"Powerless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... extract with decided benefit. So soon as the administration of the remedy was stopped the loss of weight ceased, but with the renewal of the remedy the loss of weight again ensued to a certain point, beyond which the extract seemed powerless to act. Ewald also reports good results from this ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... she was thus ardently defending herself she knew well that she had sinned against the supreme social law—the law of "the look of things." It was true that chance had worked against her. But common sense would have rendered chance powerless by giving it no opportunity to be malevolent. She was furious with Rachel Fleckring. That Rachel Fleckring, of all mortal girls, should have exposed herself to so dreadful, so unforgettable a humiliation was mortifying in the very highest degree. ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... behavior had cast a shadow upon the party which even Mollie's empty light-hearted chatter was powerless to dispel, and when, shortly after midnight, Sir Lucien drove Rita home to Prince's Gate, they were very silent throughout the journey. Just before the car ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... found I had taken the whole Boer force in flank, and had entirely cut them off from their line of retreat. My guns played on the masses of horsemen, but my few cavalry, dead beat, were {p.151} powerless, and for the second time I longed for a cavalry brigade and horse artillery battery to let me reap the fruits of a hard-fought action." "The loss in both these actions," Methuen says, "was great, and convinces me that if an enemy ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... thinking there is,' admitted the other very solemnly. 'I was so sorry for her, and felt so powerless. She cried a little. All I could do was to entreat her not to behave rashly. I thought her ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... to most beneficient results. For many generations the great scourge of Europe was the smallpox. Often the disease was as violent as the plague (S474), and carried off nearly as many victims. Medical art, seemed powerless to deal with it, and even in years of ordinary health in England about one person out of ten died of this loathsome pestilence. In the early part of George I's reign, Lady Mary Montagu, then traveling to Turkey, wrote that the Turks were in ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... Pretence and grimace and sordid beggary for votes will some day cease to avail. Have FAITH, and struggle on, against all evil influences and discouragements! FAITH is the Saviour and Redeemer of nations. When Christianity had grown weak, profitless, and powerless, the Arab Restorer and Iconoclast came, like a cleansing hurricane. When the battle of Damascus was about to be fought, the Christian bishop, at the early dawn, in his robes, at the head of his clergy, with the Cross once so triumphant raised in the air, came down to the gates of the city, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... reconcile the degree of punishment inflicted upon the soldiers, the poorly paid defenders of the Empire, with their casual offences. While he rebelled against the brutalities of some officers, he was powerless to prevent them. The sentencing powers conferred by court-martial were at that time beyond belief. A captain and two subalterns could order 999 lashes with a "cat" steeped in brine. It is on record that ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... science? What was the intellectual generation that sprang from each of them? I only repeat what the men of science have themselves pointed out. The man of genius was continued by the English analysts of the eighteenth century, comparatively powerless and obscure followers of the renowned master. The man of intelligence was continued by successors like Bernoulli, Euler, Lagrange, and Laplace, the greatest ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... passage that, in all relations of life, Christ regards the kingdom of God as the more powerful, victorious, finally overcoming all opposition, and the kingdom of darkness as powerless, falling in ruins ever more and more. Yet, how do most of you have so little confidence in your faith, and wrap it carefully in the cotton of isolation, lest it take cold from any draught of the world; while others are vexed with you, and proclaim that ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... the fiery chariots that girdled the prophet. Men are blind to the starry truths that shine as silver in the firmament. They are deaf to the Voice which is gone out to the ends of the earth, and yet they have eyes and ears, conscience, intuitions. They possess organs, but these are powerless. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... coward and never shirked duty yet; but frankly I don't much like facing him for this reason. A madman's a madman, and we can't expect a madman to be any too reasonable if we oppose him, however tactfully. I should be powerless if he got off his head, or resented the advice I should have to give him, or went for me—powerless, I mean, to do anything but stop him with a bullet. But if he's got to be stopped that way, I don't want to be the ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... purposes. It would exclude almost the whole of war from Alexander's time to Napoleon's. And what guarantee was there that the next war would confirm to the Napoleonic type and accommodate itself to the abstract theory? "This theory," he says, "is still quite powerless against the force of circumstances." And so it proved, for the wars of the middle nineteenth century did in fact revert to ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... "When he comes back, I will ask him what can be done. It will not be easy to hide you, for these negroes chatter like so many parrots; and the news will spread all over the town that some English boys are here, and in that case they will take you away, and my father would be powerless ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... father's property. So we see how little convincing force the stock notion on which the Real Estate Intestacy Bill was based,—the notion that in the nature and fitness of things all a man's children have a right to an equal share in the enjoyment of what he leaves,—really has; and how powerless, therefore, it must of necessity be to persuade and win any one who has habits and interests which disincline him to [216] it. On the other hand, the practical operation proposed relies entirely, if it is to be effectual in altering the present ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... claim for it a special application in dislocations. It has certainly peculiar merits here, as the will is so nearly subjugated by it as to render the patient quite powerless to resist your effort at replacing, and at the same time ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... numbered but one in six of their assailants, yet they are repulsed with a loss of sixty dead, while the Vaudois only lost three. Other attacks were equally unsuccessful, and so La Trinite persuades the Angrognians to a truce by which they are powerless to resist, although he still continues his own plans of devastation, plunder, and confiscation. Those cruelties drive the people of La Torre to caves and rocks, although it is winter. An instance of cruelty may be narrated in the case of a man aged a hundred and three, who was found by the ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold
... instruments, the cost of which had in the long run to come out of the estate. The result was that undesirable persons were too frequently appointed, whose main object was to extract from the estate as much as possible in the shape of costs of administration. The debtor was practically powerless to prevent this result. If he attempted to do so he sometimes became a target for the exercise of revenge. His discharge, which under liquidation by arrangement was entirely a matter for the creditors, might be refused indefinitely; and so largely ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... American was the real danger. That pale ghost conjured from the grave by Stampa was intangible, powerless, a dreamlike wraith evoked by a madman's fancy. Already the fear engendered myopia of the morning was passing from Bower's eyes. The passage of arms with Millicent had done him good. He saw now that if he meant to win Helen ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... bored its way through the skull of the wolf, who, with a rasping yelp, made a sidelong plunge, as if diving off a bank into the water, and, striking on the side of his head, rolled over on his back, with his legs vaguely kicking at the moon, and as powerless to do harm as a ...
— Cowmen and Rustlers • Edward S. Ellis
... Piero's life. The plot failed, chiefly owing to the coolness and the cunning of the young Lorenzo, Piero's eldest son. Public sympathy was strongly excited against the aggressors. Neroni, Acciaiuoli, and Soderini were exiled. Pitti was allowed to stay, dishonoured, powerless, and penniless, in Florence. Meanwhile, the failure of their foes had only served to strengthen the position of the Medici. The ladder had saved them the trouble of kicking ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... insulated buildings, which seemed to be store-houses, we passed these quickly in single file, pretty wide apart. The interstices were from thirty to fifty yards. In these intervals, we received a tremendous fire of musketry from the ramparts above us. Here we lost some brave men, when powerless to return the salutes we received, as the enemy was covered by his impregnable defences. They were even sightless to us, we could see nothing but the blaze from the ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... thought the quiet boy could be made the subject of practical jokes and petty annoyances without much danger of retaliation. Graham would usually remain patient up to a certain point, and then, in dismay and astonishment, the offender would suddenly find himself receiving a punishment which he seemed powerless to resist. Blows would fall like hail, or if the combatants closed in the struggle, the aggressor appeared to find in Graham's slight form sinew and fury only. It seemed as if the lad's spirit broke forth ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... as if they were powerless to move, the girl entered the warm and cheerful room, but at her entrance understanding seemed to give her strength. With a shuddering, shivering, indrawing breath she drew back ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... the absence of research in this direction, and how man, endowed to overcome every physical disability which encompassed him on land, was powerless to live on the wide ocean, although it is ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... said: "It was no caprice of the fortunes of war. From the very first cannon-shot our fragile ships were at the mercy of the formidable hostile squadron. They were condemned to fall one after another under the fire of the American batteries, powerless to strike, and were defended only by the valour in the breasts ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... on hearing the young man's voice was almost superhuman. It was something like a mingled cheer and cry of agony. In another moment he sprang forward, and seizing Henry in his arms, pressed him to his breast with a grasp that rendered the youth utterly powerless. ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... beloved Anthony!" said Juliet, sinking on her knees beside him, and clasping his fettered hands within her own. "I have loved you long and tenderly. I shall see you no more on earth. If my life could ransom yours, I would give it without a sigh; but will is powerless; our hands are tied; we are indeed the creatures of circumstance. All that now remains for us is to submit—to bow with fortitude to the mysterious ways of Providence. To acknowledge, even in our hearts' deep agony, that whatever is, ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... Spaniards began to feel very uneasy. An army composed of thousands of Indians was encamped only two miles away; and compared with it, the two hundred men of Pizarro appeared powerless. The situation of the Spaniards, should the Inca decide to oppose ...
— Discoverers and Explorers • Edward R. Shaw
... heed their presence, And you will not shrink before them, 280 Rise thou up, O Water-Mother, Raise thy blue cap from the billows, And thy soft robe from the waters, From the ooze thy form of beauty, For a powerless hero's rescue, For a weakly man's protection, Lest I should be eaten guiltless, ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... temptation thou wilt trample under foot. 'Thou shalt not be afraid for the pestilence that walketh in darkness, nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday.' Hidden known temptations will be equally powerless; and in the fold into which all pass by faith in Christ thou shalt be safe. And so, kept safe from each danger and in each moment of temptation, the aggregate and sum of the several deliverances will amount to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... for two days. The vanity for which she did penance whenever her madonna loveliness, consummated by the white robe and veil of her novitiate, tempted her to one of the little mirrors in the pupil's dormitory, was powerless to check the blighting flow. There had been moments when she had argued that her vanity had its rights, for had it not played its part in weaning her from the world?—that wicked world of San Francisco, whose very breath, accompanying her family on their ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... right to be represented in Congress at any and all times, and to participate in the government of the country under all circumstances, admits of neither question nor dispute. If this is indeed true, then is the Government of the United States powerless for its own protection, and flagrant rebellion, carried to the extreme of civil war, is a pastime which any State may play at, not only certain that it can lose nothing, in any event, but may be the gainer by defeat. If rebellion succeeds, it accomplishes its purpose and destroys the ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... seized with another fit, lost his speech, and, after struggles the most melancholy for Helen to see, conscious as she was that she could do nothing for him—he expired—his eyes fixed on her face, and his powerless ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... the whole corps, some fifteen thousand men. It seemed as though the whole army was being stampeded. We soon had a vast throng of these fugitives dammed up in our front, a terrible menace to the integrity of our own line as well as of all in our rear. We were powerless to do anything should the enemy break through, and were in great danger of being ourselves swept away and disintegrated by this frantic mob. All this time the air was filled with shrieking shells ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... child are both dead," said the old physician, with tears in his eyes. "Both dead. It was a boy. Science was powerless; nature was hostile and the ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... nations against three. When Roumania and Italy join the Allies, as is now being diplomatically arranged, Germany will be completely surrounded, with Switzerland, Holland, and Denmark in a measure locked in and powerless to give aid or assistance to the Germans. Indeed, these three smaller countries and Scandinavia are practically locked in now, with the North Sea placed in the war zone, and Italy as well as Denmark and Holland shutting out all contraband goods for ...
— The Audacious War • Clarence W. Barron
... "Very well, Tyn-Dall, but I warn you, do not enter the Grove. There is death there, death that even I am powerless to prevent. The Guardians will not harm her, but any stranger ... will not live ...
— Grove of the Unborn • Lyn Venable
... surrender. He was not afraid to risk being killed in a running fight. He was willing to take that chance. But the thought of imprisonment appalled him. To be shut from the sun and the space of the range—perhaps for life—or to be sentenced to be hanged, powerless to make any kind of a fight, without friends or money . . . He thought of The Spider, of Boca, of Montoya, and of Pop Annersley; of Andy White and Bailey. He wondered if Ed Brevoort had got clear of El Paso. He knew that there ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... and the paddles slapped the water furiously for a time, but without producing any effect. The steamer had taken the ground harder than I supposed. She had run her bow upon the gradual slope of the bottom till the wheels were powerless to move her. ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic
... Millar felt herself powerless. She dared no more interfere to keep back Annie from her calling than a good Roman Catholic mother would forbid her ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... comforting shouts greeted them. The woods were silent, save for the calls of birds and animals, which, friendly though they might be, were powerless to aid the two girls against this traditional enemy of every furred and ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at Long Lake - Bessie King in Summer Camp • Jane L. Stewart
... of the Protestant faith against Popery. Very many others were in the same case. Mr Battiscombe did not venture to plead for his sons, for he might himself have been seized and condemned by the unjust Judge, while he was utterly powerless to assist them openly. The health of the Colonel did not allow him to leave home, or, interested as he was in the fate of his young friends, he would have gone to try and help them. Mr Willoughby, however, who was dauntless in a good ...
— Roger Willoughby - A Story of the Times of Benbow • William H. G. Kingston
... his wife and one confidential friend. He rarely took much; never so much as to be brutal at home, or unfit for business at the office; but enough to prove to him that he was not his own master. The shame of his bondage he felt keenly, powerless as he felt himself to break the chains. The week after I left home his wife left also for a visit to her father's. She took the children, one a young babe three months old, with her. Mr. P. was to follow her in a fortnight. She never saw him again. One night he went to his ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... vanity is wounded, the confidence which the country will feel in the enormous superiority of its army will be favorable to an explosion of national anger, in the face of which the moderation of the Imperial Government will perhaps be powerless. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... she had been so carefully hedged in by the numberless small barriers of a girl's sphere, so guided and managed for by those about her, that it had been hardly possible for any sore temptation to come near her. But now suddenly cut adrift from her quiet moorings, she found herself powerless to keep out of the rapid current which must plunge her into deep misery and vice. There had not been a doubt in her mind that she was not a real Christian, for she had freely given a sentimental faith to the Christian dogmas propounded to her by persons whom she held to be wiser and better ...
— Brought Home • Hesba Stretton
... Ferrara; and to keep down the Pope they made use of the barons of Rome, who, being divided into two factions, Orsini and Colonnesi, had always a pretext for disorder, and, standing with arms in their hands under the eyes of the Pontiff, kept the pontificate weak and powerless. And although there might arise sometimes a courageous pope, such as Sixtus, yet neither fortune nor wisdom could rid him of these annoyances. And the short life of a pope is also a cause of weakness; for in the ten years, which is the average ...
— The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... thing more, my Leuchtmar. You must accept a memento of this hour, a memento which I prepared even before my departure from The Hague, and which shall be to you a proof of my gratitude. I am poor and powerless, and as I build all my hopes upon the future, so must I do with my presents as well. You must accept from me a gift of my future, friend. I know full well that what you have done for me can not be recompensed, but I would so gladly ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... in the bitter frost. The wolves meanwhile trot about to keep warm; while the stupid cat sits in one spot slowly perishing, and never thinks of running up and down the tree to keep himself alive. The feet grow benumbed at last, powerless to hold on any longer, and the lynx tumbles off into the wolves' jaws; or else, knowing the danger, he leaps for the nearest ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... of excitement. A steady fire of questions and answers passed between the younger and older brother. The wolf was in hand, the horns of a hundred angry cows held the enemy prisoner, and yet the boys were powerless to make the ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... All that they knew of Jesus was that He was the one 'whom Paul preached.' Even the name of Jesus is spoiled and is powerless on the lips of one who repeats it, parrot-like, because he has seen its power when it came flame-like from the fiery lips of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... a body tireless and powerful enough to remain thirty consecutive hours on horseback. It was a body so powerful that criminal neglect and stupid ignorance of the laws of health were powerless ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... Dan stood powerless. But for the gate behind him he would have turned and ran; to scramble back over that, his limbs utterly refused. The delay caused him, in spite of his fear, to discern the very obvious fact, that the shadowy figure ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... morning, Laura," she began, after a few moments, "recalled my own early years so vividly, that I could not keep down emotions I had deemed long since powerless. The cause of those emotions it is now, I clearly see, my duty to reveal—that is, to you. For years I have carefully avoided permitting my mind to go back to the past, in vain musings over scenes that bring no pleasant thoughts, no glad feelings. I have, ...
— Home Scenes, and Home Influence - A Series of Tales and Sketches • T. S. Arthur
... expansion of their State. There is, however, one very material fact to be remembered in judging the policy of Lord Derby. At the time of the convention of 1884 the English population in the Transvaal was a small, scattered, and powerless minority, and as their numbers were far too scanty to make them a danger to the State, there was not much reason to believe that the Transvaal authorities would repudiate their own assurances and subject them to oppressive disabilities. It was not until two years after ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... will of the gods, he brought low the glory of the powerless Swedes, doing their king to death and crushing him with the ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... the trouble that had sprung up in her eyes. Her laugh, her gay conversation, her rare composure and gentle hauteur were powerless to drive away the haunted, worried gleam in those expressive eyes of blue. Lorry had it on his tongue's end a dozen times during the next day or so after the count's narrative to question her about the condition of affairs as ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... river. In a few moments the men would be coming home, crossing the ice, perhaps to their death instead of to the warm supper awaiting them at their shanty homes. The thought of it all gripped Jacky's young heart with fear, but he was powerless to warn them. He could not take a single step, and he was rapidly becoming paralyzed with cold and pain. Once more the soft nose of the old horse touched his ear. With the nearness of the warm, friendly ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... he "had smote the balls of his own eyes," and the wise baffler of the sphinx, Oedipus, the haughty, the insolent, the illustrious, is a forlorn and despairing outcast. But amid all the horror of the concluding scene, a beautiful and softening light breaks forth. Blind, powerless, excommunicated, Creon, whom Oedipus accused of murder, has now become his judge and his master. The great spirit, crushed beneath its intolerable woes, is humbled to the dust; and the "wisest of mankind" implores but two favours—to be thrust from the land an exile, and once ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... plenitude and complexity of the facts of real life. In its purism, in its disdain of terms suited to the occasion, in its avoidance of lively sallies, in the extreme regularity of its developments, the classic style is powerless to fully portray or to record the infinite and varied details of experience. It rejects any description of the outward appearance of reality, the immediate impressions of the eyewitness, the heights and depths of passion, the physiognomy, at once so composite yet absolute personal, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... opinion the South will never consider this a satisfactory adjustment. You say we are protected by the principles of the common law. Who can tell what this will amount to? Assuming the territorial government to be favorable, it could do nothing. You leave it powerless. Suppose a citizen of Virginia emigrates to the territory south of the line with his property. He would have no earthly right except under the laws of Virginia. The power to enforce those laws is a thousand miles away. If we are to make a partition, let it ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... 12 midnight she was labouring much in her breath, coughed a very little cough, and all at once the rapidity of her breath nearly doubled, suddenly her hand fell over powerless, her eyes became fixed, there was some difficult breathing, and with Mrs. Henderson on the one side of the bed, which had been moved when we came from the hills ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... come off unhurt. One of them, named Chiku, acknowledging that he had been terribly frightened, said. "His fear was not the kind which makes a man jump overboard and run away; but that which brings the heart up to the mouth, and renders the man powerless, and no more able to fight ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... catastrophe. They push nearer and nearer to the brink of the abyss. The warning cry of "back" is challenged by the eager shout of "forward!" The older methods of social progress are abandoned as too slow. The older weapons of social defense are thrown aside as too blunt. Parliamentary discussion is powerless. It limps in the wake of the popular movement. The "state", as we knew it, threatens to dissolve into labor unions, conventions, boards of conciliation, and conferences. Society shaken to its base, hurls itself into the industrial suicide of the general strike, refusing ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... That is the gravamen of the charge against you! You who make then weep, make then tremble, puff them with spiritual conceit, or depress them with terrors of damnation just as you please, how comes it that you are powerless all at once in deterring them from wild and bad actions—you, who are all-powerful in inciting them to any thing, since to refrain from violence is easier than to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... him, for the fellow offered barely a show of opposition. His astounded faculties had no more than recognised the call for resistance when he was powerless in Lanyard's hands. Swung bodily away from the wheel, he went over the rail to the forward deck like a bag of sugar. Immediately Lanyard ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... end, however, came to the appalling tragedy which was taking place before their very eyes; for while they still watched, powerless to save, a terrific explosion occurred, followed by a rain of blazing pieces of timber and, gruesome sight! of portions of human bodies which had been whirled aloft, and now came hurtling down on the decks of the flag-ship. The fire had reached ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... person held to service or labor in one State under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall in consequence of any law or regulation therein be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due," is powerless without specific legislation to enforce it. Now, on what ground would a member of Congress, who is opposed to slavery in the abstract, vote for a Fugitive law, as I would deem it my duty to do? Because ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... approached she grew nervous. Unlike Zora, she had not inherited her father's fearlessness and joy of battle. The touch of adventurous spirit which she had received from him had been her undoing, as it had led her into temptation which the gentle, weak character derived from her mother had been powerless to resist. All her life she had been afraid of Zora, subdued by her splendid vitality, humbled before her more generous accomplishment. And now she was to fight for her honor and her child's and at the same time for the tender chivalry ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... head slowly, with an arrogant smile. It then occurred to George that this man differed strangely from all other men—because the sinister spell of the war had been powerless over him alone. All other men bore the war in their faces and in their gestures, but this man ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... to carry upstairs. Poor Gouache was hardly recognisable for the smart soldier who had crossed the bridge of Sant' Angelo half an hour earlier. His uniform was all stained with mud, there was blood upon his pale face, and his limbs hung down, powerless and limp. But as the young girl looked at him, consciousness returned, and with it came the sense of acute suffering. He opened his eyes suddenly, as men often do when they revive after being stunned, and a short groan ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... five hundred sailors and marines cleaning their rifles and marking out distances in the capital of a so-called friendly Power; with our pro forma despatches still being despatched while our real messages are frightened; attempting to weather a storm which the Chinese Government is powerless to arrest. The very passers-by are becoming sheep-eyed and are looking ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... or another, when a man begins to ask, "What is the use of it? Why were we born? What good do we do here? Why should we—as the majority of mankind doubtless are—mere animals be laden up with sorrows till at last our poor backs break? Is God powerful or powerless? If powerful, why did He not let us sleep in peace, without setting us here to taste of every pain and mortification, to become acquainted with every grief, and then to perish miserably?" Old questions these, ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... me that it deprived my eyes of sight, and my tongue of speech. I had no power to utter a cry, nor, I think, did he give me time to utter one, as he immediately approached me, and taking me in his arms (for, overwhelmed as I was, I was powerless, I say, to help myself), he began to make such professions to me that I know not how falsehood could have had the power of dressing them up to seem so like truth; and the traitor contrived that his tears should vouch for his words, and his sighs for ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... like manner we trace the steps of the misguided and infatuated Richard, treacherous at once and betrayed, from the hour when the news of Bolinbroke's hostile and successful measures reached him in (p. 059) Dublin to the day when he fell powerless into the hands of his enemy, we shall find much to reprehend; much to pity; little, perhaps nothing, which can excite the faintest shadow of respect. When the Earl of Salisbury left Ireland, Richard solemnly promised him that he would ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... maintain her ascendancy for centuries under the emperors, notwithstanding all her astonishing profligacy and anarchy. And, lastly, after her secular ascendancy had been destroyed by the inroads of the northern barbarians, she rose like the phoenix from her ashes, and, though powerless in material force, held mankind in subjection by the chains of the mind, and the consummateness of her policy. Never was any thing so admirably contrived as the Catholic religion, to subdue the souls of men by the power of its worship over the ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... had acted on the first three days of his ocean passage from New York. At the same time all the other functions of his body began to operate. A group of Frenchmen passing by burst into hilarious laughter; it was ridiculous and humiliating, but Jimmie was powerless to help it—he wasn't cut out for a soldier, he hadn't agreed to be a soldier, they had had no business sending him up here where vast craters of shell-holes were opening in the ground, and whole trees were being lifted out of the ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... from her care, deprive her of their society, and even of the comfort of occasionally seeing them; and he may place them under the tutelage of the ignorant and vicious; while the deeply wronged mother is powerless, according to law, to help either herself or ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... then, being able to excuse yourself—how? By Divine law again (as you understand it). Divine law says that whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed—that is to say, by you: so you can run under cover and hang Tom Smith. But when Divine law does not protect you, you are powerless. At the most you can send him off to take his ten-to-one chance in a battalion, and when you read his name in the returns, come mincing up to God and say: 'So poor old Tom's gone! How the deuce ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... you say that you will return," replied the sheriff tentatively. The sheriff meant what he said and for the moment had forgotten that he was powerless and was not the ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... Confucius the Chou dynasty still filled the throne. But it had long since become effete, and all power had passed into the hands of the great vassals. The condition of China was much like that of Germany in the worst days of the Holy Roman Empire. The emperor was powerless, the various vassal states were independent in all but name, and often at war one with the other. These states again were disintegrated, and their rulers impotent against encroaching feudatories. In Confucius' native state, Lu, ...
— The Sayings Of Confucius • Confucius
... cheering. We had no complaint as to business patronage in the State of California, but there was ever present that spectre of oath denial and disfranchisement; the disheartening consciousness that while our existence was tolerated, we were powerless to appeal to law for the protection of life or property when assailed. British Columbia offered and gave protection to both, and equality of political privileges. I cannot describe with what joy we hailed the ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... before they were well awake. Men, women, and children fell victims to such ingenuity of cruelty as only savage vengeance could conceive. Children were dashed to pieces before their parents' eyes; aged parents tomahawked before struggling sons and daughters; fathers held powerless that they might witness the tortures wreaked on wives and daughters. Homes which had heard some alarm and were on guard were set on fire, and those who perished in the flames {167} died a merciful death compared to those who fell in the hands of the ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... horror, looked on despairingly at this dreadful occurrence, which he was quite powerless to prevent, and to make matters worse his sight failed him, everything became dark, and he felt himself carried along through the air by ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... painting, by a pack of cards, in the presence of stakes for the roasting of smugglers and of the cauldron for the boiling of counterfeiters. The diverse forms assumed by thought in the realm of slang, even song, even raillery, even menace, all partook of this powerless and dejected character. All the songs, the melodies of some of which have been collected, were humble and lamentable to the point of evoking tears. The pegre is always the poor pegre, and he is always the hare in hiding, the fugitive mouse, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... complexion, very manly and well bearded like his defunct sire. Notwithstanding his great vigour, in ninety days he had little by little withered, ruined by his commerce with the succubus of the Rue Chaude, according to the statement of the common people; and her maternal authority over the son had been powerless. Finally in his latter days he appeared like a poor dried up worm, such as housekeepers meet with in a corner when they clean out the dwelling-rooms. And always, so long as he had the strength to go, he went ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... Punjab are utterly powerless and worthless. The great body of the nation is adverse to all control, and in no degree submissive to the authority of those who are ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... filmy line was sped, For powerless or untrue Each aim appeared, and back recoiled The patient insect, six times foiled, And yet unconquered still; And soon the Bruce, with eager eye, Saw him prepare once more to try His courage, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... woman! Ha, does she not give herself the appearance of not remarking that I constantly have for her a clouded brow and an unfriendly greeting? How! will she not take the pains to see that her empress looks upon her with disfavor? But she shall see and feel that I hate, that I abhor her. Oh, what a powerless creature is yet an empress! I hate this woman, and she has the impudence to think I cannot punish her unless ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... Foch struck in 1870 were without weight in helping to avert France's catastrophe. But he was like hundreds of thousands of other young Frenchmen similarly powerless in this: In the anguish he suffered because of what he could not do to save France from humiliation were laid the foundations of all that he has contributed to the ...
— Foch the Man - A Life of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Armies • Clara E. Laughlin
... I do the apocrypha of the agony column: such crude devices amuse the intelligence without fatiguing it. But this is different. It is clearly a reference to the words in a page of some book. Until I am told which page and which book I am powerless." ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of tears is to have faced and conquered the simple human nature, and to have attained an equilibrium which cannot be shaken by personal emotions. It does not imply any hardness of heart, or any indifference. It does not imply the exhaustion of sorrow, when the suffering soul seems powerless to suffer acutely any longer; it does not mean the deadness of old age, when emotion is becoming dull because the strings which vibrate to it are wearing out. None of these conditions are fit for a disciple, and if any one ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... wild, 'Twixt you and Progress' pale-faced child Fated vendetta rages, And Pity's self stands powerless To help you counter with success The onset of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 6, 1890 • Various
... "We were powerless to help ourselves. But while we sat there in utter despair, a neighbor rode by and hailed us. He told us that Red Cross committees had started out from Milwaukee and Chicago at first tidings of the fire, with car-loads of supplies, and that if we could go to ...
— The Story of the Red Cross as told to The Little Colonel • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... the wish, on his side, to spare her might be what most worked with him, this very fact of their seeming to have nothing "inward" really to talk about wrapped him up for her in a kind of sweetness that was wanting, as a consecration, even in her yearning for her husband. She was powerless, however, was only more utterly hushed, when the interrupting flash came, when she would have been all ready to say to him, "Yes, this is by every appearance the best time we've had yet; but don't you see, ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... sensational campaign the country had ever seen. "The barbed arrows of ridicule had pierced the strong man's armor," one editorial said, "and accomplished something that the heaviest blows of the Opposition had been powerless to achieve." Dr. Clay had defeated George Steadman by a large majority, and the Millford "Mercury" was free to express itself editorially, and did so with ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... laughed, as who should say, "You put me off," then surrendered herself with eagerness to the pleasure of his report. At the moment of his approach, under pretence of talking to an elderly cousin of Maxwell's, she had been lost in such an abstraction of powerless pity for George Tressady—whose fair head, somehow, never escaped her, wherever it moved—that she had hardly been able to bear with her guests or the burden of ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... for the wearied foot. The better way is hidden; faith hath failed— One stronger far than reason mastered her. It is not reason makes faith hard, but life. The husks of his dead creed, downtrod and dry, Are powerless now as some dishonoured spell, Some aged Pythia in her priestly clothes, Some widow'd witch divining by the dead. Or if he keep one shrine undesecrate And go to it from time to time with tears, What ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... waistcoat. There remained, then, none but old Catherine, who had been too lately picked up to have lost her common sense. In this state Bonaparte found Europe; and it was this state of its rulers which lost it with scarce a struggle. These animals had become without mind and powerless; and so will every hereditary monarch be after a few generations. Alexander, the grandson of Catherine, is as yet an exception. He is able to hold his own. But he is only of the third generation. His race is not yet ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... lady did, when she had heard Federigo's story, and seen the relics of the bird, was to chide him that he had killed so fine a falcon to furnish a woman with a breakfast; after which the magnanimity of her host, which poverty had been and was powerless to impair, elicited no small share of inward commendation. Then, frustrate of her hope of possessing the falcon, and doubting of her son's recovery, she took her leave with the heaviest of hearts, and hied her back to the boy: who, whether for fretting, ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... husky whispers, and they were more alarmed than ever at discovering the extent of their own demoralization. The bottle, one of those small-necked, big-bodied quart-bottles that Western topers carry in yellow-cotton handkerchiefs, was passed round. But even the whisky seemed powerless to neutralize their terror, rather increasing the ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... under," was shouted in the voice of some eager friend. Rising up on the water, Morton made a last effort to do as he was bid. He did press the man's head down,—well down below the surface,—but still the hand clung to him, and as he struck out against the water, he was powerless ...
— Aaron Trow • Anthony Trollope
... climax of my confusion was reached when, folded in his warm embrace, and giddy with the whirl, a strange, sweet thrill would shake me from head to foot, leaving me weak and almost powerless, and really almost obliged to depend for support upon the arm which encircled me. If my partner failed from ignorance, lack of skill, or innocence, to arouse these, to me, most pleasurable sensations, I did not dance with ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... passed eight days in arrest—eight tedious days, days of powerless anger and painful humiliation. This arrest had been, by the king's express orders, so strict, that no one was allowed to see the prince but Pollnitz, who belonged, as the king said, to the inventory of the ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... of Norway was framed in 1814, the Continent was but little acquainted with the pure parliamentarism, with a ruling Council and a powerless King. The Constitution is instead based on the theory of the division of the state power into three organs, and this is plainly stated in the division of the Constitution. The King's veto over legal questions is only suspensive, ...
— The Swedish-Norwegian Union Crisis - A History with Documents • Karl Nordlund
... violently resenting interference. Therefore you can only stand and watch, hoping that he will notice the flames before they are beyond control, and extinguish them. The probability is, however, that he will notice the flames too late. And powerless to avert disaster, you are condemned, therefore, to watch the damage of valuable property. The flames leap higher and higher, and they do not die down till they have burned themselves out. You avert your gaze from the spectacle, and until you are ...
— The Human Machine • E. Arnold Bennett
... my meaning. I am talking of a man who is full of courage and determination, yet just because he is only one is powerless. A lion might be killed by rats if there ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner |
