"Feeble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the high seats of the four-in-hands and mail coaches, in the victorias, the broughams, the landaus. There was a universal spread of cold viands and a fine disorderly display of champagne baskets which footmen kept handing down out of the coach boots. Corks came out with feeble pops, which the wind drowned. There was an interchange of jests, and the sound of breaking glasses imparted a note of discord to the high-strung gaiety of the scene. Gaga and Clarisse, together with Blanche, were making ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... covered with stucco and held on high the saint's reliquary. The too lachrymose Madonna in terra-cotta, 256, already ushers in the decadence. Portrait busts of Henry II., 227, the vicious Henry III., 253, and of the feeble Charles IX., 252, are also to be noted. Pilon's pupil, Bart. Prieur (d. 1611), is responsible for the monument to the Constable Anne of Montmorency and Madeleine of Savoy, in the recess of a window, and the three ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... and held the lamp down, its feeble rays showing that he was upon a broad stone laid across one of the old mine-shafts, one of those close by the ancient furnace we had discovered on our first visit. On this he now halted for a moment, ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... discord rise From church and cloister dim, When will we cease our feeble cries, And trust the world to Him? 'Tis His the broken heart to bind, To heal the serpent's bite, The judge is He of all mankind, And shall He ...
— War Rhymes • Abner Cosens
... came, flickered like feeble lights, and went out—thoughts of what had happened to her at Lamo; a dull wonder over Meeder Lawson's presence in town when he should have been with the men on the range; speculation as to the whereabouts of the men—why ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... comes on with the night, the trees drip, drip in a feeble melancholy sort of way, the wind has a lugubrious sob in its voice, and it is intensely dark. It is about nine o'clock, when Miss Catheron rises from her place by the sick-bed and goes out of the room. In the corridor she stands a moment, with ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... of Ptah and entered a large vault where a lamp was then gleaming. By the feeble light Herhor saw a man sitting at a table; he was eating. The man wore a coat of ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... have done so, had I been able to bear the fatigue," Grandma Elsie replied, "but at that time I was quite feeble from a severe illness. He did not think me strong enough to visit the stores, but ordered goods sent out to the Oaks for me to select from, which gave me nearly as much enjoyment us I could have found in going to the city in search ...
— Christmas with Grandma Elsie • Martha Finley
... with the geek-speaker in his mouth, "is King Firkked's Spear of State, and here, upon it, is King Firkked's head. Two days ago, Firkked was at peace with the Company, and Firkked was King in Skilk. If he had not dared raise his feeble hand against the might of the Ullr Company, he would still be alive, and his Spear would still be borne behind him. So must all those who rise against ...
— Ullr Uprising • Henry Beam Piper
... of date branches, some wells, and here and there a villager. The huts were so blended with the date-palms, in colour and make, that it was with difficulty our eye could catch sight of them. I am often astonished how these slight, feeble tenements can protect the people from the sun and cold and wind. It is like living in open Desert. When we had continued our course some two hours, the Sheikh of the district came running out after us, demanding the customs-dues, and attempting to stop the slaves for payment. ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... remarking that there was too much Latin in them. The executors seem to have moved for what is called an interim injunction—that is, an injunction until trial of the cause, and, from the report in Ambler, it appears that Lord Apsley (a feeble creature) granted such an injunction, but recommended the executors to permit the publication if, on seeing a copy of the correspondence, they saw no objection to it. In the result the executors gave their consent, and the publication became an authorized one, ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... full of idle heat, Draws bloody humours from my feeble parts, Preserving life by hastening [234] cruel death. My veins are pale; my sinews hard and dry; My joints benumb'd; unless ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part I. • Christopher Marlowe
... his room and into bed unseen, he hoped. Alone with the darkness, he allowed himself the rare relief of tears; and at length fell asleep. He awoke to find his father standing at his bedside. The little man held a feeble dip-candle in his hand, which lit his sallow face in crude black and white. In the doorway, dimly outlined, was the ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... and oh! and oh! in the ruined garden where all lay black and prone, a thread of green creeping, a tiny bud peeping, a breath of spring upon the air. Glad woman, I fell upon my knees, and stretched out trembling hands to where, faint and feeble, yet alive, bloomed once more my flower ...
— The Silver Crown - Another Book of Fables • Laura E. Richards
... of the Pennsylvania delegation, but none of them took an important part in the Convention, not even the aged Benjamin Franklin, President of the State. At the age of eighty-one his powers were failing, and he was so feeble that his colleague Wilson read his speeches for him. His opinions were respected, but they do not seem to have ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand
... a strong monopoly, affect the price of rails in England, Germany, etc. Within the central region wages and interest tend toward uniformity, though, as we have seen, they do not attain it. Across the boundary which separates this center from the outer zone, economic influences act in a more feeble way and are unable to bring rates of wages and interest even to an approximate equality. Western Europe, America, and whatever regions are in very close connection with them, we treat as a society, with the remainder of the world as its environment. This center trades with the environing ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... yourself. Then you took them to a saddler, and got him to make straps for them; that is, if you were rich, and your father let you have a quarter to pay for the job. If not, you put strings through, and tied your skates on. They were always coming off, or getting crosswise of your foot, or feeble-mindedly slumping down on one side of the wood; but it did not matter, if you had a fire on the ice, fed with old barrels and boards and cooper's shavings, and could sit round it with your skates on, and talk ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... salutary restraints of law and prejudice; and the meanest of mankind might, without folly, entertain a hope of being raised by valor and fortune to a rank in the army, in which a single crime would enable him to wrest the sceptre of the world from his feeble and unpopular master. After the murder of Alexander Severus, and the elevation of Maximin, no emperor could think himself safe upon the throne, and every barbarian peasant of the frontier might aspire to that august, but ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... the more he will be stung and stirred into earnestness and energy of effort, if only, side by side with the consciousness of imperfection, there springs triumphant the confidence of success. That will give strength to the feeble knees; that will lift a man buoyant over difficulties; that will fire desire; that will stimulate and solidify effort; that will make the long, monotonous stretches of the road easy, the rough places plain, the crooked things straight. Over all reluctant, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... a much-talked of project among them had been a little picnic party in the woods, and as Clem now proposed to get it up in honor of Cyn's success, the plan was immediately carried out. Mrs. Simonson, with a feeble protest, because Miss Kling was not invited, accompanied them. The "them," of course, consisted of Cyn, Nattie, Clem, Jo, and the newly ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... wise, and shortens the arm of the mighty. To the chapel—to the chapel, Lady Eveline; and instead of vain repining, let us pray to God and the saints to turn away their displeasure, and to save the feeble remnant from the jaws ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... of all was gone; death had no terrors for the lowly since the anointed head was not spared. With the fury of lions the Upland, Smaeland, Finland, East and West Gothland regiments rushed a second time upon the left wing of the enemy, which, already making but feeble resistance to General Horn, was now entirely beaten from the field. Bernard, Duke of Saxe-Weimar, gave to the bereaved Swedes a noble leader in his own person; and the spirit of Gustavus led his victorious squadrons anew. The left wing quickly formed ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... room of the house, set apart as its place of especial social hilarity and sanctity,—the "best room," with its low studded walls, white dimity window-curtains, rag carpet, and polished wood chairs. It is now lit by the dim gleam of a solitary tallow candle, which seems in the gloom to make only a feeble circle of light around itself, leaving all the rest of the ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... tells his own tale in language sufficiently plain and explicit. If any figure him out as a man of feeble frame and low stature, let them change ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... up and listened; for as the preacher ceased he heard the sound of many sobs; and presently a woman, old, gaunt and feeble, staggered out from the church and flung herself face downwards ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... very formidable opposition: but it is by no means improbable that they were effected without much difficulty. The disorders of the Church imperatively called for some strong remedy; and it perhaps occurred to not a few that a distracted presbytery, under the presidency of a feeble old man, was but ill fitted to meet the emergency. They would accordingly propose to strengthen the executive government by providing for the appointment of a more efficient moderator, and by arming ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... was beating against the windows, and a rising wind made itself heard in feeble wails as it turned the dark corners of the Tavern. Presently it was to howl and shriek, and, as the rain ceased, to rattle the window shutters and the ancient, creaking sign that hung out over the porch,—for on the wind tonight came the first ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... move in any way when there, am wheeled from the stairs to the pony-carriage, cannot walk three steps, can hardly stand a moment, and in rising from my chair am sometimes ten minutes, often longer. So you see that I am very, very feeble and infirm. Still I feel sound at heart and clear in head, am quite as cheerful as ever, and, except that I get very much sooner exhausted, enjoy society as much as ever, so you must come if only to ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... 1907, to provide for the holding of elections in the Islands for a Legislative Assembly. The Act limited the voters to "male persons 23 years of age or over," thus again putting up the barriers against women and including them in the list of the disqualified as listed—"insane, feeble-minded, ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... other young Indian maiden, who had not said a word, but had been pitying him from the first moment she saw how feeble and sad he looked, now interfered, and remonstrated with her sister, whose tongue kept up a constant stream of abuse. Taking the old man to her side of the wigwam she seated him on a rug of deerskins and then built up before him a bright fire. Then she quickly brought in venison, cooked it ...
— Algonquin Indian Tales • Egerton R. Young
... and by that ranting mode of thought which the stage develops in some few. He was the leader of a conspiracy which aimed at compassing the deaths of others besides Lincoln. Andrew Johnson, the Vice-President, was to die. So was Seward. That same night one of the conspirators, a gigantic boy of feeble mind, gained entrance to Seward's house and wounded three people, including Seward himself, who was lying already injured in bed and received four or five wounds. Neither he nor the others died. The weak-minded or mad boy, another man, ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... his heart shut up as he saw the long-watched-for two coming down the little path with a third person; with Philip holding up the failing steps of poor Bell Robson, as, loaded with her heavy mourning, and feeble from the illness which had detained her in York ever since the day of her husband's execution, she came faltering back to her desolate home. Sylvia was also occupied in attending to her mother; one or twice, when they paused a ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... produced a state of deadlock, in which two exactly equal parties were balanced, and a stable Government impossible. When that point was reached, men began to observe the strong and supple Constitution of the adjacent United States, and to recognize that a politically feeble Canada was courting an absorption from that quarter which all Canadians disliked. The Legislative Union was dissolved by the mutual consent of the Provinces with the approval of the Mother Country, and in 1867, under the British North America Act, the Federal Union was formed which exists in such ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... companion of the suspicious-looking man, who appeared to have followed them for no good purpose. He finally decided not to do so, since it would only alarm Mr. Carroll, and prevent his sleeping off his fatigue, while there would be no advantage gained, since a blind and feeble man could be of little use in repelling the burglar, should the stranger ...
— Try and Trust • Horatio Alger
... are, perhaps, the most puzzling. These are the true Sylvia, the real wood-birds. They are small, very active, but feeble songsters, and, to be seen, must be sought for. In passing through the woods, most persons have a vague consciousness of slight chirping, semi-musical sounds in the trees overhead. In most cases these sounds proceed from the warblers. Throughout the Middle and Eastern States, ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... the fervor of this ideal-bearer cools and fades, and is spent along the length of the roads. He is now no more than a poor black bantam which cannot possibly take wing. His face mournfully awakes to the evening. He shuffles along, bows his long and feeble spine, and his spirit and his strength exhausted, he approaches the porch of his house, where ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... out of which subsequent events and our present struggle have grown." The Dutch believe themselves,—and not without reason,—capable of great things, they were moved by an ambition to seize the power which they believed,—and the retrocession fostered that belief,—was falling from England's feeble and vacillating grasp. "Long before the present trouble" says a Member of the British Parliament well acquainted with South African affairs, "I visited every town in South Africa of any importance, and was brought into close contact with every class ...
— Native Races and the War • Josephine Elizabeth Butler
... that she was virtuous too; Virtue it self's a Dream of so slight force, The very fluttering of Love's Wings destroys it; Ambition, or the meaner hope of Interest, wakes it to nothing; In Men a feeble Beauty shakes the ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... gleam of light some distance off, shining on the rugged walls of a vast chamber or set of chambers. He could only dimly see this, for the light was but feeble, and the bearer hidden behind the rugged pillars which supported the roof; but it was evidently coming nearer, and as it approached he could see that he was in a vast cavernous, flat-ceiled place, which appeared to have been a quarry, ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... he would." There was a twinkle in her eyes and I knew it was useless to dissemble. "Tim and I are different. I never hesitate to use strategy to get my chair, even at the expense of a feeble old man." ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... it—she threatened it several times! [With great determination.] We must get into this room—do you hear me—we must get in if we have to break the door down! [They shake the door. He calls a little louder.] Jinny, Jinny darling—do you hear me? [JINNY makes a sort of feeble effort to lift her head, but fails.] Jinny, for God's sake, answer me! I love you Jinny—Jinny! [Very slowly JINNY lifts her head and, with difficulty, she hears as if in a dream; she is dazed, barely alive.] She ...
— The Girl with the Green Eyes - A Play in Four Acts • Clyde Fitch
... of the hearer might either provoke a smile or start a tear. The gay and thoughtless might, indeed, laugh at the wavering and undecided notes, but to the reflecting mind there was something profoundly pathetic in the feeble tribute to the praise of their Maker, of those whose voices in the ordinary course of nature must soon be silent in ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... I wasn't on the landing a moment before he found out I was there. He turned on me sharply, and I saw the face of an immature young man, a weak nose, a scrubby little moustache, a feeble chin. So for an instant we stood—he looking over his shoulder at me and regarded one another. Then he seemed to remember his high calling. He turned round, drew himself up, projected his face, raised his arms, spread his hands in approved ghost fashion—came towards me. As he did so his little ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... and from that hour, whatever they were, kept them entirely to himself. There could be no doubt that, up to this last moment, he had nourished a feeble hope of regaining Grace in the event of this negotiation turning out a success. Not being aware of the fact that her father could have settled upon her a fortune sufficient to enable both to live in comfort, he deemed it now an absurdity to dream any longer ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... the Jew grew very feeble. He had lasted his fourscore and ten years, and prosperity had attended him through all, and children loved him; but, true to his first and only fondness, his heart was ever across the sea, where gentle Abraham, studiously intent amongst ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... to see Paul, first. A big day for him—because of Ramos. Paul is getting feeble, I ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... valued, because they were neither derived from choice, nor maintained with constancy: a proper pageant of state in a regular monarchy, where his ministers could have conducted all affairs in his name and by his authority; but too feeble in those disorderly times to sway a sceptre, whose weight depended entirely on the firmness and dexterity of the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... day the pianoforte was still a feeble instrument compared with the grand of to-day. Its capacities were but beginning to be appreciated. Beethoven had to seek and invent effects which now are known to every amateur. The instrument which the English manufacturer Broadwood presented to him ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... along with this old Princess's cavalcade, two gentlemen: her son, my Lord Firebrace, and his friend, my Lord Mohun, who both were greeted with a great deal of cordiality by the hospitable Lord of Castlewood. My Lord Firebrace was but a feeble-minded and weak-limbed young nobleman, small in stature and limited in understanding to judge from the talk young Esmond had with him; but the other was a person of a handsome presence, with the bel air, and a bright daring warlike aspect, which, ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... challenged every principle on which the social fabric had been based, and the only refuge in the coming storm in France was the Monarchy. Never had its power been more absolute. The king's will was law—a harbour of safety, indeed, if he were strong and wise and virtuous: a veritable quicksand, if feeble and vicious. And to pilot the state of France in these stormy times, Henry II. left a sickly progeny of four princes, miserable puppets, whose favours were disputed for thirty years by ambitious and ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... servant, who was a sincere Christian, and would not be of any other for any worldly consideration. The king immediately caused this man to be sent for, and bidding Scander depart, he examined the convert as to his reasons for having become a Christian. In reply, he quoted certain feeble jesuitical reasons, declaring his determination to be of no other religion, though the king made him many fair speeches and large offers to return to Mahometism, offering him pensions, and the command of horse. He said he had now only ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... and stared at him. Then he cried again, "Little ram, little ram, scatter money!"—But the ram stood there stock-still and did nothing. Then the man in his anger caught up a piece of wood and struck the ram on the head, but the poor ram only uttered a feeble baa! and ...
— Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales • Anonymous
... have nearly always been kept at arm's-length by the fiction that the 'guide' should control everything, that the seance is a religious rite, that the medium must not be touched nor exposed to the light, and so on, till the scientist was reduced to the feeble rank of an on-looker in the dark, so that no real test was possible. These Italians did not grant any of these traditions. They were scientists, not devotees at a ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... slow fever and the camp disorder, which prevented my being in the skirmish. I had not passed the enemy but a little while before the enemy came up; and if I had been with the regiment at the lines, I was so weak and feeble, I should without doubt have fallen into their hands. I have now left the regiment for a few days, and am with brother Chester, about sixteen miles ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... within these ruins' very shade The singing workmen shape and set and join Their frail new mansion's stuccoed cove and quoin With no apparent sense that years abrade, Though each rent wall their feeble works invade Once shamed all such in power ...
— Poems of the Past and the Present • Thomas Hardy
... in Charge of the Special Schools under the Education Department, cited illustrative cases, one of which may be thus stated: "Two feeble-minded parents in New Zealand have had up to the present time ten degenerate children, all of whom are a lifelong burden on the State. Taking the case of these children, and assessing the cost to the State of maintaining ...
— Venereal Diseases in New Zealand (1922) • Committee Of The Board Of Health
... our lands, so that our children, and our children's children, whose lands are being taken possession of by foreigners, may receive what is just and fair for the loss of their lands. I am old and feeble. I am the only surviving Chief of those who spoke to Lord Selkirk. I pray the great Mother, whose medal I have, to feel for ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... for the last six hours—the oppressive sense of an uninhabited world. When he raised his head a gleam of light, illusory as it often happens in dense darkness, swam before his eyes. While he peered, the sound of feeble knocking was repeated— and suddenly he felt rather than saw the existence of a massive obstacle in his path. What was it? The spur of a hill? Or was it a house! Yes. It was a house right close, as though it had risen from the ground or had ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... supply of water and salts is given both processes are possible; the intensity of carbon-assimilation determines which of the two is manifested. A diminution in the production of organic substances, particularly of carbohydrates, induces vegetative growth. This can be effected by culture in feeble light or in light deprived of the yellow-red rays: on the other hand, flower-production follows an increase in light-intensity. These results are essentially in agreement with well-known observations on cultivated plants, according to which, ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... There was no party spirit—no unity of interests. A few, who were mischievously inclined, marched off to the College of Surgeons in a pretentious file; but even before they reached their destination the feeble inspiration had died out in many, and their numbers were sadly thinned. Some followed strange gods in the direction of Drummond Street, and others slunk back to meek good-boyism at the feet of the Professors. The same is visible in better things. As you send ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... crept out of the hold. Every movement of their own affrighted them, though they knew a drunken stupor rested on some of the ship's company. One after another the three fugitives finally slipped into the water. Heraklas bore up Timokles, who swam but weakly. The third Christian was feeble, but he made headway, and in slow fashion they came at length ...
— Out of the Triangle • Mary E. Bamford
... moment the whole power of administration had been restored to the Mikado. Unfortunately for himself and for the country, Go-Daigo was too feeble of character to avail himself of this great opportunity. He revived the dead shogunate by appointing his own son shogun; he weakly ignored the services of those whose loyalty and courage had restored him; and he foolishly strengthened [271] the hands of those whom he had every reason ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... high; where the snow underfoot is unbroken; where under snow-filled skies a wind studded with needle-sharp ice crystals blows a perfect gale; where the lonely and frozen desolation is peopled only by the haunting shape of fear that next morning a wan and feeble sun may find you staggering still blindly on, hopelessly lost, or fallen beside a drift where the winter's snows must melt ...
— The Boy With the U.S. Census • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... anything much," Peaceful opined optimistically. "They can't do anything but steal berries, and they're most gone, anyhow. Go ask him what he wants, down there." The last sentence was but feeble sort of fiction that his boys would await his commands; as a matter of fact, they were outside before ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... for so feeble a nature; we answer that such is his actual condition. This is a plain matter of fact which cannot be denied. The various principles of his constitution, and his position in relation to the external world, ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... true that they injured none but themselves! Would there were no generations yet unborn to suffer by inheriting feeble constitutions, or actual disease, from ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... queen, with lofty mien, Prepared some lovely pies. The feeble knave side-glances gave At them with longing eyes. The cruel king, with mocking fling, Said: "Do, now, have some pie!" The qualmish knave, no longer brave, Could only ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... looked the embodiment of dejection, when at last, followed by Jimmy, she entered his room. He was sitting in an easy-chair, leaning forward with his hands to his head. All his usual exuberance appeared to have left him; he looked quite old and feeble. Seeing Jimmy, he scowled fiercely, making no attempt to rise ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb
... just in time, Philip," Francois said, with a feeble laugh, "another step and I should have been down. I am weaker than I thought I was, and the fresh air is well-nigh ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... arms, Goll was never without having a hundred men in his household, every one of them able to get the better of yourself." "And is it to them you belong, crooked-speaking, bare-headed Conan?" said Cairell. "It is to them I belong, you black, feeble, nail-scratching, rough-skinned Cairell; and I will make you know it was Finn was ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... night was feeble in comparison with the violent joy of the next morning. Denry was wandering, apparently aimless, between the finish of the tobogganing track and the portals of the Metropole. The snowfall had repaired the defects ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... not lightly. No; my sleep was heavy and full of troubled dreams. I have a sort of half belief that the role we play in these dream-scenes wears the body as much as if we enacted it in reality. I have often awaked from such visions feeble from fatigue. If such be the fact, during that night upon the prairie I went through the toils of the ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... my wife. The only woman who has the right to bear my name is one whom I married when I was a young colonial official. She was a rather eccentric woman, of feeble mentality and incredibly subject to impulses that amounted to monomania. We had two children, twins, whom she worshipped and in whose company she would no doubt have recovered her mental balance and moral health, when, by a stupid accident—a passing carriage—they ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... found in Parisian salons. It was sustained and invigorated by the passion for freedom and for justice asserting itself against the despotism and abuses of government and against the oppressions and abuses of the Church. The opposing forces were feeble, incompetent, disorganised. The methods of government were, in truth, indefensible; religion had surrendered dogma, and lost the austerity of morals; within the citadel of the Church were many professed and many secret ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... Modesty's my forte, And Pride my feeble:[741]—let us ramble on. I meant to make this poem very short, But now I can't tell where it may not run.[no] No doubt, if I had wished to pay my court To critics, or to hail the setting sun Of Tyranny ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... waned away; the autumn tints were already on the trees, and the light of the September afternoon was growing feeble and uncertain, as a dainty little figure scrambled out of the low carriage that had drawn up before the neatest and most ideal of English cottage homes. Lady Eleanor More stood at the garden wicket to receive her friend, and behind her in the doorway was to ...
— A Child of the Glens - or, Elsie's Fortune • Edward Newenham Hoare
... relaxed his iron grip, and then came torrents of rain. The frost returned when the rain ceased, and taking the wet earth into his gaunt hands turned everything into dirty sheet ice. In Wilhelmine's yellow room at the Jaegerhaus the blue stove radiated a pleasant warmth, and, if a feeble sunray struggled through the gloomy, leaden sky, the yellow hangings caught it like a lover, and seemed to treasure it, filling the whole room with a hint of spring sunshine. In the castle the Duchess sat in her sombre apartments which she had made as dull, as dreary, as charmless as herself. ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... different; we are only educating these countries up to self-government; it is all in the interest of morality that we protect them; as soon as they wish to go we will give them our blessing—in short, we have got a conscience, because the national health is feeble and nervous. You look out, or you will get into the same condition. You will begin to ask whether it is right to shoot pretty little birds in order to eat them; you will become a vegetarian; and you will ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... this, the distribution of forest land, of desert, and of water, is such as to reduce the possible influence of the woods to a low expression; for the forests are, in large proportion, situated in cold or temperate climates, where the action of the sun is comparatively feeble both in elevating temperature and in promoting evaporation; while, in the torrid zone, the desert and the sea—the latter of which always presents an evaporable surface—enormously preponderate. It is, upon the whole, not probable that so small ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... occurred to him that the Little Woman was unreasonable to expect it of him. Her idea of getting him out of town for a time, as the judge had advised, was to send him up to San Francisco to be close-herded there. Casey had promised to go, but now the prospect jarred. He wasn't feeble-minded, that he knew of; it seemed natural to want to do his own deciding now and then. When he got back home in the morning, Casey meant to have a serious talk with the Little Woman, and get right down to cases, and tell her that he was built for the desert, and that you can't teach an ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... see Thy Words and Actions did not well agree? Canst thou dissemble well? didst cry and melt, As if the pain you but express'd, you felt? Didst kneel, and swear, and urge thy Quality, Heightning it too with some Disgrace on me? And didst thou too assail her feeble side? For the best bait to Woman is her Pride; Which some mis-call her Guard: Didst thou present her with the set of Jewels? For Women naturally are more inclin'd To Avarice, than Men: pray tell me, Friend. —Vile Woman! did she ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... foreseeing the issue, and feeling that one so guilty should not be left till the last moment, had sent the good priest. The latter, although he had objected that the Conciergerie had its own two chaplains, and added that he was too feeble to undertake such a task, being unable even to see another man bled without feeling ill, accepted the painful mission, the president having so strongly urged it, on the ground that in this case he needed a man who could be entirely trusted. The president, in fact, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... either; the rest of the crew were equally desperate. What heed would these nomads pay to Jack Chapin's commands, once they learned the truth? They were Arabs who owed allegiance to no one but themselves, the country was wild, the law was feeble, it was twenty miles to the railroad! And, besides, the thought of confession was abhorrent. Physical injury, no matter how severe, was infinitely preferable to Helen Blake's disdain. He cast about desperately for some saving loophole, ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... it is true, in the height of his power; but, at his uprising, the air is filled with harmonious sounds, the insect tribes are on the wing, and unite their feeble voice in the ...
— The Little Quaker - or, the Triumph of Virtue. A Tale for the Instruction of Youth • Susan Moodie
... of course, appealed to her strongly. Sometimes she pleased herself by fancying that the doctor had discovered that one of her lungs was quite gone and the other a mere fragment, and feared to tell her. On such days her voice was feeble but breathed the same sweet patience that her face wore. Again, it was her heart "outwearing its sheath," as she put it. Always, however, she felt herself an interesting and picturesque invalid, ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... was rapid. No opposition was experienced by the way, until the column arrived within a few hours' march of Candahar; and then the enemy's attack was feeble, and easily repulsed. On the 9th of January, General Stewart ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty
... written by himself. By that time he was too feeble to be able to write, and of course it was only a few months before his death. This letter was written in response to one from Anna Swanwick. To me, I must frankly own, it breathes of the past tragedy, of those doubts and fears ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... realities of actual life! What are the most brilliant fancies of a child or of a mere ignorant "romancer," compared to the amazing visions of the Arctic regions or the high Alps, which we have seen? "Fictions" and "extravagance"! All our wildest sallies are but intravagance and feeble fancy compared with the sublimity of fact. No doubt there are men and women gifted with the power of burlesquing reality, and thus, not going beyond its limits, but causing much dust and confusion within ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... courtiers who were afraid to look above his shoe-tie. His public character has been scrutinized by men free from the hopes and fears of Boileau and Moliere. In the grave, the most majestic of princes is only five feet eight. In history, the hero and the politician dwindles into a vain and feeble tyrant.—the slave of priests and women,—little in war, little in government,—little in every thing but the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 561, August 11, 1832 • Various
... his country. If it ever occurred to him in his secret soul that at the period of his preeminence he had done anything to arrest that prosperity, he gave no sign. He loved rather to remember and sometimes to recall to others the part he had taken in the nurture of the young republic in the feeble days of its infancy. Of his own administration and the events of that time he had much less to say than of the true interpretation of the Constitution, of the intent of its framers, and the circumstances that influenced their deliberations. His voluminous ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... risks of life or honour are too great for a woman to run. It is only when the latter, tired of the shams of life, would pursue the realities, that we become alive to the fact—hitherto, I suppose, studiously concealed from us— how frail and feeble a ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... him were but convertible terms." He made the throne the first in Europe, even while he who sat upon it was personally contemptible. He gave lustre to the monarchy, while he himself was an unarmed priest. It was a splendid fiction to make the King nominally so powerful, while really he was so feeble. But royalty was not a fiction under his successor. How respectable did Richelieu make the monarchy! What a deep foundation did he lay for royalty under Louis XIV.! What a magnificent inheritance ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... feather to the abounding evidences of the Christian faith, or grave it a line deeper on the heart of a true believer; but it may close the lips of the ribald, it may repress the vanity of her who, forgetting what Christianity has done for woman, aims her feeble shafts against its humblest professor, to know that such a man as Tazewell, whose whole life was spent in the science of proofs and probabilities, must henceforth be ranked with Milton and Newton—the prince of song and the prince of philosophy, and with our own Pendleton and Wythe—those serene ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... are by no means to be despised, but we recognise that they are very feeble, for the reason that democracy always eludes them. By the care it takes to exclude efficiency, it has made the Chamber of Deputies (with some few exceptions) a body resembling itself with absolute fidelity both in respect ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... pleasure, what have they sung who have celebrated thy praise? They have called thee transitory, O thou who dost create! And they have said that thy passing beams have illumined their fugitive life. Words that are as feeble as the dying breath! Words of a sensual brute who is astonished that he should live for an hour, and who mistakes the rays of the eternal lamp for the spark which ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... of a feeble understanding. It reveals a pusillanimous reasoner, who suffers himself to be alarmed by consequences; a superstitious creature, who thinks he is honouring God by the fetters which he imposes on his reason; a kind of unbeliever who is afraid of unmasking himself to himself. For if truth ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... of a wall, trying to analyse that enormous mass of sound which fills his ears and brain, and flows through his heart like maddening wine. He can bear the sight of the dead grass on the cliff-edge, weary, feeble, expostulating with its old tormentor the gale; then the fierce screams of the blasts as they rush up across the layers of rock below, like hounds leaping up at their prey; and far beneath, the horrible confused battle-roar of that great leaguer of waves. He cannot see them, as he strains ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... eyes, following the direction of his, rested on that heap of ashes. It struck me that it was very large. I took the tongs, and as soon as I stirred the cinders, I felt the metal underneath, a mass of gold and silver coins, receipts taken during his illness, doubtless, after he grew too feeble to lock the money up, and could trust no one to take it to the bank ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac
... those who do not know him intimately. It is not because he has been without ambition. On the contrary he has longed to soar like the eagle but he has the wings of the sparrow and whatever exertion he has made has ended in a feeble ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... turn their backs upon this cold, inhospitable New York and set up their household gods in the "City of Brotherly Love." The city of Penn, he added, was the place for one of his calling—laughing as he spoke, at the feeble pun—but there was new hope and life in the laugh. In Penn's city, even if disappointments should come they would be able to bear them, for how should human beings suffer in ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... The other contestants essayed feeble grins, but it was easy to see that their pies no longer tasted good to them. More and more slowly they ate, while Jimmy kept placidly on, his original gait hardly slackened. He finished the third pie and started nonchalantly on a fourth. At sight of this, and his confident bearing, ...
— The Radio Boys Trailing a Voice - or, Solving a Wireless Mystery • Allen Chapman
... of this truth cannot be over-estimated. For so long as we refuse to recognize it, so long as we attempt to stop the present evils of monopoly by trying to add a feeble one to the number of competing units, or by trying to legislate against special monopolies, we are only building a temporary dam to shut out a flood which can only be controlled at the ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker
... lighthouse system. This coast, extending to about two thousand miles in circuit, is, perhaps, the most dangerous of any in Europe. Previous to the erection of efficient lighthouses, it was frequently strewed with wrecks, and proved how inadequate to the protection of the mariner were the few feeble lights which were then under the controul of private or local trusts. Accordingly, in the year 1786, the Commissioners of Northern Lighthouses were, by Act of Parliament, erected into a board, consisting of his Majesty's ...
— Smeaton and Lighthouses - A Popular Biography, with an Historical Introduction and Sequel • John Smeaton
... And half volatilised the spirit The antagony of matter And of spirit is, by thinking, Blended into higher union. Thus soars my creative genius Far on high, while I am drinking. And when through my brain are rushing Revelations from the wine-fumes, And when then my feeble body Tottering sinks down by the wine-tun, 'Tis the triumph of the spirit, 'Tis the act of self-deliverance From the narrow bounds of being. Thus my solitude doth teach me Nature's everlasting system. With mankind it would be better, Had the great Germanic race but Understood their high ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... you; for this scandal grows greater every day, not only through the thing that was done to the Sienese ambassador, but also through the other things which are seen day by day, which are enough to provoke to wrath the feeble hearts of men. You do not need this person now, but someone who shall be a means of peace, and not of war. Although he may act with a good zeal for justice, there are many who do so with such disorder and such ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... on that little line. He doesn't want to do that. He goes to the other boat, and makes a feeble experiment of hoisting and lowering, by means of both davits, the man to sit in the yawl. "I couldn't do it!" ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern
... at the moment appeared to be its permanent domination in national affairs. As Garrison had apprehended, the performance of the North fell far short of its protestations when the crisis came. It swallowed all its brave words, and collapsed into feeble and disheartened submission to its jubilant and hitherto invincible antagonist. The whole North except the small and irrepressible band of Garrisonian Abolitionists were cast down by the revulsive wave of ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... extra effort seemed to have supplied all that was necessary, and as the men saw that they were beginning to draw a little away from the falling water they burst out simultaneously with a hearty hurrah, one that seemed to give fresh energy to the rowers. But it sounded feeble, hushed, and smothered as it were by the increasing roar of the falling water, ever growing into ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... an Alleluia Chorus. I have borrowed words from the Angel Song at the opening of "Faust" for my score. But the music has an expression of its own, and the words are feeble; and the only comfort is, that these words will be lost in the triumph strain of the tones that ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... the Editor thinks it needful to give warning: namely, that he is animated with a true though perhaps a feeble attachment to the Institutions of our Ancestors; and minded to defend these, according to ability, at all hazards; nay, it was partly with a view to such defence that he engaged in this undertaking. To stem, or if that be impossible, profitably ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... chamber, whither he had been secretly conducted early in the morning, to the end that his great age might not be seen of the people to work on their compassion. But, notwithstanding the forethought of this device, when he came in, his white hair and his saintly look and his feeble, tottering steps softened every heart. Even the very legate of Antichrist, the Archbishop himself, my grandfather said, was evidently moved, and for a season looked at the poor infirm old man as he would have spared him, ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... most terrific that besieges dreams, viz—the horrid inoculation upon each other of incompatible natures. This horror has always been secretly felt by man; it was felt even under pagan forms of religion, which offered a very feeble, and also a very limited gamut for giving expression to the human capacities of sublimity or of horror. We read it in the fearful composition of the sphinx. The dragon, again, is the snake inoculated upon the scorpion. The ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... Figures in their Time and Country: one of whom tells the Story of all Three. This was Nizam ul Mulk, Vizier to Alp Arslan the Son, and Malik Shah the Grandson, of Toghrul Beg the Tartar, who had wrested Persia from the feeble Successor of Mahmud the Great, and founded that Seljukian Dynasty which finally roused Europe into the Crusades. This Nizam ul Mulk, in his Wasiyat—or Testament—which he wrote and left as a Memorial for future Statesmen—relates the following, as quoted in the Calcutta Review, No. 59, ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam • Omar Khayyam
... house was full - It was the constant practice of governor Bernard and his adherents, to represent the opposition of the house to the pernicious designs of the enemies of the colonies, which generally consisted of full three quarters of the members and sometimes more, as the feeble efforts of ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... freshet would rudely tear them. Insect life did not abundantly manifest itself, for the day was sunless; but now and again, with crisp rattle of his gauze wings, a dragon-fly flashed along the river. Through these scenes the Teign rolled drowsily and with feeble pulses. Upon one bank rose the confines of Whiddon; on the other, abrupt and interspersed with gulleys of shattered shale, ascended huge slopes whereon a whole summer of sunshine had scorched the heather to dry death. But fading purple still gleamed here and there in points and splashes, ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... that round her whole form swam a delicious, invisible sphere, a distillation that her veriest self sent forth, as gardenias do their perfume, moving where she moved and staying where she stayed, and compared with which wine was a feeble vapor for a man to get ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... arrival here, I have been informed of the honor conferred on me by Congress, in being appointed Secretary to the Commissioners at the Court of France, an honor which greatly overpays the feeble efforts of my zeal, and is more than I could expect, considering the well founded pretensions of ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... expert no better than the duffer. The fish will take, or they won't. If they won't, nobody can catch them; if they will, nobody can miss them. It is as simple as trolling a minnow from a boat in Loch Leven, probably the lowest possible form of angling. My ambition is as great as my skill is feeble; to capture big trout with the dry fly in the Test, that would content me, and nothing under that. But I can't see the natural fly on the water; I cannot see ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... armour. In front of them lay the path which sloped, for a hundred yards or more, to the first corner. Below them, on the right, the path again appeared at the point where it jutted out for some half-dozen yards in its zigzag course, and there Fanfulla caught the gleam of steel, reflecting the feeble moonlight. He drew Ferrabraccio's attention to it, and that stout warrior at once gave the word to ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... days of chivalry, though completely modernized. The glowing conversation of the poet had more echo in her mind than in her heart. She thought it fine to be his providence. How sweet the thought of supporting by her white and feeble hand this colossus,—whose feet of clay she did not choose to see; of giving life where life was needed; of being secretly the creator of a career; of helping a man of genius to struggle with fate and master it. Ah! to embroider his scarf for the tournament! to procure ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... name the book which now stood open in my hand, and whose very prints, feeble expounders of its wondrous lines, had produced within me emotions strange and novel? Scarcely, for it was a book which has exerted over the minds of Englishmen an influence certainly greater than any other of modern times, which has been in most people's hands, and with the contents of which even ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... beautiful tradition concerning him, that in his old age, when he was too feeble to walk to the church or to preach, he was carried thither, and said again and again,—"Little children, love one another." Some said, "Master, why dost thou always say this?" He replied, "It is the Lord's command, and if this alone is done, it is ...
— A Life of St. John for the Young • George Ludington Weed
... If the heart and the digestive system be disproportionately strong, they will overload and oppress the other organs, one of which will soon give way; and, as the strength of the human body, like that of a chain, is to be measured by its weaker link, one disproportionately feeble organ endangers or destroys the whole. The second requisite is freedom from exposure to the various casualties, indiscretions, and other causes of disease to which illness and early ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... so low and feeble that only she could hear him. Mrs. Blake did not move as Audrey entered; her eyes were fixed on her boy's face. They seemed the only living things about her. From time to time, even in his awful suffering, he had struggled to say a word to her, but she had scarcely answered him, ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... following story as a specimen, and take it in particular as being quoted quite seriously by certain anti-Napoleonic writers in the endeavour to bolster up a feeble case. Prejudice and distorted vision prevented them from seeing the absurdity of such attempts to blacken the character of ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... Marryat's Pirate anyhow; it is written in sand with a salt-spoon: arid, feeble, vain, tottering production. But then we're not always all there. He was all somewhere else that trip. It's damnable, Henley. I don't go much on The Sea Cook; but, Lord, it's a little fruitier than the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... dear Aylmer," said she, with a feeble attempt at a smile, "have you any recollection of a dream last ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... imprisonment at Milan in the year 1512, he composed a "Dialogo d'Amore" to send to his sorrowing wife at Ischia, a production which the learned Paolo Giovio, the historian and bishop of Nocera, pronounced as being "summae jucunditatis," though in reality it seems to have been feeble enough. But however halting and commonplace the warrior's verses, Pescara's composition had the immediate effect of opening the flood-gates of his wife's poetic temperament, for she replied at once to her spouse's effort with an ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... jewels in the dark are soonest spied). 240 Unto her was he led, or rather drawn, By those white limbs which sparkled through the lawn. The nearer that he came, the more she fled, And, seeking refuge, slipt into her bed; Whereon Leander sitting, thus began, Through numbing cold, all feeble, faint, and wan. "If not for love, yet, love, for pity-sake, Me in thy bed and maiden bosom take; At least vouchsafe these arms some little room, Who, hoping to embrace thee, cheerly swoom: 250 This head was beat with many a churlish billow, And therefore let it rest upon ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... was conducted to the divan, where Ilderim and Ben-Hur received him standing. A loose black gown covered his person; his step was feeble, and his whole movement slow and cautious, apparently dependent upon a long staff and the arm of ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... ever yet done so.' Accordingly, overcome with this desire, he put his hand into her bosom and holding it there awhile, himseemed he felt her heart beat somewhat. Thereupon, putting aside all fear, he sought more diligently and found that she was certainly not dead, scant and feeble as he deemed the life [that lingered in her;] wherefore, with the help of his servant, he brought her forth of the tomb, as softliest he might, and setting her before him on his horse, carried her privily ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio |
