"Weakening" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... her weakening, but the Benediction stiffened her resolve, and when the final Amen sounded, she turned blindly to the man beside her, and said, hardly above ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... had known no mother, combined with the progressive weakening of my father's health and peace of mind during the previous year or so, may probably have influenced my attitude in all such matters, may have given a partly feminine quality to my affection for my father. I know it seemed to me unfitting that he should ever take any part in ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... He coughed blood to his lips, at which Roy laid him back and stood up. So there was no mistake, after all, and he had arrived too late. This was the Kid's revenge. This was how he struck. Lacking courage to face a man's level eyes, he possessed the foulness to prey upon a woman. Roy felt a weakening physical sickness sweep over him till his eye fell upon a sodden garment which Helen had removed from her brother's shoulders and replaced with a dry one. He snatched it from the floor and in a sudden fury felt it come apart in ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... the first time in his life that Cowperwood had ever shown the least sign of weakening or despair. He had felt all along as though there were nothing to the Greek theory of being pursued by the furies. Now, however, there seemed an untoward fate which was pursuing him. It looked that way. Still, fate or no fate, he did not propose to be daunted. ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... the whole matter into a mere calculation of interests. He was accustomed to say that one of the chief merits of Christianity was that it taught that right and wrong were as far apart as Heaven and Hell, and that no greater calamity can befall a nation than a weakening of the righteous hatred ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... whispering was hastily suppressed; love for her, desire that she should be comfortable—those must be the real reasons. But he must be careful lest she, the sensitive, should begin to brood over a fear that she was already weakening him and would become a drag upon him—the fear that, he knew, would take shape in his own mind if things began to go badly. "You may be sure, dearest," he said, "I'll do nothing that won't help me on." He tapped his forehead with ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... lifted my eyes, I found myself standing under the willow-tree at the creek where Mabel and I had been sitting in the afternoon. The locusts, with their shrill metallic voices, kept whirring away in the grass, and I heard their strange hissing sh-h-h-h-h, now growing stronger, then weakening again, and at last stopping abruptly, as if to say: "Didn't I do well?" But the blue-eyed violets shook their heads, and that means in their language: "No, I don't think so at all." The water, which descended in three successive falls into the wide, dome-shaped ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... nature that is revealed in such a note as the following: 'A nameless day, a day without form, yet a day in which the Spring most mysteriously begins to stir. Warm air in the lengthening days; a sudden softening, a weakening of nature.' In describing this atmosphere, this too sudden softness, he uses a word frequent in the vocabulary of Shelley—'fainting.' In truth, like the great English poet, whom he seems not to have ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... Southern troops gave way. Their whole center was driven in, and they lost foot by foot the ground that they had gained with so much courage and blood. Grant saw his success and he pressed more troops upon his weakening enemy. The batteries were pushed forward and raked ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... opinions are derived from thought and study, has built her husband up by permitting his expression to stand even though her own judgment might differ from him. If she be a true wife or sister, she will seek, in retirement, to correct an opinion which could not be avowed in public without weakening a husband's or a brother's influence. A woman that builds up another is herself a power ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... strongly we have endeavoured to impress this importance on all your minds. The tie of family, and the love it ought to produce, is one of the sweetest of all our earthly duties. Perhaps we old people see its value more than you young; but, to us, the weakening of it seems like a disaster only a little less to be ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... came from the North, where the Isonzo was first crossed by the enemy. At this point there occurred a weakening of certain troops of the second Italian army, which gave the overwhelming German contingents an opportunity to pass forward between a portion of the army on the North and that on a line farther South. Then began ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... given, for these can come from God alone, it is only He who can finally make them reign on the day appointed by His almighty power! And there is even that interested charity which people abuse of to rail against Heaven itself and accuse it of iniquity and indifference, that lackadaisical weakening charity and compassion, unworthy of strong firm hearts, for it is as if human suffering were not necessary for salvation, as if we did not become more pure, greater and nearer to the supreme happiness, the more ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... what happened after that. Jilly was past all control. She was screaming steadily but her anguished howls were almost providential for they helped out Jane's weakening shouts. Again and again Jane turned the steers, her voice growing fainter and hoarser. The cattle seemed to gather impetus with each rush—the distance between them was fast lessening and the beasts became more and more unruly about going back. But in some miraculous ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... Christian admonition will not be lost upon them.[H] I will say the same of the American Home Missionary Society. They have little to do with slavery, as I have already remarked. Many think they ought not to say any thing upon the subject, because they cannot do so without weakening their influence. But then this question comes: If good men do not speak, who will?—[Hear, hear!]—and, as our Savior said in regard to the children that shouted, Hosannah, 'If these should hold their peace, the stones ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... unable to speak of its effects, mental or otherwise. With regard to alcohol, I have found that although the brain may receive a temporary accession to its production of thought, through the use of wine, etc., such increased action is always followed by a decided weakening of the thinking power, and that on the whole a far greater amount of even mental work is to be obtained without the use of alcohol than ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade
... at the man standing near her she saw that he was scarcely listening. Some intense preoccupation made him take in but vaguely what she was saying. She saw that he was deeply moved in some way, and the consciousness that this was so gave her a sense of alarm. She felt her own will weakening, and she knew that somehow she must get this parting over, if her strength were to ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... regularly in the pay of the British, and until the close of the war he was to be employed actively in weakening the colonists by destroying their settlements intervening between the populous centres of the Atlantic states and the borders of Canada. In this unhappy fratricidal war each side used the Indians to strike terror into the hearts of its enemies, and as a result, in the quiet valleys ...
— The War Chief of the Six Nations - A Chronicle of Joseph Brant - Volume 16 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • Louis Aubrey Wood
... this means in its application to our own life. Such a warning is evidently meant to remind us that the mystery of sin in human life is not to be got rid of by any such reliance on vague hopes. This mystery of sin in the heart and life, misleading, weakening, dragging us down, means in fact the subtle, poisonous, creeping power which evil inclinations exercise over a weak and depraved will. Are we, then, to trust to some sudden visitation from above, for which ...
— Sermons at Rugby • John Percival
... Forrest said: "Flushing the colon does not cause a weakening of the intestines. When this procedure is no longer necessary, owing to restored health, the intestines have also been restored and improved in tone and will carry on ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell
... coasts of Ireland. In truth, but for Spanish support in the Mediterranean, Bonaparte could never have ventured upon his Eastern expedition. Thus the defection of the Court of Madrid changed the character of the war. Thenceforth it revolved more and more around colonial questions, to the weakening of the royalist and republican motives which had worked so potently in its early stages. The oriental adventure of the young Corsican was to emphasize the contrast between the years 1793 and 1798; but the scene-shifting began with the intrigues of Godoy. In a sense Pitt ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... a mile from the rock where he had left his comrade, Weber once more paused. Nothing as yet had come to confirm that peculiar warning described, but his faith knew no weakening on that account. ...
— Cowmen and Rustlers • Edward S. Ellis
... of affairs in beleaguered Warsaw on that fatal 6th of September when the Russian general, taking advantage of the weakening of the patriot army, ordered ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... emotion, he had often repined at his lonely lot. By degrees the boy's fantasy and reverence which had wound themselves round the image of Eugenie subsided into that gentle and tender melancholy which, perhaps by weakening the strength of the sterner thoughts, leaves us inclined rather to receive, than to resist, a new attachment;—and on the verge of the sweet Memory trembles the sweet Hope. The suspension of his profession, his schemes, his struggles, his career, left his passions unemployed. Vaudemont was ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 5 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... blocks, said to have been excavated from certain vineyards near the Arch of Constantine, where they served as buttresses for the foundations of that part of the Colosseum which is now in ruins, perchance because of the weakening of ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari
... of thought relating to amendment of the Constitution. One need not be committed to the belief that amendment is weakening the fundamental law, or that excessive amendment is essential to meet every ephemeral whim. We ought to amend to meet the demands of the people when ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... of sacred fire-lighting. Connections of that sort were easily invented at random by the compilers of the Brahmanas in their existing form. Coming to the analysis of names, Kuhn finds in Urvasi 'a weakening of Urvanki (uru anc), like yuvaca from yuvanka, Latin juvencus . . . the accent is of no decisive weight.' Kuhn will not be convinced that Pururavas is the sun, and is unmoved by the ingenious theory ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... with me to-morrow, and stays at a friend's house, whence he and Alfred Potocki purpose coming on for the play on Tuesday evening. After all, I am not sorry he is coming; his regard for me is not of a sort to make me dread the weakening effect of his sympathy, and it will be comfortable to know that among that strange audience I have just such a kind well-wisher as he is, to keep up whatever ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... that youth, springing out of his armchair and opening the door. As he did so a note fell from off the handle. Charlie's face blanched to his very hair while Joe read aloud, his voice weakening ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... to join him. Villeneuve, Napoleon believed, had thoroughly deceived Nelson. "Those boasted English," he wrote, "who claim to know of everything, know nothing of it," i.e. of Villeneuve's escape and course. But the "boasted English," as a matter of fact, did know all about it, and in place of weakening their forces in the Bay of Biscay, strengthened them. Meanwhile Nelson, with ten ships of the line, was hard on the track of Villeneuve with eighteen. At Barbadoes, Nelson was sent a hundred miles out of his course by false intelligence, and that hundred miles just enabled Villeneuve ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... bank of the pond had made open water at several places, now that the winter frost was weakening. Out of these the beavers often came, as was plainly seen in the tracks, so the trappers approached ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... for the conflicts that yet remain, as the Red Indians believe that the strength of every defeated and scalped enemy passes into his conqueror's arm. They should have given force to our better nature, and weakening, progressive weakening, to our worse. They should have rooted us more firmly and abidingly in Him from whom all our power comes, and so have given us more and fuller supplies of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... entirely, a mob of half-naked renegades had made a prisoner. He was not dead, that solely surviving man from the Golden City. He was bound, and the Ragged Men guarded him closely, and his guards were diverting themselves unspeakably by small tortures, minor tortures, horribly painful but not weakening. And they capered and howled with glee when ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... know," she said, after a time, "I am—almost weakening about giving our money for a Home. Somehow, I'd so like for you to have it, ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... amount of physical pain inflicted by parents on children under twelve years of age, the most callous-hearted would be surprised and shocked. If it were possible to add to this estimate an accurate and scientific demonstration of the extent to which such pain, by weakening the nervous system and exhausting its capacity to resist disease, diminishes children's chances for life, the ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... speech of mine made the doctor wince, and I am not sure but he began to fear that my mind was weakening in a new direction. But I had my own excuse for my action, which I felt that I could explain to him at some future time. The fact is, I was so disturbed in my mind about Mona and was anticipating so much from meeting the so ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... necessary for him to weaken still further the power of the barons. He reintroduced a plan which had been first adopted by his grandfather, which had the double merit of strengthening the king upon the Continent and of weakening the barons in England. Henry needed an army to defend his Continental possessions against the king of France. The fyrd, or general levy of Englishmen, was not bound to fight except at home, and though the feudal vassals were liable to serve abroad, they could only be made to serve for ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... Earl of Buckingham, laid his vandal hands upon Joan de Tany, she turned upon him like a tigress. Blow after blow she rained upon his head and face until, in mortification and rage, he struck her full upon the mouth with his clenched fist; but even this did not subdue her and, with ever weakening strength, she continued to strike him. And then the great royalist Earl, the chosen friend of the King, took the fair white throat between his great fingers, and the lust of blood supplanted the lust of love, for he would have killed her in ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... end of 1914 was disappointing. Russia's accomplishment consisted of her victories in Galicia, and, probably more important, the drawing of German troops from the western front and the consequent weakening of Germany's offensive in France and Belgium. Russia was no farther on the road to Berlin than at the opening of ...
— A School History of the Great War • Albert E. McKinley, Charles A. Coulomb, and Armand J. Gerson
... officers were jealous of me. They envied me my place as Adjutant, and they were angry because Laguerre assigned one so much younger than themselves to all the most important duties. They said that by showing favoritism he was weakening his influence with the men and that he made a "pet" of me. If he did I know that he also worked me five times as hard as anyone else, and that he sent me into places where no one but himself would ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... was on the trail again. It was the afternoon of the second day of his quest. He was saddle-sore and weary, but his purpose knew no weakening. Gipsy was going fresh and strong, and though she had already traveled probably a hundred miles in her rider's aimless wanderings, she moved as though she was out for a morning's exercise on a liberal ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... maintenance hereafter of these particular classes upon the community: on the ground, therefore, of the future protective benefit to society, such expense may be legitimately laid upon the community as a whole. Further, in these cases, the danger of the weakening of the sense of parental responsibility is not an extreme danger to the Commonwealth, since the aid is definitely limited to a restricted number of cases, and since the moral obligation imposed upon the individual to provide for the education of his ...
— The Children: Some Educational Problems • Alexander Darroch
... monsieur; but, so far from weakening our efforts, they set us an example of courage in their own fortitude. Were nothing but resolution necessary to repel so accomplished a soldier as M. de Montcalm, I would gladly trust the defense of William Henry to the elder ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... said Henriette. "As dinner progressed I thought it wise to use it to keep Mrs. Innitt from weakening; so when the salad was passed I managed, without anybody's observing it, to drop the automobile nut into the bowl. The Duke of Snarleyow got it and the climax was capped. Mrs. Innitt burst into a flood of tears and—well, to-morrow, Bunny, Norah leaves. You will take her this ...
— Mrs. Raffles - Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman • John Kendrick Bangs
... Briarthorn had endeavoured to serve the enemy well, his exertions and assiduities had gained for him little more than toleration. His wish to obtain Hist for a wife had first induced him to betray her, and his own people, but serious rivals to his first project had risen up among his new friends, weakening still more their sympathies with treason. In a word, Briarthorn had been barely permitted to remain in the Huron encampment, where he was as closely and as jealously watched as Hist, herself, seldom appearing before the chiefs, and sedulously keeping out of view of Deerslayer, ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... walls the mighty sire explores, With eye close searching, lest a weakening flaw, Might hurl some part to ruin. All he found Firm in its pristine strength;—then glanc'd his eye Around the earth, and toils of man below. 'Bove all terrestrial lands, Arcadia felt— His own Arcadia—his preserving care. ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... managers for Government were not sufficiently submissive to the pleasure of the possessors of immediate and personal favour, sometimes from a confidence in their own strength, natural and acquired; sometimes from a fear of offending their friends, and weakening that lead in the country, which gave them a consideration independent of the Court. Men acted as if the Court could receive, as well as confer, an obligation. The influence of Government, thus divided in appearance between the Court and the ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... hallucination. A firm faith in the ritual employed, and a strong effort of will to bring about the desired result, were usually insisted upon as essential to the success of the operation.(2) A period of fasting prior to the experiment was also frequently prescribed as necessary, which, by weakening the body, must have been conducive to hallucination. Furthermore, abstention from the gratification of the sexual appetite was stipulated in certain cases, and this, no doubt, had a similar effect, especially as concerns magical evocations directed to ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... favorably disposed toward the rights of children than I am, and yet I am thoroughly convinced that soft-heartedness accompanied by soft-headedness is weakening the mental and moral fiber of hundreds of thousands of boys and girls throughout this country. No one admires more than I admire the sagacity and far-sightedness of Judge Lindsey, and yet when Judge Lindsey's methods are proposed as models for school government, I cannot lose sight, as ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... with resolute and grim determination stamped on every face. There would be no weakening at any spot where a ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... truth is expressed in the fewest possible words, in words which are inevitable, in words which could not be changed without weakening the meaning or throwing discord into the melody. To choose the right word and to discard all others, this is the chief factor in good writing. To learn good poetry by heart is to acquire help toward doing this, instinctively ...
— Life's Enthusiasms • David Starr Jordan
... resource. Its very obviousness should, of course, have warned him away, but his reason for attacking Mrs. Travis had an intimate connection with the general causes of his discontent. Disguise it how he might, he was simply in the position of a husband who fears that his authority over his wife is weakening. Mrs. Travis, as he knew, was a rebel against her own husband—no matter the cause. She would fill Cecily's mind with sympathetic indignation; the effect would be to make Cecily more resolute in independence. Added to this, there was, in truth, something of that conflict ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... questions, debates and determinations, in papers tending to the justifying of their unjust invasion. Whatever have been men's intentions in taking that way, yet the thing done by them, hath tended to the advantage of the enemy, and hath divided these who should have been joined in the cause, to the great weakening of the power of the kingdom, and this, interpretatively, is to act for the ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... of fair, fresh English girls, with huge crinolines, and their hair done up in chenille nets, made him long for England again, and the sound of their voices went nigh to weakening his resolve. But he stood firm to the last, and saw me off by The Baron. I felt a strange "serrement de coeur" as I left him standing there, so firm, as if he had been put "au piquet" by M. Dumollard! and so thin and tall and slender—and his boyish face so grave. Good heavens! How much alone ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... therefore give an automatic inscription of the correspondence exchanged. Such is the principle. But, practically, very great difficulties present themselves, these being connected with the rapid weakening of the electric properties of the selenium, and with the necessity of having recourse to infinitely small mechanical actions only. The problem is nevertheless before us, and it is to be hoped that the perseverance of the scientists ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various
... time picture to yourself your forces beating down his and overcoming him. Hold this idea and picture in your mind: "My vibrations are stronger than are yours—I am beating you!" Follow this up with the idea and picture of: "You are weakening and giving in—you are being overpowered!" A very powerful psychic weapon is the following: "My vibrations are scattering your forces—I am breaking your forces into bits—surrender, ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... monument to Bishop Law, the work of T. Banks, R.A. A figure of Religion leaning on a cross is above the tablet. This monument was originally fixed on the pillar behind the pulpit ("Columnae hujus sepultus est ad pedem"). It was removed to the north aisle because of the weakening of the pillar through having been cut to receive the memorial; and in 1894 was again removed and fixed here, about as far away from the bishop's grave as ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Carlisle - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. King Eley
... then Tennyson’s hold upon the British public seemed to grow stronger and stronger up to the day of his death, when Great Britain, and, indeed, the entire English-speaking race, went into mourning for him; nor, as we have said, has any weakening of that hold been perceptible during the five years that have ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... to the weakening of popular faith in the Hellenistic age is the decay of the institution of the Oracle. This, also, is of early date; as early as the fifth and fourth century we hear much less of the interference of the oracles in political matters than in earlier times. The most important of them all, the Delphic ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... their glances of inquiry, I added significantly: "We have no weapons. We cannot allow ourselves to starve—the end must come before that, for as soon as they saw us weakening we would be at ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... price which some Germans thought it worth while to pay for the unity which was all that was left them of 1870. Therefore Paris, with some hopes of disintegration across the Rhine not yet extinguished, can resist no opportunity of insult or indignity, no occasion of lowering the prestige or weakening the influence of a Government, with the continued stability of which all the conservative interests of Europe are nevertheless ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... the Commission to execute the law with perfect fairness and with as little irritation as is possible. But of course no relaxation of the principle which underlies it and no weakening of the safeguards which surround it can be expected. Experience in its administration will probably suggest amendment of the methods of its execution, but I venture to hope that we shall never again be remitted to the system which distributes public positions purely as rewards for partisan ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... it back, his eyes shining. His feelings had undergone a sharp reaction. He now felt that Tuppence was all that was noble and disinterested. Had she not refused Julius without hesitation? True, the note betokened signs of weakening, but he could excuse that. It read almost like a bribe to Julius to spur him on in his efforts to find Tommy, but he supposed she had not really meant it that way. Darling Tuppence, there was not a girl in the world to touch her! When he saw her——His thoughts were ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... the old beliefs are losing their influence to a greater and greater extent, they are ceasing to shape the ephemeral opinions of the moment as they did in the past. The weakening of general beliefs clears the ground for a crop of haphazard opinions without a past or ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... there chalk-faced, his lips so dry that he had to keep moistening them with the tip of his tongue. Two thoughts hammered in his head. One was that he had come to the end of his trail, the other that he would game it out without weakening. ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... fever and cough have gone the child may be allowed to be up and about the room, but for a time should not indulge in violent exercise, because there is often some weakening of the heart muscle by the disease. The aim is to allow the heart muscle to regain its normal condition before putting too much strain upon it. The diet should be increased when the fever has gone away, and should include good, plain, ...
— Measles • W. C. Rucker
... the teasing hint about Archie when mother said "dear" in that tone. It meant that mother was weakening. ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... by their own attendants. The Chief Eunuch, who was among them, took General Han on one side. "This is a very serious matter," he urged. "Let us send for General Yuan and the Chinese." General Han apparently weakened and agreed. There was no weakening on the part of the students. The Chief Eunuch and the General were "one by one withdrawn from the King's presence" and when outside were promptly despatched. Then the King was bidden to write notes to his chief anti-Progressive ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie
... swept away. Of the poorer people the loss was beyond computation. Nothing the human enemy was capable of could have done so much to ruin Athens as this frightful visitation, and to the end of the war that city felt its weakening effects. ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... reason why it should not be called an Asthenia; it is surely the weakening of a mental process that is strong in normal individuals. The evidence here presented shows that. I doubt whether there is any marked pathological change, since the individual may be educated out of it; but this does not necessarily follow as proven with my dog in Berlin.[2] ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... and spiritual prosperity in some other. They were, at least, the dejection of a magnanimous spirit, that could only be cast down by some new hindrance to the spread of reason and enlightenment among men, or some new weakening of their incentives to ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 3 (of 3) - Essay 2: The Death of Mr Mill - Essay 3: Mr Mill's Autobiography • John Morley
... and put his arm round her waist: an argument that no woman can answer in a man she loves; it seems to deprive her of her reasoning faculties. In the atmosphere of affection which she breathed, she sometimes feared that her mental powers were really weakening. As a girl she had lived a life full of purposes, which, if somewhat vague, were unquestionably large. She had then had great interests,—art, music, literature,—the symphony concerts, Mr. Hunt's classes, the novels of George Eliot, and Mr Fiske's lectures on the cosmic philosophy; ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... till the lintels were green with moisture and slippery with rot. Standing on this untrod threshold, I instinctively glanced up at the scaffolding above me, and started as I noticed that it had partially fallen away, as if time were weakening its supports and making the precipitation of the whole a threatening possibility. Alarmed lest it might fall while I stood there, I did not linger long beneath it, but, with a shudder which I afterwards remembered, stepped ...
— The Old Stone House and Other Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... the master come home, and raised his weakening voice in requiem over the friend of his youth, he will seek once more his dear Paris, and find again his cloistered home ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... and intrigues against which the weak sons of Theodosius were helpless in the hands of able and unscrupulous self-seekers, the result of which was the final separation of the empire into two distinct governments and the weakening of the powers of resistance of both against those ever-increasing encroachments of the barbarians which eventually caused the fall ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... and the understanding of certain hard utterances, therefore, there must of necessity lie a gradation of easier steps. And here Polwarth was tempted to give him a far more important, because more immediately practical hint, but refrained, from the dread of weakening, by PRESENTATION, the force of a truth which, in DISCOVERY, would have its full effect. For he was confident that the curate, in the temper which was now his, must ere long come immediately upon the truth towards which he ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... beauty I had read it aloud to her, perhaps, on fifty separate occasions. All this I mention to take away any appearance of a vulgar attempt to create omens; but still, in the very act of confessing the simple truth, and thus weakening the marvellous character of the anecdote, I must notice it as a strange instance of the 'Sortes Miltonianae,'—that precisely at such a moment as this I should find thrown in my way, should feel tempted to take up, and should open, a volume containing such a passage as the following: and ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... prognostication, they had traversed quite half the length of the lake ere there was the slightest perceptible sign of the creature weakening; and they accomplished another quarter of the distance ere the reptile slackened speed sufficiently to admit of their attempting to haul the yacht up alongside it. Then, when they at length proceeded to make the attempt, the ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... the cell doors with no means of sitting, I would, at times, become so completely exhausted as to be obliged to retire to rest a while. Then, taking the air from the cells would occasionally be most repulsive and injurious to health, the whole weakening ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... therefore, became a matter of the first importance. The possession of the Mississippi by us from Memphis to Baton Rouge was also a most important object. It would be equal to the amputation of a limb in its weakening effects ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... This episode, instead of weakening Handy in the estimation of his people, tended rather to strengthen him. It proved that he could wield power when he considered it necessary to do so. Notwithstanding that the departing one was unpopular with his associates, he had managed through insinuating manners ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... with conviction, "that each in turn has left his layer of concentrated thinking and belief behind him; because each believed intensely, absolutely, beyond the least weakening of any doubt —the kind of strong belief and thinking that is rare anywhere today, the kind that wills, impregnates objects, saturates the atmosphere, haunts, in a word. And each, believing he was utterly ...
— The Damned • Algernon Blackwood
... So it is too. The time the moon is going back, the blood that is in a person does be weakening, but when the moon is strong, the blood that moves strong in the same way. And it to be at the full, it drags the wits along with it, the same as ...
— New Irish Comedies • Lady Augusta Gregory
... the close of his speech (Appendix 2), presents an idea, first in general terms, and then in specific terms, thus: "No contrivance can prevent the effect of...distance in weakening government. Seas roll, and months pass, between the order and the execution, and the want of a speedy explanation of a single point is enough to defeat a whole system." Find elsewhere in Burke's speech and in the editorial ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... had nothing to gain and everything to lose by weakening the pacific power of old Caleb, whose granddaughter he sought to wed, but with a successful rival, whom he must kill or be killed by, usurping the authority to which he had himself expected to succeed, his interests were reversed. If he could not rule, he could wreck, and the promiscuous ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... twenty-five. This is perhaps a somewhat larger number than would be essential to work the ship, and than would have been shipped if the voyage had been to any port of a civilized country; but on a voyage to a wild coast, the possibilities of long absence and of the weakening of the crew by death, illness, etc., demanded consideration and a larger number. The wisdom and necessity of carrying, on a voyage to an uninhabited country, some spare men, is proven by the record of Bradford, who says: "The disease begane to fall amongst ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... were made women, almost from their very birth, and compliments were listened to instead of instruction. These, weakening the mind, Nature was supposed to have acted like a step-mother, when she ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... prisoner, no doubt; but, after all, he can end the unpleasantness at any moment. He need but to answer our question, and he can go to sleep as comfortably as a little child. The want of sleep is very trying, the want of proper food and of fresh air is very weakening; the prisoner must ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... Higher, but May Fall Lower How Fatalism Sustains Caste Contamination by Touch A Bone Collector's Pride of Rank The "Thief Caste" Caste and the Banyan Tree A Maharaja's Defence of Caste Some Forces That Are Battering Down the System Foreign Travel Weakening Caste. ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... ticks. They are the pests of Africa. They exist nearly every place and carry a particularly malicious germ that gives one "tick fever." It is not a deadly fever, but it is recurrent and weakening. There are all kinds of ticks, from little red ones no bigger than a grain of pepper to big fat ones the size of a finger-nail, that are exactly the color of the ground. They seem to have immortal life, for they can exist for a long time without food. Doctor Ward told us of some that he had put in ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... that Kimberley was outside the ambit of the army's high and mighty consideration. Others argued that the Colonel's policy of "mum" was mainly intended as a protest against the traffic in "Specials." We were all weary; the strain was weakening our mental faculties; the most sensible and philosophic cherished the queerest thoughts. As a cynic observed, one night at souchong, it took a siege to test one's intelligence—and it tried the cynics as much as the non-intellectual. All ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... measure responsible for what misrule there may be in Armenia and Syria. But I am in no way interested in supporting Turkish or any other anarchy. The Allied Powers can easily prevent it by means other than that of ending Turkish rule or dismembering and weakening the Ottoman Empire. The Allied Powers are not dealing with a new situation. If Turkey was to be partitioned, the position should have been made clear at the commencement of the war. There would then have been no question of a broken pledge. As it is, no Indian Mahomedan ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... commend the indulger his clemency, while other non-conformists, adhering to interdicted duties, were justly complaining of the effects of his severity. And as the woeful effects of it, strengthening the supremacy, weakening the hands of those that witnessed against it, extinguishing zeal, and increasing many divisions, did correspond with these wretched designs; so these could not be counteracted, but very much strengthened and promoted, by the acceptance of the indulgence, which, in ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... that he was weakening, that the last blow had hurt him badly, came to Masten the sickening knowledge that Randerson was fighting harder than ever. He paid no attention to Masten's blows, not even attempting to fend them off, but bored ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... organs, since they occur in dementia, idiocy, and old age, and the physiological and mental causes are the same; the power of fixing the attention and governing the thoughts is diminished, owing to the weakening of the vivid consciousness of the external world, produced by a torpidity of the afferent organs. In these cases the recollections which are not altogether lost sometimes reappear as hallucinations. ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... with the Wheel of Fortune. For it appears not how this can be done without danger and mischance of putting out a great number of the best and ablest; in whose stead new elections may bring in as many raw, unexperienced, and otherwise affected, to the weakening and much altering for the worse of public transactions. Neither do I think a Perpetual Senate, especially chosen and entrusted by the people, much in this land to be feared, where the well-affected, either in a Standing ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... from Reynolds, who seemed to be weakening. "What a dreadful affair this is! I'd give anything in my power to give if I ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... Robsart, protected him from the immediate vengeance of the king, and dismissed him without ransom. But he was unable to guard him from other penalties of his rashness, being the heavy fines by which he was impoverished, according to Henry's mode of weakening his enemies. The good knight did what he might to mitigate the distresses of my ancestor; and their friendship became so strict, that my father was bred up as the sworn brother and intimate of the present Sir Hugh Robsart, the only son of ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... dearer,' Mr Wegg returned. 'For when a person comes to grind off poetry night after night, it is but right he should expect to be paid for its weakening effect on his mind.' ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... offspring when he turned them into the police Lost and Found. Fitzgerald gave his gifts to an orphanage, with a fine disregard of their inappropriateness. But he gloomily suspected that a great many of his friends were weakening. The presents weren't bribes. Big Jake not only didn't ask acknowledgments of them, he denied that he was the giver. But inevitably the recipients of bounty with the morning milk felt less indignation about what Big Jake was doing and wasn't getting ...
— The Ambulance Made Two Trips • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... you know, sir? He seemed better; but a man can't go through such things as that without their leaving some weakening of ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... undergone a change. In early times it had been a barrier; later, under the Phoenicians, it became a highway, and to the Greeks a defense. We find that the Romans made it a basis for sea power and subdued all the lands on its margin. With the weakening of Rome came a weakening of sea power. The Barbary states and Spain became Saracen only because the naval power of the eastern empire was not strong enough to hold the whole sea, but neither was the Saracen able to gain supreme ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... ought to have been in bed at nine o'clock," said Phillida, her hold on the stocking weakening perceptibly under the spell ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... office, and the preposterously large salary attached to it, he reminded himself constantly that he trod on unsure ground. Once or twice he had been conscious of a strange sense as of some couchant beast beside him ready to spring; also of some curious weakening and disintegration in Melrose, even since he had first known him. He seemed to be more incalculable, less to be depended on. His memory was often faulty, and ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... prevents the core being drawn up until it has fairly gripped the sides of the wheels. The subsequent raising of the core therefore turns the wheels, raises the rack rod, and strikes the arc. The feed is operated by the weakening of the magnetic field of the coil, which causes the core to lose its grip of the wheels, and allows the top carbon to descend. The catch, L, Fig. 8, has a lateral play, and serves to engage in the teeth of the rack rod, so as to prevent ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 711, August 17, 1889 • Various
... devotion which were lavished on Napoleon misled him into making a most serious error in the organisation of the contingents which were to make up the great army destined for the war against Russia. Instead of weakening the governments of Austria and Prussia, his former enemies, by demanding from them the greater part of their available troops, which, prudence would suggest should be placed in the van, not only to spare French lives, but to allow ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... modern education is producing a habit of mind which is ever weakening in us the spiritual apprehension of truth—the truth of a person as the ultimate reality of existence. Science has its proper sphere in analysing this world as a construction, just as grammar has its legitimate office in analysing the syntax of a poem. But the world, as ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... and the wisdom of lord Burleigh alike inclined him to a pacific policy; and though Robert Cecil, for the purpose of strengthening himself and weakening his opponent, would frequently act the patron towards particular officers,—those especially of whom he observed the earl to entertain a jealousy,—it is certain that warlike ardor made no part of his natural composition. Essex on the contrary was all on fire for ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... action in hindering full oxidation of the blood, and causing fatty degenerations should be studiously avoided. These physicians attribute many of the deaths from heart-failure in such diseases to the combined action of the disease and the alcohol in exhausting the heart, and weakening its structure. ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... to help her. He suffered as much as she. Yet there was no weakening of his sensations; he was in as much torture as he had been at the start. He knew that they could not die and could never escape ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... the Central Empires, and in the judgment of the Bulgars with such finality and at the cost of so few sacrifices, that it was sheer impossible for the Entente Governments to attempt to compete with those. Bulgaria demanded immediate possession of Central Macedonia and the permanent weakening of the Serbian State. And this the Central Empires promised to effect within a few weeks from Bulgaria's entry into the war. Moreover, while asking that she should take part in a struggle against that group of belligerents which she deemed by far the weaker, they undertook to give her the full support ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... dying, and the bark on the main trunk becoming loose. The disease progresses slowly and I have seen large trees infected for twelve or fifteen years, continuing to bear fine crops. It does have a very weakening effect, though, and eventually saps the life from the tree long before its natural span of life of about ...
— Growing Nuts in the North • Carl Weschcke
... Patriotism forbids the man who loves his country, to shrink from any personal sacrifice, if he can thereby arrest some great national evil. That the use of tobacco is a great national evil, appears from the considerations which have been laid before you. It has been shown that tobacco is weakening the physical and mental energies of this nation,—that it is depraving our morals, and destroying the public conscience,—and that it is causing an amazing waste of property, and health and life. I ask every patriot to ...
— A Disquisition on the Evils of Using Tobacco - and the Necessity of Immediate and Entire Reformation • Orin Fowler
... the work of the army, and the tragic disaster of the Champagne drive was the result partly of intrigue in Paris in the government, partly of poverty, partly the result of three winters of terrible suffering in the nation, and partly the weakening under the strain of all these things, of this "too too solid flesh and blood." During the winter of 1916-17 soldiers at the front received letters from home telling of starvation and freezing and sickness in their families. And trench conditions ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... the Navy's Bureau of Supplies and Accounts objected to the use of black marines at the supply depot in Scotia, claiming that such an assignment to the Navy's sole installation in upper New York State would bring about a "weakening of the local public relations advantage now held by the Navy" and would be contrary to the Navy's best interests. He pointed out that the assignment would necessitate billeting white marine graves registration escorts and black marines in the same squad rooms. The use of ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... Auletes had been losing his friends and weakening his government, and, at last, when he refused to quarrel with the senate about the island of Cyprus, the Egyptians rose against him in arms, and he was forced to fly from Alexandria. He took ship for Rome, and in his way there he met Cato, ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... was distinguished by several vicissitudes, but the general result was the weakening and dispiriting of the American forces. Brigadier General Ashe was surprised in his camp and utterly defeated, and the British army not only penetrated into Georgia, but made its appearance at Beaufort in South Carolina. Here it was ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... only the slow growth of the power of the Church at the expense of the power of the Empire. Now it is important to grasp that the great exception to equality, the institution of Slavery, was slowly modified by both causes. It was weakened both by the weakening of the Empire and by the strengthening ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... They are perfectly acquainted with the country. They can select their point of attack. With their large numbers they can surround us. First they will shoot our horses. Then we shall be on foot and at their mercy. We now can take them by surprise. Our only safety consists in so weakening them, and appalling them by the vehemence of our attack, that they will have no heart to ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... terror during the first three years of war, and by their firm opposition, which they by and by induced the Poles and Yugoslavs to imitate, they brought about a permanent political deadlock, menacing Austria's very existence internally and weakening her ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... in the querulous accents of one whose brain is weakening. 'Pawliney, I wish you'd come down and sing a little, the house is terrible lonesome since ...
— A Princess in Calico • Edith Ferguson Black
... re-birth. Physical torture? The words were meaningless beside this warping, this tearing apart of spirit and mind—those precious children of his brain—limb from limb. Their shrieks for help!—their cries of anguish and horror! their clutches! their last spasmodic—despairing—weakening embrace! He would hold them! His clasp would defy all the powers of Earth and Air! No, they should not go—they should not. Oh! this cursed hand, with its nerves of steel. It would conquer yet, conquer and compress him down into an atom of ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... capital with her out of the service done by the promise of a conditional engagement. Ambition turned Florine's head; she did not hesitate. She had had time to gauge Lousteau pretty thoroughly. Lousteau's courses were weakening his will, and here was Nathan with his ambitions in politics and literature, and energies strong as his cravings. Florine proposed to reappear on the stage with renewed eclat, so she handed over Matifat's correspondence to Nathan. Nathan ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... it—Drew and Anse, Rennie and Teodoro. They coaxed, led, supported Shiloh when they could, and brought him to the water hole. And then they worked to stop the weakening flow of blood. Drew kept the young horse quiet while Rennie stitched up the worst of ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... inarticulate something which locked her in her room for hours of repressed, unexplained sobbing. Her writing became exhausting. Talks before her literary class were a nightmare of anticipation—for through all, there had never been any weakening of the beauty and intensity of her unselfish desire to give to the world her best. The dear old uncle watched her with growing apprehension. He persuaded her to seek health. It was first a water- cure; then a minor, but ineffective operation; ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... for you to deny his apparent conditions and affirm his real ones, and instead of thoughts of pity, which are only weakening, you could think of happiness and contentment. I truly believe we can learn to think of people this way, if we only catch ourselves for correction every time ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... the gaps they had made. Then the villagers howled and shouted and scrambled across the logs, pulling and pushing the obstinate timber, and the red head of Namgay Doola was chief among them all. The logs swayed and chafed and groaned as fresh consignments from upstream battered the now weakening dam. All gave way at last in a smother of foam, racing logs, bobbing black heads and confusion indescribable. The river tossed everything before it. I saw the red head go down with the last remnants of the jam and disappear between the great grinding, tree-trunks. ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... my assailant at a disadvantage, as I was unable to reach his face, owing to his superior grip of me; but I managed to get a leg at the back of his, and though the pressure on my windpipe was terrible, and I felt that I was weakening fast, I threw him back against the railings. As I did so a light was thrust into my face, ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... would be the better for not reading; and so far as these words of mine shall be taken for counsel, I am not willing that they should unqualifiedly praise him. The matter is by no means simple; it is not easy to conceive of a means of purifying the literature of the past without weakening it, and even falsifying it, but it is best to own that it is in all respects just what it is, and not to feign it otherwise. I am not ready to say that the harm from it is positive, but you do get smeared with it, and the filthy thought lives with the filthy rhyme in the ear, even when it does ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... was magical. Amid this scene of carnage and death a wild yell of merriment went up that brought courage to many weakening hearts, and Caney had fallen before the men had ceased to laugh at the joke ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves
... has been found. In front of it he places a jar with tesvino and some vessels containing food. On either side of these he lays one of his balls, and in front of all he plants the cross. The food and the beer are the payment to the dead that he may help to win the race by weakening the adversaries. ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... of great interest to the French. In the first place, they could not endure seeing the enemy intrenched five kilometres away from the coveted city. Moreover, it was most important for them to prevent the Germans from weakening the Verdun front and transferring their men and guns to the Somme. The French troops, therefore, were to take the initiative out of the hands of the Germans and inaugurate, in their turn, a battle of fixation. This new situation presented two phases: ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... instance does our Savior alter His language when He finds His words taken in the literal sense? Does He tell His hearers that He has spoken figuratively? Does He soften the tone of His expression? Far from weakening the force of His words He repeats what He said before, and in language more emphatic: "Amen, amen, I say unto you, Unless ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink His blood, ye shall not have life ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... looked out for the impartial administration of justice: he revived discipline and a military spirit in the army, and sought to infuse a better spirit into the civil administration. While he avoided cruel persecution, he directed all his personal efforts to the weakening of the Christian cause. Julian led an expedition against the Persians. He sailed down the Euphrates to Circesium, and thence proceeded into the interior of Persia. He repulsed the enemy, but was slain while engaged in the pursuit. The soldiers ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher |
