"Feeble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of little maidens, in white robes and veils, began to assemble with their flags and banners at the appointed hour round the old market cross, which,—grey and crumbling at the summit,—bent over the streets like a withered finger, crook'd as it were, in feeble remonstrance at the passing of time,—while glimpses of young faces beneath the snowy veils, and chatter of young voices, made brightness and music around its frowning and iron-bound base. Shortly before ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... was far too weak to hold the tree down, and when the Giant let go the tree swung back into the air, bearing the little Tailor with it. When he had fallen to the ground again without hurting himself, the Giant said: "What! do you mean to tell me you haven't the strength to hold down a feeble twig?" "It wasn't strength that was wanting," replied time Tailor; "do you think that would have been anything for a man who has killed seven at a blow? I jumped over the tree because the huntsmen are shooting among the branches near us. Do you do the like if you dare." The Giant made an ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... know the type he depicts—the sporting "nuts," with their careful get-up, effeminate paraphernalia, and vacuous countenances. So long as they can wear a sporting costume and carry a gun they are prepared to take a menial place under a Prussian over-lord and submit with a feeble fatalism to the loss of national independence. It is light satire in keeping with the subject, and it provides a relief to the sombre tragedy which is the artist's ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... to the coffee and strawberries did Muir break the silence. "Yon's a brave doggie," he said. Stickeen, who could not yet be induced to eat, responded by a glance of one eye and a feeble pounding of the blanket with his ...
— Alaska Days with John Muir • Samual Hall Young
... Weak and feeble states like those of Central America may not feel themselves able to assert and vindicate their rights. The case would be far different if expeditions were set on foot within our own territories to make private war against a powerful nation. If such expeditions were ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Buchanan • James Buchanan
... attention to the tribes of the south-west which had not yet made their submission—the Carians, the Dorian Greeks, the Caunians, and the people of Lycia. Impressing the services of the newly-conquered Ionians and AEolians, he marched first against Caria, which offered but a feeble resistance. The Dorians of the continent, Myndians, Halicarnassians, and Cnidians. submitted still more tamely, without any struggle at all; but the Caunians and Lycians showed a different spirit. These tribes, which were ethnically allied, and of a very peculiar type, had never yet, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... as I, Octavius Buzzby, what Mr. Champney's will was—too feeble a thing to place dependence on for any length of time; if he said that, he didn't mean it—not as you think he did," she added in a tone that sent a shiver along Octavius' spine. But he did not intend to be "downed," as he said to himself, "not this time by ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... maintain them in comfortable idleness. They were at once made slaves of. Had they been strong, handy agricultural labourers, their lot would have been easy enough. Unfortunately for them, one had been a London tailor, the other a shoemaker, and the luckless pair of feeble Cockneys could be of little use to their taskmasters. These led them such a life that they tried running away once more, and lived for a time in a cave, subsisting chiefly on fern-root. A period of this diet, joined to their ever-present ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... insisted upon exchanging his own riding horse, "Five Spot," for the sorry mule which the Duchess rode. But even this act did not draw the party into any closer sympathy. The young woman readjusted her somewhat draggled plumes with a feeble, faded coquetry; Mother Shipton eyed the possessor of "Five Spot" with malevolence, and Uncle Billy included the whole party ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... shops, which are suppressed today and opened to-morrow. In order that this enterprise may go on increasing for the service of God and of your Majesty, will you order that an encomienda be given to us. With it and my feeble efforts we could support ourselves, and so great a work as this ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XXII, 1625-29 • Various
... in the steadying hands of the hunter. For four or five minutes he made no attempt to draw in his prize, but let the fish have full play to the length of its tether, till its efforts had become comparatively feeble; when, slowly bringing it alongside, he took the line in his hand, and, with a quick jerk, landed the noble fellow safely on the ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... them to be a remedy for disease." The new science was called Kinesipathy, or the "motor-cure." The curative movements were first practised in 1813, while Ling remained at Stockholm. A motor-hospital was established in connection with the gymnasium; and to accommodate the invalid and the feeble, new exercises, called "passive movements," were devised. These were executed by an external agent upon the patient,—that agent being usually the hand of the physician. The sick man, too weak for violent, voluntary effort, was stretched and champooed, the muscles of his trunk ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... letter with these sentences, which have raised the hopes and stimulated the courage of many mourners. I only wish this imperfect sketch of the Order of Helpers of the Holy Souls, and of the nature of their work, might prove a first though feeble step towards the introduction amongst us at some future day of a Sisterhood which, in the words used on his death-bed by Father Faber, the great advocate amongst us of devotion to the Holy Souls in Purgatory, "procures ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... for which all three listened was already on the way. Forever it had been "happening," yet only reached them now because they were ready and open to it. Events upon the physical plane, he grasped, represented the last feeble expression of things that had happened interiorly with a vaster power long ago—and are ever happening still. This Sound they listened for, coming from the Spirit of the Earth, lay ever close to men's ears, divinely sweet and splendid. It seemed born somewhere in the heart ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... lay upon his dying bed, His eye was growing dim, When, with a feeble voice, he called His weeping son to him: "Weep not, my boy," the veteran said, "I bow to Heaven's high will; But quickly from yon antlers bring ...
— Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader • John L. Huelshof
... winter by some ingenious contrivance, there may be sham open fireplaces within, with ingle nooks about the sham glowing logs. The needlessly steep roofs will have a sham sag and sham timbered gables, and probably forced lichens will give it a sham appearance of age. Just that feeble-minded contemporary shirking of the truth of things that has given the world such stockbroker in armour affairs as the Tower Bridge and historical romance, will, I fear, worry the lucid mind in a great multitude of the homes that the opening half, at least, of this ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... yours! You appal the tyrant's heart, and poison with secret alarm his impious joys. He flies, with coward step, your incorruptible aspect, and erects afar his throne of insolence.* You punish the powerful oppressor; you wrest from avarice and extortion their ill-gotten gold, and you avenge the feeble whom they have despoiled; you compensate the miseries of the poor by the anxieties of the rich; you console the wretched, by opening to him a last asylum from distress; and you give to the soul that ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... prodigies foretold it; A feeble government, eluded laws, A factious populace, luxurious nobles, And all the maladies of sinking States. When publick villainy, too strong for justice, Shows his bold front, the harbinger of ruin, Can brave Leontius call for airy wonders, Which cheats interpret, and ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... which she had established for the aged, I called to see her. She was then ill and although the nurse said that I could not see her, after my card had been taken to her, she sent for me. She was quite feeble, but said to me: "I have been deeply interested in what thee has been telling me all these years about the little schools. I would give largely to them if thee thinks that thee could get Dr. Washington or Dr. Frissell to come to see me." I am sure ...
— Twenty-Five Years in the Black Belt • William James Edwards
... Effingham spoke, he handed his kinsman a small handbill, which purported to call a meeting for that night, of the inhabitants of Templeton, to resist his arrogant claim to the disputed property. This handbill had the usual marks of a feeble and vulgar malignancy about it, affecting to call Mr. Effingham, "one Mr. Effingham," ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... beast and bird and fish Came mustering to the sound, Every man and every maid From miles of country round: Meggan on her herdsman's arm, With her shepherd, May, Flocks and herds trooped at their heels Along the hillside way; No foot too feeble for the ascent, Not any head too gray; Some were ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... Miller remarks: "Generally speaking, the greater the difference in the properties of two bodies, the more intense is their tendency to mutual chemical action...But between bodies of a similar character the tendency to unite is feeble." (12/15. 'Elements of Chemistry' 4th edition 1867 part 1 page 11. Dr. Frankland informs me that similar views with respect to chemical affinity are generally accepted by chemists.) This latter proposition accords well with the feeble effects of a plant's own pollen on the fertility ...
— The Effects of Cross & Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom • Charles Darwin
... river, I saw a brig, approaching rapidly under sail. The whole scene made an odd impression of bustle, and sluggishness, and decay, and a remnant of wholesome life; and I could not but contrast it with the mighty and populous activity of our own Boston, which was once the feeble infant of this old English town;—the latter, perhaps, almost stationary ever since that day, as if the birth of such an offspring had taken away its own principle of growth. I thought of Long Wharf, and Faneuil Hall, and Washington ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Who has not received a letter and knew before opening it that it had violets within? It had atmosphered itself with rich perfume, and something far richer, for three thousand miles. The first influences which came over the Atlantic cable were so feeble that a sleeping infant's breath were a whirlwind in comparison. But they were read. It is no wonder that the old astrologers thought that men's whole lives were influenced by the stars. Every vegetable life, ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... into the ring as the gong rang, and they now supported him to his corner. At his feeble request one unlaced the glove from his right hand, which he extended to his late adversary with a ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... she to take care of her feeble parents, and he to take care of his invalid mother and ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... private capital the number of crimes can be made exceedingly small. By the method of individual curative treatment it will generally be possible to secure that a man's first offense shall also be his last, except in the case of lunatics and the feeble-minded, for whom of course a more prolonged but not less kindly ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... answered I, in a feeble voice, "leave your slave, and go to those who can teach their tongues to lie. I have never deceived you, although I may have displeased you. I have loved you with fidelity and truth. Now that you have ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... to lose through a feeble vanity—that beautiful Constantinople!" she said musingly. "The East and the West—what an empire! More than Alexander ever grasped at—what might not have been done with it? Asian faith and Oriental sublimity, with Roman power and ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... me. I have once or twice lately felt a melting sweetness in the name of Jesus as I spoke to Him and told Him my trouble. Yes, and the trouble went away, and I arose all right. Is it not blessed of Christ to care so much for us poor feeble men, so sinful and so careless about honouring Him? the moment we come to Him He is ready ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... took any step to comply with this dying injunction. During that long interval there were repeated envoys from Koma, now a comparatively feeble principality, and Shiragi made three unsuccessful overtures to renew amicable relations. At length, in 583, the Emperor announced his intention of carrying out the last testament of his predecessor. To that end his Majesty desired ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... If you looked at his hand, you would see it. Hands speak More than faces. His thumb (the first phalanx) was weak, Undeveloped; the second, firm jointed and long, Which showed that the reasoning powers were strong, But the will, from disuse, had grown feeble. ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... wouldn't have minded at all; but, being sick and sad, he spent an anxious day, sitting in a cranny of the rock, thinking of Davy and Moppet. It was so rough, even in the cove, that he could neither swim nor fly, so feeble was he; and could find no food but such trifles as he could pick up among the rocks. At nightfall the storm raged fiercer than ever, and he gave up seeing Moppet; for he was sure she wouldn't come through the pelting rain just to feed him. So he put his head under his wing, and tried to sleep; ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... IQ under 70 are sometimes labeled "feeble-minded", and the others, in order, "borderline", "low normal", "average" (from 90 to 110), "superior", "very superior", "exceedingly superior"; but this is arbitrary and really unscientific, for what the facts show is not a separation into classes, but a continuous gradation from one extreme ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... where the light fell on his poor, pale face, Alec Deans in a moment recognized his foster-father, and set to work to restore him. The long stormy passage, and the trials incident to emigrant life on shipboard, added to the fatigue and fright of his night's wanderings, had so told on the old man's feeble frame, that after much effort on the part of Alec Deans to revive him, he could do no more than move restlessly, murmuring, "Puir Jeanie! Puir ...
— Harper's Young People, January 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... that breathed into people! the books were about peace and gentleness, but the name was the most horrible of war-cries—those who wished to uphold old names at first strove to oppose it, but their efforts were feeble, and they had no good war-cry; what was Mars as a war- cry compared with the name of . . .? It was said that they persecuted terribly, but who said so? The Christians. The Christians could have given them a ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... politician. Mr. Hume, then in the zenith of his influence, followed up the blows so heavily dealt by Sir Robert and Mr. Roebuck. The efforts of Lord George's followers to cover his disastrous defeat were feeble and fruitless. It was not until the 20th that the amendment proposed by Sir William Somerville on the 9th was carried, and on the 29th the announcements were made in the lords and commons that ministers had resigned. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... hot campaign. The people know enough of the general argument in advance, to appreciate a strong statement of it, or the addition of new items. They already have much of that interest in the theme that other classes of speakers must first seek to arouse. The tyro makes his feeble beginnings in the sparsely settled portions of the country, but the polished orator is welcomed by large audiences at the centres of population, and wins money, fame, and possibly a high office. Americans have many opportunities of hearing ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger
... supposed playfully to have anticipated this attack. He is giving an account of Blackmore's imaginary Literary Club of Lay Monks, of which the hero was 'one Mr. Johnson.' 'The rest of the Lay Monks,' he writes, 'seem to be but feeble mortals, in comparison with the gigantick Johnson.' See also post, Oct. 16, 1769. Horace Walpole (Letters, v. 458) spoke no less scornfully than Sheridan of Johnson and his contemporaries. On April 27, 1773, after saying that he should like to be intimate ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... not surprising that the small countries which once formed part of Turkey-in-Europe are anxious to grow larger and stronger by annexation of territory and consolidation of populations. They are tired of being feeble: it is not amusing. Servia once expected that she would be allowed to gain a considerable portion of Bosnia, her neighbor province, but the Austrians are there, and would speedily send forces to Belgrade ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... Strangers, where Tommy was not afraid to go, down to the Under-world? Or will you stay here in the sun? Perhaps you will do better to stay here in the sun, for the Under-world has terrors for weak hearts that were born but yesterday, and feeble feet may ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... was really a keen-sighted old lady, his plausible excuses and affectionate embraces did not meet with the same acceptance. Not that he really cared, for he was impatient of her slow ways, and did not feel sorry for her failing sight or feeble limbs; only, he liked the five shillings and half-sovereigns she occasionally bestowed, and thought that he might receive more if he ...
— A Little Hero • Mrs. H. Musgrave
... energy of the preposterous and grotesque original? In fact, we may see how unmanageable is this classical treatment of the essentially absurd in Tennyson himself. The humorous passages in The Princess, though often really humorous in themselves, always appear forced and feeble because they have to be restrained by a certain metrical dignity, and the mere idea of such restraint is incompatible with humour. If Browning had written the passage which opens The Princess, descriptive of the "larking" of the villagers in the magnate's ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... above and below, the great gleaming wall stood there through the centuries, defying the puny curiosity, the feeble efforts of man to even gaze upon it and marvel over it, except from a long distance. I would have given all I had to have been able to advance to the very edge and, kneeling there, look over it down those majestic palisades of white flushed through with green, throwing back to the sun, their ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... arrived as reinforcements, and took cover behind our parados as there was no room in the trench. Captain Culling asked that they take on the attack, and Mr. Doxsee volunteered to lead it. The response was feeble, and the attack petered out to nothing, Bugler Hunt and a man of the Toronto Battalion being killed by the side of Doxsee, who, finding himself alone, returned to the ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry
... of the warriors, laying aside their arms and expressing by words and gestures the utmost friendliness, came forward and were admitted into the camp. They were followed by others. Soon there were enough stalwart savages there easily to overpower, in a hand-to-hand fight, the feeble garrison of but six men. Carson's suspicions were excited, and watching their movements with an eagle eye, he soon discovered that they ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... the Divine will that he should be well in a few days. Day after day he continued feeble; and suffering much, though not so acutely as in the first attack, Mr. Nobbs continued to attend him, and the treatment was approved afterwards by the physicians consulted. All the clergy took their ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... exclaims Mr. Palgrave, "which has filled London with the dead monotony of Gower or Harley Streets, or the pale commonplace of Belgravia, Tyburnia, and Kensington; which has pierced Paris and Madrid with the feeble frivolities of the Rue Rivoli and the Strada de Toledo." Upon which Arnold observes that "the architecture of the Rue Rivoli expresses show, splendor, pleasure, unworthy things, perhaps, to express alone and for their own sakes, but it expresses them; ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... ammunition dump. The noise was earth-shaking, and was even more exhilarating than that of the barrage at Vimy. I was so carried away by my feelings that I could not help shouting out, "Glory be to God for this barrage!" The German reply came, but, to our delight, it was feeble, and we knew we had taken them by surprise ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... feeble faith, he looked for an immediate and practical answer, in the shape, perhaps, of his mother, with his little night-gown and bowl of bread ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... rage for that operation not only among the doctors, but actually among their patients. There are men and women whom the operating table seems to fascinate; half-alive people who through vanity, or hypochondria, or a craving to be the constant objects of anxious attention or what not, lose such feeble sense as they ever had of the value of their own organs and limbs. They seem to care as little for mutilation as lobsters or lizards, which at least have the excuse that they grow new claws and new tails if they lose the old ones. Whilst this book was being prepared for the press a case was tried ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... throne; occasioned by the great assurances which were given of their inclinations to the House of Austria: but this expectation failing, England was insensibly drawn into an established war, under all the disadvantages of the distance of the place, and the feeble efforts of the other allies. The account we have to lay before your Majesty, upon this head, is, that although the undertaking was entered upon at the particular and earnest request of the imperial court, and for a cause of no less ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... As the feeble-minded people at the almshouse sometimes caused trouble by running off, large balls of iron had been provided to be chained to the feet of such persons. Thus their progress would be hindered and their escape be less probable. Still they ...
— The Poorhouse Waif and His Divine Teacher • Isabel C. Byrum
... Regis Brugiere blazed out. With strange contortions of the body and writhings of the face his form came upright, the arm still reaching. So it swayed for a moment, then fell. The man's will-power ran from him in a last supreme effort. Twice more he struggled blindly, but the efforts were feeble. At last with a sigh he gave himself to the cold, which had been waiting. And the cold was ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... not what it ought to be, Steady and fixed, like a star on high, But more like a fisherman's light at sea; Hither and thither it seems to fly - Sometimes feeble, and sometimes bright, Then suddenly lost in the gloom ...
— Poems of Cheer • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... that end. A just war gives the right to take the life of the enemy; but there are limits to this right. If an enemy submits, and lays down his arms, we can not justly take his life. And justice and humanity forbid that women, children, feeble old men, and sick persons, who make no ...
— The Government Class Book • Andrew W. Young
... pyre or funeral; let my body lie Mangled beneath the waves: I leave a name That men shall dread in ages yet to come And all the earth shall honour." Thus he spake, When lo! a tenth gigantic billow raised The feeble keel, and where between the rocks A cleft gave safety, placed it on the shore. Thus in a moment fortune, kingdoms, lands, Once ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... when, mindful of her temper, he began to think his words had been harsh, and, conscious of her power, he concluded his vows had been rash. He therefore sought her once more, but found she was not inclined to relent, until, as Pepys was assured, this monarch of most feeble spirit, this lover of most ardent temper, "sought her forgiveness upon his knees, and promised to ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... brought her to his bedside Stephen felt in a measure awed. His bandaged face and head and his great beard, singed in patches, looked to her in the dim light rather awesome. In a very gentle voice she said kind things to the sick man, who acknowledged them in a feeble whisper. The Doctor, a keen observer, noticed the change in his voice, and determined to understand more. Stephen spoke of his bravery, and of how it was due to him that all on the ship were saved; and as she spoke her emotion moved ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... all right—in our normal senses," returned the Senator, icily. "I believe there are persons who gibber and giggle at mishaps to others—but I also believe that such a peculiar sense of humor is confined largely to institutions for the refuge of the feeble-minded." ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... The characters are second-rate middle class, instead of being dukes and millionaires. The heroine gets kicked through the mud: real mud. Theres no plot. All the old stage conventions and puppets without the old ingenuity and the old enjoyment. And a feeble air of intellectual pretentiousness kept up all through to persuade you that if the author hasnt written a good play it's because hes too clever to stoop to anything so commonplace. And you three experienced men have sat through all this, and cant tell ...
— Fanny's First Play • George Bernard Shaw
... cold and barren season that the seeds of that rich harvest which we have reaped were first sown. While poetry was every year becoming more feeble and more mechanical, while the monotonous versification which Pope had introduced, no longer redeemed by his brilliant wit and his compactness of expression, palled on the ear of the public, the great works of the old masters were every ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... had much to disturb me lately. My wife's health has been very feeble for months, and I am worn out with anxiety and watching. We are now on our way to a warmer climate, where I hope she will ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... been unpaid for two years, and the old man was getting pretty feeble; so, after the boy was killed, I realized that was the end of the Farrel dynasty and that the mortgage would never be paid. Consequently, in self-protection, I foreclosed. Of course, under the law, Don Miguel had a year's grace in which to redeem the property, and during that year ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... to care about Mexico's good name in the world at large. Maltreated Americans demanded punishment of the Mexican offenders, but the United States had been engaged in patiently waiting and watching, only once in a while sending a feeble protest either to the Federal or the Constitutionalist leaders in that ...
— Dave Darrin at Vera Cruz • H. Irving Hancock
... shorten'd limbs A webby membrane spreading, binds their arms In waving wings. The gloom conceal'd the mode, Of transformation from their former shape. Light plumage bears them not aloft,—yet rais'd On wings transparent, through the air they skim, To speak they strive, but utter forth a sound Feeble and weak; then, screeching shrill, they plain: Men's dwellings they frequent,—nor try the woods; And, cheerful day avoiding, skim by night; Their name from ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... Mr. Spens, that if the Firs is sold he will certainly die. He is an old man, and feeble now. I am almost sure that he speaks the truth when he says such ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... war, about the young men who had gone from Wyck and would not come back, about the marvel of Sutton's living on through it all, and he so old and feeble. She talked ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... speech satisfied his worthy landlady; and, fatigued by a bodily exertion, which, in the present feeble state of his frame, nothing less than the resolution of his mind could have carried him through, Thaddeus went directly to bed, where tired nature soon found temporary repose in ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... alley. She had worked in a seashore restaurant several summers and could read a little. From the newspaper account she gathered enough to rouse her half-soothed frenzy. Her eyes flashed fire as she went about her dark little tenement room making baby comfortable. His feeble wail and his sweet eyes looking into hers only fanned the fury of her flame. She determined not to wait for Michael, but to go on her own account at once to that girl that was stealing away her husband, her baby's father, and tell her what she ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... escape as any of them. And here we may note one point of superiority of the American government over others. In other countries it can sometimes be the interest of politicians to foment and declare war. A war strengthens a tottering dynasty, an imperial parvenu, an odious tyrant, a feeble ministry; and the glory won in battle on land and sea redounds to the credit of government, without raising up competitors for its high places. But let American politicians take note. It is never their interest to bring on a war; because a war is certain to generate a host of popular ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... spasm of the old hate, but a feeble one, hardly more than a brief wash of the early torrents of rage. Something had burned out of him these months; an increasing dullness ...
— Gone Fishing • James H. Schmitz
... said, "I'll step lightly, that is, ef I happen to be walkin' 'roun' in my sleep, an' I'll take care not to wake you too suddenly, Sol Hyde. I wouldn't do it for anything. I don't want to stunt your growth, an' you already sech a feeble, delicate sort o' creetur, not able to take nourishment ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... is involuntary. On the muddy and wet gravel-walks I found the larvae of this lampyris in great numbers: they resembled in general form the female of the English glowworm. These larvae possessed but feeble luminous powers; very differently from their parents, on the slightest touch they feigned death and ceased to shine; nor did irritation excite any fresh display. I kept several of them alive for some time: their tails are very singular organs, for they act, by a well-fitted contrivance, ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... her triumph by the conversion of those she first drew from darkness. Placed as lights on the rocks of eternity, and shining on us who are yet tossed about on the stormy seas of time, the penitent saints serve us as saving beacons to guide our course during the tempest. Many a feeble soul would have suffered shipwreck had it not taken refuge near those tutelary towers where are suspended the memorial deeds of the sainted heroes whose armor was sackcloth, whose watchword the sigh of repentance poured out ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... too heavy for me. My wounds stink, and are corrupt, because of my foolishness. I am troubled; I am bowed down greatly; I go mourning all the day long. For my loins are filled with a loathsome disease: and there is no soundness in my flesh. I am feeble and sore broken; I have roared by reason of the disquietness of my heart. Lord, all my desire is before thee; and my groaning is not hid from thee. My heart panteth, my strength faileth me: as for the light for mine eyes, it also is gone from ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the little creature still looked very fragile-even at the end of a month. She was so tired out with her day of almost rapturous enjoyment that Mrs. Brownlow would not let her come down stairs again, but made her go at once to bed, in spite of a feeble protest ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... had no charm to him, since it was directed to utilitarian ends and was uncertain. His sayings had such a lofty, hidden wisdom that very few people understood him: his utterances seemed either paradoxical, or unintelligible, or sophistical. "To the mentally proud and mentally feeble he was equally a bore." Most people probably thought him a nuisance, since he was always about with his questions, puzzling some, confuting others, and reproving all,—careless of love or hatred, and contemptuous of all conventionalities. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... which opens upon the cellar where Victor stores his skins. Once more the fire flares up in his dreadful eyes. An oil-lamp is upon a shelf. He dashes towards it, and soon its dull, yellow flame sheds its feeble rays about. He stoops and prises up the heavy square of wood. Below sees the top rungs of a rough ladder. His poor brain is incapable of argument and with a fierce joy he clambers down into the dank, earthy ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... of our institutions, we enter as equals into the competitive struggle of life, where all cannot be gainers, and where it is inevitable that the strong and the intelligent should succeed, while the feeble and the ignorant must fail. But as both classes have been admitted freely into the race, there is no feeling on the part of the winners of duty or obligation toward the losers. If one chooses to be charitable, he may; if not, society has no claim upon him, no right ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... telegraphy; and in former times it was not seldom used to the injury of the white settlers, who at first had no idea that the thin column of smoke rising through the foliage of the adjacent bush, and raised perhaps by some feeble old woman, was an intimation to the warriors to advance and attack the Europeans. (R. Brough Smyth, F.L.S., F.G.S., The Aborigines of Victoria. Melbourne, 1878, vol. i, ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... me, and jeered, and told me tales of ghosts and of the dead that walk at night. But mostly did he laugh at my feeble fancy. I told him more, and he laughed the harder. I swore in all earnestness that these things were so, and he began to look upon me queerly. Also, he gave amazing garblings of my tales to our playmates, until all began ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... for the first time at the spectacle of some terrestrial phenomena belonging to another existence. To give body and existence to such new sensations would have required the coinage of new words—and here my feeble brain found itself wholly at fault. I looked on, I thought, I reflected, I admired, in a state of stupefaction not ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... us these minor details in an hour's reading; but we prefer to sit vacuously making feeble jokes about the singers or the occupants of the neighboring boxes, without a single intelligent thought as to why the composer attempted to write precisely this sort of an opera, when he did it, or how far ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... comforted him a little. But the constant gnawing ache at his heart, and the withdrawal of all object to live for, soon began to tell upon his always feeble constitution. ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... even though no one should hurt him, threw in some food to prolong his life. At night they returned home, not dreaming of any danger, but supposing that on the morrow they would find him dead. The Panther, however, when he had recruited his feeble strength, freed himself with a sudden bound from the pit, and hastened to his den with rapid steps. After a few days he came forth and slaughtered the cattle, and, killing the Shepherds who had attacked him, raged with angry ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... Song! whose whispers Delight my pensive brain, When will the perfect harmony Ring through my feeble strain? ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... the faithless keeper of the Hambleton lockup departed on winged feet. He was back in remarkably quick time, a checkerboard under his coat and two bar glasses in his pockets. A last feeble flicker of responsibility stayed his hand an instant as he ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... 19th the three armies were converging toward Atlanta, meeting such feeble resistance that I really thought the enemy intended to evacuate the place. McPherson was moving astride of the railroad, near Decatur; Schofield along a road leading toward Atlanta, by Colonel Howard's ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... It seemed so feeble, so inadequate, not a hundreth part of what he felt did it express, and yet what could he say? Not even in his extremity could he write tender messages to his loved ones there. They would know, surely they would know, they would understand, that his thoughts had been full of them ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... 'Now at this attic window of which I spoke,' he went on saying, 'I have seen a poor pale-faced girl for ever bending over needlework, although sometimes, but very rarely, I have observed her carefully watering and tending those flower-pots with their feeble attempts at greenery.' ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... time in idle coaxing. She seized a broom and rapped the sleeper sharply on the legs. His peg-stick was insensible to this insult, but one leg kicked a feeble protest. In vain Lovey Mary tried violent measures; Chris simply shifted his position and slumbered on. Finally she resorted ...
— Lovey Mary • Alice Hegan Rice
... once more and sounded it, for he would know whether King Charles were coming. Ah me! it was a feeble blast that he blew. But the King heard it, and he halted and listened. "My lords!" said he, "things go ill for us, I doubt not. To-day we shall lose, I fear me much, my brave nephew Roland. I know by the sound of his horn that ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... was a state of almost perpetual war, rapine, and anarchy, during which the weak and unarmed were exposed to insults or injuries. The power of the sovereign was too limited to prevent these wrongs; and the administration of justice too feeble to redress them. The most effectual protection against violence and oppression was often found to be that which the valour and generosity of private persons afforded. The same spirit of enterprise which had prompted so ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... a good many, the majority of them do not possess the exalted purity of mind you and many very young men attribute to them. They are, on the contrary, for the most part quite ready to exercise a wise discretion in the matter of marriage, even when the feeble tendencies which represent their affections point another way. A little pressure goes a long way with them; they are always glad to make the most of it; it is the dust they throw up to hide their retreat. Your Angela, for instance, ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... sung through to the faint accompaniment of the tiny screaking rocker. It was a very solemn abjuration against the promiscuous sitting about of casual creatures. And oddly enough it seemed to him in a way that something was speaking through that feeble, quavering voice to him; that this was of the same parcel with what had happened, was happening. He felt singularly tense—had not the slightest desire to laugh. And as he watched, the orange patch on the floor began to fade, until the ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... Stratton. It had all come back, and with a thrill of horror he realized that they were talking about him. They were discussing his fate as calmly and callously as if he had been a steer with a broken leg. A feeble protest trembled on his lips, but was choked back unuttered. He knew how futile any protest would ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... went forward, the walls of a city came in sight, and folk began to meet them on the road, some riding, some afoot, all of whom were either youths or maidens, all looking as joyous as if the morning of happy life had just begun for them, and no old or feeble person was to be seen. Niam led her companion through a towered gateway built of white and red marble, and there they were met by a glittering company of a hundred riders on black steeds and a hundred on white, and Oisin mounted a black horse and Niam her white, and they rode up to a stately ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... some brandy from a bottle which stood on the floor, and mixed it with a little hot water. Gammon the while observed him with much curiosity. In five years or a little more he had become an old and feeble man; his thin hair was all but completely grey, his flesh had wasted and discoloured, his hand trembled, his breath came with difficulty. Present illness accounted perhaps for the latter symptoms; but, from that glimpse of him in Norton Folgate, Gammon had known that he was much aged and shaken. ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... half dead. Philosophy strove with it in vain,—there was no real meeting-ground between the two systems. The final appeal of the Stoic was to reason. The Christian theologians thought they reasoned, but their argumentation was feeble save at one point. But that was the vital point,—experience. Christianity, in its mixture of ardor, credulity, and morality had somehow a power to give to common men and women a nobility and gladness of living which Stoicism could not inspire ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... To this feeble protest Mr. Whitelaw vouchsafed no answer. He had lighted his pipe by this time, and was smoking and staring at the fire with his usual stolid air—meditative, it might be, or only ruminant, like one of his ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... mine end doth haste; I run to death, and death meets me as fast, And all my pleasures are like yesterday. I dare not move my dim eyes any way; Despair behind, and death before, doth cast Such terror, and my feeble flesh doth waste By sin in it, which it towards hell doth weigh, Only thou art above, and when towards thee By thy leave I can look, I rise again; But our old subtle foe so tempteth me, That not one hour myself I can sustain: Thy grace may wing me to prevent his ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... weak, Have fled the great hills of Thy love, Too faint to hear what Thou dost speak, Too feeble with fear ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... material. It must have nothing but a bleak world of bitterness, and this it had imposed upon both his happy temperament and his generous heart, so that even in life he had been able to exercise nothing but a rather feeble kindness. His will had been to hold up to the world a picture of the end to which it must come, since splendour wrung from ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... faded Future, uncertain and frail, As I cherish thy light in each draught, His lamp is not more to the miner - their sail Is not more to the crew on the raft. For Hope can make feeble ones earnest and brave, And, as forth thro' the years I look on, Believe me, my friend, between this and the grave, I see wonderful ...
— New Poems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... though with a hand much too feeble indeed for any but moral suasion. It was enough. Barby stood silently, and very anxiously watching her, till the fire had removed the outward chill at least. But even that took long to do, and before it was well done, Fleda again ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... and by all classes of clergy and laity—how Father Hecker did in after years discuss these topics, and how he did inspire all about him with his own enthusiastic hopes of a future and more successful effort! When he went to Europe in 1873, too feeble to hope for recovery, leaving the enterprise behind him in the same condition as his own broken health, how unmurmuring was his submission to the Divine and human wills which had brought ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... gentleman is pressing the lady for her daughter's hand, not for her own]—perverting me from the road of virtue, in which I have trod thus long, and never made one trip—not one faux pas. Oh, consider it; what would you have to answer for, if you should provoke me to frailty! Alas! humanity is feeble, Heaven knows! Very feeble, ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... especially he knew their weaknesses He did his best to be friends with all the world Heresy was a plant of early growth in the Netherlands His imagination may have assisted his memory in the task History shows how feeble are barriers of paper Holland, England, and America, are all links of one chain I would carry the wood to burn my own son withal In Holland, the clergy had neither influence nor seats Informer, in case of conviction, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... tried gently to disengage himself from her slender fingers, but the feeling of their frailness, the knowledge of her wound, made her feeble grasp as an ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... hence may be a treasure to some bibliomaniac. Of its contents, speaking critically of what I wrote between fifty and sixty years ago, some, of the pieces have not been equalled by me since, and are still to be found among my Miscellaneous Poems: but, many are feeble and faulty. Some of the reviews before me received the new poetaster with kindly appreciation; some with sneers and due disparagement,—much as Byron's "Hours of Idleness" had been treated not very many years before: though another cause for hatred and contempt ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... glaring divisions, irreconcilable differences, and internal dissensions emphatically prove that the truth is not in them: and that they have been built, not on the rock, but on the shifting sand, and are the erections, not of God, but of feeble, fickle men. ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan
... believed at the time that he had been murdered. The event created great excitement, and furnished the occasion for the formation of a new party in N.Y. This new party was in fact a rehabilitation of the Adams wing of the Democratic-Republican party, a feeble organization, into which shrewd political leaders breathed new life by utilizing the Anti-Masonic feeling. The party spread into other middle states and into New England; in 1827 the N.Y. leaders tried, unsuccessfully, to persuade Henry Clay, though ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous
... this thou mayest be assured that though thou hadst done all the sins of the world, they shall neither hurt nor condemn thee; for the mercy of God is greater than all the sins of the world. But we sometimes are in such a case that we think we have no faith at all, or if we have any, it is very feeble and weak. And therefore these are two things; to have faith and to have the feeling of faith. For some men would fain have the feeling of faith, but they cannot attain unto it; and yet they may not despair, but go forward in calling upon God, and it will ...
— The Pulpit Of The Reformation, Nos. 1, 2 and 3. • John Welch, Bishop Latimer and John Knox
... thither she was going, must be going! Ah Madeleine, fool—you may well weep, yonder on your pillow, for the happiness that was yours and that you have dropped from your feeble hands! ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... far as my feeble power goes you'll get your mail; an' if it happens to involve any other male—why, from this on, I'm under your orders." She was grateful all right, an' tried to smile, but it was ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... chief Umxamama sprang up to do the king's bidding, but he was feeble with age, and the end of it was that Masilo, being mad with fear, killed Umxamama, not Umxamama Masilo. Then Inguazonca, brother of Unandi, Mother of the Heavens, fell upon Masilo and ended him, ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard
... then he preferred his old, home-made moccasins. His straggly, gray whiskers were badly stained with tobacco from his constant companion—an old, corncob pipe. He was short and stout, and had of late years become very feeble, being just able to hobble about a little each day with the aid ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley
... dar wuz a glass somewhar on my table wid cracked ice in it. Lor'! Lor'! how dry I wuz! I neber longed fer whiskey in my born days ez I panted fur dat ice. It wuz powerful dark, fur de grease wuz low in de lamp, an' de wick spluttered wid a dyin' flame. But I felt aroun', feeble like an' slow, till my fingers touched a glass. I pulled it to me, an' I run my han' in an' grabbed de ice, as I s'posed, an' flung it in my mouf, ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... man, who stood near her. She certainly did not consent, but she resisted carelessly, herself struggling against that instinct which is always strong in simple natures, and very imperfectly protected, by the undecided will of inert and feeble natures. She turned her head now to the wall, and now towards the room, in order to avoid the attentions which the farmer tried to press on her, and her body writhed a little under the coverlet, as she was weakened by the fatigue of the struggle, while he became ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... is very feeble, owing to the decreased density of the Aether, but as it proceeds on its journey it is constantly passing into denser parts of the aetherial electro-magnetic field around the sun. The result is, that as the resistance is increased, ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... that a man had offered to die for her, she was so transported that she jumped off the bed, feeble as she was, and danced about the room for joy. She did not care who the man was; that was nothing to her. The hole wanted stopping; and if only a man would do, why, take one. In an hour or two more ...
— The Light Princess and Other Fairy Stories • George MacDonald
... Instinctively, he snatched his long dagger from its sheath and turned quickly. Not twenty feet from them a huge cat-like beast stood half crouched on the edge of the darkness, his long tail switching angrily. The feeble light from the depth of the cave threw the long, water-soaked visitor into bold relief against the black wall beyond. Apparently, he was as much surprised as the two who glared at him, as though frozen to the spot. A snarling ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... prefer the evil to the remedy; the choice constantly lay between their lessons waiting to be finished or the joys of a slide, and waiting for a bandage carelessly put on, and still more carelessly cast off again. Also it was the fashion in the school to gibe at the poor, feeble creatures who went to be doctored; the bullies vied with each other in snatching off the rags which the infirmary nurse had tied on. Hence, in winter, many of us, with half-dead feet and fingers, sick with pain, were incapable of work, and punished for not working. The Fathers, too often ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... it is," replied Mr. Allen, anxious lest this new barrier should come between Mercy and her work. "It is only a prejudice. And you need never let your mother know any thing about it. She is so old and feeble it would not be worth ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... disappointed to read that he found only 83 epileptics, or possible epileptics, among his 1,000 cases. A full two-thirds of the cases presented no symptoms of mental abnormality while only one tenth were definitely feeble-minded. These are but scattered data; no digest, which might be taken as substitute for the ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... a naggin'! That is what wears out us public men,— wimmin's questionin'. It hain't so much the public duties we have to perform that ages us, and wears us out before our time,—it is woman's weak curiosity on public topics, that her mind is too feeble to grasp holt of. It ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... but I do—I do! I shall have a grown-up daughter. She will be the kind of girl everyone will look at—and someone—important—may want to marry her. But, Oh!—" He was reminded of the day when she had fallen at his feet, and clasped his rigid and reluctant knees. This was something of the same feeble desperation of mood. "Oh, WHY couldn't someone like that have wanted to marry ME! See!" she was like a pathetic fairy as she spread her nymphlike arms, "how ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Brother Joseph had retired to his room, in the afternoon, he saw a young capuchin enter horribly haggard, with a pale thin face, who saluted him with a feeble, trembling voice. As, at the sight of this spectre, Joseph appeared a little disturbed, "Don't be alarmed," it said to him; "I am come here as permitted by God, to fulfill my promise, and to tell you that I have the happiness to be amongst the elect through the mercy of the Lord. But learn that it ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... into the night, followed by the feeble inquiry of her father's eyes, the anxious look ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... pleasant, although the street did not prove quite that happy region it had looked from the nursery windows. Moreover, however strong one may fancy one has become indoors, the convalescent's first efforts out of doors are apt to be as feeble as those of a white moth that has just crept from the shelter of its cocoon, giddy with daylight, and trembling in the open air. By-and-by this feeling passed away, and one afternoon Ida was allowed to go by herself into the garden, ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing |
