|
|
|
More "Impotently" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and beheld a young sparrow, with a yellow ring around its beak and down on its head. It had fallen from the nest (the wind was rocking the trees of the alley violently), and sat motionless, impotently expanding its barely-sprouted ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... had no thought of making stand. Just in the nick of time he sprang aside in a bound that carried him a full thirty feet. Another such, another and another, and then he went capering off frivolously down the woody aisles, while the bear lumbered impotently after him. ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... the Central Empires will be so increased that at a propitious moment, in a characteristic sudden assault, the armies of the Central Empires will invade and conquer Palestine, Egypt and India, and take what they will in Africa and Asia, while British, Japanese, and American and French navies impotently rage in useless ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... double-razor-edged dirk in short, resistless arcs, managed to keep the snaky tendrils from coiling about his right arm, which was wielding the heavy, trenchant sword. Every time that mighty blade descended it cleaved its length through snapping spikes and impotently grinding leaves; but more than once a flailing tendril coiled about his neck armor and held his helmet immovable as though in a vise, while those frightful, grinding saws sought to rip their way through the glass to the living ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... the grey Unending waste of sea and night, Dull, impotently infinite, Blots out the ...
— Silhouettes • Arthur Symons
... A wide-open River Press, flapping impotently in the embrace of a willow, caught the eye of Banjo, a little blaze— faced bay who bore the captive. He squatted, ducked backward so suddenly that his reins slipped from Slim's fingers and lowered his head between ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... O lithe and free! Fast in my linen prison I press On impassable bars, or emptily Laugh in my great loneliness. And still in the white neat bed I strive Most impotently against that gyve; Being less now than a thought, even, To you alone with ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke
... explaining a thing he had many times explained, Mostyn rose. Before him the open doorway framed an oblong patch of calm gray sky, and toward it he moved, his mental hands impotently outstretched, a soundless cry welling up ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... his lamented fall, The Common wealth served at his Funerall And by a Solemne Order built his Hearse. But not like thine, built by thy selfe, in Verse, Where thy advanced Image safely stands Above the reach of Sacrilegious hands. Base hands how impotently you disclose Your rage 'gainst Camdens learned ashes, whose Defaced Statua and Martyrd booke, Like an Antiquitie and Fragment looke. Nonnulla desunt's legibly appeare, So truly now Camdens Remaines lye there. Vaine Malice! how he mocks thy rage, while breath ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher in Ten Volumes - Volume I. • Beaumont and Fletcher
... convulsed her face, effectually terrified me, and disengaging myself from her grasp, I screamed as loud as I could for help. The blind woman continued to pour out a torrent of abuse upon me, foaming at the mouth with rage, and impotently shaking ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... York! New York was many, many things, she knew. The great house could have been filled from weekend to week-end from New York; but not with Graingers and Pendletons and Stranger; not with those around the walls of whose fortresses the currents of modernity still swept impotently; not with those who, while not contemning pleasure, still acknowledged duty; not with those whose assured future was that for which she might have sold her soul itself. Social free lances, undoubtedly, and unattached men; those who lived in ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... that inverted Bowl we call The Sky, Whereunder crawling coop't we live and die, Lift not thy hands to It for help—for It Rolls impotently on as ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Salaman and Absal • Omar Khayyam and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... on, barking their shins in the darkness that encompassed them beyond the circle of the bonfires. Behind them McIvor was hallooing to his scattered followers at the top of his lungs and cursing impotently between hollers as he poked about at ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... Shakespeare says, the mind of Mr. T. Chambers, before they can rule the world? For my own part, my resolve is formed. This great question shall henceforth be seriously taken up in Fleet Street. As a sop to those toothless old Cerberuses the bishops, who impotently exhibit still the passions of another age, we will accord the continuance of the prohibition which forbids a man to marry his grandmother. But in other directions there shall be freedom. Mr. Chambers' admirable Bill for enabling a woman to marry her sister's husband will doubtless ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... the porch, and I reached the lich-gate to see our beautiful car, piloted by a man in a grey hat, scudding up the straight white road, while in her wake tore a gesticulating trooper, shouting impotently, ridiculously out-distanced. Even as I watched, the car flashed round a ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... his little senate laws, What bosom beats not in his country's cause? Who sees him act, but envies every deed? Who hears him groan, and does not wish to bleed? Even when proud Caesar, 'midst triumphal cars, The spoils of nations, and the pomp of wars, Ignobly vain and impotently great, Show'd Rome her Cato's figure drawn in state; 30 As her dead father's reverend image pass'd, The pomp was darken'd and the day o'ercast; The triumph ceased, tears gush'd from every eye; The world's great victor ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... shouted impotently; a small page, on his way to the postoffice, stood agonizedly upon one leg; and a moment later there was a splintering crash, the blue taxi shed a cabin-trunk and a suit-case on to the pavement, and then, after a paralyzing moment ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... kicks, and squalls,—while a small female apprentice, by way of chorus, in costume and gesture absurdly caricaturing her prima donna, (a sort of Cossitollah marchioness, indeed, for some Dick Swiveller of the Sahibs,) shuffles rheumatically with her feet, or impotently dislocates her slender arms, or pounds insanely on a cracked tomtom, or jangles her clumsy cymbals, while the squatting bearers cry, "Wah wah!" and clap their sweaty hands,—our poor old glee-maiden of Cossitollah strums her two-stringed guitar, letting ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... to be distinguished, because the one was stripped to the ridi and the other wore a holoku (sacque) of some lively colour. The first was uppermost, her teeth locked in her adversary's face, shaking her like a dog; the other impotently fought and scratched. So for a moment we saw them wallow and grapple there like vermin; then the mob ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with the innumerable multitude which swayed to and fro like the tempest tossed waves of ocean; the main body continued for hours, loading the air with hoarse murmurs or angry shouts; detachments breaking off from time to time to rush with frantic speed and hurl themselves successively but impotently upon the iron doors and stone walls of the Station ...
— A Sketch of the Causes, Operations and Results of the San Francisco Vigilance Committee of 1856 • Stephen Palfrey Webb
... paused. There were so many enemies, he knew not which to pursue first. But straight ahead, in the very middle of the open, and far from any shelter, he saw a huddled group of children and nurses fleeing impotently and aimlessly. Shrill cries came from the cluster, which danced with colors, scarlet and yellow and blue and vivid pink. To the mad buffalo, these were the most conspicuous and the loudest of his foes, and therefore the most dangerous. With a bellow he flung his tail straight ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... while the ferryman pulled it and himself across. We met several more in the course of the next few minutes, before which we all bowed down into the bottom of the boat, while the hawser scraped, grumbling impotently, ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... minutes, all would be over. Once the NX-1 was dragged into that dark cavern there'd be no chance of escaping to warn the world above, of saving the submarine. What now? The question brought beads of sweat to his tormented brow. He, Keith Wells, standing impotently by while his ship, the pride of the service, was hauled inch by inch to some ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... removed from the bustle below; the sound of the dustman-like bell, which calls the house to meals, barely reaches my ear. I often catch myself parodying poor Maturin's lines, which I have applied to this unpoetical grievance, and concluded most impotently— ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... Intelligence and Peace are natural kindred: the ancient Republics were Military and aggressive only because they tolerated and cherished Human Slavery; and it is this which recently fomented hostilities between the two Republics of North America, and now impotently threatens the internal peace of our own. Liberty, if thorough and consistent, always did and must incline to Peace; while Despotism, being founded in and only maintainable by Force, inevitably fosters a martial spirit, organizes ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... fallen, while the older dynasties of Europe were feeling once more secure, because the man who hesitated not to sacrifice vast myriads of human lives to accomplish his own aggrandizement, was now bound, and, like a tiger in chains, could do nought save growl impotently. ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... Mommer!" But Mrs. Urmy and Lady Hartley had beaten a diplomatic retreat. Jeannette jumped to her feet, the color flaming in her face, her eyes snapping with indignation. "Oh!" she cried, impotently. "I'll—I'll—oh! what can I do? It must come out! He must apologize. Who did it? Oh, I ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... And after the first sharp pang,—after the arrow of conviction fastened in my heart,—I pressed it there with a kind of stern, vindictive joy, triumphing in my capacity of suffering. I wonder if any one ever felt as I did,—I wonder if any worm of the dust ever writhed so impotently under the foot of ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... and looked out. Once he rushed across to his garden and came back cursing impotently, to report a shell fallen close to the garden, his carefully erected forcing frames shattered to splinters by the shock, and a hail of small stones and the ruins of an iron stove dropped obliteratingly across ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... the face above the cheek-bones was noble; but the lower part fell away to a mouth and chin which were amiable and undecided. At the hour of Tabs' arrival, he was flinging up his hands and spluttering impotently, an inexpert swimmer in the waters ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... fear, as chicks to the hen. They will marvel at us and will be awe-stricken before us, and will be proud at our being so powerful and clever, that we have been able to subdue such a turbulent flock of thousands of millions. They will tremble impotently before our wrath, their minds will grow fearful, they will be quick to shed tears like women and children, but they will be just as ready at a sign from us to pass to laughter and rejoicing, to happy mirth and childish song. Yes, we shall set them ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Christmas. The old man, weakened by his long illness, had been stunned by the War, and when his second illness seized him, he made no effort to resist it. He would lie very quietly for a long while, and then a paroxysm of fury would possess him, and he would shake his fist impotently in the air. "If they wanted a war," he shouted once, "why didn't they go and fight it themselves. They were paid to keep ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... shattering the bones and crushing the flesh into a pulp. Out of the cavity darted the arrow-shaped head, hissing and lunging frantically and blindly in all directions, while the latter half of the body writhed impotently and twisted itself into knots; but the snake could not move ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... performance; but still it allowed Westerman to come within pistol shot of him before he could get beneath the shelter of the wall. The German, however, in his anxiety to get through the gate, omitted to fire, though he had the pistol in his hand; he seized hold of the iron bars and shook them impotently: strong as he was, the gate was much too firm to be moved by his strength; the wall was twelve feet high, and utterly beyond his power to scale ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... was preparing to leave New York, China was in turmoil. Yuan Shi-kai was president of the Republic, but the hope of his heart was to be emperor of China. For twenty years he had plotted for the throne; he had been emperor for one hundred miserable days; and now he was watching, impotently, his dream-castles crumble beneath his feet. Yuan was the strong man of his day, with more power, brains, and personality than any Chinese since Li-Hung Chang. He always had been a factor in his political world. His monarchial dream first ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... giant munitions plant. The Nansalians built factories there and laughed while the armies of Sator raged impotently at the magnetic barrier. They tried sending missiles through, but the induction heating in every metal part of the bombs either caused them to explode instantly or ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... read no more, for the tall printer, seemingly incapable of coherent speech, kicked the desk impotently, threw his arms above his head, and, his companions confidently looking to see him foam at the mouth, lost his balance and toppled over backward, his extensive legs waving wildly in the air as he struck the floor. ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... mighty arms the long body of Master Paul Hungerford. He was followed by Garlinge, who was performing the like embracive office for the short body of Master Peter Rainham. The two angry gentlemen plunged and struggled impotently to free themselves from their guardians and hurl themselves at each other's throats. They might as well have tried to free themselves from clamps of iron. To the master-muscled Garlinge and Clupp—a strong Gyas, a strong Cloanthes, ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... difference: about the head this envelope, though not so thick, is of a boneless toughness, inestimable by any man who has not handled it. The severest pointed harpoon, the sharpest lance darted by the strongest human arm, impotently rebounds from it. It is as though the forehead of the Sperm Whale were paved with horses' hoofs. I do not think that any ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... GENTLEMAN [coming from the portico to his granddaughter's right] Great Heavens! And at the base of this monstrous poltroon's statue the War God of Turania is now gibbering impotently. ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... the summer, he had recognized the sound, had realized the steep agony towards which the current was bearing him, and had struggled horribly, impotently, against the inevitable. But of late, though the sound was ever in his ears, welling up out of the blue distance, he had given up the useless struggle, and lay still in the sunshine watching the summer woods slide past and the clouds sail away, always away ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... authority of the favorite or the authority of the favorite's master. By the time that Grenville had been two years in office the King hated him as {72} bitterly as he had ever hated Pitt. If Bute was impotently furious to find himself discarded and despised by his intended tool, the King was still more exasperated to find that the King's servant proposed to be the King's master. Grenville was a good lawyer and a good man of business, but he ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... I envisage that! Come with me, Your Excellency, and look on it: Zeno the Great is there, writhing impotently in the grasp of his captors and, at such intervals as his voice can be heard, hoarsely importuning me to make all clear. The gendarmes are there. The troopers are there in full panoply of lethal equipment and carnage-dealing implements of war. The mayor is there, ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... been Diego's last but that his two followers lifted him to his feet and, picking him up like a child, ran for his canoe with him. With a few rapid strokes they were in midstream and paddling up the river with powerful strokes while Sikaso raged impotently on ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... understood the pallor on the upturned faces of the crowd. He looked at the house again. The whole street was wrapped in a crimson mist; the falling streams of water which the firemen still continued to direct on the blaze were hissing impotently, and seemed only to feed the fire. In the crowd that watched there was hardly a sound; one could almost hear men's hearts beating as they waited for the conclusion of the tragedy which they knew to be inevitable. But further down the street, ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... saw that even the man Cazeau suspected him. And then,—when the public confession of the Abbe Vergniaud came under discussion,—the Pope had gathered together all the visible remains of physical force his attenuated frame could muster, and had hurled himself impotently against the wall of opposing fact with such frail fury as almost to suggest the celebrated simile of "a reed shaken with the wind". In vain had the Cardinal pleaded for Vergniaud's pardon; in vain had he urged that after all, the sinner had branded himself as such in the sight of all men; what further ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... strange spectacle met his view. The pony was sitting on the ground, erect, after the manner of a biped. Its head was in the air, its hind-legs were extended horizontally, its fore-legs were waving impotently up and down'. The ant-bear had carved its way deep into the bowels of the earth, gradually but relentlessly dragging the hapless pony down until its posterior parts hermetically sealed up the burrow. It was, in fact, only the smallness of the latter which prevented the ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... else winding among the semi-genteel squares and terraces westward by Copenhagen Street, or, best of all, mounting to the Regent's Canal, where we paused to lean over the bridge and watch flotillas of ducks steer under us, or little white dogs dash, impotently furious, from stem to stern of the great, lazy barges painted in a crude vehemence of vermilion and azure. These were happy hours, when the spectre of Religion ceased to overshadow us for a little while, when my Father forgot the Apocalypse and dropped his austere ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... 1883, the march began—just two years after they had entered the frozen deep—Greely hoping to meet the relief ship oh the way. He did not know that three weeks before she had been nipped in the ice-pack, and sunk, and that her consort, the "Yantic," had gone impotently home, without even leaving food for the abandoned explorers. Over ice-fields and across icy and turbulent water, the party made its way for five hundred miles—four hundred miles of boating and one hundred of sledging—fifty-one days of heroic exertion ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... of the combat lasted, when the Prussian battalions were hurling their human waves in columns against the rocky defences of Gravelotte, only for them to fall back impotently, like the broken foam and spent wash of billows which have assailed in vain the precipitous peaks of some cliff-defended coast that repels their every attack; when the sharp clash of steel met opposing steel and galloping thud of flying squadrons, urged on with savage oath and triumphant cheer, ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Aunt Anfisa is slowly moving along. Her image quivers in the darkness before Foma, like the modest flame of a wax candle. And it dies out and disappears in the darkness. Pelagaya is quickly going somewhere along a straight road. There Sophya Pavlovna Medinskaya is standing, her hands hanging impotently, just as she stood in her drawing-room when he saw her last. Her eyes were large, but some great fright gleams in them. Sasha, too, is here. Indifferent, paying no attention to the jostling, she is stoutly going straight into the very ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... with this difference: about the head this envelope, though not so thick, is of a boneless toughness, inestimable by any man who has not handled it. The severest pointed harpoon, the sharpest lance darted by the strongest human arm, impotently rebounds from it. It is as though the forehead of the Sperm Whale were paved with horses' hoofs. I do not think that any sensation lurks in it. Bethink yourself also of another thing. When two large, loaded Indiamen chance to ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... Tientsin half-acquiesced in but fifteen short hours ago is no longer thought of, for what the Ministers propose to do now interests no one. After impotently attempting to deal with questions for which they were in no wise fitted they have resigned themselves to the inevitable, and have become mere pawns like the rest of us. Fortunately the men who are men begin to work with frenzied energy, ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... Gregorio. He looked at the pewter mugs shining in the sunlight. He eyed greedily the passage of one from hand to hand; and when one man, after taking a long pull, laughed and held it upside down to show him it was empty, he burst into an uncontrollable fit of anger, and shook his fist impotently at the soldiers, who chaffed him good-naturedly. As he went along by the stables, a friendly lancer, pitying him, probably, too, wearying of his own lonely watch, called to him, and offered him a drink out of a stone ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... that the steamer had been hit forward on the starboard side. The upper portion of the stem piece was almost down to the water level, her foremost hold was obviously filling rapidly. Her stern was high out of water, the red ensign of England flapping impotently on the ensign staff. Her propeller, which was still slowly revolving, thrashed the water, and this heightened the impression that I was watching the struggles of a dying animal. The propeller was ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... clear and strong, casting black shadows all about her. Twice, in her frantic efforts to escape, she ran back into the centre of the maze. The jester had gone, but she imagined him lurking behind every corner, and she impotently recalled his words: "There is no way ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... of her anger and despair stormed through her veins again with yet greater violence, but this time George Goring was forgotten and all its waves broke impotently against that adversary whose diabolical power she was so impotent to resist, who might return to-morrow, ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... Life of Reason nothing is needed but an analytic spirit and a judicious love of man, a love quick to distinguish success from failure in his great and confused experiment of living. The historian of reason should not be a romantic poet, vibrating impotently to every impulse he finds afoot, without a criterion of excellence or a vision of perfection. Ideals are free, but they are neither more numerous nor more variable than the living natures that generate them. Ideals are legitimate, and each initially ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... conquer and a soul to dare, Joined to the manners of a dancing bear, Fools unaccustomed to the wide survey Of various Nature's compensating sway, Untaught to separate the wheat and chaff, To praise the one and at the other laugh, Yearn all in vain and impotently seek Some flawless hero upon whom to wreak The sycophantic worship of the weak. Not so the wise, from superstition free, Who find small pleasure in the bended knee; Quick to discriminate 'twixt good and bad, And willing in the king to find the cad— No reason seen why genius and conceit, The power ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... to the landlady and to invisible constables for help. But her pangs were childish compared with Morsfield's, who, with the rage of a conceited schemer tricked and the fury of a lover beholding the rape of his beautiful, bellowed impotently at Weyburn and the coachman out of hearing, 'Stop! you!' He was in the state of men who believe that there is a virtue in imprecations, and he shot loud oaths after them, shook his fist, cursed his friend Cumnock, whose name he vociferated as a summons to him,—generally the baffled ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... o'clock they were passing over the basin of Imenge, and the tribes scattered over the adjacent hills were impotently menacing the Victoria with their weapons. Finally, she sped along as far as the last undulations of the country which precede Rubeho. These form the last and loftiest chain of the mountains ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... was the effect of Jeckley's cocktail on an otherwise empty stomach. Whatever the cause, I suddenly became conscious that I was passing into a state of high mental tension; I wanted to scream, to beat impotently upon the air; Jeckley would have put it that I was within an ace of flying ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... terrifying oaths Lighthouse Harry thrust a shell into the breech of the quick-firing gun. Without waiting to aim it, he tugged at the trigger. Nothing happened! He threw open the breech and gazed impotently at the base of the shell. It was untouched. The ship was ringing with cries of anger, of hate, with rat-like ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... striving to grasp campus tradition, to understand college life, was eager to fling himself into the scrimmage, to give every ounce of his mighty power, to offer that splendid body, for his Alma Mater, and now he must hobble impotently on the side-line, watching his team ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... Ball they call the High— By which the Duffer thinks to live or die, Lift not your hands to IT for help, for it As impotently froths as you ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... before them, but as they approached more nearly the couch, upon which the captain was, they encountered six figures encased in armor fully as capable as their own. The beams of the Lewistons rebounded from that armor in futile pyrotechnics, the bullets of the automatics spattered and exploded impotently against it. And behind that single line of armored guards were massed perhaps twenty unarmored, but masked, soldiers; and scuttling up the ramps leading into the hall were coming the platoons of heavily-armored figures which Costigan had ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... up where he intended to anchor and called to the stooping white-clad figure in the bow: "Let go!" There was an answering splash, a sudden rasp of hawser, the booms swung idle, and the yacht imperceptibly settled into her berth. The wheel turned impotently; and, absent-minded, John Woolfolk locked it. He dropped his long form on a carpet-covered folding chair near by. He was tired. His sailor, Poul Halvard, moved about with a noiseless and swift efficiency; he rolled and cased the jib, ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... motives with your wife's is blasphemy," cried the other. "Her deed held the glory of self-sacrifice, that you might gain enlightenment; while you, railing impotently here, giving out affront against the gods, are as the wild beast on the mountain that cannot bear the arrow in ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... that in two minutes the eighty or ninety thousand people which it held could escape. Caracalla had the exits closed. Those who escaped were naked; to bribe the guards they were forced to strip themselves to the skin. In the circus a vestal caught his eye. He tried to violate her, and failing impotently, had her buried alive. "Caracalla knows that I am a virgin, and knows why," the girl cried as the earth swallowed her, but there was no one ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... Once again to vengeful fury would he rouse the fiend of old That in Richard's breast is lurking, ready once again to spring. Dreading now that vengeful spirit, with a wavering voice, the king Questions impotently, wildly: "Prisoner, tell me, what of ill Ever I have done to thee or thine, that me thou wouldest kill?" Higher, prouder still he bears him; o'er his countenance appear, Flitting quickly, looks of wonder and of scorn: what ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... wearing the badge of our most noble order. I should not have been as there is no moral distinction between a thief and a spy." Encouraged by his own words, he tore the medal from its resting place, while Carrick groaned impotently. ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... imagine her breast thus adrum with remorse and hatred of herself, the while that town by town fell before the invader like card-houses. Every rumor of defeat—and the news of some fresh defeat came daily—was her arraignment; impotently she cowered at God's knees, knowing herself a murderess, whose infamy was still afoot, outpacing her prayers, whose victims were battalions. Tarpeia and Pisidice and Rahab were her sisters; she hungered in her ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... the darkness came suddenly back upon her, enveloping her, overwhelming her—a darkness that could be felt. For a little she fought against it frantically, impotently. Then her feet seemed to totter over the edge of a dreadful, formless silence. She knew that ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... could see that they were balanced on the edge of a culvert; to her right was the darkness; up ahead, the lights were glaring impotently off into space. And then she realized that an arm was encircling her waist in an iron grip and that the motor was still thrumming and that someone was running around in front of the car and then peering off down the slope where they tipped so perilously. These things came to her in just that ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... suddenly radiant and now utterly extinct, in the various and voluminous array of his writings. Although his earlier plays are in every way superior to his later, there is evidence even in the best of them of the author's infirmity of hand. From the first he shows himself idly or perversely or impotently prone to loosen his hold on character and story alike before his plot can be duly carried out or his conceptions adequately developed. His "pleasant Comedie of 'The Gentle Craft,'" first printed three years before the death of Queen Elizabeth, is ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... ages will. So long as there are men fit for it, quorum odium virtute relicta placet, it will never be wanting. It is a barbarous envy, to take from those men's virtues which, because thou canst not arrive at, thou impotently despairest to imitate. Is it a crime in me that I know that which others had not yet known but from me? or that I am the author of many things which never would have come in thy thought but that I taught them? It is new but ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... moral inquiry, and it is of great importance to determine it even on this account, in order that reason may not on the one band, to the prejudice of morals, seek about in the world of sense for the supreme motive and an interest comprehensible but empirical; and on the other hand, that it may not impotently flap its wings without being able to move in the (for it) empty space of transcendent concepts which we call the intelligible world, and so lose itself amidst chimeras. For the rest, the idea of a ...
— Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals • Immanuel Kant
... glancing calmly at the apoplectic old aristocrat gagged on the ground, whose eyes were starting impotently from his head. "I have made an appointment here with a thoroughly nice young fellow. An old friend. Jasper Drummond his name is—you may have met him this afternoon at the Beaumonts. He can scarcely come though till the Beaumonts' ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... so heartbroken was that cry, as might be the howl of a lost soul raging impotently, that it seemed to stop the course of the very blood in her veins. In fear and terror she dropped her guarding arm, half feeling already the blow she expected to receive in her face, and quailing from the raving madman ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... life, from its bare preservation to its supreme fruition. There is a high pretension in morality which is the necessary consequence of its motive. But man is not, on that account, in need of those reminders of failure which are so easy to offer, and which are so impotently true; he needs rather new symbols of faith, through which his heart may be renewed, and his courage fortified to proceed with an undertaking of which he cannot see the end. Faith and courage ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... Wilbur went on. "But I was still confident. I sank all the proceeds of the first strike—and sank them fast, for unaccountable accidents that crippled me both financially and in the progress of the work began to happen." Wilbur flung out his hands impotently. "Oh, it's a long story—too long to tell. Thurl was at the bottom of those accidents. He knew as well as I did that the mine was rich—better than I did, for that matter, for we discovered before we ran him out ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... holiest of man's desires: yet stronger immeasurably, as with the educated, things of the mind are stronger than things of the body. Those who deny this are fools, or imposters,—I know not which. To do so is to strike at the very foundation of human nature,—but impotently,—for in fundamentals, human nature is good." Unconsciously, a smile ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... saying that you and your wife were going as Lady Isobel's guests to that house of hers. She did that for me. And now, do you think we ought to seem even seem—to slight her kindness?' Hugh was turning about, chafing impotently. ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... closing in on us, flung wide those gates of Death once more, and turning, before passing through, beckoned to our Maluka to follow. But at those open gates the Maluka lingered a little while with those who were fighting so fiercely and impotently to close them—lingering to teach us out of his own great faith that "Behind all Shadows standeth God." And then the gates gently closing, a woman stood alone in that little home that had been wrested, so merrily, out of the ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... looked like a wasp. The lassoes were tautened, and the youngster thrown over on his side. The Joven, grinning cheerfully, then forced a thong of raw hide into his unwilling pupil's mouth, whilst the young horse, half-mad with terror, rolled his eyes impotently. The Joven, standing astride over the fallen animal, half-dancing on his toes in his canvas shoes, would shout to the men to slacken the heel- rope, and then to let go the head-rope. As the terrified animal struggled to his feet, the Joven slipped nimbly on to the recado. Then came a brief ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... Stratton would be assigned to night-herd duty with promise of relief at a certain hour. Almost always that relief failed to materialize, and Buck, unable to leave the herd, reeling with fatigue and cursing impotently, had to keep at it till daybreak. The erring puncher generally had an excellent excuse, which might have passed muster once, but which grew threadbare ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... I peered impotently, trying to see through the reek. At first, it was impossible to make out anything. Then, as I stared, I saw something below, to my left, that moved. I looked intently toward it, and, presently, made out another, and then another—three dim shapes that appeared to be ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... satisfy. So gentle was his nature, that, even stirred as he was, he could not conceive a fitting punishment for so great an offense. He felt his own inadequacy, his own feebleness to cope with the problem before him, and so he sat brooding impotently. ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... his commissioners still persisted—unsuitable immigrants, over-crowded ships, disease which spread from ship to land and overcrowded the local hospitals, wretched and poverty-stricken masses lingering impotently at Quebec, and a straggling line of westbound settlers, who obtained work and land with difficulty and after many sorrows.[28] Sydenham had none of Gibbon Wakefield's doctrinaire enthusiasm on the subject; and, as he said, the inducements, to parishes and landlords to send out their surplus population ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... web assault, the Spider drub! Worse than Tarantula venom hath the bite Of this Conkiferous Ogre, which to fight Herschelles did adventure! Thump! Bang! Whack! The web is burst, the Spider's on his back, All impotently spluttering poisonous spleen Let's hope such monster may no more be seen. And let us hail great Herschelles, whose skill The high-nosed horror hath availed to kill. Blow, Infants, blow the pipe, and thump the tabor, In honour of the hero's ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, April 2, 1892 • Various
... a little deeper. His spirit, his pride, awoke and rebelled, raging impotently. He would not bear the burden. He would die somehow. He would find a means, do what they would to stop him. He would escape—somehow—from this particular hell. He would not be chained between life and death. He would burst the bonds. He would ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... a moment, and we were whisked away, to the chagrin of the figure, which glided impotently out of the shadow in vain pursuit, too late even to catch ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... had won the Newdigate. The subject was Andrea del Sarto, one of my favourite painters—il pittore senza errore—and his prize poem—it had, of course, to be academic in form—was excellent. It said just the things about him which Browning somehow missed, and which I had always been impotently wanting to say. And a year or so afterwards—when I praised his poem—he would shrink in a more than deprecating attitude: I might just as well have extolled him for seducing the wife of his dearest friend. His later poems, of which he was immodestly proud—"Sensations Captured on ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... herself was an ogress, they were so young and so unsuspicious. She had an impression not that they were deliberately hiding anything from her, but that the understanding between them somehow tacitly excluded her from their intimacy. She felt out of it at Lapton, hovering impotently on the edge of the magic circle that their passion had created. The strangest thing of all about this amazing relation of theirs was its air of innocence. She was so keenly aware of this, and felt herself so likely to fall a victim to the idea's persuasions, ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... cried Aram, grasping his comrade by the throat, and shaking him with a vehemence that Houseman, though a man of great strength and sinew, impotently ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... both, accompanied me to London. As, however, the weather was rough, and she was a very bad sailor, I saw little of her on the voyage. For my own part, I enjoyed the stormy days, the howling winds and the infuriated waves dashing impotently over the steamer. They filled me with a sense of conflict and of amusement. It is always good to see man triumphing over the murderous forces of nature. It puts one in ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... me upon the evidence. There were documents enough in existence to have proved my part in the affair; but not one of them dared the King produce, since they would also show me to have been no more than his instrument. And so, desiring my death as it was now clear he did, he must sit impotently brooding there with what patience he could command, like a gigantic, evil spider into whose web I obstinately refused to ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... stolen Winchester and fired, meaning to kill; but he miscalculated the range a bit and Thurston crumpled down with a bullet in his thigh. The revolver was empty now and fell smoking at his feet. So he lay and cursed impotently while he watched the marauders ride out of sight up ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower
... precisely three minutes to twelve—for I had just consulted my watch—that the great idea surged into my brain. At four minutes to twelve I had been grumbling impotently at Providence. By two minutes to twelve I had determined upon a manly and ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... undoubtedly, overwrought at times. There were days when the sight of a book filled me with physical nausea, with contempt for the littleness, the narrow outlook, that seemed to me to characterise every written work. I was fiercely, but quite impotently, eager at such times to demonstrate the futility of all the philosophy ranged on the rough wooden shelves in my gloomy sitting-room. I would walk up and down and gesticulate, struggling, fighting to make clear to myself what a true philosophy should ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... against which Mary might rage impotently. After all, Constance was Gordon's wife, and he could ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... He raged and stormed impotently in his retirement at Friedrichsruh, and by every loud and insulting means in his power—by voice, pen, by special interviews, in his private letters, in his telegraphic dispatches, in his talks with the old friends or new callers, and to the last scratch of his Memoirs—Bismarck remains ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... murmur of fragrant night winds through the crisp foliage, the faint call of Diana's horn from the woodlands, moon-fairies dancing on the spider-webs, the glint of the dew on the roses, the far-off music of the surges tossing impotently on the sands, the forgetfulness of time and place and care, and not a cloud 'twixt you and the heavens? ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... Pleydon, who listened with a flattering interest. "I expect you're laughing at me inside," she ended impotently. "And the other, the Greek Victory," he added, "is the goddess of the other world, of the spirit. It's quaint a heathen ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... slowly vanished. His eyes took on a stony, remote look as though the matter had ceased to interest him. And while Kelly tramped impotently about the room, he leaned his shoulders against the wall and stared ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... to Howat Penny, flamed with autumn and faded in a day. Throughout the night he heard the crisp sliding of dead leaves over the roof, the lash of the wind swung impotently about the rectangular, stone block of his dwelling. At the closing of shutters the December gales only penetrated to him in a thin, distant complaint. The burning hickory curtained the middle room with a ruddy warmth. It was a period of extreme peace; ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... was by this time so far broken that he followed his new acquaintance to a neighbouring pond, growling threateningly but impotently. ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... You make me sick. Go to bed." Norry tugged at Hugh's arm impotently; Hugh simply sat limp, ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... commonly more pleasure in the criticism which hurts, than in that which is innocuous; and are more tolerant of the severity which breaks hearts and ruins fortunes, than of that which falls impotently on the grave.—Ruskin. ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... one, or stroked its nose. She had been, and was, the intimate friend of many men and women who were "doing things" in the world. But she had never felt within herself the power to create anything original, and was far too intelligent, far too aristocratic in mind, to struggle impotently to be what she was not meant to be, or to fight against her ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... he insisted, and snapped his fingers at Marculescu, who fumed impotently behind the ...
— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass
... lifted his right arm and waved it soundlessly. He lifted his left—but there was no waving flourish. Instead it fell impotently almost before it was lifted. On the stoop the old man still sat motionless, his ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... the moment when his weapon was wrenched from him, two long grey arms come out of the darkness and coil about the largely-looming form of Slabberts. Enveloped in the neutral-tinted tentacles of this mysterious embrace, the big Boer struggled impotently, and a quick, imperative voice said, between the thick pants of ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... at him vindictively, but impotently. His jaw was set and hard. A cold fire glittered in his eyes. How selfishly eager he was to be started on his way not even the girl could have known. Moreover, some sort of plan for the horseman's speedy punishment had taken ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... to ignore or to despise. He was not a frothy orator who made his appeal to the masses, but the leader of the trained thinkers of the revolutionary party, a political rebel who, instead of fulminating wildly and impotently after the manner of his kind, expressed his theories in clear, reasonable and logical form. It is easy, but unprofitable, to sneer at the futility of some of Godwin's conclusions or to complain of ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... that, impotently, pathetically, like an old lion with its teeth drawn. He prowled moodily around, looking for an enemy on whom to vent his anger. But he could find no tangible force that opposed him. He could see nothing on which to centralize his activity. Yet ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... had never anticipated. Bruce Carmyle seemed to be creeping into her life like an advancing tide. There appeared to be no eluding him. Wherever she turned, there he was, and she could do nothing but rage impotently. The situation ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... Blair looked impotently about the room, but his former companions had returned to their game. Filling in the silence, the dull clatter of chips mingled with the drunken snores of ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... for a moment. A recollection of the chance that he had impotently and unaccountably thrown away returned to him. He tried to laugh, albeit with a glowing cheek, over the momentary bashfulness which he thought had overtaken him, and which must have made him ridiculous in her eyes. He even took a few hesitating steps in ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... a possibly fatal termination to the night's adventure. He groaned at the mockery of having found his life only to lose it now, when it was more precious to him than it had ever been, and to lose it in a silly brawl with semi-savages. He cursed himself impotently and rebelliously ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... danged sight more'n that, now I'm tellin' yuh!" raved Applehead impotently. "I ain't sayin' nothin' agin Luck, but they's goin' to be some danged plain speakin' done on some subjects when he comes back, and given' squaws a free rein and lettin' 'em ride rough-shod over everybody and everything is one of 'era. Things is gittin' mighty funny when a danged ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... threw his weight on the left rein and swung them sharply in that direction. For a few feet they traveled evenly enough but when they were still some distance from the bank, the horse on the left sank quickly to his shoulders, lunged, stood on his hind legs and pawed the air impotently, and then settled ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... wrath fell impotently on the new Duchess, who returned his presents and settled smilingly down to enjoy her new dignities and her honeymoon. Within a year—so powerless is anger against love—Charles summoned the truants back to favour, and the Duchess, as Lady of the ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... impotently, and was about to run back by the way he had come when a voice spoke in the shadows; and at the sound of the voice, the sword fell from the man's hand and he reeled ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... If one of the three is lacking, the work sticks, hangs, and grates; and thus what I feel that the word-artist ought to do is to aim at working on these lines, but to be very strict and severe about the ultimate selection of his work. If, for instance, in a big task, a section has been dully and impotently written, let him put the manuscript aside, and think no more of it for a while; let him not spend labour in attempting to mend bad work; then, on some later occasion, let him again get his conception clear, and write the whole section again; if he loves writing for itself he will not care ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... swiftness of his going, could only stare after him impotently. He knew that it would be impossible to find one ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... sentimentality, felt very sick, and increasingly so as the old man told how he had met her up at the Sheriff's Court. "Sixteen, and making her appearance in the Sheriff's Court!" Yaverland had a vision of a court of obscure old men all gloating impotently and imaginatively on Ellen's red and white. "What was she doing there?" he asked in exasperation, forgetting his vow to appear indifferent about Ellen, and was enraged to see Mr. Mactavish James chuckle at ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... through, to beat the Turk and liberate the Russian. It is all pure poetry now, the wrecked lighters stuck in the sand, the sweep of Ocean Beach, the rounds of Suvla Bay. You see it one day, and all the sea is impotently angry, raging against a shore which does not reply; you see it another, and it is lapped in an eternal peace; you see it as it is going to look hundreds of years hence, when all the cemeteries are fitted out in stone, and the cypresses have grown around them, and the British have gone home, ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... woes. But some smiles were caused even then by the plight of one man, who had a habit of accumulating bits of food against the day of starvation that he seemed always to think was at hand, and who was condemned now to watch impotently while hungry comrades with undisturbed stomachs made biscuits, rations, and ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... was awake, and that my confused and hateful dreams, of which no distinct memory remained, had vanished. The only thing I could recall concerning them was an indefinite and oppressive sense of loss of some kind, at which I had vaguely and impotently protested. ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... of the pain, he reached again. The skin blistered on his hands, and for a long, horrible instant he groped impotently. The flame was raging by now, two or three pitch-laden spruce chunks blazing fiercely at once, and it seemed wholly likely that the cabin itself would catch fire. But ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... moral progress postulates material and physical improvement. The growth of artificial wants is as much the cause as the effect of civilisation: they proceed PARI PASSU. A taste of comfort begets a love of comfort. And this kind of love militates, not impotently, against the other; for self- interest is a persuasive counsellor, and gets a hearing when the blood is cool. Life must be more than possible, it must be endurable; man must have some leisure, some repose, before ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... The lad's impotently roving glance fell upon Simon Cameron. And into his sullen face leaped stark terror. At sight of it, Gavin Brice hit on a new idea for wringing speech ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... state. While Cato gives his little senate laws, What bosom beats not in his country's cause? Who sees him act, but envies every deed? Who hears him groan, and does not wish to bleed? E'en when proud Caesar, 'midst triumphal cars, The spoils of nations, and the pomp of wars, Ignobly vain, and impotently great, Show'd Rome her Cato's figure drawn in state; 30 As her dead father's reverend image pass'd, The pomp was darkened, and the day o'ercast; The triumph ceased, tears gush'd from every eye; The world's great victor pass'd unheeded by; Her last good man dejected Rome adored, And honour'd ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... Aristobulus himself who after some time succeeded in escaping from captivity, excited during the governorship of Aulus Gabinius (697-700) three different revolts against the new rulers, to each of which the government of the high-priest Hyrcanus installed by Rome impotently succumbed. It was not political conviction, but the invincible repugnance of the Oriental towards the unnatural yoke, which compelled them to kick against the pricks; as indeed the last and most dangerous of these revolts, for which the withdrawal of the Syrian army of occupation in consequence ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... the still May sunshine against an old grey tomb of carved stone. Two angels with spread wings upheld the defaced inscription. Above it, over it, round it, like desire impotently defying death, a flood of red roses clambered and clung. Were they trying to wake some votary who slept below? A great twisted sentinel cypress kept its own dark counsel. Against its shadow Fay's figure in her white gossamer gown showed more ethereal and exquisite even ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... at the base of the enormous pectoral fin, clinging with maniacal strength, mad with fear. Striking out to little purpose, save to help buoy himself, blinded by the flying scud and broken crests, Rainey felt himself upreared, swept impotently on and slammed against the slimy hulk, just close enough to Sandy to grasp him by the collar, as the whale, stung by a killer's tearing at its oily tongue, flailed with its fin and the two of them slid down its ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... or devil that you spirit away great herds like this. Across the keg, I know, but how—how? Twenty thousand! My God, you'll swing for this night's work," he went on impotently. "The whole countryside will be after you. I am not the man to sit down quietly under such handling. If I spend every cent I'm possessed of, you shall be hounded down until you dare not show your face on this side of ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... that their cause is black, In puling prose and rhyme, Talk hatefully of love, and tack Hypocrisy to crime; Who smile and smite, engross the gorge Or impotently frown; And call us "rebels" with King George, As if they ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... winter he tried on her a course of flirtation which he had learned very well in his Sophomore year. But German girls do not flirt. His arrows sank in feebly, impotently, as if her attention had the despairing resistance of a sandbag. Unperturbed she made nothing of it. He felt that she thought he was silly or had the rickets. So he speedily ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... which inspires the insight of our best moments. In action, in desire, we must submit perpetually to the tyranny of outside forces; but in thought, in aspiration, we are free, free from our fellow-men, free from the petty planet on which our bodies impotently crawl, free even, while we live, from the tyranny of death. Let us learn, then, that energy of faith which enables us to live constantly in the vision of the good; and let us descend, in action, into the world of fact, with that ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... half-suppressed oath was ended with an indignant sigh. Here and there too,—contrasting the redecorated, refurnished, and smiling shops—heaps of rubbish before the gate of some haughty mansion testified the abasement of fortifications which the owner impotently resented as a sacrilege. Through such streets and such throngs did the party we accompany wend their way, till they found themselves amidst crowds assembled before the entrance of the Capitol. The officers there stationed kept, however, so discreet and dexterous an order, that they ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the two was an endless terror—since tomorrows are always tomorrows, and todays face us with every dawn. Trembling at the uncertainties ahead, he longed for that peace which is only found in the finalities of yesterdays. With anguished eyes he peered into the future, and wrung his hands impotently. ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... ass!" said Carlton, dropping back to the marble pavement again, and gazing impotently up at the row of figures outlined against the sky. "I must look like a bear in the bear-pit at the Zoo," he growled. "They'll be throwing buns to me next." He could see the two elder sisters talking to Mrs. Downs, who was evidently explaining his purpose in going down to the ...
— The Princess Aline • Richard Harding Davis
... one of his sudden spasms of pain, was striking the air impotently with small, clenched fists, frightening the children who were gathering around him, joining in ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... chair superimposed on table, and, with his long lean legs and arms, looking like a monstrous and horrible spider, began to work the heavy bow across the long strings. He had rehearsed it to perfection. In performance, something happened. His artist's nerve had gone. His fingers fumbled impotently for the stops. His professional experience saved a calamitous situation. With an acrobat's stride he reached the stage, telescoped fiddle and bow to normal proportions, and after a lightning nod to the chef d'orchestre, played the Marseillaise. At the end there was half-hearted ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... brought his stumbling beast to a stand not a rod away from Axel Peterson's side. Peterson had viewed the proceeding with a disturbing qualm. Boyle, as talkative before as a washerwoman, now grew suddenly silent. His mouth stood open impotently; the gray of a sinking heart came over his face as he looked long at the battered man, who had dropped the reins to the ground and was coming toward them ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... should have become older. The grass at one side of the steps was specked with the white stubs of Grandemont's cigarettes. The cotton-broker's clerk sat in his chair with the smoke spiralling above him. I doubt that he once thought of the little fortune he had so impotently squandered. Perhaps it was compensation enough for him to sit thus at Charleroi for a few retrieved hours. Idly his mind wandered in and out many fanciful paths of memory. He smiled to himself as a paraphrased line of Scripture strayed into his ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... Middle, and End, whose face is turned on all sides, the Source of life and death, is but to present other men with symbols by which we vainly endeavor to communicate to them the same vague ideas which men in all ages have impotently struggled to express. And it may be doubted whether we have succeeded either in communicating, or in forming in our own minds, any more distinct and definite and true and adequate idea of the Deity, with all our metaphysical conceits and logical subtleties, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... break away, but Larrabie had caught his arm and twisted it in such a way that he could not move without great pain. Impotently he writhed and cursed. Meanwhile his captor relieved him of his revolver, and, with a sudden turn, dropped him to the ground and ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... the body of their unconscious fellow as it lay in the way; two had been struck by it as it fell, and were half stunned; others turned back to see the cause of the trouble; many were forced to the ground, impotently furious with drink, and not a few were trampled upon, and hurt, and burnt by their ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... since his Christmas trip to Morrison. When he turned a page he turned it for all time, but in the last day or two he had caught himself surrepticiously trying to steal a glance at some which had only just rustled into place. Dexter Allison had left brilliant men of cross-examination panting impotently at the barrenness of their efforts; he had known it and enjoyed it to the full. But he knew, too, that he could never face, jauntily or otherwise, one reproach in the dusky eyes of the girl with whom he had more than once played truant, to breakfast with Caleb ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... of Crothers grew in her heart as she impotently suffered for the children, but Crothers was as gentle and kind to her as any wise and considerate father could have been. He was patient with her bungling and errors; he did not turn her off to his clerks ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
Copyright © 2024 Free Translator.org
|
|
|
