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More "Infirmity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Abigail Prim detested Samuel Benham because he represented to her everything in life which she shrank from—age, avoirdupois, infirmity, baldness, stupidity, and matrimony. He was a prosaic old bachelor who had amassed a fortune by the simple means of inheriting three farms upon which an industrial city subsequently had been built. Necessity rather ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... that it is a suspicious sign of infirmity of faith in our modern moralists to make their exemplary young people always pretty; and dress them always in the height of the fashion. One may read Miss Edgeworth's 'Harry and Lucy,' 'Frank and Mary,' 'Fashionable Tales,' ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... taught that this Being was so different from all other beings, that He could not be expressed by the image of any visible thing; also, that He could not be looked upon, and that not so much from inherent impossibility as from human infirmity; further, that by reason of His power He was without equal and unique. (90) Moses admitted, indeed, that there were beings (doubtless by the plan and command of the Lord) who acted as God's vicegerents - that is, beings to whom God had given the right, authority, and power to ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part I] • Benedict de Spinoza
... who are getting fat are generally like that. For every added pound an added excuse, for each multiplying inch at the waistline a new plea in abatement to be set up in the mind. I see the truth of it now. When you start getting fat you start getting fatuous. With the indubitable proof of his infirmity mounting in superimposed folds of tissues before his very gaze, with the rounded evidence presented right there in front of him where he can rest his elbows on it, your average fattish man nevertheless refuses to acknowledge the visible situation. ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... melancholy. There is no more beautiful illustration of the principle of compensation which marks the Divine benevolence than the fact that some of the holiest lives and some of the sweetest songs are the growth of the infirmity which unfits its subject for the rougher duties of life. When one reads the life of Cowper, or of Keats, or of Lucretia and Margaret Davidson,—of so many gentle, sweet natures, born to weakness, and mostly dying before their time,—one cannot help thinking that the human race ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... man would be justified in concealing, without falsehood, the fact of a bodily lack or infirmity on his part which concerned himself alone, he would not be justified in concealing the fact that he was sick of a contagious disease, or that his house was infected by a disease that might be given to a caller there. Nor would he be justified in concealing a defect in a horse or ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull
... eighteen months Poe's connection with Graham was dissolved. The reason has not been made perfectly clear; but from what we already know, it is safe to charge it to Poe's infirmity of temper or of habit. His protracted sojourn in Philadelphia was now drawing to a close. It had been the most richly productive, as well as the happiest, period of his life. For a time, sustained by appreciation and hope, he in a measure overcame his intemperate ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... him—General Harrington, the invincible, the adored of so many hearts! "He would soon be an old man, and then the friendship, which was all her heart could ever give, would content him. He an old man—he who had solemnly determined never to know what age or infirmity was." The insult was too much. His outraged vanity hardened into absolute malice. For the first time he positively hated the man who could be loved better than himself. He forgot the self-sacrifice, the wealth given up to his use—the sublime devotion which had made James ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... distinction between lesser and more important regulations; in her view, all were of equal consequence. She took her share of the menial duties, which for the first years weighed heavily on the community in consequence of their having no lay Sisters. No indisposition or infirmity, no pressure of business or excess of fatigue could induce her to deviate in one iota from the practices of common life. Ever active and indefatigable, she might be seen, now teaching and tending her dear Indian children, now directing ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... the low ideal which leads us to worship success. From his earliest years a boy learns from his surroundings, if not by actual precept, to strive not so much to be something as somebody. The love of power rather than fame may be the "last infirmity of noble minds," but it is probably the first infirmity of many ignoble ones. Herein lies the justification of the criticism of a friendly alien. "You pride yourselves on your incorruptibility, and quite rightly; for in England there is probably less ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... Whatever is necessary they have, they receive it from the community, and the magistrate takes care that no one receives more than he deserves. Yet nothing necessary is denied to anyone. Friendship is recognized among them in war, in infirmity, in the art contests, by which means they aid one another mutually by teaching. Sometimes they improve themselves mutually with praises, with conversation, with actions, and out of the things they need. All those of the same age call one another brothers. They call all over twenty-two ...
— The City of the Sun • Tommaso Campanells
... that in which it is doing. You instantly acknowledge the power, while your curiosity is not quenched. For instance, in the cartoon of the "Beautiful Gate," you see the action at the word is just breaking into the miracle—the cripple is yet in his distorted infirmity—but you see near him grace and activity of limb beautifully displayed, in that mother and running child; and you look to the perfection which, you feel sure, the miracle will complete. This is by no means the best instance—it is the case in all his compositions where ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... pity for several reasons. First, because the tempter by his cunning had deceived our first father, Adam; secondly, because the spirit of man is encompassed by flesh and consequently by infirmity; thirdly, because his spirit, enclosed as it is in an earthly body, is frail as the vessel which enshrines it, easily overbalanced by every breath of wind, and unable to right itself again; fourthly, because the temptation in the Garden of Eden was great and over-mastering; ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... Paracelsus in his book of madness, who brags how many several persons he hath cured of it. Felix Platerus (de Mentis Alienat. cap. 3) reports of a woman in Basel whom he saw, that danced a whole month together. The Arabians call it a kind of palsie. Bodine, in his fifth book, speaks of this infirmity; Monavius, in his last epistle to Scoltizius, and in another to Dudithus, where you may read more of it."—Burton's Anatomy ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... conduct can ever induce us to forget. If he confessed him, self-liable, like the rest of us, to mistakes and shortcomings, we must remember that the great officers of the government who decreed his downfall were not less the subjects of human infirmity. ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... of these two antitheses of my text; and the other is no less profound and significant. 'He was rich; He became poor.' In this connection 'rich' can only mean possessed of the Divine fulness and independence; and 'poor' can only mean possessed of human infirmity, dependence, and emptiness. And so to Jesus of Nazareth, to be born was impoverishment. If there is nothing more in His birth than in the birth of each of us, the words are grotesquely inappropriate to the facts of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... been any appearance of weakness or infirmity before in the Recluse, it now vanished. Nothing could exceed the promptitude and energy of his movements. To rush to the water, to throw himself into a boat, to unfasten it from the stake to which it was tied, and with a vigorous ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... Further, according to the Apostle (2 Cor. 12:9): "Virtue [Douay: 'power'] is made perfect in infirmity." But infirmity is an evil. Therefore virtue is referred not only to ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... disadvantage (among others) of so limiting my upward view that I am unable to see more than about ten feet of the height of the house immediately opposite to me, although, by reaching as far out of the window as my infirmity will permit, I can see for a considerable distance up and down the canal, which does not exceed fifteen feet in width. But, although I can see but little of the material house opposite, I can see its reflection upside down in the canal, and I take a good deal of inverted interest in such ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... unsuspicious of the greatness of the cause she had for dread. Illness, a breaking up of the constitution, the payment of sudden infirmity and premature old age for the waste of unguarded health and strength,—these seemed to me the threats awaiting her; and great and grievous enough, yet how short of the ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... to treat the poor soul's want of memory as a common infirmity; pretended he was himself very often troubled in the same way, and advised him to read the newspapers. "My good wife," said he, "has brought me a whole file of the Cape Gazette. I'd read them if I was you. The deuce is in it, if you don't rake ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... him, unworthy incapacity of doing without a woman whom he despised and even occasionally hated. The very fits of moral hysterics, nay, of moral St. Vitus's dance, of which such love maladies largely consisted, sickened him, degraded him in his own eyes like some disgusting physical infirmity. In his twenty-second year he had such a love malady, he had been the scandal of all London in an intrigue with a certain very lovely Lady Ligonier, who, divorced by her husband for her guilt with the young Italian, was on the ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... and lurching from side to side. Ivar never drank, and Alexandra thought at once that one of his spells had come upon him, and that he must be in a very bad way indeed. She ran downstairs and hurried out to meet him, to hide his infirmity from the eyes of her household. The old man fell in the road at her feet and caught her hand, over which he bowed his shaggy head. "Mistress, mistress," he sobbed, "it has fallen! Sin and death for the young ones! God have ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... the inconsistency of our ideas, of our manners and of our laws, with regard to a question which concerns the life of almost all living beings, we did not endeavor to make plain, in a short peroration, the political causes of the infirmity which pervades all modern society. After having exposed the secret vices of marriage, would it not be an inquiry worthy of philosophers to search out the causes which ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... appearance from what he became subsequently. Far from having that fullness which approached to corpulence—that sallow puffiness of cheek which verged on the unhealthy—or that heaviness of limb, or general obesity, which threatened infirmity—he was slender in frame, but firm and well-proportioned; yet there was something which indicated premature wear, by hardship in the field and toil in the cabinet; he was quick and nervous in every movement, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... favored beyond all precedent, but that he adopted the habits and fell in with the vices of Oriental kings, and lost the affections of his people. He was exalted to the highest pinnacle of glory; he descended to an abyss of shame,—a sad example of the infirmity of human nature which all ages ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... me to be the maddest part of her conduct by any means. However, I'm glad the thing is cleared up: it relieves one's mind to have things cleared up. Yes, I'll keep it a secret, Mr. Betteredge. I like to be tender to human infirmity—though I don't get many chances of exercising that virtue in my line of life. You think Mr. Franklin Blake hasn't got a suspicion of the girl's fancy for him? Ah! he would have found it out fast enough if she had been nice-looking. The ugly women ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... conveyed to your executive, 'We are in peril of our lives; send us an army for defence'? Was that a 'petty affair' which drove families from their homes,—which assembled women and children in crowds, without shelter, at places of common refuge, in every condition of weakness and infirmity, under every suffering which want and terror could inflict, yet willing to endure all, willing to meet death from famine, death from climate, death from hardships, preferring any thing rather than the horrors of meeting it from a domestic assassin? Was ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... its passage through the valley field, was remarkable for nothing but a rare infirmity of purpose, which would never let it keep one course for many rods together. It twisted and curled about, making many little meadow promontories on one side and the other; hurrying along with a soft, sweet gurgle that sounded fresh, even under ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... our ears are closed to truth and friendship for some time after the triumphal course of composition. We are too sensitive for the gentlest touch; and when we really have the most infirmity, we are angry to be told ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... help feeling that she was so. We felt ourselves fairly imaged when standing before her, as in a clear plate-glass mirror. There were no distorted lines caused by her own imperfections; for although she considered herself "compassed with infirmity," no one else could take such a view of her, but only saw the abundant charity which could cover and forgive a multitude of failings in others. We felt that if there was any good in us, she knew it, and even when she saw them "with all our faults she loved us ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... be twelve feet high, so that, even without the glass, it would be impossible for anyone to get over it without assistance. As I stood there looking at it, resenting the threat of that broken glass, and pondering the infirmity of character which such a threat revealed, it suddenly struck me that the upper part of the wall differed slightly from the lower part. It was a little lighter in colour, a little newer in appearance; and, examining the wall more closely, I discovered that originally it had been ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... shook the credit of the New Bedford owners. And the act itself was simply murder. Tari's life must have hung in the beginning by a hair. In the grief and terror of that time, it is not unlikely he went mad, an infirmity to which he was still liable; or perhaps a child may have taken a fancy to him and ordained him to be spared. He escaped at least alive, married in the island, and when I knew him was a widower with a married ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... decays the wise{,} doth eve{r} make the better fool. Clown. God send you, sir, a speedy infirmity{,} for the better increasing of your folly."—Shakespeare. Twelfth Night{, ...
— Reflections - Or, Sentences and Moral Maxims • Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld
... him. In vain for the daughter as for the father. He replied to her with the quiet self-possession which should have convinced her that no man on earth was less entitled to indulgence for the gentlemanlike infirmity of shyness, and no man less needed the duties of any hostess for the augmentation of his comforts, or rather for his diminished sense of discomfort; but his replies were in monosyllables, and made with the air of a man who says in his heart, "If ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... these reasons for withholding it had passed away? This is a question that has often been put to me both in print and in conversation. And yet I should have imagined that the explanation was not far to seek. It was simply diffidence; in other words it was that infirmity which, though generally supposed to belong to youth, comes to a writer, if it comes at all, with years. Undoubtedly there was a time in my life when I should have leapt with considerable rashness into the brilliant ranks of our ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... not be put down to the fault of the Septuagint or the allegorists or Philo that the Alexandrian development of Judaism led on to Roman Christianity. It is to be ascribed rather to the infirmity of human nature, which requires the ideas of its inspired teachers and peoples to be brought down to the common understanding, and causes the progress towards universal religion to be a slow growth. The masses of the Alexandrian Jews in his own day cannot ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... other, that had I seen this face on a stranger, in a still more distant corner of the earth—it must have called to mind the hills of my native land. The old man was very deaf, but in spite of age and this infirmity his sharp blue eye expressed the enduring vigour of his mind. He had buried his wife in Scotland, and had left there a numerous family, that he might become its pioneer at the antipodes. He had thus far worked his way successfully, and was beginning ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... own flight, had the mortification to see all the lands assigned to charitable and to religious uses, the humane and pious foundations of themselves and their ancestors, made to support infirmity and decrepitude, to give feet to the lame and eyes to the blind, and to effect which they had deprived themselves of many of the enjoyments of life, cruelly sequestered and sold at the same market of violence and ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... ever arrested by the pages forming the object of this reference that rigour of discrimination has wholly and consistently failed, I gather, to constitute a part. In which fact there is perhaps after all a rough justice—since the infirmity I speak of, for example, has been always but the direct and immediate fruit of a positive excess of foresight, the overdone desire to provide for future need and lay up heavenly treasure against the demands of my climax. If the art of the drama, ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... of this foole Maluolio, doth he not mend? Mal. Yes, and shall do, till the pangs of death shake him: Infirmity that decaies the wise, doth euer make ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... came. A greater infirmity came instead, and at last Joyce suggested that her mother should not get up in bad weather. They both knew what this meant, but the episode passed as others do, and Mrs. Leach was bedridden. ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... shewing——That his father was extremely sick, that he had several necessary affairs at St. Andrews, and desired liberty to go there for that effect. Which petition being read, with a certificate of his father's infirmity, the council granted licence to the petitioner to go to St. Andrews, to visit his father, and perform his other necessary affairs; always returning when he should be called ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... London now to be of a little use to A——; not ostensibly, for I can neither go out, nor give parties: but I am the confidential friend to whom she likes to bring her social gatherings, as she can see something of the world with others. Age and infirmity seem to be overlooked in what she calls the harmony between us,—not perfect agreement of opinion (which I should regret, with almost fifty years of difference), but the spirit-union: can you say ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the fashion of this generation, but gave tokens of age never discerned in Mars for the last three or four thousand years. The form, though erect and even stately, was that of one who had felt the long since abolished infirmity of advancing years. The countenance alone bore no marks of old age. It was full, unwrinkled, firm in physical as in moral character; calm in the unresisted power of intellect and will over the passions, serene in a dignity too absolute and ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... Lastly, because nothing clearly was gained by causing the Gospel to end so abruptly that every one must see at a glance that it had been mutilated. No. The omission having originated in a mistake, was perpetuated for a brief period (let us suppose) only through infirmity of judgment: or, (as I prefer to believe), only in consequence of the religious fidelity of copyists, who were evidently always instructed to transcribe exactly what they found in the copy set before them. The Church meanwhile in her corporate capacity, has ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... the very front of the platform, and when we had finished the hymn I noticed that the smell of perspiration was beginning to overpower the oranges. It is my misfortune to have an unusually acute sense of smell. No one afflicted with such an infirmity ought to take any part in the politics of ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... teeth at his own impotence. But there was no strength, no virile grip to take his fate in his own hands and mould it like a man. He only mourned his disadvantages, and sometimes blamed destiny, sometimes a congenital infirmity of purpose, for the dreary course of his life. Nature alone could charm his sullen moods, and that not always. Now and again she spread over the face of his existence a transitory contentment and a larger hope; but the first contact ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... united two things before incompatible, monarchy and liberty; and Trajan is now daily augmenting the felicity of the empire; and the public security [6] has not only assumed hopes and wishes, but has seen those wishes arise to confidence and stability; yet, from the nature of human infirmity, remedies are more tardy in their operation than diseases; and, as bodies slowly increase, but quickly perish, so it is more easy to suppress industry and genius, than to recall them. For indolence itself acquires a charm; and sloth, however odious at first, ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... will only be patient, we shall grow better too, because we belong to the world and cannot be left behind. Once more I say in reply, that I am not content with no greater progress than the old States of Europe, burthened with the institutions of dark ages and tottering with infirmity, are able to make. It is for us to encourage them, by the spectacle of what may be accomplished by young and unshackled energies. It is for us to do the world a greater service than it has yet received through achievements wrought on this soil. We have asserted the ...
— The Religion of Politics • Ezra S. Gannett
... Whereas we are given to understand that upon some letters heretofore written, you are on the way repairing hither, forasmuch as we are informed by your son-in-law, Henry Seckford, that your sickness and infirmity is such as without danger you may not travel, we are very well contented if you shall not like to repair up, that you return again to the place where you were committed, there to remain until such time as further order shall be taken with you. ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... reverses was a physical one; he could not endure the hard life in the college of Montaigu. The addled eggs and squalid bedrooms stuck in his memory all his life; there he thinks he contracted the beginnings of his later infirmity. In the Colloquia he has commemorated with abhorrence Standonck's system of abstinence, privation and chastisement. For the rest his stay there lasted only ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... quadrangle of about four hundred yards square, with a cloistered wall all round; but I must not describe any more tombs.[15] Here, under a marble slab, lies the head of poor Dara Shikoh, who, but for a little infirmity of temper, had perhaps changed the destinies of India, by changing the character of education among the aristocracy of the countries under his rule, and preventing the birth of the Maratha powers by leaving untouched the independent kingdoms of the Deccan, upon whose ruins, under his bigoted ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... entrance hovers an enormous specimen of the American eagle, with outspread wings, a shield before her breast, and, if I recollect aright, a bunch of intermingled thunderbolts and barbed arrows in each claw. With the customary infirmity of temper that characterizes this unhappy fowl, she appears, by the fierceness of her beak and eye, and the general truculency of her attitude, to threaten mischief to the inoffensive community; and especially to warn all citizens, careful of their safety, against intruding on the premises ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... The infirmity of my temper has been a subject of eternal regret to me; yet it never displayed itself with much force, except under the lash of my brother's sarcasms. My indignation on those occasions had a strange mixture of fear in it, and both together suffocated ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... disoblige him; but having called the maid, conjuring her to tell her whether any thing passed between her and Octavio; she again told her lady the whole truth, in which there could be no discovery of infirmity there; she embraced her, she kissed her bosom, and found her touches soft, her breath and bosom sweet as any thing in nature could be; and now lost almost in a confusion of thought, she could not tell what to imagine; at last she being wholly possessed that all the fault was not in ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... weight and afford exciting sport; but I have no tackle with me, and did not even bring a gun, as I thought I should be too seedy to do anything but moon about. I did not then know the great exertion necessary to reach Kashmir, an exertion which any man with bodily infirmity would hardly venture on without first providing himself with an undertaker. Upon making enquiries I find that all the Coolies and supplies on the other road, have been sent over to this side, so I must keep to it and not cross as I intended. In the evening a slim young ...
— Three Months of My Life • J. F. Foster
... the infirmity of your natural disposition, my child. I know, too, what circumstances have done to embitter it. Our heavenly Father will take all that into account. Yet there is no one who has not within himself faults and temptations to contend with. Many have far ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... aside his uniform, he had yet never succeeded in looking the civilian, and his military title had clung to him through thirty years of practical life. Furthermore, if it must be admitted that he looked somewhat older than his sixty years, that fact was not to be accounted for by any acknowledged infirmity, unless, indeed, the stiff leg he had brought with him from his four years' service ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... chose a place where the trees have been cleared and the snow mountains spread themselves for the feast of the eyes of those who can see. He put his milk-can and his staff on the ground, and stood for a moment with head bowed as if crushed by his infirmity. Then he threw up his hands and raised his head, as though a sudden vision had come to him—his whole body tense and expectant, like that of a man who strains every nerve to catch a message from the hills across the valley. For a minute he remained still, as if receiving something in his hands ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... Colonel Wynyard took down the same story from Taniwha's lips in 1852, when he was supposed to be about ninety-three, and says: "His faculties were little impaired, and his great age perceptible more from a stoop and grey hairs than any other infirmity." Cook expressed very strong disapproval of Mr. ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... that bald, gray old man, his hands trembling with constitutional infirmity and age, upon whose consecrated head the vials of tyrannic wrath had been outpoured. Among the crowd of slaveholders who filled the galleries he could seek no friends, and but a few among those immediately around him. Unexcited, he raised his voice, high-keyed, as was usual with ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... to their own professionalism; no doubt they could laugh at it themselves. But there is always a danger that we shall be enslaved by it; and it is the business of criticism to free us from that slavery, to make us aware of this last infirmity of great artists. We are on our guard easily enough against a professionalism that is out of fashion. The Wagnerian of a generation ago could sneer at the professionalism of Mozart; but the professionalism of Wagner seemed to him to be ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... even that which he hath.' How cruel and yet how wise, how terribly striking and true! A healthy man! What more can he want, and what abundant gifts that best of all gifts will gain for him! If he is visited by infirmity—only look at me!—how much misery I have suffered from this curse, terrible enough in itself, and tainting everything ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... rendered mad by the bite of a dog, is surely excusable, and yet we ought to constrain him. In like manner, the man who cannot govern his passions, nor restrain them by the fear of the laws, though excusable on account of the infirmity of his nature, can nevertheless not enjoy peace, nor the knowledge and the love of God; and it is ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... the benefit of members of the Convention. But if she were a confiding miss of "sweet sixteen," instead of the "strong-minded woman" that she is, and the blushes of all those brilliant signs were transfused into her own lovely cheeks, we suspect (such is the infirmity or the perversity of "those odious men") that she would make more conquests than she can reasonably expect to do with the intellectual blaze and brilliancy of this week's Revolution—splendid new signs and all. We fear the time is rather ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... but it was also somewhat pathetic. These two good commonplace souls had travelled through life together side by side for over thirty years, and, despite age, infirmity, and "nearves", were still lovers at heart. Before the wife's eyes the figure of "Mr Macalister" loomed so large that it blocked out the entire world; to him, even in this hour of depression, "the wife" ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... answer that was promptly shot off at me in a brief tone of voice. I made with my head and my hand a courteous gesture, by which I seemed to sympathize gently with the infirmity that was thus revealed to me, after which I sat down, feeling more easy. I had drawn my adversary's fire. ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... speeches in the Canadian House of Commons have never been surpassed. But to his great {105} gifts were joined great weaknesses, among which may be set down an abnormal sensitiveness. He was peculiarly susceptible to the daily annoyances which beset a public man. So marked was this infirmity that men without a tithe of his ability, but with a better adjusted nervous system, would sometimes presume to torment him just for the fun of the thing. While he was minister of Justice, political exigencies ...
— The Day of Sir John Macdonald - A Chronicle of the First Prime Minister of the Dominion • Joseph Pope
... well-known Baptist clergyman in Brooklyn, who was a critic in her way, and who had a faint suspicion that anecdotes generally were "made up" for the occasion, went one day with her father to hear his Thanksgiving sermon. He told a melting story about his poor blind brother who, notwithstanding his infirmity, was always cheerful and happy. The audience was deeply impressed, and many, including the speaker himself, were moved to tears. On her return home, Mary, we will call her, said, with deep earnestness, "Papa, when you were telling that about Uncle Nat this morning, ...
— Harper's Young People, March 23, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... existing source anything comparable to it could be supplied. Mrs Hopgood seldom went to church. The church, to be sure, was horribly dead, but she did not give that as a reason. She had, she said, an infirmity, a strange restlessness which prevented her from sitting still for an hour. She often pleaded this excuse, and her husband and daughters never, by word or smile, gave her the least reason to suppose that they did not ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... tooth for a tooth and revenging bloodshed with bloodshed. For one who is second in doing unrighteousness acts no less unrighteously, when the difference is only one of order, doing the self-same work. But such a precept was, and is, in other respects just, because of the infirmity of those to whom the law was given, and it was given in violation of the pure law, and was not consonant with the nature and goodness of the Father of all; it was to a degree appropriate, but yet given under a certain compulsion. For he who forbids the commission of a single murder in that he ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... oft to them that be maidens, and eke to them that be corrupt; and this sin men clepe pollution, that cometh in four manners;" these four manners being (1) languishing of body from rank and abundant humors, (2) infirmity, (3) surfeit of meat and drink, and (4) villainous thoughts. Four hundred years later, Madame Roland, in her Memoires Particulieres, presented a vivid picture of the anguish produced in an innocent girl's mind by the notion of the sinfulness of erotic dreams. She menstruated ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... provide for the indigent who are not insane, and thus to transfer to the Federal Government the charge of all the poor in all the States. It has the same power to provide hospitals and other local establishments for the care and cure of every species of human infirmity, and thus to assume all that duty of either public philanthropy or public necessity to the dependent, the orphan, the sick, or the needy which is now discharged by the States themselves or by corporate institutions or private endowments existing under the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 5: Franklin Pierce • James D. Richardson
... he gave me a description of the studios and library, which are very curious, and offered to take me with him on his next visit, to renew my old acquaintance with the now celebrated artist. But my infirmity would have rendered awkward the introduction to his young wife, to whom the memories of ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... the tone of that close voice Conceived for that law a bitter distaste Conscious beauty Detached and brotherly attitude towards his own son Did not mean to try and get out of it by vulgar explanation Did not want to be told of an infirmity Dislike of humbug Dogs: with rudiments of altruism and a sense of God Don't care whether we're right or wrong Don't hurt others more than is absolutely necessary Early morning does not mince words Era which had canonised hypocrisy Evening not conspicuous for open-heartedness Everything ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of John Galsworthy • John Galsworthy
... of the people. There have been, however, several incidents which amused me, though scarcely worth telling. A passionate tavern-keeper, quick as a flash of gunpowder, a nervous man, and showing in his demeanor, it seems, a consciousness of his infirmity of temper. I was a witness of a scuffle of his with a drunken guest. The tavern-keeper, after they were separated, raved like a madman, and in a tone of voice having a drolly pathetic or lamentable sound mingled with its rage, as if he were lifting up his voice to weep. Then he jumped into ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... indifference, he would have been amused at the gravity with which the savages listened to the translation of this unusual request. No taunt, no smile mingled with their surprise, for Hetty had a character and a manner too saintly to subject her infirmity to the mockings of the rude and ferocious. On the contrary, she was answered ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... a skilful physician was Dr. H——, but his infirmity was a love of strong drink; and, therefore, was it that he softened not the terrible blow which must soon have fallen. I link with his memory no reproaches now, for all this is away down in the past; and that foe that sooner or ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... interior, Mr Paton one day encountered "a strange figure, with a long white beard, and a Spanish cap, mounted on a sorry horse"—this was no other than Holman, the well-known blind traveller, whom he had last seen at Aleppo, and who, having passed in safety, under the safeguard of his infirmity, through the most dangerous parts of Bosnia, was now on his way to Walachia. He instantly recognised Mr Paton's voice, and mentioned his name on being told where he had last seen him; and after a walk on the esplanade, in which the objects in view were described to him, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... a slim young man walked slowly past the group. He was well dressed, and carried himself with ease and some dignity, albeit with an air of listlessness—a weary and dragging gait, due in part to a slight infirmity of one foot. When some of the dalesmen bowed to him his smile lacked warmth. He was Hugh Ritson, the younger ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... Thus infirmity was made permanent; and the law (also) in the heart of the people with the malignity of the root; so that the good departed away, and the evil ...
— Deuteronomical Books of the Bible - Apocrypha • Anonymous
... and stayed with him about two months, watching the order of his life, and the purity of his manner; how frequent he was in prayers, how humble in receiving brethren, severe in reproving them, eager in exhorting them; and how no infirmity ever broke through his continence, and the coarseness of his food. But, unable to bear longer the crowd which assembled round Antony, for various diseases and attacks of devils, he said that it was not consistent to endure in the desert the crowds of cities, but that he must rather begin where Antony ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... his chair quite still, as indeed he always was, but now it was a deathlike quietness, without the least sign of the wonderful mobility of feature and cheerfulness of voice and manner which made people so soon grow used to his infirmity—sat until his room was prepared. Then he suffered himself to be carried to his bed, which, for the first time in his life, he refused ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... him "an errant mountebank"—though Evelyn sought his society, and was grateful for its stimulus. Lady Fanshawe, who met him at Calais, at the Governor's table, says he "enlarged somewhat more in extraordinary stories than might be averred.... That was his infirmity, though otherwise a person of most excellent parts, and a very fine bred gentleman." "A certain eccentricity and unsteadiness perhaps inseparable from a mind of such vanity," is Lodge's criticism. "The Pliny of our age for lying," quoth Stubbes. But ...
— The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened • Kenelm Digby
... happened? One of the big boys, as he called him, tripped him up at school, and he fell on his hip. It kept him in bed for a year, and he's never been the same since; he will always be a cripple," grieved the mother. She wiped her eyes; she never could think of her boy's infirmity without weeping. "And what seemed the worst of all," she continued, "was that the boy who did it never expressed any regret for it, or acknowledged it by word or deed, though he must have known that Ben knew who hurt him. He's a man here, now; and sometimes ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... rascality generally may be tolerated, but feebleness of mind or infirmity of body never! All through our penal administration and prison discipline this principle prevails, and ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... to the piano. The moment he sat down, I noticed the nervous infirmity of which Mrs. Harling had told me. When he was sitting, or standing still, he swayed back and forth incessantly, like a rocking toy. At the piano, he swayed in time to the music, and when he was ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... should arise in favour of drunkenness, as that it would enable you to face a degree of cold, or contagion, else menacing to life, a duty would arise, pro hac vice, of getting drunk. We had an amiable friend who suffered under the infirmity of cowardice; an awful coward he was when sober; but, when very drunk, he had courage enough for the Seven Champions of Christendom. Therefore, in an emergency, where he knew himself suddenly loaded with the responsibility of defending a family, we approved highly ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... his art, that the amorous spectator is cured of his infirmity by perceiving the evil effects of passion, and he who enters the theatre under a load of sorrow departs from it with a serene countenance, as though he had drunk of that ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... knew very well that Pink Mulgrum was deaf and dumb, he "jawed" at him as though his hearing was as perfect as his own, doubtless forgetting for the moment his infirmity. ...
— On The Blockade - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray Afloat • Oliver Optic
... which is very rare, they fear and respect him above every one else. This old man is frequently the great-grandfather, or the great-great-grand-father of the family, for those natives live to a very great age. I have seen some of them not able to walk, without having any other distemper or infirmity than old age, so that when the necessities of nature required it, or they wanted to take the air, they were obliged to be carried out of their hut, an assistance which is always readily offered to the old men. The respect paid to them by ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... settee in front of him, rose the lengthy and fishy person with the cowhide boots and enormous hands. His name was Josiah Badger and he was, according to Trumet's estimate, "a little mite lackin' in his top riggin'." He stuttered, and this infirmity became more and more apparent as ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... man! I am laughing at you, and at every one else, at everything except myself. Will you go to Unorna? You need not trust her any more than the natural infirmity ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... weakness &c adj.; debility, atony^, relaxation, languor, enervation; impotence &c 158; infirmity; effeminacy, feminality^; fragility, flaccidity; inactivity &c 683. anaemia, bloodlessness, deficiency of blood, poverty of blood. declension of strength, loss of strength, failure of strength; delicacy, invalidation, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... over an infirmity, a fault, or an obligation till they grow morbid," she thought. "I might not be able to show him what was best and right, but papa could if we ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... unfrequently met with in children—more especially boys—under twelve years of age. It is a mistake to suppose, as is done by some parents, that slothfulness or negligence is the invariable and only cause of this infirmity; on this point Dr. Vogel says:—'In most cases which I have observed, the children through their own sense of honor or on account of repeated punishments, had a lively interest in avoiding the accident, and yet were unable to do this without appropriate treatment ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... young puppy!" cried the man; and entirely forgetful of his infirmity, he took three or four paces toward them, with his stick raised ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... hold upon posterity. The same is true of many of my colleagues—the Billiken, for instance, and the Kewp. But the Billiken is a philosopher, and doesn't care; and the Kewp is a careless child. But I feel it, Sara; I have to confess to you that I am a prey to the 'last infirmity of noble minds.'" After a moment he added, less sadly but more irritably, "That creature, now, brainless as it is, is just a doll. ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... common idea was, they were of Jewish descent. Their unpleasant smell was again pressed into service. The Jews, it was well known, had this physical infirmity, which might be cured either by bathing in a certain fountain in Egypt—which was a long way from Brittany—or by anointing themselves with the blood of a Christian child. Blood gushed out of the body of every Cagot on Good Friday. No ...
— An Accursed Race • Elizabeth Gaskell
... stated, attracted Pope's notice, who made a curious note on a scrap of paper sent with it to a friend. Johnson is described as "a man afflicted with an infirmity of the convulsive kind, that attacks him sometimes so as to make him a sad spectacle." This seems to have been the chief information obtained by Pope about the anonymous author, of whom he had said, on first reading the ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... great bodily distress and perplexity of mind, and put forth no effort to release me, and thus restore me to useful activity in his service? Many, many, not in Herod's castle, but in other castles, such as beds of affliction, castles of poverty, castles of persecution, castles of bodily infirmity, castles of bereavement, castles of losses and crosses in one way and another, have had the same experiences, the ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... Berry, "than to deride infirmity." Having compassed the Place Royale, we returned to the Boulevard. "And now, if you've quite finished maundering over the beauties of a landscape which you can't see, supposing we focussed on the object with which we set out. I've thought out a new step, I want to show you. It's called 'The Slip ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... this very speculation on his own infirmity only affords him another occasion for indulging it. It is not from any want of attachment to his father or of abhorrence of his murder that Hamlet is thus dilatory, but it is more to his taste to indulge his imagination in reflecting upon the enormity of the crime and refining on ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... prosperous. She hated misery, and not only misery in the abstract, but miserable weak creatures. She was ready enough, as we have seen, to right a wrong, especially if the wrong was championed by those whom she despised; but for simple infirmity, at least in human beings, she had no more mercy than the wild animals which destroy any one of their tribe whom they find disabled. There was more than a chance, too, that Andrew would interfere with her own happiness. If he ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... of decrepitude, who seemed only dully conscious of Dan's appearance; but Aunt Winnie, seated in her armchair by the window, started up in tremulous rapture at sight of her boy. Despite her age and infirmity, she was still a trig little body, with snow-white hair waved about a kind old wrinkled face and dim soft eyes, that filled with tears at ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman
... young—not boys exactly, but at that stage of life when the physical powers are most active, and the heart most buoyant. That, to my thinking, would be a better arrangement than to grow old, even if we live on until we stumble at last from mere infirmity into the grave, looking forward in discontent one half of our lives, and backward in equal discontent ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... his nature clamoured for her, imperiously, as it clamoured for light and air. He had no concern with anyone but her—her only—and he could not let her go. It was not love; it was a bodily weakness, a pitiable infirmity: he even felt it degrading that another person should be able to exercise such an influence over him, that there should be a part of himself over which he had no control. Not to see her, not to be able to gather fresh strength from each chance meeting, ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... that we had not noticed this the first few days of our residence here, and could only account for it by our being so much taken up with the more obvious wonders of our novel situation. I have since learned, however, that this want of observation is a sad and very common infirmity of human nature, there being hundreds of persons before whose eyes the most wonderful things are passing every day, who nevertheless are totally ignorant of them. I therefore have to record my sympathy with such persons, and ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... hands on the ruler's daughter, and she awoke from the sleep of death to her father's love. You also remember how he healed the crooked woman. He said to her, "Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity," and he laid his hands on her, and immediately she was made straight, and she ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... meeting-house which stood close by. We were much struck by the solemn figure of the mother, a very old woman, as she walked toward her old home with some of her remaining children. I had not thought to see her again, knowing her great age and infirmity. She was like a presence out of the last century, tall and still erect, dark-eyed and of striking features, and a firm look not modern, but as if her mind were still set upon an earlier and simpler scheme ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... from the feebleness of age or from the infirmity I have mentioned, had great difficulty in walking, he had brought with him a small boy, whose business it was to direct his tottering steps ...
— The House in the Mist • Anna Katharine Green
... Lancastrian exiles who might take up the report. Her only safety was in being known, to the few who did meet her, as the convent-bred maiden whose home had been destroyed, and who was content to gain a livelihood as the assistant whom his wife's infirmity made needful. As to Sir Leonard, the knight's own grace and gratitude had endeared him, as well as the professional pleasure of curing him, and for the lady's sake he should ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... cannot, if I would, conceal my infirmity from myself or you; I hardly wish it to continue unknown to the world. If I have once esteemed you, if I have plighted to you my troth, and in my confiding folly forgot my higher duties, God has amply punished me for the weakness in your own ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... she insisted, "especially your infirmity of purpose. You said you were going to ride by yourself. But, do you know, I don't believe you are of a particularly ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... obeyed; and a cruel precaution involved in the same sentence the childhood and innocence of John, the son of the criminal. But the operation was so mildly, or so unskilfully, performed, that the one retained the sight of an eye, and the other was afflicted only with the infirmity of squinting. Thus excluded from the succession, the two princes were confined in the tower of Anema; and the piety of Manuel, the second son of the reigning monarch, was rewarded with the gift of the Imperial crown. But at the end of two years, the turbulence of the Latins and ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... less of limitation and infirmity. Its eyes, sometimes oblivious of the things most obvious, pierce the remotest future, read the innermost soul, discern the last and highest fruitions. The seed in its hand, hard, black, unbroken, is already a flower ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... living, and must be between seventy and eighty years of age; she has, for the last forty years, been an exemplary Christian. When I was a youth I took some pains to learn her to read; this is now a great consolation to her. Since age and infirmity have rendered her of little value to her "owners," she is permitted to read as much as she pleases; this she can do, with the aid of glasses, in the old family Bible, which is almost the only book she has ever looked into. This with some little mending for the black children, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... of December), that a "Committee be appointed to examine and report precedents of such proceedings as may have been had, in case of the personal exercise of the Royal authority being prevented or interrupted, by infancy, sickness, infirmity, or otherwise, with a view to provide for the same." [Footnote: Mr. Burke and Mr. Sheridan were both members of this committee, and the following letter from the former ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... geology, it reaches into the vast, undefined past; and like biology, it comprehends all life science; but unlike each, it has no limitation to any sphere. It is equally at home with living forms and with dead matter—equally at home in the humbler spheres of human life and human infirmity, and in the higher spheres of the spirit world, which we call heaven. It grasps all of biology, all of history, all of geology and astronomy, and far more than telescopes have revealed. It has ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, April 1887 - Volume 1, Number 3 • Various
... since I have been a witness and subject, not to tell you some times, that by your influence and example I have attained to such a step of goodness, as to be thankful, were both to accuse your power and judgment of impotency and infirmity. ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... the end of May or early in June, rebuking backsliders, and denouncing the Queen's rumoured marriage with any infidel, "and all Papists are infidels." Papists and Protestants were both offended. There was a scene with Mary, in which she wept profusely, an infirmity of hers; we constantly hear of her weeping in public. She wished the Lords of the Articles to see whether Knox's "manner of speaking" was not punishable, but nothing could be done. Elizabeth would have ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... forehead, and it was apparently one of his life's labours to get it to lie amid the mass, for his hand rarely ceased to be in motion without an impulsive stroke at the refractory forelock. He peered through his eyelashes ordinarily, but from no infirmity of sight. The truth was, that the man's nature counteracted his spirit's intenser eagerness and restlessness by alternating a state of repose that resembled dormancy, and so preserved him. Rosamund was obliged to give him credit for straightforward eyes when they did look out and flash. Their ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the voice of calamity, produces a powerful emotion in these vast regions; and when beneath these immense domes you hear some old man dragging his feeble steps along the polished marble, watered with so many tears, you feel that man is imposing even by the infirmity of his nature which subjects his divine soul to so many sufferings; and that Christianity, the worship of suffering, contains the true guide for the ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... ways, and would think nothing of any freak, however whimsical; but a stranger would look with different eyes. Few, indeed, were the strangers or visitors who ever came to Chetwynde Castle; but when one did come he would naturally be an object of suspicion to this poor soul, conscious of her infirmity, and struggling desperately against it. Such thoughts as these succeeded to the others which had been passing through the General's mind, and he was just beginning to think of some plan by which he could soothe this poor creature, when he was aware of a movement on her part which ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... and useful employment of whatever powers we possess. There are men, indeed, in whom an over-sensitive conscience is even a paralysing thing, which by suggesting constant petty and ingenious scruples holds them back from useful action. It is a moral infirmity corresponding to that exaggerated intellectual fastidiousness which so often makes an intellectual life almost wholly barren, or to that excessive tendency to look on all sides of a question and to ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... Patch as the King calleth him!" exclaimed Sir Thomas. "A man I have ever thought wore the motley rather from excess, than infirmity, ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... which led him to plan nobly; an accomplished writer; and as he was found worthy of the warm and unchanging friendship of Franklin, that sage who sought for excellence while he looked with a kindly eye upon human infirmity, we, too, may peruse the virtues of the man and smile upon ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... sometimes of one day, sees them, with fear, change toward her, who has remained the same. It is that they have developed in them to a very intense degree the imagination of the human soul, and that to observe is to them only a pretext to construe. That infirmity had governed Julien from early maturity. It was rarely manifested in a manner more unexpected than in the case of charming Alba Steno, who was possibly dreaming of him at the very moment when, in the silence of the night, he was forcing himself to prove that she was capable of ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... nevertheless, of the then standing Ministry of Scotland, many did suddenly and readily comply with that alteration of the Government, some out of Pride and Covetousness, or Man-pleasing, some through infirmity or weakness, or fear of Man, and want of Courage and Zeal for God; many faithful Ministers were thereupon cast out, and many Insufficient and Scandalous Men thrust in on their Charges, and many Families ruined, because they would not own them ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... after, and he got a hold of the money he called his, whereupon he parted with his practice, and by idleness and self-indulgence, knowing all the time what he was about, brought on an infirmity which no skill could cure, and is now a grumbling invalid, at one or another of the German spas. I mention it partly because many preferred this man to Faber on the ground that he went to church every Sunday, and always shook his head at ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... an evening school in the village; that is to say, she was a ridiculous old woman of limited means and unlimited infirmity, who used to go to sleep from six to seven every evening, in the society of youth who paid two pence per week each, for the improving opportunity of seeing her do it. She rented a small cottage, and Mr. Wopsle had the room up stairs, ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... Detraction to object the worst That may be told, and utter all it can; It cannot find a blemish to be enforced Against him, other than he was a man, And built of flesh and blood, and did live here, Within the region of infirmity; Where all perfections never did appear To meet in any one so really, But that his frailty ever did bewray Unto the world that ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... Arnold is called for by friends to play on the piano at an evening entertainment. Mrs. Brown and I, being left alone, begin a conversation of the personal kind, which is the only resource among the poor. If she had had any infirmity—a wooden leg or a glass eye—she would naturally have begun by showing it to me, but as she had been spared intact she ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... "to say that we cannot know the absolute is, by implication, to affirm that there is an absolute." Certainly, if we take an infirmity of language to be the equivalent of a necessity of existence, not otherwise. When I say that we cannot know a four-sided triangle I do not affirm by implication that a four-sided triangle exists. I am asserting that the phrase, a four-sided ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... risk of pusillanimous shirking. Moreover, some work practically requires an over effort for its accomplishment; and no man of mettle will begrudge his very life-blood when necessary. Overwork is "the last infirmity of noble minds." Yet when not really necessary, it must be ranked as a sin, and not too generously condoned. The intense competition of modern industry, the complexity of our economic machinery, the colossal ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... feel greatly distressed about you, and if I could be of any use I would leave my work unfinished to aid you. But you will have every medical assistance that can be rendered, and I cease not to beg the Lord who healeth his people to be gracious to your infirmity. ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... "You mean your temporary infirmity," she said calmly. But her cheeks reddened and she bent lower over her work. A dull colour stained his face, too, but he merely ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... thoroughly how this transformation of art as a whole into histrionics is just as much a sign of physiological degeneration (or more precisely a form of hysteria), as any other individual corruption, and infirmity peculiar to the art which Wagner inaugurated: for instance the restlessness of its optics, which makes it necessary to change one's attitude to it every second. They understand nothing of Wagner who see in him but a sport of nature, an arbitrary mood, a chapter of ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... efficient naval officer, was anything but "captainish"; he was simply a clean-shaven, clean-cut young fellow, with a face that mirrored every emotion of his soul. Knowing this infirmity—if such it is—he resolutely put down the jealous thoughts that surged through his brain; and when the visitors, guests of the captain, reached the deck, he met them, and was introduced to Mr. Foster with as pleasant a face as ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... ingaged in Thought the other Night upon this Topick, and in made such a strong Impression upon me, that it produced a very odd Dream. As it is the Weakness of Women, and old Men, to be fond of telling their Dreams to their Friends, I hope my Readers will excuse me this Infirmity of my Age. ...
— The Theater (1720) • Sir John Falstaffe
... the danger to which we are all exposed, far more than that other extreme, is of deferring too completely and slavishly to, and being far too subtly influenced in all that we do by, the thought of what A, B, or C, may have to say or to think about it. 'The last infirmity of noble minds,' says Milton about the love of fame. It is an infirmity to love it, and long for it, and live by it. It is a weakening of humanity, even where men are spurred to great efforts by the thought of the reverberation ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... devil was named Captain Cochegrue; and his creditors, the blockheads, citizens, and others, whose pockets he slit, called him the Mau-cinge, since he was as mischievous as strong; but he had moreover his back spoilt by the natural infirmity of a hump, and it would have been unwise to attempt to mount thereon to get a good view, for he would incontestably have ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... been my practice, and it has been eminently successful, and therefore I commend it to others, treating with pity the infirmity of those who ignorantly condemn it, as "They know not what ...
— An Epitome of Homeopathic Healing Art - Containing the New Discoveries and Improvements to the Present Time • B. L. Hill
... advertised in the county newspapers, than comports with a dog of his dignity. Now, these mischances clearly belong to that class of accidents commonly called casualties, and are quite unconnected with any infirmity of temperament on my part I cannot help Pearl's proficiency in jumping, nor Dash's propensity to wander through the country; neither had I any hand in the loss which has given its title to this paper, and which, after so much previous dallying, I am ...
— The Lost Dahlia • Mary Russell Mitford
... danced the "Gavotte," the "shawl-dance," as taught to do by Monsieur Mallet, at the great dancing-school on Chestnut Street, or jumped Jim Crow to his infinite amusement and the unmitigated disgust of Evelyn, to whom his physical infirmity made him any thing but attractive. Such personal perfection as she possessed is, I am afraid, apt to make us cold-hearted and exacting as to externals in others. Evelyn could endure commonplace, but could not forgive a blemish. Once Norman Stanbury came ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... may say cunningly. She had descended to artifice on behalf of the girl whom she loved, admired, and pitied. She had seen some way into the man's mind, and had been partly aware of his purpose,—of his infirmity of purpose, of his double purpose. She had perceived that a word from her might help Grace's chance, and had led the man on till he had committed himself, at any rate to her. In doing this she had been actuated by friendship rather than by abstract principle. But now, when the moment had come in ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... early History of the State. An application made by Dr. Woods to Sir Thomas Phillipps revealed the existence of Hakluyt's Discourse. Dr. Woods set to work to edit this valuable document, but a fire destroyed most of his materials, and was followed by physical infirmity which forbade literary labour. Dr. Charles Deane's familiarity with the topics suggested by the matter in hand, and his position as a "Collaborateur" of Dr. Woods for some months, at once pointed him ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... require the greatest care, for the failing is difficult to eradicate and would, if not cured, be a source of great unhappiness in after life. To prevent such a result, generally, means are taken to refine the taste of the patient (if I may use the word), and call out the quality most opposed to the infirmity, viz., that of looking out ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... must always be with us. The productive capacity of society is now so great that none need want, and all are able to earn their livelihood, and more, except where they are prevented from doing so by sickness, infirmity, or by the existence of laws and customs which the individual cannot himself, acting alone, remove."[196] "There is a demand for the labour of every man under any well-ordered social system. If there is a waste of men now, it is the fault of the wage system."[197] "Sufficient ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... bleed, Though garments must be rent, and eyes be scorched: And if the valley of the shadow of death Be passed, and to the level road they come, Still with their faces to the polar star, It is not with the same looks, the same limbs, But halt, and maimed, and of infirmity. And for the rest of the way they have to go It is not day but night, and oftentimes A night of clouds ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... Dresden days, and he soon felt at home in my house, where my wife always gave him a warm welcome. I easily persuaded him to follow me shortly to Albisbrunnen to undergo a thorough treatment for an infirmity from which he was suffering. I established myself there as comfortably as I could, and I looked forward to excellent results. The cure itself was superintended in the usual superficial way by a Dr. Brunner, ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... Landale, "(excuse me pray—it's becoming quite an infirmity) so that is settled. I hope it will storm to-night, that the wind will blow and howl—and then I snuggle in the feather bed in that queer old room and try and fancy I am happy Molly ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... feels with thee; Christ has suffered for thee, and suffered with thee. Thou canst go through nothing which Christ has not gone through. He, the Son of God, endured poverty, fear, shame, agony, death for thee, that He might be touched with the feeling of thine infirmity and help thee to endure, and bring thee safe through ...
— Out of the Deep - Words for the Sorrowful • Charles Kingsley
... Jack Straw's at four. . . . In the very improbable (surely impossible?) case of your not coming, we will call on you at a quarter before eight, to go to the ragged school." The next (5th of March) shows him in yielding mood, and pitying himself for his infirmity of compliance. "Sir, I will—he—he—he—he—he—he—I will NOT eat with you, either at your own house or the club. But the morning looks bright, and a walk to Hampstead would suit me marvellously. If you should present yourself at my gate (bringing the R. A.'s along with ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... view, all were of equal consequence. She took her share of the menial duties, which for the first years weighed heavily on the community in consequence of their having no lay Sisters. No indisposition or infirmity, no pressure of business or excess of fatigue could induce her to deviate in one iota from the practices of common life. Ever active and indefatigable, she might be seen, now teaching and tending her dear Indian children, now directing the building of the new convent, now superintending the domestic ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... however, He took pity for several reasons. First, because the tempter by his cunning had deceived our first father, Adam; secondly, because the spirit of man is encompassed by flesh and consequently by infirmity; thirdly, because his spirit, enclosed as it is in an earthly body, is frail as the vessel which enshrines it, easily overbalanced by every breath of wind, and unable to right itself again; fourthly, because the temptation in the Garden of Eden was great ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... entire conviction. Not one of them saw it in the light that I did. It either appeared to them a casual and unimportant circumstance, or they thought it sufficiently accounted for by Mr. Falkland's infirmity and misfortunes. Did it really contain such an extent of arguments and application, that nobody but I ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... aware of her friend's infirmity, and more than once had sought with delicacy and yet with faithfulness to open her eyes to the consequences of her indulgence. But Mrs. Haldane, unfortunately, was incapable of taking a broad, and therefore correct, view of anything. She was governed far more by her prejudices and feelings ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... population of Al-Kyris,—the people who are the blood, bone, and sinew of the city,—these are not in favor of change either in religion, laws, manners, or customs. But Khosrul is old,—and that the King humors his vagaries is simply out of pity for his age and infirmity, Niphrata,—not because of fear! Our Monarch knows ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... hated. The very fits of moral hysterics, nay, of moral St. Vitus's dance, of which such love maladies largely consisted, sickened him, degraded him in his own eyes like some disgusting physical infirmity. In his twenty-second year he had such a love malady, he had been the scandal of all London in an intrigue with a certain very lovely Lady Ligonier, who, divorced by her husband for her guilt with ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... planned to betray—that they should pretend to be absolutely deaf to his observation, the manifest gravity of its bearing upon their interests and future happiness notwithstanding. Moreover, we who are among the spectators are bound to credit this curious auricular infirmity on the part of the lover and the lady. We can of course hear perfectly well the speech of their playfellow, and are thoroughly aware that from their position they must of necessity hear it at least as distinctly as we do. Yet it ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... is the comic tragedy of vituperative malevolence. Holy-Cross Day heightens the grotesque with pity, indignation and solemnity: The Heretic's Tragedy raises it to sublimity. Browning's satire is equally keen and kindly. It never condescends to raise laughter at infirmity, or at mere absurdities of manners; it respects human nature, but it convicts falsity by the revealing intensity of its illumination. Of cynicism, of the wit that preys upon carrion, there ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... push doubt into error. When a drunkard died, he remembered that "his mother was an habitual drinker, and he was nursed on milk-punch, and the thirst was in his constitution"; so he hoped "that God saw it was a constitutional infirmity, like any other disease." He reduced the dogma of Total Depravity to the simple proposition, "that men by nature do not love God supremely, and their neighbor as themselves." He stoutly resisted the attempt to overawe belief, either ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... him, tripped him up at school, and he fell on his hip. It kept him in bed for a year, and he's never been the same since; he will always be a cripple," grieved the mother. She wiped her eyes; she never could think of her boy's infirmity without weeping. "And what seemed the worst of all," she continued, "was that the boy who did it never expressed any regret for it, or acknowledged it by word or deed, though he must have known that Ben knew who hurt him. He's a man here, now; and sometimes Ben meets him. But Ben ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... once assumes the attitude of strength, many who are now neutral, or perhaps professedly leaning to the apparently stronger party, will come over avowedly to the Crown. The timidity of the secret friends of the government in Lower Canada is an infirmity (I think of a majority of mankind) which requires as much pity as it deserves censure. All Greeks are not Spartans. Ten men seem to be made for work, where one is constituted for war. I have found it so in the hour of peril; when I have been ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... honour. In his youth he had been complimented on the possession of a nose exactly resembling that of the great Duke of Wellington, and ever since that time he had made the great man the guiding star of his voyage over the ocean of life, the only saint in his calendar; and he had, as far as human infirmity would permit, modelled his conduct and demeanour in imitation of those of the immortal hero. He spoke briefly, and in a tone of decision. The expression of his face was fierce and defiant, his bearing erect, his stride measured with soldierly regularity. He was not a large man, weighing ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... an infirmity more common among men of letters, authors, &c., than any other class; indeed, one is inclined to think it is no rare accompaniment of talent. A few celebrated names occur to me who suffered weakness of distinct vision to see but the better ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 223, February 4, 1854 • Various
... the poetic nature of his mother. While he was yet a lad I beat him till he was discolored by bruises. Twice I would have killed him only for the intervention of my wife. I have tried to live down my infirmity, your Honor, and I have at last secured control of myself, and I believe this boy will do the same, but do not send him to be an associate with criminals. My God! do not treat him as I would not do, even in my worst moments. Give him a ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... must perish through the want of the bare necessities of life. Poor Law Commissioners were established, England was divided into Districts, and the Districts into Unions. Out-door relief was to be given, on the order of two justices, to poor persons wholly unable, from age or infirmity, to work. But there was much opposition to the new law; it was considered a grievance that old couples were refused relief at home, and that the sexes must be separated at the workhouse, to which the name of "Bastille" began to be attached. In Devonshire it was even believed that the bread distributed ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... is also represented in the Scripture as one who prays. We read in Rom. viii. 26, R. V., "And in like manner the Spirit also helpeth our infirmity; for we know not how to pray as we ought; but the Spirit Himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered." It is plain from this passage that the Holy Spirit is not merely an influence that moves us to pray, not merely an illumination ...
— The Person and Work of The Holy Spirit • R. A. Torrey
... bee-trees as readily as in his morning days. Never was old age more green, or gray hairs more graceful. His high, calm, bold forehead seemed converted by years, into iron. Decay came to him without infirmity, palsy, or pain—and surrounded and cherished by kind friends, he died as he had lived, composed and tranquil. This event took place in the year 1818, and in the eighty-fourth ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... utterance would alone have attracted attention, and, with the man's attitude, was very significant, but it was equally evident to most of those who watched him that he was also struggling with some infirmity. Western hospitality has, however, no limit, and one of the younger men ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... drunkenness, as that it would enable you to face a degree of cold, or contagion, else menacing to life, a duty would arise, pro hac vice, of getting drunk. We had an amiable friend who suffered under the infirmity of cowardice; an awful coward he was when sober; but, when very drunk, he had courage enough for the Seven Champions of Christendom. Therefore, in an emergency, where he knew himself suddenly loaded with the responsibility of defending a family, we approved highly of his getting drunk. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... boots it with uncessant care To tend the homely slighted Shepherds trade, And strictly meditate the thankles Muse, Were it not better don as others use, To sport with Amaryllis in the shade, Or with the tangles of Neaera's hair? Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise (That last infirmity of Noble mind) To scorn delights, and live laborious dayes; But the fair Guerdon when we hope to find, And think to burst out into sudden blaze, Comes the blind Fury with th'abhorred shears, And slits the thin spun life. But not the praise, Phoebus repli'd, ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... enough, it attracted immediate attention from the church authorities. Galileo was summoned to appear at Rome to defend his conduct. The philosopher, who was now in his seventieth year, pleaded age and infirmity. He had no desire for personal experience of the tribunal of the Inquisition; but the mandate was repeated, and Galileo went to Rome. There, as every one knows, he disavowed any intention to oppose the teachings ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... Asaph began to cure himself when, instead of saying, "All things are against me," he said, "This is my infirmity," my fault; I am enough to turn a beehive sour. His cure was almost perfect when he said, "I will remember the years of the right hand of the Most High." The cure for the blues is simple, then. First, own up to it that the largest part of ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... eye my grandfather had two legs all the way down and, except for his crutches and an occasional squeak, you would not have detected his infirmity. Evidently the maker did no more than imitate nature, although, for myself, I used to wonder at the poverty of his invention. There would be distinction in a leg, which in addition to its usual ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... between Socialism and Anarchism as regards the question of distribution. Socialism, at any rate in most of its forms, would retain payment for work done or for willingness to work, and, except in the case of persons incapacitated by age or infirmity, would make willingness to work a condition of subsistence, or at any rate of subsistence above a certain very low minimum. Anarchism, on the other hand, aims at granting to everyone, without any conditions whatever, just as much of all ordinary commodities ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... be measured by his life, not by his failure under a single and peculiar peril. The Apostle, though forewarned, denied his Master on the first alarm of danger; yet that Master, who knew his nature in its strength and its infirmity, chose him for the rock on which he ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... accounts, I suppose, for the name he gave his daughter. His habit of quoting is troublesome to me; because I cannot always translate what he says. But he has a feeling for my infirmity and a tactful way of saving ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham
... her arms akimbo, as much as to say she defied me; and, indeed, I could hardly tell how to begin to remonstrate with her, so much did I feel that Miss Matty, in her increasing infirmity, needed the attendance of ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... clergy, or any clergy, should show themselves vicious beyond the fair bounds allowed to human infirmity, and to those professional faults which can hardly be separated from professional virtues, though their vices never can countenance the exercise of oppression, I do admit that they would naturally have the effect of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... down as soon as I thought there was a prospect of breakfast. Entering the room very softly, I had a view of him before he discovered my presence. It was mournful, indeed, to witness the subjugation of that vigorous spirit to a corporeal infirmity. He sat in his chair—still, but not at rest: expectant evidently; the lines of now habitual sadness marking his strong features. His countenance reminded one of a lamp quenched, waiting to be re-lit—and alas! it was not himself that could ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... which the ear gathered every word, as the famished Israelites collected the heavenly manna, had a corresponding effect upon the preacher himself. His words became more distinct, his manner more earnest and energetic; it seemed as if religious zeal was triumphing over bodily weakness and infirmity. His natural eloquence was not altogether untainted with the coarseness of his sect; and yet, by the influence of a good natural taste, it was freed from the grosser and more ludicrous errors of his contemporaries; and the language ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... long and faithful service in a Department, shall be incapacitated by mental or bodily infirmity for the efficient discharge of the duties of his position may be appointed by the head of the Department, at his discretion, to a position of less responsibility in ...
— Messages and Papers of Rutherford B. Hayes - A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • James D. Richardson
... interposition of the judgment, and sent home, by the delightful process of criticism, to the memory, there to exercise the mind to the last of life, to be the amusement of our declining years, and, when all the other faculties for receiving pleasure are impaired by old age and infirmity, to cast the sunshine of delight over the last ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... alone and she made her way to Bridgepoint where an older half brother was already settled. This brother was a heavy, lumbering, good natured german man, full of the infirmity that comes of ...
— Three Lives - Stories of The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle Lena • Gertrude Stein
... this a miracle, proclaimed this Arrigo a saint and running all to the house where he lay, bore his body, for that of a saint, to the Cathedral, whither they fell to bringing the halt, the impotent and the blind and others afflicted with whatsoever defect or infirmity, as if they should all be made whole by the ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... attraction of temper in the quaint child, small and delicate, with a certain Jewish expression in his clear, brown complexion, eyes not precisely of the same colour, and a slow walk adding to the staidness of his figure; and whose infirmity of speech, increased by agitation, is ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... allowed more liberty to the unhappy Theresa than her condition renders safe either to her or me. I could not on my arrival here collect sufficient resolution to look upon her; and to adopt those measures of security which the weakness of Alice has left disregarded. To this infirmity of purpose on my part must be ascribed the dreadful shock you sustained by the sudden appearance of the unfortunate maniac, who I conclude was attracted to your apartment by the long-forgotten sound of music. ...
— Theresa Marchmont • Mrs Charles Gore
... even less of limitation and infirmity. Its eyes, sometimes oblivious of the things most obvious, pierce the remotest future, read the innermost soul, discern the last and highest fruitions. The seed in its hand, hard, black, unbroken, is ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... Justinian was careful to preserve the independence of the Episcopate and {25} to order that the first steps in the election of bishops should be by the clergy and the chief citizens in each diocese. And, as a letter of S. Gregory shows, the bishops were elected for life; neither infirmity nor old age was regarded as a cause for deposition, and translation from see to see was condemned by many a Council. All the clergy under the rank of bishop might marry, but only before ordination to the higher ...
— The Church and the Barbarians - Being an Outline of the History of the Church from A.D. 461 to A.D. 1003 • William Holden Hutton
... goodness of any Stallion, but would prefer the latter before the opinion of all mankind. What then? It is not every Horse that has been a good racer will get good colts; some have suffered too much in their constitution by hard and continual labour, whilst others have some natural infirmity that may probably be entailed on ...
— A Dissertation on Horses • William Osmer
... speak of disease or death as necessities; never as the will of God. It is Satan, not God, who binds the woman with a spirit of infirmity. It is not the will of our Father in heaven that one little one should perish. Indeed, we do not sufficiently appreciate the abhorrence with which the whole of Scripture speaks of disease and death: because ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... divine care and goodness which the promiscuous distribution of good and evil (I do not mean in the doubtful advantages of riches and grandeur, but in the unquestionably important distinctions of health and sickness, strength and infirmity, bodily ease and pain, mental alacrity and depression) is apt on so many occasions to create. This one truth changes the nature of things; gives order to confusion; makes the moral world of a ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... to these objections, and at the same time renders it so difficult to give a satisfactory answer to them, is the natural infirmity and unsteadiness both of our imagination and senses, when employed on such minute objects. Put a spot of ink upon paper, and retire to such a distance, that the spot becomes altogether invisible; you will find, that upon your return and nearer approach the spot first becomes visible by short ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... and summons to the unpublished forces of nature, to be aidant and remediate to the good man's distress, is continually echoed by the poet, but with a broader application. It is not the bodily malady and infirmity only—it is not that kind of madness, only with which the poor king is afflicted in the later stages of the play, which appears to him to need scientific treatment—it is not for the cure of these alone that he would ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... ephemeral journals. I gave lectures and printed them as pamphlets. It was all very good exercise; but the odd part of it seems to me, in looking back, that I never expected pay, but rather spent my own money in printing what I wrote. That last infirmity of literary minds I laid aside soon after I left Oxford. I rather think that the first money which I made with my pen was payment for a character-study of my uncle, Lord Russell, which I wrote for The World; thereby eliciting from Matthew Arnold the urbane ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... views; the great popular feminine upheaval in America was now in full swing; the eugenic principle had been declared; all human infirmity and degenerate imperfections were to be abolished through marriages based no longer upon sentiment and personal inclination, but upon the scientific selection of mates for the purpose of establishing the ideally ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... opposite side. From the hill, which is crowned by these buildings, descend small streets, in which dwell the inhabitants, all more or less dependent on the lord of the manor, all cared for by him, and many of them pensioned when disabled by age or infirmity. ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... arrangement has the disadvantage (among others) of so limiting my upward view that I am unable to see more than about ten feet of the height of the house immediately opposite to me, although, by reaching as far out of the window as my infirmity will permit, I can see for a considerable distance up and down the canal, which does not exceed fifteen feet in width. But, although I can see but little of the material house opposite, I can see its reflection upside down in the canal, and I take a good deal ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... with not one of his merits. He was perpetually changing his mistresses, but it cannot be said whether it was inconstancy on his part, or disgust on theirs, but the latter appears to me most probable. Though young, he was devoured by gout or some other infirmity, but it was called gout out of deference to the house of Richelieu. They talked of the duchess de ———, whose husband was said to have poisoned her. The saints of Versailles—the duc de la Vauguyon, the duc d'Estissac, and M. de Durfort—did like others. These persons practised religion in ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... votes, by compromise, or by acclamation. A vote by scrutiny is to be taken twice every day in the conclave—once in the morning and once in the afternoon. All the cardinals, save such as are confined to their cells by infirmity, proceed to the chapel, and there, after the mass, receive the communion. They then return each to his cell to breakfast, and afterward meet in the chapel again. The next morning at 8 A.M. the sub-master of the ceremonies rings a bell at the door of each cell; at half-past eight he ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... hath cured of it. Felix Platerus (de Mentis Alienat. cap. 3) reports of a woman in Basel whom he saw, that danced a whole month together. The Arabians call it a kind of palsie. Bodine, in his fifth book, speaks of this infirmity; Monavius, in his last epistle to Scoltizius, and in another to Dudithus, where you may read more of it."—Burton's Anatomy ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... did much to foster and give currency to the superstitious tales connected with the Abbey, by believing, or pretending to believe in them. Many have supposed that his mind was really tinged with superstition, and that this innate infirmity was increased by passing much of his time in a lonely way, about the empty halls and cloisters of the Abbey, then in a ruinous melancholy state, and brooding over the skulls and effigies of its former inmates. I should rather think that he found poetical enjoyment in these ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... It stands in the centre of a quadrangle of about four hundred yards square, with a cloistered wall all round; but I must not describe any more tombs.[15] Here, under a marble slab, lies the head of poor Dara Shikoh, who, but for a little infirmity of temper, had perhaps changed the destinies of India, by changing the character of education among the aristocracy of the countries under his rule, and preventing the birth of the Maratha powers by leaving untouched the independent kingdoms of the Deccan, upon whose ruins, under ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... among us is not so? He was ambitious—who among us is ashamed to own that "last infirmity of noble minds!" He was avaricious, my readers will say. No;—it was for no love of lucre that he wished to be Bishop of Barchester. He was his father's only child, and his father had left him great wealth. His preferment brought him in nearly three thousand a year. The bishopric, ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... Land with interest. The same parties existed in both colonies; but Judge Pedder did not participate the political sympathies of Judge Forbes, and made no pretence to popular applause. To those who check the abuses of irresponsible power something is due; but when the balance of human infirmity is struck, it will not be always ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... the eyes of each and found his way out with the astonishing certainty of movement that made so many forget his infirmity. Possibly he was not desirous of encountering Draycott's embarrassed gratitude again, for in less than a minute they heard the swirl ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... that blindness to human limitations, and that presumptuous self-will, which in Greek tragedy we have so often seen stumbling against the altar of Nemesis. Our consciousness that the decay of old age contributes to this condition deepens our pity and our sense of human infirmity, but certainly does not lead us to regard the old King as irresponsible, and so to sever the tragic nexus which binds together ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... what is right, we cannot pursue it. We go off, on the other hand, against our better knowledge, into the road to evil. Now, it was the opinion of George Fox, that something might be done to counteract this infirmity of human nature, or to make a man keep up to the precepts which he believed to have been divinely inspired, or, in other words, that a system of Discipline might be devised, for regulating, exciting, and preserving ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... her face and hands. Evidently, these companions were all three on intimate terms, as was natural enough, since a great many childish impulses were softly creeping back on the simple-minded old man; insomuch that, if no worldly necessities nor painful infirmity had disturbed him, his remnant of life might have been as cheaply and cheerily enjoyed as the early playtime of the kitten and the child. Old Dr. Dolliver and his great-granddaughter (a ponderous title, which seemed quite to overwhelm the tiny figure ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the wisest and most natural, as well as the most just mode of disposing of them. Such a government, well administered, and with an accurate observance of its governing principles, would probably be the best that human infirmity will allow men to administer; but when the capital mistake is made of supposing that mere numbers are to control all things, regardless of those great fundamental laws that the state has adopted for its own restraint, it may be questioned if so loose, and capricious, and selfish a system, is not ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... touches of chivalry in the national character; but it is asking too much to suppose that men who are placed in the situation I have named, should not exhibit some of the most unpleasant traits of human infirmity. Our trunks were put into a handbarrow, and wheeled by two men a few hundred yards, the whole occupying half an hour of time. For this service ten francs were demanded. I offered five, or double what would have been required by a drayman ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the manner of men, because of the infirmity of your flesh: for as ye have yielded your members servants to uncleanness, and to iniquity, unto iniquity; even so now yield your members servants to righteousness, unto holiness. For when ye were the servants of sin, ye were free from righteousness. ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England
... choice was made among the sons of Noah. Ham mocked at his father's infirmity, while his two brothers veiled it; and Noah was therefore inspired to prophesy that Canaan, the son of the undutiful Ham, should be accursed, and a servant of servants; that Shem should especially belong to the Lord God, and that Japhet's posterity should be enlarged, and should dwell ...
— The Chosen People - A Compendium Of Sacred And Church History For School-Children • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... about his pigs or his poultry, or a physician about his patients, or a lawyer about his briefs, or a merchant about stock, or an author about himself, you know how to account for this, it is a common infirmity, you have a laugh at his expense and there is no more to be said. But here is a man who goes out of his way to be absurd, and is troublesome by a romantic effort of generosity. You cannot say to him, 'All this may be interesting to you, ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... solitude he had contrived to weave around him. In vain for the daughter as for the father. He replied to her with the quiet self-possession which should have convinced her that no man on earth was less entitled to indulgence for the gentlemanlike infirmity of shyness, and no man less needed the duties of any hostess for the augmentation of his comforts, or rather for his diminished sense of discomfort; but his replies were in monosyllables, and made with ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... describes minutely five successive ages, during each of which the earth was peopled by an entirely distinct race. The first or golden race lived in perfect happiness on the fruits of the untilled earth, suffered from no bodily infirmity, passed away in a gentle sleep, and became after death guardian daemons of this world. The second or silver race was degenerate, and refusing to worship the immortal gods, was buried by Jove in the earth. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... be born blind, imbecile, or deformed, we will seek everywhere, even in the darkness of a religion we have ceased to practise, for some God whose intention to question; but if the child be born poor—a calamity, as a rule, no less capable than the gravest infirmity of degrading a creature's destiny—we do not dream of interrogating the God who is wherever we are, since he is made of our own desires. Before we demand an ideal judge, we shall do well to purify our ideas, for whatever blemish there is in these will surely be in the judge. ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... French knew they were beaten, and therefore, instead of fighting, abandoned the famous stronghold and Crown Point, and retreated down to Isle aux Nois, whither Amherst should have followed them. Instead of doing so, he took to building and repairing fortifications—the last infirmity of military minds of a certain order —and finally went into winter quarters with nothing further done. Amherst, at the end of the war, received the routine rewards of a well-meaning and not defeated commander-in-chief; but it was Wolfe who ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... some, gifted with acute spiritual insight, really perceived that dreadful warping of a diseased will, and clothed it with a material image for their own grosser senses; or if Barney, through dwelling upon his own real but hidden infirmity, had actually come unconsciously to give it a physical expression, and walked at times through the village with his back bent like his spirit, although not diseased, Thomas Payne could only speculate. He finally began to adopt the latter belief, as he himself, sometimes ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the son of a Norman farmer. As long as his father and mother lived, he was more or less taken care of; he suffered little save from his horrible infirmity; but as soon as the old people were gone, a life of atrocious misery commenced for him. A dependent on a sister of his, everybody in the farmhouse treated him as a beggar who is eating the bread of others. At every meal the very food he swallowed was made a subject of reproach ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... recent, but the humor of it hardly less arch or less refined. The celebrity of M. de Chateaubriand, the vainest of mortals, was on the wane. About the same time, it happened to be casually mentioned in conversation that Chateaubriand was affected with deafness, and complained bitterly of that infirmity. 'Je compends,' said Talleyrand; 'dequis qu'on a cesse de parler de ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... heart of hearts—that last infirmity of his noble mind—quite as much horrified at the news as the Premier had been. But scarcely were the dread tidings out of the minister's mouth when, perceiving his opportunity, he rose to it as a fish rises to a fly, and pretended with all ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... can't read or sleep from the pain. Now, he is just 'healed,' and is allowed to travel for two months, after which he is to return and be burned again. Isn't it a true martyrdom? I ask. What is apprehended is paralysis, or at best nervous infirmity for life, from the effect of the blows (on ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... history of Cephalonia, meaning the savage dose of martial law nine years before. He justly took it for a marked symbol of the state of excitement at which under various influences the popular mind had arrived. Age and infirmity prevented the archbishop from coming to offer his respects, so after his levee Mr. Gladstone with his suite repaired to the archbishop. 'We found him,' says Mr. Gordon, 'seated on a sofa dressed in his most gorgeous robes of gold and purple, over ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... provides a diversity of work for His own purposes, and at the same time a variety of example for us, when He chooses some lives, and laying upon them, what seems to be a heavy burthen of sickness and infirmity, or filling them with a great modesty and retiringness of spirit, or shutting them up within very narrow and insurmountable barriers of circumstance, says to them, in a voice which it is impossible to misinterpret, "Serve ...
— Beside the Still Waters - A Sermon • Charles Beard
... captives: however, they made no reply, but went on deliberating for several days more as to the proper course to pursue. There was a deal of talk, but the disposition to accord a truce predominated. On learning this Appius the Blind was carried to the senate-house (for by reason of his age and his infirmity he was a stay-at-home) and declared that the modus vivendi with Pyrrhus was not advantageous to the State. He urged them to dismiss Cineas at once from the city and to make known to Pyrrhus by his mouth that the king must first withdraw to his home country and from there make propositions ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio
... I mention this infirmity not as an excuse for my shortcomings and failures—for them there is no excuse—but as a reason why I have abstained from the treatment of so much that is so popular, delightful, and exhilarating in English country life. If there had been no Charles Keene (a terrible supposition ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier
... dim grace; Our heart's infirmity is too easily won To set a new love in the old love's place And seek fresh vanity under ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... in exchange be under age a certain allowance per annum is made till she becomes marriageable. Beguppok is a mode of marriage differing a little from the common jujur, and probably only taking place where a parent wants to get off a child labouring under some infirmity or defect. A certain sum is in this case fixed below the usual custom, which, when paid, is in full for her value, without any appendages. In other cases likewise the jujur is sometimes lessened and sometimes increased by mutual agreement; but on trials it ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... sickness, pain, weariness and weakness, may all be translated into the same language, and may be arranged as synonyms of the same word. Yes! piety, goodness, the favour and approbation of God, are all marked out by sorrow and infirmity here. Why else did the blessed Jesus tabernacle here below—a man of sorrows? and why else was he acquainted with grief? It might make a Christian almost drink his cup of sickness and pain with greediness when he remembers that he is tasting the same ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... story, from the day my father died, keeping back nothing except the matter relating to Squire Fishley's infirmity. ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic
... it up. The inner upheaval had gone too far. He stopped and looked at her—piteously, the features quivering. It was as though the man's whole nature had for the moment broken up, become disorganised. She could not bear it. Some ghastly infirmity seemed to have been laid bare to her. She held out both her hands. Swiftly he caught them, stooped, kissed them, let them go. It was an extraordinary scene—to both ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... all I ascribe to my own imbecility. No fault in thee Lord but in my infirmity, And want of respect in such gifts as ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous
... of religion. He would speak just what he thought, and as he felt. He somehow got the name of being an eccentric preacher, as every man, I believe, does who never prevaricates, and always acts and speaks as he thinks. Somehow or other, Elder Blunt had heard of Sister Scrub, and that infirmity of hers, and he resolved to cure her. On his first round he stopped at "Squire Scrub's," as all other itinerants had done before him. John, the young man, took the elder's horse and put him in the stable, and the preacher entered ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... uncertainty may relate to any period, and be quite indifferent. Misgiving is ordinarily in regard to the outcome of something already done or decided; hesitation, indecision, and irresolution have reference to something that remains to be decided or done, and are due oftener to infirmity of will than to lack of knowledge. Distrust and suspicion apply especially to the motives, character, etc., of others, and are more decidedly adverse than doubt. Scruple relates to matters of conscience ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... the destinies of half Europe and Asia, and the lives of scores of thousands of brave men, hanging on the will of an irresolute young man, depressed by the consciousness of his own infirmity, and desperately seeking for some stronger mind on which to lean. Had I not been placed by my Polish sentiment in a position of antagonism to the Czardom, perhaps—but it is useless to indulge ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... in our own churches, what preachers and what pastors Christ gave to Kidderminster, and to Bedford, and to Down and Connor, and to Sodor and Man, and to Anwoth, and to Ettrick, and to New England, and to St. Andrews, and places too many to mention. With all its infirmity and all its inefficiency, what a truly heavenly power the pulpit is when it is filled by a man of God who gives his whole mind and heart, his whole time and thought to it, and to the pastorate that lies around it. His mind may be small, and his heart may be full of corruption; ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... cause him who bears it to think all else of small account. His children were nothing to my father when compared to my mother, and he would have been content to lose them every one if thereby he might have purchased back her life. But after all it was a noble infirmity, for he thought little of himself and had gone through much ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... give no quarter to the most shadowy thought of how this or that will look. From the faintest thought of the praise of men, we must turn away. No man can be the disciple of Christ and desire fame. To desire fame is ignoble; it is a beggarly greed. In the noble mind, it is the more of an infirmity. There is no aspiration in it—nothing but ambition. It is simply selfishness that would be proud if it could. Fame is the applause of the many, and the judgment of the many is foolish; therefore the greater the fame, the ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald
... American legislature, remarkable for his absence of mind, exhibited a singular instance of this mental infirmity very lately. Having to present a petition to the house, he presented himself instead, and did not discover his mistake until ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 9, 1841 • Various
... belt, were not only unlike the fashion of this generation, but gave tokens of age never discerned in Mars for the last three or four thousand years. The form, though erect and even stately, was that of one who had felt the long since abolished infirmity of advancing years. The countenance alone bore no marks of old age. It was full, unwrinkled, firm in physical as in moral character; calm in the unresisted power of intellect and will over the passions, serene ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... insanity, in another by idiocy, in another by epilepsy, in another by gross eccentricity, in another by moral perversities, in another by ill-balanced intellect,—each and all implying a brain more or less vitiated by the parental infirmity. There is nothing strange in all this diversity of result. In the healthy state, organic action proceeds with wonderful regularity and uniformity; but when controlled by the pathological element, all this is changed, although the change has its limits. This diversity in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... had some 30 or 40 ponies which were laden as I should judge by the variety; with every thing that they possessed; for there were fastened on the top of the enormous loads which they carried, dogs, puppies, paupooses, chickens, & those who were unable to walk by reason of age or infirmity. One of the puppies thus confined kept yelping, probably from hunger, an old indian perhaps tired of hearing it, or thinking that it disturbed us, steped up & shot it in the head with a blunt arrow & killed it, and then threw it in the river. They were in a hurry to cross ...
— Across the Plains to California in 1852 - Journal of Mrs. Lodisa Frizzell • Lodisa Frizell
... bridge, and the bridge had christened the meeting-house which stood close by. We were much struck by the solemn figure of the mother, a very old woman, as she walked toward her old home with some of her remaining children. I had not thought to see her again, knowing her great age and infirmity. She was like a presence out of the last century, tall and still erect, dark-eyed and of striking features, and a firm look not modern, but as if her mind were still set upon an earlier and simpler scheme of life. An ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... believe that, in obedience to this suggestion, I rose for the purpose of ordering a light, that I might instantly make this confession in a letter. A second thought shewed me the rashness of this scheme, and I wondered by what infirmity of mind I could be betrayed into a momentary approbation of it. I saw with the utmost clearness that a confession like that would be the most remediless and unpardonable outrage upon the dignity of my sex, and utterly unworthy of that ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... with a fox's tail, as the saying is—'t is a wonderment you did not try your hand on that there wiseacre that stole your honour's harness, and wants to be an arrant with a murrain to 'un. Lord help his fool's head, it becomes him as a sow doth a cart saddle." "There is no guilt in infirmity," said the knight; "I punish the vicious only." "I would your honour would punish Gilbert then," cried the squire, "for 't is the most vicious tuoad that ever I laid a leg over—but as to that same seafaring man, what ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... experience of the theory and practice of nurture, and the care and management of young children, of attendance on women in and immediately after child-birth, and of nursing attendance in cases of sickness or other mental or bodily infirmity. ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... in the eye, a pearle, or any humour that comes out of the head. My father laboured under this infirmity, and our learned men of Salisbury could doe him no good. At last one goodwife Holly, a poore woman of Chalke, cured him in a little time. My father gave her a broad piece of gold for the receipt, which is this:-Take about ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey
... 6.—On our sending to a tailor named Ott, he could not come to us by reason of bodily infirmity; but on paying him a visit I found him a meek and spiritual man. He undertook to speak with some others of the same way of thinking, to meet us in our hotel at 7 o'clock. On making it known he found more were desirous of coming than he had expected; a number of young people asked permission ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley
... He at first sight fell violently in love, and demanded me in marriage of my father, who, though a kind-hearted, good man, was, I believe, heartily glad to get rid of me, but at the same time frankly apprized him of my infirmity. 'O, ho!' answered the enchanter, 'never mind that—I shall soon cure her, I warrant you.' He then approached to make his declaration, when, being exceedingly provoked at his slighting expressions, which I had overheard, I gave him such an explosion ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... army of tramps. The mean number of such inmates in all the workhouses on any day is about 40,000, of whom about one-third are sick, one-third aged and infirm, one-seventh children, one-twentieth mothers of illegitimate children, and one-twelfth insane and epileptic. This awful confusion of infirmity and vice, this Purgatory perpetuating itself to the exclusion of all hope of Paradise, presents the vital problem of ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... prejudice against pie as an article of diet. It is common to hear every form of bodily degeneracy and infirmity attributed to this particular favorite food. I see no reason or sense in it. Mr. Emerson believed in pie, and was almost indignant when a fellow-traveller refused the slice he offered him. "Why, Mr.," said be, ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... then and now, and Lasse had found out the reason for himself: he was getting old. The very discovery brought further proof of its correctness, laid infirmity upon him, and removed the tension from his mind, and what was left of it from his body. The hardest blow of all was when he discovered that he was of no importance to the girls, had no place at all in their thoughts of men. In Lasse's world ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... of disposition, threw them into intimacy, and they agreed it would be a good thing 'to see something of Ireland'; and with this wise resolve they had set out on that half-fishing excursion, which, having taken them over the Westmeath lakes, now was directing them to the Shannon, but with an infirmity of purpose to which lack of sport and disastrous weather were contributing powerfully at the moment we have presented ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... company with Juan de San Joseph, he was taken by Corcuera on his Jolo campaign to look after the Caraga natives in his army. The two religious penetrated the mountains alone in an endeavor (partially successful) to reduce the Joloans to peace. He died in 1652, after a long and deep-seated infirmity. Antonio de la Madre de Dios, son of Fernando Romero Pizarro of Truxillo, professed in the Madrid convent, September 24, 1615. He went to the Philippines in 1621. He was sent to the island Hermosa, where he remained until that island was abandoned by ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various
... generally may be tolerated, but feebleness of mind or infirmity of body never! All through our penal administration and prison discipline this principle prevails, and is ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... but, to my surprise, although we never could have had a worse specimen of them than what this excursion presented to us, yet the norman hunter upon which I was mounted, carried me over the deepest ruts, and abrupt hillocks, without showing the least symptom of infirmity which so much prevails amongst his brethren of the Devonshire breed. The norman horses are remarkable for lifting their feet high, and the safety and ease with which they carry their riders. In the morning of the ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... to the desert. As soon as he saw him he changed his dress, and stayed with him about two months, watching the order of his life, and the purity of his manner; how frequent he was in prayers, how humble in receiving brethren, severe in reproving them, eager in exhorting them; and how no infirmity ever broke through his continence, and the coarseness of his food. But, unable to bear longer the crowd which assembled round Antony, for various diseases and attacks of devils, he said that it was not consistent to endure in ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... will-power to make a successful stand against the promptings of my bodily lusts; nor was I able, though not devoid of talent, to perform any arduous or enduring mental work. There ensued also at this early stage a great infirmity of purpose, from which I still suffer to this day. I would take up now one thing, now another, at first with fiery zeal, soon to cast it aside in favour of some new undertaking, to be ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made of; and our little life Is rounded with a sleep. Sir, I am vex'd; Bear with my weakness; my old brain is troubled: Be not disturb'd with my infirmity: If you be pleased, retire into my cell, And there repose: a turn or two I'll walk, To still my ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... Whether of the two is more likely to be healed and offends God the less, the man who sins from ignorance or infirmity, or the man who sins ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
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