"Paralyse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... man has acquired, in the exercise of his art, a strong faith in money; he finds it very useful to him, and he makes it very useful to society. Shall I shake that faith in Bucket because I want it myself; shall I deliberately blunt one of Bucket's weapons; shall I positively paralyse Bucket in his next detective operation? And again. If it is blameable in Skimpole to take the note, it is blameable in Bucket to offer the note—much more blameable in Bucket, because he is the ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... those dreary flats We move, with scanty space to sit on, Flanked by stout girls with steeple hats, And waists that paralyse a ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... to become fastidious with the culture of the body, the last to be expelled from the temple of the pure-spirit; that sense to whose refinement all breeding and all education is devoted; that sense which, ever an inch at least in front of man, is able to retard the development of nations, and paralyse all social schemes—this Sense of Smell awakened within him the centuries of his gentility, the ghosts of all those Dallisons who, for three hundred years and more, had served Church or State. It revived ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... meeting of the Councils to St. Cloud. Bonaparte had secured the support of almost all the generals and troops in Paris. His brother Lucien, now President of the Council of Five Hundred, hoped to paralyse the action of his own Assembly, in which the conspirators ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... freely granted to duly accredited visitors who may be desirous of consulting manuscripts, the labour of searching among the huge bewildering piles would be overwhelming, and the thought of it would at once paralyse effort. There is no proper catalogue of the printed books; and the list of manuscripts is so deficient as to be altogether worthless. During six months, from November till June, the library is open for study every day, except Thursday and the numerous saints' days, whose recurrence can ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... do discuss any (and it will perhaps be expected of you), I should think that you could not select a better case than that of the sand wasps, which paralyse their prey, as formerly described by Fabre, in his wonderful paper in the 'Annales des Sciences,' and since amplified in ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... effect of the blow was to paralyse the second-hand department. As far as new books went Isaac was fairly safe. If the Public was tricky he was generally up to its tricks. But with second-hand books you never knew where you were, not unless you had made a special study of the subject. Owing to ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... which he works his problems, for real entities—and with this further disadvantage, as compared with the mathematician, that the blunders of the latter are of no practical consequence, while the errors of systematic materialism may paralyse the energies and destroy ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... not sit down and mope," explained M. Fille. "He was at work the next day after his daughter's flight just the same as before. He is a man of great courage. Misfortune does not paralyse him." ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... rely upon Providence or fate alone, and make no effort for its own preservation. Individuals never fall into this error among you, drink as deeply as they may of fatalism; that narcotic will sometimes paralyse the moral sense, but it leaves the faculty of worldly prudence unimpaired. Far otherwise is it with your government: for such are the notions of liberty in England, that evils of every kind—physical, moral, and political, are allowed their free range. As relates to ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... is a laugh; a harsh, senseless laugh. The effect is to terrorise, to paralyse its prey. It is wicked. It climbs up into piercing, high, falsetto tones; all maniacal. . . . So insane that though one knows perfectly well what it is, it chills one's blood. This keeps on a long time, with variations. Every change seems worse than the ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... activity. Non-co-operation in itself is more harmless than civil disobedience, but in its effect it is far more dangerous for the Government than civil disobedience. Non-co-operation is intended so far to paralyse the Government, as to compel justice from it. If it is carried to the extreme point, it can bring ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... was suffering from what is commonly called confluent smallpox. But I did not. From the beginning there has been something about this terrible disease which physically and morally has exercised so great an influence over my destiny, that seemed to paralyse my mental powers. In my day I was a doctor fearless of any other contagion; typhus, scarletina, diphtheria, yellow fever, none of them had terrors for me. And yet I was afraid to attend a case of smallpox. From the same cause, in my public speeches I made light of ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... know some fellows tell their plots to any and everybody—and others, if they don't do that, lay bare their artistic souls to those near and dear to them. Well, I can't. A word, no matter how loving, of adverse criticism, a glance even that was not sympathetic would paralyse me, it would shatter my faith in the whole structure I had built up. I can't help it. It's my nature. As I told you two or three months ago, it has always been my instinct to work in the dark. I instanced my First at Cambridge. ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... enemy, the Boers having moved their guns. Shells, and not only shells but huge boulders, dropped among the advancing troops, crushing and mutilating, and leaving behind a streak of mangled bodies. But though the ordeal was terrible, and the sound and sight of wounded and bleeding were enough to paralyse the stoutest heart, the ever "gay" Gordons plodded on, passing higher and higher, while their officers leading, cheered and roared them up the precipitous ascent. Thus they clambered and plodded, with men dropping dead at their ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... warp the natural progress of life. They paralyse all of it that is not devoted to their tyranny and caprice. This makes the difference between the laughing innocence of childhood, the pleasantness of youth, and the crabbedness of age. A load of cares lies like a weight of guilt upon the mind: so ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... nuncius had been requested to present himself with his letters of credence in the camp. Henry was unwilling that he should enter Paris, being convinced that he came to do his best, by declamation, persuasion, and intrigue, to paralyse the enterprise. Sully's promises to Ubaldini, the former nuncius, that his Holiness should be made king, however flattering to Paul V., had not prevented his representatives from vigorously denouncing Henry's monstrous scheme to foment ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... clear notion of what was the matter. He was changing. The world was changing too. It had suddenly expanded. He felt that he, also, ought to expand. There was so much to learn, to see, to know—so much, that it seemed to paralyse his initiative. Could he absorb all this? Would he ever get things in order once more, and recapture his self-possession? Would he ever again be satisfied with himself? It was an invasion of his tranquillity, ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... happy country. Yes, gentlemen; but since that time it has been known in our happy country. Since that time false telegrams about the entry of the Russian army into Constantinople have been sent home to disturb, and paralyse, and reverse the deliberations of Parliament, and have actually stopped these deliberations, and led experienced statesmen to withhold their action because of this intelligence, which was afterwards, and shortly afterwards, shown to be wholly without ground. Who invented that ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... demonstration and for a moment or two stood in amazed silence. The audacity of the youngster appeared to paralyse his ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... capture, using neutral flags, and finding other subterfuges for new restrictions. The embargo would tie up the ships to rot, throw seamen out of employment, destroy perishable commodities like breadstuffs, and paralyse trade. From the moment of its passage, therefore, merchants and shipowners resisted it, charging that Napoleon's Decree had provoked the British Orders, and that if the former would recede, the latter would be modified. It revived the old charge of Jefferson's enmity to commerce. ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... winter is a contingency the mail-driver reckons as part of his daily life, and the waggons going to and fro frequently pass between high walls of frozen snow. In these wild places, which can scarcely be said to be populated at all, a snow-storm, however, does not block the King's highways and paralyse traffic as London permits itself to be paralysed under similar circumstances. Men are set to work and cut a way through in a very short time, and no one makes the least difficulty about it. But with the tracks that lead to isolated farmsteads it is different; ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... the universe is solved for Eucken through life and action. While continual contemplation and thought is apt to paralyse us, "action is the best defensive weapon against the dangers and trials of human existence." "Doubt is not cured by meditation, but by action." He believes that we can attain certainty through action of much ...
— Rudolph Eucken • Abel J. Jones
... must join him at Khartoum, that Zobeir's presence would paralyse the Mahdi, that Zobeir must succeed him in the government of the country after the evacuation. Did not Sir Evelyn Baring, too, have the mystic feeling? Sir Evelyn Baring confessed that he had not. He distrusted ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... realize what is going on around us, it is easy to see that the anti-militarist movement is rapidly reaching a stage when it will be easily able, even unaided, to paralyse any war immediately and automatically. The pioneers in the movement have played the same part as was played in the seventeenth century by the Quakers. In the name of the Bible and their own consciences, the Quakers refused to recognize the right of any secular authority to compel ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... of motives that were fictitious, misleading, and profoundly unscientific. Mill agreed that a supernatural origin could not be ascribed to received maxims of morality without harming them, because to consecrate rules of conduct was to interdict free examination of them, and to paralyse their natural development in accordance with changes of circumstance. Looking back over the interminable controversies, and the successive variations in form and spirit that every great religion has ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... and I can't say how many of them are involved. But what I have evidence of is that they brought in the Russian delegate to their councils—Kratzky, who is a byword even among Russians for sticking at nothing. If Kratzky could stave off discussion of European politics and paralyse the Assembly until Russia should be ready and able to pounce on and hold by force the new Russian republics—well, naturally monarchist Russia would be pleased. I have evidence that Wilbraham and Levis have been ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... the sea-shore—which shore is a good sandy stretch for miles and miles on either side. I don't think we were ever quite so thoroughly washed by the sea-air from all quarters as here—the weather is fine, and we do well enough. The sadness of the war and its consequences go far to paralyse all our pleasure, ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... the nibbling tactics passed down from above, inadequate co-operation by the divisions fighting side by side with us, and the failure of our artillery to hit the pill-boxes which we had hoped could be put out of action by our heavy shells, further combined to paralyse efforts which, had they been directed to more easy tasks, would now, as often, have earned for the ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... and the temple suddenly meet his view, as he reaches the height, and he is deeply moved. Any reflective mind might well have been stirred by the thought of the masses of men gathered there. Nothing is so futile as an arithmetical numbering of people, for after a certain point figures paralyse the imagination, and after that they tell the mind little or nothing. But here was actually assembled the Jewish people, coming in swarms from all the world, for the feast; here was Judaism at its most pious; here was ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... Gotwar, who used to paralyse the most eloquent and fluent men by her glib and extraordinary insolence; for she was potent in wrangling, and full of resource in all kinds of disputation. Words were her weapons; and she not only trusted in questions, but was armed ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... it sometimes does. Voltaire was a pupil of the Jesuits; Samuel Butler was the pupil of a hopelessly conventional and erroneous country parson. But then Voltaire was Voltaire, and Butler was Butler: that is, their minds were so abnormally strong that they could throw off the doses of poison that paralyse ordinary minds. When the doctors inoculate you and the homeopathists dose you, they give you an infinitesimally attenuated dose. If they gave you the virus at full strength it would overcome your resistance and produce its direct effect. The doses ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... positivism, if accepted fully, must either destroy or paralyse; it is this, therefore, that in imagination we must now try to eliminate. To do this—to see what will be left in life to us, without this faculty, we must first see in general, how much is at ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... natural impulsiveness, allowed it to gain currency in order to identify Louis XVI with French democracy, and that in its turn with public opinion in England. Further, we now know that Marie Antoinette, in her resolve to paralyse the policy and the defensive power of France, wrote at once to Fersen at Brussels that her consort's letter was very far from speaking his real sentiments.[71] This news, when passed on to London, must have made it clear that the two envoys represented the Girondin Ministry, ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... Three separate bodies of men, by a judicious arrangement of our partisan, were prepared to enter their country at the same moment. These were so placed, that, though operating separately, they might yet be made to cooperate if desired. The effect was such as to paralyse the incipient resolution of the loyalists. They showed no disposition for fight; and feeling their temper, conscious of his difficulties, and now no longer hopeful of help from the British, Gainey dispatched a flag ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... toward Rome. Three several armies, to meet which there is not one legion on this side of Cisalpine Gaul! What, then, even if all were peace in Rome, what then could stand against us? But there shall be that done here, here in the very seat and heart, as I may say, of Empire, that shall dismay and paralyse all who would else oppose us. Cethegus, when the centuries are all assembled in the field of Mars, with fifteen hundred gladiators well armed and exercised even now, sets on the guard in the Janiculum, and beats their standard down. Then, while all is confusion, Statilius and Gabinius with ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... Christian woman should bear the afflictions of this, world. I do not ask you not to weep for me, for that would be putting too violent a constraint upon your nature, but do not weep over much. Above all, Victorine, do not allow your sorrow to paralyse your actions. You will have to act then, not only for yourself, but for your child—for my daughter; and if you then give way to the violence of sorrow, who shall think and ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... him with something in his face that was almost strong. When this man had entered the room, Arthur felt his heart give one great bound which almost choked him. There was a strange physical feeling of vacuity in his breast which seemed to paralyse his breathing powers, ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... resignation. An Afrikander Cabinet, with a nationalist element reporting its confidential councils with the Governor to Mr. Hofmeyr, the Bond Master, and President Steyn, the secret ally of President Krueger, would have been sufficient in itself to paralyse the faculties of any ordinary administrator at such a crisis. But this was not the only adverse influence with which circumstances brought Lord Milner into collision. Incredible as it may seem, it ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... Guiana,' with Sir Robert's sketch of Raleigh's history and character, form in everything but its cost a very model of an excellent volume. For the remaining editors,[V] we are obliged to say that they have exerted themselves successfully to paralyse whatever interest was reviving in Hakluyt, and to consign their own volumes to the same obscurity to which time and accident were consigning the earlier editions. Very little which was really noteworthy escaped the industry of Hakluyt himself, ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... Ireland, at least so far as regarded able-bodied persons; it might induce them to abandon their habitual industry and economy, and prevent them from providing for the wants of age and supervening infirmity. Any such plan was calculated to diminish self-reliance, to paralyse industry, to decrease economy, and, above all, to damp and extinguish the kindly and generous feelings of nature. He further objected to the bill, because it taxed the occupiers of lands, and involved many difficulties of apportionment between his landlord and himself: ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... bad woman, made bad by circumstances. In tracing the vigilant resolution with which she plays upon human weakness, the spasms of compunction which shoot across her wily designs, the selfish afterthoughts which paralyse her generous impulses, her fits of dare-devil courage and uncontrollable panic, and the steady current of good-humoured satisfaction with herself which makes her chuckle equally over mishaps and successes, Defoe ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... Yellow-hair. ... No, the man in the boat is keeping his distance. He'll never see you. Don't splash when you take the water. Swim like an otter, under, until you're well out. ... You're young and sturdy, slim as you are. You'll get through if the chill of Isla doesn't paralyse you. But you've got to do it, Yellow-hair; you've GOT ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... should be trained. All these sons of the present, who have raised the banner of the 'self-understood,' are therefore straining every nerve to crush down these feelings of youth, to cripple them, to mislead them, or to stop their growth altogether; and the favourite means employed is to paralyse that natural philosophic impulse by the so-called "historical culture." A still recent system,[10] which has won for itself a world-wide scandalous reputation, has discovered the formula for this self-destruction of philosophy; and now, wherever ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... Hastings, every man taken would be at once hung. Sivajee did not appear put out about it. I do not think he expected any other answer, and imagine that his real object in writing was simply to let them know that I was a prisoner, and so enable him the better to paralyse the attack upon a position which he no doubt ...
— Tales of Daring and Danger • George Alfred Henty
... joy. He was going to cable from Southampton to the New York World, mail his account to America on the same day, paralyse London with his three columns of loosely knitted headlines, and generally efface the earth. 'You'll see how I work a big scoop when ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... renovation; but any such hope was doomed in advance, so long as the Caucasian concept of God was unchanged. When you cannot trust God you cannot trust anything; and when you cannot trust anything you get the condition of the world as it is to-day. And that you cannot trust a God whose "love" will paralyse the hand by which you have to earn a living, or snatch your baby from your breast—to say nothing of a thousand ingenious forms of torture inflicted just because "He sees that it is best for you," after having led you to see otherwise—that ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... II. believed that he could paralyse the movements of the Greeks by terrific cruelty. On Easter Sunday, April 22, the Patriarch Gregorios and three other bishops were executed in Constantinople—a deed which caused a thrill of horror from the Moslem capital to the mountains of Greece, and the palaces of St. Petersburg. The ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... all such fantasies," said Mr. Beckendorff; "they only tend to enervate our mental energies and paralyse all human exertion. It is the belief in these, and a thousand other deceits I could mention, which leach man that he is not the master of his own mind, but the ordained victim or the chance sport of circumstances, that makes millions pass through life ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... ugly rush from Sydney on the news of the coming annexation, and most of whom as promptly retreated on finding the proclamation to be a reality. But at the same time his treaty and his proclamation were bound to paralyse settlement, to exasperate the entire white population, and to plunge the infant colony into a sea of troubles. Outside the missionaries and the officials every one was uneasy and alarmed. All the settlers were either landowners, ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... "La Juive," "Gustave," and "Masaniello." He resigned his position precipitately upon the advent of Duprez. The younger singer afflicted the elder with a kind of panic. The news that Duprez was among his audience was sufficient to paralyse his powers, to extinguish his voice. He left France for Italy. His success was unquestionable, but he had lost confidence in himself; a deep dejection settled upon him, his apprehension of failure approached delirium. At last he persuaded himself that the applause he won from a Neapolitan audience ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... ovipositor of the female modified into a sting, which is often used for the purpose of providing food for the helpless grubs. Thus the digging wasps (Sphegidae and Pompilidae) hunt for caterpillars, spiders, and other creatures which they can paralyse with their stings, and bury them alongside their eggs to furnish a food-supply for the newly-hatched young. The social wasps and many ants sting and kill flies and other insects, which they break up so as to feed their grubs within the nest. It is well known that ...
— The Life-Story of Insects • Geo. H. Carpenter
... had not, however, seen the few files that formed the rearmost guard, and were therefore caught between two bodies of troops, and almost annihilated. This sudden reversal of the situation seemed to paralyse the tribesmen, and the rest of the gorge was safely passed. Though the natives followed up the rear guard to within two miles of the camp, they never made another determined attack. The force lost, in all, five officers wounded, and a hundred men killed ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... paralyse the action of the Second Bureau agent, old Vagualame, and I, the false Corporal Vinson, will be all the more ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... course of this operation General De Lisle, of the 2nd Cavalry Brigade, thought he saw a good opportunity to paralyse the further advance of the enemy's infantry by making a mounted attack on his flank. He formed up and advanced for this purpose, but was held up by wire about 500 yards from his objective, and the 9th Lancers and 18th Hussars suffered severely in ...
— Sir John French - An Authentic Biography • Cecil Chisholm
... further ten minutes. My head swam. My mental balance seemed to have become strangely upset by that highly pungent odour of lavender and verbena. I could even taste it upon my tongue, and somehow it seemed to paralyse all my senses save two, ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... doubtfully, some almost timorously, some with jubilation, one or two with real regret. Under their fingers grew the more amplified mandates which, following upon the bombshell of the already prepared telegrams, were within a few hours to paralyse industrial England, to keep her ships idle in the docks, her trains motionless upon the rails, her mines silent, her forges cold, her great factories empty. Even the least imaginative felt the thrill, the awe of the thing he was doing. On paper, ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... its commerce. Building is everywhere going forward; land has doubled and trebled in value; improvements are in steady progress; and, should the present prosperous course of things meet with no untoward check to paralyse the industry of the people, Albany will in a few years assume an importance more profitable to its citizens than the empty honour it derives from being styled ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... "the hidden hand," which is supposed to paralyse our military efforts, are divided in opinion as to whether this cryptic member is most actively employed by Lord HALDANE, Sir WILLIAM ROBERTSON or Sir EYRE CROWE, Assistant-Secretary to the Foreign Office. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 28, 1917 • Various
... keen, sceptical, critical, just, impartial, with a mind always open to conviction, but refusing to move until convinced. Such men are an invaluable element in the deliberative stages of every question; but their very critical powers paralyse action, and when movement becomes necessary their hesitations are a drawback. I fancy that Cornewall Lewis was just such another, but I did not ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... front rank firing as at a battue, each man independently. There were a few section volleys tried, the soldiers pausing for an instant to deliver their fire. Once or twice also, the rear rank was closed up, and joined in the fusilade. One effect was to paralyse the deer and birds within range. I noticed that the tip-filed bullets did not usually spread, and that their man-stopping quality was something of a myth. Even the dum-dum does not invariably "set up" on striking an object. For the Omdurman Campaign ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... he began. 'War, my dear sir, is indiscriminate. War spares not the child; it spares not the barrow of the harmless scavenger. No more,' he concluded, beaming, 'no more do I. Whatever may strike fear, whatever may confound or paralyse the activities of the guilty nation, barrow or child, imperial Parliament or excursion steamer, is welcome to my simple plans. You are not,' he inquired, with a shade of sympathetic interest, 'you are not, I trust, ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... The thing which could deal death in a breath was outside that bolted door. But Byrne believed neither in walls nor bolts now. Unreasoning terror turning everything to account, his old time boyish admiration of the athletic Tom, the undaunted Tom (he had seemed to him invincible), helped to paralyse his faculties, ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... overspread Zeppa's face. We have already said that his smile had fascination in it. The effect on the savage was to paralyse him for the moment. Zeppa advanced, took Ongoloo's face between both hands, and, placing his nose against that of the chief, ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... to form capitals, without being able to fix the limits to this ever-increasing facility of realising equality and well-being? Would it not be madness in them to admit such doctrines, and to act in a way which would drain the source of wages, and paralyse the activity and stimulus of saving? Let them learn this lesson, then; doubtless, capitals are good for those who possess them: who denies it? But they are also useful to those who have not yet been able to form them; and it is important ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat
... monster which roared at him now was different from the dingoes Tasman had known. With massive, bony skull held low, and saliva dripping from his short, powerful jaws, the old wolf sent forth his most terrible snarl of challenge and defiance; the cry which had been used in bygone years to paralyse his victims into a condition which made them easy prey for his tearing claws and lance-like tusks. But the horrible sound was powerless so far as Finn was concerned, and the Wolfhound gathered himself together now for ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... mortal representatives of their intangible foe. But the general feeling is despondent. The unfortunate landowners, house proprietors, and many of the merchants, complain bitterly that they are delivered into the hands of a "convict," whose ticket of leave enables him to paralyse ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... influence of the Royalist committee that he showed himself so indulgent to those of the emigrants whose monarchical prejudices he knew were incompatible with liberal opinions. By the presence of emigrants who acknowledged nothing short of absolute power, he thought he might paralyse the influence of the Royalists of the interior; he therefore granted all ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... opulence did not paralyse his pen. In 1839 he published a vehement attack upon the Ballot, from which he foresaw no better results than the enfranchisement of every one, including women, universal corruption, systematic lying, and a victory for the "lower order of voters" over their ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... hands, and that some man was not at its head who could have managed to have thrown upon Canadian soil, at Fort Erie and one or two other points, a force to act separately or in conjunction with sufficient effect to completely paralyse all opposition in Western Canada, among an already excited and incongruous host, who could have been easily swept before a compact handful of troops fired by a spirit so lofty and a resolve so unconquerable as that which actuated the brave little band of patriots ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... mountain to the bustling camp and the new leader. No man is indispensable. God's work goes on uninterrupted. The instruments are changed, but the Master-hand is the same, and lays one tool aside and takes another out of the tool-chest as He will. Moses is dead,—what then? Does his death paralyse the march of the tribes? No; it is but the ground for the ringing command, 'Therefore arise, go over this Jordan.' The immediate installation of his successor, and the uninterrupted continuance of the advance, do not mean that Moses is not honoured or is forgotten, for the narrative ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... lose no opportunity, even if his chance of doing good be but small. The sower of the seed has need of much patience; and though he need not actually be expecting and looking for disappointment, as that would paralyse his efforts for good, he must yet be prepared for it." [2] In this spirit of patience and perseverance Mary Whately carried on her work, and though her work was largely pioneering, she was not without encouragement. ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... best and wisest of us, there is such a tendency to believe in a mysterious link, connecting the living and the departed; that a story of this nature, in exciting our feelings, serves to paralyse our reasoning faculties, and leaves us half converts, to the doctrines that ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... fortune of those who are entitled to be rash. With all his audacity, which was nearly equal to his craft, he had no moral courage; and, if affairs went wrong, and, from some accident, exhaustion of the nervous system, the weather, or some of those slight causes which occasionally paralyse the creative mind, he felt without a combination, he would begin to cry like a child, and was capable of any action, however base and humiliating, to extricate himself from the ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... because White could play P-K6! and paralyse the whole of Black's game by preventing his ...
— Chess Strategy • Edward Lasker
... exposure for a few minutes to humid air, raised to 120o-122o Fahr., or 49o to 50o Cent. It deserves notice that the leaves of Drosera, after being immersed in water at 130o Fahr., are excited into movement by a solution of the carbonate so strong that it would paralyse ordinary ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin
... the palace, except when he had flared out at the King, he had moved and stood and sat in a solemn bewilderment. The effect of the changed atmosphere had been to paralyse his simple and sturdy faculties; and his face had grown unintelligent during the process. More than once Chris had been seized with internal laughter, in spite of the tragedy; the rustic squire was so strangely incongruous with the situation. But ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... brilliant letter writer, but often and often she would tear up what she had written and begin again. There was not much news in Bryngelly; it was difficult to make her letters amusing. Also the farcical nature of the whole proceeding seemed to paralyse her. It was ridiculous, having so much to say, to be able to say nothing. Not that Beatrice wished to indite love-letters—such an idea had never crossed her mind, but rather to write as they had talked. Yet when she tried to do so the results were not satisfactory to her, ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... its rage and pain kept twining about the pole, treating that as the cause of all its suffering. Morgan stood there full of excitement, but though longing to deliver a blow that should paralyse if it did not kill our enemy, I could not get the ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... To paralyse without killing, "to deliver the prey to the larvae inert but living": that is the end to be attained; only the method varies according to the species of the hunter and the structure of the prey; thus the Cerceris, which attacks the coleoptera, and the Scolia, which preys upon ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... say that because he has permitted this he must sanction that. Some of these remarks may seem to suggest that it is advisable the office should be retained, which is not the case. We pay too high a price for it since it tends to paralyse the drama; on the other hand it is to be hoped that so long as the office exists the holders of it will be very careful concerning any efforts to exploit the Scriptures for the ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... ministers regard the mitre as merely a sort of donative for their own private tutors, or the chaplains of their noble friends, or as provision for a relative, dependent, or the brother of a Treasury clerk, they not merely degrade the office, but they paralyse the church. Of the living prelacy we do not speak: but it is impossible to look upon the list of archbishops and bishops (a few excepted) during the last century, without surprise that the inferior clergy have done so much, rather than that they have done so little. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... our new silk suits to give New York a treat on a hot August day. Not that we or any one else ever wears silk suits in any Wichita or Emporia; silk suits are bought by Wichita people and Emporians all over the earth to paralyse the natives of the ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... her long white night-robe, over which fell the thick waves of her light hair. The horror which had seized him yielded to the most ardent yearning. Pressing his hand upon his throbbing heart, he watched her every movement. He longed to go forward to meet her, yet a supernatural spell seemed to paralyse his energy. He would sooner have dared clasp in his arms the image of a beautiful Madonna than this embodiment of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... counter-revolutionary forces, such as the Black Hundreds, which will inevitably bring about the impossibility of convoking the Constituent, will cause a military catastrophe, the death of the Revolution, paralyse the economic life of ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... 23d July the afflicted husband makes this entry:—"It pleased God to visit me with the deep and terrible affliction of taking away my friend, companion, and adviser of twenty-nine years." It was a heavy blow, and for a time it seemed to paralyse the Dean. This journal, never regular, becomes from this ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... that pregnant word the great truth that if once a man gets it into his head that God's principal relation to him is to demand, and to command, you will get no work out of that man; that such a notion will paralyse all activity and cut the nerve of all service. And the converse is as true, namely, that the one thought about God, which is fruitful of all blessing, joy, spontaneous, glad activity, is the thought of Him as giving, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... streets were still few and were laid out mainly as avenues for processions and as ample spaces for great facades.[4] Private houses were still of small account. The notion that the City was the State, helpful and progressive as it was, did something also to paralyse in certain ways ...
— Ancient Town-Planning • F. Haverfield
... Mr Macdougall anywhere at first, so I feared that the force with which the boom sheet had come against his chest might have so injured him as to paralyse his movements when he fell overboard; but, presently, when I rose on the crest of another huge rolling billow that took me up a little higher aloft, I saw him struggling in one of the watery valleys between the ridges of the waves ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... on that!" he screamed; and I let him take a full glass of spirits, for I wanted to secure the Derringer. The drink appeared to paralyse him, and I slipped down to the landlord's room. The worthy man took things very coolly; none of his trade ever like to see a man drunk, but they become hardened to it in time, and talk about delirium tremens as if it were ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... was completely invested. The pioneers and working-parties were actively at work, and soon turned Tippoo's wonderful garden into a scene of desolation. The sultan saw that his situation was becoming desperate, and made an attempt to negotiate, but at the same time thought to paralyse the efforts of the English and end the war, by procuring the assassination of their chief. A number of horsemen, drugged and maddened by bhang, vowed to bring to the sultan the head of his foe, and lay it at his ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... what remedy? That Himself should pay the penalty, and effect a full redemption. How? By becoming a creature, and so lifting up the race to Himself through so generous a condescension. I show that it was antecedently probable that the Divinity should come in humble form, not to paralyse our reason by outward glories,—that He might even die as a seeming malefactor; this was the guess of Socrates: and that for the trial of our faith there are likely to be permitted all manner of difficulties and mysteries for us to gain personal strength by combating and living ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... illustrated from various sources. Pickle was not only able to keep the Duke of Newcastle and George II. well informed as to the inmost plots, if not the most hidden movements of Prince Charles, but he could either paralyse a serious, or promote a premature, rising in the Highlands, as seemed best to his English employers. We shall find Pickle, in company with that devoted Jacobite, Lochgarry, travelling through the Highlands, exciting hopes, consulting the chiefs, unburying a hidden treasure, and encouraging ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... last given way, to find that the hour or two had not done it, for the night had passed; it would soon be broad day, with the elephants being driven to water and a sentry resuming his post; and a chill was beginning to paralyse him, while hope grew more and more dull for the searcher for ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... a standstill? To keep his place is the duty of a good citizen. Learn to sacrifice your secret preferences. Appointments must be filled, and some one must necessarily sacrifice himself. To be faithful to public functions is true fidelity. The retirement of public officials would paralyse the state. What! banish yourself!—how weak! As an example?—what vanity! As a defiance?—what audacity! What do you set yourself up to be, I wonder? Learn that we are just as good as you. If we chose we too could be intractable and untameable and do worse things than you; but we ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... beauty.... I am myself growing better, and shall by and by be a worthy object of love, one that will not anywhere disappoint or need forbearance.... I have no child, and the woman in me has so craved this experience that it has seemed the want of it must paralyse me...." ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... the body, not only of man but of brutes, is a blow on the nose. Many animals, such as the seal and others, are killed by it immediately, and there is no doubt but a severe blow on that tender part will paralyse almost any beast for the time and give him a dread for the future. I believe that repeated blows upon the nose will go farther than any other means to break the courage of any beast, and I imagine that these are resorted to: but it is only my opinion, recollect, and it must be taken for ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... of millions of men, well accoutred and armed and provisioned, to come over to help us. If America placed all her mighty weight on the side of England at this moment, it would paralyse the German Army. If America said, as we are saying, that this war should never cease until Germany was powerless ever to make war again, you would do more for peace than if all the talkers in America were to go round preaching peace. That is why, Quaker as I am, I am a soldier, and will remain ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... perhaps at the same time helped to some degree—with other far deeper and stronger forces—to produce that sceptical and centrifugal state of mind, which now tends to nullify organised liberalism and paralyse the spirit of improvement. The Benthamites, led first by James Mill, and afterwards in a secondary degree by John Mill, had pushed a number of political improvements in the radical and democratic direction during the time when the ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... to paralyse the Allied offensive by striking with all our naval weight at his cross-channel communications. The U-boat war is too slow, and time is not on our side, whilst a hammer blow down the Channel might do great ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... without dispute. And then? We will accept the Scolia as the pioneer, the foundress of the first principles of the art. The simplicity of her method justifies our supposition. She learns her trade in some way or other, by accident; she knows supremely well how to paralyse her Cetonia-grub with a single dagger-thrust driven into the thorax. One day, through some fortuitous circumstance, or rather by mistake, she takes it into her head to strike two blows. As one is enough for the Cetonia, the repetition was of ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... attained four times to ecstatic union with "the One." Plotinus combined, in unusual measure, the intellect of the metaphysician with the temperament of the great psychic, so that he was able to analyse with the most precise dialectic, experiences which in most cases paralyse the tongue and blind the discursive reason. His sixth Ennead, "On the Good or the One," is one of the great philosophic treatises of the world, and it sums up in matchless words the whole mystic position and experience. There are two statements in it which contain ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon
... that it does not appear to us as it really is, but with all its accompaniment of historic memories. The special characteristic of prestige is to prevent us seeing things as they are and to entirely paralyse our judgment. Crowds always, and individuals as a rule, stand in need of ready-made opinions on all subjects. The popularity of these opinions is independent of the measure of truth or error they contain, and is ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... something to remove this disgrace. As Mr. Parker truly observes, the essence of de Gourmont's genius is to be found in an insatiable curiosity which the absolute closing of any vista of knowledge by the final and authoritative discovery of truth would paralyse and petrify. He does not, as Mr. Parker justly says, seek for truth with any hope or even any particular wish, to find it. Truth found would be truth spoiled. He seeks it from sheer love of the pursuit. In this respect he is precisely of the stuff out of which ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... allusions in Justin where the various incidents in the history of the incarnate Logos are conceived as a series of arrangements meant to form part of the history of salvation, to paralyse mankind's sinful history, and to regenerate humanity. He is thus a forerunner of Irenaeus ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... asserts that Christians are to invoke the saints solely and exclusively for their prayers, and not for any benefits as from the saints themselves. But then he seems to paralyse that declaration by this refinement: "It must nevertheless be observed that we have not to do with words, but with the meaning of words; for as far as concerns the words, it is lawful to say, 'Saint Peter, have mercy on me! Save me! Open to me the entrance of heaven!' So also, 'Give ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... on, "and after that—after my father had asked me to have a glass of whiskey with him—after I had refused and he had gone to bed and I was putting the spirit-case away without any idea of drinking again, one smell of the whiskey seemed to paralyse my whole mental force. It turned me from a sane man who had had a solemn warning into a madman who had only one feeling—the craving for alcohol in some shape. I smelt again, and the smell of it went like fire through my veins. I tasted it, and then I drank. ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... difficulties the sacred writer places that natural foreboding, physical shrinking and hesitation which paralyse men when, after lives spent in sin and selfish indulgence, they desire to make their peace with God; for, says he, 'They shall be afraid of that which is high, and fears shall be in the way'. The imaginary obstacles which arise in people's minds, seeming to make holy living ...
— Standards of Life and Service • T. H. Howard
... one complete microcosm of interchange, of give-and-take, diastole-systole, of rhythm and harmony; and therefore all such things as give him impressions of the reverse thereof, go against him, and in a greater or lesser degree, threaten, disturb, paralyse, in a way poison or maim him. Hence he is for ever seeking such congruity, such harmony; and his artistic creativeness is conditioned by the desire for it, nay, is perhaps mainly seeking to obtain it. Whenever he spontaneously ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... can't hold a pair of trousers in her lap. Moreover, she can't sew with anything smaller than a crochet needle. Look at me! I am growing a beard so that people can't see my Adam's apple. That's how poor and thin I'm getting to be. Now just listen a minute; I'll give you a few figures that will paralyse you." ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... of both Jem and Paddy seemed to paralyse the little man with fear, and he lay on the boards glaring up at them with terror ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane |
