"Weakening" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the oratory of Lord Lyndhurst, when in his prime, were perfect coolness and self-possession, a most pleasing and plausible manner, singular ingenuity in dealing with a difficult question or in weakening the effect of an argument really unanswerable, a clear and musical voice, great ease and felicity of expression, and a wonderful command, always discreetly used, of all the weapons of irony and invective. He is, perhaps, the only nobleman in the House of Lords ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... been recognized as de jure head of the Fujiwara family. Nevertheless, Kiyomori, having contrived that the child should be entrusted to his daughter's care, asserted its claims so strenuously that many of the Fujiwara manors and all the heirlooms were handed over to it, the result being a visible weakening ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... village, he was expelled. I have often heard old Burmans talking about this, and comparing these times with those. In those times all big crimes were unpunished, and there was but little petty crime. Now all big criminals are relentlessly hunted down by the police; and the inevitable weakening of the village system has led to a large increase of petty crime, and certain breaches of morality and good conduct. I remember talking to a man not long ago—a man who had been a headman in the king's time, but was not so now. We were chatting of various subjects, and he told me he had ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... differences between the prices at which he sells and those at which he buys—that is, upon his power to tax the producers and consumers of the earth. It is the most extraordinary and most universal system of taxation ever devised, and it is carried out at the cost of weakening and enfeebling the people of all the purely agricultural countries. The more completely all the world, outside of England, can be rendered one great farm, in which men, women, and children, the strong and the ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... risks of becoming familiar with God's enemies. Secondly, that the cause, though natural, be not morally prejudicial. Not even a natural cause, brandy for instance, may be used to all its effects. Thus for the mesmeric sleep, though that should be proved to be purely natural, yet the weakening of the will thence ensuing, and the almost irresistible dominion acquired by the operator over his patient, render it imperative that such a remedy should not be applied without grave necessity, and under an operator of assured ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... it would seem, [Footnote: Sheppard, p. 364.] would not tolerate the Vandals in Spain, and intrigued with the Goths, their hereditary enemies, to make an attack upon them, perhaps with the view of weakening the strength of the Goths themselves, A.D. 416. Wallia, king of the Goths, was successful, and the Vandals were worried. The Romans also sent an army to reconquer Spain from their grasp, which drove the Vandals into Andalusia. But the Vandals turned upon their enemies and entirely discomfited ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... verse of S. Mark's concluding chapter; are in fact the words of Him whose very Name is Love. The precious warning clause, I say, (miscalled "damnatory,"(4)) which an impertinent officiousness is for glossing with a rubric and weakening with an apology, proceeded from Divine lips,—at least if these concluding verses be genuine. How shall this inconvenient circumstance be more effectually dealt with than by accepting the suggestion of the most recent editors, ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... done at all, it was best to do it thoroughly, since to have kept some natives under our protection, and to have handed over the rest to the tender mercies of the Boers, would only be to render our injustice more obvious, whilst weakening the power of the natives themselves to combine in self-defence; since those under our protection would naturally have little sympathy with their more unfortunate brethren—their interests ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... [Footnote F: Manifestly weakening. The Russian champion feels himself on the defensive, and at a loss how to continue. Thus the text move may be as good ...
— The Blue Book of Chess - Teaching the Rudiments of the Game, and Giving an Analysis - of All the Recognized Openings • Howard Staunton and "Modern Authorities"
... which he commands. At any moment great masses of that life are being wasted, turned to no account; and the result is not merely negative, for at any moment the wasted life, the stuff that is not being used, is dividing and weakening the effect of the picture created out of the rest. That so much remains, in spite of everything, gives the measure of Tolstoy's genius; that becomes the more extraordinary as the chaotic plan of his book ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... bringing up the rear. A great many that had been broken down by the rapid marches and the sun's burning rays from the time of our crossing into Maryland till now, were not up at the battle of the 17th, thus weakening the ranks of Lee to nearly one-half their real strength, taking those on detached service into consideration also. But these had all come up and joined their ranks as we began crossing the Potomac. None wished to ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... Attitude and expression are characteristic. She is the strong woman still, conscious of immense power; and, if that shut mouth could speak, and if health were given back to her, ready no doubt still to use it tyrannously. There is no weakening and no repentance in the face; and I like it better so. Nor did she ever really reverse, though she modified, the exclusion of Coryston from the inheritance. She was able during an interval of comparative betterment about Christmas-time, ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... moved toward the one window of which the cabin boasted. The roof at the opposite end and directly over the bed where the fire had started was now weakening ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... not in brutal carelessness that the poor horse was driven through all that suffering ... yes, and how that one touch of softness acts back upon the energy and resolution and exalts both, instead of weakening anything, as might have been expected by the vulgar of writers or critics. And then 'Saul'—and in a first place 'St. Praxed'—and for pure description, 'Fortu' and the deep 'Pictor Ignotus'—and the noble, serene 'Italy in England,' which grows on you the more you know of ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... Nelson did not entertain apprehensions of any serious attack on Minorca; and, therefore, without weakening more essential service, prudently kept merely an eye to the remote possibility of such an event; nor did his lordship's judgment, on this occasion, prove to be less judicious ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... believed that, sweet lady, life would lose its savour and become but a bleak existence," responded Don Carlos. "I prefer to believe that you love, yet refrain, and that your complaint to your fiance is an indication that your resistance is weakening, that you fear unless you are able to avoid me you will inevitably surrender to the ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... Blue Flower. But she gave no heed to him as she put the dropped crucifix into the weakening fingers. Murder, as such, is as horrifying to the gentle Hopi tribe as it is sport for ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... river and in the broken country bounded upon the west by the fenced-in railroad, three calves bore the VP brand—three husky heifers that never had suckled a VP mother. So had the range gossip, sown by chance in the soil of his greed of gain and his weakening ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... it is for a man to be kowtowed by men, it is not so bad, because not so weakening, as the domestic idolatry which sometimes goes on when one man is the centre of a large family of women, and the only object upon which the natural feminine instinct can expend itself. No greater damage can be done to a man than ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... any opinion of a father's, does not affect your real innocence; and as to the disgrace of the fact, depend on it, that, considered in all its bearings, political as well as moral, Sir Hildebrand regards it as a meritorious action—a weakening of the enemy—a spoiling of the Amalekites; and you will stand the higher in his regard for your supposed ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... showing signs of weakening. The Thessians got a third ray into position for operation, and opened up. Almost at once the tubes heated terrifically. In an instant they would give way. Arcot threw his ship into space, and let the tubes cool under the water jacket. ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... Jessie—Jessie and, of course, Pappoose—so close at hand in town, there was gaining ground at the post an impression that the safety of the board of officers sent to choose the site of the new Big Horn post had been imperiled by Dean's weakening at a critical moment in presence of a band of probably hostile Sioux. Burleigh had plainly intimated as much to his chief clerk and Colonel Stevens, and when Loring and Stone came through a day or two later and questions were asked about that meeting, the aide-de-camp gave ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... contracted, although—it is in the form of a Greek cross—each arm is sixty feet: in fact, it is only a crypt of unusual size; and although here were the saint's bones in an urn of bronze, we were conscious of a weakening of the impression made by the place we had just left. No doubt it is because the crypt is of this century, while the other two churches ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... that some trace of the original dimorphism of the sheep in this character was retained in both horned and hornless breeds. We may suppose that the factor for horns had disappeared entirely from the hornless sheep by a mutation, but in the horned breed another mutation had been a weakening of the influence of the sexual hormones on the development of the character, which, as in all such cases, is really inherited in both sexes. In the F1, when the horned character in the female is only inherited from one side, the hereditary tendency is ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham
... with his own eyes, and it appeared less funny than he had been led to believe. The horrible screams of the dead manager's wife pursued them as they hurried to the town. McMurdo was absorbed and silent; but he showed no sympathy for the weakening of his companion. ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the colonies at all, and not from any particular imposition; and that excises and a stamp-act had all been resorted to, in the war of 1812, without overturning the administration of Mr. Madison, or weakening that of his successor. But of what avail was a statement of this kind, in opposition to the allegations of one who appeared before Europe in the character of an American diplomate? Mr. Harris enjoyed the double advantage ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... with a hammer building in plaster and steel. I wondered what he did in that dreadful place. I hesitated, then asked him what he was building. "We are adding to Hell," he said, "to keep pace with the times." "Don't be too hard on them," I said, for I had just come out of a compromising age and a weakening country. The angel did not answer. "It won't be as bad as the old hell, will it?" I said. ...
— Fifty-One Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... is a miserable thing for a question of truth {319} to be confined to mere presumption and counter-presumption, with no decisive thunderbolt of fact to clear the baffling darkness. And, sooth to say, in talking so much of the merely presumption-weakening value of our records, I have myself been wilfully taking the point of view of the so-called 'rigorously scientific' disbeliever, and making an ad hominem plea. My own point of view is different. For me the thunderbolt ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... on the gravelled courtyard, he made a cheap and sorry gibe. But when he stood beneath the cross-arm to be pinioned, his legs played him traitor. Those craven knees of his gave way under him, so that trusties had to hold the weakening ruffian upright while the executioner snugged ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... straight into his eyes, "please tell me the truth: Aren't you feeling the advance of age? As the body is weakening, are your perceptions ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... profitably consider what 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 we make ...
— Sermons at Rugby • John Percival
... to make them safe much exercise in cold and pure air is necessary. And yet it is the children of the rich, housed in chambers and school-rooms most of their time, who are fed with these dangerous dainties, thus weakening their constitutions, and inducing fevers, colds, and many other diseases. The proper digestion of food depends on the wants of the body, and on its power of appropriating the aliment supplied. The best of food can not be properly digested ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... antagonist weakening; he knew it by his gurgling breath and his weakening grasp. He himself was also well-nigh spent, although he was not quite exhausted. Then, fearing lest the apparent weakness of his opponent was only a ruse by which he might gain advantage, ...
— Tommy • Joseph Hocking
... twenty or so big, flat feet. That'll take metal, but we can cannibal the whole Middle without weakening ...
— Subspace Survivors • E. E. Smith
... fierce light in Skelly's eye turn to joy. The man foresaw his triumph, and he began to curse low, but fast and with savage unction. Harry felt himself weakening, and he made another mighty effort to retain his hold, but the fingers still slipped, and, as Skelly struck him harder than ever in the chest, they flew ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler
... most violent anarchy, and he would have nothing to do with the strike at Montsou, which he considered a merely childish affair. Disgusted at the return of the miners to their work, he resolved to bring about the destruction of the Voreux pit, by weakening the timbers which kept out a vast accumulation of water. He accomplished that work of madness in a fury of destruction in which he twenty times risked his life. And when the torrent had invaded the mine, imprisoning the unfortunate workers, Souvarine ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... who could be amused by such things. Could this be what they called the joy of living? Milly's eyes had begun to sparkle. He forgot that in this very contempt the theatre was providing what he had come to seek—a drug for conscience. And before he recognised this the drug was weakening. Horribly, stealthily, It began to reassert itself. These people—what would happen if he stood up in his place and shouted It? His mind played with the temptation; he saw white faces, men standing and looking ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... he had noted how the cinch of his working saddle was weakening; some of the strands had parted even. He should mend it now, but he had no time to lose, and he did have another saddle, which he did not use twice during the year and which for months now he had not even seen. ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... the same stringent discipline that ruled the others. Though he felt his powers weakening beneath days of worry and nights of broken rest, he would have been surprised by the smallest concession, and would even have considered it a weakness to ask for any. That his rest was broken did not postpone the early breakfast by a single five minutes; that his health was failing did not alter ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... their wonder loudly and profanely. In vain did Murphy explain that Queenstown was around the corner to the south, and it was to Queenstown that they were bound. Their dissatisfaction grew, and at dinner-time lifted them above the weakening influence of the ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... From whatever point of view politicians may like to regard the end of the Transvaal war, any resident in this country can be only too well aware of the fact that one result of that terrible experience has been, a material weakening of respect for English people, and for the rights of the ...
— A Winter Tour in South Africa • Frederick Young
... right of nomination to all these situations, concentrated in the hands of a single person, left too much opening for error, and too much influence to favour, weakening the impulse of emulation, and reducing the teachers to a state of dependence ill suited to the honourable post they occupied, and to the importance of ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... such conditions, with new wealth come luxury and love of ease and that fatal readiness to believe that God has placed us in the best of possible worlds, which so lowers men's aims and unstrings their firmness of purpose. Pleasure saps high interests, and the weakening of high interests leaves more undisputed room for pleasure." "The political spirit has grown to be the strongest element in our national life; the dominant force, extending its influence over all our ways of thinking in matters that have least to do with politics, or even nothing ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... which would enable her to bring her whole force to bear on the rebels in the Low Countries. France on the other hand had recovered from the exhaustion of her own religious wars, and was eager to take up again the policy pursued by Francis the First and his son, of weakening and despoiling Germany by feeding and using religious strife across the Rhine. In 1610 a quarrel over Cleves afforded a chance for her intervention, and it was only an assassin's dagger that prevented Henry the Fourth from doing that which Richelieu was to do. England alone could hinder ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... beyond Romani, had been pushed further ahead. A system of training was started, but as the men had not recovered from the fatigue of the Katia operations, and the weather was very trying, vigorous forms of exercise were given up. A number of men went to hospital with a weakening form of diarrhoea almost akin to dysentery, while the medical authorities were in a highly nervous state about cholera of which a few cases had been reported. It was presumed that this had been contracted from the Turkish prisoners ...
— The Seventh Manchesters - July 1916 to March 1919 • S. J. Wilson
... detrimental to Ireland. And as the absentees are, in the strongest view, our greatest enemies, first by consuming above one-half of the rents of this nation abroad, and secondly by turning the weight, by their absence, so much on the Popish side, by weakening the Protestant interest, can there be a greater folly than to pave a bridge of gold at your own expense, to support them in their luxury and vanity abroad, while hundreds of thousands are starving at home for want ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... how it was that he had left America without seeing her. His journey to America was one of the uncanniest things that had ever happened in his life. Something seemed to have kept him from her, and it was impossible for him to determine what that thing was, whether some sudden weakening of the will in himself or some spiritual agency. But to believe in the transference of human thought, and that the nuns could influence his action at three thousand miles distance, seemed as if he were dropping into some base superstition. Between sleeping and ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... myself; but I have rarely confided them in detail, or otherwise, to those about me, because I know that even the most trustful of my friends would regard them merely as the outcome of an imagination unrestrained by conscience, or of a gradually weakening mind subject to hallucinations. I know them to be true, but until Mr. Edison or some other modern wizard has invented a search-light strong enough to lay bare the secrets of the mind and conscience of man, I cannot prove to others that they are ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... fresh injury to bear ... She would ring me up to tell me of her appointments with my husband ... she hoped to make me suffer so much I should end by killing myself.... I did think of it sometimes, but I held out, for the children's sake ... Jacques was weakening. She wanted him to get a divorce ... and little by little he began to consent ... dominated by her and by her brother, who is slyer than she is, but quite as dangerous ... I felt all this ... Jacques was becoming harsh to me.... He had not the courage to leave ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... was a sturdy fighting man, doing solid execution upon both the inward and outward enemies of the State. The latter were the savages, the former the Quakers; the energy expended by the early Puritans in resistance to the tomahawk not weakening their disposition to deal with spiritual dangers. They employed the same—or almost the same—weapons in both directions; the flintlock and the halberd against the Indians, and the cat-o'-nine-tails against the heretics. One of the ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... eyes wider in astonishment; but there could be no mistake—the crisis had passed, and Zelter was visibly weakening; the lion died out of his eyes, the pipe once more found its way to his lips, and after many demurs, many arguments, much pacing up and down, Zelter with a sigh of relief gave in. It was a noble surrender, for it included a promise of all the help that ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... tribes may have used shorter, others longer words or cries: they may have been more or less inclined to agglutinate or to decompose them: they may have modified them by the use of prefixes, suffixes, infixes; by the lengthening and strengthening of vowels or by the shortening and weakening of them, by the condensation or rarefaction of consonants. But who gave to language these primeval laws; or why one race has triliteral, another biliteral roots; or why in some members of a group of languages b becomes p, or d, t, ...
— Cratylus • Plato
... this is so, it may yet be true that some special enfeeblement (generated by the rise of temperature) which does not assume the acute form usually implied in the name, disease has the effect of stimulating impulses of a criminal character, or of weakening the barrier which prevents these impulses from breaking out and carrying all before them. It is a perfectly well-established fact that a high temperature not only produces physical enfeeblement, but that it also impairs the usual activity and energy of the brain. In other ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... inflammation, subsequent upon slight injury; or, in some cases, without any such provocation, as in gout, rheumatism, and scrofula. One of the first results of the inflammation, in such cases, is a weakening of the forces which distribute the blood to the surface and extremities of the body. It is generally admitted that in scrofulous persons the vascular system is weak, the vessels are small, and because nutrition is ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... I. For looking at the almost lifeless man I thought of my own good fortune. This morning I had envied him. Now he had nothing but his wealth, and his hold on that was weakening fast. I had everything—life and health, home and friends—I had Mary. As we parted a few minutes before, up there in the woods, I had pitied him. He had seemed so lonely, so bitter in his loneliness, and yet at heart so good. Now his eyes half opened as they carried ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... shot from the fires, expanding in size, but weakening in intensity. These lights, and the candles at the west end, revealed in a strange combination the middle ages, the ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... for the Catholic cause, from which the tide of conquest was rolled back upon the Reformation. But in 1559 the outlook for the Church was very gloomy; no one could predict whether a General Council might not increase her difficulties by weakening the Papal power and sowing further seeds of discord among her few faithful adherents. Yet Pius, after an attempt to combine the Catholic nations in a crusade against Geneva, which was frustrated ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... outside line of the shell and cut to shape roughly. See that the spreaders and sides fit true all over, then put white lead on the joint and nail with 1-3/4 -in. finishing nails as close as possible without weakening the wood. Slightly stagger the nails in the sides, the 1-in. side boards will allow for this, trim off the sides, turn the box over and paint the joints and ends of the spreaders, giving them two or three coats ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... receive in having marrying. She did continue in being affectionate in having, in giving, in receiving, in marrying, in resisting in spoiling in expecting in attending in deploring in obeying in enjoying her children. She did continue in expecting weakening. She did continue in hoping strengthening. She did continue in worrying eating. She did continue in rounding fading. She did continue in attending living. She did continue in enjoying feeling not being denying. She did continue in having been ...
— Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein - With Two Shorter Stories • Gertrude Stein
... away. I am going to leave Portchester for several months. I am going to see the world. I did not tell you this last night for fear of weakening under your entreaties, or should I say commands? Lately I have felt myself weakening more than once, and I want to know what it means. Absence will teach me, absence and the sight of new faces. Do you quarrel with this necessity? Do you think I should know my mind without ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... so ready," he said. "War must come some time. We should choose the moment, not leave it to chance. The nation needs war as a stimulant, as a corrective, as a physician. We grow stale; we think of our domestic troubles. The old racial passions are weakening and with them our virility. Victory will make room for millions in the place of the thousands who fall. The indemnity will bring prosperity. Because we have had no war, because the long peace has been abnormal, ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... 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 and ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... present life and his, and face the future cheerfully. A misunderstanding arose between them, indeed, which is, perhaps, one of the typical misunderstandings between men and women. The man, impatient of painful thoughts and recollections, eager to be quit of them as weakening and unprofitable, determined to silence them by the pleasant clamor of his own ambitions and desires; the woman, priestess of the past, clinging to all the pieties of memory, in terror lest she forget the dead, feeling it a disloyalty ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... who was a master hand at coloring, dipped the offending quills in brown dye and left them to soak in it all night, not only making them a nice warm color, but somewhat weakening their rocky spines, so that they were not quite as rampantly hideous as before, in ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... or modified species. They can show too that the changes daily taking place in ourselves; the facility that attends long practice, and the loss of aptitude that begins when practice ceases; the strengthening of passions habitually gratified, and the weakening of those habitually curbed; the development of every faculty, bodily, moral or intellectual, according to the use made of it, are all explicable on this same principle. And thus they can show that throughout all organic nature there is at work a modifying ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... measure. Your imprudence was trifling; it exposed you to trifling perils; you did not risk your head by it. The Penguins have lost that cruel and sanguinary pride which formerly gave a tragic grandeur to their revolutions; it is the fatal result of the weakening of beliefs and character. Ought one to look upon oneself as a superior spirit for having shown a little more clear-sightedness than the vulgar? I am very much afraid, on the contrary, Bidault-Coquille, that you have given proof of a gross misunderstanding ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... Jerusalem by his wife Melisinda. He was born in 1130, and became king in 1143, under the regency of his mother, which lasted till 1152. He came to the throne at a time when the attacks of the Greeks in Cilicia, and of Zengi on Edessa, were fatally weakening the position of the Franks in northern Syria; and from the beginning of his reign the power of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem may be said to be slowly declining, though as yet there is little outward trace of its decay to be seen. Edessa was lost, however, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... local Government a preponderance in the Legislature against the people's rights."[88] This, however, can hardly be accepted as a full or true explanation, as the Captain's absence at the time would not have given such a preponderance to the Government on any test vote. The weakening of the Opposition may or may not have been one of the objects sought to be achieved by the Captain's accusers. If so, it signally failed. Captain Matthews, be it understood, was not in receipt of half-pay, but of a pension. He ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... is, that the tea will not flourish in open sunshine; at any rate, subjection to this should be gradual. Further, that cutting the main stem is detrimental, not only inducing long shoots, but most probably weakening the flavour of the leaves. It appears to me to be highly desirable, that an intelligent superintendent should reside on the spot, and that he should at least be a good practical gardener, with some knowledge of ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... winding to the westward, neither is there any sufficient drainage from the west in the shape of gulches or branches. It appears as if there had been an original start, at least, given to the present basin by a removal of earth in a curve, subsequent wearing and weakening enlarging the cauldron to its actual form and size. This size is constantly increased by decay and by the work of diggers; for this bluff has been of late a favorite resort for them, from the fact that in its face human ...
— Historical Introduction to Studies Among the Sedentary Indians of New Mexico; Report on the Ruins of the Pueblo of Pecos • Adolphus Bandelier
... serious tastes. She had her quiet retreat into which the noise and glare did not intrude, where a few men of letters and thoughtful men of the world revived the old conversational spirit. She amused her idle hours by writing graceful tales, and, after the close of her court life and the weakening of her health, she turned her thoughts towards the education and improvement of her sex. Blended with her wide knowledge of the world, there is always a note of earnestness, a tender coloring of sentiment, which culminates towards the end in ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... and trust in God. As often as he then raised his hands to heaven and the people prayed with him, trusting that God would lend them victory, they were indeed victorious; as often, however, as Moses let down his hands and the people ceased prayer, weakening in their faith in God, Amalek conquered. But it was hard for Moses constantly to raise his hands. This was God's way of punishing him for being somewhat negligent in the preparations for the war against Amalek. Hence Aaron and Hur were obliged to hold up his arms and assist ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... offerings of fruits and flowers, and dainty repasts of the things which he was wont to like; and will pour out for him, into the little cup of ghosts and gods, the fragrant tea of guests or the amber rice-wine. Strange changes are coming upon the land: old customs are vanishing; old beliefs are weakening; the thoughts of today will not be the thoughts of another age—but of all this he knows happily nothing in his own quaint, simple, beautiful Izumo. He dreams that for him, as for his fathers, the little lamp will burn on through the generations; he sees, in softest ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... Paris some years ago produced fascination in the following manner: He would cause the subject to lean on his hands, thus fatiguing the muscles. The excitement produced by the concentrated gaze of a large audience also assisted in weakening the nervous resistance. At last the operator would suddenly call out: "Look at me!" The subject would look up and gaze steadily into the operator's eyes, who would stare steadily back with round, glaring eyes, and in most cases ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... Ambrose told the Countess. "Virtuous, indeed, but not with the virtue of the religious. He will never enter the Church. He has drunk at headier streams." The Countess was nearing her end. All her days, for a saint, she had been a shrewd observer of life, but with the weakening of her body's strength she had sunk into the ghostly world which the Church devised as an ante-room to immortality. Her chamber was thronged with lean friars like shadows. To her came the Bishop of Beauvais, once a star of the Court, but now in his age a grim watch-dog of ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... 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
... decide for her now? I longed to plead with her, longed to let her see that I was not hard-hearted, was thinking of her, was acting for her sake as much as for my own. But I dared not. "She would misunderstand," said I to myself. "She would think you were weakening." ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... in addition we had Warren, the gunner's mate of the Barracouta, as gunner; Coombs, the carpenter's mate, as carpenter; and Bartlett, the boatswain's mate, as boatswain. And by way of a crew, the captain gave us forty of his best men, as he very well could without weakening his own ship's company, a ship with supernumeraries having most opportunely arrived from home only a few days previously. It will thus be seen that, so far as strength was concerned, we were fairly well able to take care of ourselves. We were expected to do far ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... is acutely pointed, and contains two smaller pointed arches within it, each of which has an inner trefoiled arch. The tympanum of the large arch is pierced with a quatrefoil or trefoil. To counteract the weakening tendency of the triforium passage, saving arches, as may be seen from the south, have been introduced to carry the chief pressure across from main pier to main pier. A similar strengthening arch exists in the outer wall of the triforium gallery at Amiens. The west end is pronounced ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story
... her. Then, fearing that further delay—added, possibly, to further persuasion on her part—might end by weakening my determination, I gave her a final kiss, and hurried out of ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... juster views of man and virtue, which I can not help believing must have had great effect in weakening in their minds the old, exclusive, bigoted notions, and in paving the way for the great outburst of free thought and the great assertion of the dignity of humanity which the fifteenth century beheld. They opened a path for that influx of scientific knowledge which has produced ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... chevalier contrived to render du Bousquier both ridiculous and odious for a time; but ridicule ends by weakening; when all had said their say about him, the gossip died out. Besides, at fifty-seven years of age the dumb republican seemed to many people to have a right to retire. This affair, however, envenomed the hatred which du Bousquier already bore to the house of Esgrignon to ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... prepared to sell their lives dearly, believing that those of the crew who might have been loyal had been slaughtered. For some minutes they stood waiting in the darkness, and heard no sound but the moans of the steward, who was fast weakening from ...
— The South Seaman - An Incident In The Sea Story Of Australia - 1901 • Louis Becke
... what you're going to do," said Bunny, marking her weakening with cheery assurance. "You'll take Chops for a walk to-morrow evening through the Burchester Woods. You know that gate by the larch copse? It's barely a mile across the down. Be there at seven, and perhaps—who knows?—perhaps—Chops ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... those whose hopes are centred in material prosperity in this world 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 ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 3 (of 3) - Essay 2: The Death of Mr Mill - Essay 3: Mr Mill's Autobiography • John Morley
... luxuriant and so keep the cane within bounds. Suckers must be cut or broken off at the points where they originate, otherwise several new ones may start from the base of the old. If the vines are topped, it must be kept in mind that summer pruning is weakening, and the tips of shoots should, therefore, be taken when small, the object being to direct the growth into those parts of the vine which are ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... populace was carried much too far when they tore me and my unfortunate brother to pieces, yet I certainly had deserved to lose their affection by relying too much on the uncertain and dangerous friendship of France, and by weakening the military strength of the State, to serve little purposes of my own power, and secure to myself the interested affection of the burgomasters or others who had credit and weight in the faction the favour of which I courted. This had almost subjected my country to France, ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... contrary, was very old; compare the proofs in Delitzsch's Commentary on Habakkuk, S. 21. The Assyrian power, although, when outwardly considered, at its height, when more closely examined, began, even at that time, already to sink. A weakening of the Assyrian power is intimated also by the circumstance, that Hezekiah ventured to rebel against the Assyrians, and the embassy of the Chaldean Merodach Baladan to Hezekiah, implies that, even at that time, many things gave a title to expect the speedy downfal ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... brows in perplexity. Here was a game in which neither his bold heart nor his active limbs could help him. It was the new force mastering the old: the man of commerce conquering the man of war—wearing him down and weakening him through the centuries until he had him as ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... mean that after to-day I should not meet you again. If you were not quite what you are it would be easier. But as it is I find it a little too much of a test. No, don't mistake me or think that I am weakening. That is impossible. But all the same I don't want ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... length of the luminous attacks. A Morse apparatus interposed in this annexed circuit will 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 who are ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various
... invitation, Gibson spoke at churches, mass meetings, clubs and luncheons of business men's organizations. Brennan declared that the commissioner was showing signs of weakening on his vow that he would not become a candidate for ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... to-day, if the general reader were asked, he would probably be of the belief that the first rank was due to the earlier personage and collection. There is somehow a prestige about the Roxburghe sale which time seems incapable of weakening; yet in comparison with its successor it was a mere handful; and in fact the accumulations even of Harley, the second Earl of Oxford, vast and precious as they may have been, were not equal in magnitude or in value to those of Heber, of whom ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... and the other did not even listen, and he parted with the garrulous manager and rode on to the house. Deb, wet-eyed, met him with a welcome that severely tried his Spartan fortitude, without in the least weakening his resolve. Although she did not know it, being still filled with grief for her lifelong friend, it was the power and command that he had endowed her with which gave that charming air of fearless and ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... learned to prosper without a high tariff, and the South was voting for large subsidies to Eastern shipping. The West had found a way to develop her resources in spite of Southern and Eastern jealousy, and the laws of commerce were daily weakening the influence of state rights and sectional dislike. A new era had begun. Big business interests and great railway schemes had developed the corporation in its modern connotation; large harvests and a most enterprising industry were producing ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... must have been a fatiguing trip for you, though I myself am as fresh as a May morning. There is nothing wrong with you, but you are tired. Repose, my dear boy, repose, and plenty of it. That infernal Sicilian doctor! I shall never forgive him for bleeding you as he did. There is nothing so weakening. Good-bye—I shall hardly see you ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... goal-line, the ball going high and being caught by Marvin on the Blue's thirty yards. Brimfield, desperate for a score, lined up quickly and Norton struck the Claflin centre and piled through for ten yards. The Blue was weakening. Kendall added four and Still made a yard at left tackle. On the fifteen-yard line Marvin sent McClure back as if to try for a goal. Evidently Claflin accepted the bluff in good faith, for, although there were cries of "Fake!" ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour
... of mental irritation, listened to the African's foretelling. It seemed to him the imaginings of a zealot's weakening brain. This war which he foretold was to Michael an impossible thing amongst civilized nations, but he listened patiently to all that he had to say. Blood which was to pour like a river over the Western ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... that?... White says he must have help. I see. Woods and the others are weakening. Being badly beaten, eh?... More men needed to go out to the other plane. Wants reinforcements. Yes. I see. Well, tell him that he'll have them. If he can wait half an hour we'll have them walking by thousands into that light. I'll be damned if we won't! Just tell ...
— Hellhounds of the Cosmos • Clifford Donald Simak
... lady from becoming pregnant so frequently as she otherwise would. This, if she be delicate, is an important consideration, and more especially if she be subject to miscarry. The effects of miscarriage are far more weakening ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... given us power and skill 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 His exhaustless ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... convincement that ill winds have never blown me any good; that, on the contrary, the steady pressure of hardship and misfortune, during a period when my life was still in a great measure in the formative state, exerted an influence which was altogether evil, weakening the impulses which should have been growing stronger, and giving free rein to those which, under more favoring conditions, ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... proofs of them. Also, do not forget that the little story in question is selected from among a hundred others, which in their turn are equally indecisive, but which, repeating the same facts and the same tendencies with a strange persistency, and by weakening ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... woman who had reared her, a good number of sous, almost a little dowry, fifteen hundred francs in the savings bank. The old people, persuaded by his talk, and relying also on their own judgment, were gradually weakening, when he came to the delicate point. Laughing in rather a ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... the present day is the play which is sufficiently indicated by calling it immoral. There is no doubt about it that the theater, as at present conducted, is pulling the stones from the foundations of public morality, and weakening, and in many quarters endangering, the whole structure of society. The atmosphere of the modern theater is lustful and irreverent. It is a good place for Christians to keep away from. It is a good opportunity for the strong man to deny himself for the ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... bewilderment came upon his face—his poor, tormented face; then suddenly Saduko threw his arms wide, and sobbed in an ever-weakening voice: ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... individualism. Love of country and the ties of family life were loosened by the universal craving for self-indulgence and personal distinction. Idleness, sensuality, and scepticism—three baneful sisters—gained the mastery, weakening the fabric of society, and leading on to the evil courses ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... losing its tenseness as he looked into those brown eyes; found the strain of the situation weakening. The room appeared less chill, the vista beyond the doorway less formidable. Here was a good comrade for a long road—a girl to meet life with some spirit ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... of emotion from personal passion, art has in common with philosophy. If the philosopher will seek after truth, there must be, says Plotinus, a "turning away" of the spirit, a detachment. He must aim at contemplation; action, he says, is "a weakening of contemplation." Our word theory, which we use in connection with reasoning and which comes from the same Greek root as theatre, means really looking fixedly at, contemplation; it is very near in meaning to our imagination. ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... Mediterranean has thus 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 control. Thus the conditions were the same as in ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... you know, was constructed with the object of weakening beforehand the power which you were about to confide to me. Six millions of votes formed an emphatic protest against it, and yet I have faithfully respected it. Provocations, calumnies, outrages, have found me unmoved. Now, however, ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... which wrong thinking destroys the health. Thinking thoughts of lust is a prolific cause of unhappiness, sickness and nervous disease. The divine forces of life are directed into a wrong channel, resulting either in indulgence and inevitable weakening of body, brain and will, or in repression and its consequent nervous diseases. If the thoughts are allowed to dwell upon impurity, evil results must follow in some form, either in action or ill-health, or both. Thought ...
— Within You is the Power • Henry Thomas Hamblin
... of the journey they would be compelled to cross a chasm on a rope and vine bridge. Umballa, knowing this, circled and reached this bridge before they did. He set about weakening the support, so that the weight of passengers could cause the structure to break and fall into the torrent below. He could not otherwise reach the spot ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... 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 ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... sway a mob ended by sweeping M. Binet off his feet. The prospect which Scaramouche unfolded, if terrifying, was also intoxicating, and as Scaramouche delivered a crushing answer to each weakening objection in a measure as it was advanced, Binet ended by promising to ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... above nature, and enlarges images beyond their real bulk; by affectation, which forsakes nature in quest of something unsuitable; and by imbecility, which degrades nature by faintness and diminution, by obscuring its appearances, and weakening its effects." In Chevy-Chase there is not much of either bombast or affectation; but there is chill and lifeless imbecility. The story cannot possibly be told in a manner that shall make ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... mistake. Misled in some degree unquestionably by the optimistic McLane, he got the idea that Jackson was weakening, that the Democrats were afraid to take a stand on the subject until after the election, and that now was the strategic time to strike for a new charter. In this belief he was further encouraged by Clay, Webster, and other leading anti-Administration men, as well as by McDuffie, a Calhoun supporter ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... perpendicular. No increase in the deviation was found to exist when it was examined early in the present century. It is a wonder that this slight-looking structure can have survived the blasts, and thunderbolts, and earthquakes, and the weakening effects of time on its stones and timbers for five hundred years. Since the spire of Chichester Cathedral fell in 1861, sheathing itself in its tower like a sword dropping into its scabbard, one can hardly help ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... to set an example. I picked Houston's World because we can withdraw from it without weakening our position; its position in space is such that it would constitute no menace to us even if we never reduced it. That way, we can be sure that our little message is received ...
— The Highest Treason • Randall Garrett
... most of the day in her own sitting-room and required Eve to be at her side—she could picture his sufferings, and, try as she would, she could not keep herself from softening a little. Her pride was weakening. Constant attendance on her employer was beginning to have a bad effect on her nerves. Association in a subordinate capacity with Mrs. Rastall-Retford did not encourage a proud and ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse
... belief, to reveal as much of the mysteries interpreted by philosophy, as would counteract the demoralizing effects of the state religion, without compromising the tranquillity of the state itself, or weakening that paramount reverence, without which a republic, (such I mean, as the republics of ancient Greece were) could ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... project of proceeding to England. Mr. Radcliffe, on finding that his representations were ineffectual, begged that he might have an hundred horse given to him, that with them he might try his fortune with the Highlanders: this was also denied him, for fear of weakening the force; and he was constrained to proceed with his ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... Temple, had made a pretence of eating some of it at his breakfast, and then had bidden her never let him see it again. This was one of his ways of making sure that she and the Lump were properly fed, without weakening her independence by sapping her belief that she really supported ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... hate. . . . And this wasn't the worst, either. The worst was a sense that, lying somewhere with closed eyes under the ebb and flow of the tide, my beloved was working against me, watchfully, by unguessable ways, and weakening me. There was this dog, for example. . . . Yes, that had been the first token. How had it passed from me—this power over animals that had used ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Snake Purdee as he swung around a ledge at the edge of the narrow entrance to Smugglers' Glen and made a grab at Nort who was running as fast as he could under the weakening influence of the gas. "It's all right here—the wind will blow the stuff to the east. Swing around here, everybody!" and he indicated a niche to the west of ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Death Valley - or Diamond X and the Poison Mystery • Willard F. Baker
... and so pure of tone that the very spirits of the Western heavens would pause to look and listen. But divided they form a thing that is hideous to eye and ear. Oh, my China! how many wars are there from time to time among the different sections, weakening the country and making it poor! If only all these peoples, great and small, the gold and silver and the baser elements, would unite, then would this land be really worthy of the name of ...
— A Chinese Wonder Book • Norman Hinsdale Pitman |
