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Defenseless   Listen
adjective
Defenseless  adj.  
1.
Destitute of defense; unprepared to resist attack; unable to oppose; unprotected. (Also spelled defenceless)
2.
Unarmed; used of persons or the military. Antonym: armed.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Defenseless" Quotes from Famous Books



... the court had reassembled, Masanath came into the great council chamber. Alone and dressed in mourning, she seemed so little and defenseless that Meneptah stirred uncomfortably in his throne. Slowly she approached the dais and fell on her knees before the king. The great gathering of courtiers held its breath, ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller

... agony of reproach, as if the knife of a friend had been unexpectedly thrust into his heart. Dick's arm, tensed by the insane anger of his mind, was drawn back to deal another blow, and seemed to stop half-way, impotent to strike that defenseless face before him. ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton

... benefits of government; I find that the government which conferred the right of citizenship is powerless, or indisposed, to force respect for its own enactments; I find that these people, left to the mercy of their enemies, alone and defenseless, and without judicious leadership, are urged to preserve themselves loyal to the men and to the party which have shown themselves unable to extend to them substantial protection; I find that these people, alone in their struggles of doubt and of prejudice, are surrounded by a public opinion powerful ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune

... your brother who actually did the deed! Unhappily I listened to your brother! See now the awful result of this mistake! Go you now to this heartless Princess whom men call Flower o' the World or else our poor defenseless city will have to ...
— The Laughing Prince - Jugoslav Folk and Fairy Tales • Parker Fillmore

... the outlook had so changed that, although the war was not yet over, they could look forward to the future with some degree of hope. The news brought from Rheims by occasional refugees was always sad. The Germans continued to shell the defenseless city, and the Cathedral sustained more and more injuries, but the beautiful stained-glass windows had been carefully taken down, the broken pieces put together as far as possible, and the whole shipped to safer places in ...
— The French Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins

... answered Elias. "You must be surprised that I, another unfortunate, young and strong, should propose to you, old and weak, peaceful measures, but it's because I've seen as much misery caused by us as by the tyrants. The defenseless are ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... a man who had learned strange facts and knew that a defenseless woman was a victim—called me to Finland. Therefore, with my passport properly vised and my papers all in order, I one night left Hull for Stockholm by the weekly Wilson service. Four days of rough weather in the North Sea and the Baltic brought me to the Swedish capital, whence on the following ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux

... was listening. Dropping into the chair which he had drawn up for me, I told him of our elk—'As big as horses, your Honor'; of our mountain lions—savage beasts that could climb trees and fall upon the defenseless; of our catamounts, deer, wolves, bears, foxes—all these we killed without molestation from anybody; I told him how all American sportsmen were like the Nimrods of old. How galling, then, for a true shootist to be misunderstood, decried, denounced, and arrested for so insignificant ...
— Fiddles - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith

... forgiven. The German seizure of Kiao-chau had led to the Russian occupation of Port Arthur, the British occupation of Wei-hai-wei and French occupation of Kwan-chow Bay. The vultures were swooping down on defenseless China. This had led to the Boxer disturbance of 1910, where ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish

... apparent that the pirates had perceived the almost defenseless condition of the schooner. In a few minutes they would be swarming the deck, for poor old Sing would be entirely helpless to repel them. If Dr. von Horn were only there, thought the distracted girl. With the machine gun alone he ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... Major. "If I could have come out with them," he sighed. He well knew the softening effect upon romantic womanhood of a long sea voyage where the willing winds sway the softer emotions of the breast, and the trembling woman is defenseless against the ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage

... great chief heard this he did not put on his war paint and lead his warriors against the defenseless French who had so long dealt falsely with him. He sat alone for a long time, thinking. The next day he sent a letter to Major Gladwin saying that he was now ready to bury the hatchet, and begging the English to forget ...
— Four American Indians - King Philip, Pontiac, Tecumseh, Osceola • Edson L. Whitney

... of the Abenakis. Capt. Kennedy having been sent to their villages with a flag of truce, was, with his whole party, made prisoners. To chastise them for this outrage, as well as to retaliate for their continued cruelty and murders on the defenseless frontier settlements, Gen. Amherst dispatched the celebrated Major Rogers with a detachment of his rangers to the villages on the St. Francis. Just before daybreak, on the fifth of October, he surprised and killed at least two hundred Indians, ...
— The Abenaki Indians - Their Treaties of 1713 & 1717, and a Vocabulary • Frederic Kidder

... James, vi, 144.]; two of the lieutenants and the master were also shot down. The ships gradually worked round till the wind was again on the port quarter, when they separated, and the Guerriere's foremast and main-mast at once went by the board, and fell over on the starboard side, leaving her a defenseless hulk, rolling her main-deck guns into the water. [Footnote: Brenton, v, 51.] At 6.30 the Constitution hauled aboard her tacks, ran off a little distance to the eastward, and lay to. Her braces and standing and running rigging ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt

... that there were larger and more dangerous animals in the forests. There were bears prowling somewhere in those dim shadowy woods, eating the young buds and leaves, and capturing such defenseless birds and rabbits as they could. Once or twice they heard some heavy creature crashing through the underbrush, and looked at each other with startled eyes; but no harm came near them, and by the middle ...
— A Little Maid of Old Maine • Alice Turner Curtis

... on: "Something has happened to a gentle and defenseless member of our community. We don't know ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit

... before 1890. It forbade a denial of the right to vote by any State. The Supreme Court easily determined that no violation could occur when a hostile mob excluded negroes from the polls. It had been settled before 1890 that the negro was defenseless against personal discrimination. It remained to be seen whether he could be disfranchised by law and yet have no redress. Not till the South found some of its people appealing for the negro vote in the crisis ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson

... cursing their ancestors for making the mistake of attacking a neighboring humanoid planet instead of Earth, only two days away on high drive. By now, they knew that Earth was defenseless. And yet, they seemed content to go on with their vows forgotten. Duke couldn't believe it. Down underground, beyond Earth inspection, they could have vast stockpiles of weapons, ready to install in their ships ...
— Victory • Lester del Rey

... and bad; and ambition usurps the honors due to virtue. Nor is this wonderful; since you study each his individual interest, and since at home you are slaves to pleasure, and here to money or favor; and hence it happens that an attack is made on the defenseless state. ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust

... to fix my attention on the fixity of the bed. I put my hand over my eyes to shut out all thought save of the dead woman, defenseless already, reclining on that earth into which she will sink. But my looks, impelled by superhuman curiosity, escape between my fingers to this other woman, half revealed to me in the tumult of sorrow, and my eyes cannot ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse

... elastic rupture of their capsule whose walls pinch them out. To be suddenly hit in the face by such a missile brings no smile while the sting lasts. Witch-hazel twigs ripening indoors transform a peaceful living room into a defenseless target ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... that bombardment of that defenseless little town, carried on longer, might have cost as many lives as are likely to be lost in the case of a steamship ...
— Dave Darrin After The Mine Layers • H. Irving Hancock

... the clouds, they went, and down again, towards the defenseless Earth, that could not flee from the chariot of the Sun. Great rivers hid themselves in the ground, and mountains were consumed. Harvests perished like a moth that ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various

... she recognized an egotist in the settee, she felt none of that usual shutting of doors in her mind which meant clearing ship for action; on the contrary her instinct told her that this man was somehow completely pregnable and quite defenseless. When Ardita defied convention—and of late it had been her chief amusement—it was from an intense desire to be herself, and she felt that this man, on the contrary, was preoccupied ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... remember it was on August 20th that the climax came. Liege had fallen. The English Expedition had landed, and was marching on Belgium. A victorious German army had goose-stepped into defenseless Brussels, and was sweeping out toward the French frontier. The French advance into Alsace ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich

... the Czar's failure to stand by his own manifesto, and exasperated by the murderous attacks of the Black Hundreds upon defenseless people in the streets, the Social Democrats, the Social Revolutionists, and the extreme opponents of the government generally resorted to a series of armed revolts, which finally culminated in the bloody barricade-fighting in the streets of Moscow in December, 1905. Taking alarm at these revolutionary ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various

... the Turk smoked. Instead I blundered upon the absurdly simple notion of trying to locate the negro of given length and proportions. The real "mosquito man"—one of that dark band that spends its Zone years with a wire hook and a screened bucket gathering evidence against the defenseless mosquito for the sanitary department to gloat over—was found not to fit the model even in hue. Moreover, "mosquito men" are not accustomed to carry their devotion to duty to the point of crawling under trunks ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck

... when we have only changed its name. We have contrived to withdraw from the slave just that fiction of property relation which made it for the interest of some one to care for him a little, however imperfectly; and, having destroyed that, we turn him out defenseless to shift for himself in a community every member of which is embittered against him. The whole South resounds with the outcries of slaves suffering the vindictive wrath of former masters; laws are being passed hunting them out of this State and out of that; ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... soon driven out by Stilicho, a German chieftain who had risen to the command of the army of Honorius. Alaric gave up Greece only to invade Italy. Before long the Goths crossed the Julian Alps and entered the rich and defenseless valley of the Po. To meet the crisis the legions were hastily called in, even from the distant frontiers. Stilicho formed them into a powerful army, beat back the enemy, and captured the Visigothic camp, filled with the spoil of Greek cities. In the eyes of the Romans Stilicho seemed ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER

... lapsed into a reminiscent and melting mood. In a pretty affectation, we were asked to meditate upon the old garret, the deserted hearth, the old letters, the old well-sweep, the dead baby, the little shoes; we were put into a mood in which we were defenseless against the lukewarm flood of the Tupperean Philosophy. Even the newspapers caught the bathetic tone. Every "local" editor breathed his woe over the incidents of the police court, the falling leaf, the tragedies of the boarding-house, in the most lachrymose periods he could command, and let us ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner

... the Danes in a harbor there. Three of these Danish vessels were afloat, and came out boldly to attack Alfred's armament. The other three were upon the shore, where they had been left by the tide, and were, of course, disabled and defenseless until the water should rise and float them again. Under these circumstances, it would seem that the victory for Alfred's fleet would have been easy and sure; and at first the result was, in fact, in Alfred's favor. Of the three ships that came out to meet him, two were captured, and one escaped, ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... mob had melted away like a small snowbank in a hot sun. It was one thing to help lynch a defenseless Mexican; it was quite another to face nine or ten determined men backing the law. Scarce a score of the vigilantes remained, and most of them were looking for a chance to save their faces "without starting anything," as ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine

... a curiously grim mood. He hated the subterfuge he had practised, and there was something very repugnant in this stealthy tracking down of his man, but the chase was nearly over and he meant to finish it. Defenseless merchant seamen could not be allowed ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss

... died before he would have wronged intentionally either class. In this case he had struck in behalf of a poor and unfortunate girl who had been grievously wronged at Baylor, and it used to be held, and is yet held in some communities, that the man who strikes in the defense of a defenseless woman exhibits the highest trait of chivalry, even if he had made a mistake in striking, but here in Waco, with its Christian schools and churches, and its so-called Christian civilization it was rewarded first by mobs and then ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... disastrous to the inhabitants, who had to suffer hunger and privations of every kind. Life at Orenbourg became insupportable. The decision of fate was awaited with anguish. Food was scarce; bombshells fell upon the defenseless houses of citizens. The attacks of Pougatcheff made very little excitement. I was dying of ennui. I had promised Accoulina that I would correspond with her, but communication was cut off, and I could not send or receive a letter from Belogorsk. My only pastime consisted ...
— Marie • Alexander Pushkin

... speech which formed their apparent medium of communication that she imbibed her information: she found it in the air, she extracted it from Durham's look and manner, she caught it in the turn of her sister-in-law's defenseless eyes—for in her presence Madame de Malrive became Fanny Frisbee again!—she put it together, in short, out of just such unconsidered indescribable trifles as differentiated the quiet felicity of her dress from Nannie and Katy's "handsome" ...
— Madame de Treymes • Edith Wharton

... that an expedition then preparing at New York was designed to reinforce General Howe; and insisted that, should the troops then embarked at that place, instead of proceeding to the Delaware, make a sudden movement up the Hudson, it would be in their power, should Albany be left defenseless, to destroy the valuable arsenal which had been there erected, and the military stores captured with Burgoyne, which had been ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing

... but you must remember that although governments begin wars it is the people who carry them on. Let the people of England and Holland hear, as they will hear, of the brutal ferocity of the French marshal on a defenseless people, and their sympathies will be strongly with you. They will urge their governments to action, and vote willingly the necessary sums for carrying on the war. Let them hear that with you too war is massacre, ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty

... county. To pour a volley in upon the rebels would endanger the lives of the prisoners as much as those of the enemy. Meanwhile the rebels themselves were rapidly deploying and opening fire. The militia were in danger of losing all their advantage, of being shot down defenseless, of perhaps losing the day, all owing to the presence of the prisoners in the enemy's ranks. Again Colonel Ashley gave the order to fire. ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy

... did see where a boat had been drawn up on shore, and if any "shoves" and other cruel and abusive "handling" had been administered by those scoundrels with seventy pistols, it must have been to that poor defenseless boat. Or perhaps they were out in the middle of the lake at that ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... little, none could ever tell. Like enough, to judge from the sound, his back was broken on the spot. But he had no time given him to recover. Silver, agile as a monkey, even without leg or crutch, was on the top of him next moment, and had twice buried his knife up to the hilt in that defenseless body. From my place of ambush I could hear him pant aloud ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson

... reason that these had been built only to resist an army, and so lay with flanks entirely open to a fleet. General Lovell (the able commander who had so often warned the Confederate Government of the danger from the sea) at once evacuated the defenseless city. The best of the younger men were away with the armies. The best of the older men were too few for the storm. And so pandemonium broke loose. Burning boats, blazing cotton, and a howling mob greeted Farragut's arrival. But after the forts (now completely cut off from their base) ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood

... wait for him, knowing full well that he must return as defenseless as he went away. As soon as Douglass came near the place where the white man was hiding, the latter made a leap at Fred for the purpose of tying him for a flogging. But Douglass escaped and took to the woods, where ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various

... rebels who so could stand; And this when peril pressed him sore, Left aidless in the shivered front of war— Skulkers behind, defiant foes before, And fighting with a broken brand. The challenge in that courage rare— Courage defenseless, proudly bare— Never could tempt him; he could dare Strike up the leveled ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville

... words were smooth and oily. To Hal it really looked as though this fellow respected gameness enough not to take it out on a defenseless enemy. ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock

... they are an incomplete version of ourselves touches me. They actually seem defenseless, though ...
— Second Landing • Floyd Wallace

... a great gun shook the world. There was no mistaking the sound of it or its meaning. The fleet had opened fire on the defenseless town. Mandy's teeth chattered and her ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon

... have reached the full measure of strength and agility, and through years of experience have come to a full knowledge of the many dangers to which their race is exposed. It would seem extraordinary that nature should have cared so well for them, and should have left the more defenseless females and young unprotected from the dangers likely to come to them from enemies which may ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various

... will you slay him, my son? For you must leave your club and your armor behind, and be cast to the monster, defenseless ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes

... rang the bell. I stooped for my hat. To tell the truth, I was rather afraid to expose myself in such a defenseless attitude, but the Countess preserved her self control. The butler opened the door. I bowed, and left the Countess regarding me through the maimed "starers." Then I found the butler smiling. He probably knew the signs of the weather. I wouldn't be Lady Mickleham's butler if you ...
— Dolly Dialogues • Anthony Hope

... is unripe. The monkey's missile struck home and the crab was sorely hurt by the blow. Again and again, as fast as he could pick them, the monkey pulled off the hard persimmons and threw them at the defenseless crab till he dropped dead, covered with wounds all over his body. There he lay a pitiful sight at the foot of the tree ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki

... the students were beating it because they knew it to be defenseless. Her dog! toothless and old, who could not hold when his jaws closed on an arm or leg, but who, with that indomitable courage of his race, fought on and ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath

... by raiding their neighbours. Their armed bands of hired retainers ravaged, burned, pillaged—the strong against the weak, the shrewd against the simple, the powerful against the defenseless. The power of those savages was purely physical. The power we give to their modern prototype is both physical and moral. They kill the body and poison the souls of the living. The older savage made raids for the necessities of life. ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon

... in rhythm and rhyme, with due regard for euphony and cadence, is always safe, and is totally different from bursting out upon a defenseless ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard

... Romans. The Volscians rejected the proposition with a sort of scorn. "We see," said they, "from the fate of Saguntum, what is to be expected to result from an alliance with the Romans. After leaving that city defenseless and alone in its struggle against such terrible danger, it is in vain to ask other nations to trust to your protection. If you wish for new allies, it will be best for you to go where the story of Saguntum is not known." This answer of ...
— Hannibal - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... of view in which this case seems to merit your most serious attention. The real prosecutor is the master of the greatest empire the world ever saw; the defendant is a defenseless, proscribed exile. I consider this case, therefore, as the first of a long series of conflicts between the greatest power in the world and the only Free Press remaining in Europe. Gentlemen, this distinction of ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... naturally fell to the admirably organized Church to keep order, when it could, by threats or persuasion; to see that sworn contracts were kept, that the wills of the dead were administered, and marriage obligations observed. It took the defenseless widow and orphan under its protection and dispensed charity; it promoted education at a time when few laymen, however rich and noble, pretended even to read. These conditions serve to explain why the Church was finally able greatly to extend the powers ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson

... a matter of course, the indifference of the others as to what befell the defenseless prisoner. The next Indian who advanced upon him with drawn knife would not be so likely to find himself disputed by another, anxious to perform the same job. It seemed certain that no one would interfere in the interests of ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne

... my own prudence and your sleepy head for having escaped with my life. I tell you candidly, that I threw the powder out of your pan while you were asleep. If I served you as you deserve, I should now put my bullet into you; but I can not kill a man who is defenseless—and that saves your life; but set off as fast as you can away from me, for if you follow me I will show no more forbearance. Away with you directly," continued Edward, raising his gun to his shoulder and pointing it at Corbould; "if you do not ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat

... rigid society really is; but I should have thought that even you would have thought it wrong for your brother to come here so often in your mother's absence and bring his friend with him; it is taking advantage of two defenseless girls to intrude himself and Mr. Erle on us in ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... suspicion of the truth reached me that since I came to live with him my uncle had been bitting and breaking his tongue. It occurred to me that Bill Seaver, whom I secretly despised, had spoilt him and that I had done wrong in leaving him all the afternoon defenseless in bad company. ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller

... was speedily provided with another interest which engrossed him to the exclusion of further efforts to bait a victim defenseless against ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance

... feeling the need of a little more sunlight perhaps, or of pin-money and elbow-room, sailed away and conquered for themselves two entire continents, as well as a good part of a third. I have also heard that the inhabitants of this island, not content with killing and enslaving so many defenseless fellow-creatures, or with picking up any lesser island, cape, or bay that happened to suit their fancy, took it upon themselves to govern several hundred million unwilling individuals of all colors and religions in other parts of the world. And, having thus procured both sunlight and elbow-room, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... spoken more of theology than we intended; and we need not say how much the monstrous inequalities attributed to the combatants affect our estimate of the results of the conflict. The state of man is what it is, because the defenseless Adam and Eve of Milton's imagination yielded to the nearly all-powerful Satan whom he has delineated. Milton has in some sense invented this difficulty; for in the book of Genesis there is no such inequality. The serpent may be subtler ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... for the first time he went to the Baptist Chapel, the illusion was strong upon him that every man, woman, and child in the congregation had discovered his secret. When they all stood up to sing, it seemed that he was naked, defenseless, utterly at their mercy. With every word of their carefully selected hymn they were telling him that they knew all about him. When they began their third verse, they simply roared ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell

... trembled, so violent was the emotion the little seemingly accidental caress caused. A feeling she had never realized in the whole of her life before. Why did he tease her so. Why did he always behave in this maddening manner! and choose moments when she was defenseless and could make no move. Of one thing she was certain, if she should stay on in Russia she must come to some understanding with him if possible, and prevent any more of these ways—absolutely insulting ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn

... have been employed to force all these wretches to make lies a shameful bulwark of their lives. Fualdes was not my enemy, he was only my creditor. If covetousness had misled a man otherwise decent and moderate, if it had armed his hand, I would never, for all that, have raised it against a defenseless old man. If you want a sacrifice, take me; I am ready, but do not mingle my lot with that of this brood. My family, who have always dwelt in the country, and have followed the customs and simple ways of ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various

... not say he would. But he gave her his strong grip and friendly smile. Just then his face did not look hard. He could not tell her why he had held his cousin on the grill so long, that it had been in punishment for what he had done to a defenseless friend of his in the name of love. What he did say suited her perhaps ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine

... in any case I had meant to make a clean breast of it before we parted,"—he hesitated—then looked up frankly—"I would rather you spoke no more of it, Harry! I've made my confession. I admit I nearly struck Leveson for slandering an innocent and defenseless woman,—and I believe you'll forgive me for that. Next, I own that though I am getting into the sere and yellow leaf, I am still conscious of a heart,—and that I feel a regretful yearning at times for the joys I have missed out of my life—and you'll forgive me for that ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli

... harassed, so trampled upon, so plundered by that sordid and licentious class of infringers known in the parlance of the world, with no exaggeration of phrase, as 'pirates.' The spoliation of their incessant guerrilla warfare upon his defenseless rights have, unquestionably, ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.

... the insurgents were far more numerous than they; for the king's party consisted, in great measure, of well-armed and well-disciplined soldiers, while the insurgents were comparatively a helpless and defenseless rabble. ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... as well as brave. They took the part of the weak and the oppressed against the tyrannical and the strong in the rustic contentions that they witnessed; they interposed to help the feeble, to relieve those who were in want, and to protect the defenseless. They hunted wild beasts, they fought against robbers, they rescued and saved the lost. For amusements, they practiced running, wrestling, racing, throwing javelins and spears, and other athletic feats and accomplishments—in every thing excelling all their ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... the upper body: the phallus polarized from the upper centers, and directed towards the great breast center of the woman. Her wakeful fear is terror of the great breast-and-shoulder, upper rage and power of man, which may pierce her defenseless lower self. The terror and the desire are near together—and go with an admiration of the slender, abstracted ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence

... But secretly she was creeping among fears, longing, and guilt. She knew what it was, but she dared not name it. She hated even the sound of the word "sex." When she dreamed of being a woman of the harem, with great white warm limbs, she awoke to shudder, defenseless in the dusk of her room. She prayed to Jesus, always to the Son of God, offering him the terrible power of her adoration, addressing him as the eternal lover, growing passionate, exalted, large, as she contemplated his splendor. Thus she mounted to ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis

... replied Dolores, shuddering slightly at sight of him. The giant was streaked and splashed with blood; for in those moments when he stood defenseless before casting his infernal machine, a dozen cutlases and knives had ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle

... trade which were lying there. He had the two-handled knife, with which he was about to try his skill on a hide that was stretched over the beam of the wooden horse, when Birt glanced up and came hastily to the rescue. Rufe was disposed to further investigate the appliances of the tanyard left defenseless at his mercy, but at last Birt prevailed on him to go home and play with Tennessee, and was glad enough to see his tow-head, with his old hat perched precariously on it, bobbing up and down among the low bushes, as he wended his way along ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)

... practices to withdraw the affections of the people from it; the evident tendency of their arts, and those of their agents to countenance and invigorate opposition; their disregard of solemn treaties and the laws of nations; their war upon our defenseless commerce; their treatment of our ministers of peace, and their demands, amounting to tribute, could not fail to excite in me sentiments corresponding with those my countrymen have so generally expressed in ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing

... indulging in feelings of the deepest malice; and there were about a dozen of them—Frank's old enemies—who determined that he should not go unpunished. But there were others who began to see how cowardly they had acted in attacking a defenseless boy, for the only reason that he was a bad boy, and to fear that they had lost the good-will of Frank and his associates. The village boys, with a few exceptions, were accustomed to look up to Frank as a sort of leader; not that he aspired to the ...
— Frank, the Young Naturalist • Harry Castlemon

... in English: 'You are a coward. You have insulted a defenseless man. You have befouled the face of your king. ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... discouragements, the entire party sank down exhausted upon the snow. The entire party? No! There was one man who never ceased to work. When a fire had been kindled, and nearly every one had given up, this one man, unaided, continued to strive to erect some sort of shelter to protect the defenseless women and children. Planting large pine boughs in the snow, he banked up the snow on either side of them so as to form a wall. Hour after hour, in the darkness and raging storm, he toiled on alone, building the sheltering breastwork which was to ward off death from the party who by this time ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan

... sank that day into the bosom of the prairies, a fearful storm of fire and blood burst upon the defenseless settlers and missionaries. Like the dread cyclone, it came, unheralded, and like that much-to-be-dreaded monster of the prairies, it left desolation and death in its pathway. The Sioux arose against the whites and in their ...
— Among the Sioux - A Story of the Twin Cities and the Two Dakotas • R. J. Creswell

... time not the sign of a woman or a child had been seen. But when order was finally restored and the defenseless warriors were herded together as compactly as possible, the huts surrounding the main buildings were opened, as by magic, and the women poured forth wailing ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Conquest of the Savages • Roger Thompson Finlay

... distends his nostrils—on a sudden toss you the reins and leave you to guard him while he dispatches an errand. If it were a motor car there would be a brake to hold it. If it were a boat, you might throw out an anchor. A butcher's cart would have a metal drag. But here you sit defenseless—tied to the whim of a horse—greased for a runaway. The beast Dobbin turns his head and holds you with his hard eye. There is a convulsive movement along his back, a preface, it may be, to a sudden seizure. A real friend would have loosed the straps that run along the horse's flanks. ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks

... of the Secretary that adequate and regular appropriations be continued for coast-defense works and ordnance. Plans have been practically agreed upon, and there can be no good reason for delaying the execution of them, while the defenseless state of our great seaports furnishes an urgent reason for ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison

... its work baffling and difficult instead of simple and easy, but it had powerful allies in the shape of hunger, cold, fatigue, persecution, deception, and treachery; and opposed to this array nothing but a defenseless and ignorant girl who must some time or other surrender to bodily and mental exhaustion or get caught in one of the thousand traps ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... nation's greatness depends. Moreover no state can build permanently or surely by denying to a half or a third of those governed any voice whatever in the government. If the Negro was ignorant, he was also economically defenseless; and it is neither just nor wise to deny to any man, however humble, any real power for his legal protection. If these principles hold—and we think they are in line with enlightened conceptions of society—the prosperity of the New South was by no means as genuine as it appeared to be, and the ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley

... around the jungle woke to the night. Noxious blooms raised their heads to drink in the deadly moisture; hungry pythons took up their silent vigil at water holes; night prowlers slunk in the gloom to spring on the more defenseless creatures, and over it all the inscrutable jungle kept watch, passing silent judgment on man and beast, in this ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart

... until his successor arrived. When all others fled, he was faithful, and such conduct should never be forgotten. Mr. Morris not only risked his life, but he took a heavy responsibility, and laid himself open to severe attack for having protected defenseless people against the assaults of the mob. But his courageous humanity is something which should ever be remembered, and ought always to be characteristic of the men who represent the United States in foreign countries. ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt

... at him quickly, with that bird-like pertness I discovered later. He was declaring war, himself defenseless, and was not even aware ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs

... world, Jim," Denny had said. "An unimaginably different world. A terrible world, in which you'll be a naked, soft, defenseless thing. I'd hate to bet that we'd live even to reach the termitary. And once inside that—it's odds of seven to one that ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst

... boiling waters, Into everlasting torment. Then the hero, Lemminkainen, Sang the foemen with their broadswords? Sang the heroes with their weapons, Sang the eldest, sang the youngest, Sang the middle-aged, enchanted; Only one he left his senses, He a poor, defenseless shepherd, Old and sightless, halt and wretched, And the old man's name was Nasshut. Spake the miserable shepherd: "Thou hast old and young enchanted, Thou hast banished all our heroes, Why hast ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.

... control any heredity. It can only manifest itself when we let ourselves drift. The tragedy of it is that we have drifted too far sometimes before we learn that we could have directed the course if we had willed. Ignorance is seemingly the most cruel foe we have to encounter, because we are so defenseless, not ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn

... passions. Most often they are only transitory fires: one destroys another, and all are absorbed by the great blaze of the creative spirit. But if the heat of the furnace ceases to fill the soul, then the soul is left defenseless against the passions without which it cannot live: it must have passion, it creates passion: and the passions will devour the soul ...—and then, besides the bitter desire that harrows the flesh, there is the need of tenderness which drives a man who is weary and disillusioned ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland

... out the nests of these dinosaurs, gnawing through the shells of their eggs, and thus destroying the young. The appearance, or evolution, of any egg-destroying animals, whether reptiles or mammals, which could attack this great race at such a defenseless point would be rapidly followed by its extinction. We must accordingly be on the alert for all possible theories of extinction; and these theories themselves will fall under the universal principle of the survival of the fittest ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew

... miserable assent. His half-sister's reproachful eyes distracted him; the mention of her defenseless position before the world touched his sorest feeling. It was almost more than he could stand, He was upon the verge of hysterical breakdown, when her manner ...
— The Net • Rex Beach

... the Chinese fight? "What with, stupid Gretchen?" How can a virtually bankrupt nation like China take up arms, which she doesn't possess, against the mighty nations of Europe? Defenseless, unarmed China is no match for the "civilization" of ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte

... alter, neuter, sterilize, fix. shatter, exhaust, weaken &c. 160. Adj. powerless, impotent, unable, incapable, incompetent; inefficient, ineffective; inept; unfit, unfitted; unqualified, disqualified; unendowed; inapt, unapt; crippled, disabled &c. v.; armless[obs3]. harmless, unarmed, weaponless, defenseless, sine ictu[Lat], unfortified, indefensible, vincible, pregnable, untenable. paralytic, paralyzed; palsied, imbecile; nerveless, sinewless[obs3], marrowless[obs3], pithless[obs3], lustless[obs3]; emasculate, disjointed; out of joint, out of gear; unnerved, unhinged; water-logged, on one's beam ends, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... of commerce between province and province was by water in coasting vessels. These coasting vessels were so defenseless, and the different colonial governments were so ill able to protect them, that those who chose to rob them could do it ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle

... Virginians lured across the Ohio near the mouth of Yellow Creek in 1774. On the Virginia side the murderers made three of the Indians drunk and tomahawked them, and when they had tricked the others into discharging their guns at a mark, and so had them defenseless, they ruthlessly shot them down. Logan's sister, who was the only woman in the party, tried to escape, but a bullet cut short her flight, and she died praying her murderers to have mercy on the babe she held in her arms. They spared it, and ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells

... powerful, reducing force upon her. So he came at length to kiss her, and she was almost betrayed by his insidious kiss. Her open mouth was too helpless and unguarded. He knew this, and his first kiss was very gentle, and soft, and assuring, so assuring. So that her soft, defenseless mouth became assured, even bold, seeking upon his mouth. And he answered her gradually, gradually, his soft kiss sinking in softly, softly, but ever more heavily, more heavily yet, till it was too heavy for her to meet, ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

... what put such a strange fancy into your head? An enemy in my ship! Why, there is not a man on board who would not cut off his right hand rather than harm one hair of your poor, witless, defenseless head! There was not a dry eye on the deck when you and the rest wuz ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield

... justifiable wrath Mr. Freddie would appear and nonchalantly suggest a "few eats for some chaps who'd dropped in" as casually as though Janet were not already on the verge of explosion. Of course she would prepare the lunch, stabbing the bread-saw viciously into the defenseless loaf and muttering dark things as she assembled something she called "old doves" on a big Sheffield platter. Janet couldn't cook at all but she could arrange things as beautifully as her ancestors did—and they had been a race of public park gardeners! There wasn't anything ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke

... communicative about the week's doings in Newbern. He hung a finished sheet of Sam Pickering's pencilled copy on a hook, and casually surveyed the sheet beneath. It was a social item, he saw—the notice of a marriage. Then names amazingly leaped from it to sear his defenseless eyes. Lyman Teaford—Miss Pearl King! He gasped and looked about him. The familiar routine of the office was under way. In his little room beyond he could see Sam Pickering scribbling other items. He constrained himself to read the monstrous slander ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson

... attack the defenseless; he has not been used for it. His ways are established in that; there is no fear. If he should be ranging at any time, he will return at the first call; but if he does not, my Master, let him go. ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost

... their friends had been killed, and secondly that they had suffered under a misapprehension. The settlers, in disregard of advice, were living in scattered situations over a large territory, and they were all in danger, and defenseless, even if New Amsterdam itself could escape. Kieft was heartily cursed by all impartially; he was compelled to make overtures for peace, and a pow-wow was held in Rockaway woods, in the spring of 1643. Terms were agreed upon, and, according to Indian usage, gifts ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne

... can't, or won't, keep out of mischief. Meek-looking fellows some of them are. The owners go to bed at night, and the dogs pretend to go, too; but when the house is quiet and the family asleep, off goes Rover or Fido to worry poor, defenseless creatures that can't defend themselves. Their taste for sheep's blood is like the taste for liquor in men, and the dogs will travel as far to get their fun, as the men will travel for theirs. They've got it in them, and you can't ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders

... I help it? You must not forget that you had just leaped into the lion's den defenseless, because you loved me. Could I deny you then? Until that moment I had been the Princess adamant; in a second's time you swept away every safeguard, every battlement, and I surrendered as only a woman can. But it really sounded shocking, didn't it? ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... of all that probably happened on the occasion? Shall not the assassin appear to rush forth suddenly from his lurking place? Shall not the other appear seized with horror? Shall he not cry out, beg for his life, or fly to save it? Shall I not see the assassin dealing the deadly blow, and the defenseless wretch falling dead at his feet? Shall I not picture vividly in my mind the blood gushing from his wounds, his ghastly face, his groans, and ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser



Words linked to "Defenseless" :   defenselessness, unarmed, unprotected, defencelessly, vulnerable, defenceless, naked, defenselessly



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