"Vulnerable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ever proved the vulnerable portion of false religions,—the portion which, if I may use the metaphor, their originators could not dip in the infernal river. The ability of drawing the line, in the early and ignorant ages of the world, ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... without loving the son—had played, indeed, a father's part to him since Henry Marsham's death. He knew the brilliant, flawed, unstable, attractive fellow through and through. But his knowledge left him still vulnerable. He thought little of Oliver's political capacity; and, for all his affection, had no great admiration for his character. Yet Oliver had power to cause him pain of a kind that no other of his ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... use trying to frighten me. But what about your ideals? What is the nature of the difference between yours and mine, which makes yours so much less vulnerable than mine?" ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... Place it was a different story. Ken realized he was watching a great team. They reminded him of Dale's varsity, though they did not play that fiendish right-field-hitting game. Ken had a numbness come over him at the idea of facing this Place team. It soon passed, for they had their vulnerable places. It was not so much that they hit hard on speed and curves, for they got them where they wanted them. Keene flied out on high fast balls over the inside corner; Starke bit on low drops; Martin was weak on a slow ball; MacNeff, the captain, could not touch speed ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... as it was, was fatal to the calculations of the monarch of the jungle. From his rear came two shots in rapid succession, each hitting him in a vulnerable portion of his body. He leaped up into the air, rolled over on the edge of the hollow, and then came down, head first, just grazing Dick's arm, and landing at the boy's feet, ...
— The Rover Boys in the Jungle • Arthur M. Winfield
... career of assassination and of poisoning, into which the queen afterwards entered, was at all events postponed. As a public man, the minister was fully triumphant. But the minister was a father; at this side he was vulnerable; and fortune dealt her blow with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... not a little. Leave it to chance indeed! Had she not caused me to grow stronger and larger by every word she uttered? And had not the conversation revealed to me Mr. Blackthorn's one vulnerable part? I knew well enough that I should be able to dominate his thoughts as I had done hers. Finding me burdensome, she had passed me on to somebody else with additions that vastly increased my working powers, and then she talked of leaving it to chance! The way in which mortals practise ...
— The Autobiography of a Slander • Edna Lyall
... said that under modern conditions mountains favour either the offensive or the defensive. But they certainly make operations far more deliberate than upon a level. An engineered road or railway in an Alpine valley is the most vulnerable of things; its curves and viaducts may be practically demolished by shell fire or swept by shrapnel, although you hold the entire valley except for one vantage point. All the mountains round about ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... My Lords, these are considerations to be borne in mind with respect to this question of Denmark. It may be said that other combinations might be made—that although we could not ourselves attack the German Powers with any great amount of success, yet there are vulnerable points upon which they, and especially Austria, may be open to attack; that those doctrines and theories which Austria and Prussia have put forward, with regard to foreign nationalities, may be retorted upon them, and especially upon Austria with effect—they may be applied to other parts ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... sting of the punches, although dazing him slightly, brought Redmond to his senses, as he realized how vulnerable his momentary loss of temper had rendered him. He now braced himself with dogged determination and, covering up warily, circled his adversary with clever foot-work. Yorke, tearing in again was met with one of the crudest jabs he had ever known—flush ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... into the open arms of France, sure of dying in the embrace. And now, what means have you of guarding against this coming evil, upon which the future happiness or misery of every Englishman depends? Have you a single ally in the whole world? Is there a vulnerable point in the French empire where the astonishing resources of that people can be attracted and employed? Have you a ministry wise enough to comprehend the danger, manly enough to believe unpleasant intelligence, honest enough to state their apprehensions at the peril of their places? Is there anywhere ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... looked so ridiculously vulnerable that day in the Victim's Society. I would have helped anyone who ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... all his life he had declined to recognize me as what I was! Ah, I should have been glad to shout his age, his dyes, his artificialities, to all the crowd, so to touch him where it would most pain him! For was he not the vainest man in the whole world? How well I knew his vulnerable point: the monstrous depth of his vanity in that pretense of youth which he preserved through superhuman pains and a genius of a valet, most excellently! I had much to pay Antonio for myself, more for my father, most for my mother. This ...
— The Beautiful Lady • Booth Tarkington
... to a sacred cause. Asceticism, repulsive in many of its aspects, and even unnatural and inhuman, drew a cordon around the Christians, and separated them from the sensualities of ordinary life. It was a reproof as well as a protest. It attacked Epicureanism in its most vulnerable point. "How hardly shall they who have riches enter into the kingdom of God?" Hence the voluntary poverty, the giving away of inherited wealth to the poor, the extreme simplicity of living, and even retirement ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... his vulnerable heel, and there are times in the lives of each of us when the arrow of accident, harmless at all other periods, can enter and ruin. Colonel Bancker had kept his secret, or believed that he had kept it, inviolate; but his fatal moment had come. Whether ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... the two lay thus, and then a sudden convulsion of the giant carcass at the man's side, a tremor, and a stiffening brought Tarzan to his knees beside the crocodile. To his utter amazement he found that the beast was dead. The slim knife had found a vulnerable ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... expression came into his face. It was one of the pleasant features of his professional career that his brother physicians occasionally vented their jealousy of him upon one of their joint patients—stabbing him, so to speak, through their lungs or heart, wherein he was most vulnerable. Just as he expected! They had deliberately neglected his prescriptions, after calling him a winter-journey north to deliver them, and as deliberately allowed the victim to die according to their treatment rather than permit him to live according to ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... accounting himself blessed? This one, to whom he, Mark, would never have presumed to aspire, Tristan, braving enemies and danger, had brought home to him. And now that through such a possession his heart had become more vulnerable to pain than before, wherefore wound him in the very spot where it was tenderest?—destroy his faith in his friend, fill his frank heart with distrust, bring him to the degradation of dogging his friend by night and listening covertly? "Wherefore to me this hell which no heaven ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... thirst, when he was struck in the throat by a bolt, or headless arrow, shot from a cross-bow by a boy who was hiding in a bur-tree or elder bush. The boy-archer must have been a good shot to hit a warrior clothed from head to foot in armour in the only vulnerable point exposed, but in those days boys were trained to shoot with bows and arrows from the early age of six years, their weapons, being increased in size and strength as they grew older; their education was not ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... first. Unfortunately, matters are coming to a head far sooner than I expected. In addition, my disposing of one of their men earlier," he tapped his left arm significantly, "has left me in a vulnerable position. I dare not go to the authorities myself, for fear of exposing myself. And believe me"—he snapped his fingers—"I would not get as far as the nearest policeman. However, professor, you are unsuspected. You could report this plan with ...
— "To Invade New York...." • Irwin Lewis
... Jack and Carlos, who had, with the tacit consent of Don Hermoso, jointly assumed the responsibility of defending the place, had, on the previous night, held a short council of war, and had finally come to the conclusion that of the two vulnerable points of attack which still remained, that which they had by common consent come to speak of as the "cross-country route" was the weaker, since at one point the river was so narrow that it could be jumped by a horseman, and consequently was capable of being temporarily ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... opponents. "If chosen governor," said the Herald, "he will have his adversaries consigned to dungeons and their property seized and confiscated under the act of Congress."[850] In accepting an invitation to speak at Rome, John Van Buren, quick to see the humour of the situation as well as the vulnerable point of the Radicals, telegraphed that he would "arrive at two o'clock—if ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... he had nothing as yet in the oil-field conspiracy that the newspapers or the public would accept as evidence of fraud and corruption. But on the other hand, Bucks was only a man, after all; a man with a bucaneer's record, and by consequence vulnerable beneath the brazen armor of assurance. If the attack were ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... his own handwriting of the subjects on which he was to converse with his master and with the ministers of Lewis. These minutes, though concise and desultory, can for the most part be interpreted without difficulty. The vulnerable points of the coast are mentioned. Gosport is defended only by palisades. The garrison of Portsmouth is small. The French fleet ought to be out in April, and to fight before the Dutch are in the Channel. There are a few broken words clearly ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the king's meaning, but Prince Ludwig did not show by any change of expression that the shot had struck him in a vulnerable spot; nor, upon the other hand, did he ignore the insinuation. There was only sorrow in his ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... or two of those young painter fellows after me lately," he said in ruminative tone, as he picked at the green baize of his desk-top. He spoke with a slight querulousness, as if these wily and hardy adventurers had wilfully hit upon him as the weak spot in the defences, as the vulnerable point of the Grindstone. In particular he saw a pair of burning black eyes, a pair of eager, sinewy hands strewing drawings over the pink and gold brocades of his front parlour suite, and a shock of dark hair that swished about over ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... on its own flesh, and the time soon comes when it beholds the wasteful restlessness of mere indignation, of mere protest. It sees that to overcome the ill it must go forth manfully and do battle, and attack the enemy in his most vulnerable spots, instead of fruitlessly railing against him. Literature then becomes full of purpose; becomes aggressive, attacks now the throne, now the church, now the law, now the institution, now the person. Tragedy is ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... out of the Hudson about a dozen miles north of the city, and broadening into the East River, about a mile wide where it separates New York from Brooklyn Heights, on Long Island. Encamped on Staten Island, on the south, General Howe could, with the aid of the fleet, land at any of half a dozen vulnerable points. Howe had the further advantage of a much larger force. Washington had in all some twenty thousand men, numbers of them serving for short terms and therefore for the most part badly drilled. Howe had ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... sandy desert extends above six hundred miles to the Red Sea. Nature had interposed a vacant solitude between the ambition of two rival empires; the Arabians, till Mahomet arose, were formidable only as robbers; and in the proud security of peace the fortifications of Syria were neglected on the most vulnerable side. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... trying time in bad places of the road, for at steep bits on the down grade, if the wheelers get at all out of control, he has the pole bearing down on him, either punching his horses and making them kick, or probing for vulnerable places in his own person. He has the responsibility of keeping his traces just so that they are not slack, and yet that the horses are not in draught and pulling the gun or waggon down. The lead-driver has to pick ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... which they got over ground and the amount of fatigue they could undergo. To afford perfect protection to his line supplying the army from its base at Louisville, as against these raiding bands, if infantry was to be employed, Rosecrans's entire force was needed, posted by brigades at the vulnerable points. To make an advance and thus lengthen his lines, simply increased the present difficulties. Without making the necessary preparation to protect his line of supplies, Rosecrans would hamper his forward movement and retard and cripple his advance when ...
— The Army of the Cumberland • Henry M. Cist
... the trundle-bed could pierce the vulnerable heel of this, the door opened slowly to the broad shape of Clytemnestra. One hand shaded her eyes from the candle she carried, and she peered into the corner where the two beds were, a flurry of eagerness in her ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... opposition between 'reason' and 'passion.' The President of the University of Yale said, for instance, the other day in a powerful address, 'Every man who publishes a newspaper which appeals to the emotions rather than to the intelligence of its readers ... attacks our political life at a most vulnerable point.'[60] If forty years ago Huxley had in this way merely preached 'intelligence' as against 'emotion' in the exploration of nature, few would have listened to him. Men will not take up the 'intolerable disease of thought' unless their feelings are first ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... only handle this woman rightly, then I may get the hold I want on this old recluse Johnstone, congested with the fat pickings of forty-five years. A close-mouthed old rat is he, and yet it seems that he is vulnerable after all. If he is playing fast and loose with the government he will never get his honors before he gives up the sleeping trust ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... threw down her chopper, and turned to wipe her hands on a roller towel. Perhaps she had come to the conclusion that as a pure saving of time it would be wise to give in without further demur; perhaps the twinkling appeal of the brown eyes touched a vulnerable spot in her heart; perhaps the service itself was of some value ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... drawn by the secret truth that lies at the bottom of all things. An act of injustice is almost always a confession of weakness; and very few such confessions are needed to reveal to the enemy the most vulnerable spot of the soul. He who commits an unjust deed that he may gain some measure of glory, or preserve the little glory he has, does but admit that what he desires or what he possesses is beyond his deserving, and that the part he has sought to play exceeds ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... He added, that the Southern States would derive an essential advantage, in the general security afforded by the increase of our maritime strength. He stated the vulnerable situation of them all, and of Virginia ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... subject and notwithstanding his conviction that the hypothesis was sound, Darwin was quite aware that it was probably the most vulnerable part of the "Origin". Thus he wrote to H.W. Bates, April 4, 1861: "If I had to cut up myself in a review I would have (worried?) and quizzed sexual selection; therefore, though I am fully convinced that it is largely true, you may imagine how ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... was clothed with pure wampum. He was now reduced to three arrows, and it was only by extraordinary agility that he could escape the blows which the Manito kept making at him. At that moment a large woodpecker (the ma-ma) flew past, and lit on a tree. "Hiawatha" he cried, "your adversary has a vulnerable point; shoot at the lock of hair on the crown of his head." He shot his first arrow so as only to draw blood from that part. The Manito made one or two unsteady steps, but recovered himself. He began to parley, but, in the act, received a second arrow, which brought him to his knees. But he ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... sharks in these waters is the chief drawback to the pleasures of boating, and many an ill-fated oarsman pays the forfeit of life or limb for his temerity in venturing out too far. The nose of the shark is his most vulnerable part; and the natives, who eat this sea-monster as willingly as he eats them, often inflict a fatal wound by slinging a huge stone at his nose and battering it to a jelly as he rises out of the water. The flesh is eaten raw by the aborigines in their wild state, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... hive, called the monastery de la Cruz. Here Maximilian established himself in a friar's lonely cell. On the north a small river skirted the town, on the south, where nothing intervened between the grassy plain and the wooded Alameda, the besiegers found the most vulnerable flank. ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... and arguments, probably one raises an insurrection against him that may never be crushed; for in the fields of logic one can skirmish, perhaps, as well as he. Had he confined himself to dogmatism, he would have intrenched his position in darkness, and have hidden his own vulnerable points. But coming down to base reasons he lets in light, and one sees where to plant the blows. Now, the worshipful reason of modern France for disturbing the old received spelling is that Jean Hordal, a descendant of La Pucelle's ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... as the herd has entered the first enclosure, strong barricades are erected across the entrance; and as there is no ditch at this point, the hunters take advantage of the remarkable dread which the animal has of fire, to scare them from this most vulnerable part of the fortification. Fires are gradually lit all round the first enclosure, so that the only way of escape which is left is by the entrance ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley
... promptings in his real nature. The life of the plains was his in all its varying moods, but there was an unchanging love for his kind under it all. However, like all such men, he hated to be surprised into a betrayal of these innermost feelings, and this is what had happened. Somers had found the vulnerable point in his armor of reserve, but, like the sensible man he was, he kept his ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... Ideal involves so much emotion as to render the Idealist vulnerable by human passion, however long and well guarded, still vulnerable,—liable, at last, to a union with Instinct. Passion obscures both Insight and Forecast. All effort to elevate Instinct to Idealism is abortive, the laws of their being not coinciding (in the early stage of the existence of the one). ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... relations of the Four; but beyond question the head and front of the Party was Lord Randolph. That ingenious man possessed a deadly knack of "drawing" Gladstone, as the boys say. He knew the great man's "vulnerable temper and impetuous moods,"[34] and delighted in exercising them. He pelted Gladstone with rebukes and taunts and gibes, and the recipient of these attentions "rose freely." There was something rather unpleasant in the spectacle of a man of thirty playing ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... attack never presents any difficulty. The shell possesses no lid and leaves the hermit's fore-part to a great extent exposed. Here, on the edges of the mantle, contracted by the fear of danger, the Mollusc is vulnerable and incapable of defence. But it also frequently happens that the Snail occupies a raised position, clinging to the tip of a grass-stalk or perhaps to the smooth surface of a stone. This support serves him as a temporary lid; it ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... friend, he sat down with a jolt. But he was smiling with anticipated triumph. He felt that his long experience as a salesman of dry goods had taught him how to reach the most vulnerable point in feminine armor. When it came to winning over Mrs. John Day to his side Allan Dy hadn't an earthly chance ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... against the British which were hatching in each city. It was no time yet for an eastward advance. The successes north and west of Pretoria stimulated Botha to attack what he supposed would strategically now be the most vulnerable section of the perimeter of defence, namely, the section facing him. If it had not been weakened by the withdrawal of troops to the west, troops would probably have been withdrawn from the west to meet him, and ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... the eyes of the world have been fixed, are prosperous and ably administered. Ebrington in Ireland, Auckland in India, and now Poulett Thomson in Canada, have contributed in their different ways to the favourable expose of the Government, nor is there any point on which they are particularly vulnerable, or any grave reproach to which they have rendered themselves obnoxious. But all this will not avail to make them strong, or render their tenure of office secure and permanent. They are not popular, ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... for their purpose. And thus while the blundering cheat—gull that he was, for all his cunning—thought himself rolled up hedgehog fashion, with his sharpest points towards them, he was, in fact, betraying all his vulnerable parts to ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... utility. Behind an army they are excellent; in front of an army their value is still problematical. Even down in Calvinia, where Burghers were scarce and main roads fair, they rarely carried a message as safely and as quickly as a mounted Kaffir. They are vulnerable all round from other causes than the hazards of war. Machine vulnerable, man vulnerable, and in a country like this, where the roads are not masked by hedgerows, they furnish a kind of 'running-deer' to every Burgher observation-post, and, as far as ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... ensure success if it could be done. Anyhow, the syndicate led off with their main force first; for while the two killers hung on the cachalot's flanks, diverting his attention, the sword-fish, a giant some sixteen feet long, launched himself at the most vulnerable part of the whale, for all the world like a Whitehead torpedo. The wary eye of the whale saw the long, dark mass coming, and, like a practised pugilist, coolly swerved, taking for the nonce no notice of those worrying wolves astern. The ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... riverine area irrigated by the Niger. About 10% of the population is nomadic and some 80% of the labor force is engaged in farming and fishing. Industrial activity is concentrated on processing farm commodities. Mali is heavily dependent on foreign aid and vulnerable to fluctuations in world prices for cotton, its main export. In 1997, the government continued its successful implementation of an IMF-recommended structural adjustment program that is helping the economy grow, diversify, and attract foreign investment. Mali's adherence to economic reform, ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... perhaps rejoiced in secret that they gave us so much to do. Let me alone; on this occasion, I will give utterance to that which weighs upon my heart; I will not shoot my arrow in vain. I know where he is vulnerable. For he ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... Quick as thought Carson cut and trimmed from the tree a stout cudgel, which would neither break nor bend. Soon, one of the bears commenced climbing the tree. The nose of the bear is very tender, and is the only point vulnerable to blows. ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... entertainments and the grand company? there are no grand entertainments where there is no money; no lords and ladies where there are no entertainments—and there lay the poor lodger in the desolate house, groaning on a bed no longer his, smitten by the hand of God in the part where he was most vulnerable. Of what use telling such a man to take comfort, for he had written the "Minstrel" and "Rob Roy,"—telling him to think of his literary fame? Literary fame, indeed! he wanted back his ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... what is the particular law of force which governs the radial stream of the solar vortex. It will be necessary to enter into this question a little more in detail than our limits will justify; but it is the resisting influence of the ether, and its consequences, which will appear to present a vulnerable point in the present theory, and to be incompatible with the perfection of ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... vigilant and never vulnerable, and we will fight our wars against poverty, ignorance, and injustice—for those are the enemies against which our forces ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... finger on Somerset's arm, saying, 'If she's not a Paedobaptist, or Episcopalian; if she is not vulnerable to the mediaeval influences of her mansion, lands, and new acquaintance, it is because she's been vulnerable to what is worse: to doctrines beside which the errors of Paaedobaptists, Episcopalians, Roman Catholics, are but ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... had a sudden vision, born of that feeling returning from the shed, of the illimitable tranquility, the release from all triviality, of an honesty beyond equivocation or assault. Fanny, in her way, possessed it; but that, he saw, was made vulnerable, open to disaster, through her love for him. It was necessary, for complete safety, to be entirely insulated from the humanity of emotions. That condition he instinctively put from his thoughts as being ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... more than an hour, Peter Rainy heartening his young master in this desperate plight. The old Indian declared that a woman as malicious as Maria must have her vulnerable spot, that she might be bribed; in fact, that a hundred ways of removing the obstruction might be come at. Presently, Donald caught a little of his companion's fire, and began to ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... personified him in return as Mr. Rochester. In this case, it is evident that the author of "Vanity Fair," whose own pencil makes him grey-haired, has had the best of it, though his children may have had the worst, having, at all events, succeeded in hitting the vulnerable point in the Becky bosom, which it is our firm belief no man born of woman, from her Soho to her Ostend days, had ever so much as grazed. To this ingenious rumour the coincidence of the second edition of Jane Eyre being dedicated to Mr. Thackeray has probably given ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... a moment's silence, in which Grassette's head was thrust forward, his eyes staring into space. The old Seigneur had touched a vulnerable ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... first only a drizzle, in which I ate breakfast; it surely was better than last night, with the steady rain running from my hat into my stew as I bent over it, and cooling as well as diluting it, besides searching out vulnerable parts of my person, which a poncho does not truly protect. Yesterday I set my things down on a wet board; today I stood at the high running-board of an auto-truck, a very desirable position. Yet I thought my hands have seldom been colder than when I stood in line this morning, unable to ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... America swarm with crocodiles, and these wage perpetual war with the jaguars. It is said, that when the jaguar surprises the alligator asleep on the hot sandbank, he attacks him in a vulnerable part under the tail, and often kills him, but let the crocodile only get his antagonist into the water, and the tables are turned, for the jaguar is held under ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... early part of 1643, the shires lying in the neighbourhood of London, which were devoted to the cause of the Parliament, were incessantly annoyed by Rupert and his cavalry. Essex had extended his lines so far that almost every point was vulnerable. The young prince, who, though not a great general, was an active and enterprising partisan, frequently surprised posts, burned villages, swept away cattle, and was again at Oxford before a force sufficient to encounter him could ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of her finger on the vulnerable point in the apparent refusal of her prayer may have been due to a woman's quick wit, but it was much more due to a mother's misery and to a suppliant's faith. There must have been something in Christ's look, or in the cadence of His voice, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... four and five hours—sometimes longer, and while observing their agonies he enjoyed "that contented mind which is a perpetual feast." Now that he was a man, he delighted in torturing human beings after the same methods applied mentally, whenever he could find a vulnerable part through which to thrust a sharp ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... that such a type of psychotic reaction is the result of the mutual interaction between an unstable, highly vulnerable psyche and an unfavorable environmental situation—in this instance prison environment—we understand the more readily the later history ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... storm those heights, now strengthened with earthworks and bristling with cannon, would be presumptuous; but away on the right seemed the vulnerable point of the enemy's line. Returning to his quarters, Sheridan determined at once upon his plan of attack. The Nineteenth corps was thrown farther to the left, and our Sixth corps occupied the position in the center, facing now to ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... person is the wolf," said the other shepherd, "and cunning as dangerous; who knows more than he? He knows the vulnerable point of every animal; see, for example, how he flies at the neck of a bullock, tearing open the veins with his grim teeth and claws. But does he attack a horse in this manner? I ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... affections can do more; but I assure you, where there are not the means to stave off grinding toil or crushing poverty, affections wither; or if they do not quite wither, they bear no golden fruit of happiness. On the contrary, they offer vulnerable spots ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... thousand Virtues more, and plant Them round him like a Wall of Adamant, Strong as the Gates of Heaven; we'll reach his Heart: Cheer, cheer, my Friends, I've found one Mortal part. For he has Pride, a vast insatiate Pride, Kind Stark, he's vulnerable on that side. Pride that made Angels fall, and pride that hurl'd Entayl'd Destruction through a ruin'd World. Adam from Pride to Disobedience ran: To be like Gods, made a lost wretched Man. There, there, my Sons, let our pour'd strength all fly: For some bold ...
— Anti-Achitophel (1682) - Three Verse Replies to Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden • Elkanah Settle et al.
... with desperate and savage fierceness, thrust themselves under the very bellies of the chargers, encountering both the hoofs of the steed and the deadly lance of the rider, in the hope of finding a vulnerable place for the sharp Moorish knife,—the horsemen, avoiding the stern grapple of the Spaniard warriors, harrassed them by the shaft and lance,—now advancing, now retreating, and performing, with incredible rapidity, the evolutions of ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... flesh" and to be woman are two different things. Where a woman is vulnerable, on the side of pity, for instance, which so readily turns to love, Josiana was not. Not that she was unfeeling. The ancient comparison of flesh to marble is absolutely false. The beauty of flesh consists in not being marble: its beauty is to palpitate, to tremble, to blush, to bleed, ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... our collection. It was another matter with the dogs. With them seal-hunting was far too favourite a sport for the opportunity to be neglected. Against a full-grown seal, however, they could do nothing; its body offered no particularly vulnerable spots, and the thick, tight-fitting skin was too much even for dogs' teeth. The utmost the rascals could accomplish was to annoy and torment the object of their attack. It was quite another matter when the young ones began to arrive. Among this small ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... said, putting down his cup. He felt himself as helplessly vulnerable as a man who is lunged at ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... determined—irrevocably determined (but consider!) upon the disunion with Messrs. Longman, I will just observe that when persons have been intimate, they have discovered each other's vulnerable points; it therefore shows no great talent to direct at them shafts of resentment. It is easy both to write and to say ill-natured, harsh, and cutting things of each other. But remember that this power is mutual, and in proportion to the poignancy of the wound which you would ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... enough of the principles common to human nature, under every modification, to know where to plant their wounds. Like savage hackney coachmen, they know where there is a raw. And the instincts of human nature teach them that every man is vulnerable through his female connexions. There lies his honour; there his strength; there his weakness. In their keeping is the heaven of his happiness; in them and through them the earthy of its fragility. Many there are who do not feel the maternal relation to be ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... so placed that his range of vision is extremely limited, and, on account of the low speed of his boat while submerged, he can operate over only a very limited area of water while the other vessels are moving many miles. Then, too, he is extremely vulnerable to the effect of enemy shells and to the ramming of enemy ships. Under these conditions the submersible commander is more or less forced to a policy of lying ambushed to surprise his enemy. It is said that the ...
— The Journal of Submarine Commander von Forstner • Georg-Guenther von Forstner
... town taken, they conclude it impossible to have occurred but through the venal treachery of their officers.—The English, I have observed, always judge differently, and would not think the national honour sustained by a supposition that their commanders were vulnerable only in the hand. If a general or an admiral happen to be unfortunate, it would be with the utmost reluctance that we should think of attributing his mischance to a cause so degrading; yet whoever has been used to French society will acknowledge, that the first suggestion on such events ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... have continued. But the larger the tract of country which an empire covers—especially when different tribes and nations are included in it—the weaker and less organised it becomes. Within little more than a century of the death of Cyrus the Great the Greeks discovered the vulnerable point in the Persian Empire, owing to an expedition of ten thousand Greek mercenaries under Xenophon, who had been engaged by Cyrus the younger in an attempt to capture the Persian Empire from his brother. Cyrus was slain, 401 B.C., but the ten thousand, under the leadership of Xenophon, ...
— The Story of Geographical Discovery - How the World Became Known • Joseph Jacobs
... saw a man lying on his back in the snow. His arms were folded, one above the other, across his face and throat. Thus he was trying to shield himself from White Fang's teeth. And there was need for it. White Fang was in a rage, wickedly making his attack on the most vulnerable spot. From shoulder to wrist of the crossed arms, the coat-sleeve, blue flannel shirt and undershirt were ripped in rags, while the arms themselves were terribly slashed and ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... beyond; babies toddled across the road, with stooping mothers in their train; the whole air and scene seemed to be suffused with suggestions of the pathetic expansiveness and helplessness of human existence, which, generation after generation, is still so vulnerable, so confiding, so eager. Life after life flowers out from the darkness and sinks back into it again. And in the interval what agony, what disillusion! All the apparatus of a universe that men may know what it is to hope and fail, to win ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... you three considerations, which will prove to you at once that this great moral question is more vital to our two nations than to any other, and that we are peculiarly vulnerable to the ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... himself with smothering his victim. Boone disentangled his left arm, and with his knife dealt a furious blow upon the snout of the animal, which, smarting with pain, released his hold. The snout is the only vulnerable part in an old black bear. Even at forty yards, the ball of a rifle will flatten against his skull, and if in any other part of the body, it will scarcely produce any ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... insidious blind to vindicate his attacks upon an organized priesthood. We can recognize now that his opponents oversimplified his intention, that they blackened it to make his villainy at once definitive and vulnerable. At the same time we must admit that he often equated the ideas of repression and clerical authority, even as he coupled those of freedom and the guide of ...
— A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing (1729) • Anthony Collins
... is a traitor, jealously stabbing my spotless reputation. I deny the indictment, and appeal to your heavenly charity, praying you to believe that I plead guilty only to the possession of a heart tenderly vulnerable to the shafts of grace ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... to study one's own kind; and to-night I am going to speak to you of a man. I am going to tell you the story of a man—a man as passionate, as headstrong, as weak and vulnerable as you yourselves." He halted for a moment, and his glance seemed to ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... beyond the mark, and after pointing out the errors of others, to commit fresh mistakes of their own. In the skilful criticism of M. Renan's work on the Apostles, in No. 29 of the "Fortnightly Review" there is now and then a vulnerable spot through which a controversial shaft may perhaps be made ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... a helpless anger on her account. He wasn't sure why. What was she to him? He'd probably never see her again. A hell of an attractive target, to be sure; and after so much celibacy he was highly vulnerable; but ...
— Industrial Revolution • Poul William Anderson
... getting on in the world. Medland thought that in all likelihood, if he gained his request, he would keep his word. That thought made the temptation stronger, but it forced itself on him when he remembered the number of years during which he had been even more vulnerable in one respect than he was now, and yet the man had left him alone. He could say neither ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... wide. "Whatever's come to Jack?" he said; but seemed puzzled at the Maluka's answer that he was "only getting educated." The truth is, that every man has his vulnerable point, ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... objection, as made to my new teaching, I could only answer that I did not make my circumstances. I fully acknowledged the force and effectiveness of the genuine Anglican theory, and that it was all but proof against the disputants of Rome; but still like Achilles, it had a vulnerable point, and that St. Leo had found it out for me, and that I could not help it;—that, were it not for matter of fact, the theory would be great indeed; it would be irresistible, if it were only true. When I became a Catholic, the Editor of the Christian Observer, ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... had much about him, in character, of that unassuming and quiet austerity which, while enjoying the poignancy of its own jokes, has no heel of Achilles in itself, and absolutely refuses to be laughed at. I could find, indeed, but one vulnerable point, and that, lying in a personal peculiarity, arising, perhaps, from constitutional disease, would have been spared by any antagonist less at his wit's end than myself;—my rival had a weakness in the faucal ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... to a plot against the wall. Now there was a certain part of it that was especially vulnerable, where the bank of the Tiber is, because at this place the Romans of old, confident in the protection afforded by the stream, had built the wall carelessly, making it low and altogether without towers; Vittigis therefore hoped to capture the city rather easily from that quarter. For indeed ...
— Procopius - History of the Wars, Books V. and VI. • Procopius
... ardent and dauntless reformer followed out the moral of the parable of the Good Samaritan into its most rigid and repulsive consequences with a pen of steel, and let fall his "trenchant blade" on every vulnerable point of human infirmity; but there is a want in his system of the mild and persuasive tone of the Gospel, where "all is conscience and tender heart." Man was indeed screwed up, by mood and figure, ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... letter from Schiller to Goethe to which Ebeling refers in the following lines. Schiller is writing to Goethe concerning plans for the Xenien, December 29, 1795.[46] The abundance of material for the Xenien project is commented upon with enthusiastic anticipation, and in a list of vulnerable possibilities we read: "Thmmel, Gschen als sein Stallmeister—" acollocation of names easily attributable, in consideration of the underlying satiric purpose, to the general nature of their work, without ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... exclaimed, straightening her shoulders and drawing in her chin with a mock display of bravery. "I believe it was in an English novel that I read that any woman without a hump can get any man she sets out for. It is a matter of determination and concentration and a wise choice of vulnerable objects." ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... anxious not to wound me where I was most vulnerable, began by soothing my ruling passion; and then proceeded to detail the physical chances of a ruined constitution, of death, and of failure; and afterward to represent, with unassuming but with stedfast energy, the moral turpitude first of subjecting myself to the physical ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... Charleston Harbor consisted of Fort Moultrie on the main land (in which Anderson's command was stationed), Fort Pinckney, and Fort Sumter standing massive and alone in the centre of the harbor. Anderson, with his handful of troops in the most vulnerable of the three forts, saw day by day the secession sentiment growing stronger. Almost daily some of the privileges of the soldiery were cut off; such as the right of passing through the city, and the right to buy supplies in the public markets. Daily could be heard the drum and ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... lending them money, or accommodating them in some other way, until he had won the confidence of all those in command of the steamer, as well as those in charge of Johnston's Island. After a time, he found out those who were most vulnerable on the money question, and those whom he did not dare to approach upon the subject. Of the latter class, there is one mentioned in particular by the rebels, whose suspicions they did not care to arouse, and which they made every attempt to lull. This was an officer named Eddy, from ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... laugh at such things. But they must be the very ancient pallium philosophers, ensconced in tubs, if they pretend to merriment over the spectacle of nether garments gapped at the spot where man is most vulnerable. He got loose from them and held them up to the candle, and the rays were admitted, neither winking nor peeping. Serviceable old clothes, no doubt. Time had not dealt them the final kick before they ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... he walked his horse round the western side, where the torrent was replaced by a smooth arm of water, for which a cutting had been made to complete the isolation of the crag of Roccaleone. But here, where the castle might more easily have become vulnerable, a blank wall greeted him, broken by no more than a narrow slit or two midway below the battlements. He rode on towards the northern side, crossing a footbridge that spanned the river, and at last coming to a halt before the entrance tower. Here again the moat was formed by ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... honeycombed with vulnerable spots; and to secure the ready writer on your side is the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... Albert Sidney Johnson came to the command of the great Western Department, he found but a few thousand troops at his disposal to defend a territory of immense extent, and vulnerable at a hundred points. ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... These facts were sure; regarding them there was no doubt, no reason for doubt. There was but one question: might there be still other enchantments, unknown to Merlin, which could render Sir Sagramor's veil transparent to me, and make his enchanted mail vulnerable to my weapons? This was the one thing to be decided in the lists. Until then the world must remain ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... vulnerable part appears to be the snout,—just where the sailor had chosen to make his hit; and a blow delivered there with an axe, or even a handspike, usually puts a termination to the career of this rapacious ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... has its billet," he quoted, and he was glad indeed that the billet in this case had not been his vulnerable cerebrum. ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... result, as it respects myself, I care not; for I have a consolation within that no earthly efforts can deprive me of, and that is, that neither ambition nor interested motives have influenced my conduct. The arrows of malevolence, therefore, however barbed and well pointed, never can reach the most vulnerable part of me; though, whilst I am up as a mark, they will be continually aimed. The publications in Freneau's and Bache's papers are outrages on common decency, and they progress in that style in proportion as their ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... It is noticeable that much more attention has been paid to protective devices at Zuni than at Tusayan. This is undoubtedly due to the prevalent use of adobe in the former. This friable material must be protected at all vulnerable points with slabs of stone in order quickly to divert the water and preserve the roofs and ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... Marx, much of the program of the Alliance seemed a remnant of eighteenth-century philosophy, while the rest was pure utopianism, consisting of unsound and impractical reforms, mixed with atheism and schoolboy declamation. Altogether, the policies and projects of Bakounin seemed so vulnerable that the General Council evidently felt that little preparation was necessary in order to defeat them. They seemed to have forgotten, for the moment, that Bakounin was an old and experienced conspirator. In any case, ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... the solid walls and oak-barred door of the house the wave beat, only to fall back again, a broken, seething mass of brandished arms and ravening faces. One point alone was vulnerable, the window, and there in the gap stood Tavannes. Quick as thought he fired two pistols into the crowd; then, while the smoke for a moment hid ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... high rampart or curtain, strengthened by a tall bastion in its centre and covered by a regular hornwork pushed out from its front. So much for the extremities, seaward and landward. That flank of the place which it presented to the sandhills across the Urumea was clearly more vulnerable, and yet not easily vulnerable. Deep water and natural rock protected Mount Orgullo, the citadel hill. The sea-wall, for almost half its length, formed but a fausse braye for the hornwork towering formidably behind it. Only where it covered ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... from the signs and gestures of the natives on various occasions when explaining their mode of warfare, they are also used for charging and thrusting with, the neighbourhood of the armpit being the part aimed at as most vulnerable. ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... huge jaws and a savage attack with teeth and claws until the victim is torn in pieces or swallowed whole. But the stealthy, persistent tracking of the cat or weasel tribe, the intelligent generalship of the wolf pack, the well planned attack at the most vulnerable point in the prey, characteristic of all the predaceous mammals, would be quite impossible to the dinosaur. By watching the habits of modern reptiles we may gain a much better idea of his capacities and limitations than if we judge only from the efficiency of his teeth and claws, and forget ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew
... Shelburne made his motion, Lord North communicated some additional papers respecting Ireland, and gave notice, that he would, in about a week, move for a committee of the whole house to enter upon this subject. Opposition, however, seem to have considered Ireland a vulnerable point in the phalanx of the ministry; and before the time intimated by Lord North had expired, the Earl of Upper Ossory moved a vote of censure in the commons upon ministers for their neglect of the affairs of that country. This motion was ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... odds the most exciting hunt we have had," said Ayrault, "both on account of the determined nature and great speed of the attack, and the almost impossibility of finding a vulnerable spot." ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... have ceased to love, or to believe in the dignity of loving. The great barrier to all real greatness in this present age of ours is the fear of ridicule, and the low and shallow love of jest and jeer, so that if there be in any noble work a flaw or failing, or unclipped vulnerable part where sarcasm may stick or stay, it is caught at, pointed at, buzzed about, and fixed upon, and stung into, as a recent wound is by flies, and nothing is ever taken seriously or as it was meant, but always perverted and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... But the Renaissance annals are filled with the records of men and women whose natures are marvellous studies of contrasted and contradictory traits. Such was the Neapolitan tyrant. While a monster in much, he had his vulnerable points. He was ambitious to pose as a friend of the "New Learning," and he knew that Lorenzo was not only the most munificent patron, but also one of the most illustrious ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... that the Captain's caution made sense: on Wulcreston, he'd learned at the Academy, a whole Earth expedition had been slaughtered before contact because the natives mistook hand telescopes for weapons. And surely on any world a spacesuited man looked more like a monster than a man although he was vulnerable in a spacesuit, even more vulnerable than a naked man because he ...
— A World Called Crimson • Darius John Granger
... directly between those glowing orbs, which remained stationary, as if in waiting for the fatal messenger. It came the next moment. True to its aim, the tiny sphere of lead entered the head of the bear at the most vulnerable point, and the life went out from that huge mass. A rasping growl, a few spasmodic throes, and ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... human, which can take place only between two people who love each other; who love each other so well that each knows with cruel certainty the surest way to wound the other; and who stab, and tear, and claw at these vulnerable spots in exact proportion ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... spirit before a fall. Yes; but he who is low enough already—none of the sure destructions that pride always works shall ever come near to him. "The proud man," says Sir Henry Taylor, "is of all men the most vulnerable. 'Who calls?' asks the old shepherd in As You Like It. 'Your betters,' is the insolent answer. And what is the shepherd's rejoinder? 'Else are they very wretched.' By what retort, reprisal, or repartee could it have been made half so manifest that the insult had lighted upon armour of proof? ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... ha-ha—here and there and anywhere suitable for a little detention and talk that should seem accidental, and be out of sight. Nor was Godfrey the man to be insensible to the influence of such a woman, brought to bear at close quarters. A man less vulnerable—I hate the word, but it is the right one with Sepia concerned, for she was, in truth, an enemy—might perhaps have yielded room to the suspicion that these meetings were not all so accidental as they appeared, and as Sepia treated them; but no glimmer of such a thought passed through ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... certain number of my friends entertain the same feelings towards me, I can become a perfect philosopher with respect to all the rest,—whatever it may be, or whatever land it may concern. But if my heart be attacked in its most vulnerable part, if you were to love me less, I should feel, in truth, too miserable. But I need not fear this—need I, my dearest love? I was very ill during the first part of my voyage, and I might have enjoyed the ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... be lit with the lurid flames of worse than fratricidal war! Let the dagger, the bullet, the flames and the pestilence, smite every vulnerable point! Let the desolation of death reign in the Northern homes enriched by plunder of the South! Let the audacious minions of the tyrants in our country be met in silence and darkness, struck down by a power they see not! Remember ...
— The Oaths, Signs, Ceremonies and Objects of the Ku-Klux-Klan. - A Full Expose. By A Late Member • Anonymous
... disarm all other Germans, lest they fire into the backs of those who carried the charge farther on to the final stage of the objective. What awaited them they would know only when they climbed over the parapet and became silhouettes of vulnerable flesh in the open. Yes, one had the system in the large and the small, by the army, the corps, the division, the brigade, the battalion, and the man, the individual infantryman who was to suffer that hazard of marching ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... drew the French and English Protestants together. They agreed to engage in further raiding of Spaniards, share and share alike by nationalities, though Drake had now only thirty-one men against Tetu's seventy. Nombre de Dios, they decided, was not vulnerable, as all the available Spanish forces were concentrated there for its defence, and so they planned to seize a Spanish train of gold and jewels just far enough inland to give them time to get away with the plunder ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... the letter, moved also in the hope that an arrow from the quiver of truth had found in the doctor a vulnerable spot. He answered that he should be welcome to see the child when he would; and that she should go to him when he pleased. He must promise, however, as the honest man every body knew him to be, not to teach her there was no God, or lead her to despise the instructions ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... flesh of the dancers. It even appears as though the greater the number of bites, the more delighted are the participants, who hold the reptiles in the most careless manner and allow them to strike where they will, and to plant their horrible fangs into the most vulnerable parts with impunity. When the dance is over, the snakes are taken back to the woods and given their liberty, the superstition prevailing that for the space of one year the reptiles will protect the tribe from ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... of the period slipped by, nay, crawled by, in which Miss Baylis darting from one victim to another bent upon reaching their vulnerable points. Then it came, Electra Sanderson's turn ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... nodded. "But he went further than that. What did he mean by the Keeper of the Cones—and that the Things—were vulnerable under the same law that orders us? And why did he command us to go back to the city? How could he know—how ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... unscientifically called it, the natural frontier of the Rhine, and that the grand conflict with Austria should be transferred to Italy. Germany was a nation of armed men, and was best let alone. In Italy, the Austrians would have only their own resources for war. Their most vulnerable point was the outlying principality of Belgium, so distant from Vienna and so near ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... October) Terrain: mostly flat alluvial plain; hilly in southeast Natural resources: natural gas, uranium, arable land, timber Land use: arable land 67%; permanent crops 2%; meadows and pastures 4%; forest and woodland 16%; other 11%; includes irrigated 14% Environment: vulnerable to droughts; much of country routinely flooded during summer monsoon season; overpopulation; deforestation Note: almost ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... lit the night sky. The northern night had set in to the fantastic measure of the ghostly dance of the polar spirits. The air was still, and the temperature had fallen headlong. The pitiless cold was searching all the warm life left vulnerable to its attack. The shadowed eyes of night looked down upon the world through a gray twilight ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... aside and his eyes wandered involuntarily up to the shrapnel clouds, bearing a prayer, a silent invocation to those senseless things up there rattling down so indiscriminately, a prayer that they would teach this cold-blooded boy suffering, convince him that he was vulnerable. ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... something like a ball, but our porcupine does not. I have tried all sorts of tricks with him, and made all sorts of assaults upon him, at different times, and I have never yet seen him assume the globular form. It would not be the best form for him to assume, because it would partly expose his vulnerable under side. The one thing the porcupine seems bent upon doing at all times is to keep right side up with care. His attitude of defense is crouching close to the ground, head drawn in and pressed down, the circular shield of large quills upon his back opened and extended ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... objection to stand holding by the shelf, experiencing a sensation delightful as standing upon one's head in a swing, before a lady that ought to have your best attention;—however, for all Lark's protestations, we saw some one-sided smiles, as much as to say, his vulnerable part, like that of Achilles, lay in the heels—an insinuation Lark could well afford to allow, for he does not live to dance, alone, like some sage, ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... good-natured people, who especially abound in those semi-English Continental towns, had been kind enough to quote or misquote to him a remark of Royston's about that sermon; and on this topic the chaplain was very vulnerable. He would have forgiven a real substantial injury far sooner than a ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... years old, under the form of "Letters to a Provincial by one of his Friends," put forth a series of [63] pamphlets in which all that was vulnerable in the Jesuit Fathers was laid bare to the profit of their opponents. At the moment the quarrel turned on the proposed censure of Antoine Arnauld by the Sorbonne, by the University of Paris as a religious ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... at this time in Egypt, endeavoring to assail England, the most formidable foe of France, in India, the only vulnerable point which could be reached. Fifty thousand Russians, in a single band, were marching through Germany to cooeperate with the Austrians on the French frontiers. The more polished Germans were astonished at the barbaric character of their allies. A Russian officer, in a freak ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... Tigris, and the Armenian mountains. The Caucasian range between the Euxine and the Caspian seas presented an insuperable barrier, as did the deserts of Arabia to the Roman legions. The Atlas, the African desert, and the cataracts of the Nile formed the southern boundaries. The vulnerable part of the empire lay between the Danube and Rhine, from which issued, in successive waves, the Germanic foes of Rome. To protect the empire against their incursions, the Emperor Probus constructed a wall, which, however, proved ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... water up and pours it over himself after he has first examined it carefully. The indigenous Indians, living in the remote parts of the forest, do not use this mode of protection, but cover the vulnerable portions of the body carefully with strips of bark, which render ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... crouching figure in the corner. The space between this iron shelf and the roof may have been from two or three feet. If I could only get up there, squeezed in between bars and ceiling, I should have only one vulnerable side. I should be safe from below, from behind, and from each side. Only on the open face of it could I be attacked. There, it is true, I had no protection whatever; but at least, I should be out of the brute's path when he began to pace about his den. He would ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... no perceptible mark on the political history of the country. Great in so many fields, eminent as a soldier, as a navigator, as a poet, as a courtier, there was a limit even to Raleigh's versatility, and he was not a statesman. It was political ambition which was the vulnerable spot in this Achilles, and until he meddled with statecraft, his position was practically unassailed. It must not be overlooked, in this connection, that in spite of Raleigh's influence with the Queen, he never was admitted as a Privy Councillor, his advice being asked in private, ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... the new Ministry was vulnerable in another place where the most unconstitutional weapons were employed against it. The King was eager to avenge the affront that had, as he conceived, been put upon him by the compulsion that had forced him to accept ministers so little to his taste. He was prepared to stick at little in order ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... rubbing his hands with delight. "Aha!" thought he; "jealous! actually jealous! absurdly jealous! That is a good sign. Who would have thought so proud a man could be jealous of a sailor? I have found out your vulnerable point, my friend. I'll tell Lucy; how she will laugh. David Dodd! Now we know how to manage him, Lucy and I. If he freezes back again, we have but to send for David Dodd and his fiddle." He bustled home, and up into the drawing-room to tell Lucy Mr. Talboys had ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... look-out for hostile aeroplanes. The moment one is observed to be advancing, all the men seclude themselves and maintain their concealment. To do otherwise is to court a raking artillery outburst. The German aeroplane, detecting the tendency of the trenches describes in the air the location of the vulnerable spot and the precise disposition by flying immediately above the line. Twice the manoeuvre is repeated, the second movement evidently being in the character of a check upon the first observation, and in accordance with instructions, whereupon the Tommies, to quote ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... saw his foe in time to avoid the rush by leaping over the straining hawser, knee-high, and the ugly jaws closed with a crash on the rope. Barry's shot rang out simultaneously with the singing snap of a Manila strand, and the heavy bullet chugged home in the vulnerable skin on the ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... a malady of vulnerable heels—a species of running fever—which operates on sound-headed and honest-hearted creatures very much like the cork leg in the song did on its owner. When he had once got started on it, the more he tried to stop it, the more it ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... love we want merely to overleap envy. And often we attack and make ourselves enemies, to conceal that we are vulnerable. ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... cry of pain from the hound had blown all our fears to the winds. If he was vulnerable he was mortal, and if we could wound him we could kill him. Never have I seen a man run as Holmes ran that night. I am reckoned fleet of foot, but he outpaced me as much as I outpaced the little professional. In front of us as we flew up the track we heard scream ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle |
