it; while the immensity of its riches excited the cupidity of a neighbouring royal robber. It was plundered, and then set on fire; the truth of the declaration made by Job upon the perishable works ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... all times to be loved, and to deserve the love; but happiest of all to enjoy it after sorrow and sin. But we must escape from this ordeal of prosperity, of flattering words and intoxicating fumes of praise, as soon as we can. Who would not soon be enervated in that tropical and luxurious atmosphere? If it be dangerous, happily it is not often that he or we shall breathe its heavy sweetness, but far other are the ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... sphere of usefulness; nor will she attain to this sphere, until the disabilities and disadvantages, religious, civil, and social, which impede her progress, are removed out of her way. These restrictions have enervated her mind and paralyzed her powers. While man assumes that the present is the original state designed for woman, that the existing "differences are not arbitrary nor the result of accident," but grounded ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... sort of "tinkle," a certain falsetto tone in his style, which offended men of robust and severe taste; but this meretricious resonance of style was a matter of envy and admiration when affectation was the rage, and when the times were too enervated and too corrupt for the manly conciseness and concentrated force of an eloquence dictated by liberty and by passion. He seems to have acquired both among his friends and among strangers the epithet of "dulcis," "the charming or fascinating Gallio:" "This is more," says the ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... Christ made overtures of friendship. His was a frank and open nature, his a fresh and unsullied heart. He had also a certain grace and indescribable charm that clothed him with rare attraction. Wealth, too, was his, and all the advantages that go therewith. Yet ease had not enervated him, nor position made him proud. He had indeed passed through the fierce fires of temptation, but had come out with ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... himself, and his teachers forebore to urge him. He was meagre and sickly from the first, and hence had the nickname of Batalus, given him, it is said, by the boys, in derision of his appearance; Batalus being a certain enervated flute-player, in ridicule of whom ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... more difficult matter. It would be a dangerous matter if instinct taught your pupil to abuse his senses; if once he acquires this dangerous habit he is ruined. From that time forward, body and soul will be enervated; he will carry to the grave the sad effects of this habit, the most fatal habit which a young man can acquire. If you cannot attain to the mastery of your passions, dear Emile, I pity you; but I shall not hesitate for a moment, I will not permit the purposes of nature to ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... radical part of the man had suffered irremediable hurt. He had lost his habits of industry, and formed the habit of pleasure. Apologetical biographers assure us of the contrary; but from the first, he saw and recognised the danger for himself; his mind, he writes, is "enervated to an alarming degree" by idleness and dissipation; and again, "my mind has been vitiated with idleness." It never fairly recovered. To business he could bring the required diligence and attention without difficulty; but he was thenceforward incapable, except in rare instances, ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... arrived at the age of maturity; by an easy intercourse with the other sex, they become enervated and emaciated, ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... a very simple supper—cheese, honey, roasted apples, and brown bread; but the children had healthy appetites, and had not been enervated by luxuries. Conversation during the meal was general. When it was over, the three younger ones were despatched to bed with a benediction, under charge of their eldest sister; young Gerard seated himself on the bench, with a handful of slips of wood, which he was ambitiously trying ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... memory of Miss Mitchin's crushing competition, Father again declared that no dinky tea-pot inn could permanently rival Mother's home-made doughnuts. But he said it faintly then, and more faintly on the days following, for inactivity again enervated him—made him, for the first time in his ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... abandoned. Booth was naturally of a sanguine temper; nor would any such apprehensions as he mentioned have been sufficient to have restrained his joy at meeting with his Amelia. In fact, a reflection on the injury he had done her was the sole cause of his grief. This it was that enervated his heart, and threw him into agonies, which all that profusion of heroic tenderness that the most excellent of women intended for his comfort served only to heighten and aggravate; as the more she rose in his admiration, the more she quickened his sense of his own unworthiness. After ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... judicially incurred by sin. It is the withdrawal of that divine unction which enriches the acquiescent soul with moral power and pleasure. The subtraction leaves the mind enervated, obscured, confused, degraded, and distracted."—HOMO: ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... alone had retained their full vitality. They were constantly recruited by immigrants from their kinsfolk of the desert, and the continual infiltration of these semi-barbarous elements kept the race from becoming enervated by contact with the indigenous population, and more than compensated for the losses in their ranks occasioned by war. The invasion of Tiglath-pileser and the consequent deportations of prisoners had decimated the tribes of Bit-Shilani, Bit-Shaali, and ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... enervated. At last he remembered that the week had advanced only as far as Thursday. Between that time and the Fabian Saturday a number of untoward events ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... when Caesar inquired he received the following information: —That "there was no access for merchants to them; that they suffered no wine and other things tending to luxury to be imported; because they thought that by their use the mind is enervated and the courage impaired: that they were a savage people and of great bravery: that they upbraided and condemned the rest of the Belgae who had surrendered themselves to the Roman people and thrown aside their national courage: that ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... foster-children of the she-wolf. Plunder, in the animal lust of which alone it originated, remains its law, and its only notion of imperial administration is a coarse division, imposed by the extent of its territory, into satrapies, which, as the central dynasty, enervated by sensuality, loses its force, revolt, and break up the empire. Even the Macedonian, pupil of Aristotle though he was, did not create an empire at all comparable to that created by the Romans. He overran ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... he bestowed so liberally on the European nations, advised us to populate the torrid parts of Australia with immigrants from the Latin races. In Natal the English families who are settled in the country are said to be enervated by the climate; and on the high plateaux of the interior our countrymen find it necessary to pay periodical visits to the coast, to be unbraced. The early deaths and not infrequent suicides of Rand magnates may indicate that the ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... assert that the subject is worn threadbare. Threadbare it may be to you, enervated and blase man of pleasure, worn and hardened man of the world; but it is not for you I write. The fountain which leaps up fresh and living in every new life can never be exhausted till the springs of all life are ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... provided for her, but had declared herself to be broken-hearted for ever unless she were allowed to throw herself away upon this wretched creature. But he blamed himself almost as much as he did her. Why had he allowed himself to be so enervated by her prayers at last as to surrender everything,—as he had done? How could he presume to think that he should be allowed to escape, when he had done so little ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... which it is evident the will not, and so I suppose that laudable conspiracy falls to the ground. However, we shall sort o' look for you all the week. But you won't come. I know it to my fingers' ends. Cradled in luxury, wrapped in comfort, enervated by city indulgences, sophisticated by fashionable society—well, I won't finish the ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... while others by mean and vicious actions, forfeit the advantages of their birth, and sink into ignominy and disgrace. How necessary that in early life useful habits should be formed, and turbulent passions restrained, so that when manhood and old age come, the mind be not enervated by the follies and vices of youth, but, supported and strengthened by the Divine Being, be enabled to say, "O God, thou hast taught me from my youth, and now when I am old and grey-headed, O God, ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... had been so beastly drunk, that he scarce knew what he was about when awoke; and Marble rather dragged him on deck, and aft to the taffrail, than assisted him to walk. There we got him at last; and he was soon dangling by the tackle. So stupid and enervated was the master's mate, however, that he let go his hold, and went into the ocean. The souse did him good, I make no doubt; and his life was saved by his friends, one of the sailors catching him by the collar, and raising him into ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... is the so-termed "famine district," and the famine of one year is said to have destroyed over four millions of people; pestilence is always threatening these natives, and besides, the demands for tribute of an enervated priesthood (who "toil not," alas! "neither do they spin") have to be met. So is it any wonder that poverty prevails and that sadness of countenance is ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... the secretary, who had been working with the exiles and knew all their plans, having long before invited Archias and his friends to a wine party to meet certain courtesans, intended to endeavour to hand them over to their assailants in as enervated and intoxicated a condition as possible. However before they were very far gone in liquor a rumour was brought to their ears, which, although true, was without confirmation and very vague, to the effect that the exiles were concealed in the city. Though Phillidas endeavoured to change the subject, ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... immense vitality of the French people bore up the burden. While agriculture languished, and intolerable oppression turned peasants into beggars or desperadoes; while the clergy were sapped by corruption, and the nobles enervated by luxury and ruined by extravagance, the middle class was growing in thrift and strength. Arts and commerce prospered, and the seaports were alive with foreign trade. Wealth tended from all sides towards the centre. ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... to be supposed that men satiated with the brutal shows of the amphitheatre, even if enervated by their frequentation of the Suburra, could, on leaving the city, be always content with simple pleasures, rural occupations, or pleasure-sails. Habit demanded something more exciting; and the ready tragedy of a fish-pond ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... From the first moment that you breathed the air of heaven, you have been accustomed to nothing else but hardships. The heroes of the American Revolution were never put upon harder fare, than a peck of corn, and a few herrings per week. You have not become enervated by the luxuries of life. Your sternest energies have been beaten out upon the anvil of severe trial. Slavery has done this, to make you subservient to its own purposes; but it has done more than this, it has prepared you ...
— Walker's Appeal, with a Brief Sketch of His Life - And Also Garnet's Address to the Slaves of the United States of America • David Walker and Henry Highland Garnet
... lies between the sea and the edge of the great interior plateau, and of the whole Zambesi Valley, up which most of the attempts at an advance had been made. Fever not only decimated the expeditions and the garrisons of the forts, but enervated the main body of settlers who remained on the coast, soon reducing whatever enterprise or vigour they had brought from Europe. The other was the tendency of the Portuguese to mingle their blood with that of the natives. Very few women were ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... succeeded that gross voluptuary to work the reform in manners, if not in morals, which his own personal habits were so well calculated to produce. It required the terrible lesson given by the Revolution to awaken the natural feelings of affection that had so long slumbered supinely in the enervated hearts of the higher classes in France, corrupted by long habits of indulgence in selfish gratifications. The lesson at once awoke even the most callous; while those, and there were many such, who required it not, furnished the noblest examples of high courage and self-devotion ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner |
