"Imbecility" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The bullet lodged somewhere about the brain, and it has produced, by its pressure, this peculiar form of imbecility. The past is an utter blank to him, and it is only for a short time every morning that he has the power ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... pawnbroker woman, of use to no one!... Killing her was atonement for forty sins. She was sucking the life out of poor people. Was that a crime? I am not thinking of it and I am not thinking of expiating it, and why are you all rubbing it in on all sides? 'A crime! a crime!' Only now I see clearly the imbecility of my cowardice, now that I have decided to face this superfluous disgrace. It's simply because I am contemptible and have nothing in me that I have decided to, perhaps too for my advantage, as that... ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... abilities of the most distinguished of the papal bishops, to bring him into the pale of their church. Those examinations, which were very long and learned, were all written down by Mr. Philpot, and a stronger proof of the imbecility of the Catholic doctors, cannot, to an unbiassed mind, be exhibited. December 16th, in the consistory of St. Paul's bishop Bonner, after laying some trifling accusations to his charge such as secreting powder to make ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... strangest of all human moods is the mood which will suddenly strike us perhaps in a garden at night, or deep in sloping meadows, the feeling that every flower and leaf has just uttered something stupendously direct and important, and that we have by a prodigy of imbecility not heard or understood it. There is a certain poetic value, and that a genuine one, in this sense of having missed the full meaning of things. There is beauty, not only in wisdom, but in this ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... to resent. His feelings were not quick; but contempt, says the Eastern proverb, pierces even through the shell of the tortoise; and neither prudence nor decorum had ever restrained Frederic from expressing his measureless contempt for the sloth, the imbecility, and the baseness of Louis. France was thus induced to join the coalition; and the example of France determined the conduct of Sweden, then completely subject ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... [The heathen poet whose words these are, ("We move towards what is forbidden"), describes well the perversity and the imbecility of our nature. Vid Ovid Amor. lib. iii. eleg. 4 ver. 17 ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... runs through the entire poem, where Satan alone is resolute and rational. Nothing can exceed the imbecility of the angelic guard to which Man's defence is entrusted. Uriel, after threatening to drag Satan in chains back to Tartarus, and learning by a celestial portent that he actually has the power to fulfil his threat, considerately draws the fiend's ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... wallabies, wallaroos, wombats, and certain other eccentric things, including the Tasmanian devil; but none is a bigger fool than the biggest marsupial, the kangaroo. This is natural, because he has most room to store his imbecility. The kangaroo's general weakness of character is visible all over him. He has never quite made up his mind what to be even now; he is nothing ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... duty of neglecting nothing within your power to insure them a sane mind in a sound and undeformed body. And, good God! how many are the instances of deformed bodies, of crooked limbs, of idiocy, or of deplorable imbecility, proceeding solely from young children being left to the care of servants! One would imagine, that one single sight of this kind to be seen, or heard of, in a whole nation, would be sufficient to ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... Amongst them there was an aged man of grayish beard, who was particularly loud and zealous in his condemnation of the dishonest banker. He railed against the Government, which, he said, was priest-ridden under the whip of Mazarin; the imbecility of the police; and the apathy of the citizens, who bore so peaceably such glaring acts of injustice and imposition. He poured out a volume of calumny against the priesthood, and blasphemed so as to cast a chill of terror through his ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... ugly. His features were like his sister's, but while in her case everything was lit up by a joyous, self-satisfied, youthful, and constant smile of animation, and by the wonderful classic beauty of her figure, his face on the contrary was dulled by imbecility and a constant expression of sullen self-confidence, while his body was thin and weak. His eyes, nose, and mouth all seemed puckered into a vacant, wearied grimace, and his arms and legs always ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... government, of the sources of national prosperity, of the causes of national decay, he knew no more than his master. It is curious to observe the contrast between the dexterity with which he ruled the conscience of a foolish valetudinarian, and the imbecility which he showed when placed at the head of an empire. On what grounds Lord Mahon represents the Cardinal as a man "of splendid genius," "of vast abilities," we are unable to discover. Lewis was of a very different opinion, and Lewis was very seldom mistaken in his judgment of ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... ridiculous. What, for instance, can be weaker than the figure above given from the great work of Perrot and Chipiez, with its good-humoured face, its tongue hanging out of its mouth, its tottering forelegs, and its general air of imbecility? The lioness' head represented in the same work is better, but still leaves much to be desired, falling, as it does, very far behind the best Assyrian models. Nor were the sculptors much more successful ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... Yes, I had forgotten to ask about him; so we are one in our imbecility, my little Aristotle. This ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Lilly. "And that's just the point. We've got to love and hate moreover—and even talk. But we haven't got to fix on any one of these modes, and say that's the only mode. It is such imbecility to say that love and love alone must rule. It is so obviously not the case. Yet we ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... eighteenth century, Gothic architecture had already fallen into utter disrepute. Sir Henry Wotton, fresh from his embassies in Venice, had declared that such was the 'natural imbecility' of pointed arches, and such 'their very uncomeliness,' that they ought to be 'banished from judicious eyes, among the reliques of a barbarous age.'[844] Evelyn, lamenting the demolition by Goths and Vandals ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... the usual difference shown amongst people in such circumstances,—energy and coolness contrasted with imbecility and frantic excitement. A friend who moved three times, with her husband so ill that he had to be carried from place to place, never once forgot to administer his medicine at regular intervals,—with a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... readers,' Lamb wrote to Coleridge, 'I hate all that do read, for they read nothing but reviews and new books. I gather myself up into the old things.' 'I am jealous for the actors who pleased my youth,' he says elsewhere. And again: 'For me, I do not know whether a constitutional imbecility does not incline me too obstinately to cling to the remembrances of childhood; in an inverted ratio to the usual sentiment of mankind, nothing that I have been engaged in since seems of any value or importance compared to the colours which imagination ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... a dunce. Imbecility of mind is as rare, as deformity of the animal frame. If this position be true, we have only to bear it in mind, feelingly to convince ourselves, how wholesale the error is into which society has hitherto fallen in the destination of its members, and ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... epilepsy in our collection show advanced dementia and in some the clinical history would indicate also original mental inferiority, that is to say, imbecility or feeble-mindedness. ...
— A Study of Association in Insanity • Grace Helen Kent
... to a young man's lips, than to crown with madness an old drunkard's life-long alienation—worse to wake the fierce appetite in the depths of a generous and promising nature, than to take the carrion of a man, a mere shell of imbecility, and soak it in a fresh debauch. Therefore, if I were going to say where the License should be granted in order to show its efficacy, I would say—take the worst sinks of intemperance in the city, ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... equally blank look of despair; as he stood with his legs apart and his arms hanging down by his side—the very personification of imbecility. "If I wos a fly I'd know wot to do. I'd walk up the side o' that cliff till I got to a dry bit, and then I'd stick on. But, not bein' a fly, ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... Our presence here was the inevitable sequel of past events. We appeared with bayonets and bullets because of the bosh uttered on this floor; because of the bills—with treasonable stump-speeches in their bellies—passed here; because of the cowardice of the poltroons, the imbecility of the dodgers, and the arrogance of the bullies, who had here cooperated to blind and corrupt the minds of the people. Talk had made a miserable mess of it. The ultima ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... irrational: it insists on caring for individuals; it absolutely refuses to adopt the quantitative view of human anguish, and to admit that thirteen happy lives are a set-off against twelve miserable lives, which leaves a clear balance on the side of satisfaction. This is the inherent imbecility of feeling, and one must be a great philosopher to have got quite clear of all that, and to have emerged into the serene air of pure intellect, in which it is evident that individuals really exist for no other purpose than that abstractions may be drawn from ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... 1770. Every man naturally persuades himself that he can keep his resolutions, nor is he convinced of his imbecility but by length of time and frequency of experiment[332]. This opinion of our own constancy is so prevalent, that we always despise him who suffers his general and settled purpose to be overpowered by an occasional desire. They, therefore, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... over his head; there was even a glimpse of a possibility afforded; besides the galleys, a possible death penalty, in case his identity were established, and the affair of Little Gervais were to end thereafter in condemnation. Who was this man? what was the nature of his apathy? was it imbecility or craft? Did he understand too well, or did he not understand at all? these were questions which divided the crowd, and seemed to divide the jury; there was something both terrible and puzzling in this case: the drama was not only ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... would, perhaps, cease to suppose that any such chimerical and groundless notion had influenced my proceedings. Have I said enough to clear myself of so silly an imputation? Not that it is a crime to marry, or a crime to wish to be married; but it is an imbecility, which I reject with contempt, for women, who have neither fortune nor beauty, to make marriage the principal object of their wishes and hopes, and the aim of all their actions; not to be able to convince themselves that they are unattractive, and that ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... son, Rutland, was killed as he fled. But Richard's eldest son, Edward—Edward IV. (1461-1483)—supported by the powerful Earl of Warwick, "the king-maker," defeated the queen at Towton, took possession of the throne, and imprisoned Henry VI., who had fallen into imbecility. Edward was popular because he kept order. But the favors which he lavished on the Woodvilles, relatives of his Lancastrian wife Elizabeth, enabled the opposing party, to which Warwick deserted, to get the upper hand (1470); and Edward fled to Holland. But he soon ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... political supremacy, as pious Jews dream of the rebuilding of Zion. That they were at the bottom of the Meerut mutiny may be taken for granted. That they took for their leader the heir of the Moghul shows the Mahometan nature of the outbreak. At the same time, we believe that if it had not been for the imbecility of Hewitt, who commanded at Meerut, the mutiny never would have occurred, or the mutineers would have been promptly put down. Even after they had escaped from Meerut, Delhi never could have fallen into their hands, if that city—so important, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... and Harry Forsyth remained in this state of semi- imbecility, free from anxiety about his mother and sister at home, forgetful of all but his animal comforts and the superficial interest he felt in such prattle as this. His bodily health improved before his mental activity; perhaps ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... them. They are the breath of life—by which I mean that life, in its own way, breathes them upon us. They are so, in a manner prescribed and imposed—floated into our minds by the current of life. That reduces to imbecility the vain critic's quarrel, so often, with one's subject, when he hasn't the wit to accept it. Will he point out then which other it should properly have been?—his office being, essentially to point out. Il en serait bien embarrasse. Ah, ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... marriage market. If a girl does not get well married, it were better for her and for her mother also if she had never been born, or had been cast with a millstone round her neck into the sea. Whom she marries—whether a man old enough to be her father, whether a pattern of imbecility, whether a man of a notoriously debauched character—this matters not a jot. Only let him have money. This being the conception of marriage, and marriage being the aim of all sagacious up-bringing, as most men unhappily are more surely taken on ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... himself. However, in a day or two, after a visit from the commandant, his cell was cleaned. His manacles prevented his walking, or even standing, and the moral effect of being unable to use his hands was a strange apathy such as might precede imbecility. He was interrogated several times, but always adhered to his confession at Kamenitz; menaces of harsher treatment, even of torture, were tried—means which he knew too well had been resorted to before; his guards ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... despotic, and the principles of its administration at variance with Scripture and reason. This takes away all motives to industry and thrift. Then again, the people are ignorant; have no mental discipline, no store of useful knowledge, but their minds are marked with torpor, imbecility, and poverty of thought: while at the same time they are full of grovelling ideas, false opinions, and superstitious notions, imbibed in childhood and confirmed by age. The children, too, are growing up in ignorance of all that is useful and praiseworthy. ...
— Thoughts on Missions • Sheldon Dibble
... this opportunity of presenting a second point which embarrasses me; it is the carelessness—it is worse than that—the imbecility of the bee in the presence of the Philanthus. One would naturally suppose that the persecuted insect, gradually instructed by family misfortune, would exhibit anxiety at the approach of the ravisher, and would at least ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... fastidiousness in the execution of your ornament, you diminish the possible number and grandeur of your buildings. Do not think you can educate your workmen, or that the demand for perfection will increase the supply: educated imbecility and finessed foolishness are the worst of all imbecilities and foolishnesses; and there is no free-trade measure, which will ever lower the price of brains,—there is no California of common sense. ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... the questions generally, because he can keep his countenance, and look more like an inspired idiot, and throw more imbecility into the tone of his voice than any man that lives. It ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... occiput. I cannot put other people's thoughts together; I forget every paragraph as fast as I read it; and my head has received such a shock by an all-night journey on the top of the coach, that I shall have enough to do to nurse it into its natural pace before I go home. I must devote myself to imbecility. I must be gloriously useless while I stay here. How is Mrs. [M.]? will she pardon my inefficiency? The city of Salisbury is full of weeping and wailing. The Bank has stopt payment; and every body in the town kept money at it, or has got some ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... brought back the charm of his writing before she wearied of it." A later visitor, Miss Martineau, his old helper in days of struggle, was now thus esteemed: "Broken into utter wearisomeness, a mind reduced to these three elements—imbecility, dogmatism, and unlimited hope. I never in my life was more heartily bored with any creature!" In 1847 there followed the last English glimpse of Jeffrey and the last of Dr. Chalmers, who was full of enthusiasm about Cromwell; then a visit to the Brights, John and Jacob, at Rochdale: ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... from his father: "I am not surprised at your intelligence, but if anything could exceed the folly of going into a monastery it is the imbecility of coming out of it. The former appears to be a subject of common talk in this island already, and no doubt the latter will soon ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... but an imperfect image of their brilliancy, the ruins only of their grandeur, and a system that has experienced progressive alterations, the fruits of social events, political circumstances, and the ambitious imbecility of its improvers. After leaving Egypt, the Mysteries were modified by the habits of the different nations among whom they were introduced, and especially by the religious systems of the countries into which they were transplanted. To maintain the established ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... complaint, for such was the power of the Babe, that rather he did support the Mother's weakness than was supported; and as he lighted his Mother's travel by the way from Nazareth to Bethlem that it was not tedious to her tender age, so he took away all her dolour and imbecility from her travel in child-birth, and therefore 'she wrapt him ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... are shocked too severely, we become totally and permanently impaired, and suffer violent fits and fearful rages, insanity or imbecility. ...
— Tyranny of God • Joseph Lewis
... knew more of his early history. From all I can learn, he was only what is called "half-witted," when they received him at the asylum in London. The cruel repressive treatment in that place aggravated his imbecility into violent madness—and such madness has a tendency to recur. Mrs. Wagner's influence, which has already done so much, is my main hope for the future. Sit down, and let me explain the strange position in which you find us here, ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... considerable annoyance, and a sequestration of British property to a large amount was promptly executed in various quarters. The fate which awaited the Mussulman negociator was a lamentable one: he was accused of imbecility or treachery; and his head was taken off his shoulders to decorate the niche over the Seraglio gate: he paid dear for his friendly feelings towards the English. So ended the famed expedition to the Hellespont and the Bosphorus. It broke the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... instances, there can be no doubt that the celebrated English poets of the early part of this century, Scott, Wordsworth, Southey, became intellectually dull and incapable towards the end of their days, nay, soon after passing their sixtieth year; and that their imbecility can be traced to the fact that, at that period of life, they were all led on? by the promise of high pay, to treat literature as a trade and to write for money. This seduced them into an unnatural abuse of their intellectual powers; and a man who puts his Pegasus ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... classical education," they say, "cultivates the imagination a great deal too much, and other habits of mind a great deal too little, and trains up many young men in a style of elegant imbecility, utterly unworthy of the talents with which nature has endowed them.{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} The matter of fact is, that a classical scholar of twenty-three or twenty-four is a man principally conversant with works of imagination. ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... position where this necessary work may be done by you effectually. This is the very thing that ought to be done at once. Since the Bureau has been abolished it will be impossible to get along with the great influx of imbecility and destitution which gathers and centers in Washington every winter, without some one being appointed to see to it, and certainly everybody knows that there is no one so competent for this work as yourself. To this end I will do whatever I can, but you know that ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... old man in his dotage" equally with a "young man under age." But as dotage signifies imbecility of mind, this subject will be more properly considered under the ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... the baggage were just as related in the story—the only liberty I have taken being the bestowal of names. 'M. Arture' was really of the party, but I have made him Scotch instead of Irish, and I have no knowledge that the lackey was not French. The imbecility of the Abbe is merely a deduction from his helplessness, but of course this may ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... scenes from Gil Blas, Don Quixote, and the Vicar of Wakefield, or mountain sceneries with young idiots of Londoners wearing Highland bonnets and brandishing rifles in the foregrounds. Do but think of these things in the breadth of their inexpressible imbecility, and then go and stand before that broken bas-relief in the southern gate of Lincoln Cathedral, and see if there is no fiber of the heart in you that ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... "whether it would not be better to bear the ills we have than fly to those we know not of. I am, however, in no doubt about the weakness of the federal government. If it remains much longer in its present state of imbecility, we shall be one of the most contemptible nations on the face of the earth." "It is clear to me as A, B, C," said Washington, "that an extension of federal powers would make us one of the most happy, wealthy, respectable, ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... could give them to you; until then I had but to think of one thing, and that was of keeping body and soul together. My chance of seeing you was to let them have their will with me. Those brutes were sure, sooner or later, to bring you to me, that you might see the caged fox worn down to imbecility, eh? That you might add your tears to their persuasion, and succeed ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... was smaller and whiter, and his eyes were more like little black beads than those of either of his brethren—would fire off a point-blank pistol-shot of a question; when this was answered or evaded, they resumed their steady stare. I was lapsing rapidly into a helpless imbecility under the horrible fascination, when their mother summoned me to supper; they vanished then, with a derisive chuckle, to which they were certainly entitled: for they had utterly discomfited ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... miserable misfortunes; when his gout troubled him less and he was in a somewhat more humane frame of mind, he would perhaps give the rector some money, after having bullied him in the most painful manner, and berated the whole parish for its shiftlessness and imbecility. But, whatsoever his mood, he never failed to make as many sarcastic and embarrassing speeches as possible, and to cause the Reverend Mr. Mordaunt to wish it were proper and Christian-like to throw something heavy at him. During ...
— Little Lord Fauntleroy • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... heard of poor Caberfae's death? What a pity it is he should have outlived his promising young representative. His state was truly pitiable—all his fine faculties lost in paralytic imbecility, and yet not so entirely so but that he perceived his deprivation as in a glass darkly. Sometimes he was fretful and anxious because he did not see his son; sometimes he expostulated and complained that his boy had been allowed to die without his seeing him; and sometimes, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... he had come to the stage when it was here five shillings and there half a crown as a charge for the charm of his society with the most casual of acquaintances. He made his breakfast on a salt-spoonful of cayenne and a glass of brandy, and he passed from intellectual godhood to a hiccuping imbecility in a breath. At from four to five in the afternoon he carried his lofty head and a prematurely pimpled countenance into some unwatched obscurity. He habitually emerged from this hiding-place within an hour of midnight, and thence ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... the fallacy of drawing general conclusions from this fact is shown by the additional fact that in idiots and imbeciles premature awakening of the sexual life is also of common occurrence. In cases such as were formerly described as moral insanity, but which in Germany to-day are classed with imbecility, sexual assaults on others are very common at an early age. This is true also of other forms of idiocy and imbecility. In asylums for such patients, feeble-minded children not infrequently make sexual attempts on nurses and on ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... to speculate no more, to give her no hopes that might prove groundless. The future was uncertain: the patient might have convulsions, paralysis, locomotor ataxia, mere imbecility with normal physical functions, or intermittent insanity. It was highly unprofessional to speculate in this loose fashion about the outcome of ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... Tyrrel's objection to the very name of Falkland became more palpable and uniform, Miss Melville increased in her precaution. She would stop herself in the half-pronounced sentences that were meant to his praise. This circumstance had necessarily an ungracious effect; it was a cutting satire upon the imbecility of her kinsman. Upon these occasions she would sometimes venture upon a good-humoured expostulation:—"Dear sir! well, I wonder how you can be so ill-natured! I am sure Mr. Falkland would do you any good office in the world:"—till ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... his imminent peril, ventured down the bank, and shouted to him to fly to them. He moved not; they entreated him, and, knowing his great age and infirmity, and the utter imbecility of the poor old dame, insisted upon ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... question of scanty populations strung along the banks of the St. Lawrence; it was—or under a government of any worth it would have been—a question of the armies and generals of France. America owes much to the imbecility of Louis XV. and the ambitious vanity and personal dislikes of ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... nation and some of the Ministers wish to act vigorously, but are retarded in all their operations by the imbecility of age, or the more powerful operation of English gold. As the English Ministry seem convinced of the pacific, or rather undecided, state of the rulers here, they hasten, by the most vigorous exertions ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... misfortune that Nietzsche, the great keen thinker, should have been misled into an opposite conclusion by the mental weakness, the paralytic imbecility, which gradually enveloped his brain like a growth of mould. And the foolish youths, who esteem the expressions of this incipient insanity as the revelations of a vigorous genius, swear by his later hallucinations about the Over-man and ...
— The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the Hour • Friedrich Max Mueller
... truth,[1332] for, albeit Francis of Alencon had received the baptismal name of Hercules, he was a puny weakling, from whom no labors could ever be expected, but rather a dull existence of sloth and imbecility. It was, however, a stretch even of diplomatic assurance, for La Mothe Fenelon to suggest to the virgin queen of England, as he deliberately reports that he did, that Alencon's malady was probably due to his disappointment at Elizabeth's failure to reciprocate his honest affection![1333] ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... delicacy which blood can give, combined, as one does sometimes see, with the broad strength of the proletarian—so different from poor me!—and so different, too, as I recollected with perhaps a savage pleasure, from the miserable, stunted specimens of over-bred imbecility whom I had often passed in London! A strange question that of birth! and one in which the philosopher, in spite of himself, must come to democratic conclusions. For, after all, the physical and intellectual superiority of ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... a spiritual renovation of the heart, while the head is too intoxicated to apprehend a moral obligation, is almost beyond rational belief. It is difficult to conceive that any man, in such a state of voluntarily-induced imbecility, too drunk to hold intelligent converse with men, can be competent to transact business with God, to receive and answer those calls from the Holy Spirit that decide the eternal destinies ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... is that we'll end up a lot of intellectual roues: we'll be incapable of being astonished with anything. We knew, to start with, that science and imbecility are continuous; nevertheless so many expressions of the merging-point are at first startling. We did think that Prof. Hitchcock's performance in identifying the Amherst phenomenon as a fungus was rather notable as scientific vaudeville, if we acquit him of the charge of seriousness—or ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... charge of the detachment knew nothing of his trade, and had been hoisted to a commission in return for the use of a few freeholders. The Irish read character quickly. They saw at a glance the marked imbecility of the devoted man; and by an imposition, from which any but an idiot would have recoiled, trapped the silly victim and, worse still, sacrificed those who had been ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... is evident that the consciousness of some imbecility or other is at the bottom of this extraordinary expression. I don't think, however, that these persons are commonly fools. I have known a number, and all of them were intelligent. I think nothing ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... curious to see what defence the super-ingenious Premier has to offer for himself in Parliament. I suppose, as usual, the question will drift into a brutal party fight, when the furious imbecility of the Tories will lead them to spoil their case. That is where we are; on the one side, timid imbecility "waiting for instructions from the constituencies"; furious imbecility on the other, looking out for party advantage. Oh! for a few months ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... loyal to the Constitution of Mexico. They repelled the Indian savages; they encountered every discomfort; they subdued the wilderness, and converted into cultivated fields the idle waste of this now prolific territory. Their courage and enterprise achieved that which the imbecility of your countrymen had either neglected, or left for centuries unaccomplished. Their situation, however, was not disregarded by Mexico, though she did not, as might have been expected, extend to them a protecting and fostering care, but viewed them as objects of cupidity, ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... hands and feet are not developed and look pudgy. The face is pale and has a waxy, sallow tint. The muscles are weak and the child cannot support itself. Above the collar bone there are pads of fat. The child does not develop mentally and there may be one of the grades of idiocy and imbecility (feeble-minded). ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... free either to resign himself to the indolence and self-indulgence so natural to the species; or, "spurning delights, to live laborious days;"—free either to sink into ignorant sloth, dependent uselessness, and self-induced imbecility, bodily and mental, or to assert by honest labor a noble independence,—to seek after knowledge as for hidden treasures, and, in the search, to sharpen his faculties and invigorate his mind. And while we see around us some men addressing themselves with stout, brave hearts to what Carlyle ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... prey upon his innocent and industrious subjects.[5] In India there are no universities or public schools, in which young men might escape, as they do in Europe, from the enervating and stultifying influence of the zanana.[6] The state of mental imbecility to which a youth of naturally average powers of mind, born to territorial dominion, is in India often reduced by a haughty and ambitious mother, would be absolutely incredible to a man bred up in such schools. They are often utterly unable to act, think, or speak for themselves. ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... which this necessity forced upon him, his courage almost—though not quite—failed him; for since the capture of the Aurora Walford had, under the influence of the sufferings to which he, in common with the rest, had been subjected, relapsed into a state of almost complete imbecility; so that, so far as assisting in the matter of his own escape was concerned, he was helpless as an infant There was, however, one point in Leicester's favour; and it was this. Walford still knew him, and appeared to recognise, in spite of ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... a negative be found enticing? for, from the negative point of view, I flatter myself this volume has a certain stamp. Although it runs to considerably over a hundred pages, it contains not a single reference to the imbecility of God's universe, nor so much as a single hint that I could have made a better one myself—I really do not know where my ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... metaphor that governs the mechanism of language, and sheds a glory and a beauty around even our every-day fireside words; so that even those that seem hackneyed, worn out, and apparently tottering with the imbecility of old age—would we but get into the core of them—will shine forth with all the expressive meaning of their spring time—with the blush ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the end. He becomes careless of his appearance; with the decrease of his means his coats become shiny, and his cuffs more and more frayed. Eventually he falls into a state of sodden imbecility, relieved by occasional flashes of delirium tremens, and dies at the age of thirty-six, regretted by nobody except the faithful bull-dog, whose silver collar was the last ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, April 5, 1890 • Various
... possessions fell, one after another, into the hands of the successful revolutionists, or were seized by former slaves, Don Ignacio found it difficult to meet his royal master's demands. The fickle King, already childish to the verge of imbecility, gave scant thanks in return for the Rincon loyalty, and when at last, stripped of his fortune, deserted by all but the few Tory families who had the courage to remain in Cartagena until the close of the war, Don Ignacio received with sinking heart the news of the battle of ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... be supremely delicate to buy only the highest priced stamps, without reference to their adequacy; then mere QUANTITY was sought; then outgoing letters were all over-paid and stamped in outrageous proportion to their weight and even size. The imbecility of this, and its probable effect on the reputation of Laurel Run at the General Post-office, being pointed out by Mrs. Baker, stamps were adopted as local currency, and even for decorative purposes on mirrors and the walls of cabins. Everybody ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... safe gauge of mental capacity. Intellectual vigor leads to action. To a person of mental resources inactivity is more irksome than the hardest work, and sluggishness is justly used as a synonyme of imbecility. Exertion under the pressure of want is, however, not incompatible with an inert disposition, and spontaneous activity, the love of busy-ness for its own sake, can be ascribed only to men and monkeys; monkeys, at least, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... pushed her angrily from her. "Sorry! Never dare to say such a thing again! Oh, I don't know which is most hateful to me, his villainy or your whining imbecility. Leave me—go to your room, and never come to me ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... his bedchamber over the little grocer's shop he told himself with bitter self-reproach—he had undoubtedly encouraged the man. From admiration Jack had rapidly passed to infatuation, from infatuation to apparent imbecility. Had Johnny's mind been less intent upon his own troubles, he might have been suspicious. As it was, and after all that had happened, nothing now could astonish Johnny. "Thank Heaven," murmured Johnny, as he blew out the light, "this Mrs. Postwhistle ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... followed close upon that of the political power of Spain. The splendid empire of Charles V had sunk, from causes inherent in the policies of that over-ambitious monarch, through the somber bigotry of Philip II, the ineptitude of Philip III, the frivolity of Philip IV, to the imbecility of Charles II; and the death of the last of the Hapsburg rulers in 1700 left Spain in a deplorably enfeebled condition physically and intellectually. The War of the Succession (1701-1714) exhausted her internal strength still more, and the final acknowledgment of Philip V (reigned 1701-1746) brought ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... notice of her, but took, instead, two or three hard peas out of his pocket, and shot them with his thumb-nail against the window, vaguely at first, but presently with the distinct aim of hitting a superannuated blue bottle which was exposing its imbecility in the spring sunshine, clearly against the views of Nature, who had provided Tom and the peas for the speedy ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... said; and there passed between us dim smiles, I have no doubt of the most touching imbecility on earth. We were standing by then in the middle of the room with its vivid colours on a black background, with its multitude of winged figures with pale limbs, with hair like halos or flames, all strangely tense in their strained, decorative attitudes. Dona Rita ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... masterpiece, have confused the drawing of the eyes, and reduced the bloom and delicacy that the features traced by a master hand, even when they become an almost complete wreck, often retain; for time and fortune are not so conscientiously destructive as the imbecility of the incapable. Next we have a portrait of Duerer when only five years older, in perfect preservation,—that in the Prado at Madrid. This charming picture must certainly have drawn a sonnet from the Shakespeare ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... Brighton, and of his own accord never would have gone; he was prejudiced against the place because its name has become suggestive of fashionable imbecility and the snobbishness which tries to model itself thereon; he knew that the town was a mere portion of London transferred to the sea-shore, and as he loved the strand and the breakers for their own sake, to think of them in such connection could be nothing but a trial of his temper. Something of ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... heath scene the man is more remembered than the storm. It has been objected that in the first scene Mr. Irving's Lear is too old and feeble. I venture to think otherwise. I further venture to think that the King's age and the King's imbecility have both been accurately appreciated. A man at eighty, a man athirst for flattery, a man who would pay a kingdom in exchange for adulation, must have outlived all that is best and strongest in human nature. ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... only had the State lost an ultimate controlling power, if dull, yet practised and tenacious, but this loss was palpable to all the world. The void stood bare and unrelieved before the public eye. The notorious imbecility of the Emperor Ferdinand, the barren and antiquated formalism of Metternich and of that entire system which seemed to be incorporated in him, made Government an object of general satire, and in some quarters of rankling contempt. ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... calculation when one considers what woman owes to religion. The Reformation reduced woman to the position of a mere breeder of children. During the sway of Puritanism woman was a poor, benighted being, a human toad under the harrow of a pious imbecility. ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... statement of the case, for I affirm that the reviewer exposes a great deal more than his rage, since his imbecility, ignorance, and dishonesty, are quite as apparent ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... as a nation seemed at hand. The nobility had been led into captivity and sold to an invading enemy; the clergy had seen its altars defamed by arrogant strangers. Industry had been ruined by civil wars during the long imbecility of Charles VI., and the succeeding ravages made by the English. Villages were depopulated, homes desolated, and look where they might, the people of France saw no hope of aid, save ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... heavy as Rotten Row in April,—how in the name of common sense can Jimjams be expected to show up against high-class yearlings like Ballarat and Tifftoff on the Goodwin Sands, T. Y. C.? The whole thing is only another instance of the hare-brained imbecility and downright puddling folly with which the cackling herd will follow any brazen-headed nincompoop who sets up to advise them on turf matters. Jimjams has just as much chance of winning this race as Mr. JEREMY has of being ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 19 April 1890 • Various
... said to me in a low voice, "that the poor woman has fallen into senile imbecility, and that is the cause of her looks, which are so strange, considering the terrible sight she ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... degree stand in authentic place? Take but degree away, untune that string, And, hark, what discord follows! each thing meets In mere oppugnancy: the bounded waters Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores, And make a sop of all this solid globe: Strength should be lord of imbecility, And the rude son should strike his father dead: Force should be right; or rather, right and wrong, Between whose endless jar justice resides, Should lose their names, and so should justice too. Then every thing includes itself in power, Power ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... BY imbecility and fears Will is restrain'd from doing ill; His mind a porcupine appears, A porcupine without ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... yes; and as they passed in, looked at Paul as if he were a little mouse, and the house were a trap. He was a weak-eyed young man, with the first faint streaks or early dawn of a grin on his countenance. It was mere imbecility; but Mrs Pipchin took it into her head that it was impudence, and made ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... some,' repeated Mrs. Olney, and nodded, but whether in assent or imbecility it was hard ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... was not the man for me. Though it was big enough to be made, by the papers at home, of political importance, it was, after all, neither more nor less than piracy. The idea of my turning a sort of Irish traitor was so extravagantly outrageous that now I could smile at the imbecility of that fellow O'Brien. As to turning into a ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... wasting away in either atrophy or consumption, and that the doctors said the only hope for her was home and native air. Poor child! what home was there for her, with her sister-in-law absorbed in the care of her brother, whose imbecility was no spectacle for one in a critical state of health and failing spirits? We were at Arked at the time, and offered to go and fetch her (it was Dermot's kind thought), leaving the children ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... polemic to the point that history revolves forever through five recurring epochs, and that, as our civilization has been now four centuries in the "age of reason," it must next (and probably soon) pass into the fifth stage, that of decrepitude, and thence into infantile credulity and imbecility once more,—as a demonstration that history is such a Sisyphus, his induction is weak ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... expression of contempt. But I am afraid that even this disdainful phrase does me too much honour. I am more and more convinced that I suffer, not from a shiny or showy impertinence, but from a simplicity that verges upon imbecility. I think more and more that I must be very dull, and that everybody else in the modern world must be very clever. I have just been reading this important compilation, sent to me in the name of a number of men for whom I have a high respect, and called "New Theology and Applied Religion." ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... as one may say, on the very threshold, between Mrs. Pipchin the Ogress in bombazeen and the weak-eyed young man-servant who opens the door! The latter of whom, having "the first faint streaks or early dawn of a grin on his countenance—(it was mere imbecility)" as the Author himself explains parenthetically—Mrs. Pipchin at once takes it into her head, is inspired by impudence, and snaps at accordingly. Of this we saw nothing, however, in the Reading. We heard nothing of Mrs. Pipchin's explosive, "How ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... humourists always keep themselves out of sight, or, more properly speaking, never think about themselves at all, unlike our latter-day school of humourists, who seem to have revived the old horse-collar method, and try to raise a laugh by some grotesque assumption of ignorance, imbecility, or bad taste. ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... masturbation could be more easily traced among men than among women, excessive masturbation was more common among women. And, while among the men masturbation was most frequent in the lowest grades of mental development (idiocy and imbecility), and least frequent in the highest grades (general paralysis), in the women it was the reverse. (P. Naecke, "Die Sexuellen Perversitaeten in der Irrenanstalt," Psychiatrische en Neurologische ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... to apologize in the most abject manner to the present Governor of California, to Hon. Mr. Low, the Governor elect, to Judge Field and to Hon. Wm. M. Stewart, for the great wrong which my natural imbecility has impelled me to do them in penning and publishing the foregoing sanguinary absurdity. If it were to do over again, I don't really know that I would do it. It is not possible for me to say how I ever managed to believe that refined and educated gentlemen ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... certainty of injury to body and mind from the continuance of solitude for life. The digestive and vocal organs, and the reason would inevitable suffer. In proof she quoted the notorious imbecility of the aged monks of La Trappe: "We are credibly informed of the fact (in addition to what we have known at home) that amongst the monks of La Trappe few attain the age of sixty years without having suffered an absolute decay of ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... which was natural and pure; he became a little jealous of his father and of Sidney on other grounds than those of self-interest. Intolerable as his home was, no wonder that he found it a pleasant relief to spend an evening in Hanover Street; he never came away without railing at himself for his imbecility in having married Clem. For the present he had to plot with his wife and Mrs. Peckover, but only let the chance for plotting against them offer itself! The opportunity might come. In the meantime, the great thing was to postpone the marriage—he ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... are divided as to whether it is to be a duel or a cold-blooded murder; but I know my part is to transform my face from that in which diabolical hatred and fiendish rage is depicted, into a gradual state of simpering, smiling imbecility, and I think the curtain will fall upon me and my rival locked in each other's arms, shedding maudlin tears of love ...
— Dwell Deep - or Hilda Thorn's Life Story • Amy Le Feuvre
... they cannot accompany the herd. Although for very many years I have hunted both in Asia and Africa I have never seen a sick elephant in a wild state, neither have I ever come across an example of imbecility through age. It is rarely we discover a dead elephant that has not met with a violent death, and only once in my life have I by accident found the remains of a tusker with the large tusks intact. This animal had been killed in a fight, as there were unmistakable signs of a fearful ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... preposterous state of affairs. Social organisation was still in the barbaric stage. There were already great numbers of actively intelligent men and much private and commercial civilisation, but the community, as a whole, was aimless, untrained and unorganised to the pitch of imbecility. Collective civilisation, the 'Modern State,' was still in the womb ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... me, and which it must, in time, supersede. Now and then, though very rarely, the man of the earth regains the intellect he has lost; in which case his lunar counterpart returns to his former state of imbecility. Both parties are entirely unconscious of the change—one, of what he has lost, and the other of what ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... late Ernest Crosbie and others, and endorsed by Mr Harris. Will it really stand fire? Mr Harris emphasizes the passages in which Shakespear spoke of mechanics and even of small master tradesmen as base persons whose clothes were greasy, whose breath was rank, and whose political imbecility and caprice moved Coriolanus to say to the Roman Radical who demanded at least ...
— Dark Lady of the Sonnets • George Bernard Shaw
... Ensconced Smug; Goldsmith scaled the Richardson ghetto and wrote his touching and deathless verse; Fielding's saffron comedies were produced at Drury Lane; Cowper, nearly the same age as the artist, did his work and lapsed into imbecility, surviving him sixteen years; Richardson became the happy father of the English Novel; Sterne took his Sentimental Journey; Chatterton, the meteor, flashed across the literary sky; Gray mused in the churchyard and laid his head upon the lap of earth; Burns was promoted from the Excise to be the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... girl," he said with the imbecility of a man who ought to speak and who has nothing to say, also who has something that he does not wish ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... service done to literature by criticism as a whole. I have, no doubt, the unenviable advantage over you of having wasted three mortal months in reading all the literary criticism extant of the first quarter of this century. It would be difficult to express my sense of its imbecility, its blundering, and its bad passions. But the good books it assailed are not lost, and the bad ones it glorified do not survive. It is not that the public has been the better judge, but that good work has the seeds of life, while bad work carries with it the seeds of dissolution. ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... fastened to his wrist. And now the seconds, who had been standing in a close group with the heads of their horses together, separated at an easy canter, leaving a large, clear field between him and his adversary. Captain D'Hubert looked at the pale sun, at the dismal landscape, and the imbecility of the impending fight filled him with desolation. From a distant part of the field a stentorian voice shouted commands at proper intervals: Au pas—Au trot—Chargez! Presentiments of death don't come to a man for nothing he thought at the moment he put ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... honor to show to you Madame Courtelyou's portrait of myself? It is called 'The Glorification of Imbecility,'" he said as he proffered his ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... sound, comparable stock. Karl Pearson has pointed out that this is not the case. Demme selected his children of drunkards by selecting children who came to his hospital on account of imperfect development of speech, mental defect, imbecility or idiocy. When he found families in which such defective children occurred, he then inquired as to their ancestry. Many of these children, he found, were reduced to a condition approaching epilepsy, or actually epileptic, because ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... admire its reliefs, but at the same time we know it is a picture, and that it is quite flat. The two tests of knowledge never interfere with each other. To suppose they do is to suppose a case of imbecility that even a lunatic must laugh to scorn. So far, therefore, we think the illuminator mistaken in slavishly copying the limitations of the glass-painter. It is no very great knowledge of nature that is shown in these drawings. There is a good example of the method of study followed ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley
... mean utterly without it. The pages you want altered contain, as I explained to you very lucidly, I think, the very raison d'etre of the work, and it would therefore, it seems to me, be an imbecility of the first magnitude to cancel them." Peter had really renounced all hope that his critic would understand what he meant, but, under favour of circumstances, he couldn't forbear to taste the luxury, which probably never again would ...
— Sir Dominick Ferrand • Henry James
... never appreciate a shade of meaning. You are yourselves rapacious, violent, immodest, careless of distinction; and yet the least thought for the future shocks you in a woman. I have no patience with such stuff. You would despise in a common banker the imbecility that you expect ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and of the laws of Congress, and even counseled and endured every forced submission to the bogus laws. Though they had defiant and turbulent spirits in their own ranks, who often accused them of imbecility and cowardice, they maintained a steady policy of non-resistance, and, under every show of Federal authority in support of the bogus laws, they submitted to obnoxious searches and seizures, to capricious arrest and painful imprisonment, rather than by resistance to place themselves in ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... adjutants, reformed the laws of several of our States, so that a married woman is no longer left the unprotected legal slave of any unprincipled, drunken spendthrift who may be her husband,—but, in case of the imbecility or improvidence of the natural head of the family, the wife, if she have the ability, can conduct business, make contracts, earn and retain money for the good of the household; and I am sure no one can say that immense injustice and ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... and corruption disappear in the splendor of public virtue. Providence is always present in the affairs of nations, but not to work miracles to counteract the natural effects of the ignorance, ineptness, short-sightedness, narrow views, public stupidity, and imbecility of rulers, because they are irreproachable and saintly in their private characters and relations, as was Henry VI. of England, or, in some respects, Louis XVI. of France. Providence is God intervening through the laws he by his creative act ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... that he was able to solve the daily questions of army existence, to deal with the allies, to plan attacks on New York, to watch and scheme for the southern department, to cope with Arnold's treason, with mutiny, and with administrative imbecility, and at the very same time consider the gravest governmental problems, and send forth wise suggestions, which met the exigencies of the moment, and laid the foundation of much that afterwards appeared in the Constitution of the United States. He was not a speculator on government, and ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge |
