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Stamina   Listen
noun
Stamina  n. pl.  
1.
The fixed, firm part of a body, which supports it or gives it strength and solidity; as, the bones are the stamina of animal bodies; the ligneous parts of trees are the stamina which constitute their strength.
2.
Whatever constitutes the principal strength or support of anything; backbone; vigor; as, the stamina of a constitution or of life; the stamina of a State. "He succeeded to great captains who had sapped the whole stamina and resistance of the contest."
3.
Hence: The power of endurance; the ability to withstand fatigue, disease, deprivation, etc., and continue working.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Stamina" Quotes from Famous Books



... between dawning adolescence and full maturity when the pleasures and emotions of art will have to satisfy cravings which, if starved or insulted, may become morbid and seek disgraceful satisfactions, and, if prematurely gratified otherwise than poetically, may destroy the stamina of the race. And it must be borne in mind that the most dangerous art for this necessary purpose is the art that presents itself as religious ecstasy. Young people are ripe for love long before they are ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw

... foppery was never cured; it was the bad stamina of the mind, which, like those of the body, were never rectified: once a coxcomb, and always ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell

... "Wonderful stamina some of these men have," Mr. Goodenough said. "That man has come forty-five miles at full speed, and is now going off again as fresh as when ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty

... strictly to his purpose. He limited himself to so much beer and wine, and never exceeded. He became proud of his firmness, forgetting that there had been nothing to test the stamina of his resolution. ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson

... name may smell as sweet, yet it is clear that with regard to every thing coming from the pen, whether folio or billet doux, imaginative poem, or matter-of-fact note of hand, there is a vast deal in this important item, which is often the very life and stamina of the whole production. Then again, the subject of extreme want is one of general interest, while the allusion to the unpublished poem must always prove an especial attraction to the curious. Such were the intrinsic merits ...
— The Lumley Autograph • Susan Fenimore Cooper

... over himself had been the secret of much of his great success on the baseball field, when the whole game hinged on a single ball which he had to deliver to a heavy batter. And that batter usually struck out when the pinch came, for he proved to have less stamina than the ...
— Motor Boat Boys Mississippi Cruise - or, The Dash for Dixie • Louis Arundel

... religious and charitable purposes, will wonder how a frame naturally weak should so long have endured the wear of such exertion. In 1788, when his illness was a matter of deep concern to the Abolitionists, Dr. Warren said that he had not stamina to last a fortnight. No doubt his bodily powers were greatly aided by the placid and happy frame of mind which he habitually enjoyed; but it is important to relate his own opinion, as delivered by an ear-witness, on the physical benefits which he derived from a strict abstinence ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various

... grizzled moustache, and blinked the sunken eyes. "She has lost nerve," he went on, "lost nerve entirely. I shall suggest that she be dismissed. Her sudden failures of stamina are most embarrassing at ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen

... the subject, which, probably, was not known to Wirt. Patrick Henry is said to have told his eldest grandson, Colonel Patrick Henry Fontaine, that he was instructed by his uncle "not only in the catechism, but in the Greek and Latin classics."[11] It may help us to realize something of the moral stamina entering into the training which the unfledged orator thus got that, as he related, his uncle taught him these maxims of conduct: "To be true and just in all my dealings. To bear no malice nor hatred in my heart. To keep my hands from picking and stealing. Not to covet other ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler

... growth and renovation; and which the distresses and the prosperity of the country equally tended to augment, was an admirable substitute for a prerogative, that, being only the offspring of antiquated prejudices, had moulded in its original stamina irresistible principles of decay and dissolution. The ignorance of the people is a bottom but for a temporary system; the interest of active men in the state is a foundation perpetual and infallible. However, some circumstances, arising, it must be confessed, in a great degree from ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... soon becomes a disease very fatal to happiness and positively injurious to health. It is well known how in an epidemic the panic-stricken are most liable to the contagion, and the life of the habitual valetudinarian tends promptly to depress the nerve energy which provides the true stamina of health. In the words of an eminent physician, 'It is not by being anxious in an inordinate or unduly fussy fashion that men can hope to live long and well. The best way to live well is to work well. ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... probably had a village somewhere over the rise. He regarded them without fear or apprehension of what might occur during the sleeping hours. He had read the Primary Report, brought back by the pioneer expedition. These people were entirely harmless. Also they were possessed of remarkable stamina. They had stood for days, watching the first expedition, grinning at it, ...
— The Terrible Answer • Arthur G. Hill

... on the snow. The summer of Labrador has a beauty of its own, far unlike that of more genial climates, but which its inhabitants would not forego for the warm life and lavish luxuriance of tropical landscapes. The dwarf fir-trees throw from the ends of their branches yellow tufts of stamina, like small lamps decorating green pyramids for the festival of spring; and if green grass is in a great measure wanting, its place is supplied by delicate mosses of the most brilliant colors. The truth is, every season and climate has its peculiar beauties and comforts; the footprints ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... of them, and he had had far more than his share of the hard, gruelling fights—the kind that worked the heart and lungs to bursting, that took the elastic out of the arteries and made hard knots of muscle out of Youth's sleek suppleness, that wore out nerve and stamina and made brain and bones weary from excess of effort and endurance overwrought. Yes, he had done better than all of them. There were none of his old fighting partners left. He was the last of the old guard. He had seen them all finished, ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London

... the Keynote What Neglect of Her Forests Has Cost China Forestry Lessons from Japan and Korea Conserving Individual Wealth The Essential Immorality of Waste Avoiding the Wastes of War Preserving Our Physical Stamina and Racial Strength A Lesson from China Patriotism as a Moral Force The Coming "Conflict of Color" ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe

... but I fancy they would expectorate too elaborately to be neighbourly. Fish, however, would not smoke at all.—They are a cowardly and corrupt people, living in water, which is a singular thing to do. Neither would many birds smoke, they have neither the stamina nor the teeth, but I am certain that crows and jackdaws would chew tobacco eagerly and with true relish. A large proportion of the insecta are too light-minded and frivolous to care for smoking. Beetles, however, ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens

... prison. External accident, and not internal taint, had brought them within the grasp of the law, and what had happened to them might happen to most of us. They were essentially men of sound moral stamina, though wearing the prison garb. Then came the largest class, formed of individuals possessing no strong bias, moral or immoral, plastic to the touch of circumstances, which could mould them into ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... Borrowstone, who was by all odds the most impressionable and emotional one in the outfit, a man who always argued the moral side of every question, yet could not be credited with possessing an iota of moral stamina. Gloomy as we were, he added to our depression by relating a pathetic incident which occurred at a child's funeral, ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams

... advancement of the Kingdom of God, then we should eschew the devil's weapons. We should see to it that no victory is won at the cost of men's immortal souls. Besides, we gain no real advantage; I am certain of that. I have been in this war long enough to know that the stamina of our men, the quality of our men, is not made better by this damnable thing. It is all the other way. Our Army is a poorer army because of it, and we have lost more than we have gained by the use of it. That ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking

... some come into the world with the stamina of life so weak, that they live but a few days, or months, or years; and it cannot be clearly known, to what such shortness of life is owing; whether to some defect in the father or the mother, in begetting them; or to the ...
— Discourses on a Sober and Temperate Life • Lewis Cornaro

... lacked was consistency. He could go in and pitch a brilliant game, but he could not often do it two days in succession. In this respect he was not unlike many celebrated young pitchers. Joe was not fully developed yet. He had not attained his full growth, and he had not the stamina and staying power that would come with added years. But he was acquiring experience and practice that would stand him in good stead, and his natural good health, and clean manner of living, were ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick

... the board. These facts often made the composition of these boards somewhat heterogeneous and peculiar. The one which was to register the voters of Horsford consisted of a little old white man, who had not enough of stamina or character to have done or said anything in aid of rebellion, and who, if he had done the very best he knew, ought yet to have been held guiltless of evil accomplished. In his younger days he had been an overseer, but ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee

... properly, which are ever noticeably sick. Then rush them to market as soon as they reach the proper weight. Thus you will save for your own use only those which are physically right, which have the health and stamina that will enable them to stand up under the strain of continuous egg-production. And such a flock, after it has undergone the further culling of a year in the laying pen, will give you breeding birds capable of producing ...
— Pratt's Practical Pointers on the Care of Livestock and Poultry • Pratt Food Co.

... contained in itself a perpetual principle of growth and renovation; and which the distresses and the prosperity of the country equally tend to augment, was an admirable substitute for a prerogative, that, being only the offspring of antiquated prejudices, had moulded into its original stamina irresistible principles of decay and dissolution. The ignorance of the people is a bottom but for a temporary system; the interest of active men in the state is a foundation perpetual ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke

... attired, and he looked like a very effeminate young man—one who possessed neither courage nor stamina. Indeed, from his appearance, a resolute, sturdy man might expect to deal with him as he would with a mere boy. But our hero was one of those who expanded ...
— Oscar the Detective - Or, Dudie Dunne, The Exquisite Detective • Harlan Page Halsey

... reasoned from, and bent to your own convenience, but not to be taken to heart. It amuses you; it interests you; it adds to your stock of facts; it makes life curious and valuable: but if you suffer from it, it is because you have not basis, stamina; and probably you deserve to be slighted. This, however, is true only when people have become somewhat concentrated. Children know nothing of it. They live chiefly from without, not from within. Only gradually as they approach maturity ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... mythology had taken up into itself a portion of the blood outpoured on Calvary. Planted in the conservatory of semi-philosophical yearnings, faintly tinctured with the colours of misapprehended Christianity, without inherent stamina, without the powerful nutrition which the earlier heroic fables had derived from the spiritual vigour of a truly mythopoeic age, the cult of Antinous subsisted as an echo, a reflection, the last serious ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... confidence in your own opinion, Mr. Berkeley," retorted Miss Simpkins, who, be it said, was a girl of much moral stamina, having an aversion to conceited young men, and let no opportunity slip when she could give ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour

... unwilling workers, and consequently unable to support themselves . . . They are often so degraded in intellect as to be incapable of distinguishing their right from their left hand, or of recognising the numbers of their own houses; their bodies are feeble and without stamina, their affections are warped, and they scarcely ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London

... merit except speed. And, of course, the faster the ball comes off the racket the more liable is it to go astray. Another reason why you should temper zeal with discretion is that a vigorous service will tire you out like nothing else, and in a long match stamina should be judiciously preserved. You never know when an extra spurt may not be required to turn the scale in your favour. I have often noticed the difference in length and sting between the service of some players at the beginning of the match and in the third set, and I am sure that ...
— Lawn Tennis for Ladies • Mrs. Lambert Chambers

... let that boy bother his brains about your stupid Ego and Non-Ego?" said he. "Don't you see he is injuring himself, beginning to sink under a sort of mental albumenurea,—at the very time, too, when he has most need of stamina? He does nothing but read, read, read,—and what, forsooth? Not anything that will teach him the genuineness of life and manhood, but those damnable spirit-exalting, body-despising emasculates of Alexandria,—Madame ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various

... the hoof, foot, hand, wing, paddle, both in living and extinct animals, being all constructed on the same framework, and again of the petals, stamina, germens, &c. being metamorphosed leaves, can by the creationist be viewed only as ultimate facts and incapable of explanation; whilst on our theory of descent these facts all necessary follow: for by this theory all the beings of any one class, say of the mammalia, are supposed ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin

... hyacinth, and quite as beautiful, spiked to a point, exhibiting a cone or pyramid of flowers, widely separate on all sides, and all expanded together, principally white, finely tinted with various colours, as red, pink, yellow, and buff, the stamina forming a most elegant fringe amid the modest tints of the large and copious petals. These feathery blossoms, lovely in colours and stately in shape, stood upright on every branch all over the tree, like flowery minarets on innumerable verdant ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 490, Saturday, May 21, 1831 • Various

... Dolores, I'm sure," said Lord James. "She's quite a charming girl,—vivacious and all that, you know. She's taken quite a fancy to you. The mother is one of those silly climbers who never look below the surface. You have twice my moral stamina, but just because I happen to have a title and ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet

... in their beds with a severe attack of measles. Their aunts had been so long unaccustomed to children's ailments, that perhaps they may have exaggerated the danger; still, even the family doctor looked grave and talked about 'Indian constitutions,' 'no stamina,' etc., etc., and the old house that had so lately rung with childish voices and laughter now lay hushed and silent in the ...
— Bulbs and Blossoms • Amy Le Feuvre

... his head just the way Carol does sometimes when he's planning to be pleasant as soon as it's convenient. "Well, I can't help it! Exceptions, of course, are exceptions! But Cuba? A climate all mushy with warmth and sunshine! What possible stamina can a young man have who's grown up on sugar-cane sirup ...
— Fairy Prince and Other Stories • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... occasionally through its officers, experimental farms, etc., tries to get good sire stock for both horses and cattle, but as long as the dams are bad—mere weeds, without blood, bone, muscle, or stamina, the produce must be bad. As a pretty well established and general rule, the ryots look after their bullocks,—they recognise their value, and appreciate their utility, but the cows fare badly, and from all I have myself seen, and from the concurrent testimony of many observant friends in the rural ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis

... the American Merino," Dick was saying; "to give it the developed leg, the strong back, the well-sprung rib, and the stamina. The old-country breed lacked the stamina. It was too much hand-reared ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London

... reason why it should be," was the answer. "It is not liable to give serious trouble to a man of your stamina, ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish

... described by authors, the greater part of which are at present incorporated among the genuine species of Bignonia of Linne; a genus that will hereafter be divided, according to the shape of the calyx, the number of fertile stamina, and more especially the form of the fruit (which in some species is an orbicular or elliptical capsule, varying in others to a long cylindrical figure, with seeds partly cuneated, or thickened ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King

... Flanders." I have no doubt, however, that the cerealia of La Belle Alliance would have been much more nutritive if the top-dressing which the plain received during the three days of June, 1815, had not been robbed of its stamina by London dentists, who carried off the soldiers' teeth in hogsheads; and by Yorkshire bone-grubbers, who freighted several transports with the skeletons of regiments of troopers, as well as troop-horses, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 538 - 17 Mar 1832 • Various

... out!" Madame said, nodding slowly up and down. Her black veil, pushed up, sagged over her brows like a mourning band. "You cannot afford to waste the stamina. And will you keep on the theatre—with ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence

... the head forester not agreeing with her at bottom, notwithstanding his contradictory nature prevented him admitting it frankly; as for Antonie, she was a good-natured little thing, but she lacked the stamina required to end such an intimacy, and her aunt, in consequence, was resolved to end it for her. But at this critical moment something unexpected happened. Willibald stepped forward ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner

... about it, fifteen of them. And behind, guarded by the flames and that somber circle, were the women. There was a uniformity in this gathering. The members were plainly all of the same racial stock, of medium height, stocky yet fined down to the peak of stamina and endurance, their skin brown, their shoulder-length hair black. And they were all young—none over thirty, some still in their late teens. Alike, too, was a certain drawn look in their faces, a tenseness of the eyes and mouth as they ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton

... have volunteered in the war, and although very few of them had ever had an previous military experience, yet their stamina and unconquerable courage were such that the youth of the great Empire, on more than one occasion, when called upon, as on the Somme, to attack as well as defend, swept the famed Prussian guard out of seemingly impregnable positions, ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy

... a Danish Rudin—a nature with a multitude of scattered aspirations, squandering itself in brilliant talk and fantastic yearnings. It is the same coquetting with the "advanced" ideas of the age, the same lack of mental stamina, the same wretched surrender and failure. It is the complexion of a period which the author is here attempting to give, and he takes pains to emphasize its typical character. One is almost tempted to believe that Shakespeare, by a gift of happy ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... know, but doubtless many were crushed to death and many more killed by Joshua's men. I trust, however, that some of them escaped, since, compared to the rest of the Abati, they were as lions are to cats, although, like all their race, they lacked the stamina to fight an ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard

... caused him to come on. Max and his friends were there, and Shack Beggs would sooner die than let them see he lacked the stamina they ...
— Afloat on the Flood • Lawrence J. Leslie

... is not altogether a matter of temperature, although the good old deacon used to say, in his humble, simple way, that his third wife was a very good woman, but her "temperature was very different from that of the other two." The north wind is full of courage, and puts the stamina of endurance into a man, and it probably would into a woman too if there were a series of resolutions passed to that effect. The west wind is hopeful; it has promise and adventure in it, and is, except to Atlantic ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... had the contest been a short one it would have been impossible to say which would have been the victor, but it was prolonged, and the mountaineers had the physical stamina which the men of the valleys lacked, and the longer the fight lasted the greater was the victory of the brave ...
— The Hero of Ticonderoga - or Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys • John de Morgan

... the bath, and in a few minutes returned, having undergone this necessary ablution after a mango feast. His dress was changed, and he offered the appearance of an upright, gentleman-like, hard-featured man, who had apparently gone through a great deal of service without his stamina ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat

... were exuberance and vitality in the very touch of her foot upon the carpet, and there was that cleanliness about her, that freshness, that suggested a recent plunge in the surf and a "constitutional" along the beach. One felt that here was stamina, good physical force, and fine animal vigor. Her arms were large, her wrists were large, and her fingers did not taper. Her hair was of a brown so light as to be almost yellow. In fact, it would be safer to call it yellow ...
— Blix • Frank Norris

... powerful and self-devoted natures may sometimes recover the ground lost by mental degradation or physical misuse, by employing proper means, under the direction of unswerving resolution, yet often things may have gone so far that there is no longer stamina enough to sustain the conflict sufficiently long to perpetuate this life; though what in Eastern parlance is called the "merit" of the effort will help to ameliorate conditions and improve ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various

... to be reluctantly recorded, in fact, that the Protestant saints have not ordinarily had much to boast of, in physical stamina, as compared with the Roman Catholic. They have not got far beyond Plotinus. We do not think it worth while to quote Calvin on this point, for he, as everybody knows, was an invalid for his whole lifetime. But we do take it hard, that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various

... formidine tota Mens rapitur: videor stellantia visere templa Numinis, argenteamque domum, lucisque recessus, Solus ubi in vacuo regnat Pater orbis, et, igne Cinctus inexhausto, devolvit stamina fati, AEquatoque regit ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker

... from her eye as well as the color from her cheek, and all vigor vanishing from her languid soul and body. The resemblance to her mother grew more striking daily. She was a melancholy result of that artificial luxurious life by which the whole nature is so enervated that there seems no stamina left to resist the first cold blast of adversity. Instead of being like a well-rooted hardy native of the soil she seemed a tender exotic that would wither even in the honest sunlight. As a gardener would say, she needed "hardening off." This would require the bracing of principle ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe

... chiefly because he cannot help himself, and partly, perhaps, because he has no other ideal. But it is at best an unlovely and cramping form of existence. Though he can sustain life on a remarkably small wage, he is nearly always hungry, and has so little stamina that he easily succumbs under serious sickness. He wears but little clothing, and his young children none at all. But he suffers much in the rains because he has no change of garments, and in the cold weather because his flimsy dress is no protection; and if he ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin

... said the doctor. 'He has no stamina; he simply offers no resistance to the disease that is carrying him off. You should cheer him up a bit, Mrs. Somers—crying never mended a sick man yet.' For he was the parish doctor, and a ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... natural objects are in more request among foreigners, they pay a stricter attention to the subject that may be required; and we found them indeed such scrupulous copyists, as not only to draw the exact number of the petals, the stamina, and pistilla of a flower, but also the very number of leaves, with the thorns or spots on the foot-stalk that supported it. They will even count the number of scales on a fish, and mark them out in their representations, and it ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow

... old man broke in sharply, cutting in two my self-communings. "You're a fellow of some stamina, if you have got at her secret without making her a promise. So the child is well! That's good! There's one long black mark eliminated from my account. But I have not closed the book, and I am not going to, till my conscience has nothing more to regret. ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green

... didn't suppose you were one of that cad's sycophants, Parker! I fancied you had more stamina than that. Next thing you'll be saying that when his horse won the 'free for all' at Mystic Park it was something more ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish

... were lacking—men whose social and financial position only a few months before seemed impregnable, men who had gone down in ruin, one or two who had perished by their own hand, several whose physical and financial stamina had been shattered at the same terrible moment. Some were ill, some dead, some had resigned, others had been forced to write their resignations—such men as Dysart for example, and James Skelton, now in prison, unable ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers

... Besides opening up a new field of enterprise and good investment for capital, it would give healthy employment to many women and children. Open air employment for the young is of no little consideration to maintain the stamina of the future generation; for it cannot be denied that our factory system and confined cities are prejudicial to the physical ...
— The Art of Perfumery - And Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants • G. W. Septimus Piesse

... death. The land, trees, and cultivation cost so little that one good crop is expected to remunerate for all outlay. If more crops are obtained, there is so much clear gain. Under this slovenly treatment there is, of course, rapid deterioration in the stamina of the peach. Pits and buds are taken from enfeebled trees for the purpose of propagation, and so tendencies to disease are perpetuated and enhanced. Little wonder that, the fatal malady, the "yellows," has blighted so many hopes! I ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe

... short shovels, and they have taken to them all right. These men are not so strong as they seem, and they are not worth nearly so much as English navvies. They may be willing, but they have not the same stamina. The English navvy eats about two pounds of beef for his dinner and washes it down with about two quarts of ale. These men never see meat from one year's end to another. They live on potatoes, and bits of dry bread and water. At three in the afternoon they are not worth much, clean ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... with us, the desire for a wider, manlier field of action, so much as an intense longing to get where care and comforts would arrest their swift progress to the shadowy hereafter. The cruel rains had sapped away their stamina, and they could not recover it with the meager and innutritious diet of coarse meal, and an occasional scrap of salt meat. Quick consumption, bronchitis, pneumonia, low fever and diarrhea seized upon these ready victims for their ravages, and bore them off at the ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... something of that sort, I guess, with a lot of Theosophy thrown in. The Klondike is a good country. I might have been there yet, and become a millionaire, if it hadn't been for Spot. He got on my nerves. I stood him for two years all together, and then I guess my stamina broke. It was the summer of 1899 when I pulled out. I didn't say anything to Steve. I just sneaked. But I fixed it up all right. I wrote Steve a note, and enclosed a package of "rough-on-rats," telling him what to do with it. I was worn down to skin ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London

... in our gardens; the double blue is also not unfrequent; the single white is less common; and the double white Miller never saw, yet admits that it may exist spontaneously, or be produced from seed: Parkinson mentions a white variety with red threads or stamina. ...
— The Botanical Magazine, Vol. I - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis

... fatter, fairer, and altogether handsomer than the nomadic offshoots of that race, and resemble the Esquimaux (to whom they have been compared) in nothing but their rude, filthy manner of life. Von Buch ascribes the difference in stature and physical stamina between them and the Finns to the use of the vapor bath by the latter and the aversion to water of the former. They are a race of Northern gipsies, and it is the restless blood of this class rather than any want of natural capacity which retards their civilisation. Although the whole race has ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor

... degree, given no opportunity to develop her own character, to grow up to life's responsibilities. Her mother had not even told her of her grandparents, being ashamed of them, making Gloria ashamed. Grandparents of whom any one might be justly proud; folk of integrity, of stamina, of fearless hardihood, men and women of that glorious type that builds empires. And Gloria, King sensed, was like them. Deep within her, under the layers of artificiality which her mother had striven so indefatigably and lovingly to lay on, she was like them. He remembered his ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory

... patients who would always rather be "interesting" than normal, it was not the first time that he had watched the bloom being rubbed off love; nine broken engagements and balked romances were born of doltish delay; but a mass of sensibility like Eric Lane had not the stamina to wait nor the placidity to go away ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna

... all stood William T. Coleman. He had taken a prominent part in the old Committee of '51. With him were Clancey Dempster, small and mild of manner, blue-eyed, the last man in the room one would have picked for great stamina and courage, yet playing one of the leading roles in this crisis; the merchant Truett, towering above all the rest; Farwell, direct, uncompromising, inspired with tremendous single-minded earnestness; James Dows, of the rough and ready, humorous, blasphemous, ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White

... and rhetoric in the college of Lisieux. He then went to Paris, and studied under Beau and Batteux; when, applying himself more particularly to the profession of physic, he returned to Caen, in his thirtieth year, and put on the cap of Doctor of medicine; but he wanted either nerves or stamina for the successful exercise of his profession. He had cured a patient, after painful and laborious attention, of a very serious illness; but his patient chose to take liberties too soon with his convalescent state. He was imprudent: ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... and abdominal viscera. These in their turn support and invigorate the nervous system. All exercises which operate more directly upon these internal organs—as, for example, laughing, deep breathing, and running—contribute most effectively to the stamina of the brain and nerves. It is only the popular mania for monstrous arms and shoulders that could have misled the intelligent ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various

... we find these original questions and answers: 'What are the most difficult roots to extract from the ground?' The cube-root. 'What is the pistil of a flower?' It is that instrument with which the flower shoots. 'What is meant by the word stamina?' It means the pluck or courage which enables the flower to shoot.' 'The reversionary interest of a life-crossing, with retail lucifer business attached,' is offered by a street-sweeper near the Bank of England, he having 'prigged ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various

... power.] Strength.— N. strength; power &c. 157; energy &c. 171; vigor, force; main force, physical force, brute force; spring, elasticity, tone, tension, tonicity. stoutness &c. adj.; lustihood[obs3], stamina, nerve, muscle, sinew, thews and sinews, physique; pith, pithiness; virtility, vitality. athletics, athleticism[obs3]; gymnastics, feats of strength. adamant, steel, iron, oak, heart of oak; iron grip; grit, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... the highest nerve tension. Not one was there who had not missed death a dozen times by the merest of escapes. They had for ten or eleven days been engaged in an offensive and what meagre rest had been theirs was woefully insufficient to counteract the heavy demands made upon the stamina. ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq

... huge man—the lion found it out, and the three thousand men whom he slew found it out; yet he was the subject of petty revenges and out-gianted by low passion. I am far from throwing any discredit upon physical stamina. There are those who seem to have great admiration for delicacy and sickliness of constitution. I never could see any glory in weak nerves or sick headache. Whatever effort in our day is made to make the men and women more robust ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage

... square man? And hear what that big gentleman of the other lord's party says. A gentleman of his height and weight has a right to his opinion. He 's dead against Kit Ines: it's fists, not feet, he says, 'll do it to-day; stamina, he says. Benny ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... began for Jan a life so strangely, wildly different from anything he had ever known or suspected to exist, that only a dog of exceptionable fiber and stamina—in character as well as physique—could possibly have survived transition to it from the smooth routines which Jan had ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson

... hitherto been very healthy; but in the beginning of winter I was seized with a severe illness which, though not immediately dangerous, lasted so long, that it was doubtful whether I should have stamina to recover. It was a painful and fatiguing time to my daughters. They were quite worn out with nursing me; our maid was ill, and our man-servant, Luigi Lucchesi, watched me with such devotion that he sat up twenty-four nights with me. He has been with us eighteen years, and now that ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville

... they could have failed to guess it, except that they never would have suspected to look for anything resembling exophthalmic goiter in a person of her stamina," he answered, pronouncing the word slowly. "You have heard of the thyroid ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve

... the Lord be God, serve Him; but if Baal, then serve him." The South may well laugh to scorn the affected moral sensibility of the North against the extension of her slave system. It is nothing, in the present relations of the States, but sentimental hypocrisy. It has no stamina—no back-bone. The argument for non-extension is an argument for the dissolution of the Union. With a glow of moral indignation, I protest against the promise and the pledge, by whomsoever made, that if the Slave Power will seek no more to lengthen its cords and strengthen its stakes, ...
— No Compromise with Slavery - An Address Delivered to the Broadway Tabernacle, New York • William Lloyd Garrison

... hundred yard dash, would not be worth while attempting in this long race. Those contestants who managed to cover the entire distance were bound to be so exhausted when the last mile was reached that they could not be expected to have much stamina left, so as to make a ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman

... canyon or two between them, and William was lame and Casey was too exhausted to walk more than half a mile before he must lie down and own himself whipped. Casey Ryan had never done that for a man, and he did not propose to do it for Nature. He thought that William ought to have enough stamina to make the trip if he were given time enough. And at the last, if William gave out, then Casey would manage somehow to walk the rest of the way. It all depended upon giving William ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower

... to fight on three legs, which he found demoralizing. But still he had the advantage, and it was not until any other dog of Aleck's size would have retreated half killed that the bull-dog's superior courage and stamina began to tell. Quite heedless of his injuries, and the blood that poured into his eyes, he slowly but surely drove the great sheep-dog, who by this time would have been glad to stop, back into an angle of the wall, and then suddenly pinned him ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard

... people are advancing from a literary point of view, but I claim that they are losing out along moral lines. I don't believe that we value morals as well as the people did years ago who didn't know so much. I believe that the whole nation, white and black, is losing moral stamina. They do not think it is bad to kill a man, take another man's wife or rob a bank, or anything else. They desecrate the churches by carrying anything into the church. There is no sacred place now. Carnivals and everything else are carried to ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration

... the stamina of this composite division that, although opposed throughout by five or six times their number of Turks and Turkish irregulars, the latter were unable to overwhelm them. To the Western mind, unacquainted with the mentality ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various

... understand it." Cantwell prided himself on his strength and stamina, therefore the truth was unbelievable. He and Mort had long been partners, they had given and taken much at each other's hands, but this was something altogether different. Grant had saved his life, at risk of his own; the older man's endurance had been the greater and he had ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various

... survey made in 1861 the moral condition of the Indians was rather low and it was a regret that the people of color exhibiting generally more moral stamina should be degraded by living among them. Accounting for this condition of Affairs a contemporary said of the low moral condition of the Fall River Indians in 1861: "The prejudice of color and caste, and the social proscription to which the colored ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various

... "Three great sea-captains, Nelson, Cook, and, it is said, Columbus himself, always paid tribute to Neptune. And, if I am not mistaken," he added, glancing through the port windows, "we shall all have our stamina tested ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy

... the circumnavigation of the globe, going out to Australia by the Cape of Good Hope, and returning by Cape Horn. This, including two years of wandering in the woods and wilds of Australia, evidently gave a new accession of vital stamina to my frame. It is said that the climate of Australia makes young men old, and old men young. I do not believe the first part of the proverb, but I am quite certain that there is a great deal in the second part of it. During those two years I chiefly lived in a tent, and led a quiet, ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade

... famulo summum confessus Apollo 'utere luce tua longamque' ait, 'indue famam, dum tibi me iunctum mors inrevocata veretur. vincimur: immites scis nulla revolvere Parcas stamina; vade, diu populis promissa voluptas Elysiis, certe non perpessure Creontis imperia aut vetito nudus iaciture sepulcro.' ille refert contra, et paulum respirat ab armis: 'olim te, Cirrhaee pater, peritura sedentem ad iuga (quis tantus miseris honor?) axe trementi ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler

... happy feeling, instead of being in a state of physical collapse. That fireplace—those big stones—I was soft, then, a little, anemic, alcoholic degenerate, with the spunk of a rabbit and about one per cent as much stamina, and some of those big stones nearly broke my back and my heart. But I persevered, and used my body in the way Nature intended it should be used—not bending over a desk and swilling whiskey... and, well, here I am, a better ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London

... mortally wounded, and expired soon afterward. His fall was a grievous blow to General Lee's heart, as well as to the Southern cause. Endowed by nature with a courage which shrunk from nothing; active, energetic, of immense physical stamina, which enabled him to endure any amount of fatigue; devoted, heart and soul, to the cause in which he fought, and looking up to the commander of the army with childlike love and admiration, Stuart could ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke

... wise to study the condition that we might almost call "Americanitis." The American youth, as shown in the Olympic games, is not only a match in speed, strength, and stamina for the youth of other nations, but when it comes to the individual specialist even then the American-trained boy is his superior. We smash records regularly. We have been doing this for a decade with hardly a break. Even those who criticize our tendency ...
— Keeping Fit All the Way • Walter Camp

... steadiness of purpose, unknown to mad chasers after wealth. Obstinate, dogged, perhaps tinged with the self-superior spirit of "I am holier than thou"—they may be; but men who forsake all for an ideal and pursue it consistently for a century and a half develop a stamina that enters into the very blood of their race. It is a common saying even to this day that Quebec is more Catholic than the Pope, and Ontario more ultra-English than England; and when the Canadian is twitted with being "colonial" ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut

... present chapter. This proposition is a most important one, and therefore its establishment needs to be inquired into with the greatest particularity. If a race does not possess the requisite physical stamina, it is impossible for it to maintain a high degree of moral and intellectual culture or compete with its more vigorous rivals in the ...
— A Review of Hoffman's Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 1 • Kelly Miller

... subject;—the Austrian face is, certainly, getting to be prevalent among the southern catholic families, for all of them are closely allied to the house of Habsbourg by blood, but I do not see any more in the physique of the Saxon Dukes than the good old Saxon stamina, nor aught in the peculiar appearance of the royal ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper

... continued as the Pillars of Hercules led to the Atlantic and eventually to the new world. For every nation that bordered the Mediterranean illimitable highways opened out for expansion, provided it possessed the stamina and the skill to win them. And in those days they were practically the only highways. Frail as the early ships were and great as were the perils they had to face, communications by water were far centuries ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott

... that China would be centuries in showing the same changes which the Japanese have made in a single generation; but recent events go far to prove that Japan will be outstripped in the race for progress by its slow-going neighbor. What profoundly impresses any visitor to China is the stamina and the working capacity of the common people. Tireless laborers these Chinese are, whether they work for themselves or the European. What they will be able to accomplish with labor-saving machinery no one can predict. Certainly should they accept modern methods of work, with the same ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch

... without throbbing vitality. In fact, you are not yourself in every sense unless you possess vitality of this sort. The emotions and instincts that come to one when thoroughly developed, with the vital forces surging within, are decidedly different from those which influence one when lacking in stamina. Many who have grown beyond adult age are still undeveloped, so far as physical condition and vigor is concerned, and this lack of physical development or vitality means immaturity-incompleteness. It means that one is short on manhood or womanhood. This statement, that one's ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden

... patience and endurance under evil. We stand always prepared to fight manfully for our convictions, and to obtrude them at all points upon friend and foe alike. It is not in the nature of the East to do this. We say that he has no stamina. We call him, in opprobrium, "the mild Hindu." But let us not forget that he will reveal tenfold more patience than we under very trying circumstances, and will turn the other cheek to the enemy when we rush into gross sin by our haste and ire. His is one of the ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones

... felt his moral stamina crumbling within him. "I don't know—about that. Perhaps I'll be a drag to ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs

... deeply into the Cabalah, I could never become a practical adept in the Mysteries. I thought at the time it was because I had not the stamina to carry out the severer penances, and was no true scion of my grandsire. I have still before me the gaunt, emaciated figure of the Saint, whom I found prostrate in our outhouse. I brought him to by unbuttoning his garment at ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... the apparent progress of many animals to greater perfection, as in some insects, as the flies with two wings, termed Diptera; which have rudiments of two other wings, called halteres, or poisers; and in many flowers which have rudiments of new stamina, or filaments without anthers on them. See Botanic Garden, Vol. II. Curcuma, Note, and the Note on l. 204 of Canto I. of this work. It has been supposed by some, that mankind were formerly quadrupeds as well as hermaphrodites; and that some parts of the body are not yet ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin

... naturalist would at a new bug. "You could find work for her in here," unlatching the gate of the Reformatory school. "She could serve humanity here just as well as if she had more—more—well, we'll say stamina." ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various

... which formed periods of expression, at least to the mind of the observer. Monet's production had become a kind of mercerized production, and a kind of spurious radiance invested them, in the end. It remained for Pissarro, Sisley, Cezanne, and Seurat to stabilize the new discovery, and to give it the stamina it was meant to contain, as a scientific idea, ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley

... of these rumors. In fact, he was not greatly alarmed by any of them. He was sure that McClellan, although without genius, would restore the stamina of the troops, if indeed it were ever lost, which he doubted very much. He had seen how splendidly they fought at the Second Manassas, and he knew that there was no panic among them. Moreover, the North was an inexhaustible storehouse of men and material, and whenever one ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler

... and tear of hard labour; and if the bee be not destroyed before the season is over, this down entirely disappears, and the groundwork of the insect is seen, white or black. On a close examination, very few of these black or aged bees, will be seen at the opening of the spring, as, not having the stamina of those that are younger, they perish from inability to encounter the vicissitudes of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 377, June 27, 1829 • Various

... delivered here, about a fortnight ago; and carefully read, as beseemed, with due entertainment and recognition. A vigorous Mr. Thoreau,—who has formed himself a good deal upon one Emerson, but does not want abundant fire and stamina of his own;—recognizes us, and various other things, in a most admiring great-hearted manner; for which, as for part of the confused voice from the jury bog (not yet summed into a verdict, nor likely to be summed till Doomsday, nor needful to sum), the poor prisoner at the bar may justly ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson

... The stamina of immortality, if I may be allowed the phrase, is the perfectibility of human reason; for, was man created perfect, or did a flood of knowledge break in upon him, when he arrived at maturity, that precluded error, I should doubt whether his existence ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]

... Many a thoroughbred I've bought that came all the way from Kentucky or Missouri. All that had the stamina to get to Californy, the one thing left that many of the poor devils could sell ...
— Down the Mother Lode • Vivia Hemphill

... miles and the weight of the burden nearly eighty pounds. The hill-tribes, breathing a cool and invigorating air, are alone equal to such displays of vigor and endurance. Some time afterward, in going to Simla in the Western Himalayas, I employed coolies who were possessed of the same wonderful stamina as these Nepaulese. They were splendid-looking men, shorty but thick-set and very muscular, with olive-brown skins, piercing black eyes, long glossy hair and regular and handsome features. One of this class ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various

... while their nervous system, especially in its emotional department, is kept in unnaturally active play; it is no wonder if those of them who do not die of consumption, grow up with constitutions liable to derangement from slight causes, both internal and external, and without stamina to support any task, physical or mental, requiring continuity of effort. But women brought up to work for their livelihood show none of these morbid characteristics, unless indeed they are chained to an excess of sedentary work in confined and ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill

... improvement in our counterfeit presentment; but in those days the body was made with yellow mohair, ribbed with red silk and gold twist, and as thick as a fertile bumble-bee. John Pike perceived that to offer such a thing to Crocker's trout would probably consign him—even if his great stamina should over-get the horror—to an uneatable death, through just and natural indignation. On the other hand, while the May-fly lasted, a trout so cultured, so highly refined, so full of light and sweetness, ...
— Crocker's Hole - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore

... lost, and harnessing his team in the early morning, drove the gang-plow through the soil until the red sunset faded off the plain. In his heart, he knew the fight was hopeless; Festing, for example, in his place, might perhaps make good, but he had not the stamina for the long struggle. All the same, he worked with savage energy until his mood changed and he went off to hunt sandhill cranes. He would sooner have gone to the poolroom, but there was a risk of his meeting Sadie at ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss

... man at home, but he is, I believe, hot- headed, and Lord Stanley is ten times worse; he would soon have up the barricades in London. Lord Clarendon seems a safe guide, but Peel is the man for the time, if he has the stamina. Lord Palmerston has conducted the duties of his office with admirable tact of late; and much of the good feeling that prevails in Europe towards England at present seems to arise from it. Amelie begs to be most kindly ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman

... the general. He was accurate, systematic, and untiring; always at his post, whether it were at his desk in camp, or by the side of his chief in the field. Of slight, almost frail body, with an intellectual face, he looked unequal to rough field work, but showed a stamina in fact which many a more robust man envied. Colonel Wherry was the incessantly active personal representative of the general, intrusted with his oral orders, and making for him those examinations and investigations which are only satisfactory when the commander has learned to trust the ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox

... the lightning. We recount the promises, we shut our ears to the rebukes. We love the passages which speak of our Master's gentleness, we turn away from those which reveal His severity. And all this is unwise, and therefore unhealthy. We become spiritually soft and anaemic. We lack moral stamina. We are incapable of noble hatred and of holy scorn. We are invertebrate, and on the evil day we are not ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett

... cursed and struck. She could only beg him to be good and do what was demanded without laying himself liable to punishment. Milo, the serious-faced little burden bearer, was growing fast, and lacked stamina. Beneath the cotton-mill regime, his chest was getting dreadfully hollow. He was all too good a worker, and tried anxiously to make up ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke

... strengthening work and healing influence touched the lives of most women. Hemmed in by the walls of their homes, weighed down by bulky confining clothing, fed on the tradition of weakness, women could never gain the breadth of view, courage, and stamina needed to demand and appreciate emancipation. She thought a great deal about this and how it could be remedied, and wrote her friend, Thomas Wentworth Higginson "The salvation of the race depends, in a great measure, upon rescuing women from their hot-house existence. ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz

... thin, sallow, and almost stupid; I seat myself, and again attack M. Bagueret: he beats me, once, twice, twenty times; so many combinations were fermenting in my head, and my imagination was so stupefied, that all appeared confusion. I tried to exercise myself with Phitidor's or Stamina's book of instructions, but I was still equally perplexed, and, after having exhausted myself with fatigue, was further to seek than ever, and whether I abandoned my chess for a time, or resolved to surmount every difficulty by unremitted practice, it was the same thing. I could never advance ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... government. Young men anxious for places in the gift of the government found that winking at Frank Miller's vices and conforming to the demoralizing customs of his place were passports to political favors, and lacking moral stamina, hushed their consciences and became partakers of his sins.[4] Men talked in private of his vices, and drank his liquors and smoked his cigars in public. His place was a snare to their souls. "The dead were ...
— Trial and Triumph • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper



Words linked to "Stamina" :   legs, toughness, staying power



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