"Feebleness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... your affections as you could never have believed it would. It is not for a man, who is the father of a man, to show any weakness of the heart, or any over-sensitiveness, in those ties which bind him to his kin. And yet—yet, as you sit by your fireside, with your clear, gray eye feasting in its feebleness on that proud figure of a man who calls you "father,"—and as you see his fond and loving attentions to that one who has been your partner in all anxieties and joys, there is a throbbing within your ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... better head her glorious body fits Than his that shakes for age and feebleness: What, should I don this robe and trouble you? Be chosen with proclamations to-day, To-morrow yield up rule, resign my life, And set abroach new business for you all? Rome, I have been thy soldier forty years, And led my country's strength successfully, ...
— The Tragedy of Titus Andronicus • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... of climate, for the temperature of the most southern parts of Africa differs little from that of Greece. And the tropical nations, too, of your own continent, the Peruvians, were more improved than those who inhabited the temperate regions. Besides, though the climate had instilled softness and feebleness of character, it might also have permitted the cultivation of the arts, as has been the case with us in Asia. On the whole, without our being able to pronounce with certainty on the subject, it does seem probable that some organic difference exists in the various races of mankind, ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... Sancho's eyes nearly rolled out of his head. He acted as if he were about to have convulsions, for he began to tremble from head to foot. When Don Quixote beheld the squire's countenance, even he began to show signs of feebleness, but his bravery overcame his fears. He shrugged his shoulders as if shaking off an evil spirit, and was ready for ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... hurried bearing. Irritable he was; one heard that, as he apostrophized with vehemence the awkward squad under his orders. Sometimes he would break out on these raw amateur actresses with a passion of impatience at their falseness of conception, their coldness of emotion, their feebleness of delivery. "Ecoutez!" he would cry; and then his voice rang through the premises like a trumpet; and when, mimicking it, came the small pipe of a Ginevra, a Mathilde, or a Blanche, one understood why a hollow ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... pale in colour, but certainly not less in quantity than normally. The condition of the pulse is an important indication of diminution of the quantity of the blood, though only when it is marked. It presents a peculiar smallness and feebleness in all cases of ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich
... equal claims, and brute force must be the final resort; in which case, the strongest would have the best of every thing. The democratic rule, then, is, that superiors in age, station, or office have precedence of subordinates; age and feebleness, of youth and strength; and the feebler sex, of more vigorous man. [Footnote: The universal practice of this nation, in thus giving precedence to woman has been severely commented on by foreigners, and by some who would transfer all the business of the ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... His square-shaped head was covered with bright brown hair, which had a reddish tinge, and his moustache was of no stinted growth: his black eyes penetrated and flashed, and could glow and glare in a way to make weakness and feebleness tremble. His quick speech did not spare: right and left he used his swords of thought and will. Fall in! or, Out of the way! were the commands laid down by him since the foundations of Spenersberg were laid. In the fancy-goods line he might have made of himself a spectacle, supposing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... condition both in body and soul a man should be when he is overtaken by death; and consider the shortness of life, the boundless abyss of time past and future, the feebleness of all matter. ...
— The Thoughts Of The Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius
... Stone Court he could not see the change in Raffles without a shock. But for his pallor and feebleness, Bulstrode would have called the change in him entirely mental. Instead of his loud tormenting mood, he showed an intense, vague terror, and seemed to deprecate Bulstrode's anger, because the money was all gone—he had been robbed—it had half of it been taken from him. He had ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... the great design of settling the Colony of Georgia, watched over its nascent feebleness, cherished its growth, defended it from invasion, vindicated its rights, and advanced its interests and welfare, Oglethorpe resigned the superintendence and government into other hands, and retired to his country ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris
... a higher power of resistance than the most robust men. This frail, sickly Guynemer, twice refused by the army because of feebleness of constitution, never gave up. In proportion as the requirements of aviation became more severe, as the higher altitudes reached made it more exhausting, Guynemer seemed to prolong his flights to the point where overwork and nervous depression compelled ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... father might be pleased to pass on it. But her kinsman, Lord Meadshire, Lord-Lieutenant of the county, a great magnate in the eyes of the world, was to her just a very kind and playful old man, whose jokes only, because of their inherent feebleness, caused her any discomfort. Cousin Humphrey would preserve her from the results of her fault if ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... man were still very good, I mean to say here that if man had not lost his love for his fellow-man and his love for God; in other words, if man still loved the Lord his God with all his heart and his neighbor as himself, feebleness of body and weakness of mind would be matters of small moment. The body is soon done with any way; and the mind or intellect is still sufficiently clear for all the purposes of life in this world; and when once disengaged from the body that here clogs and fetters ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... inhabit, no land to cultivate, nor any domestic charge or care. With whomsoever they come to sojourn, by him they are maintained; always very prodigal of the substance of others, always despising what is their own, till the feebleness of old age overtakes them, and renders them unequal to the efforts of such ...
— Tacitus on Germany • Tacitus
... the French people that this family had put to death "the bravest of the brave." It would have been no common good fortune for Louis XVIII. to have pardoned or visited with light punishment a great soldier whose political feebleness had led him to an act of treason, condoned by the nation at large. Exile would not have made the transgressor a martyr. But the common sense of mankind condemns Ney's execution: the public opinion of France has never ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... nervous tremor and shrinking overspread Sandy's face. He had suffered so much through religion during the last few months, that in this final moment of humanity the soul had taken refuge in numbness—apathy. Let God decide. He could think it out no more; and in this utter feebleness his terror of hell—the ineradicable deposit of childhood and inheritance—had passed away. He gathered his forces for the few human and practical things which ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 9 o'clock, appear to have been incapacitated, by the accumulated hardships and disappointments of the night, to contend with the obstacles before them. The character of the casualties sufficiently indicates the comparative feebleness of the fighting. There were 31 killed, 58 wounded, while in prisoners there were lost 633. The accounts give the impression that many of the men taken were physically too depressed to quit the shelter in which they found themselves, in order to retire further. Two guns also were lost. ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... people who loved her—and there was no one who knew her who did not love her—but her activity obliged her caretakers to be incessantly on the alert. Miss Merriam, the skilled young woman from the School of Mothercraft, who had pulled her through her period of greatest feebleness, now found herself sometimes quite outdone by the energy of her ...
— Ethel Morton at Rose House • Mabell S. C. Smith
... secure the friendship of the young prince by ministering, in every possible way, to his pleasures. They led him to the chase, encouraged whatever disposition he chanced to manifest, and endeavored to train him in a state of feebleness and ignorance which might promote their ambitious plans. The Kremlin became the scene of constant intrigues. Cabal succeeded cabal. The position of the triumvirate became, month after month, more perilous. The young prince gave decisive indications of discontent. ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... Esquire, of Kingcombe Holm, who never allowed either his mind or his body to appear en deshabille. Agatha wondered how he could ever have been a baby squalling, a boy playing, or a young man wooing; nay, more (the thought irresistibly presented itself as she noticed the extreme feebleness which his dignity but half disguised), how he would ever stoop to the last levelling of all humanity—the ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... conflux of two eternities," and in this center of all time and space for the moment it is I that stand. Great is Eternity, but it is made up of time. Could we blot out one day in the midst of time, Eternity could be no more. The feebleness of man has its place ...
— The Philosophy of Despair • David Starr Jordan
... a sleepless war against sloth and feebleness, is one of the noblest of human spectacles. This warfare was rapidly and hourly changing the monotony and dreary aspects of rock and forest. Under the creative hands of art, temples of magnificence rose where the pines had fallen. ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... much say I: yet I hear my equals talk, and I think, "Oh! my Professor, they testify to your wisdom." I love him because he has given my every sense a face-forward attitude (you will complain of my feebleness of speech) to exterior existence. There is a princely view of life which is a true one; but it is a false one if it is the sole one. In your Parliament your House of Commons shows us real princes, your Throne merely titled ones. I speak ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to the ship, shocked at his feebleness; but for Sampayo he would scarcely have been ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton
... nothing but the habits of jerkiness and bad co-ordination for which we have to thank the defective training of our people. I think myself that it is high time for old legends and traditional opinions to be changed; and that, if any one should begin to write about Yankee inefficiency and feebleness, and inability to do anything with time except to waste it, he would have a very pretty paradoxical thesis to sustain, with a great many facts to quote, and a great deal of experience to ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... possible that any literature of the world now yields sentimental novels so vague and immature as those which America brings forth? Or is it that their Transatlantic compeers float away and dissolve by their own feebleness before they ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... napping &c. (not expect) 508; leave a loose thread; let the grass grow under one's feet. render neglectful &c. adj.; put off one's guard, throw off one's guard; distract, divert. Adj. neglecting &c. v.; unmindful, negligent, neglectful; heedless, careless, thoughtless; perfunctory, remiss; feebleness &c. 575. inconsiderate; uncircumspect[obs3], incircumspect[obs3]; off one's guard; unwary, unwatchful[obs3], unguarded; offhand. supine &c. (inactive) 683; inattentive &c. 458; insouciant &c. (indifferent) 823; imprudent, reckless &c. 863; slovenly &c. (disorderly) 59, (dirty) 653; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... she stood before him that Smith was aware of her; with a wrinkling of his brow and a sigh, he came back to his surroundings. Mary saw and noted how the raptness of his face gave way to its usual feebleness as ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... The feebleness of La Barre's effort to maintain French sovereignty over the Iroquois is reflected in his request that they should ask his permission before attacking tribes friendly to the French. When he asked them why they had attacked the Illinois, they gave this ominous answer: 'Because they deserved ...
— The Fighting Governor - A Chronicle of Frontenac • Charles W. Colby
... so devised by my father,' replied the open-hearted girl. 'The Spanish cavaliers are men of honour, who war not against women and almoners. A more powerful attendance were more likely to provoke animosity. Feebleness is sometimes the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... feel that we stand on firm ground, without danger of offending sincere opinions, which are often wrongly called prejudices. To a great extent, the majority of the human race are virtually vegetarians from necessity. Nor do we find feebleness either of mind or body necessarily ensues. We believe there are tens of thousands of families who would give vegetarianism a trial were it not for fear. Persons are too apt to think that bodily strength depends upon the nature of the food we eat. In India we have a feeble race, ...
— Cassell's Vegetarian Cookery - A Manual Of Cheap And Wholesome Diet • A. G. Payne
... Santi paid no attention to the refusal and went about preparing the meal. When it was ready the old man suffered himself to be persuaded and ate a little. He was in reality stronger than he looked, and an extraordinary nervous energy still lurked beneath the appearance of a feebleness almost amounting to decrepitude. The little nourishment he took sufficed to restore the balance, and when he rose from the table, he was outwardly almost himself again. When a man has suffered great moral pain for years, he bears a new shock, even the worst, better than one who is hard hit in the ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... doubtful. It was as if Tito had been helped by some diabolical prompter, who had whispered Baldassarre's saddest secret in the traitor's ear. He was not mad; for he carried within him that piteous stamp of sanity, the clear consciousness of shattered faculties; he measured his own feebleness. With the first movement of vindictive rage awoke a vague caution, like that of a wild beast that is fierce but feeble—or like that of an insect whose little fragment of earth has given way, and made it pause in a palsy of distrust. It was this distrust, ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... that, as Zeus means the sky, therefore he is no more than the deep concave of heaven personified and deified, and that consequently Zeus is not the true, the only God. This argument is only equalled in feebleness by that of the materialist, who argues that "spiritus" means simply breath, therefore the breath is the soul. Even if the Greeks remembered that, originally, Zeus meant the sky, that would have no more perplexed their minds than the remembrance that "thymos"—mind—meant originally blast. ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... was a man of fine talent, but was compelled to give a portion of his time to business, through the financial feebleness of the charge. ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller
... from death, and there is more to live for. For me, that am often unready and weak, here is again his ever just helpfulness. He is but a shadow of himself, and I cannot wonder that he is so bitter against the enemy, or that he desires, less on account of his bodily feebleness than from a wish to revenge his cruel treatment, to serve with the horse. They are never more quiet than gadflies. It is dangerous duty, and should it cost this dear life, how shall I ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... party, says that it is impossible the thing can go on in this way; three Lords in the King's household (Errol, Macclesfield, and Delawarr) voted against the Bill, and if they are not dismissed it will be such a proof of the feebleness of Government as will disgust all the Whigs and make their support very lukewarm.[14] Burdett, who was more active and zealous than anybody in bringing about the Coalition, is very much disgusted already, and there appears altogether such a want ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... beautifully too this name, 'the God of peace,' comes in to suggest that even in the strife there may be tranquillity. I remember in an old church in Italy a painting of an Archangel with his foot on the dragon's neck, and his sword thrust through its scaly armour. It is perhaps the feebleness of the artist's hand, but I think rather it is the clearness of his insight, which has led him to represent the victorious angel, in the moment in which he is slaying the dragon, as with a smile on his face, and not ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... to alarm his mother by informing her of his illness—without Valentine to console him, or Mat to amuse him, Zack's spirits now sank to a far lower ebb than they had ever fallen to before. In his present state of depression, feebleness, and solitude, there were moments when he doubted of his own recovery, in spite of all that the doctor could tell him. While in this frame of mind, the remembrance of the last sad report he had heard of his father's health, affected him very painfully, and he bitterly condemned himself ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... that I would get a bill through Congress incorporating the Methodist Episcopal Church of the State of Nevada. I told you to say, in reply, that the creation of such a law came more properly within the province of the state legislature; and to endeavor to show them that, in the present feebleness of the religious element in that new commonwealth, the expediency of incorporating the church was questionable. What ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... who impels men to divers sins, to ungodly opinions, to open crimes. This we may see in the philosophers, who, although they endeavored to live an honest life could not succeed, but were defiled with many open crimes. Such is the feebleness of man when he is without faith and without the Holy Ghost, and governs himself only ...
— The Confession of Faith • Various
... reconciliation with the Church of her fathers, she had shown sometimes an anxious disposition to practise the usual austerities of good Catholics. But neither doctor nor director had been able to indulge her in this respect, owing to the feebleness of her health. And on the whole she ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Arizona, your housemaid will perhaps ask you to deliver a message to her brother in Manitoba. Nowhere more than in the history of geography do we need to keep before us, at every step, the limitations of the untutored mind and its feebleness in grasping the ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... great. The world rightly seeing must fear it; and fear is the highest homage the world ever gives. But he is penniless; and he has many foes; and jealousy can with so much ease thrust aside the greatness which it fears into obscurity, when that greatness is marred by the failures and the feebleness of poverty. Genius scorns the power of gold: it is wrong; gold is the war-scythe on its chariot, which mows down the millions of its foes and gives free passage to the sun-coursers with which it leaves those heavenly fields of light ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... life as was furnished in the thirteenth century by the intelligent and sturdy Cathari of southern Gaul. [Sidenote: The Cathari, or Puritans of the Eastern Empire] [Sidenote: The Albigenses] [Sidenote: Effects of persecution; its feebleness in England] ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... gasping, all but insane with hysteria. Then the never-to-be-forgotten night that ensued, when he descended into the pit, horrified at what he supposed he had done, at one moment ridden with remorse, at another raging against his own feebleness, his lack of courage, his wretched, vacillating spirit. But morning had come, and with it the knowledge that he had failed, and the baser assurance that he was not even remotely suspected. His own escape had been no less miraculous than that of ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... my feet, for my feebleness was gone, and hasted to the closet. A lancet and other small instruments were preserved in a case which I had deposited here. Inattentive as I was to foreign considerations, my ears were still open to any sound of mysterious ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... worthlessness of human desire; this the misery and desolation of the human heart. But how little do they know of the throbbings of that heart! How poorly have they studied the secrets of the human breast! How imperfectly do they understand the feebleness and the strength of man's fortitude and will! If the bright object still gleams in the horizon, if the brilliancy of glory is still spread on the remotest hill, if the distant sky is still invested with the ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... exclude Toddie's screams she closed her door tightly, but Toddie's voice was one with which all timber seemed in sympathy, and it pierced door and window apparently without effort. Gradually, however, it seemed to cease, and with the growing infrequency of his howls and the increasing feebleness of their utterance, Mrs. Burton's spirits revived. Dressing leisurely, she ascended Toddie's prison to receive his declaration of penitence and to accord a gracious pardon. She knocked softly at the ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... pictures were too feeble and wholly inadequate to satisfy. So gentle was his nature, that, even stirred as he was, he could not conceive a fitting punishment for so great an offense. He felt his own inadequacy, his own feebleness to cope with the problem before him, and so he sat ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... California, as the Spaniards frequently call it." Even after the occupation and settlement by the Spaniards, so feeble were their establishments that, as Vancouver reports to the Admiralty, it would take but a small force to wrest from Spain this most valuable possession. But though the growing feebleness of Spain presaged the time when her hold upon America would be loosened, the standard of individual heroism was not lowered, and the achievements of Portola and of Anza rank with those of De Soto and Coronado. The California explorer did not, it is true, ...
— The March of Portola • Zoeth S. Eldredge
... unfeeling, Edward?' she said, at length, when Darnell had passed into the feebleness of exhaustion. 'If you had seen the tears rolling down poor Aunt Marian's cheeks as she told me, I don't think you would have laughed. I didn't ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... life are as the beginnings of natural life. The babe is born in feebleness, and we must wait through the periods of infancy, childhood and youth, before we can have the strong man ready for the burden and heat of the day, or full-armed for the battle. If Mr. Gray is in the first effort to lead a Christian life, ...
— All's for the Best • T. S. Arthur
... had a dreadful neatness; it smelt of disinfectant, furniture polish and soap, and Sophia, from the big armchair, said mournfully, 'They might have left it as it was. It feels like lodgings.' And as the very feebleness of her outcry smote her sense and waked echoes of all she left unsaid, her mouth fell shapeless, and she cried, 'She's gone!' in a ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... would seem that bombast is one of the hardest things to avoid in writing. For all those writers who are ambitious of a lofty style, through dread of being convicted of feebleness and poverty of language, slide by a natural gradation into the opposite extreme. "Who fails in great endeavour, ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... to increase its power,—although this court could shake Europe to its foundations, it was yet unable to govern it. The elective aristocracy, cardinals chosen by powers at variance with each other; the elective monarchy, a pope whose qualifications were old age and feebleness, and who was only crowned on condition of a speedy decease: such was the temporal government of the Roman States. This government combined in itself all the weakness of anarchy, and all the vices of despotism. It had produced ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... I restored him to the bosom of the club, and compassionating the feebleness of his health and extreme lowness of his spirits, I recommended him to "take a little wine for his stomach's sake," and, when he was sufficiently re-established, to embrace the media-via, ni-jamais-ni-toujours plan—not to kill himself like a ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... make the law effective. 4. That Congress provide means for distributing arriving aliens who now congregate in the large cities. 5. That as a means of those incapable of self-support through age or feebleness; those who have not brought sufficient money to maintain them for a reasonable time in event of sickness or lack of employment. 6. That adequate means be adopted, enforced by sufficient penalties, to compel steamship companies to observe in good faith the law which ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... soldier; and you can think and talk of nothing but the war. The oldsters quiz your enthusiasm unmercifully, and cause your complexion to assume a red and gobbling appearance, and your conversation to limp into half-incoherent feebleness. Nevertheless everyone is very kind to you, for you are a great pet with the old fogies—their prize 'Jack;' and even old Mr. Gruff rasps down his tones, so that those harsh accents seem to pat you on the back. Your handwriting, usually so firm and easy, quavers a little, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... plutocracy at last. And there are similar historic riddles to be unpicked in the similar forms of social address. There is something singularly forlorn about the modern word "Mister." Even in sound it has a simpering feebleness which marks the shrivelling of the strong word from which it came. Nor, indeed, is the symbol of the mere sound inaccurate. I remember seeing a German story of Samson in which he bore the unassuming name of Simson, which surely shows Samson very much shorn. There is something of the same dismal ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... her feelings with regard to the kind old couple, who had taken the stranger in, and cared for her, and nursed her, as though she had been a daughter? Each wilful sentence spoken in the half- unconscious irritation of feebleness came now with avenging self-reproach to her memory, as she hung about Mrs. Sturgis, with many tears, which served instead of words to express her ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... war of Germans against Germans was in the eyes of many the greatest of all criminals; and on the 7th of May an attempt was made by a young fanatic to take Bismarck's life in the streets of Berlin. The Minister owed the preservation of his life to the feebleness of his assailant's weapon and to his own vigorous arm. But the imminence of the danger affected King William far more than Bismarck himself. It spoke to his simple mind of supernatural protection and aid; ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... but a narrative of the decline of the power and prosperity which had been matured under the Bengal conquerors and of the rise of the Malabar marauders, whose ceaseless forays and incursions eventually reduced authority to feebleness and the island to desolation. The vapid biography of the royal imbeciles who filled the throne from the third to the thirteenth century scarcely embodies an incident of sufficient interest to diversify the monotonous repetition of temples founded and dagobas repaired, ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... reign the nobles were awed by his austerity towards some members of their own high estate, and divided between the claims of Lancaster and York; and the peasantry, who cared little for the claims of the rival Roses, were maddened by the extortions and indignities to which they were subjected. The feebleness and corruption of the Government, and the disasters in France, combined with the murder of the Duke of Suffolk, added to the general discontent; and the result was, that in the year 1450 the country was ripe for revolution. In June of that year, and immediately after ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... engaged in combat with a Greek of gigantic stature, who came out of the city and challenged the two best men in the Magyar army. 'I am the feeblest of the Magyars,' said Botond, 'but I will kill thee;' and he performed his word, having previously given a proof of the feebleness of his arm by striking his battle-axe through the brazen gate, making a hole so big that a child of five years old could walk ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... hunters of the beast, Nimrod and Orion and Tristram of Lyonesse. Yet not so long as "African Game Trails" and the "Hunting Trips of a Ranchman" endure, to lift the imagination to those noble sports denied to the run of mortals by poverty, feebleness, timidity, the engrossments of the humdrum, everyday life, or lack of enterprise and opportunity. Old scraps of hunting song thrill us with the great adventure: "In the wild chamois' track at break of day"; "We'll chase the ...
— Four Americans - Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman • Henry A. Beers
... woman slightly raises her languid head, lifts an arm, which feebly falls back again upon her divan, raises her eyes to the ceiling, raises all that she has power to raise; then darting at you a leaden glance, she says in a voice of remarkable feebleness: ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... For, having forgiven his grandparent, he had been growing to feel for the desolate old man a sort of filial tenderness, and strong in his fresh young manhood, it seemed terrible to him to see John Trevlyn lying there in his helplessness and feebleness, waiting for death. ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask
... not an invalid, but I suffer from giddiness, a feeling of suffocation, with excruciating pains, and apparent cessation of the heart's action. I am also so nervous, that, whenever the door is opened, I begin to scream loudly. My mental feebleness finds vent in puns that have alienated my oldest friends. Could some Correspondent explain these symptoms? I do not believe in Doctors, but am taking "Soft-sawder's Emulgent Balsam of Aconitine." It does not seem to have done me much good yet, but that is probably due to my not having ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 21, 1891 • Various
... made a better figure in it, who preached better or had more authority in his parish? He had a native gift for administration, being tolerant both of opinions and conduct, because he felt himself able to overrule them, and was free from the irritations of conscious feebleness. He smiled pleasantly at the foible of a taste which he did not share—at floriculture or antiquarianism for example, which were much in vogue among his fellow-clergyman in the diocese: for himself, he ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... genius of France produced on a stranger from the western world. I can only answer, none. The Academy of the Sciences can scarcely ever be less than distinguished in such a nation; but when I came to look about me, and to inquire after the purely literary men, I was forcibly struck with the feebleness of the catalogue of names. Not one in five was at all known to me, and very few, even of those who were, could properly be classed among the celebrated writers of the day. As France has many very clever men who were not on the list, I was desirous of knowing the ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... moment he could not speak. He was aware of nothing but anger. "It's impotence and weakness on your part, that's all it is!" he cast out at her, hating her savagely as he spoke, "no matter what fine words you've decided to call it to cloak your own feebleness. It's the littleness of the vital spark in you. Or it's cowardly inertia, turning from the real fulfilment that calls for you, back to chips and straw because you are used to them. It's being a ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... the discussion of the Problem of Society. The declared object of the work—which is of the class of philosophical novels—is to exhibit the miseries of the poor; the conventionalisms, hypocrisies, and feebleness of the rich; the religious doubts of the strong, and the miserable delusions and superstitions of the weak; the mammon-worship of the middling and upper classes, and the angry humility of the masses. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... son for the first time since his childhood was in Italy. With Venice he was in his father's phrase "simply infatuated." For his son's sake, but also with the thought of a place of retreat when perhaps years should bring with them feebleness of body, Browning entered into treaty with the owner, an Austrian and an absentee, for the purchase of the Manzoni Palazzo on the Grand Canal. He considered it the most beautiful house in Venice. Ruskin had described it ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... other in wreathing the same tree; or an audacious liana, with great clusters of orange or scarlet blossoms, takes possession of several trees at once, lighting up the dark greenery with its flaming splotches; or an aspiring trailer, dexterously linking its feebleness to the strength of other plants, leaps across the river from tree to tree at a height of a hundred feet, and, as though in mockery, sends down a profusion of crimson festoons far out of reach. But it ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... recollections of my life is of a journey made by him, at considerable personal inconvenience, only about a year ago, to visit a former parishioner who had not seen him for years, and who in his old age and feebleness desired to talk with him. His visit brought sunshine and mental and spiritual comfort, and will ever be gratefully remembered by those ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 54, No. 3, July, 1900 • Various
... upon whom was the burden of rescuing some lovely maiden from imprisonment in a seemingly impregnable fortress, was but child's play compared to the task before Earl, who must scale the walls of the castle of despair and batter down doors that laughed at the feebleness of steel if he would claim Eunice for his own again. He was face to face with the dreadful fact that nothing but the solution of the long standing race problem of America could release to him the one so dear to his heart, so essential to ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... caused an immense sensation. For some time popular resentment against the feebleness and jobbery of the stadholderless government had been deep and strong. Indignation knew no bounds; and the revolutionary movement to which it gave rise was as sudden and complete in 1747 as in 1672. All eyes were speedily turned to the Prince of Orange as the saviour of the country. ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... position of a habitual beggar is not hard to take after a certain number of lessons in the mendicant's art have once been learnt. In one sense it is the pressure of want which has made these people beggars, in another sense it is their own apathy and feebleness ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... Eskimo tale, greatly modernized and altered. The Eskimo believe in a kind of sorcerers or spirits, who have instruments which they merely point at people or animals, to kill them. I think that the Indian who told me this story (P.) was aware of its feebleness, and was ashamed to attribute such nonsense to Glooskap, and therefore made the hero an Indian named Woodchuck. But among Mr. Rand's Micmac tales it figures as a later tribute to the memory of the ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... heroine must grow as a moss-rose and the weed remain a weed. Credit is not due to one; blame should not be visited on the other. Is this true? Is not the choice between good and evil placed before every human soul, save where ignorance and mental feebleness destroy free agency? In the field of the world which the angels of God are to reap, is it not even possible for the tares to become wheat? And cannot the sweetest and most beautiful natural flowers of character borrow from the skies a fragrance and bloom not of ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... scientific tolerance. We are saved by it from uselessly fretting ourselves because of the ungodly and the inevitable; from mourning over the decline of Gothic architecture into Perpendicular aridity and flamboyant feebleness, over the passage of the scepter from Sophocles to Euripides or from Tasso to Marino, over the chaos of Mannerism, Eclecticism and Naturalism into which Italian painting plunged from the height of its maturity. This toleration and acceptance ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... he were beaten helpless. Surely if aid were coming it must have arrived long ago. He had been fighting for hours. He kept striking on, but he felt his strength failing, and he could have laughed wildly at the pitiful feebleness of his blows. He was knocked down, and scrambled up again, amazed that he was not killed or disabled. His one hope lay in the fact that the man was evidently much the worse for drink, and often struck as blindly as himself. If he could but occupy the brute's attention until help ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... temples. Such a set of laborers was never before seen. Falstaff's ragged regiment was a joke to them. Each had a wheelbarrow, a spade, or pick, and a cloak; but the last was the most important part of their equipment. Some of them picked at the earth with a gravity that was equalled only by the feebleness of the effort and the poverty of the result. Three strokes so wearied them that they were forced to pause and gather strength, while others carried away the ant-hills which the first dug up. It seemed an endless task to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... I could hear it; but we are now so miserably off in voices, that I hardly ever attempt to listen to a song, without fancying myself deaf from the feebleness of the performers. I hate everything that requires attention. Nothing gives pleasure that does not ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... connected with him, he can offer no compensation. The almost invariable tendency of the wife to place her influence in the same scale with social consideration, is sometimes made a reproach to women, and represented as a peculiar trait of feebleness and childishness of character in them: surely with great injustice. Society makes the whole life of a woman, in the easy classes, a continued self-sacrifice; it exacts from her an unremitting restraint of the whole of her natural inclinations, and the ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill
... victim of physical deformity, increased by a fall which prevented the possibility of her ever being able to walk, nature had with unusual malignity stamped her with a feebleness of intellect that at times bordered almost ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... a true poet and a scholar of very varied accomplishments. His friends have lost much more. Since his last attack of influenza, those who knew him and loved him had been much concerned about him. The pallor of his complexion had greatly increased; so had his feebleness. As long ago as May last, when I called upon him at the Athenæum Club in order to join him at a luncheon he was giving at the Café Royal, I found that he had engaged a four-wheeled cab to take us over those few yards. The expression in his kind and wistful blue-grey eyes ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... sir. It is not the fault of the beef, but of my feebleness. Mistress Talbot will do it reason. But I, methinks I could eat better were the ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... friendship for Mr. Lincoln, and the tremendous cheering that rose from the throats of his friends echoed and dashed itself against the sides of the Wigwam, died down, and began anew, until the noise that had been made by Seward's admirers dwindled to comparative feebleness. Again and again these contests of lungs and enthusiasm were repeated as other names were presented to ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay
... and as a rule he is either to some degree a degenerate, or else a person who is suffering from an early stage of general paralysis, dementia, or some other highly enfeebling cause of mental disorganization, such as chronic alcoholism. Sexual feebleness is further indicated by the fact that the individuals selected as ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... nobleness, for while it wraps the unknown in sacred mystery, it proclaims man one in nature with the Highest, by birthright a son of the gods, of an intelligence akin to theirs, and less than they only in degree. Through thus presenting at once his strength and his feebleness, his grandeur and his degradation, religion goes beyond philosophy or utility in suggesting motives for exertion, stimuli to labor. This phase of it will ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... forgotten. But when nothing of this kind can be attempted, and a slight outline is all that the sculptor can command, we may anticipate that this outline will be composed with exquisite grace; and that the richness of its ornamental arrangement will atone for the feebleness of its power of portraiture. On the porch of a Northern cathedral we may seek for the images of the flowers that grow in the neighboring fields, and as we watch with wonder the gray stones that fret themselves into thorns, and soften into blossoms, we may care little ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... fulfilled the duties of secretary with much distinction, but not without some feebleness and negligence in consequence of his bad health, Fourier died the 16th of May, 1830. I declined several times the honour which the Academy appeared willing to do me, in naming me to succeed him. I believed, without false modesty, that ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... of iodide of potassium were then removed, and replaced by a very delicate galvanometer (205.); it was so nearly astatic, that it vibrated to and fro in about sixty-three beats of a watch giving one hundred and fifty beats in a minute. The same feebleness of current as before was still indicated; the galvanometer needle was deflected, but it required to break and make contact three or four times (297.), before the ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... kept him by him, for Aridius was agreeable in conversation, wise in counsel, just in judgment, and faithful in whatever was committed to his care. As the siege continued, Aridius said to Clovis, "O king, if the glory of thy greatness would suffer thee to listen to the words of my feebleness, though thou needest not counsel, I would submit them to thee in all fidelity, and they might be of use to thee, whether for thyself or for the towns by the which thou dost propose to pass. Wherefore keepest thou here thine army, whilst thine ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... house of Austria, brothers, uncles, cousins, holding important posts all over the empire, were much alarmed in view of the peril to which the family ascending was exposed by the feebleness of Rhodolph. They held a private family conference, and decided that the interests of all required that there should be reconciliation between Matthias and Rhodolph; or that, in their divided state, they would fall victims to their numerous foes. The brothers agreed to an outward ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... at the funeral of Lord Shaftesbury, in England. It is well to remember such noblemen as he was. The chair at Exeter Hall, where he so often presided, should be always associated with him. His last public act, at 84 years of age, was to go forth in great feebleness and make an earnest protest against the infamies exposed by Mr. Stead in London. In that dying speech he called upon Parliament to defend the purity of the city. As far back as 1840, his voice ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... slept either: but one could easily see that in his feebleness, in his anxious look, in the dark, circles about his eyes. His shirt-front was all rumpled, and his cuffs were far from clean. Carried away by the course of events, the mind had forgotten the body. Noel's well-shaved chin, on the contrary, rested upon an irreproachably ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... man better cover a speedy retreat from a powerful adversary. This had been the secret of his secession at the time of Lord Raymond's election. In the unsteady glance of his eye, in his extreme desire to learn the opinions of all, in the feebleness of his hand-writing, these qualities might be obscurely traced, but they were not generally known. He was now our Lord Protector. He had canvassed eagerly for this post. His protectorate was to be distinguished by every ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... action, and held his hearers engaged, when his periods were such as pronounced by an ordinary speaker, would not have preserved the audience from that listnessness, which is instantly seen and felt by the speaker, and soon adds embarrassment and confusion to feebleness. In private society, to the last months of his existence, it gave him rather the air of a youth inexperienced in the realities of life, and entering it under the ardour of hope, than of a man who had almost reached the limits ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... that the root of the evil lay in the feebleness of Congress, and although he could not deal with the finances, he was able to strive for an improvement in the governing body. Not content with letters, he left the army and went to Philadelphia, in the winter of 1779, and there appealed to ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... stage. It has been observed by Mr. Ward that, taking a hint from Colley Cibber, he 'became the real founder of that sentimental comedy which exercised so pernicious an influence upon the progress of our dramatic literature.' 'It would be unjust,' he adds, 'to hold him responsible for the feebleness of successors who were altogether deficient in the comic power which he undoubtedly even as a dramatist exhibits; but in so far as their aberrations were the result of his example, he must be held to have contributed, though with the best ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... belief frequently lack, and, above all, the faculty of writing like a gentleman without writing like a mere gentleman. No one can charge Lockhart with dilettantism: no one certainly can charge him with feebleness of intellect, or insufficient equipment of culture, or lack of humour ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... Spain. He replied in a manner evidencing his willingness to serve, marking no eagerness. He did not notice that there might be a secret meaning, hidden under this question. When he related to me what had passed between him and the King, I blamed the feebleness of his reply, and represented to him the ill effect it would create if at such a time he evinced any desire to keep out of the campaign. He appeared convinced by my arguments, and to wish with more eagerness than before to ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... and looked all round, wondering how he got there, and moved off toward the T—— bridge. He was pale and his eyes were hot, and feebleness was in all his members, but he seemed to breathe easier. He felt that he had thrown off the old time which had been so oppressive; and in its place had come peace and light. "Lord!" he prayed, "show me my way, that I may renounce these horrid ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... Barbury Green. The creature was well mounted (ominous, when he came to override my caprice!) and he looked bigger, and, yes, handsomer, though that doesn't signify, and still more determined than when I saw him last; although goodness knows that timidity and feebleness of purpose were not in striking evidence on that memorable occasion. I had drawn up under the shade of a tree ostensibly to eat some cherries, thinking that if I turned my face away I might pass unrecognised. It was a stupid plan, for if I had whipped up the mare and driven on, he ...
— The Diary of a Goose Girl • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... conscious of her feebleness. It would have been better to have said, "I am another man's mistress," but she could not speak the words, and he asked if they might have tea in the new service. She did not answer, so he rang, and when the servant left the room he took her hands and drew her closer to ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... remark applies to the dyspepsias and constipation which further annoy the patient and embarrass the treatment. If such a person is by nature emotional she is sure to become more so, for even the firmest women lose self-control at last under incessant feebleness. Nor is this less true of men; and I have many a time seen soldiers who had ridden boldly with Sheridan or fought gallantly with Grant become, under the influence of painful nerve-wounds, as irritable and hysterically emotional as the veriest girl. If ...
— Fat and Blood - An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria • S. Weir Mitchell
... be studied, indeed, but easily and superficially; not that it would not be better, perhaps, if he could have approached other arts with penetrating insight; but he felt that for himself, with his limitations, his feebleness, his faltering grasp, nothing must come between him and his literary preoccupation. The other arts might feed his soul indeed, but he could not serve them. He found that he took great delight, and was always at ease, in the company of musicians ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... long hours I'd spend in viewing The elemental strife, My soul the while subduing With the littleness of life; Of life, with all its paltry plans, Its conflicts and its cares— The feebleness of all that's man's— The might that's God's ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... Because to place either truth or error above the reach of argument is certain to weaken truth and to strengthen error. Secondly, because to hold as true on the authority of others anything which concerns us deeply, and which we could prove ourselves, produces feebleness, if not dishonesty. And, thirdly, because to feel unwilling or unable to meet objections by argument is generally the first ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... sense of being which establishes har- mony, enters into no compromise with finiteness and [15] feebleness. It undermines the foundations of mortality, of physical law, breaks their chains, and sets the captive free, opening the doors for ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... those who beheld him now, that never, since Mr. Dimmesdale first set his foot on the New England shore, had he exhibited such energy as was seen in the gait and air with which he kept his pace in the procession. There was no feebleness of step, as at other times; his frame was not bent; nor did his hand rest ominously upon his heart. Yet, if the clergyman were rightly viewed, his strength seemed not of the body. It might be spiritual, and imparted to him by angelic ministrations. It might be the exhilaration of that ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... book. The amber mouthpiece of a magnificent Indian hookah lay on his knee; the enameled coils lay like a serpent in the room, but he had forgotten to draw out its fresh perfume. And yet there was a complete contradiction between the general feebleness of his young frame and the blue eyes, where all his vitality seemed to dwell; an extraordinary intelligence seemed to look out from them and to ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... look to see that the strings of his moccasins and his beaded garters are well tied, and tightening his sash belt around his leathern shirt, the swift runner would be off like an arrow; making straight for the far away wigwam, where, in age and feebleness, is one of the grandmothers of the tribe, now loved by all; but who would have been put to death years ago, if the blessed Gospel had not come among this people and wrought its marvellous transformations in their hearts. Six miles would that fleet Indian ...
— On the Indian Trail - Stories of Missionary Work among Cree and Salteaux Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... everybody, like a new and incomprehensible music falling on slumbering ears. But he was listened to with respect, with the veneration inspired by his years and his unsullied career. His voice had the melodious feebleness of a muffled, silver bell; and his words rolled through the silence of the hall with a certain prophetic stateliness, as if the vision of a better world were passing before his eyes as he spoke, the revelation of a perfect ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... suddenly from the sere range into abundant and peaceful pasture, the physical side of her being rounded out, glowing with the fires of youth, at the same time that the poor old Captain sank slowly but surely into inactivity and feebleness. She did not perceive his decline, for he talked bravely of his future, and called her attention to his increasing weight, which was indeed a sign ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... came a strength greater and more enduring than he had ever known before. Redeemed from the material baseness of his past when he changed the prison cell for Lettice's ennobling presence, he was now saved from the mental and moral feebleness to which he might have sunk by the ordeal through which ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... "the hysteria, the hypochondriasis, the consumption, the dwarfish deformities, the suffering lives and early deaths of the children of inveterate smokers, bear ample testimony to the feebleness of constitution ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... societies; but all these effects converge, paralyzing in the nation the best half of the soul, and, worse still, to leading the will astray and perverting the public mind, transforming generous impulses into evil outbursts, and organizing lasting inertia, ennui, discontent, discord, feebleness, and sterility.[4102] ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine |
