"Helpless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not present unbearable conditions. Moreover, time would bring about its shifts. In a week, in a month, in six months, Mr. Harley might have Storri helpless as Storri now had him. It was a case for delay; Mr. Harley must ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... to bring doubt to the mind of the headquarters man awoke a vague distrust in that of Scanlon. The question of motive filled him with uneasiness—that as to the likelihood of a person other than young Burton being near enough to strike the death blow, turned him cold and helpless. ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... government, co-operative power, and the larger self which can be found only in association. During this age and within his group the boy does not act as one possessing clear and independent moral responsibility. He acts as part of the gang, subject to its ideals, and practically helpless against its codes of conduct and ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... voice seemed to be taken at once as its prey by the silence. Even her thought seemed to be seized by it, and to be conveyed away from her like a living thing whose destiny it was to be slain. She felt paltry, helpless, unmeaning, in the midst of this arid breast of Nature, which was pale as the leper is pale. She felt chilled, even almost sexless, as if all her powers, all her passions and her desires, had been grasped by the silence, ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... Yaspard brought his boat alongside of the skerry. The castaway was lying on the turf, battered and helpless. He could only raise his hands, and watch the boy's movements with intense emotion; and it was evident he could not help in ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... your character," forsooth! No; if you have chosen ill, you have De-formed it, and that forever! In some choices it had been better for you that a red-hot iron bar struck you aside, scarred and helpless, than that you had so chosen. "You will know better next time!" No. Next time will never come. Next time the choice will be in quite another aspect—between quite different things,—you, weaker than you were by the evil into which you have fallen; it, more ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... stalwart youth imperilling life and limb for the sake of others; to see a powerful swimmer breasting the billows with a fixed purpose to do or die. But it is terrible and spirit-crushing to see such a one tossed by the breakers as if he were a mere baby, and hurled back helpless on the sand. Twice did the young sailor dash in, and twice was he caught up like a cork and hurled back, while the people on shore, finding their remonstrances useless, began to talk ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... hang it over her—doing it, at the same time, in such a humorous, graceful way that no one could refuse such a present so given. One of her courtiers always carried about a purse, with orders, whatever place they passed through, to inquire there for the most aged and most helpless persons, and give them relief, at least for the moment. In this way she gained for herself all round the country a reputation for charitableness which caused her not a little inconvenience, attracting about her far ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... ask,' he said, turning towards where Barnaby stood looking on, 'that one who has the gift of sight, would lay this out for me in bread to keep me on my way? Heaven's blessing on the young feet that will bestir themselves in aid of one so helpless as ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... with the helpless despair of a man on a spar who watches the lifeboat put off with its last load for the shore. The young ladies, almost before nurse was gone, began to run along the rows of chairs, falling down once in twelve, and rapidly toning down the pretty ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... heathens, who lived long before our Divine Master made his appearance in the flesh. Can Christian Americans deny these barbarous cruelties? Have you not Americans, having subjected us under you, added to these miseries, by insulting us in telling us to our face, because we are helpless that we are not of the human family? I ask you, O! Americans, I ask you, in the name of the Lord, can you deny these charges? Some perhaps may deny, by saying, that they never thought or said that we were not men. ...
— Walker's Appeal, with a Brief Sketch of His Life - And Also Garnet's Address to the Slaves of the United States of America • David Walker and Henry Highland Garnet
... washed up on our coasts, and then we can see how huge is this strange monster of the deep. It is by far the largest of all living animals. Once on the land it is quite helpless; it cannot regain its home in the waters, and slowly dies. It is shaped like a fish, and its home is in the sea, so no wonder it has often ...
— Within the Deep - Cassell's "Eyes And No Eyes" Series, Book VIII. • R. Cadwallader Smith
... ship came into the picture to aid the impression of intense expectation; for with her canvas reduced, she, too, seemed to have lost that instinct which had so lately guided her along the trackless waste, and was "wallowing," nearly helpless, among the confused waters. Still she was a beautiful and a grand object, perhaps more so at that moment than at any other; for her vast and naked spars, her well-supported masts, and all the ingenious ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... and fought and dug for another hour and then Billy Dixon was unable to stand the sight of his partner lying helpless on the summit of ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... ran strong and deep. In Thrums the local Black Nibs were burned in effigy, and whenever they put their heads out of doors they risked being stoned. Even where the authorities were unprejudiced they were helpless to interfere; and as a rule they were as bitter against the Black Nibs as the populace themselves. Once the patriarch was running through the street with a score of the enemy at his heels, and the bailie, opening ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... vastness and its difficulties, and at the prospect the courage of youth sometimes flags. We are still serving our apprenticeship to life; we are new to the business, a kind of faint-heartedness overpowers us, and leaves us in an almost dazed condition of mind. We feel that we are helpless aliens in a strange country. At all ages we shrink back involuntarily from the unknown. And a young man is very much like the soldier who will walk up to the cannon's mouth, and is put to flight by a ghost. He hesitates among the maxims of the world. The rules ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... fair cities and roads were deserted. The tramp of Roman soldiers was heard no more in the land, and the enfeebled native race were left helpless and alone to fight their battles with the Picts and Scots;—that fierce Briton offshoot which had for centuries dwelt in the fastnesses of the Highlands, and which swarmed down upon them like vultures as soon ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... wits. I had no speech to 'mak' laff' with. At the very instant of my dilemma I chanced to see a soberly-clad old townsman hustled between two helpless women of the crowd, his pipe in his mouth, and his hat, wig, and handkerchief sliding over his face, showing his bald crown, and he not daring to cry out, for fear his pipe should be trodden ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... shall be able to do all you require, without feeling it any extra trouble, unless you are very helpless," said Mrs. Doddery, who was on her knees unstrapping one ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... "if you only knew how weak and helpless a thing it is to be a woman—and how glad we are to be noticed! Why, I was just thinking before you came in that about the only really helpful thing a woman could do in this world was just to stay around home ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... night, when fuel fails, and hunger is our company, then poverty becomes harsh and unpalatable, and not to be boasted of; though even penury has spurred many a sluggish life to conquering moods. When a man lies with his face to the wall, paralytic, helpless, useless, a burden to himself and others, and hears the rub of his wife washing for a livelihood—and he loves her so; took her to his home in her fair girlhood, when her beauty bloomed like a garden of roses, and promised to keep her, and now she works ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... owe to our parents! What other creature in the world is so helpless as the human infant? Leave a little baby to take care of itself, and how long do you suppose it would live? How many of us would be alive to-day, if in our earliest years we had not been provided for and watched over with tender care? But the ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... impression on his lordship, otherwise decidedly the truest friend of the poet, was that Clare, notwithstanding repeated advice to that effect, had neglected to make a good arrangement, or, in fact, any arrangement at all, with his publishers, so that he stood to them in the position of a helpless client. Probably, Lord Radstock reasoned that as his friend had shown himself thus unable to carry on the ordinary affairs of life, he would not be better qualified to be the manager of a farm, although one of only seven acres. In consequence, he not only refused to get the two hundred ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... know," was the helpless rejoinder. "I think there is a bottle of oil of cloves somewhere in my upper drawer, if you will find ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... January, 1869) he discovered this great amusement that he had been given the very room in which the director of the establishment told him the hero of the tale had been attacked by a neighbor's bees while he was lying helpless in the "packing" sheets. See Duboc's "Auf Reuterschem Boden" ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... position to the service of the poor, the weak and the lost. His life and work were one of the chief glories of the nineteenth century. From early youth to venerable age his hand was outstretched to assuage the miseries of the helpless and to deal a blow at cruelty and ...
— Great Testimony - against scientific cruelty • Stephen Coleridge
... the tree, and was tossing her body about in frantic endeavor to get loose. Means approached close and deftly slipped a noose over one of the wildly gyrating fore-legs. Leading his rope over the branch of another tree, he stretched her out in a helpless position parallel ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... certain Bishop Lascaris, as he passes through Austrian territory on his way to Rome. In Lithuania the Prince might safely have been left. He could do the Elector of Hanover no harm anywhere, except by such Fenian enterprises as that which Pickle was presently to reveal. The anxious and always helpless curiosity of George II. and his agents about the Prince seems especially absurd, when they look in the ends of the earth for a man who is in ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... note of pessimism is found in the lines of both these poems. In the latter, it becomes a helpless cry of anguish. But despair seems to cure the poet rather than drown his faith in hopelessness. As a critic, he encourages every initiate of the cause. As a "soldier of the verse," he himself fights his battles of song in every field. In short story, in drama, in epic poetry, and above all ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas
... the girl had left him, miserable, hopeless, helpless; the words of the Spanish song seemed sung for a lost love of his. And certainly his love was lost. He had stayed on in the stubborn superstitious belief that something would surely happen to relieve him from his predicament—fortune had never failed him before—and instead, ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... increase my difficulties; summoning, therefore, all the gaiety I was master of to my aid, I appeared to participate in the joke, like many a modern roue, laughing in unison without comprehending the essence of the whim, merely because it was the fashion. What a helpless race, old father Etona, are thine (thought I), when first they assume the Oxford man; spite of thy fostering care and classic skill, thy offspring are here little better than cawkers{37} or wild Indians. "Is there no glossary of university wit," said I, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... gentlemen, look at this! Here I just gave surety to one of them for a half, and the other forgave me a half. And even after that he is dunning me, poor helpless me! ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... moselle could be got here; so he gave me several bottles of Krumbholzkirchner,[1] deeming this best for my health, as no really good moselle is to be had. Pray forgive my troubling you, and ascribe it chiefly to my helpless condition. ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... himself among the various sonorous things with which Mr. Rusper adorned the front of his shop, zinc dustbins, household pails, lawn mowers, rakes, spades and all manner of clattering things. Before he got among them he had one of those agonising moments of helpless wrath and suspense that seem to last ages, in which one seems to perceive everything and think of nothing but words that are better forgotten. He sent a column of pails thundering across the doorway and dismounted with one ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... "the poor in England[386] were better provided for, than in any other country of the same extent: he did not mean little Cantons, or petty Republicks. Where a great proportion of the people (said he,) are suffered to languish in helpless misery, that country must be ill policed, and wretchedly governed: a decent provision for the poor, is the true test of civilization.—Gentlemen of education, he observed, were pretty much the same in all countries; the condition of the lower orders, the poor especially, was the true mark ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... into the sinecure of the American consulship with the ease that never left him even in such high places. The tintype establishment was soon to become a thing of the past, although its deadly work along the peaceful and helpless Spanish Main was never effaced. The restless partners were about to be off again, scouting ahead of the slow ranks of Fortune. But now they would take different ways. There were rumours of a promising uprising in Peru; and thither the martial Clancy would turn his adventurous ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... cried Edith, piteously. "I want someone to care for me—to be proud of me for what I am and the little things I can do! If I painted a hideous dog on a helpless china plate, I'd want someone to think it was pretty. If I cooked a mess in the chafing-dish or on the stove, I'd want someone to think it was good, just because I did it! If I embroidered a red rose ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... Great Prince, belonging to William and Daniel Williams and Edward Beal, English merchants. She had been pressed by the Turks at Constantinople, and employed as a transport for Turkish soldiers and provisions to Crete. The crew had been helpless in the affair, and the owners blameless; and his Highness does not doubt that the Doge and Senate will immediately give him a token of their friendship by causing the ship to be restored.—The naval victory of the Venetians was, doubtless, that which Morus had celebrated In the Latin poem for which ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... of England and her hope for the good of the Earth That we to-day are speeding, and many a gift of worth Shall follow the brand and the bullet, and our wrath shall be no curse, But a blessing of life to the helpless—unless we are liars and worse - And these that we see are the senders; these are they that speed The dread and the blessing of England to help the ...
— The Pilgrims of Hope • William Morris
... Then a bewildered, struggling look came into his face, then a helpless look, and he stood staring vacantly, like a somnambulist, at the waiting audience. The moments of painful suspense went by, and he still stood as if struck down. I saw how it was; he had been seized with ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... the Spaniards of tributes from the Indians. He declares that he and all his brethren regard the conquests made in these islands as unjust; and denounces the acts of injustice, oppression, and extortion committed against the helpless natives. Rada asserts that the rate of tribute is three times as high as it ought to be, considering the poverty of the Indians; and urges the governor to reduce the amount levied to one-third of the present exaction, and to protect the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 - Volume III, 1569-1576 • E.H. Blair
... afflicted with tuberculosis and a beginning is being made in the provision of state hospitals for crippled children where they may receive necessary surgical and orthopedic treatment. Likewise the more helpless mental defectives, the insane, the imbeciles and idiots, are cared for ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... show uncommon clearness of understanding, tenderness of affection, and rectitude of intention; but discover, at the same time, a temper timorous, anxious, and impatient of misfortune; a tendency to burst into complaints, helpless dependance on the affection of others, and a weak desire of moving compassion. There is, indeed, nothing insolent or overbearing; but then there is nothing great, or firm, or regal; nothing that enforces obedience ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... is yet in the flesh. He finds the law thundering his guilt and condemning him to death. He cannot wash away the past, nor hide it; he cannot obey God's law with a carnal mind, and that is all the mind he has. He is lost, and helpless of himself, but longs for a way of escape. Paul's cry in the same position is the cry of the despairing heart that has not found the Saviour, "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" Rom. 7:24. Thank God, there is an answer ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... the results of the recent experiments of Professor Geley, in France. Before such results the brain, even of the trained psychical student, is dazed, while that of the orthodox man of science, who has given no heed to these developments, is absolutely helpless. In the account of the proceedings which he read lately before the Institut General Psychologique in Paris, on January of last year, Dr. Geley says: "I do not merely say that there has been no fraud; I say, 'there has been no possibility ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle
... deck Dejah Thoris and I found ourselves after twelve long years of separation proved entirely useless. Her buoyancy tanks leaked badly. Her engine would not start. We were helpless there in mid air above the ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... I riding the crocodile like a horse and stabbing furiously, while close by was Bes rolling his yellow eyes but helpless, for he had no weapon. Still the devil was not dead although blood streamed from him, only mad with pain and rage. Nor could the shouting Ethiopians help me since they had only bows and dared not shoot lest ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... took you here," she continued, her full voice gathering passion, "because you are helpless and an outcast. And because I had taken you before, ignorantly, I feel bound to defend you as you never defended me. But I am not bound to do more, and you have ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... him. A strong liking had sprung up between the two, rather to the surprise of everybody. From the first John showed a decided preference for Jim, who was so big and strong and capable, everything he himself was not; and in the same way the helpless weakness of the invalid made its appeal to the boy who in all his life had ...
— The Story of the Big Front Door • Mary Finley Leonard
... or the dead. No tongue thy peerless name hath spoken, No space can hold that awful name; The aspiring spirit's wing is broken;— Thou wilt be, wert, and art the same! Language is dumb. Imagination, Knowledge, and science, helpless fall; They are irreverent profanation, And thou, O God! art all in all. How vain on such a thought to dwell! Who knows Thee—Thee the All-unknown? Can angels be thy oracle, Who art—who art Thyself alone? None, none can trace Thy course sublime, For none can catch a ray from ...
— Notes and Queries, Issue No. 61, December 28, 1850 • Various
... aphorisms; the which is both unworthy and perilous. Let us see things clearly for a moment; if we do this anything is possible, no matter how idealistic and apparently impracticable it may be. Is there any one who would confess that character and intelligence are now a helpless minority in this nation? Such an admission would be almost constructive treason. The instinct of the majority is right, but it is defective in will and it is subservient to base leadership, while its power for good is negatived by the persistence ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... see frontispiece.] Rowing, he knew, would be of no use, as he might be pulling away from the island instead of towards it. Fastening his jacket to an oar, he set it up as a signal, and sat down helpless and inactive, but his mind was busy as he gazed into the depths of the moonlit sky. He thought of home, of the father whom he had so deeply injured, of the prospects that he had unwittingly blighted, of his comrade Ben Trench, and his other friends on the Coral Island. As he continued to think, ...
— Philosopher Jack • R.M. Ballantyne
... Meredith, you are a man of honour—yes, it shall be fairly played." Ned's lip quivered, but he bowed and stood perfectly still. "Lady Horsingham," continued Sir Hugh, "be good enough to hand me those tables; they contain a dice-box.—Nay, Mr. Meredith," seeing Ned about to assist the helpless, frightened woman; "when present, at least, I expect my wife to obey me." Lucy was forced to rise, and, trembling in every limb, to present the tables to her lord. Sir Hugh placed the dice-box ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... the sweet breath, which he nips up in his arms and kisses, and gives a tongue that she may talk back to him his own words, endows with brains that she may think his thoughts,—a quaint little helpless lovely parody of his wisdom and power; a toy, yes; a refreshment, yes; a place of peace, yes,—but how much more! Yes, more by all that we don't understand when ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... he came to a place where were sitting some aged widows and some orphan children of the gold-diggers, who were helpless and destitute; they were weeping and bemoaning themselves, but stopped at the approach of a man whose appearance attracted the prince, for he had a very great bundle of gold on his back, and yet it did not bow him down at all; his apparel was rich, but he had no girdle ...
— Wonder-Box Tales • Jean Ingelow
... 1789, but every country of Europe was thrilled and changed by the new thought. Every important democratic movement leads to an awakened interest in the welfare of children, for they are among the weak and helpless. This great movement of the eighteenth century brought such a remarkable change of thought regarding children as to mark the beginning of a new kind of literature, known as literature ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... in a corner of the room. She told the nurse she might go—she herself would sit with him for the rest of the evening. He had opened his eyes and recognised her, and had moved his hand, which lay helpless beside him, so that she might take it. But he was unable to speak; he closed his eyes again and remained perfectly still, only keeping her hand in his own. She sat with him a long time—till the nurse came back; but he gave no further sign. He might have passed away while she looked at him; he was ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... is pleasant to send in your resignation and say that you will not stand it. And yet, and yet—rivers will rise; it is a way that rivers have; and the Church Secretary, when he receives the resignation, feels as helpless as the landlord. And has the minister any guarantee that the next river on the banks of which he builds his nest will never rise? And, even if he is certain of perfection in the fields to which he flies, is he quite justified in avenging his dead hens by imperilling his ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... be medicinal, and relieve my oppressed brain. What is it which has drawn this veil over my spirit? What mighty and mysterious power has stretched her hand over me? With what bounds am I held a helpless captive? I feel, but I cannot see them, and cannot tear them apart. No, no! I will be lord of myself. I will be no silent dreamer. I will live a true life. I will work, and be a faithful ruler, if I cannot be a free ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... have to do anything to the house but just shut it up, do you?" asked Allison, looking anxiously about in a helpless, mannish way. "Because, if you do, we ought to be getting ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... notion of domestic responsibility or duty. Like most women who are not positively bad, she had in her heart a desire to be right, but she didn't know how. She was all impulse, and gave way to whims and feelings, as if helpless in any effort to manage her own waywardness. As a natural consequence there were constant jars between the pair. Fred took to his clubs and mingled with men of the race-course and the billiard halls, and Lizzie beguiled herself as best she could ...
— That Mother-in-Law of Mine • Anonymous
... given my promise of secrecy, and yet I was entirely helpless in their unscrupulous hands. Again and again they demanded the papers, which they said she had given me to keep for her, and my denial only brought upon me the increased torture of the cord, until I was almost black in the face, ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... as a blind poet? Certainly, there is a compensation to a degree. I have had much of the inner life, and from the habit of self-consciousness and self-analysis, I make great guesses at Human nature in the main. But how willingly I would as a poet exchange some of this lumbering, ponderous, helpless knowledge of books, for some experience of life ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... cripple! May he break his bones! May he lie helpless for years! May his shadow leave him! May he suffer with ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre
... got condition, and they think the race is sure, And the chestnut horse will fall beneath the weight, But the hopes of all the helpless, and the prayers of all the poor, Will be running by his side to keep him straight. And it's what's the need of schoolin' or of workin' on the track, Whin the saints are there to guide him round the course! I've prayed him over every ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... enter the ministry. He is said to have freed some slaves at that time, so he must have been a 'planter,' He became a Congregational minister. My grandfather Jacobs was a carpenter; but, as I knew him, and for some years before my birth, he was a helpless invalid from paralysis ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... I still helpless! This must come to an end.' And he locked up the piano, put the key in his pocket, and set forth in quest of coffee. As he went, his mind trudged for the hundredth time a certain mill-road of terrors, misgivings, ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... of an old ragged shepherd and eating bread and cheese, his clothes were soaked and there was no possibility of his changing them. This worried her and she at once pictured him with a cold or lying helpless in the open air, stricken down by fever or inflammation of the lungs. Henceforth she thought no more about the decisive battle, and forgot all else during the hours that she sat and followed George's movements. Then she sent for ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of the strongest man are benumbed, and he is struck down helpless, by a discharge from the battery of the gymnotus. The organs which produce this curious electrical effect are placed along the under side of the tail. They may be compared to a series of columns inclosed in a thin membrane packed closely ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... toward the telegraph-key. But the man leaned quickly forward, seized him by the shoulder, and threw him heavily back into the chair. "You move again and I'll shoot!" he said sharply, and Alex sank back helpless. ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... me for the representative of that principle of liberty which God has destined to become the common benefit of all humanity. It is glorious to see a free and mighty people so greet the principle of freedom, in the person of one who is persecuted and helpless. Be blessed for it! Your generous deed will be recorded; and as millions of Europe's oppressed nations will, even now, raise their thanksgiving to God for this ray of hope, which by this act you have thrown on the dark night of their fate; even so, through all posterity, ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... fourth fundamental realization: of powers beyond those directly represented within the home; powers of compelling importance that might, or might not, be kindly; powers before which all and everything within his own narrow world had to bow down in helpless submission. In the end this one undoubtedly became the most significant of all his early realizations. It tended gradually to lessen his awe of parental authority so that, at a very early age, he developed the courage to shape his own life and opinions regardless of his immediate ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... most helpless of all young creatures and require the care of parents for the longest period. The care of a husband for his wife, and of a father for his child, is an evident necessity. The proper care and education of a single child should extend over at least fifteen years, and that ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... divorce law would, of course, diminish the number of "divorced women," and perhaps keep them out of prostitution. It does fit the first statement—in a helpless sort of way. But where does the difficulty of divorce affect the causes of it? If you bind a man tightly to a woman he does not love, and, possibly prevent him from marrying one he does love, how do you add to his virtue? And if the only way ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... grown blind and dazed with excess of light, Striving and striving in vain to mingle Earth and Heaven, Helpless and powerless against the invincible armor bright By ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... of light spread from wheel to foremast, with Yellow Rufe at the main rigging in the center of it. The light dazzled him for a second, and his throw was stayed. The three yachtsmen, huddled in their chains aft, stared in helpless amazement at the tableau; for such it became, when the fight stopped for a breath and every man's passion-filled face was lighted by ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... affairs and of Pierre himself in those early days. From the death of Count Bezukhov he did not let go his hold of the lad. He had the air of a man oppressed by business, weary and suffering, who yet would not, for pity's sake, leave this helpless youth who, after all, was the son of his old friend and the possessor of such enormous wealth, to the caprice of fate and the designs of rogues. During the few days he spent in Moscow after the death of Count Bezukhov, he would call Pierre, or go to him himself, and tell him what ought to ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... keep up the municipal police, to drain the marshes, to look after the supply of wine and corn; so to distribute the taxes that the people can recognize their necessity; he is to support the sick and the helpless, and to give his protection and society to distinguished scholars, on whom his fame in ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... at the abolition of Poynings' Act. Other resolutions demanded the abolition of the "powers exercised by the Privy Council under color of Poynings' Act," and a farther relaxation of the penal laws. So helpless did the government by this time feel itself, that the Attorney-general, who was its spokesman on this occasion, could not venture to resist the principle of these resolutions, but was contented to elude them for the time by objections taken ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... with her soft air of obstinate hopelessness. "When I want Yeena, if she isn't in the room, I clap my hands as hard as I can. But I tell you, it is no use. It is too late." As she spoke, throwing up her arms and letting them fall with a gesture of helpless despair, both Brigit and Monny felt that Islam had already raised a barrier between them and this delicate creature it had taken into its keeping. In the white wool robe she wore—the kind of loose dressing gown affected by Turkish women—she looked more like a Circassian than an American girl. ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... forcing their way to the Throne of Righteousness. A hundred men surged upon the platform, and a hundred blades rattled and clanked to the floor at my feet. Zat Arrras and his officers were furious, but they were helpless. One by one I raised the swords to my lips and buckled them again ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... repaid this life-saving exploit by growling still more wrathfully and by snapping in helpless menace at the big dog's nose. But Lad was in no wise offended. Deaf to the praise of the Mistress,—a praise which ordinarily threw him into transports of embarrassed delight,—he stood over the rescued pup; ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... unmoved and helpless, so we waited. Presently she remarked that the influence wanted her to do something, she knew not what, only that she had to get up and go across the room, which she did with the feeble step of an old man. She crossed the room and took down from the wall a colored French lithograph, and, ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... and colourless as infancy. Colourless too were the boundaries on which he looked out: the narrow enclosure of white walls, opening on a slit of pale spring landscape. His hands lay before him, white and helpless on the white coverlet of his bed. He raised his eyes and saw de Crucis at his side. Then he began to remember. There had been preceding intervals of consciousness, and in one of them, in answer perhaps to some vaguely-uttered wish ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... Bewildering my steps with straining close, And breathe their horrible spittle against me. Passions cry round me with the yelling cry Of dogs chained and starving and smelling blood. Yea, for through me the world becomes a den Of insane greed. In helpless beauty I stand Alone in the midst of dreadful adoration; And, round me thronged, the fawning, fawning lusts Open their throats upon me and whine and lick My feet with dripping tongues, or gaze to pant Hot hunger ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... their relations had been so close as to be almost domestic, and to whose hard toil their masters owed all that they possessed. As a mere matter of self-interest, moreover, apart alike from both justice and humanity, the death or flight of the labourers would leave the proprietors helpless when the next good season came, and for want of hands the land would be doomed to barrenness for years to come, to the grievous detriment no less of the landowners than of the whole people of the realm. Accordingly, Turgot ordered all those who had dismissed their metayers ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Turgot • John Morley
... to have paused a moment, and given him another stab, but I could not bring myself to do it. It is one thing to stab a man who is trying to take one's life, but it is quite another when he has fallen, and is helpless." ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty
... mind not to get into a current," said Ella Johnson. "We were staying in Cornwall last year, and my brother was nearly carried out to sea by one. He declared it must have been the Gulf Stream; it was so tremendously strong, it whirled him along, and he felt quite helpless. All he could do was to float and to call, hoping somebody might hear him. No one did for a long time, and he had drifted ever so far from land, when at last a boat was passing, and some fishermen picked him up. They told him it was very dangerous ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... of good-nature he showed, in spite of his exasperation as a mortified adorer and as a humiliated National Guardsman, broke down her nerve, strung to the point of snapping. She wrung her hands, melted into tears, and was in a state of such helpless dejection, that she allowed Crevel to kneel at her feet, ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... to plead for the helpless ones," he resumed. "I went round among the holders of the land to say a word for the tillers of the land. 'These patient people don't want much' (I said); 'in the name of Christ, give them enough to live on!' Political Economy shrieked at ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... deep chair with his hands behind his head. "It's not too hard to imagine Marthasa's great-great-grandfather running down vessels in space and pillaging helpless cities on other planets. The veneer of civilization on him doesn't ...
— Cubs of the Wolf • Raymond F. Jones
... between the two masts, the blue-jackets had evidently been piped up, for they lay there in a sort of serried disorder, to the number of two hundred and seventy-five. Nothing could be of suggestion more tragic than the wasted and helpless power of this poor wandering vessel, around whose stolid mass myriads of wavelets, busy as aspen-leaves, bickered with a continual weltering splash that was quite loud to hear. I sat a good time that afternoon in one ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... hasty foot aside Nor crush that helpless worm; The frame thy wayward looks deride, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20. No. 568 - 29 Sept 1832 • Various
... you term it, more than ever; but I also love you. When a little helpless thing, I took you from your father's arms: I loved you then as a parent would love a child. When Lady Cecil took you under her care, and I saw you but seldom, my heart leaned towards the daughter of my best friend with a brother's love. And when, as I have just said, the sunlight ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... the Christian family in regard to the helpless and vicious classes, some recently developed facts need to be considered. We have stated that the great end for which, the family was instituted is the training to virtue and happiness of our whole race, as the children ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... as the alcohol burned in their half-starved stomachs and the further intoxication of gold crept into their blood, her terror was boundless. In a moment she would feel upon her either the hands of Brodie or the hands of Jarrold. And she was helpless and hopeless. Until, since life connotes hope, there came a faint flicker of light. And with it came a sudden, compelling, swift longing. If she might set them to quarrelling over her, to send a ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... doomed to the scaffold. He came to the throne as little implicated in the acts of his predecessor as any nominal chief of a State could be; as fitting an instrument in the hands of Court and army as any reactionary faction could desire. Helpless and well-meaning, Francis Joseph, while his troops poured into Hungary, played for a while in Austria the part of a loyal observer of his Parliament; then, when the moment had come for its destruction, he obeyed ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... homage, inspiring desire, conscious of her power to charm, and gay with the natural enjoyment of her conquests—who in his walk through the world has not looked on many such a one; and, at the notion of her sudden call away from beauty, triumph, pleasure; her helpless outcries during her short pain; her vain pleas for a little respite; her sentence, and its execution; has not felt a shock of pity? When the days of a long life come to its close, and a white head sinks ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... with scared looks, this is the way they stood in their uncomfortable, rough soldier uniforms, with their starched, turned-up collars, fixing an inexpressibly helpless and pitiful gaze upon the garrisoned soldiers, who were handling them rudely. White lips, blue lines under the eyes betokened either fever or cold. And these poor children, without care, without a caress, exposed to the wind which blows unhindered from the Arctic Ocean, were marching to ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... two children, alone in this State. My husband and protector is now pining in a Yankee prison, a sacrifice on the altar of his country. Let me ask you as a man, and perhaps a father, to pause ere you turn a helpless woman from the shelter of your property. You appear wealthy, and the sum charged for the rent would make but little difference to you, if it was never paid. Oh! do not eject us from this room. My child lies there parched with fever, and to ...
— The Trials of the Soldier's Wife - A Tale of the Second American Revolution • Alex St. Clair Abrams
... daughter came near to the water, she saw the strange little basket lying in the flags, and she sent her maid to bring it to her. And when she had opened it, she saw the child; the poor baby was crying. When she saw him, so helpless and so beautiful, crying for his mother, the king's daughter pitied him and loved him. She knew the cruel order of her father, and she said at once, "This is one ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... like a madman raving—I cried to her, "Nell! my Nell!" They had left us alone and helpless, alone in that burning hell; They had left us alone to perish—forgotten me living—and she Had been left for the fire to bear her to heaven, ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... I was as helpless as a man in a strait waistcoat. When I tried to rise, my captors tautened the rope and dragged me along the ground. Resistance being futile, I resigned ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... justice to be had against them if suspected; but the people remained motionless, being so thoroughly cowed that men thought themselves lucky to escape violence, even when they held their tongues. An exaggerated belief in the numbers of the conspirators also demoralized the people, rendered helpless by the magnitude of the city, and by their want of intelligence with each other, and being without means of finding out what those numbers really were. For the same reason it was impossible for any one ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... motherhood! The right of the eldest, which in the earliest times formed a part of the natural order and was lost in the origins of society, ought never, in my opinion, to have been questioned. Ah! how much a mother learns from her child! The constant protection of a helpless being forces us to so strict an alliance with virtue, that a woman never shows to full advantage except as a mother. Then alone can her character expand in the fulfilment of all life's duties and the enjoyment of all its pleasures. A woman who is not a mother is maimed ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... resist danger, which makes the child run continually to his nurse or to his mother for protection, cannot but diminish, by the mere growth of the bodily powers. The boy feels himself to be less helpless than the child, and in that very proportion he is apt to become less teachable. As this feeling of decreased helplessness changes into a sense of positive vigour and power, and as this vigour and power confer an importance ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... travel-worn Galilean peasant, hungry, sleepy, weary, tempted, tried, like other men, but having a strange, divine Victory in him by which everything evil was vanquished at his coming. He remembered how He had reached out a Hand to every helpless one, how He was the Helper of every weak one. And out of the depths of his soul he cried to the Helper, and found comfort. Not victory, but, what is better, strength. And so, without a thought of the niceties of theological ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... her eyeballs rattled in her head. The doll fell to the floor and lay there with closed eyes. Her face was pallid and ghastly. Her bonnet had fallen off, and her hair stuck out wildly in every direction. Her legs were doubled under her in the most helpless fashion. She was the forlornest figure of a doll imaginable. Presently Mary drew her hands away from her eyes and looked down at Miranda. There was something in the doll's attitude as she lay there which touched the little girl's heart. Once she had seen a woman who had been injured in the ...
— The Christmas Angel • Abbie Farwell Brown
... man, pursued by an armed countryside, found Harley Kennan, his latest victim, like the reporter, to be weaponless. Dismounted, he snarled in his rage and disappointment and deliberately kicked the helpless man in the side. He had drawn back his foot for the second kick, when Michael took a hand—or a leg, rather, sinking his teeth into the calf of the back-drawn leg about to ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... as well as myself are very anxious to be of use to poor Alexander. The dispositions of the whole family are extremely kind towards him, but he is shy and a little helpless; his present melancholy situation is of course calculated to increase this. His position puts me in mind of mine in 1817.... He, besides, is surrounded by people who are kind to him. Of George IV., then Regent, it ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... he, when his uncle lay before him utterly helpless, "I think that disposes of you for a while. Now ...
— Brave and Bold • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... imperial twirled to the proportions of toothpicks, rode a third cavalier whom every one recognized instantly as the fugitive of Camp Cooke, the urgently-sought Captain Nevins. And, though Nevins' arms and legs were untrammeled by shackles of any kind, it was plain to see that he was a helpless prisoner. He had parted with his belt and revolver. His spurs were ravished from his heels, and his bridle-rein, cut in two, was shared between Blake and his faithful sergeant. Behind these three rode ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... worthy to fight and fit to overcome all that is wrong in the universe. Bernard Shaw's creed is just the same, sometimes thinly disguised under respect for 'the Life-Force', sometimes coming boldly forward in audacious, profound assertions that God needs Man to accomplish His own will and is helpless without him. 'There is something I want to do,' Shaw imagines his God as saying, 'and I don't know what it is; I must make a brain, the human brain, to find it out.' Rodin modelled a mighty hand, the ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... then, lost," interrupted the hunter, "and have found how helpless 'tis not to know whether to take the right hand ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... or for looking-glass grimacing; Down my hair went as I hurried, tumbling half-way to my heels; God forbid your ever knowing, when there's blood around her flowing, How the lonely, helpless daughter ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... was a tremendously imposing name to give a baby. When he lay in his crib, wee and helpless, he looked as if he might never survive the weight of it. Even later, when he began to toddle about on his small, unsteady feet, the sonorous pseudonym trailed in his wake, threatening to drag him down to an ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... his doing so, his old schoolmaster lost (through stupidity or otherwise) the establishment over which he had hitherto presided, and in which he had set so much store by silence and good behaviour. Grief drove him to drink, and when nothing was left, even for that purpose, he retired—ill, helpless, and starving—into a broken-down, cheerless hovel. But certain of his former pupils—the same clever, witty lads whom he had once been wont to accuse of impertinence and evil conduct generally—heard of his pitiable plight, ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... being," said Doctor Naudin, solemnly, "and he is, besides, a helpless boy, whom the one, indivisible, and righteous republic deprived of his father and mother, and put under your care to be educated as if he were a son of your own. I ask you, citizen, would you have struck a son of your own as ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... course say that Caesarion was not the son of Julius, but of Ptolemy, the elder of the two boys who had been called Cleopatra's husbands. The feelings of humanity might have answered that, if he was not the only son of the uncle to whom Octavianus owed everything, he was at least helpless and friendless, and that he never could trouble the undisputed master of the world; but Augustus, with the heartless cruelty which murdered Cicero, and the cold caution which marked his character through life, listening to the remark ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... the fiery roan and screamed in his ear Madeline seemed suddenly to grow lax and helpless. The big horse leaped into thundering action. This was memorable of Bonita of the flying hair and the wild night ride. Florence's hair streamed on the wind and shone gold in the sunlight. Yet Madeline saw her with the same thrill with which she had seen the wild-riding Bonita. ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... such weight, gives you such background. Is it YOURSELF you think of? You helper of the helpless. Is that your sincerity? You must sink yourself; must forget yourself and your own desire of fame, of admitted success. It is your POEM, your MESSAGE, that must prevail,—not YOU, who wrote it. You preach a doctrine of abnegation, of self-obliteration, ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... followed him as the criminal goes with the hangman, or the sheep with the butcher; took the sherry mechanically, drank it, and spoke mechanical words of praise. The object of his terror had become suddenly inverted; till then he had seen Attwater trussed and gagged, a helpless victim, and had longed to run in and save him; he saw him now tower up mysterious and menacing, the angel of the Lord's wrath, armed with knowledge and threatening judgment. He set down his glass again, and was ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... supply, was necessarily reduced to embrace a measure which ought to have been the result of reason and sound policy: he made peace with the two crowns against which he had hitherto waged a war, entered into without necessity, and conducted without glory. Notwithstanding the distracted and helpless condition of England, no attempt was made either by France or Spain to invade their enemy nor did they entertain any further project than to defend themselves against the feeble and ill-concerted expeditions of that kingdom. Pleased that the jealousies and quarrels, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... compelled to turn with it. On his first impulse the thought of swimming the stream came to him, but he dismissed it, lest some swift warrior might come up and open fire while he was in the water, in which case, being practically helpless, he might become an easy victim. So he turned with the stream and, keeping its bank close on his left, he fled eastward. But he was fully aware that the change in the course of the river brought to him a new and great danger. The right ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler |
