"Weakling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... few like him walked out. But that was expected by everybody, for Sam Whaley had identified himself from the day of Vodell's arrival in Millsburgh as the agitator's devoted follower and right-hand man. But this unstable, whining weakling and his fellows from the Flats carried little influence with the majority of the ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... aspect of it which was not silly. She was reminded by it that she had found no solution of the problem which had distracted her in Hornsey. 'What is your present condition?' Her present condition was still that of a weakling and a coward who had sunk down inertly before the great problem of sin. And now, in the growing strength of her moral convalescence, she was raising her eyes again to meet the problem. Her future seemed to be bound ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... not follow his own independent judgment, but runs perpetually to others for advice, becomes at last a moral weakling, and an intellectual dwarf. Such a man has not self within him, but goes as a supplicant to others, and entreats, one after another, to lend them theirs. He is, in fact, a mere element of a human being, and is carried about the world an insignificant cipher, ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... to figure it out after this manner, but there must be considerable chance that matters would not work so smoothly. For one thing it must be considered that Oswald Kearns was no weakling, but a more or less athletic figure, accustomed to feats of strength and agility beyond the measure of an ordinary man. Then, too, he was known to be irrational, even to the length of being considered dangerous when thoroughly aroused and it went without saying that ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... and listen to the words of thy betters. No warrior art thou, but a weakling. One king only hath Zeus given to us. Hearken then to ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... weakling. For a time she took in washing, what little she could get, devoting the intermediate hours to dressing the children, cooking, seeing that they got off to school, mending their clothes, waiting on her husband, ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... him hence beyond my reach. Aye! I'll fight with death to keep him for mine own. But, now— O, I must calm myself or miss my aim! For, like a hunter when first he sees the buck, My nerves are all unstrung. This weakling trick Of overearnestness betrays the fool In me; and yet we know it, though we profit not, The eager hand doth ever spill the cup That lifted carefully would quench our thirst. I must assume a wise placidity; As he puts on—Ah! damned hypocrite!— ...
— The Scarlet Stigma - A Drama in Four Acts • James Edgar Smith
... Norway, Harold found Denmark slipping away from him. Sweyn had in him the blood of the race of Canute, and was no weakling to be swept aside at a king's will. Magnus had left him the kingdom and he was bent on having it, if his good sword could win and hold it. In this he was supported by the Danes, and Harold found that the most he could do was to make descents on the Danish ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... butchered for food in Cho-Sen), and the pickles ungodly hot but which one learns to like exceeding well. And there was drink, real drink, not milky slush, but white, biting stuff distilled from rice, a pint of which would kill a weakling and make a strong man mad and merry. At the walled city of Chong-ho I put Kim and the city notables under the table with the stuff—or on the table, rather, for the table was the floor where we squatted to cramp-knots in my hams for the thousandth time. And again all muttered "Yi Yong-ik," and ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... Drunkard and weakling as he was, Selim had his ambitions. He wished to signalise his reign by some great conquest, such as had added lustre to the rule of his father; and in consequence he laid claim to the island of Cyprus, then belonging to Venice, The Venetians, ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... from the room haughtily but in his heart he carried an odd misgiving that burned and spread like a slow fire, consuming his pride. Scott had withstood him, Scott the weakling, and in so doing had made him aware of a strength that ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... in a fair-sized stick-and-wattle house. He was a dapper little man, with a cleverish, weakling cast of face, and was all on the jump with the turn things had taken. He had just opened the door to us, and was eyeing us uncertainly, when the Colonel and the Chief, returning on foot from their inspection, having left their horses ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... this girl," went on Hough, relentlessly. Scorn and a taunting dare and an insidious persuasion mingled with the passion of his offer. He knew how to inflame. Durade, as a gambler, was a weakling in the grasp of a giant. "Come! ... Do ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... an evil death, ye shall suffer them to abide with you; ye shall make them become children of the Bears, if they be goodly enough and worthy, and they shall be my children as ye be; otherwise, if they be ill-favoured and weakling, let them live and be thralls to you, but not join with you, man to woman. Now depart ye with ...
— The Wood Beyond the World • William Morris
... eh?" shrilled the man. "Dammit! Then come in!" And to this invitation he added blasphemy in Peter's own tongue that made his heart turn sour. It was the useless, raving blasphemy of a weakling. It was the man as Peter had known him of old. But a little worse. He still wore what remained of his Marconi uniform, tattered, grease-stained coat and trousers, with the ragged white and blue emblems of the steamship line by which he had been employed before ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... ship, where my piggishness flourishes. And keep you I will. I may make or break you. You may die to-day, this week, or next month. I could kill you now, with a blow of my fist, for you are a miserable weakling. But if we are immortal, what is the reason for this? To be piggish as you and I have been all our lives does not seem to be just the thing for immortals to be doing. Again, what's it all about? Why have ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... wife was his niece Mariana, another Austrian archduchess, but this marriage was a vain hope so far as his earthly happiness was concerned. The wished-for son was born, and duly christened Charles, but he was ever a weakling; and when the father died in 1665, preceding Maria de Agreda to the tomb by a few months only, the government was left in charge of Mariana as regent, and all Spain was soon in a turmoil as the result of the countless ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... arousing from this unmanly despair which played me for a weakling. "You must be protected also. You can't go to that other camp, ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... tried friend who raised me when I fell— A gift of weakling's tinsel oaths that strew the path ...
— The Dreamers - And Other Poems • Theodosia Garrison
... expected her to know that he did it himself. If he had been the sort of weakling that dies because he can't have a particular woman, he'd have been also the sort of weakling ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the weakling, "if you will but slacken your agile proficiency with the pole, chieftain, our supper to-night may yet consist of something more substantial than the fish which it is our ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... a weakling, thank you," retorted Mr. Prescott. "I'll do my share, and I recommend you to proclaim that any man who doesn't do his share doesn't eat to-night. But as for you, Sergeant Overton, I shall have a bad opinion of this outfit if they let you ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... before Will answered her. He sat glaring at the table, the smoke of his pipe clouding the still air of the neat kitchen. He knew he was facing a critical moment in their lives. He saw dimly that he had, for his own interests, gone a shade too far. Eve was not a weakling, she was a woman of distinct character, and even in his dull, besotted way he detected at last that note of rebellion underlying her appeal. Suddenly he looked up and smiled. But it was not altogether a pleasant smile. It was against his inclination, ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... could say.... It is morbid obstinacy.... She said that she felt there was something, some change in me.... If my convictions were calling me away, why this secrecy, as though she had been a coward or a weakling not safe to trust? 'As if my heart could play traitor to my children,' she said.... It was hardly to be borne. And she was smoothing my head all the time.... It was perfectly useless to protest. She is ill. Her very ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... he had seized her in her finery. Colina was no weakling, but within those steely arms she was helpless. She strained away her head. He could only reach her neck, under the ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... that I was ready to lie down and die. My wages were fifteen dollars a month, and every cent of it had been levied against by my Wall Street creditors. Not until I was seventy years old would any of the money I earned be coming to me. The other hired men looked on me as a weakling, and laughed at the torn golf suit ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... grave than ever before in all his wild experience, for somehow doom, shadowy and formless, like the atmosphere of an awful dream, enmisted those words; but he was no weakling to quit at the height of desperate conflict. He was strong, expert, and game to the middle of ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... him to point out to Ann her undoubted faults and failings, nerved him to the task of bringing her up in the way she should go. Mrs. Travers had long since washed her hands of the entire business. Uncle Ab, as Matthew also called him, had proved himself a weakling. Providence, so it seemed to Matthew, must have been waiting impatiently for his advent. Ann at first thought it was some new school of humour. When she found he was serious she set herself to cure him. But she never did. He was too conscientious for that. The instincts of the guide, philosopher, ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... day for New Salem and "The Grove" when Lincoln and Armstrong met. Settlers within a radius of fifty miles flocked to the scene, and the wagers laid were heavy and many. Armstrong proved a weakling in the hands of the powerful Kentuckian, and "Jack's" adherents were about to mob Lincoln when the latter's friends saved him from probable death by ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... must be pretty strong!" he thought, with the genuine admiration of the weakling for the athlete. In fact, he began to speak to Sanine but the latter, leaning against the window- sill, was looking out at the garden. Volochine stopped short; the very sound of his own squeaky ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... life been? I pictured it. They must have hidden diminished heads in hole and corner places during the dreary years. Such a man as Bobby Bulteel must have been, as George said, a weakling. The Hartlefords were poor as church mice, and were not likely to assist a scapegrace, who had dishonoured them. I remembered hearing that on the old Lord Braxted's death years ago, Braxted was sold to the Merrion-Walters, Ironfounders from Leeds. ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... Mrs. Lancaster was no weakling. The spark roused as though it had touched and scorched her. She cleared her mind for action. No useless hampering thoughts littered it now. Her intelligence reckoned nothing save the work on hand; its details she had by heart. ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... hundred years later, there sat upon the Muscovite throne, as nominal Tzar, the weakling Feodor I.; but behind the throne stood, as real Tzar, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... this period hard times befell Sweden. The small Northern country, half the size of Texas, with fewer people than the single city of London, never very rich, had trouble keeping her independence from Russia. Her king was a weakling, and lost part of his land. Then a gentleman of fortune, a man who had been a French lawyer's apprentice, and had risen to be a marshal, one whose sword had helped to carve out an empire for Napoleon, suddenly ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... to be told that his chief would have jumped any job no matter how big, rather than hurt a poor weakling like Billy Perkins. ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... you could—say. I have said it all to myself again and again, in a vain endeavor to steel myself to the business to which you plighted me. Had Ostermore been different, perhaps it had been easier. I cannot say. As it is, I see in him a weakling, a man of inferior intellect, who does not judge things as you and I judge them, whose life cannot have been guided by the rules that serve for men of ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... [Footnote: Kurvanneveha karmani jijivishet catam samah.] It is the saying of those who had amply tasted of the joy of the soul. Those who have fully realised the soul have never talked in mournful accents of the sorrowfulness of life or of the bondage of action. They are not like the weakling flower whose stem-hold is so light that it drops away before attaining fruition. They hold on to life with all their might and say, "never will we let go till the fruit is ripe." They desire in their joy to express themselves strenuously in ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore
... all he can in reason to make his mother happy, save to turn against the wife he has promised to cherish, he is a cad and a weakling if he does the latter. He must learn that it is a larger duty to be a just man than ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... weakling to shrink from the work that must be done by the world's powers? No! The young giant of the West stands on a continent and clasps the crest of an ocean in either hand. Our nation, glorious in youth and strength, looks into the future with eager and fearless eyes, ...
— American Boy's Life of Theodore Roosevelt • Edward Stratemeyer
... Olive, just because he is a pitiful weakling who, in spite of all his good intentions, has made a consistent mess of everything he's tried to do. Because a man is weak, he isn't necessarily more lovable. Because he has an incurable disease, he isn't, of necessity, any more a subject for idolatry. No; I don't mean that to lap over on to ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... is a teaching of helplessness to which I cannot subscribe—the pitiful excuse of the coward who folds his hands in the hour of danger, or of the self-indulgent weakling who yields to seductive temptation because his heart inclines to seize the pleasure of the moment even when his conscience counsels otherwise. I hold that man is the master of his own fate. Most assuredly have I been the master of mine," ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... thine. Or if you would wish to have your turn, then I would thank you if you would lend me a hand over the side, for indeed I am but a useless weight upon your deck. Little did I think that Samkin Aylward could be turned into a weakling by an hour of salt water. Alas the day that ever my foot wandered from the good red ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... decade Napoleon made much history, and he likewise did much for the royal palaces of France. After him a gap supervened until the advent of Napoleon III, who, weakling that he was, had the perspicacity to give the Baron Haussmann a chance to play his part in the making of modern Paris, and if the Tuileries and Saint Cloud had not disappeared as a result of his ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... rather founded. When the hero aboard the ship which was taking him to the Promised Land would receive the moving farewell letter of his friend, his first reaction after his horror would be one of rage: "Idiot! Fool! Miserable hopeless weakling! A life ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl
... He took from the correspondence-file the entire box of cigars and forced them on his guests. He pushed their chairs two inches forward and three inches back, which gave an hospitable note, then leaned back in his desk-chair and looked plump and jolly. But he spoke to the weakling grocer ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... away. They have both been in this part of the country for some time. But Travers' plan to inherit the Harris property was upset on account of the girl quarrelling with her parents, and his ardour seems to have cooled off noticeably. But he was as keen for the property as ever. Riles was a weakling in the hands of a man like Travers, and no doubt he betrayed the fact that Harris was taking his money with him into the hills. Then the two of them framed up the plan which has resulted in the death ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... I am no weakling—and never have been. My experience in the hard life of the inner world has turned my thews to steel. Even such giants as Ghak the Hairy One have praised my strength; but to it is added another quality ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the face. They were so earnest, these boys, they wanted so much to go. "I am sixteen but large for my age," said one; and another, "Seventeen but large and healthy." "I am as strong at least as the average boy of my size," said an evident weakling. "Not afraid of any kind of work," was what many said, while one in particular, to lure me no doubt by inexpensiveness, wrote: "I can pay my way to the Pacific coast, so that part would probably be acceptable to you." "Going around the ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... Borrow looked at the weakling child with the deepest interest, and said, "This chavo ought not to look like that—with such a mother as ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... "'Twas a weakling when I bought it; 'twas so young that you could pet it; But with all its disadvantages I reckoned it would do; And it did: Oh, lay the moral well to heart and don't forget it— Put decorum first, and all things shall be added ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... his predecessors. It was afterward hurled at Napoleon the Great, and also Napoleon the Little. In France, unless a royal personage was openly licentious, he was almost sure to be jeered at by the people as a weakling. ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... groaned and cried: "An Oracle foretold it, but I waited for some man of might who should overcome me by his valor,—not a weakling! And now"—he lifted his hands and prayed,—"Father Poseidon, my father, look upon Odysseus, the son of Laertes of Ithaca, and grant me this revenge,—let him never see Ithaca again! Yet, if he must, may he come late, ...
— Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew • Josephine Preston Peabody
... than ever before, up through a twisted pass that penetrated to the other side of the Arabian Mountains. He still had that much freedom. He wanted to think things out. In bitter, frustrating reversal of all his former urges to get off the Earth, he wanted, like a desperate weakling, to be back home. ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... as well as he was able, but to no avail. Timotheus was simple and he was clumsy, but he was no weakling. Maguffin led the horse back into the stable, spread his litter, and replaced the bridle on the wall. Then he came out quite unruffled, and asked Timotheus if he would like him to use his new boots on the prisoner, to which that worthy replied ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... without an echo: yet he too Within the cloister of his narrow days Fulfilled the ancestral rites, and kept alive The eternal fire; it may be, not in vain; For out of those who dropped a downward glance Upon the weakling huddled at his prayers, Perchance some looked beyond him, and then first Beheld the glory, and what shrine it filled, And to what Spirit sacred: or perchance Some heard him chanting, though but to himself, The old heroic ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... Help, father, brother, help; speak to the king: Thaw this male nature to some touch of that Which kills me with myself, and drags me down From my fixt height to mob me up with all The soft and milky rabble of womankind, Poor weakling even as they are.' Passionate tears Followed: the king replied not: Cyril said: 'Your brother, Lady,—Florian,—ask for him Of your great head—for he is wounded too— That you may tend upon him with the prince.' 'Ay so,' said Ida with a ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... these things stood looking up, enveloped in his ulster with the grey cowl thrust upon his forehead, like a monk. One candle cast a grotesque shadow of him on the plastered wall. And when his chance came, though he was but a weakling, he too climbed and for some moments hugged the beam, and felt the madness of the swinging bell. Descending, he wondered long and strangely whether he ascribed too much of feeling to the men he watched. But no, that ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... of kwanryo. Eleven years later, on his return to the south, he was followed by many nobles from Kyoto, and his chief provincial town, Yamaguchi, on the Shimonoseki Strait, prospered greatly. But his son Yoshitaka proved a weakling, and being defeated by his vassal, Suye Harukata—called also Zenkyo—he committed suicide, having conjured another vassal, ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... down into unconsciousness, to wake again, weak and enfeebled by his illness, no longer able to break through the spell that drew him towards her. He called himself, in his heart, a traitor, a coward, a weakling, a miserable wretch without strength, or faith, or honour. There were no bounds to his self-abasement, no depths to which he did not sink in his self-judgment. He recalled that morning eighteen months ago when ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... traditions and the Athenaeum and the Saturday Review, it would be adequately appreciated. Imagine my surprise to find that the English reviews were almost uniformly contemptuous and critical on moral and social grounds. The hero was a weakling, not for a moment to be tolerated by sound, right-thinking men. On the other hand, in America the reviewers for the most part have seen its true merits and stated them. Need I say, however, that the New York World finds it 'the sentimental servitude of a poor fool,' or that ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... family, also landowners in our district, the Miuesovs. How it came to pass that an heiress, who was also a beauty, and moreover one of those vigorous, intelligent girls, so common in this generation, but sometimes also to be found in the last, could have married such a worthless, puny weakling, as we all called him, I won't attempt to explain. I knew a young lady of the last "romantic" generation who after some years of an enigmatic passion for a gentleman, whom she might quite easily have married at any moment, invented insuperable obstacles to their union, and ended ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... policy of a weakling or a timid man. It was the policy of a prudent leader and statesman, who was feeling his way amid dangers and who as an historian himself knew the difficulties of an imprudent or ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... weakling!" Halloran snapped. "You are a—sentimentalist. You lack my stern, uncompromising moral fiber. Like him? Pah! What has that to do with it? I have no weakness, no bowels of compassion. I ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... rose up, and said: "What is this, foster-father? Is it that there shall be battle at the Tofts, and that thou wouldst have me away thence? Am I then such a weakling?" ...
— Child Christopher • William Morris
... life on the frailest tenure; there was doubt at first whether it could draw breath at all, and the nurse never expected it to live till the second day. At the end of a week, however, it still survived; and Alma turned to the poor weakling with a loving tenderness such as she had never shown for her first-born. To Harvey's surprise she gladly took it to her breast, but for some reason this had presently to be forbidden, and the mother shed ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... charms could have increased her power or retarded her ruin. All hearts were therefore filled with hope when they saw this respectable, active, and energetic woman take her place at the side of Claudius the weakling, for she brought back the memory of the most venerated personages of ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero
... public opinion. In fact, in all that relates to the so-called "conspiracy of the markets," M. Zola, whilst changing time and place to suit the requirements of his story, has simply followed historical lines. As for the Quenus, who play such prominent parts in the narrative, the husband is a weakling with no soul above his stewpans, whilst his wife, the beautiful Lisa, in reality wears the breeches and rules the roast. The manner in which she cures Quenu of his political proclivities, though savouring ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... on, the Tlahuicos, marrying among themselves, had greatly increased in numbers; and so far from remaining a weakling race, the had become, by reason of their frugal mode of living and of the wholesome, hearty labor in which they constantly were engaged, exceptionally hale and strong; the weak and crippled among them being mainly those who each year, because ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... from laziness, not from scruple. We desire to speak competently, but without affectation. We know that if our diction rises to this dual standard, it silently distinguishes us from the sluggard, the weakling, and the upstart. For such diction is not to be had on sudden notice, like a tailor-made suit. Nor can it, like such a suit, deceive anybody as to our true status. A man's utterance reveals what he is. It is the measure of his inward attainment. ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... equally life-like and equally alluring to the reader. But what of the writer? Among his literary family is there not one nearer his heart than all the rest—his dream-child? It may be the stoutest of the breed or it may be the weakling; it may be the first-born, it often is the Benjamin. Fathers in the flesh know this secret tenderness. Many a child and many a book is brooded over with a special love even before its birth.—Loved thus, for no grace or merit of its own, this book ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... gallery and projecting heads of a king with a falling lad and a bishop with children. They may have been the support of a small organ, but the local wiseacres were accustomed to declare that they were intended as prophecies of the evil days which should befall the church when a king should have a weakling for his heir and Wells should receive as its bishop a married man. These predictions were held to be fulfilled when Henry VIII., whose heir was Edward VI., nominated to the see Bishop Barlow. In N. transept note curious astronomical clock, which strikes the hours by a clumsy representation ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... thing is highly possible in that romantic archipelago. War was attempted to be levied; but Tembinok' was too swift for the rebels, and the guilty brother escaped in a canoe. He did not go alone. Tembinatake had a hand in the rebellion, and the man who had gained a kingdom for a weakling brother was banished by that brother's son. The fugitives came to shore in other islands, but Tembinok' remains to this ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... do his duty. He seemed quite surprised at the new light which was thus thrown upon the performance of what he considered his religious duties. Then I told him that he had the chance of his life to make himself a man. If in the past he had been more or less a weakling, he could now, by the help of God, rise up in the strength of his manhood and become a hero. His mother and sisters no doubt had loved him and taken care of him in the past, but they would love him far more if he did his duty now, "For", ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... into his mind. He was no longer as young as he once was, and even at his prime he shrewdly doubted his ability to cope with Riley Sinclair. With the weight of Gaspar thrown in, the thing became an impossibility. Gaspar might be a weakling, but a man who was capable of ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... disdainfully. "What has the Elf to give that could avail against me and my magic?" he exclaimed. "You amuse me, Black Shadow. Go to that weakling, the Ash Goblin, with such tales, if you will, but do not bring them to ...
— The Shadow Witch • Gertrude Crownfield
... death-dew, down to the last line of the letterpress. He thought Mr. Forman's work admirably done, and as for the letters themselves, he believed they placed Keats indisputably among the highest masters of English epistolary style. He considered that all Keats's letters proved him to be no weakling, and that whatever walk he had chosen he must have been a master. He seemed particularly struck with the apparently intuitive perception of Shakspeare's subtlest meanings, which certain of the letters display. In a note ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... atmosphere of peril which taxed all their energies. Their activity was extreme, and their passions corresponded to their vehement vitality. About such men there could be nothing on a small or mediocre scale. When a weakling was born in a despotic family, his brothers murdered him, or he was deposed by a watchful rival. Thus only gladiators of tried capacity and iron nerve, superior to religious and moral scruples, dead to national affection, perfected in perfidy, scientific in the ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... had felt great sympathy for me in the failure of the book, and was inclined—well, you have proof of it!—to pity me, of course a great deal too much, for being a weakling. She is the most tender—the most loving ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... was weak. And they were quite determined that they would at all events keep him with them, so handsome did they find him with his soft limpid eyes and beautiful curly hair. He was growing up in a languid way, dreamy, petted, idle among his mother's skirts, like the one charming weakling of that ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... a weakling as you would make her," he would say: "she can bear a mountain blast, or a shower, or a few flakes of snow, as well as any of us. Her constitution is both sound and elastic;—better calculated to endure variations of climate than ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... let our arms rest idle for a long time, they become weak and useless; if a boy takes no exercise he cannot expect to be a strong man. So, if he reads nothing that makes him exert his mind, he becomes a weakling in intellect and never feels the pure delight that the man has who can read in a masterful way a ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... who spoke German, and as he wanted to show off, he stopped to converse. We were joined by an older man who claimed to be his father. The father was really a jolly old boy. He said his son was a puny weakling, but as for himself he never had had a doctor in his life. So Jan tried his mettle with a cigar. An officer, a filthy old peasant in the remains of a battered uniform, joined the group, but he was not charming; however, Jan offered him a cigarette. The old ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... there came to this land one Telemus, a prophet, and dwelt among us even to old age. This man foretold me that one Ulysses would rob me of my sight. But I looked for a great man and a strong, who should subdue me by force, and now a weakling has done the deed, having cheated me with wine. But come thou hither, Ulysses, and I will be a host indeed to thee. Or, at least, may Poseidon give thee such a voyage to thy home as I would wish thee to have. For know that Poseidon is my sire. May be that ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... time finding out where to direct our courage. We grew dismal; they called us fatalists. Our fate—it was the fulness, the tension, the storing up of powers. We thirsted for the lightnings and great deeds; we kept as far as possible from the happiness of the weakling, from "resignation"... There was thunder in our air; nature, as we embodied it, became overcast—for we had not yet found the way. The formula of our happiness: a Yea, a Nay, ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... rainbow in the heaven of youth, but it may go too far. It may be hurtful to the man who nourishes it and dangerous to society. The world classes it with lunacy and love and so forth among the nervous accidents of life; and the humdrum healthy-minded herd always call that man a fool and a weakling or else a fanatic and a madman, in whom the grand errors of human nature are due to an effort—may I not say, a vain effort?—to live up to a great ideal." There were nervous twitchings over the muscles of John's face. ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... encased, to the fashionable bowler that contrasted with his own tweed cap, to the umbrella that protected the bowler from the dripping rain—ay, even to the comforter. It was as he had feared. Garstin was an office-desk weakling, and a mere boy into the bargain. The Works Committee had added insult to the injury they ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... course, Charley with the great heart and the seeing mind. What an awful thing for him to have brought another failure to the valley! Charley had had a sad life. Perhaps she had had dreams of her own, before she merged her destiny with Dick's. Dick was a poor weakling. But Felicia's death had saved him. Dick was a man now. If Felicia had seen him attack Ernest, she would have run away to her death, just as she had for Dick's frenzy. Potentially, he was a murderer too. But now he was a failure and as ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... his march upon Peking, then a scene of unimaginable terror and confusion. The emperor, who had hesitated to flee, found flight impossible when Li's great army invested the capital. Defence was equally impossible, and the unhappy weakling, after slaying all the women of the palace, ended the career of the Ming dynasty by hanging himself. Li was quickly master of the city, where the ancestral temple of the Mings was plundered and levelled with the ground, and all the kinsmen of the royal family he could seize were summarily put to ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... Italian to her mistress—sat the Italian nurse, pale too, but motionless, a woman from the Campagna, of a Roman port and dignity, who would have scorned to give the master whom she detested any excuse for dubbing her a weakling. ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... one member of the Council who did not belong to the Band—Councillor Weakling, a retired physician; but unfortunately he also was a respectable man. When he saw something going forwards that he did not think was right, he protested and voted against it and then—he collapsed! There was nothing of the low agitator about HIM. ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... ariseth weakling chief who bends the knee, As a withered fruitless sapling springeth from a ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... saloons of the little villages and amused them selves by running amuck and shooting up the town. These men, and indeed nearly all of the pioneers, held the man from the civilized East, the "tenderfoot," in scorn. They took it for granted that he was a weakling, that he had soft ideas of life and was stuck-up or affected. Now Roosevelt saw that in order to win their trust and respect, he must show himself equal to their tasks, a true comrade, who accepted their code of courage and honor. ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... leaping. After they had enjoyed looking at the games, Laodamas, a son of Alkinoos, said to his friends: "Let us ask the stranger to take part in the games. His strong arms and legs and powerful neck show that he is no weakling. Nor has he lost his youthful vigor after all his hardships, although nothing tires a man so much as being tossed about ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer
... women who are everywhere being driven hither and thither, led into this and into that which their own better selves would not enter into, simply because they have allowed the body to assume the mastery; while they have taken the place of the weakling, the slave, and all on account of their own weakness,—weakness through ignorance, ignorance of the tremendous forces and powers within, the forces and powers ...
— What All The World's A-Seeking • Ralph Waldo Trine
... usage of women to ask of men this little labour, which is a harder task than ever Hercules, that mighty-muscled king of heathenry, achieved. Nay, I, for all my sinews, am an attested weakling. The craft of other men I do not fear, for I have encountered no formidable enemy save myself; but that same midnight stabber unhorsed me long ago. I had wallowed in the mire contentedly enough until you came.... Ah, child, child! why ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... six feet, to the rings fastened in the rafters. "Don't carry self-will to extremes. Here you are to be stripped, hauled up to those rings, and beaten until the bow breaks. Look at it and take warning. Kin is no weakling." She shoved back her sleeve, showing an arm as hard and brawny as that of a stevedore. With disapproval she observed O'Iwa. The latter stood unresisting, eyes on the ground. Only the lips twitched from time to time. As the only person in the house, ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... on man the perfection of spiritual age, as stated above (AA. 2, 5), therefore he who approaches this sacrament is upheld by another, as being spiritually a weakling ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... people's eyes I'm a weakling because I come from off-world. Realize though, that this is also my strength. I can see things that are hidden from you by long association. You know, the old business of not being able to see the forest ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison
... treasure story, is it?" came a deep voice from the side of the car. There stepped into view a man whom Glen had not seen before. He was evidently associated with Mr. Jervice, but he did not in the least resemble him, for instead of being a cringy weakling, he was big and strong ...
— The Boy Scout Treasure Hunters - The Lost Treasure of Buffalo Hollow • Charles Henry Lerrigo
... true-blue friends, who will excuse all other shortcomings because of his honesty. It gives him the unadulterated trust of his employer and it arouses a certain admiration among his narrow circle of acquaintances. If this is true with the dullard, the weakling, then what must it mean when possessed by the great? We know, for instance, how the nation instinctively turned to General Washington when it came to choosing their President after the Revolutionary War. He may have been gifted, he may have been one of the world's ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... spoke, their topsails, friend and foe, Glittered—and there was noise of guns; pale smoke Lagged after, curdling on the sun-fleck'd main. And after that? What after that, my soul? Who ever saw weakling white butterflies Chasing of gallant swans, and charging them, And spitting at them long red streaks of flame? We saw the ships of England even so As in my vaunting wish that mocked itself With 'Fool, O fool, to brag at the edge of loss.' We saw the ships of ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... Eudamippus passed me by. With beards as lustrous as the woodbine's gold And breasts more sheeny than thyself, O Moon, Fresh from the wrestler's glorious toil they came. Bethink thee, mistress Moon, whence came my love. I saw, I raved, smit (weakling) to my heart. My beauty withered, and I cared no more For all that pomp; and how I gained my home I know not: some strange fever wasted me. Ten nights and days I lay upon my bed. Bethink thee, mistress Moon, whence came my love. ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... its glare with one Indian club held by the end, like a footman with a stolen bottle. A good-looking, well-built, iron-gray, iron-jawed man; but a fool and a weakling at that moment, if he had ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... had not been seen for two days. In spite of the fact that Albany numbered nearly "six thousand living human souls," a brief search by the docksharps soon revealed the sinner's retreat. His worst enemy would have pitied him; a red-eyed wreck; a starved, sick and trembling weakling; conscience-stricken, for the letter intrusted to him was lost; the cargo stolen—so his comforters had said—and the raw country lad murdered and thrown out into the river. What wonder that he should shun the light of day! And when big Peter with ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... state would, however, be prepared to deprive itself of the counsels, of the active political co-operation, and of the service from time to time in the responsibility of office, of men of the type of Gladstone (at the age of seventy-five), of John Stuart Mill (always a physical weakling), of Washington (serving as President after he was sixty), on the ground that these citizens were no longer capable of carrying muskets ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... the high nobility of such repentance as flings the worst of blame upon the other one, will grant himself lost, it is true, but "proud to feel such torments," to "pay the price of his deed" (ready with phrases now, he also!), as, poor weakling, he stabs himself, leaving his final word to her who had been for him all that she as yet knew how ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... aware, but, as the event transpired, the search was futile, and another day was wasted. Most annoying, too, was the fact that I dared not manifest the impatience which I naturally felt. I am not remarkable as a specimen of the strong man; quite the reverse indeed, for, while I am by no means a weakling, I am no adept in the fistic art. Hence, when my guide, Hippopopolis by name, as the sun sank behind the western hills, informed me that I was again to be disappointed, the fact that he stands six feet two in his stockings, when he wears them, and has a pleasing way of bending ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... so possessed suffers the lot of the weakling—subjection to the smallest of the things he has abused. The designer of cheap patterns is no more inevitably ridden by the flower than is the vain and transitory author by the phrase. But I had rather learn my decoration of the Japanese, and place against the blank wall one pot ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... second place, it was not the man who was to blame, nor the woman so much, as Sharpe himself. Indeed, Bobby somehow gained the impression that the others flouted and despised Sharpe and held him as a weakling. ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester |
