"Frailty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sleep, or perhaps go away, the science and the austere philosophy taught in these plays were enlivened by tavern scenes, and by the gambols of a clown, fool, or buffoon, called Vice, armed, as Harlequin, with a wooden dagger. And often, such is human frailty, the beholders went, remembering nothing but the mad pranks of Vice. It was in their eyes the most important character in the play, and the part was accordingly entrusted to the best actor. Shakespeare had seen Vice still alive, and he commemorated ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... members sometimes passed almost the whole night in the most passionate devotions, and voluntarily submitted to a spiritual tyranny that could hardly be surpassed in a Catholic monastery. They were to meet every week, to make an open and particular confession of every frailty, to submit to be crossexamined on all their thoughts, words, and deeds. The following among others were the questions asked at every meeting: "What known sin have you committed since our last meeting? What temptations have you met with? How were ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... for thirty-one shillings and threepence, I obtained the only authentic account of how the frailty of the illustrious Senora Dona Sodina was indirectly the means of raising her husband to the highest dignities ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham
... there to be put into shape (operosius excolenda), otherwise it would befall him as it had befallen all the others whose deeds, unsupported by the help of the learned, 'lie hidden in the vast heap of human frailty.' The king, or his humanistic chancellor, agreed to this, and promised that at least the Portuguese chronicles of African affairs should be translated into Italian, and sent to Florence to be done into Latin. Whether the promise was ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... sternly warning them that there is something wrong if they do not 'feel washed out after each drawing,' he still urges them to 'put a new piece of goods in the window' every morning. In fact, he is quite severe on Mr. Ruskin for not recognising that 'a picture should denote the frailty of man,' and remarks with pleasing courtesy and felicitous grace that 'many phases of feeling . . . are as much a dead letter to this great art teacher, as Sanskrit to an Islington cabman.' Nor is Mr. Quilter one of those who fails to practice what he preaches. Far from it. He ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... of our siesta is passing, my scornful friend. Do you know, I like you in spite of your scorn and you like me, too. Don't turn your head away, your peculiar modesty would hide what you call frailty and what I call love. Do you think me blind? How often, on coming back to the house with Her, have I seen your little triangular face at the window, light up and smile at my approach,—the time to open the door and you'd already put on your cat's mask—your pretty Japanesy mask, with ...
— Barks and Purrs • Colette Willy, aka Colette
... Alas! for the frailty of all human foresight! The most careful calculations often prove erroneous—not that in the present instance there was any unforeseen error: for from the very first, Karl had been distrustful of his data; and they were now to disappoint, rather than deceive him. It was not ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... Greek art is rather male than female," and Lecky adds that it was true in the moral conception of the Greeks as in their art. Bushido similarly praised those women most "who emancipated themselves from the frailty of their sex and displayed an heroic fortitude worthy of the strongest and the bravest of men."[24] Young girls therefore, were trained to repress their feelings, to indurate their nerves, to manipulate weapons,—especially ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... unerring guide; who delivered to you His ordinances with His own hand, equitable, plain, explicit, compendious, and complete; who committed no violence, who countenanced no injustice, whose compassion was without weakness, whose love was without frailty, whose life was led in humility, in purity, in beneficence, and, at the end, laid down in ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... wheel requires more drop than a club tooth must be admitted without argument, as this form of tooth requires from one-half to three-fourths of a degree more drop than a club tooth; (b) as regards the frailty of the teeth we hold this as of small import, as any workman who is competent to repair watches would never injure the delicate teeth of an escape wheel; (c) ratchet-tooth lever escapements will occasionally need to have the pallets oiled. ...
— Watch and Clock Escapements • Anonymous
... cattleman. The bedclothes, never stirred, lay in folds sharply cut out with black shadows, and they had a solid seeming, as the mort-cloth rendered in marble over the effigy. That suggested weight exaggerated the frailty of the body beneath the clothes. Exhausted by that burden, the old man lay in the arms of a deadly languor, so that there was a kinship of more than blood between him and Kate at this moment. She stepped to the side of the bed and stood staring down at him, and ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... forms of these three essential beliefs, but not to the same degree as in the case of the secondary additions. God's laws, Christ's teachings, and the inspiration of the Holy Ghost are the recognized guides to conduct; but human frailty has been such that the history of Europe presents a panorama of warring sects in almost unceasing strife about details of ritual and interpretation, while the great fundamental truths have been too frequently ignored. ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... stories, was used to analyzing them. With the aid of what she had worked out as to his character after she left him, she had no difficulty in seeing that he was deceiving himself, was excusing himself. But after all she had lived through, after all she had discovered about human frailty, especially in herself, she was not able to criticize, much less condemn, anybody. Her doubts merely set her to wondering whether he might not also be self-deceived as to ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... a habit, and become familiar to me. In short, tho' I may lawfully plead some part of the old gentleman's excuse, yet I will reserve it till I think I have greater need, and ask no grains of allowance for the faults of this my present work, but those which are given of course to human frailty. I will not trouble my reader with the shortness of time in which I writ it, or the several intervals of sickness. They who think too well of their own performances are apt to boast in their prefaces how little time their works have cost them, and what other business of ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... all the strength, and something of the stiffness, of his nature; we may recognize an almost, but not quite, ideal attitude under the shafts of unmerited obloquy. For he who thus is arrogantly censured should remember both the dignity and the frailty of man; he should wholly forgive, and almost wholly forget; but, nevertheless, should retain such serviceable hints as almost any criticism, however harsh or reckless, can afford, and go on his way with no bitter broodings, but yet (to use ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... hasten over this portion of my narrative. It is sad to dwell upon the history of human frailty, or to relate the oft-told tale of passion and villainy triumphant over virtue. A few days before Christmas, when the marriage ceremony was to be performed, they unfortunately spent one evening together alone, and he left her—ruined. Repentance followed sin, and the intervening time was passed by ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... of his people, the awe of Turk and Christian, Rabbis and sages at his feet, the rich and the great struggling to kiss his fan, the treasures poured into his unwilling palms; now she shivered with hideous suggestions and remembrances of frailty and mortal ineptitude. And as her faith faltered, as the exaltation, with which she had inspired him, ebbed away, alarm for his safety began to creep into her soul, till at last it was as a flood sweeping her in his traces. And the more her fears swelled the more she realized how much she ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... shatters a reed. Some rude beast, in wild pursuit of prey, plunges through the swamp, shatters the reed, leaves it lying upon the ground, all bruised and bleeding, and ready to die. Such is God's gentleness that, though man make himself as worthless as a bruised reed; though by his ignorance, frailty and sin he expel all the manhood from his heart and life, and make himself of no more value than one of the myriad reeds in the world's swamps, still doth God say: "My gentleness is such that I will direct upon this wounded life thoughts that shall recuperate and heal, until at ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... suggestion of frailty about Mrs. Jett. Anything but that. On the contrary, in all the eight years in the boarding house, she held the clean record of not a day in bed, and although her history previous to that time showed as many as fifteen hours a day on ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... is mere frailty: brethren, be content.— Friar Barnardine, go you with Ithamore: You know my mind; let ...
— The Jew of Malta • Christopher Marlowe
... this in a measure, I should still like to know of some of these popular good-doers. We must make considerable allowance for human frailty. Perhaps I shall be able to pick out a real jewel, where you have believed them to be only coloured glass ...
— Working in the Shade - Lowly Sowing brings Glorious Reaping • Theodore P Wilson
... dainty limbs, which Nature lent 680 For gentle usage and soft delicacy? But you invert the covenants of her trust, And harshly deal, like an ill borrower, With that which you received on other terms, Scorning the unexempt condition By which all mortal frailty must subsist, Refreshment after toil, ease after pain, That have been tired all day without repast, And timely rest have wanted. But, fair virgin, This ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... for the benign interposition of divine providence; which, in companion to the frailty, the imperfection, and the blindness of human reason, hath been pleased, at sundry times and in divers manners, to discover and enforce it's laws by an immediate and direct revelation. The doctrines thus delivered we call ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... the King of the Jann said to the Queen-mother, "Indeed Zayn al-Asnam hath not kept faith and covenant with all nicety as regards the young lady, in that he longed for her to become his wife. However, I am assured that this lapse befel him from man's natural and inherent frailty albeit I repeatedly enjoined him to defend and protect her until he concealed from her his face. I now accept[FN61] this man's valour and bestow her upon him to wife, for she is the Ninth Statue by me promised to him and she is fairer than all these jewelled images, the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... accounting for human frailty and wickedness," said James. "Let a' necessary steps be taken at once. We will consider what to do. But—d'ye hear, sir?—dinna let the bairn Jennet go. Haud her fast. D'ye mind that? Now go, and cause the guilty party to be ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... among platitudes. There is less of overt platitude in the doctrine that it is precisely this physical frailty that has given women their peculiar nimbleness and effectiveness on the intellectual side. Nevertheless, it is equally true. What they have done is what every healthy and elastic organism does in like case; they have sought compensation for their impotence in one field by employing their ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... us. It may often, and uniformly, happen that any given individual is unconscious of the Spirit that moves within him; for it is the way of that Spirit to subordinate its manifestations to its ends, knowing the frailty of humanity. But it is there, and its gradual and cumulative results are seen in the retrospect, and it may perhaps be divined as to the outline of some ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... between themselves that the boy should be scolded within an inch of his young life. And the fact that David maintained tenaciously that he had never swerved from the slow monowheel lane didn't bother his parents a bit. They were acquainted with another small-boy frailty. Small boys, on occasion, ...
— Infinite Intruder • Alan Edward Nourse
... captivity in Ireland, he accompanied the captive Richard towards his metropolis, to resign his throne there, and soon afterwards to lay down his life. To Henry, indeed, mementos presented themselves on every side of the frailty of all sublunary possessions, the precarious tenure by which king or peasant alike holds any earthly thing; whilst he was himself destined, in the revolution of the next year, to become in his own person a marked example of the same uncertainty. His ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... he surrendered to the flesh's frailty. An early cabby, cruising up from Cannon Street station on the off-chance of finding some one astir in the city, aside from the doves and sparrows, suffered the surprise of his life when Kirkwood hailed him. His face was blank with amazement when he reined ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... man's rooms involved a shameful admission which any woman might well hesitate to make unless forced to it as a last extremity. Confronted, however, with the alternative of either seeing her husband suffer for a crime of which he was innocent or making public acknowledgment of her own frailty, she had chosen the latter course. Naturally, it meant divorce from the banker's son, and undoubtedly this was the solution most wished for by the family. The whole unsavory affair conveyed a good lesson to reckless young men of wealth to avoid entangling themselves in undesirable matrimonial ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... A.D. 511, consisting of twenty-six bishops and priests, promulgated a canon declaring that on account of their frailty, women must be excluded ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... "as if he had been a god," far from elating him, awakened only in his mind a feeling of humility and a sorrowful presentiment that some disaster to himself would soon convince the Naumburgers of the frailty of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... glory, half wishing to descend from it, and perhaps feeling curious to know what a fall was like. She was a little too heavy for her cloud. To err is a diversion. Princely unconstraint has the privilege of experiment, and what is frailty in a plebeian is only frolic in a duchess. Josiana was in everything—in birth, in beauty, in irony, in brilliancy—almost a queen. She had felt a moment's enthusiasm for Louis de Bouffles, who used to break horseshoes between his fingers. ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... business associates, our nation, are determined by what we have thought and felt and done in the past and by the lessons it is necessary we shall learn. Our wealth or poverty, our fame or obscurity, our strength or frailty, our intelligence or stupidity, our good or bad environment, our freedom or limitations, all grow out of the thoughts and emotions and acts in the past. From their consequences there is no ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... is said to have been brought to the Tower muffled, according to an odious practice of Spanish despotism introduced into the country during the reign of Mary. Under the terror of such a surprise the awful alternative "Comply or burn" was laid before him. Human frailty under these trying circumstances prevailed; and in an evil hour this champion of light and learning was tempted to subscribe his false assent to the doctrine of the real presence and the whole list of Romish ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... flatter yourself too far," replied the Hermit, "with the hope that I will positively yield to the frailty of pity. Why should I snatch a dupe, so well fitted to endure the miseries of life as you are, from the wretchedness which his own visions, and the villainy of the world, are preparing for him? Why should I play the compassionate Indian, and, knocking out the brains of the captive with my tomahawk, ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... on our own confidence in virtue, as the foundation for our hope of a happy life. And, indeed, when I reflect on those troubles, with which I have been so severely exercised by fortune, I begin to distrust this opinion; and sometimes even to dread the weakness and frailty of human nature, for I am afraid lest, when nature had given us infirm bodies, and had joined to them incurable diseases, and intolerable pains, she perhaps also gave us minds participating in these bodily pains, and harassed also with ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... melancholy and despair. Not that we become passionless or simply intellectual, but that we have purified passions, which, instead of troubling us, inspire us with noble aspirations, such as anger and hatred against injustice, cruelty, and dishonesty, sorrow and lamentation for human frailty, mirth and joy for the welfare of follow-beings, pity and sympathy for suffering creatures. The same change purifies our intellect. Scepticism and sophistry give way to firm conviction; criticism and hypothesis to right judgment; and inference ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... many an individual—even of some from whom we could hope better things; and not a few charge it upon the frailty of fallen nature—as that nature now is—independent of, and in spite of their own efforts! ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... may be said with reasonable confidence, records no hero more unselfish, no one less stained with human error and frailty, than George Washington. ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... abstractions, vivid picturings of the beauties of nature, adulation of a patron, idealisation of a protege's regard for a nobleman in the figurative language of amorous passion, amiable compliments on a woman's hair or touch on the virginals, and vehement denunciation of the falseness and frailty of womankind—all appear as frequently in contemporary collections of sonnets as in Shakespeare's. He borrows very many of his competitors' words and thoughts, but he so fused them with his fancy as often to transfigure them. Genuine emotion ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... education, in the administration of justice, in commercial thrift, in mechanical and agricultural enterprise, in the development of the national resources, the progress had been steady and rapid. The politicians of Europe had been amazed to find that their unanimous prediction of the frailty of our political system had totally failed. The idea of a political centre combined with separate State organizations was as firmly fixed as ever. The General Government wielded an undiminished power in aid of the general good; the local Legislatures controlled, within the original ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... pleased with your verdict on The Bride's Prelude. I think the poem is saved by its picturesqueness, but that otherwise the story up to the point reached is too purely repellent. I have the sequel quite clear in my mind, and in it the mere passionate frailty of Aloyse's first love would be followed by a true and noble love, rendered calamitous by Urscelyn, who then (having become a powerful soldier of fortune) solicits the hand of Aloyse. Thus the horror which she expresses ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... enjoins all young ladies who desire to be pleasing in the eyes of men to "avoid a light rollicking manner, and to cultivate a sweet plaintiveness, as of hidden sorrow bravely borne." It also declares that if any young lady has a robust frame, she must be careful to dissemble it, for it is in her frailty that woman can make her greatest appeal to man. No man wishes to marry an Amazon. It also earnestly commends a piece of sewing to be ever in the hand of the young lady who would attract the opposite sex! The use of large words or any show of learning or ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... am in the wrong, my Dear, you must excuse me, for no body can help the Frailty of an ...
— The Beggar's Opera • John Gay
... another, and to act in corps, a more dreadful calamity cannot arise out of hell to scourge mankind. Nothing can be conceived more hard than the heart of a thorough-bred metaphysician. It comes nearer to the cold malignity of a wicked spirit than to the frailty and passion of a man. It is like that of the Principle of Evil himself, incorporeal, pure, unmixed, dephlegmated, defecated evil. It is no easy operation to eradicate humanity from the human breast. What Shakspeare calls the "compunctious visitings ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... understood. But since we are explaining this epistle, you will not mind if we repeat what we have so often explained elsewhere. The article of justification must be sounded in our ears incessantly because the frailty of our flesh will not permit us to take hold of it perfectly and to believe it with ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... into the doctrine that, might is right, for somehow he managed to persuade us that right makes the might - that the strong man is the man who, for the most part, does act rightly. He is not over- patient with human frailty, to be sure, and is apt, as Herbert Spencer found, to fling about his scorn rather recklessly. One fancies sometimes that he has more respect for a genuine bad man than for a sham good one. In fact, his 'Eternal Verities' come pretty much to the same as Darwin's ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... the abstract merits of our Articles and Liturgy. Perhaps there are some things in them which one would wish had not been there. They are not without the marks and characters of human frailty. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... But of this frailty I shall speak no further; indeed, I do not understand how I happened to be led into this line of discourse, for it is quite at a tangent with the subject I had in mind—namely, the ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... impossible for a married woman to remain virtuous in France, our enumeration of the celibates and the predestined, our remarks upon the education of girls, and our rapid survey of the difficulties which attend the choice of a wife will explain up to a certain point this national frailty. Thus, after indicating frankly the aching malady under which the social slate is laboring, we have sought for the causes in the imperfection of the laws, in the irrational condition of our manners, in the incapacity of our minds, and in the contradictions which ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... graces which women admire, and seemed honest and fiery enough in a manly way—the last person, as Lucian thought, to gain his aims by underhand ways, or to kill a helpless old man. But Lucian, legally experienced in human frailty, was not to be put off with voluble conversation and outward graces. He wished for proofs of innocence, and these he tried to obtain as soon as Ferruci drew breath ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... to lift them up to heaven during the prayer. Her sadness inspired a general pity—she was excluded from no house she had heart to visit—no coarse comment, no ribald jest accompanied the notice people took of her baby—no licentious rustic presumed on her frailty; for the pale, melancholy face of the nursing mother, weeping as she sung the lullaby, forbade all such approach—and an universal sentiment of indignation drove from the parish the heartless and unprincipled seducer—if all had been known, too ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... danger, and consequently makes no effort to escape. Further, his mind may be so prejudiced that he still counts the beam on which he stands secure, although a neighbour has faithfully given warning that it is about to fall; it may be that because he stands on it he cannot see its frailty. Let some friend who knows his danger, but wishes him well, approach the spot and hold a mirror in such a position that the infatuated man shall see reflected in it the under and ailing side of the beam that lies between him and the abyss. The work is done: the object is gained: ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... the rich uncle, owner of the delicatessen shop in New York, written to urge that his nephew—whose frailty of body made him unfit to enter upon the hard life of a worker in the mines—should come to America; and with his large knowledge of affairs the uncle had explained that the best bill of exchange in which money could be carried from Andreasberg to New York was ...
— An Idyl Of The East Side - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... is faultless, but) with a character unsullied even in this respect, and in all other respects irreproachable." Mankind are, more or less, the children of error; but their propensity to exaggerate human frailty deserves to be reprobated for ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - No. 291 - Supplement to Vol 10 • Various
... apprehended, Galerius Maximus, proconsul of Africa, received the Imperial warrant for the execution of the Christian teachers. The bishop of Carthage was sensible that he should be singled out for one of the first victims; and the frailty of nature tempted him to withdraw himself, by a secret flight, from the danger and the honor of martyrdom; * but soon recovering that fortitude which his character required, he returned to his gardens, and patiently expected the ministers of death. Two officers ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... grand-daughter. Miss Sedley, must, I fear, be pronounced to be, an amiable fool, there is really too much of the milk of human kindness, unrefreshed and unrelieved of its mawkishness by the rum or whisky of human frailty, in her. One could have better pardoned her forgiveness of her husband if she had in the first place been a little more conscious of what there was to forgive; and in the second, a little more romantic in her attachment to him. As it is, he was son homme; he was handsome; ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... from the Colossi of Memnon to the Nile, to the mountains, southward toward Armant, northward to Kerekten, to Danfik, to Gueziret-Meteira. Think of the color of young clover, of young barley, of young wheat; think of the timbre of the reed flute's voice, thin, clear, and frail with the frailty of dewdrops; think of the torrents of spring rushing through the veins of a great, wide land, and growing almost still at last on their journey. Spring, you will say, perhaps, and high Nile not yet subsided! ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... Erwyn; "and, indeed, I would, for her sake, that the errors of my past life were not so numerous, nor the frailty of my aspiring resolutions rendered apparent—ah, so many times!—to a gaping and censorious world. For, as you are aware, I cannot offer her an untried heart; 'tis somewhat worn by many barterings. ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... of a thousand petty rubs, which too often spoil the euphony of a silver voice, and discompose the symmetry of fair features. But the confidence which reposes on divine affection, and the charity which covers human frailty, are the only specifics ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady
... known," he said solemnly, "whether the failure of many of our shots has been human error or sabotage. Human error is a frailty of the race. Sabotage is a frailty of statesmanship, that the world is still divided as it reaches for the ...
— Prologue to an Analogue • Leigh Richmond
... discerned that there was a priori impossibility of fixing on myself the imputation of degeneracy, without fixing the same on Adam. In short, Adam undeniably proved his primitive nature to be frail; so do we all: but as he was nevertheless not primitively corrupt, why should we call ourselves so? Frailty, then, is not corruption, and ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... have to deplore among certain classes of our people, which are often superinduced by their migratory habits and irregular mode of life. But they are commonly sins of frailty, and these are not the persons that are accustomed to approach the confessional. If they did their lives would be very different ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... for Gervase goes on to say that "Lanfranc having remained untouched for sixty-nine years, his very bones were consumed with rottenness, and nearly all reduced to powder. The length of time, the damp vestments, the natural frigidity of lead, and above all the frailty of the human structure, had conspired to produce this corruption. But the larger bones, with the remaining dust, were collected in a leaden coffer, and deposited at the altar of St. Martin." Queen Ediva, as we learn ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers
... my heart and my fancy employs; I reflect on the frailty of man and his joys; Short-lived as we are, yet our pleasures, we see, Have a still shorter date, and ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various
... are mistaken, Bergenheim; my boyish love adventures have disposed me to indulgence. 'Debilis caro', you know! Shakespeare has translated it, 'Frailty, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... reason to doubt your affection for my daughter, but I must request you to abandon all idea of changing my designs. If I choose to bring my daughter to a true sense of her position by somewhat rigorous methods, it is because I am aware that the frailty of reputation surpasses the frailty of woman. I will say this to your credit, sir, that if she has not disgraced herself, it has been in some measure because you wisely forbore from pressing your suit while you were received as an instructor beneath my ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... heaven, and surveying the whole scheme of created things. Yet on the other hand there fell the sense of a baffling and miserable impotence, a despairing knowledge that one's consciousness of the right to live, and to live happily, was conditioned by one's utter frailty, the sense that one was surrounded by a thousand dangers, any one of which might at any moment deprive one of the only thing of which one was sure. How, and by what subtle process of faith and imagination, could the two thoughts ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... and superstition seek to explain events by fate and destiny, yet there is a fascination in such speculations born, perhaps, of human frailty. How happens it that James Otis laid out in 1762 the then almost treasonable proposition that "Kings were made for the good of the people, and not the people for them," in a pamphlet which was circulated ...
— Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge
... not disease, had laid his hand heavily on him. His form had withered, but it was not wasted. The sinews and muscles, which had once denoted great strength, though shrunken, were still visible; and his whole figure had attained an appearance of induration, which, if it were not for the well known frailty of humanity, would have seemed to bid defiance to the further approaches of decay. His dress was chiefly of skins, worn with the hair to the weather; a pouch and horn were suspended from his shoulders; and he leaned on a rifle of uncommon length, but which, like its owner, exhibited the ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... they enabled the country to carry a debt of three thousand million dollars, and it is probable that a debt of six thousand million would not have paralyzed the public credit. It is an instance of the frailty of human nature, when men are in the presence of great temptations, that when he became Chief Justice of the United States, he announced the opinion that the issue of United States legal tender notes was unconstitutional. That measure was the key to ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... reference to the pictures of vice which the book contains, he observes: "First, That it is very difficult to pursue a Series of human Actions, and keep clear from them. Secondly, That the Vices to be found here [i.e. in Joseph Andrews] are rather the accidental Consequences of some human Frailty, or Foible, than Causes habitually existing in the Mind. Thirdly, That they are never set forth as the Objects of Ridicule but Detestation. Fourthly, That they are never the principal Figure at the Time on the Scene; and, ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... Near fair Eurotas' banks; what solemn green The neighbour shades wear, and what forms are seen In their large bowers, with that sad path and seat Which none but light-heel'd nymphs and fairies beat;[55] Their solitary life, and how exempt From common frailty, the severe contempt They have of man, their privilege to live A tree, or fountain, and in that reprieve What ages they consume, with the sad vale Of Diophania, and the mournful tale, Of th' bleeding vocal myrtle; these and more Thy richer thoughts, we are upon the score To thy rare fancy for, ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... to the usual feminine frailty, they went "window shopping." And in every store seeking trade from the college girls they ...
— Ruth Fielding At College - or The Missing Examination Papers • Alice B. Emerson
... though they are in reality no better than concubines, and are subject to the power and caprices of their lords, are yet allowed, in the eye of the severest moralists, to have some excuse for their frailty and their weakness; and they accordingly always do find a degree of favor in this world, and become the object ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... wonderfully graceful shadow, reclining in this dark place, and no judge of the human form could have passed without a quick breath of admiration for its delicate blending of strength and frailty, its stamp of being thoroughbred. And it was along the line of thoroughbreds ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... love may plead for woman's frailty, Urged by desert and greatness of the lover, So far, divine Octavia, may my queen Stand even excused to you for loving him Who is your lord: so far, from brave Ventidius, May her past ...
— All for Love • John Dryden
... estimation, and in the estimation of their neighbours—declare that they have done those things which they ought not to have done, and that there is no health in them. Will you believe that they are encouraged by their Prayer-books to present this sad exposure of the frailty of their own admirable characters? How inconsistent—and yet how entirely true! Lord Harry, as you rightly say, behaved nobly in trying to save my dear lost brother. He ought, as you think, and as other people think, to be consistently noble, after that, in all his thoughts and actions, ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... God knew the frailty of man, that his heart was "desperately wicked," that even his righteousness was "as filthy rags," that man's only hope for victory over sin must come from the God-ward side. He, therefore, made kingly provision so rich, so sufficient, so exceeding abundant, ...
— How I Know God Answers Prayer - The Personal Testimony of One Life-Time • Rosalind Goforth
... stake. She remembered the doped cigarettes. She had heard of them before at clairvoyants'. She saw it all—Madame Cassandra playing on Mildred's wounded affections, the broker on both that and her desire to be independent—and Drummond pulling the wires that all might take advantage of her woman's frailty. ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... went home, with his eyes on the ground as usual, and measured steps. And to all who met him he seemed a creature in whom religion had conquered all human frailty. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... frailty, refinement, fastidiousness, discrimination, sensitiveness; dainty, tidbit, junket. Antonyms: ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... quartered heraldically with unutterable and demoniac natures, whilst over all rises, as a surmounting crest, one fair female hand, with the forefinger pointing, in sweet, sorrowful admonition, upwards to heaven, where is sculptured the eternal writing which proclaims the frailty of earth ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... persons to live forty years not fifty miles distant from Niagara, and never to have heard the organ speech of that great cataract. This is a common flaw in intellect. We tend to underestimate the near, and exaggerate the remote. Another application of the same frailty is noticeable in literature. Homegrown literature is, with not a few, depreciated. According to their logic, good things can not come out of Nazareth, and imported products are the only viands worth a Sybarite palate. In mediaeval days the form assumed was different, while the ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... tenderness of love, You were the subject of their last discourse. At first I thought it would have fatal prov'd; But, as the one grew hot, the other cool'd, And yielded to the frailty of his friend; At last, after much struggling, ...
— The Orphan - or, The Unhappy Marriage • Thomas Otway
... we commend the soul of this Thy servant, that, being dead to the world, he may, live to Thee: and the sins he hath committed through the frailty of his mortal nature, do Thou in Thy most merciful goodness, ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... given was contemporary with the beginning of the Trust, but that proved nothing. But the name—had it any significance, or was it a grim coincidence, that spoke even more terribly and hopelessly of the woman's promiscuous frailty? He again attacked the entire report, but there was no other record of her name. Even that would have passed any eye less eager and ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... ordered beauty and richness, but Norma was vaguely conscious, for the first time, of some new invalid quality of fussiness, of a pretty and superfluous cluttering that had not been characteristic of Alice's belongings a year ago. Alice, too, wore newly a certain stamp of frailty, her always pure high forehead had a faint transparency and shine that Norma did not remember, and the increasing accumulation of pillows and little bookcases and handsome stands about her suggested that her horizon was ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... poet; his visible Muse; the guardian angel of his better nature; the inspiring sibyl of his best affections, drawing him to her with a purifying charm, from the selfishness of the world, from poverty and neglect, from the low and base, nay, from his own frailty or vices:—for he cannot approach her with unhallowed thoughts, whom the unlettered and ignorant look up to with awe, as to one of a race above them; before whom the wisest and best bow down without abasement, and would bow in idolatry but ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... In that attribute; we see him Acting like a mortal sinner Many a time,—this, Danae, This, Europa, too, doth witness. Can then, by the Highest Good, All whose actions, all whose instincts, Should be sacred and divine, Human frailty be committed? ...
— The Wonder-Working Magician • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... thought I would ask you to tell me, dearest. You are kind, but you mustn't spare her. I didn't. She wanted to draw a veil over her frailty, but I wouldn't let her. I think she would like to confess to her husband, to pour out her heart to him, and begin again with a clean page, but she is afraid. Of course she hasn't really been faithless, and I could swear on my life she loves her husband ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... but no revelation, to guide them; and though reason be always one, we cannot wonder that different prejudices and different tempers of imagination warped it in them on such subjects as these, and produced all the extravagances of their theology. The latter had not the excuse of human frailty to make in mitigation of their presumption. On the contrary, the consideration of this frailty, inseparable from their nature, aggravated their presumption. They had a much surer criterion than human ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke
... curled with scorn of herself for having loved such a thing. It was long since she had seen the gentle light in his face which had won her heart two years ago. She was familiar with his genius, and it no longer surprised her into overlooking his frailty. His fame no longer flattered her. His gentleness was gone, and had left, not hardness nor violence, in its place, but a sort of irritable palsy of discontent. That was what she called ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... What was the explanation of this? He had enshrined her, set her upon a fairy pedestal, only to learn that she was humanly frail. Had this discovery hurt him? Intensely. How and why? It had shattered his belief in his omniscience. Yes, that was the unpalatable truth, brought to light at last. Frailty in woman he looked for, and because he knew it to be an offshoot of that Eternal Feminine which is a root-principle of the universe, he condoned. But in Flamby he had seemed to recognise a rare spirit, one loftily above ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... noble initiator. Thy work is completed; thy divinity is established. Fear no more to see the edifice of thy efforts crumble through a flaw. Henceforth, beyond the reach of frailty, thou shalt be present, from the height of thy divine peace, in the infinite consequences of thy acts. At the price of a few hours of suffering, which have not even touched thy great soul, thou hast purchased the most complete immortality. For thousands of years the world will extol thee. ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... will roll away the stone! There is a great obstacle in the way, and my frailty is incompetent to its removal. And lo! when I arrive at the place I find that the angel has been before me, and the obstacle is gone! And I would that I might learn wisdom to-day from the miracle of yesterday. Let me not be confounded about a new stone when I know that my fears about the old ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... that fire which reneweth the world, but shall passe through it to Salvation; but so, as to see, and relinquish their former Errours. The Builders, are the Pastors; the Foundation, that Jesus Is The Christ; the Stubble and Hay, False Consequences Drawn From It Through Ignorance, Or Frailty; the Gold, Silver, and pretious Stones, are their True Doctrines; and their Refining or Purging, the Relinquishing Of Their Errors. In all which there is no colour at all for the burning of Incorporeall, that is to say, ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... retirement, and caused him to renounce the world. As this story accounted in the most satisfactory manner for all that was strange about him, it was regarded in every respect as authentic; and, after the wickedness of titled men and the frailty of acting women had been freely commented upon with much sage shaking of the head, as if only titled men were wicked and acting women frail, and Morningquest itself was a saintly city, innocent of any deed not strictly ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... head, praying her to open her eyes, before whose closed lids he held the sacred image; and he, who had come so near to great sin, now prayed softly, but fervently, for her life and God's pity on her, for the frailty her slight form showed could not withstand the shock ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... one, says Lenehan. Such is life in an outhouse. Throwaway, says he. Takes the biscuit, and talking about bunions. Frailty, thy ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... ran from 1775 to 1864, in his old age confessed, "I never did a single wise thing in the whole course of my existence, although I have written many which have been thought so." This is the exaggeration of an old man who has been impressed by the frailty of human endeavor. Nevertheless, Landor is a striking illustration of the artistic temperament. He was impractical. Landor could not make a good fist. Even when angry, a frame of mind in which he found himself very frequently, he did not clench ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... are no worse than we. But there is nothing in which the self-righteousness created by anti-slavery views and feelings is more conspicuous than in the way in which the South is judged and condemned by us with regard to this one sin. Had the pulpits of the South afforded such dreadful instances of frailty, for the last ten or fifteen years, as we have had at the North, what confirmation would we have found for our invectives against the corrupting and 'barbarous' ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... in rain, And with wide parent wing Shadowed thee, nested thing, Fed thee, and slaved for thy Impotent tyranny. Nature's broad thews bent Meek for thy content. Mastering littleness Which the wise heavens confess, The frailty which doth draw Magnipotence to its law— These were, O happy one, these ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... Word with you, Wife. 'Tis no new thing for a Wench to take Man without Consent of Parents. You know 'tis the Frailty of Women, my Dear. ...
— The Beggar's Opera • John Gay
... said the abbe, with a bitter smile, "that makes eighteen months in all. What more could the most devoted lover desire?" Then he murmured the words of the English poet, "'Frailty, ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... encounter the devil. There is more in sin than our own frailty and stupidity, and the bad influence of other individuals. There is a permanent force of organized evil which vitiates every higher movement and sows tares among the grain over night. You work hard on some law to reform the ballot or the primary in order to protect the freedom and ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... banner was spread on the mountains, shall not be utterly lost, as one of the children of darkness. Trow ye, that in this day of bitterness and calamity, nothing is required at our hands but to keep the moral law as far as our carnal frailty will permit? Think ye our conquests must be only over our corrupt and evil affections and passions? No; we are called upon, when we have girded up our loins, to run the race boldly, and when we have drawn the sword, we are enjoined to smite the ungodly, though he be our neighbour, ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... the time appointed by the Father when his servitude shall end, and he enter into the liberty of the sons of God. For being thus in distress, and terrified, seeing that by no other means he can avoid the condemnation of the law, he prays to the Father for grace; he acknowledges his frailty, he confesses his sin, he ceases to trust in works, and humbles himself, perceiving that between him and a manifest sinner there is no difference at all except of works, that he hath a wicked heart, even as every other sinner hath. The condition of man's nature is such that it is able ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various
... preserved. But at length one of those holy men to whom its guardianship had descended so far forgot the obligation of his sacred office as to look with unhallowed eye upon a young female pilgrim whose robe was accidentally loosened as she knelt before him. The sacred lance instantly punished his frailty, spontaneously falling upon him, and inflicting a deep wound. The marvellous wound could by no means be healed, and the guardian of the Sangreal was ever after called "Le Roi Pescheur,"—The Sinner King. The Sangreal withdrew its visible presence from the crowds who ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... saints" (Job 15:15). Grace can pardon our ungodliness, justify us with Christ's righteousness; it can put the spirit of Jesus Christ within us, it can help us up when we are down, it can heal us when we are wounded, it can multiply pardons, as we, through frailty, multiply transgressions. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... American, her eyes fixed on the faraway monastery, her heart still and cold and fearful. She had no confidant in this miserable affair of the heart. Others, near and dear, had surmised, but no word of hers confirmed. A diffidence, strange and proud, forbade the confession of her frailty, sweet, pure and womanly though it was. She could not forget that she ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... the Heav'n of Hogs. As well might Nothing bind Immensity, Or passive Matter Immaterials see, As these shou'd write by reason, rhime, and rule, Or we turn Wit, whom nature doom'd a Fool. If Dryden err'd, 'twas human frailty once, But blund'ring is the ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... correct the florid and gaudy prospects and expectations which we are too apt to indulge, teach us to lower our notions of happiness and enjoyment, bring them down to the reality of things, to what is attainable, to what the frailty of our condition will admit of, which, for any continuance, is only tranquillity, ease, and moderate satisfactions. Thus we might at once become proof against the temptations with which the whole world almost is carried away; since it is plain ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... meant it at the time! The poor fellow gratefully kissed my hand when I offered it to him—he was not able to speak. I wonder whether I am weak about Arthur? Say a kind word for him, when his conduct comes under notice—but pray don't mention this little frailty of mine; and don't suppose I have any sympathy with his weak-minded submission to Mrs. Romayne's prejudices. If I ever felt the smallest consideration for her (and I cannot call to mind any amiable emotion of that sort), her letter to Winterfield would ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... a riddle, an enigma, an inexplicable mystery. Doubt, uncertainty, suspense of judgment, appear the only result of our most accurate scrutiny concerning this subject. But such is the frailty of human reason, and such the irresistible contagion of opinion, that even this deliberate doubt could scarcely be upheld; did we not enlarge our view, and opposing one species of superstition to another, set them a quarrelling; while we ourselves, ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... sin? But now he understands both—the void in his life, the powerlessness of his will. He understands that, like all other energy, spiritual power is contained in Environment. He finds here at last the true root of all human frailty, emptiness, nothingness, sin. This is why "without Me ye can do nothing." Powerlessness is the normal state not only of this but of every organism—of every ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... of frailty, but kept stalwart and firm to the last; but they say he grew less talkative towards the end, and would listen to other people by the hour in an amused and sympathetic silence. Only, when he did speak, it was more to the point and more charged with old experience. He drank ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... giving evidence a man ought not to affirm as certain, as though he knew it, that about which he is not certain; and he should confess his doubt in doubtful terms, and that which he is certain about, in terms of certainty. Owing however to the frailty of the human memory, a man sometimes thinks he is certain about something that is not true; and then if after thinking over the matter with due care he deems himself certain about that false thing, he does not sin mortally if he asserts it, because ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... lesson for the earth-born worm, So deep engraven on the meagre platen Of human frailty, so debased in hue, That he who dares peruse it needs but blush For his own nature. The poor shrivell'd wretch, For whose lean carcass yawns this hideous pit, Had naught that he desired in earth or heaven— No God, no Saviour, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 494. • Various
... makes allowance for our weakness and our frailty, we ought not to expect Him to indulge us in avoidable and needless errors. We made a mistake. Very well. We knew no better than to make it. But now that we do know better, we have no business repeating it. And right along here comes a great expanse of ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees
... between the two poets in their descriptions of Paradise and of its joys. In both poems, too, Adam warns his spouse of her frailty, and in the episode of Eve's meeting with the serpent there are no less than four verbal coincidences. Thus Salandra writes ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... that I have no Guilt hangs upon me, no unrepented Folly that retards me; but I pass away my last Hours in Reflection upon the Happiness we have lived in together, and in Sorrow that it is so soon to have an End. This is a Frailty which I hope is so far from criminal, that methinks there is a kind of Piety in being so unwilling to be separated from a State which is the Institution of Heaven, and in which we have lived according to its ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... perpetration to the docile secretary. But the death-warrant slumbered for a while in the keeping of the executioner. It was not until Escovedo acquired his perilous knowledge of the debaucheries of Perez and the Princess of Eboli, and had avowed his still more perilous resolution of publishing their frailty in a quarter where detection was ruin, that Perez plied with inflexible diligence artifice and violence, poison and dagger—to satisfy, coincidently, himself and his sovereign. By a similar infusion of ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various |
