"Impotently" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fury of the combat lasted, when the Prussian battalions were hurling their human waves in columns against the rocky defences of Gravelotte, only for them to fall back impotently, like the broken foam and spent wash of billows which have assailed in vain the precipitous peaks of some cliff-defended coast that repels their every attack; when the sharp clash of steel met opposing steel and galloping thud of ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... paused. There were so many enemies, he knew not which to pursue first. But straight ahead, in the very middle of the open, and far from any shelter, he saw a huddled group of children and nurses fleeing impotently and aimlessly. Shrill cries came from the cluster, which danced with colors, scarlet and yellow and blue and vivid pink. To the mad buffalo, these were the most conspicuous and the loudest of his foes, and therefore the most dangerous. With a bellow he flung his tail ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... of the speed-idiots who make an automobile an insult to everybody except its owner! The young fool!" stormed the Master, glowering impotently at the other car, already a hundred yards ahead; and at the back of its one occupant, a sportily-clad youth in ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... the rocky pile. Here his strength failed him and he sank trembling with exhaustion upon the first friendly stone, still a hundred feet from where she sat. In his bitter rage against her he strove to shout, but the effort was little more than a hoarse whisper. Lying there impotently, he studied her attitude as the minutes crept by, and there came at last into his heart a touch of pity that swelled with the sight ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... cry she awoke, shivering and half-sobbing, to feel herself the loneliest of little mortals—to long impotently for her father's touch, her father's kiss,—to pray to that dimly-radiant phantom of her mother's loveliness which was pictured on her brain, and anon to stretch out her pretty rounded arms with a soft cry of mingled tenderness and pain—"Oh, I am so sorry!—so sorry for HIM! I know ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... some physical necessity. No one, who has had experience of men of studious habits, but must recognise the existence of a parallel phenomenon in the case of those who have over-stimulated the memory. In such persons reason acts almost as feebly and as impotently as in the madman; once fairly started on any subject whatever, they have no power of self-control; they passively endure the succession of impulses which are evolved out of the original exciting cause; they are passed on from one idea to another and go steadily forward, plodding ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... O lithe and free! Fast in my linen prison I press On impassable bars, or emptily Laugh in my great loneliness. And still in the white neat bed I strive Most impotently against that gyve; Being less now than a thought, even, To you alone with ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke
... on, barking their shins in the darkness that encompassed them beyond the circle of the bonfires. Behind them McIvor was hallooing to his scattered followers at the top of his lungs and cursing impotently between hollers as he poked about at the edge ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... life, from its bare preservation to its supreme fruition. There is a high pretension in morality which is the necessary consequence of its motive. But man is not, on that account, in need of those reminders of failure which are so easy to offer, and which are so impotently true; he needs rather new symbols of faith, through which his heart may be renewed, and his courage fortified to proceed with an undertaking of which he cannot see the end. Faith and courage have ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... eyes took on a stony, remote look as though the matter had ceased to interest him. And while Kelly tramped impotently about the room, he leaned his shoulders against the wall and ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... Yuan Shi-kai was president of the Republic, but the hope of his heart was to be emperor of China. For twenty years he had plotted for the throne; he had been emperor for one hundred miserable days; and now he was watching, impotently, his dream-castles crumble beneath his feet. Yuan was the strong man of his day, with more power, brains, and personality than any Chinese since Li-Hung Chang. He always had been a factor in his political world. His monarchial dream first took definite form as ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... qualities common to each side are cancelled and the result attributed to the credit balance which will appear under one of the accounts. We saw for some months a gallant and well equipped if somewhat amorphous British Army impotently endeavouring, though in superior numbers, to make headway against an aggregation of Boer commandos, and checked at various points on an arc drawn wholly in British territory and extending in a circuit of over 500 miles from Ladysmith ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... Then Clupp entered the room, clasping in his mighty arms the long body of Master Paul Hungerford. He was followed by Garlinge, who was performing the like embracive office for the short body of Master Peter Rainham. The two angry gentlemen plunged and struggled impotently to free themselves from their guardians and hurl themselves at each other's throats. They might as well have tried to free themselves from clamps of iron. To the master-muscled Garlinge and Clupp—a strong Gyas, a strong Cloanthes, no less—they were no more ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... but of half a street, and she had had a remedy for every ill, a balm for every wound. But now she was safe, out of harm's way. She had no responsibilities worth a rap. She had everything an old woman ought to desire. And yet the silly old woman felt a lack, as she impotently watched Rachel leave the kitchen. Perhaps she wanted her eye blacked, or the menace of a policeman, or a child down with diphtheria, to remind ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... they are serving the poor, as they certainly do not contemplate doing; for by educating them, even as they are likely to do so, they will gradually prepare them, intelligently and therefore irresistibly, to demand such changes in their political and social conditions as they may now impotently desire, and will assuredly hereafter obtain; but not, I think, with the entirely cordial ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... the buck had no thought of making stand. Just in the nick of time he sprang aside in a bound that carried him a full thirty feet. Another such, another and another, and then he went capering off frivolously down the woody aisles, while the bear lumbered impotently after him. ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... the lion's neck, while the left hand plunged the knife time and again into the unprotected side behind the left shoulder. The infuriated beast, pulled up and backwards until he stood upon his hind legs, struggled impotently in this ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... man or devil that you spirit away great herds like this. Across the keg, I know, but how—how? Twenty thousand! My God, you'll swing for this night's work," he went on impotently. "The whole countryside will be after you. I am not the man to sit down quietly under such handling. If I spend every cent I'm possessed of, you shall be hounded down until you dare not show your face on this side ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... called passionately, as she beat Keenan impotently back with her naked hands. "Help me, quick! Can't you see I need you? Can't you see this is ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... later she could see that they were balanced on the edge of a culvert; to her right was the darkness; up ahead, the lights were glaring impotently off into space. And then she realized that an arm was encircling her waist in an iron grip and that the motor was still thrumming and that someone was running around in front of the car and then peering off down the slope where they tipped so perilously. These things came to her in ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... up a stone, and with it was hammering feebly, impotently, upon the rivets in the ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... buries the picture in a glaring fog. This moving, struggling mass, that fights for the right of way along the road, is within easy distance of the shells. Those from their own guns pass over them with a shrill crescendo, those from the enemy burst among them at rare intervals, or sink impotently in the soft soil. And a dozen Tommies rush to dig them out as keepsakes. Up at the front, brown and yellow regiments are lying crouched behind brown and yellow rocks and stones. As far as you can see, the hills are sown with them. With a glass you distinguish ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... us poor ship-wrecked wretches to do than to gaze impotently on our heroic brethren still struggling against the storm. The waves run high, but it ...
— With Steyn and De Wet • Philip Pienaar
... A wide-open River Press, flapping impotently in the embrace of a willow, caught the eye of Banjo, a little blaze— faced bay who bore the captive. He squatted, ducked backward so suddenly that his reins slipped from Slim's fingers and lowered his head between his white front feet. His rider seemed stupid beyond any that Banjo had ever ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... coats had sprung from the door, regardless of the corporal on duty, disdainful of demerit, had hurled themselves on wet-eyed Harris, had heaved him up on their shoulders, with pinioned, arm-locked, helpless legs, and frantic, impotently battling fists, and borne him struggling up the steps and once more within the massive portals, and then pandemonium broke loose, for this was no divided honor—there was none to share it now. They bore him, vainly protesting, into the midst of the now risen battalion. They bore him ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... End, whose face is turned on all sides, the Source of life and death, is but to present other men with symbols by which we vainly endeavor to communicate to them the same vague ideas which men in all ages have impotently struggled to express. And it may be doubted whether we have succeeded either in communicating, or in forming in our own minds, any more distinct and definite and true and adequate idea of the Deity, with all our metaphysical conceits ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... a permanently solid South was not easy. The Southerner had always been an individualist, freely exercising his right to vote independently, engaging in sharp political contests before 1861, and even during the War. The Confederate Congress wrangled impotently while Grant was thundering at the gates of Richmond. So strong was the memory of past differences, that old party designations were avoided. The political organization to which allegiance was demanded was generally called the Conservative party, and the Republican party was universally called ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson
... bold, Once again to vengeful fury would he rouse the fiend of old That in Richard's breast is lurking, ready once again to spring. Dreading now that vengeful spirit, with a wavering voice, the king Questions impotently, wildly: "Prisoner, tell me, what of ill Ever I have done to thee or thine, that me thou wouldest kill?" Higher, prouder still he bears him; o'er his countenance appear, Flitting quickly, looks of wonder and of scorn: what does ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... not seen the child, yet I loved her. She had no knowledge of my existence, yet she seemed to call to me. I suffered a dreadful thought—the fear that I should die before I saw her and feasted my eyes upon my own. I struggled to keep myself from going to seek her. I felt as one who, being dead, impotently desires to return to the world and touch the hands of the living. Year after year the desire grew strong to rise from my grave and call out that ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... Arras, and, for the first time, a town that had been systematically and ruthlessly shelled. There are no words in any tongue I know to give you a fitting picture of the devastation of Arras. "Awful" is a puny word, a thin one, a feeble one. I pick impotently at the cover-lid of my imagination when I try to frame language to make you understand what it was I saw when I came to Arras on ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... deficiency in humour, Godwin is a figure whom it is impossible to ignore or to despise. He was not a frothy orator who made his appeal to the masses, but the leader of the trained thinkers of the revolutionary party, a political rebel who, instead of fulminating wildly and impotently after the manner of his kind, expressed his theories in clear, reasonable and logical form. It is easy, but unprofitable, to sneer at the futility of some of Godwin's conclusions or to complain of the aridity of his style. His Political ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... of Crothers grew in her heart as she impotently suffered for the children, but Crothers was as gentle and kind to her as any wise and considerate father could have been. He was patient with her bungling and errors; he did not turn her off to his clerks for instruction, he spent his own time ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... the outlaws stopped, took deliberate aim with the stolen Winchester and fired, meaning to kill; but he miscalculated the range a bit and Thurston crumpled down with a bullet in his thigh. The revolver was empty now and fell smoking at his feet. So he lay and cursed impotently while he watched the marauders ride out of sight ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower
... that inverted Bowl they call the Sky, Whereunder crawling coop'd we live and die, Lift not your hands to It for help—for It As impotently moves ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... Tientsin half-acquiesced in but fifteen short hours ago is no longer thought of, for what the Ministers propose to do now interests no one. After impotently attempting to deal with questions for which they were in no wise fitted they have resigned themselves to the inevitable, and have become mere pawns like the rest of us. Fortunately the men who are men begin to work with frenzied energy, rushing ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... the night's adventure. He groaned at the mockery of having found his life only to lose it now, when it was more precious to him than it had ever been, and to lose it in a silly brawl with semi-savages. He cursed himself impotently and rebelliously for a ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... influential of whom he soon quarreled, looked upon him as a renegade; so that there was a peculiar inappropriateness in the notorious decree of the Bundesrat at Frankfurt, voted December 10, 1835, and impotently forbidding the circulation in Germany of the writings of the Young Germans: Heine, Gutzkow, Laube, Wienbarg, and Mundt—in that order. But the occupants of insecure thrones have a fine scent for the odor of sedition, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... before he knew what he was doing, had obeyed. The surprise was complete and irremediable. Coming on the top crest of his murderous intentions, he had walked straight into an ambuscade, and now stood, with his hands impotently lifted, ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... at him vindictively, but impotently. His jaw was set and hard. A cold fire glittered in his eyes. How selfishly eager he was to be started on his way not even the girl could have known. Moreover, some sort of plan for the horseman's speedy punishment had ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... the manner of his tribe, he is afraid to commit himself; thinks there may be this injury or there may be that, but says definitely nothing. I shall get someone down from town to-morrow. I'd go tonight, only—" he broke off, hammering impotently with his clenched fist on the arm of his chair. "I must be at hand to-night," he said, after a moment, controlling himself. "The mater has promised to call me if there is any change. You see," he spoke half-apologetically, "she might feel kind ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... water and some weevily biscuit to save him from starvation. All through the day and during the long, long hours of the awful night, in pain and suffering from his lopped-off limb and bruises, had he lain on his hard bed with clenched hands, blaspheming and impotently raging in his agony and despair. No prayer, however, dawned in his ruthless heart, or was breathed from his brutal lips; but curses upon curses came thick and fast, till his tongue refused to give them utterance, and he fell back in utter exhaustion. As the noise, however, of the bolt struck his ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... met his view. The pony was sitting on the ground, erect, after the manner of a biped. Its head was in the air, its hind-legs were extended horizontally, its fore-legs were waving impotently up and down'. The ant-bear had carved its way deep into the bowels of the earth, gradually but relentlessly dragging the hapless pony down until its posterior parts hermetically sealed up the burrow. It was, in fact, only the smallness of the latter which prevented ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... have a yoke upon their necks and cannot look back. And he that covets many things greedily and snatches at high things ambitiously that despises his neighbor proudly and bears his crosses peevishly or his prosperity impotently and passionately he that is a prodigal of his precious time and is tenacious and retentive of evil purposes is not a man disposed to this exercise: he hath reason to be afraid of his own memory and ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... him and now understood the pallor on the upturned faces of the crowd. He looked at the house again. The whole street was wrapped in a crimson mist; the falling streams of water which the firemen still continued to direct on the blaze were hissing impotently, and seemed only to feed the fire. In the crowd that watched there was hardly a sound; one could almost hear men's hearts beating as they waited for the conclusion of the tragedy which they knew to be inevitable. But further down the street, where it was not understood ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... and his commissioners still persisted—unsuitable immigrants, over-crowded ships, disease which spread from ship to land and overcrowded the local hospitals, wretched and poverty-stricken masses lingering impotently at Quebec, and a straggling line of westbound settlers, who obtained work and land with difficulty and after many sorrows.[28] Sydenham had none of Gibbon Wakefield's doctrinaire enthusiasm on the subject; and, as he said, ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... weakened by my two days' fast, or else it was the effect of Jeckley's cocktail on an otherwise empty stomach. Whatever the cause, I suddenly became conscious that I was passing into a state of high mental tension; I wanted to scream, to beat impotently upon the air; Jeckley would have put it that I was within an ace of flying off ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... Ball they call the High— By which the Duffer thinks to live or die, Lift not your hands to IT for help, for it As impotently ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... Justice Molehill, shouted impotently; a small page, on his way to the postoffice, stood agonizedly upon one leg; and a moment later there was a splintering crash, the blue taxi shed a cabin-trunk and a suit-case on to the pavement, and then, after a paralyzing moment of ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... by his long illness, had been stunned by the War, and when his second illness seized him, he made no effort to resist it. He would lie very quietly for a long while, and then a paroxysm of fury would possess him, and he would shake his fist impotently in the air. "If they wanted a war," he shouted once, "why didn't they go and fight it themselves. They were paid to keep the peace, ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... surprise increased. It seemed impossible that three men should overawe a whole town, should slay sheriff, justice, mayor, and nearly every official in the town, forge a royal letter with the king's seal, and then lock the gates and escape safely. There was no doubt of the fact, and the king raged impotently against his own foolish mercy in giving them a free pardon. It had been granted, however, and he could do nought but grieve over the ruin they had wrought in Carlisle. At last he sprang up, for he could endure ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... and fro like the tempest tossed waves of ocean; the main body continued for hours, loading the air with hoarse murmurs or angry shouts; detachments breaking off from time to time to rush with frantic speed and hurl themselves successively but impotently upon the iron doors and stone walls of the Station ...
— A Sketch of the Causes, Operations and Results of the San Francisco Vigilance Committee of 1856 • Stephen Palfrey Webb
... dilating on this to Mr Graybody. He simply was willing to shuffle off his mortal coil, because he found it uncomfortable in the wearing. In all likelihood, had his time come as nigh as that of Crasweller, he too, like Crasweller, would impotently implore the grace of another year. He would ape madness like Barnes, or arm himself with a carving-knife like Tallowax, or swear that there was a flaw in the law, as Exors was disposed to do. He too would clamorously swear that he was much younger, as did ...
— The Fixed Period • Anthony Trollope
... will to conquer and a soul to dare, Joined to the manners of a dancing bear, Fools unaccustomed to the wide survey Of various Nature's compensating sway, Untaught to separate the wheat and chaff, To praise the one and at the other laugh, Yearn all in vain and impotently seek Some flawless hero upon whom to wreak The sycophantic worship of the weak. Not so the wise, from superstition free, Who find small pleasure in the bended knee; Quick to discriminate 'twixt good and bad, And willing in the king to find the cad— No reason ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... feel that the word-artist ought to do is to aim at working on these lines, but to be very strict and severe about the ultimate selection of his work. If, for instance, in a big task, a section has been dully and impotently written, let him put the manuscript aside, and think no more of it for a while; let him not spend labour in attempting to mend bad work; then, on some later occasion, let him again get his conception clear, and write the whole section again; ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... herself, thinking that she might not like it. I am afraid it has reached her by some other means; and thus we may account for various attacks by her on her venerable townsman since his decease...What are we to think of the scraps of letters between her and Mr. Hayley, impotently attempting to undermine the noble pedestal on which the publick opinion has ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... which convulsed her face, effectually terrified me, and disengaging myself from her grasp, I screamed as loud as I could for help; the blind woman continued to pour out a torrent of abuse upon me, foaming at the mouth with rage, and impotently shaking her clenched fists towards me. I heard Lord Glenfallen's step upon the stairs, and I instantly ran out; as I past him I perceived that he was deadly pale, and just caught the words, "I hope that demon ...
— Two Ghostly Mysteries - A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and The Murdered Cousin • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... monstrous and horrible spider, began to work the heavy bow across the long strings. He had rehearsed it to perfection. In performance, something happened. His artist's nerve had gone. His fingers fumbled impotently for the stops. His professional experience saved a calamitous situation. With an acrobat's stride he reached the stage, telescoped fiddle and bow to normal proportions, and after a lightning nod to the chef d'orchestre, ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... and stormed impotently in his retirement at Friedrichsruh, and by every loud and insulting means in his power—by voice, pen, by special interviews, in his private letters, in his telegraphic dispatches, in his talks with the old friends or new callers, and to the last scratch of his Memoirs—Bismarck remains ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... the couch, upon which the captain was, they encountered six figures encased in armor fully as capable as their own. The beams of the Lewistons rebounded from that armor in futile pyrotechnics, the bullets of the automatics spattered and exploded impotently against it. And behind that single line of armored guards were massed perhaps twenty unarmored, but masked, soldiers; and scuttling up the ramps leading into the hall were coming the platoons of heavily-armored figures which Costigan had ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... door. It stuck; he could not turn it. This had never happened before. He tried, with force, to pull the key out. It would not move. He shook it. The doctor's coachman, he felt, was staring at him from the box of the brougham. As he struggled impotently with the key his shoulders began to tingle, and a wave of acute irritation flooded him. He turned sharply round and met the coachman's eyes, shrewd, observant, lit, he thought, by a flickering ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... read no more, for the tall printer, seemingly incapable of coherent speech, kicked the desk impotently, threw his arms above his head, and, his companions confidently looking to see him foam at the mouth, lost his balance and toppled over backward, his extensive legs waving wildly in the air as he struck ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... to Pleydon, who listened with a flattering interest. "I expect you're laughing at me inside," she ended impotently. "And the other, the Greek Victory," he added, "is the goddess of the other world, of the spirit. It's quaint a heathen woman ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... he roared. "You'll dirty my card, you thieving filibuster? Do you know what I'll do to you? I'll have your tin sign taken away from you, before I touch this port again. You'll see—you— you—" he ended impotently for lack of epithets, but continued in eloquent pantomime to ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... by the fog a voice proclaimed itself—a voice which I knew. I felt Weymouth writhing impotently beside me; heard him mumbling incoherently; and I knew that he, too, had recognized ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... at the apoplectic old aristocrat gagged on the ground, whose eyes were starting impotently from his head. "I have made an appointment here with a thoroughly nice young fellow. An old friend. Jasper Drummond his name is—you may have met him this afternoon at the Beaumonts. He can scarcely come though till the Beaumonts' dinner ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... feeling once more secure, because the man who hesitated not to sacrifice vast myriads of human lives to accomplish his own aggrandizement, was now bound, and, like a tiger in chains, could do nought save growl impotently. ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... held could escape. Caracalla had the exits closed. Those who escaped were naked; to bribe the guards they were forced to strip themselves to the skin. In the circus a vestal caught his eye. He tried to violate her, and failing impotently, had her buried alive. "Caracalla knows that I am a virgin, and knows why," the girl cried as the earth swallowed her, but there was no ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... steamer had been hit forward on the starboard side. The upper portion of the stem piece was almost down to the water level, her foremost hold was obviously filling rapidly. Her stern was high out of water, the red ensign of England flapping impotently on the ensign staff. Her propeller, which was still slowly revolving, thrashed the water, and this heightened the impression that I was watching the struggles of a dying animal. The propeller was revolving in spasmodic jerks, due, ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... it owes to its climate. Something there is,—some meteorological idiosyncrasy in its location,—which guards its still, mild air, the winter through. Storms rage impotently down from the mountains or across the Landes; they cannot pass the charmed barrier of the coteaux. Winds are rare in Pau. Rain is not rare; but the atmosphere, even when damp, is not chilling, and the ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... and helpless, stood by the barn door and impotently fumed as the canoe rounded Lone Tree Island and was lost to ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... of the stick about eighteen inches from the glaring, lidless eyes. With incredible speed the poised head shot forth. Ajax laughed. The snake was recoiling, as he struck it on the neck. Instantly it writhed impotently. My brother set the heel of his heavy boot upon the skull, ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... impotently at the situation. The mine-owner would not take "No" for an answer. He wooed her with a steady, dominant persistence that shook even her strong, young will. There was something resistless in the way he took her for granted. Gordon Elliot had not mentioned love to her, though there were ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... innkeeper, called to the landlady and to invisible constables for help. But her pangs were childish compared with Morsfield's, who, with the rage of a conceited schemer tricked and the fury of a lover beholding the rape of his beautiful, bellowed impotently at Weyburn and the coachman out of hearing, 'Stop! you!' He was in the state of men who believe that there is a virtue in imprecations, and he shot loud oaths after them, shook his fist, cursed his friend Cumnock, whose name he vociferated as a summons to him,—generally ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Moloch of our Minors! Fathers, thank Our new Alcides, who, with legal club, Could dare the web assault, the Spider drub! Worse than Tarantula venom hath the bite Of this Conkiferous Ogre, which to fight Herschelles did adventure! Thump! Bang! Whack! The web is burst, the Spider's on his back, All impotently spluttering poisonous spleen Let's hope such monster may no more be seen. And let us hail great Herschelles, whose skill The high-nosed horror hath availed to kill. Blow, Infants, blow the pipe, and thump the tabor, In honour of the hero's ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, April 2, 1892 • Various
... scene. For background the long straggling town; in the foreground the motley groups of bathers, the far-reaching smooth surface of the lake; and, beyond, the broad Atlantic, thundering impotently upon the barricade of sandhills that makes possible the ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... So long as there are men fit for it, quorum odium virtute relicta placet, it will never be wanting. It is a barbarous envy, to take from those men's virtues which, because thou canst not arrive at, thou impotently despairest to imitate. Is it a crime in me that I know that which others had not yet known but from me? or that I am the author of many things which never would have come in thy thought but that I taught them? It is new but a foolish ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... Beaumetz, through shell-shattered villages, by roads twisting up and down long hills, commenced to tell on the men long before the first halt was due. Breathing became, in many cases, long and heavy; some stumbled blindly forward with heads strained down, and others impotently cursed at the Higher Command for not calling a halt. Sweat trickled over dust-begrimed countenances, feet were aching, the tongue clove parched to the mouth, the pack ... oh, the utter hell of it. And yet ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... crept back to the homestead, and the great Shadow, closing in on us, flung wide those gates of Death once more, and turning, before passing through, beckoned to our Maluka to follow. But at those open gates the Maluka lingered a little while with those who were fighting so fiercely and impotently to close them—lingering to teach us out of his own great faith that "Behind all Shadows standeth God." And then the gates gently closing, a woman stood alone in that little home that had been wrested, so merrily, out of the very ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... in the still May sunshine against an old grey tomb of carved stone. Two angels with spread wings upheld the defaced inscription. Above it, over it, round it, like desire impotently defying death, a flood of red roses clambered and clung. Were they trying to wake some votary who slept below? A great twisted sentinel cypress kept its own dark counsel. Against its shadow Fay's figure in her white gossamer gown showed more ethereal and exquisite even than ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... evidence. There were documents enough in existence to have proved my part in the affair; but not one of them dared the King produce, since they would also show me to have been no more than his instrument. And so, desiring my death as it was now clear he did, he must sit impotently brooding there with what patience he could command, like a gigantic, evil spider into whose web I obstinately ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... idea fixed in his mind, he got stiffly to his bruised feet, readjusted the sheepskin and began wearily to climb higher. When the sun tinged all the hilltops golden yellow, he turned and shook his fist impotently at the camp far beneath him. ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... same look forming about the eyes of both—that look that told of men who struggled gamely under the sentence of death, refusing to think or to fear, and waiting, waiting, impotently. Blake looked at the colonel with a carefully emotionless gaze. "It's hell in ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... and to add mournefull Grace To the sad pomp of his lamented fall, The Common wealth served at his Funerall And by a Solemne Order built his Hearse. But not like thine, built by thy selfe, in Verse, Where thy advanced Image safely stands Above the reach of Sacrilegious hands. Base hands how impotently you disclose Your rage 'gainst Camdens learned ashes, whose Defaced Statua and Martyrd booke, Like an Antiquitie and Fragment looke. Nonnulla desunt's legibly appeare, So truly now Camdens Remaines lye there. Vaine Malice! how he mocks thy rage, while breath Of fame shall speake ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher in Ten Volumes - Volume I. • Beaumont and Fletcher
... succeeded in escaping from captivity, excited during the governorship of Aulus Gabinius (697-700) three different revolts against the new rulers, to each of which the government of the high-priest Hyrcanus installed by Rome impotently succumbed. It was not political conviction, but the invincible repugnance of the Oriental towards the unnatural yoke, which compelled them to kick against the pricks; as indeed the last and most dangerous of these revolts, for which the withdrawal ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... retreat. August 9, 1883, the march began—just two years after they had entered the frozen deep—Greely hoping to meet the relief ship oh the way. He did not know that three weeks before she had been nipped in the ice-pack, and sunk, and that her consort, the "Yantic," had gone impotently home, without even leaving food for the abandoned explorers. Over ice-fields and across icy and turbulent water, the party made its way for five hundred miles—four hundred miles of boating and one hundred of sledging—fifty-one days of heroic exertion that might well take the courage out of the ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... indeed feel anxious about this great addition of aviation to the destructive power of modern scientific warfare. Bearing its terrors in mind, we may even impotently seek to check its advance, but the appeal of flying is too deep, its elimination is now impossible, and granted that war is inevitable, it must be accepted for good or ill. Fortunately, although with the other great scientific additions, ...
— Aviation in Peace and War • Sir Frederick Hugh Sykes
... group of familiar dark faces, and the look they cast backward was not one of longing for the fleshpots of Egypt. The colonel saw Grandison point him out to one of the crew of the vessel, who waved his hand derisively toward the colonel. The latter shook his fist impotently—and ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... shouted, as he tugged impotently at the reins. "Let me go, I tell you. I haven't stole no cab, and you've got no right to stop me. I only want to take it to the Press office," he begged. "They'll send it back to you all right. They'll pay you for ...
— The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys • Richard Harding Davis
... forward and picked impotently at the bonds of the sleeping monster. But Davies was aboard again, and stirred him with a deft touch or two, till he crashed into the water with a ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... Derek chafed impotently. These unsought allies were making a difficult situation a thousand times worse. A more acute observer than young Mr Martyn, he noted the tight lines about his mother's mouth and knew them for the danger-signal they were. Endeavoring to ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... impotently, trying to see through the reek. At first, it was impossible to make out anything. Then, as I stared, I saw something below, to my left, that moved. I looked intently toward it, and, presently, made out another, and then another—three dim shapes that appeared ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... distinguished, because the one was stripped to the ridi and the other wore a holoku (sacque) of some lively colour. The first was uppermost, her teeth locked in her adversary's face, shaking her like a dog; the other impotently fought and scratched. So for a moment we saw them wallow and grapple there like vermin; then the mob closed ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... time he let go one hand-hold and found another. Gradually he worked into the shallows and to land. He could see Powder River, far downstream, still fighting impotently against the pressure ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... at times. There were days when the sight of a book filled me with physical nausea, with contempt for the littleness, the narrow outlook, that seemed to me to characterise every written work. I was fiercely, but quite impotently, eager at such times to demonstrate the futility of all the philosophy ranged on the rough wooden shelves in my gloomy sitting-room. I would walk up and down and gesticulate, struggling, fighting to make clear to myself what a true philosophy should ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... caught sight of that crazy boat of ours made of canvas and willows. They poled the raft in close, then one of them saw those three strange things writhing impotently on the sand. They were skeletons, they were in rags, they were covered ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... across the porch, and Lusk was in the room. "So I've got you!" he said. He had no weapon, but made a dive under the bed and came up with a carbine. The two men locked, wrenching impotently, and fell together. The carbine's loud shot rang in the room, but did no harm; and McLean lay sick and panting upon Lusk as Barker ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... exclaimed. "Here, Mommer!" But Mrs. Urmy and Lady Hartley had beaten a diplomatic retreat. Jeannette jumped to her feet, the color flaming in her face, her eyes snapping with indignation. "Oh!" she cried, impotently. "I'll—I'll—oh! what can I do? It must come out! He must apologize. Who did it? Oh, I ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... to be off, tossed impatient heads, straining impotently at the tightened rein. On a given word they sprang forward with a thundering rush of hoofs, swooping down upon the pegs at lightning speed, the men's faces level with the flying manes, their lance-heads skimming the ground. Followed ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... many years must he endure—how many centuries? Was his wife dying, his children abandoned? Up and down he padded; had he committed some ugly crime, for which he longed to atone—but prison is not atonement! Had his conviction been unjust, and was he raging impotently against injustice? Let him not rage too loudly, for there was a guard yonder, indifferent to tortured souls, but licensed to stop noises. A prison is a prison, not a sanitarium for diseased crooks. But if the world could hear those footfalls, and interpret their significance, how long would ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... was pursued towards the Kafir nation by the colonists and the public authorities of the colony, through a long series of years, the Kafirs had ample justification of the late war; they had to resent, and endeavour justly, though impotently, to avenge a series of encroachments; they had a perfect right to hazard the experiment, however hopeless, of extorting by force that redress which they could not expect otherwise to obtain, and the claim of sovereignty over the new province must be renounced. It rests upon a conquest ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... expecting something of the kind, intervened from one side, Shand from the other. Joe's arms were promptly pinned behind him. He struggled impotently, tears of ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... I can't indeed!" she said, and now she was striving, striving impotently, for freedom. "I'm going up to ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... chair, sumptuous with satin-damask and soft with springs, almost engulfed the tiny figure of the little old lady. To the old lady herself it suddenly seemed the very embodiment of the luxurious ease against which she was so impotently battling. With a spasmodic movement she jerked herself to her feet, and stood there motionless save for the wistful sweep of her eyes about ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... an excellent room, very large, and removed from the bustle below; the sound of the dustman-like bell, which calls the house to meals, barely reaches my ear. I often catch myself parodying poor Maturin's lines, which I have applied to this unpoetical grievance, and concluded most impotently— ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... The lad's impotently roving glance fell upon Simon Cameron. And into his sullen face leaped stark terror. At sight of it, Gavin Brice hit on a new idea for wringing speech from ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... recur to you some dream of bygone happy hours, the sibilant murmur of fragrant night winds through the crisp foliage, the faint call of Diana's horn from the woodlands, moon-fairies dancing on the spider-webs, the glint of the dew on the roses, the far-off music of the surges tossing impotently on the sands, the forgetfulness of time and place and care, and not a cloud 'twixt you and the heavens? ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... instant, to see your companion wearing the badge of our most noble order. I should not have been as there is no moral distinction between a thief and a spy." Encouraged by his own words, he tore the medal from its resting place, while Carrick groaned impotently. ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... 'em. She don't know they're there," groaned Aunt Olivia, impotently. "She don't see anything but Thomas Jefferson, and I don't know ...
— Rebecca Mary • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... something she had never anticipated. Bruce Carmyle seemed to be creeping into her life like an advancing tide. There appeared to be no eluding him. Wherever she turned, there he was, and she could do nothing but rage impotently. The situation ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... obeying her will. Within a few paces from him the statue stopped for the last time, with an abruptness that left it quivering and rocking. A greyish hue came over the face, causing the borrowed tints to stand forth, crude and glaring; the arms waved wildly and impotently once or twice, and then grew still for ever, in the attitude conceived long since ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... He beat his hands impotently upon the crust of sawdust to the left. Nan tugged that way. Tom pulled, too, heaving his great body upward, and scratching and scrambling along the sawdust with fingers spread like claws. His right leg came out of the hole, and just then ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... a moment. A recollection of the chance that he had impotently and unaccountably thrown away returned to him. He tried to laugh, albeit with a glowing cheek, over the momentary bashfulness which he thought had overtaken him, and which must have made him ridiculous ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Blair looked impotently about the room, but his former companions had returned to their game. Filling in the silence, the dull clatter of chips mingled with the drunken snores of the man on ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... white folds of the sheet that draped him, and clenched his hands impotently. "No gun! Not even a pocket-knife. Nothing but my bare hands!" ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... a lonely figure in the midst of all this lively bustle, and wished impotently that he could have let well enough alone—and by well enough he doubtless meant both the champagne and Mrs. Campbell—thus preserving the pleasant relations of yesterday. A steamship soon becomes the world itself to its passengers, and the little events ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... spoke quite slowly and clearly, and with a sarcastic emphasis that caused Gurdon to writhe impotently. Every word and gesture on the part of the cripple spoke of a strong mind and a clear intellect in that twisted body. Despite the playful acidity of his words, there was a distinct threat underlying them. It occurred to Gurdon as he stood there that he would ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... impotently, pathetically, like an old lion with its teeth drawn. He prowled moodily around, looking for an enemy on whom to vent his anger. But he could find no tangible force that opposed him. He could see nothing on which to centralize his activity. Yet ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... went on. "But I was still confident. I sank all the proceeds of the first strike—and sank them fast, for unaccountable accidents that crippled me both financially and in the progress of the work began to happen." Wilbur flung out his hands impotently. "Oh, it's a long story—too long to tell. Thurl was at the bottom of those accidents. He knew as well as I did that the mine was rich—better than I did, for that matter, for we discovered before we ran him out of Alaska that he had made secret borings on the property. But what I did not ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... saw him writhe in his chair, tormented, shaken, spent with futile curses, impotently lamenting his lost kingdom. He still had the skill, the cold calculating brain, the wit, the will; and now, by a cruel chance and a stupid accident, he had lost out! The end had come for him, and he in his heyday! There were moments when, watching ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... through all his frame. And, as he would have fallen forward, exhausted by the effort to reach her and the lovely shelter of her, Katherine caught and, kneeling, held him, his poor hands clutching impotently at her shoulders, his head sinking upon her breast. While, in that embrace, not only all the motherhood in her leapt up to claim the sonship in him, but all the womanhood in her leapt up to claim the manhood in him, thereby ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... one of the ewes. She strayed yesterday, and he'll chase the mountain through if he has to. It's no use to whistle; he won't come back without her. You let that fence be. You wouldn't dare to touch it," she finished impotently, "if I ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... GENTLEMAN [coming from the portico to his granddaughter's right] Great Heavens! And at the base of this monstrous poltroon's statue the War God of Turania is now gibbering impotently. ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... religion of reason. It is this, but it is also the religion of the soul. It recognises the value of that mystic insight, those indefinable intuitions which, taking up the task at the point where the mind impotently abandons it, carries us straight into the presence of the King. Thus it has found room both for the keen speculator on theological problems and for the mystic who, because he feels God, declines to reason about Him—for a Maimonides and a Mendelssohn, but also for ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams
... me," Barney roared as he struggled and squirmed impotently in their grip. "Doc, tell these pistol-packing bellhops ...
— Make Mine Homogenized • Rick Raphael |
