"Weak" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Pope Leo X. (* Edaces humanarum carnium novi helluones anthropophagi, Caribes alias Canibales appellati.) There can be little doubt that the Caribs of the islands, when a conquering people, exercised cruelties upon the Ygneris, or ancient inhabitants of the West Indies, who were weak and not very warlike; but we must also admit that these cruelties were exaggerated by the early travellers, who heard only the narratives of the old enemies of the Caribs. It is not always the vanquished solely, who are calumniated by their contemporaries; the insolence of ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... against us, we are carried off our feet often by the sudden swirl of the stream, and the fitful blast of the wind. But His grace comes in, and will make us able to stand against all assaults. Our poor natures, necessarily changeable, and sinfully vacillating and weak, will be uniform, in the measure in which the grace of God comes into our hearts. Just as in these so-called petrifying wells, they take a bit of cloth, a bird's nest, a billet of wood, and plunge it into ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... all From the pulpit tall Have heard the fat friars say God has decreed That the peasant shall sweat and the soldier shall bleed, And Hidalgo and King May righteously wring Sweat and blood from us all, weak, strong, young and old, And turn the tax into Treasury gold. Well, the friar knows best, Or why wear a cowl? And a cord round his breast? So why should we scowl? The friar is learned and knows the mind, From core to rind, Of God, and the Virgin, and ev'ry saint ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... But he had been fearfully buffeted among those sea-drenched rocks, bruised from head to foot, shocked by successive blows. He had spent his strength to keep the sea from claiming Steve. He had been unmercifully slashed by the barnacles. He was weak from loss of blood, and he was bleeding yet, in oozy streams,—face, hands, shoulders, knees, wherever those lance-edged ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... to visit her, because she felt it her duty to apologise to me for the trouble in which she had involved me. As the short drive to Frankfort often helped to entertain me and distract my thoughts, I gladly fulfilled her wishes, and found her in a state of convalescence but still weak, and obviously preoccupied with the effort to fortify my mind against all disagreeable surmises about herself. She said that Herr von Guaita was like an anxious, almost hypersensitive father to her. She told me ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... is coming over me; but some way your letters seem so far away, and it has been such a long time since I saw you, a whole lonesome year, and Bob dear, I am so weak and so unworthy of you; I know it, oh, I know it. But I feel to-night that I must tell you something right from my heart. It is this, dear: no matter what may happen, I want you to know that I must always love you better than any one else in all the world. I seem so young and foolish, and life ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... friend, "which burn so brightly in your book?" When he heard the voice, Gottlieb roused himself, and read; and it was written, "Watch and pray, lest ye enter into temptation; the spirit truly is willing, but the flesh is weak." Then, for a little while, Gottlieb was warned, and he walked like one awake; but, after a time, such power had this sleepy air, he was again almost as drowsy as ever, and his eyes were nearly closed. ...
— The Rocky Island - and Other Similitudes • Samuel Wilberforce
... coal-black colour and strait," and "when it went as a quadruped on all four, 'twas awkwardly; not placing the palm of the hand flat to the ground, but it walk'd upon its knuckles, as I observed it to do when weak and had not strength enough to support its body."—"From the top of the head to the heel of the foot, in a strait ...
— Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature • Thomas H. Huxley
... were beaten, kicked and insulted. Both were gray-haired old men and the latter was at the time very weak, and suffering from a severe attack of asthma. Father Pedro Vincente was also ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... fail but wills prevail." "Labor is luck." It is better to make our descendants proud of us than to be proud of our ancestry. There is hardly a conceivable obstacle to success that some of our successful men have not overcome: "What man has done, man can do." "Strong men have wills; weak ones, wishes." ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... through beautiful grazing country, gently undulating, we descended and mounted and went round sweeping curves, which formed in places regular loops not unlike a horseshoe. Two pits producing a considerable quantity of lime existed some 2 kil. from Paneiras. Weak attempts were noticeable here and there at growing coffee. We were now in an eminently wonderful pasture land—getting more and more beautiful as we neared Uberaba, where we found ourselves on almost flat country at an elevation of 2,900 ft., with hardly any trees at ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... even in their direst need. How good and how mighty to save God was, he had yet to learn: but that He was good, and that He would help him, that he firmly believed. And who had done it for him—this miracle, if you like to call it?—God. By weak human instrumentality, by degrees: but yet God: for none ...
— The French Prisoners of Norman Cross - A Tale • Arthur Brown
... "I am devoted to one whose name I cannot now mention, perhaps will never mention, but I am devoted to him. Yes!" she added with fire, "I am not altogether so weak a thing as the Lady Montforts and some other persons seem to think me—I can feel and decide for myself, and it shall never be said of ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... the Captain. 'Steady! You're too weak to stand, you see, my pretty, and must lie down here again. There, there!' To see the Captain lift her on the sofa, and cover her with his coat, would have been worth a hundred state sights. 'And now,' said the Captain, 'you must take some breakfast, lady lass, and the ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... hostility toward one who had basked in the sunshine of his favor for long years. O-Tar the jeddak had not enjoyed the afternoon. Those who surrounded him were equally glum—they, too, scowled upon the field, the players, and the people. Among them was a bent and wrinkled old man who gazed through weak and watery eyes upon the field ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... was a modest attempt to blow up Parliament, the King and his Counsellors. James of Scotland, then King of England, was weak-minded and extravagant. He hit upon the efficient scheme of extorting money from the people by imposing taxes on the Catholics. In their natural resentment to this extortion, a handful of bold spirits concluded to overthrow the government. Finally the plotters were arrested, and ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... duchy. The ruler of two states could not be always in either; he owed it to his old subjects to show himself among them in his new character; and his absence might pass as a sign of the trust he put in his new subjects. But the means which he took to secure their obedience brought out his one weak point. We cannot believe that he really wished to goad the people into rebellion; yet the choice of his lieutenants might seem almost like it. He was led astray by partiality for his brother and for his dearest friend. To Bishop Ode ...
— William the Conqueror • E. A. Freeman
... brute force, Antaeus is stifled; but falling and touching Earth, he revives. Man, borne by the irresistible force of circumstance, may become false, frivolous, and weak: his Art may dwindle to mere imitation, his Poetry turn to wailing and convulsions: but let him once fall back to Nature—to the all-cherishing Earth, the Mother of Beauty—and all his Works ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... in the first place, put a stop to anything like systematic bullying. Of course, they could not at all times restrain the tempers of their companions, or prevent the strong from oppressing or striking the weak when no one was present. Bullies and tyrants, or would-be bullies and tyrants, are to be found everywhere; but when any little fellow complained to them, they never failed to punish the bully, and to bring to light any act of injustice, making the unjust doer right the wronged one. They did ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... weird on mortal man, Powers of the grave, on you we cry! And unto Zeus the Saviour, guard Of mortals' holy purity! Receive ye us—keep watch and ward Above the suppliant maiden band! Chaste be the heart of this your land Towards the weak! but, ere the throng, The wanton swarm, from Egypt sprung, Leap forth upon the silted shore, Thrust back their swift-rowed bark again, Repel them, urge them to the main! And there, 'mid storm and lightning's shine, And scudding drift ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... is more dangerous to the young artist than any conception of ideal beauty: he is constantly led by it either into weak prettiness or lifeless abstraction: whereas to touch the ideal at all you must not strip it of vitality. You must find it in life and re-create it ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... such thoughts as these prevent you from using your influence with my poor brother, Wilkins. I am too young, too weak, too inexperienced, to control him. He would naturally scorn the advice of one so much younger; but you, oh! don't let too lowly an opinion of yourself deprive Arthur of the counsel and guidance he ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... temple, till he knocked her down. From these injuries she died. Well, it was found that he had the delusion that he was tormented by witches, to which he attributed his bodily ailments, and was ever ready with Scripture quotations in favour of witchcraft. His mind, apart from delusions, was weak. The jury acquitted him on the ground of insanity, and he was admitted at Broadmoor ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... the treaty. Why Pontius did not insist on treating with the senate and people of Rome at once, instead of trusting to them to ratify a treaty made with prisoners of war, we are not told. He was soon to learn how weak a reed to lean upon ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... found to be increasing, while that of the house of Lancaster was declining. After a time he was brought out from his imprisonment, and restored to his rank and station. King Henry the Sixth was a man of a very weak and timid mind. He was quite young too, being, in fact, a mere child when he began to reign, and every thing went wrong with his government. While he was young, he could, of course, do nothing, and when he grew older he was too gentle and forbearing to control ...
— Richard III - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... watched him as he crossed the lawn and untied his horse. She had not thanked him for coming, for promising to come again, he reflected with relief. She was no weak, dependent fool. He rode down the sodded lane, and as his horse picked his way carefully toward the avenue where the electric cars were shooting back and forth like magnified fireflies, he turned in his saddle to look once more at the ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... minerals of the rock, such as olivine, hypersthene, and pyroxene. Along Catoctin Mountain, however, both chemical and mechanical deformation have taken place, so that the original rock structure is completely merged into pronounced schistosity. This was materially assisted by the weak lath shapes of the feldspar and the mobility of ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head
... soft, loving words which many children had given others, poorer and lowlier than themselves, to encourage their weak hearts; words which they had given and forgotten, but which had yet been carefully gathered up, and put in this temple. From this temple a low sound of sweet music rose, which filled Ruth's heart with a perfect peace, as if she had found everything ...
— The Angel Children - or, Stories from Cloud-Land • Charlotte M. Higgins
... by warfare in such country were numerous and difficult. Our guns had to be dragged into position up a rough mountain track, which at some points was too narrow and at others too weak to allow the passage of a six-inch howitzer without much preliminary blasting and building up. Our first gun to go up took twenty-four hours of continuous labour between the time of starting up the track and the time of arriving in position, a distance of only about two miles of zig-zag. ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... every sixth rib is larger and longer than the others and made of tougher wood. All these ribs are bound together by longitudinal pieces, or laths, of very tough wood, yet so thin that the whole machine is elastic without being weak. Besides this, there are two strong oiled-canvas partitions, which divide the canoe into three watertight compartments, any two of which will float it if the ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... Constable, represented himself [the author] as he wished to be; Gert, as he was in moments of aroused passion; and Olof, as, after years of self-scrutiny, he had come to know himself: ambitious and weak-willed; unscrupulous when something was at stake, and yielding at other times; possessed of great self-confidence, mixed with a deep melancholy; balanced ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... time we encountered the deep snows in the Rocky Mountains, where the animals could get no forage, and Billy, in common with the others, at length became so weak and jaded that he was unable any longer to leave his place in the caravan and break a track through the snow around to the front. He made frequent attempts to turn out and force his way ahead, but after numerous unsuccessful efforts he would fall ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... yield their best only under pressure. The grape must be crushed if we would have wine. Give a poet "society" at his feet and he sings no more, or sings as Tennyson has been singing of late years—fit strains to prepare us for the disgrace he has brought upon the poet's calling. Poor, weak, silly old man! Forgive him, however, for what he has done when truly the poet. He was noble then and didn't know it; now he is a sham noble and knows it. Punishment enough that he stands no more upon the mountain heights o'ertopping the petty ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... help him hold the wheel. He said you'd be lost if I didn't. He talked all the time about keeping her head up and up. I helped him. Your voice came back years apart. At the last he was on the floor, holding the bottom of the wheel. He told me to keep it steady, dead ahead. His voice grew so weak that I couldn't hear; and then all at once he slipped away. I—I held on—called to ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... which give practice in the methods of cooking will also afford excellent drills in measuring, manipulation, and cleaning. Throughout all these, the weak points of individual members of the class should receive careful attention. In the case of typical defects, much time may be saved by calling the attention of the class to these, instead of correcting ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Household Management • Ministry of Education
... Ardry, as if paying the deepest attention to his discourse. All of a sudden, however, he cried with a sharp, cracked voice, 'That won't do, sir; that won't do—more vehemence—your argument is at present particularly weak; therefore, more vehemence—you must confuse them, stun them, stultify them, sir'; and, at each of these injunctions, he struck the back of his right hand sharply against the palm of the left. 'Good, sir—good!' he occasionally uttered, in the same sharp, cracked tone, as ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... like rather puritanical treatment. If there are false lines in Byron, there are quite as many weak lines in Shelley. If sincerity were to give out a pure flame, Byron would stand that test equal to any. His real fault is to be found in his somewhat glaring diction, like the voix blanc in singing, and in an occasional stroke of persiflage. ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... to hold back the flood of passionate avowal. Perhaps my voice was a little weak, but it grew stronger as I took heart at the sight of her listening so quietly. I told her that I had loved her that evening when we first met; that since then, in all my waking moments, she had been in my ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... no reprisal upon the German people, who have themselves suffered all things in this war, which they did not choose. They believe that peace should rest upon the rights of peoples, not the rights of governments—the rights of peoples great or small, weak or powerful—their equal right to freedom and security and self government and to a participation upon fair terms in the economic opportunities of the world, the German people, of course, included, if they will accept equality and ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... made full confession of all his machinations against the person and state of Elizabeth. In the most guilty parts of these designs he affirmed that the duke had constantly refused his concurrence;—and in fact, weak and infatuated as he was, the agents of Mary seem to have found it impracticable, by all their artifices, to bring this unfortunate nobleman entirely to forget that he was a protestant and an Englishman. He would never consent directly to procure the death or dethronement of Elizabeth; ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... have been gathered near the town of Guerrero, Chihuahua, quite recently. It seems to be a custom with the common people to make a concoction of these "giants' bones" as a strengthening medicine; we heard of a woman who, being weak after childbirth, used ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... but he had not been hurt, and he did not feel like quarreling, just then. He pushed along through the throng, and was getting out to where the crowd was thinner, when he suddenly felt a chill and a weak feeling at his heart. He had thrust his ...
— Crowded Out o' Crofield - or, The Boy who made his Way • William O. Stoddard
... when successive monarchs have occupied the throne, and alternately displayed to the people the weakness of right, and the harshness of power, the sovereign is no longer regarded by any as the father of the state, and he is feared by all as its master. If he be weak, he is despised; if he be strong, he is detested. He is himself full of animosity and alarm; he finds that he is a stranger in his own country, and he treats ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... "Proclaim ye this among the Gentiles: Prepare war, wake up the mighty men, let all men of war draw near; let them come up. Beat your ploughshares into swords, and your pruning-hooks into spears; let the weak say, I am strong." I was not in the country myself at that time, and my attention was first drawn to this in 1865 by a clergyman, who told me of his startled astonishment upon opening the Book. In the then public temper it must have thrilled every ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... make them, by the logic of events, read out either their recantation of the Colonial Revolution, or their self-condemnation for the Anti-Secession War. I have already explained to what extent these views appear to me to be tenable, and where their weak point lies: that both the insurrection of the colonies against England, and that of the South against the Federation,—both the repressive measures of England against the colonies, and of the Federation against the South,—were in themselves founded on an indefeasible right, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... woodchopper was much better, though still weak and ill. One of the doctors had told him some one was coming to see him, and had said it might prove to be some one who knew about his brother and sister. Poor Uncle Jack's eyes ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in a Great City • Laura Lee Hope
... I'm not so weak as to resent hearing a good suggestion. You are quite right, my lad. I only wonder that your brain keeps so clear in the horrible confusion this smoke brings on. Here, let's put your suggestion into use. Where's ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... though it be in repose, is not that of a weak woman; it is that of one who, thinking she knows what should be her duty, will be faithful to it; and it is also the face of a woman reserved in the expression of her feelings. Senator Burton cannot make up his mind whether Nancy realises Gerald's measureless, generous devotion. ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... taking up a cause so unpopular; but she had no shrinking from duty, however trying it might be. Strong and grand as she was, in her womanly nature, she had nevertheless the largest and tenderest sympathies for the weak and erring. She was prescient, philosophical, just, and generous. The mother of a large family, who gathered around to honor and bless her, she had still room in her heart for the woes of the world, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... would that have been upon Terry, who was so filled with malice and so reckless of consequences that he finally braved the gallows by attempting the murder of the object of his hate? But even this weak protection never was afforded. Shall it be said that Justice Field ought to have gone to the nearest justice of the peace and obsequiously begged to have Terry placed under bonds? But this he could not ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... danger. He's only weak-breasted, as yet, and clerking isn't good for him. I saw the young man at the store. If his looks don't belie him, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... is eaten is gone. I want pennies for my bag. I must buy bacon in the shops, and nuts in the market, and strong drink for the time when the sun is weak. And I want snares to catch the rabbits and the squirrels and the bares, and a pot to cook ...
— The Hour Glass • W.B.Yeats
... Boston had two or three fine old dwelling-houses, with antique gardens and old-fashioned court-yards; but they have come down to the dust before the improving spirit of the age. One would think, that after ten years a house gets weak in the knees. Perhaps these houses do; but I have lodged under roof-trees that have stood hundreds of years, and may stand hundreds more,—marry, they have ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... to do that, but they might be thinking our horses would fall and throw us. But I see that reasoning is weak. Maybe it was young Merwell—and Hank Snogger. If it was, they ought to be punished good an' proper, hear me!" went on the ...
— Dave Porter at Star Ranch - Or, The Cowboy's Secret • Edward Stratemeyer
... vessel. So we moved on, having secured enough fresh-water ice to supply a pleasant change after the somewhat discoloured tank-water then being served out. The ice still remained compact and forbidding, but each day we hoped to discover a weak spot through which we might probe to ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... requires a greater quantity of yeast than wheat bread. The following explanation may account for this fact: Some recent scientific investigations point out the fact that the activity of yeast is increased when vinegar or other weak acid material is added to bread dough. Since the proteins of cereals other than wheat absorb more of the free acid of the dough than do the proteins of wheat, the acidity of the dough is lessened. Hence more yeast is required to leaven dough ...
— School and Home Cooking • Carlotta C. Greer
... the moral law within us, without promising or threatening anything with certainty, demands of us disinterested respect; and only when this respect has become active and dominant, does it allow us by means of it a prospect into the world of the supersensible, and then only with weak glances: all this being so, there is room for true moral disposition, immediately devoted to the law, and a rational creature can become worthy of sharing in the summum bonum that corresponds to the worth of his person and not merely to ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... are the pangs that wait the hour Of calmest dissolution! yet weak man Dares, in his timid piety, to live; And veiling Fear in Superstition's garb, He calls her Resignation! Coward wretch! Fond Coward! thus to make his Reason war Against his Reason! Insect as he is, This sport of Chance, this being of a day, Whose whole existence the next cloud may ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey
... person. His complexion, light without redness, inclined to sallow, and suggested a temperament somewhat bilious. His dark brown hair had become thin above the forehead, revealing to advantage that most striking feature of his countenance. Taken all together, his appearance was that of a weak man, of delicate constitution,—an appearance hardly justified by the fact; for he endured fatigue and privation ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... the blood surged back again, and she grew weak, but the old man laughed his cheery laugh, and, pretending to clap her playfully on the shoulder, he held her firmly with his great iron hand, as he saw the blood go out of her cheeks, leaving them as white ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... get into the fresh air," he said. "I am faint and weak. I must have movement. I must see my mother. I will tell her everything." Then he went to his mirror, and looked with a grim smile at its reflection. "I have the face of a lover kicked out of doors," he continued scornfully. ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... "Why, the weak simpleton thought of confessing her whole tale of love to her mother, and imploring ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... champion of Sedition's cause. Once his soft words like streams of melted tar Stuck in our cars and led us on to war; But now we hear the self-same accents flow Unmoved as quails when buried up in snow. Is his voice weak? That dreadful voice, we're told, Once made King George the Third through fear turn cold, Europa's kingdoms to their centre shake, When mighty Samuel bawl'd at ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... pervades the prisoner's face. He has nothing to say. Burning tears course down his cheeks; but they are not tears of contrition,—Oh, no! he has no such tears to shed. Firmly and resolutely he says, "Guilty! guilty! yes, I am guilty-guilty by the guilty laws of a guilty land. You are powerful-I am weak; you have might-I have right. Mine is not a chosen part. Guilty on earth, my soul will be innocent in heaven; and before a just judge will my cause be proclaimed, before a holy tribunal my verdict received, and by angels my soul be enrolled among the righteous. Your earthly law ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... was born in Manchester—but apparently not, as he himself thought, at the country house of Greenhay which his parents afterwards inhabited—on 15th August 1785. His father was a merchant, well to do but of weak health, who died when Thomas was seven years old. Of his childhood he has left very copious reminiscences, and there is no doubt that reminiscences of childhood do linger long after later memories have disappeared. ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... first succumbed to hardship. The stalwart, huge-limbed, toil-inured men sank down earliest on the march, yielded soonest to malarial influences, and fell first under the combined effects of home-sickness, exposure and the privations of army life. The slender, withy boys, as supple and weak as cats, had apparently the nine lives of those animals. There were few exceptions to this rule in the army—there were none in Andersonville. I can recall few or no instances where a large, strong, ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... stout-hearted English sailors were merrily starving of want, and dying in the streets; while the Dutch, under their admirals DE WITT and DE RUYTER, came into the River Thames, and up the River Medway as far as Upnor, burned the guard-ships, silenced the weak batteries, and did what they would to the English coast for six whole weeks. Most of the English ships that could have prevented them had neither powder nor shot on board; in this merry reign, public officers made themselves as merry as the King did ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... his back and the mouth parted to show ugly blackened teeth and the old man laughed so hard spittle spotted his beard. "As if you didn't know," he managed to say. "As if you didn't know, Martin Pinzon. It's that weak-minded sailor again, the one who claims to have a charter for three caravels from the Queen herself. Drunk as Bacchus and there's his pretty little daughter trying to get him to come home again. I tell you, Martin ...
— My Shipmate—Columbus • Stephen Wilder
... me go and call her. They say that she is of little use in the house now, being weak and weeping, and too sad at heart to work as heretofore. They can well spare her on such an errand, and methinks it will save her life as well as his. Let me but go and tell her ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... of Robert's rule in the duchy across the channel, the condition of things there had been a standing invitation to his brother to interfere. Robert is a fair example of the worst type of men of the Norman-Angevin blood. Not bad in intention, and not without abilities, he was weak with that weakness most fatal of all in times when the will of the ruler gave its only force to law, the inability to say no, the lack of firm resisting power. The whole eleventh century had been nourishing the growth, in the favouring soil of feudalism, of the manners ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... unwearied, impassible, loving with the simplicity of a Tartar and fighting with the fury of a Cossack, he was just the man required to continue General Melas's successes over the soldiers of the Republic, discouraged as they had been by the weak vacillations of Scherer. ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - VANINKA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... is not like you! You're unkind and harsh! Her husband is the kind of man of whom one says that they are their own worst enemies; but he is an even greater enemy to his wife. He is a weak, fallen, drunken fellow. He has squandered all his property and hers too. She has a child.... How can you condemn her for leaving such a man? Nor has she left him: ...
— The Live Corpse • Leo Tolstoy
... remembered from his boyish days, that he had in some instances sacrificed taste to sentiment. There were two old larches that shaded the building, and interrupted the prospect; St. Aubert had sometimes declared that he believed he should have been weak enough to have wept at their fall. In addition to these larches he planted a little grove of beech, pine, and mountain-ash. On a lofty terrace, formed by the swelling bank of the river, rose a plantation of orange, lemon, and palm-trees, ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... such as those from the legs or wings of a chicken, put one of them into the fire, when it is not very hot, and leave it there two or three hours. Soak the other bone in some weak muriatic (m[u] r[)i] [)a]t'[)i]k) acid. This acid can be ...
— Child's Health Primer For Primary Classes • Jane Andrews
... Weak men, harassed by personal anxieties, become hard in proportion to their selfish fears. It is like the cruelty that comes of terror. He had loved his wife; but he was terribly pressed, and there ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... well as ever, only a little weak from loss of blood—and with nothing to remember her decapitation by, but a red line around her neck, which looked like a small string of coral beads, and ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... what we can do except to march him down to Carpen Falls. But we can't do that to-day, for he seems too weak. Perhaps we can take him down there to-morrow, or else some of us can go down and get an officer to come up here and take charge ...
— Dave Porter At Bear Camp - The Wild Man of Mirror Lake • Edward Stratemeyer
... translation from the shadows to the images and to the light, and the ascent from the underground den to the sun, while in his presence they are vainly trying to look on animals and plants and the light of the sun, but are able to perceive even with their weak eyes the images in the water (which are divine), and are the shadows of true existence (not shadows of images cast by a light of fire, which compared with the sun is only an image)—this power of elevating the ...
— The Republic • Plato
... traitor. As I look back now and think of it, remembering his long and distinguished service to the country in almost every capacity—as a legislator, as a diplomat, as Secretary of State, as President, I think now he was only weak. His term was about expiring, and he saw and feared the awful consequences of a ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... Weak as was the government of Mortimer and Isabella, the appeal of the abbot against this outrage was promptly heeded. A royal force quelled the riot, thirty carts full of prisoners were despatched to Norwich; twenty-four of the chief ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... Britain was taking up a heavy burden to protect weaker nations from aggression and to maintain justice.[4] Let us keep those aims pure to the end. It would, of course, be affectation to suggest that our object in the War is now simply a chivalrous desire to protect the weak or maintain justice. We now know that it is also to preserve our own existence as a nation, and that it would be better for us and our children that Britain should be sunk beneath the sea than that Germany should ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson
... drink that shall make me well! Your brother is the worst of sons; be you the best of daughters! Like a worthless bankrupt I stand before the eyes of the world! I owed it a fine man to take the place of this weak invalid, and I cheated it with a scoundrel! Be you such a woman as your mother was, and then people will say: It does not come from his parents that the boy went wrong, for the daughter treads the path of ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... emperors contented themselves with those limits which they found at their accession, none before this prince had actually contracted the bounds of the Empire: for, being more perfectly acquainted with all the countries that composed it than any of his predecessors, what was strong and what weak, and having formed to himself a plan wholly defensive, he purposely abandoned several large tracts of territory, that he might render what remained ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... periodical habit; insomuch that beer taken to breakfast will disturb the digestion of those, who have been accustomed to tea; and tea taken at dinner will disagree with those, who have been accustomed to beer. Whence it happens, that those, who have weak stomachs, will be able to digest more food, if they take their meals at regular hours; because they have both the stimulus of the aliment they take, and the periodical habit, to ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... still in the same room with him, could not speak civilly to him. And yet Mullally was civil enough to him, was anxious even to be friendly with him. There was something of a flabby sort in Mullally's nature that made Henry instinctively angry with him: his vague features, his weak, wandering eyes, peering from behind large glasses, his tow-coloured hair that seemed to have "washed-out," and above all, his squeaky voice that piped on ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... vessel. And he was thus seventeen days without any thing to subsist upon except some sour and bitter plants like the sorrel, and some small fruit of little substance large as currants, which creep upon the ground. [51] Being at his wits' end, without hope of ever seeing us again, weak and feeble, he found himself on the shore of Baye Francoise, thus named by Sieur de Monts, near Long Island, [52] where his strength gave out, when one of our shallops out fishing discovered him. Not being able to shout to them, he made a sign with a pole, on the ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... Cascade Portage which is the last on the way to the Athabasca Lake, and soon afterwards came to some Indian tents containing five families belonging to the Chipewyan tribe. We smoked the calumet in the chief's tent, whose name was the Thumb, and distributed some tobacco and a weak mixture of spirits and water among the men. They received this civility with much less grace than the Crees, and seemed to consider it a matter of course. There was an utter neglect of cleanliness and a total ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... savages, and share in the spoils of their certain victory, to which they also wished to add their own trophies. But what should be done with the white medicine man? He was too fat to be urged at speed through the forest. They feared to kill him, for they believed him to be of a weak mind, and therefore under the direct protection of the Great Spirit. Besides, being bald-headed, he could furnish no scalp, and was therefore not ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... of the cabin and plunged into the thicket. As he ran on and on, the tumult behind him faded away. The recent cold snap had formed a crust on the snow, and he made pretty good progress. Now and then, however, he struck weak spots and broke through to his knees. At the end of half-an-hour he ventured to stop. He seated himself on a log and strapped his snowshoes on securely. He was conscious of a feeling of elation. Not a sound could be heard but the ...
— The Camp in the Snow - Besiedged by Danger • William Murray Graydon
... weak and lamentable when the copyist appropriates merely the idea and works it out in a new fashion. The term new can hardly be attributed to the notion of a plucked flower as a type of death, but it occurs in so many varieties as almost to redeem ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
... never had an ill hour in her life, yet she always appeared ailing, shrank from any effort, hated exercise and exertion and at every necessity for movement asserted that she was tired, often that she felt weak. Brinnaria thought her merely innately lazy and a natural shirk. The more she saw of her the more her loathing for her and her hatred of her intensified. Quite the reverse with the others. Manlia was a large young woman ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... Milly grieved in the little weak voice they heard then for the first time. "Milly's daddy took Milly's ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... seventeenth century were of English descent. The emigration of the family from the mother country occurred at an early day when the settlements in New England were still infrequent and weak. The Otis family was among the first to settle at the town of Hingham. Nor was it long until the name appeared in the public records, indicating official rank and leadership. From Hingham, John Otis, who was born in 1657, ancestor of the subject of this sketch, removed ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... weak infiltration into our prison. A steadfast inspection was necessary to mark even the dead water overside. The River was the same colour as the fog. For a fortnight we had been without rest. We had become used to a little home which was unstable, and sometimes ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... already—you know it all. Have I not told you?" Giovanni spoke in despairing tones. He was utterly weak and spellbound; he could hardly ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... end to the continuous flow of guests, male and female, and Madame Karpathy won and captivated every heart. Of course she had the immense advantage of knowing them all beforehand, of knowing their weak and their strong points, their virtues and vices; but it is due to her to add that she had learnt her lesson excellently well, and turned it to the best advantage. She received Count Szepkiesdy with all ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... providing; quality exquisite, but difficult to get transmitted in the Storms of War]; I am ashamed of the trouble it costs you! I beg many pardons;—and should be quite abashed, did I not know how you compassionate the weak points of your friends, and that, for a long time past, you have a singular indulgence for my nose. I am very glad to know you happily returned to your Government, safe at Colombier (DOVE-COTE) in Neufchatel again." This ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... consistently maintained. What he said was not without effect; even the coarse burly Harpour dared not look up, but could only fix his eyes on the floor and kick the matting in sullen wrath while this virtuous and noble boy looked at him and rebuked him; but Tracy was more deeply moved. Tracy, weak, foolish, and feebly fast as he was, had some elements of good and gentlemanly feeling in him, and, with more wisely chosen associates, would have developed a much less contemptible character. When Power had done speaking, he looked up and said, without one ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... I am afraid that the borrowed handkerchief to which you applied the match really did get burnt, and you will probably have to offer the owner one of your own instead. That is the only weak spot in one of the most baffling tricks ever practised by the amateur prestidigitator (to use the word for the last time). It will make a fitting climax to your evening's entertainment—an entertainment which ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... and sometimes terrified, and as weak in his anger as in his terror. He persuaded the king to hold a bed of justice to compel the registration of the edicts. When the Parliament protested, he banished it to Troyes. In less than a month he became alarmed at his own vigor, and recalled it. Encouraged by his pusillanimity, ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... e.g., by obscene pictures, vulgar words, unusual dress or actions of women, close physical association as in dancing, and certain forms of music. It is not at all uncommon that individuals who are hyper-sensitive to sexually suggestive stimuli are really functionally weak. ...
— Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow
... full of illusions and dreams pursues his road without casting a look backwards. What matters, indeed, the past to him? He expects nothing but from the future. Proud at having escaped from infancy, at arriving at the age of man, at flying on his wings, he pities the years when he was small and weak, ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... me, by my sentiments to them; and so do you, M. Nevil. We shame them if we fail in courage and honour. Is it not so? If we break a single pledged word we cast shame on them. Why, that makes us what we are; that is our distinction: we dare not be weak if we would. And therefore when Venice is reproached with avarice and luxury, I choose to say—what do we hear of the children of misers? and I say I am certain that those old cold Huguenot stonecutters were ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... situation of the conquered peoples, the distribution of raw materials, the regulation of the new states and their relations with the victor countries. They concentrated all their efforts on the question of Fiume, that is to say on the one point in which Italian action was fundamentally weak in that, when it was free to enter into the War and lay down conditions of peace, at the moment when the Entente was without America's invaluable assistance and was beginning to doubt the capacity of Russia to carry on, it had never even ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti
... dense smoke, caused the greater number of our bullets to fly over their heads. Our elevated position and the necessity of rising above the works to fire, rendered our breastworks of little real advantage; considering, too, the disparity of numbers, then three lines against our one, and a very weak line at that. The loud Rebel yell heard far to our right told us to be of good cheer, they were holding their own, and repulsing every assault. The conflict in front of Breckenridge's Division was the bloodiest, with the possible exception of that ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... when out for a walk, and every object that excites their curiosity or admiration is brought at once, or pointed out, to their companion.... On the other hand, another child, brought up, perhaps, under identical conditions, but in whom this impulse is relatively weak, will explore a garden, interested and excited for hours together, without once feeling the need for sympathy, without once calling on ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... and dexterous plot-builders in the world—there always comes a day when the roused public indignation kicks their flimsy edifice down, and sends its cowardly enemies a-flying. Mr. Swift hath finely described that passion for intrigue, that love of secrecy, slander, and lying, which belongs to weak people, hangers-on of weak courts. 'Tis the nature of such to hate and envy the strong, and conspire their ruin; and the conspiracy succeeds very well, and everything presages the satisfactory overthrow of the great victim; until one ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Bethesda this morning! Oh, you sick, you lame, you troubled, you dying—crowd around this Bethesda! Step in it! Oh, step in it! The angel of the covenant this morning stirs the water. Why do you not step in it? Some of you are too weak to take a step in that direction. Then we take you up in the arms of our closing prayer and plunge you clean under the wave, hoping that the cure may be as sudden and as radical as with Captain Naaman, who, blotched and carbuncled, stepped into the Jordan, and after the seventh ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... overgrown Gourd has not been lost in the English language, for "bumpkin" is only another form of "Pumpkin," and Mr. Fox Talbot, in his "English Etymologies," has a very curious account of the antiquity of the nickname. "The Greeks," he says, "called a very weak and soft-headed person a Pumpion, whence the proverb peponos malakoteros, softer than a Pumpion; and even one of Homer's heroes, incensed at the timidity of his soldiers, exclaims o pepones, you Pumpions! So also cornichon ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... still humbly, but with a return of spirit at sight of a distinction to be drawn; 'pardon me, Casimir. You possess, even to an eminent degree, the commercial imagination. It was the lack of that in me—it appears it is my weak point—that has led to these repeated shocks. By the commercial imagination the financier forecasts the destiny of his investments, marks the ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... would try, and he assisted her to her feet. She was still very weak, and readily consented to lean on his arm; and thus they moved slowly back the way the captain of Company ...
— The Campaign of the Jungle - or, Under Lawton through Luzon • Edward Stratemeyer
... breaking our hearts," Nan said, at last. She was kneeling at her feet, chafing her hands, and Phillis was fanning her; but she pushed them both away from her with weak violence. ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... a half inches to the stride," said he. "That will be the boy, Jervis. But the light is getting weak. We must press on quickly, or we ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... seem to run riot; for in the wantonness of his disquisition he forgets, for a moment, even the reverence for that which he held in high respect[997]; and describes 'the attendant on a Court,' as one 'whose business, is to watch the looks of a being, weak ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... in conscience, but that strict law doth not countenance your recovering those lands of your ancestors.... Visit your friends often, and please the queen by all you can, for all the great lawyers do much fear her displeasure.... I do see the queen often, she doth wax weak since the late troubles, and Burleigh's death doth often draw tears from her goodly cheeks; she walketh out but little, meditates much alone, and sometimes writes in private to her best friends. The Scottish matters do cause much discourse, but we know not ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... is true, occasionally seen Mr. Hastings, and had found his manners and conversation agreeable. But surely she could not be so weak as to infer from the gentleness of his deportment in a drawing-room, that he was incapable of committing a great state crime, under the influence of ambition and revenge. A silly Miss, fresh from a boarding school, might ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... accustomed values, G.K.C. would strip the grotesque of a few inessentials, and, lo! a parable. A few strokes of irony and wit, an epigram or two infallibly placed where it would distract attention from a weak point in the argument, and the thing was complete. By such means Chesterton developed the use of a veritable Excalibur of controversy, a tool of great might in political journalism. These methods, pursued a few years longer, taught him a craftsmanship he could employ for purely romantic ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... mighty doubtful in my mind whether he paid any attention as to which of the two prize-fighting brutes failed to get up in ten seconds. Boxing is all right, and I believe in it, and want all boys to learn how to do it, in order that they may protect themselves, or protect a weak person from assault, but it ought to stop there. Men who fight each other for money ought to be classed with bulldogs, wear muzzles and a dog license, and be shunned by all decent people," and the old man lit his pipe with deliberation and smoked a ...
— Peck's Uncle Ike and The Red Headed Boy - 1899 • George W. Peck
... painful contrast. His eye was shifty, his expression weak and sensual, and the hard lines of his face and the indifference of his manner told the story of a man old in criminal thoughts if not in years and deeds. For he looked no more than twenty-five, and ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... gulf which not the profoundest search can fathom, which not the strongest-winged love can overreach: the gulf of individuality. It is those who have loved most deeply who recognise most acutely this always pathetic and often terrifying isolation of the soul. None save the weak can believe in the absolute union of two spirits. If this were demonstratable, immortality would be a palpable fiction. The moment individuality can lapse to fusion, that moment the tide has ebbed, the wind has fallen, the dream has been dreamed. So ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... sessile or stipitate, obovoid, rusty or spadiceous-yellow, shining; peridium opening at maturity in somewhat stellate fashion; stipe filiform, white or yellow, weak and short; spores dull black, spinulose, ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride
... was Paul Harley's custom, when the clue to a labyrinth evaded him, to outline his difficulties to his confidential secretary, and by the mere exercise of verbal construction Harley would often detect the weak spot in his reasoning. This stage come to, he would dictate a carefully worded statement of the case to date and thus familiarize ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... doubt," Sabatini answered, coolly. "He was wealthy and he was my uncle. I was strong and he was weak. It was as necessary for me to live as for him. So I took him by the throat and gave him thirty seconds to reflect. He decided that the life of a Cardinal of Rome was far too pleasant ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim |
