"Weak" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... this man, who had been cross and rough while he was weak, became gentler, kinder, and more deferential to her, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... home in his cottage. The nets require looking to before starting, as they are apt to get into a tangle, and there is nothing so annoying as to have to unravel strings with chilled fingers in a ditch. Some have to be mended, having been torn; some are cast aside altogether because weak and rotten. The twine having been frequently saturated with water has decayed. All the nets are of a light yellow colour from the clay and sand that has ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... stood stock-still with doubled up fists and a scowl on his not unhandsome, though weak and vicious features. Then, with a bellow, he rushed upon Roy, who contented himself by ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham
... 'self-government' showed its weak side in this direction. It meant that an important function was intrusted to small bodies, quite incompetent of acting upon general principles, and perfectly capable of petty jobbing, when unrestrained by any effective supervision. ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... extorted by Middleton. Patrick Walker tells the tale of Peden and the girl. Wodrow, in his Analecta, has the story of the Angel, or other shining spiritual presence, which is removed from its context in the ballad. The sufferings from weak beer are quoted in Mr. Blackader's Memoirs. Mitchell was the undeniably brave Covenanter who shot at Sharp, and hit the Bishop of the Orkneys. He was tortured, and, by an act of perjury (probably unconscious) on the part of Lauderdale, was hanged. The sentiments of the poem are such ...
— Ban and Arriere Ban • Andrew Lang
... Emperor could be seen personally inspecting the haversacks of the soldiers, examining their certificates, or taking a gun from the shoulders of a young man who was weak, pale; and suffering, and saying to him, in a sympathetic tone, "That is too heavy for you." He often drilled them himself; and when he did not, the drilling was directed by Generals Dorsenne, Curial, or Mouton. Sometimes he was seized with a sudden whim; ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... the Grand Duke may well be grateful that they have a Minister without relations and without favourites. The Grand Duke is, unquestionably, a man of talents; but at the same time, perhaps, one of the most weak-minded men that ever breathed. He was fortunate in meeting with Beckendorff early in life; and as the influence of the Minister has not for a moment ceased over the mind of the monarch, to the world the Grand Duke of Reisenburg has always appeared to be an individual ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... sighs. Coming to the edge of the water he peered out through the bushes and discovered the mighty moose helpless and impotent, mired in a treacherous spring bog. His legs were entirely buried in the mud, which came up on his sides. He was covered with foam and sweat, and so weak with thrashing and wrenching, that he could hardly ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... probably do to him was unthinkable. Somehow he must find a way out by self-destruction. Even should he escape, he would be unarmed and without food, and there was every possibility that they would trail and overtake him in the morning. He was lame and footsore; also he was weak from want of food. Once, when despoiling his chop boxes, the corporal had contemptuously thrown him a half eaten tin of sardines and a cigarette. He let the cigarette lie. Nourishment he must have; and so after an inward ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... find. Human nature can't keep news long and it always hunts up the man that is easy to find and unloads on him. There is a sense of security in talking to a man flat of his back—he can't get out to repeat it. Many things combine to make the News Gatherer the sick man's friend. He is helpless, weak and can't talk back. That secures a good listener. He is sick and wants to be entertained. That makes him an eager listener. And finally being confined and unable to get out he is presumably an empty vessel ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley
... traveling toward his native home. This heard, I said, in pity, "Come with me." He stooped, and straightway from the ground took up, An oaken staff by me yet unobserved— A staff which must have dropt from his slack hand And lay till now neglected in the grass. Though weak his step and cautious, he appeared To travel without pain, and I beheld, With an astonishment but ill-suppressed, His ghostly figure moving at my side; Nor could I, while we journeyed thus, forbear To turn from present hardships to the past, And speak of war, battle, ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various
... but a very weak affair compared with this, Sir William Thomson notwithstanding. To render the date of the above fully appreciable, I may note that three months later the magazine from which it is quoted was illustrated with a picture of the London and Birmingham Railway Station displaying ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... into strong vowels (a, e, o) and weak vowels (i, u). For purposes of versification y as a vowel may be treated as i. The five vowels (a, e, o, i, u) taken in pairs may form diphthongs in twenty-five possible combinations, ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
... with governesses and nurses over on a Jersey estate and pining for the higher female touch. Here am I with a batch of verses going quite innocently into Mr. Burke's office—he's an editor, you know—and he buys my stuff and howls for more. I grow white and thin providing more, and in weak moments show my beautiful inner soul to him. He, being a gentleman and an understanding one, asks me out to Jersey, and those children just cram into the hungry corners of my life. They play with me; they—they"—here a subtle touch of truth struck ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... out. Again he pushed himself to his hands and knees, and it seemed easier this time. Then, bracing himself against the curving wall of the sewer, he got to his feet. His knees were weak and wobbly, but they'd hold. They had ...
— But, I Don't Think • Gordon Randall Garrett
... watched him as he crossed the lawn and untied his horse. She had not thanked him for coming, for promising to come again, he reflected with relief. She was no weak, dependent fool. He rode down the sodded lane, and as his horse picked his way carefully toward the avenue where the electric cars were shooting back and forth like magnified fireflies, he turned in his saddle to look once more at the cottage. One light gleamed from the room he had ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... earnestly desirous of securing their good will by acting toward them in a spirit of just and generous recognition of all their rights. But justice and generosity in a nation, as in an individual, count most when shown not by the weak but by the strong. While ever careful to refrain from wrongdoing others, we must be no less insistent that we are not wronged ourselves. We wish peace, but we wish the peace of justice, the peace of righteousness. We wish it because ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... Weak and famished, Krueger bent to his all but finished task. Before morning he should know that it would work as he had planned. There remained only to fit the last parts together. The idea of building an air-ship had come to him ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... subordinate to her, else they can neither preserve mutual peace, nor hope for mutual justice, nor effectually afford mutual assistance. It is necessary to coerce the negligent, to restrain the violent, and to aid the weak and deficient, by the overruling plenitude of its power. She is never to intrude into the place of the others while they are equal to the common ends of their institution. But in order to enable ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... in their own image. There, survival of the fittest still works out its own ultimately benevolent and useful end in its own directly cruel and relentless way, cutting off ruthlessly the stupid or the weak, and allowing only the strong and the cunning to become ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... among its members, no true sense of constituting a Brotherhood, of being members of the same Body. We have to admit that the attempt to hold a high standard usually ends in failure, at least the practical failure of a weak compromise. But there are characters that are strong enough to face the isolation and to readjust life on the basis of the new principles and to mould it in accord with the new ideals. The period of this readjustment ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... to cross that arbitrary will which would brook no disobedience, and sought to intimidate him with disinheritance. Through his mind passed in slurred detail the sordid story which had given him a brother's hate in return for a quixotic championing of the weak—a hate which proved to have power enough behind it to draw a devastating hand across ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... exceedingly weak and ill. Her intellects, nevertheless, continue clear and strong, and her piety and patience are without example. Every one thinks this night will be her last. What a shocking thing is that to say of such an excellence! She will not, ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... had but one hand he could use, and he laid still, knowing that the bear would not touch him as long as he appeared to be dead, and he further knew that the monster's life-blood was fast ebbing away, and that she would soon be too weak to move. The Indian chief had all this time been loading his gun as fast as possible, and had just driven down the ball, when screams were heard from the cottage, ...
— The Forest King - Wild Hunter of the Adaca • Hervey Keyes
... by name John Baptist Cavalletto—they called him Mr Baptist in the Yard—was such a chirping, easy, hopeful little fellow, that his attraction for Pancks was probably in the force of contrast. Solitary, weak, and scantily acquainted with the most necessary words of the only language in which he could communicate with the people about him, he went with the stream of his fortunes, in a brisk way that was new in those parts. With little to eat, and less to drink, and ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... united with the Danish realm. Norway was handed over to Swedish rule, while England took for her share of the spoils the island of Heligoland, which she wanted to secure for the command of the Elbe. Thus the birds of prey gathered round and despoiled the weak realm of Denmark, which was to be further robbed ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... the compounder of his medicament, in no degree tended to soothe the infuriated master. Young Boone, having paid for his sport by an ample drubbing, seized the opportune moment, floored his master, already weak and dizzy, sprang from the door, and made for the woods. The adventure was soon blazoned. A consultation of the patrons of the school was held. Though young Boone was reprimanded, the ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... wicked who would rather plunder than work; because it stops enterprise, promotes laziness, exalts inefficiency, inspires hatred, checks production, assures waste and instills into the souls of the unfortunate and the weak hopes impossible of fruition whose inevitable blasting will add to the bitterness ...
— The Inhumanity of Socialism • Edward F. Adams
... and, taking up a piece of cheese and three bananas, goes off to bed. But the effect on Lady Gastwyck is different, for directly she hears Lord Gumthorpe make this remark she realizes that he is a weak man. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 1, 1914 • Various
... the enemy's weak point and redoubled their efforts. With Arsene Lupin disarmed and despoiled by himself, caught in his own toils, receiving not a single sou of the coveted million ... the laugh would at once be ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... bed. Seldom having been ill, the good woman was greatly alarmed about herself. She had caught a chill and was feverish and weak. Adam, and Jacob were away in the Nancy, and there was no one except Peggy to attend to her, as Mrs Brown had only waited for May's coming to go back to her own cottage. May regretted that Miss Jane had not accompanied her, as the dame, she thought, would ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... lak it was 'bout to bust. De President spoke to us and when he found out dat I was from Athens, he axed me lots of questions. He said dat he was interested in Athens. Soon Albon said us must be goin' and when us got out of dar I was right weak, but I was might proud and happy to think de President had tuk time to talk pleasant lak wid a pore ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... attempt to convince the gentry of the police or of the law that a man condemned to death is innocent. No. From henceforth Jacques Aubrieux belongs to the executioner. But the prospect of securing the sixty bank-notes is a windfall worth taking a little trouble over. Just think: that was the weak point in the indictment, those sixty notes which ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... history of Congress. One after another, the old leaders, Calhoun, Webster, Benton, Cass, and the rest,—for all were still there,—rose and solemnly addressed themselves to the state of the country and the plan of settlement. All but Calhoun: now very near his end, he was too weak to stand or speak, and Mason, of Virginia, read for him, while he sat gloomily silent, his last bitter arraignment of the North. He was against the plan. Benton, though on opposite grounds, also found fault with it. Webster, to the rage and sorrow of his own New England, gave ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... accustomed to give hard blows, did not, as he himself foreshadowed, call forth a unanimous chorus of praise; and the objections of intelligent and high-minded men are well worth taking into account. The most common one is that his criticism was always destructive; that he had an eye for the weak side of causes and men that he did not favor, and these he set forth with unremitting vigor without regard for palliating circumstances; that he erected a high and impossible ideal and judged all men by it; ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... The weak chlorine from the Deacon process cannot be treated in this manner, as chambers of impossibly large dimensions would be required. Originally the absorption of the Deacon chlorine took place in a set of chambers, constructed of large ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... prosecutor aged twenty-one. The majesty of the law had need of a vigorous rather than a learned representative; and the representative had need of other weapons than those supplied by the law books if he meant to make his authority respected and yet keep a whole skin on his body. If he proved weak and timid, he was sure to be despised; if determined and relentless, he was sure to make enemies; if incautious and unwary, he would probably get himself shot. It is doubtful, however, if any better man than young Jackson could have been ...
— Andrew Jackson • William Garrott Brown
... shop-keeper (Poeppig, Reise, II, 365); in Canada, as in many of the villages of the Alps which are not often visited, a hotel keeper. In countries with an unadvanced civilization, the little division of labor that exists is also very awkwardly regulated. Thus in Russia, weak children are very frequently put to work on farms, while powerful men are found in the city offering all kinds of eatables and the pictures of saints for sale. (Storch, Gemaelde des russischen Reichs II, 364. v. ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... more. The girl's heart was weak with the pain she knew he was bearing, but she knew that they ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... severe enough to destroy the skin, disinfection of the open wound with weak carbolic acid or hydrogen peroxide is very necessary. After this has been done, a soft cloth soaked in a solution of linseed oil and limewater should be applied and the whole bandaged. In such a case, it is important not to use cotton batting, since this sticks to the rough surface ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... not remain long under his immediate care. I was soon sent to school—that preparatory world, where the great primal principles of human nature, in the aggression of the strong and the meanness of the weak, constitute the earliest lesson of importance that we are taught; and where the forced primitiae of that less universal knowledge which is useless to the many who in after life, neglect, and bitter to the few who improve it, are the first motives for which our minds are ...
— Falkland, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... disorderly but compact pile in the center of the reading room: we could say little concerning the contents and characteristics of that library; whether it is strong in certain fields of human endeavor, or weak in other fields. The spectrum of a star is as the same library when the books are arranged on the shelves in complete perfection and simplicity, so that he who looks may appraise its contents at any or all points. Let us consider the ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... different things, and the children would have gone on for a long time. The smell in the house was not so very pleasant, 19 persons in one room, beside this the men smoked their pipes nearly the whole time. The children were crying and would not obey their parents and the parents are so very weak in this way. ...
— Bowdoin Boys in Labrador • Jonathan Prince (Jr.) Cilley
... Is thy love a plant Of such weak fibre that the treacherous air Of absence withers what was once so fair? Is there no debt to pay, no boon to grant? Yet have my thoughts for thee been vigilant— Bound to thy service with unceasing care, The mind's least generous wish a mendicant For nought ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... excitement it isn't in it with other things you wot of, Bunny, and the involuntary comparison becomes a bore. What's the satisfaction of taking a man's wicket when you want his spoons? Still, if you can bowl a bit your low cunning won't get rusty, and always looking for the weak spot's just the kind of mental exercise one wants. Yes, perhaps there's some affinity between the two things after all. But I'd chuck up cricket to-morrow, Bunny, if it wasn't for the glorious protection it affords a person ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... He followed Kueelo, swinging along in slow loping strides, but not gaining. He felt weak and sick. That jagged need for tsith was again sawing away at his entrails. His feet tangled in the outlying swamp grass, he plunged headlong ...
— One Purple Hope! • Henry Hasse
... but spell The thought in the brain of that weak Old ghost that hides in the gloom, Over there, of the ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... was justified in its declaration of war upon Germany, not only because of its direct interests in the neutrality of Belgium, but also because of the ethical duty of the strong nations to protect the weak upon adequate occasion from indefensible wrong. Apart from this general ethical justification, England was, under the Treaty of 1839, under an especial obligation to defend the neutrality of Belgium, and had it failed ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... grape must be crushed if we would have wine. Give a poet "society" at his feet and he sings no more, or sings as Tennyson has been singing of late years—fit strains to prepare us for the disgrace he has brought upon the poet's calling. Poor, weak, silly old man! Forgive him, however, for what he has done when truly the poet. He was noble then and didn't know it; now he is a sham noble and knows it. Punishment enough that he stands no more upon the mountain heights o'ertopping the petty ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... tyrant, hast for me? What wheels? racks? fires? what flaying? boiling In leads or oils? what old or newer torture Must I receive, whose every word deserves To taste of thy most worst? Thy tyranny, Together working with thy jealousies, Fancies too weak for boys, too green and idle For girls of nine, O! think what they have done, And then run mad indeed, stark mad; for all Thy by-gone fooleries were but spices of it. That thou betray'dst Polixenes, 'twas nothing; That did but show thee, of a fool, ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... shans, Annamese, and all that kind of people, into accepting them for their rulers. It was a work, as you may imagine, of centuries; with as much history going forward as during any centuries you might name. The states thus formed were young, compared to China; and as China grew old and weak, they grew into their vigorous prime. The infinity of human activities that has been! These Chow ages seem like the winking of an eye; but they were crowded with great men and small, great deeds and trivialities, like our own. The time will come when our 'Anglo-Saxon' history will be written thus: ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... changed to vexation and grief. The most careful nursing—the stiff, weak little legs were dipped into and rubbed with French brandy—and a warm pen with a dry sanded floor directly over a heater, did their work. As the new-comer got on his feet again my hope gained new life, and now our jerboa is my delight. It is, indeed, a curious animal. One who saw it only in the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... Fourth. The only way to dispose of him was by making him realise that the crown was beyond his grasp; and that if he persevered, he would find the scaffold and the axe within it. This was accordingly done so effectually that weak, impulsive Basset quailed before the storm, and fled to France to save his own life. He survived the accession of James the First for seventeen years at least [Note 3]; but no more was heard of his right ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... good drainage and a good supply of moisture. A reasonably fertile soil should be selected for a planting site but through mulches, manures, and commercial mineral fertilizers any soil may be built up to a high state of fertility. A weak tree has little chance and may come into bearing too late to be of value for the present owner. The annual growth should be checked each year and, unless 10 to 12 inches of growth has been made the previous year, some means of stimulating ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various
... for necessity. They that use them otherwise abuse themselves into weak bodies and light purses. They are good remedies, bad businesses, ...
— Book of Wise Sayings - Selected Largely from Eastern Sources • W. A. Clouston
... them, who loudly condemn the conduct of the Queen and her ministers, and advocate immediate submission to whatever terms Aurelian may impose. This party however, powerful though it maybe through wealth, is weak in numbers. The people are opposed to them, and go enthusiastically with the Queen, and do not scruple to exult in the distresses of the merchants. Their present impotence is but a just retribution upon them for their criminal apathy during the early stages of the difficulty. Then had they ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... also here an acting cause to account for that balance so often observed in nature,—a deficiency in one set of organs always being compensated by an increased development of some others—powerful wings accompanying weak feet, or great velocity making up for the absence of defensive weapons; for it has been shown that all varieties in which an unbalanced deficiency occurred could not long continue their existence. The action of ...
— Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society - Vol. 3 - Zoology • Various
... said Hilda, with a smile. "You seem, from such circumstances, to have brought yourself to consider our very prosaic housekeeper as almost a princess in disguise. I, for my part, look upon her as a very common person, so weak-minded, to say the least, as to be almost half-witted. As to her accent, that is nothing. I dare say she has seen better days. I have heard more than once of ladies in destitute or reduced circumstances who have been obliged to take to housekeeping. ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... cottage, half covered with jasmine, and shaded by a royal palm, a child lies very sick. Listen to its low, weak moaning as we cross the threshold. The mother has procured a piece of tape, the length of which, she says, is the exact measure of the head of Saint Blas. This she has repeatedly put around her babe's head ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... "the matter! That I have been a vain, weak, miserable fool!" and then there was another oath, and he flung the letter to the ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... will go, gentlemen, I will go. Whither shall I go, my children? The house where you were born to me is ours no longer. Excuse me, gentlemen—this is nothing to you. Ah! sir, you have revenged yourself on two weak women—may Heaven forgive you!" ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... horses, chose the worse way coming; and so by certain waggons called coaches, very shaking and uneasy to my judgment, came to Padua upon Saturday at night. Of whose coming being advertised, I went to visit him on the morrow after, and found him very weak; and since that time he began to appear every day worse and worse, avoiding friends' visitations; and drew himself to the counsel of two of the best physicians of this town, and entered into a continued hot ague, sometimes more vehement than at another; and as I have seen and heard, he hath been ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... she said softly to herself, as she closed the door and went back to the dining-room. 'Poor Dick! poor, dear Dick! What misery he has brought to us all! And yet he was never wicked—only weak.' ...
— That Scholarship Boy • Emma Leslie
... dance," said the fairy queen, tenderly; "thy little limbs are weak. Come, sit thou at my feet, and let me smooth thy fair curls and stroke ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... group of objectors whose motives he regarded as partly factious and partly temperamental. Writing to a friend about the character of the House, he remarked: "Three sorts of people are often troublesome: the anti-federals, who alone are weak and some of them well disposed; the dupes of local prejudices, who fear eastern influence, monopolies, and navigation acts; and lastly the violent republicans, as they think fit to style themselves, who are new lights in politics, who are more solicitous ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... family he charged with scandalous immoralities." If the use of Spaulding's story in the preparation of the Mormon Bible could be proved by nothing but this letter of Mrs. Davison, the demonstration would be weak; but this is only ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... Stafford's face, and with it fling back the pledge which he had given her the night before; then she collapsed, as it were, and sank into a chair, dropping the letter and covering her face with her hands. She could not. The strength of her love made her weak as water where that love was concerned. Though her pride called upon her to surrender Stafford, she could not respond ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... Species" was, it met in the first instance with hardly less hostile than friendly criticism. But the attacks were ill-directed; they came from a suspected quarter, and those who led them did not detect more than the general public had done what were the really weak places in Mr. Darwin's armour. They attacked him where he was strongest; and above all, they were, as a general rule, stamped with a disingenuousness which at that time we believed to be peculiar to theological writers and alien to the spirit of science. Seeing, therefore, ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... the connection, and it was understood between them, that the young people were to be united at the first port in which a clergyman of their own persuasion could be found, and previously to reaching home. This had been the aunt's own project, for, weak and silly as she was, the relict had a woman's sense of the proprieties. It had occured to her that it would be more respectable to make the long journey which lay before them, escorted by a nephew and husband, than escorted by even an accepted ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... it is with apparently autocratic powers, so scandalously timid in the face of the mob? Why is it not as autocratic in dealing with playwrights below the average as with those above it? The answer is that its position is really a very weak one. It has no direct co-ercive forces, no funds to institute prosecutions and recover the legal penalties of defying it, no powers of arrest or imprisonment, in short, none of the guarantees of autocracy. What it can do is to refuse to renew the licence of a theatre at which ...
— The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet • George Bernard Shaw
... a revolution, a great passion—with these he was at home; and his education, mainly on the Old Testament, contributed greatly to the development both of the strength and weakness of his character. For such as he are weak as well as strong; weak in the absence of the innumerable little sympathies and worldlinesses which make life delightful, and but too apt to despise and tread upon those gentle flowers which are as really here as the ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... another temper. The impulse that drove him to make music was not so weak and pliable. It could not be barbered and dapperly dressed and taught to conduct a clouded cane elegantly in the rue de la Paix or the allee des Acacias. It was too hot and wild and shy a thing, too passionately ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... weak as she was, had insisted upon being arrayed grandly, to do honor to the wedding of the only daughter ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... brain was refusing to act coherently. Flashes of lurid light passed before his eyes, and the horrible feeling of suffocation became ever more and more acute. Finally, with what he fancied was a shout for assistance, but it was, in reality, only a weak whisper, Jim lost consciousness altogether, and rolled from his couch on to the floor, where he lay like a ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... not want to take them back, and so sever even that weak bond between them. He has ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... our first supports, and it was not till three o'clock in the afternoon that Hooker's corps reached the eastern base of the mountain and began its deployment north of the National road. Our effort was to attack the weak end of his line, and we succeeded in putting a stronger force there than that which opposed us. It is for our opponent to explain how we were permitted to do it. The two brigades of the Kanawha division numbered less than 3000 men. Hill's division was 5000 strong, [Footnote: Official Records, ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... in gold had bought, soul and body, many a better man than Captain Falk. At that very moment Falk was watching us from the quarter-deck with an expression on his face that was partly an amused smile, partly a sneer. Weak and conceited though he was, he was master of that ship and crew in ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... function not so much as contemplated by other universities, and, at present, absolutely and chimerically beyond their means of attainment. Formerly we used to hear attacks upon the Oxford discipline as fitted to the true intellectual purposes of a modern education. Those attacks, weak and most uninstructed in facts, false as to all that they challenged, and puerile as to what implicitly they propounded for homage, are silent. But, of late, the battery has been pointed against the Oxford discipline in its moral aspects, as fitted for ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... I'm weak. I...." His thoughts strayed. "See, I've never had much of a chance to show what I can do. My mother's such a much stronger ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... cone-axis (fig. 67) and then away from it (fig. 68). The wood-strands are hygroscopic and cooperate with the bast tissues in opening and closing the cone. This appears to be true of all species excepting the three species of the Cembrae, whose strands are so small and weak that they are not obviously affected ...
— The Genus Pinus • George Russell Shaw
... wife to subdue completely the mild and peaceable nature of the husband. At her bidding most of his former acquaintances were discarded; and even his warmest friends and nearest relations, no longer meeting the old hearty welcome, gradually ceased to visit his house. But the bitterest effect of this weak and culpable abdication of his rights was experienced by his slaves. Sad indeed for them was the change from the ease and abundance of the bachelor's-hall, where slavery meant little more than a happy exemption from care, to their present ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... little mind topsy-turvies when I am not near to see to it in time. Will you let her be comfortable-easy for two months more? Ach Gott! if I could only be certain-sure of that, I might leave those weak new eyes of hers to cure themselves, and go my ways back to ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... escaping party was wounded and left for dead. Several hours later consciousness returned to him, and the first sight that met his gaze was the dead bodies of his father and brother. A chance was offered him to escape, but weak as he was from loss of blood, he determined to follow up the kidnaping party, forming the desperate resolve that if he could not rescue his mother and sisters, he would at least save them from the horrible fate that ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... discontented because no order prevailed in their kingdom. None of them turned aside for the others, but all swam to the right or the left as they fancied, or darted between those who wanted to stay together, or got into their way; and a strong one gave a weak one a blow with its tail, which drove it away, or else swallowed it up without more ado. "How delightful it would be," said they, "if we had a king who enforced law and justice among us!" and they met together to choose for their ruler, the one who could cleave through the water most ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... from the ranks of his fellow Republicans. To fail in that was to fail in every thing. That he made a clever speech was not denied, for every intellectual effort of Mr. Raymond exhibited cleverness. That he made the most of a weak cause, and to some extent influenced public opinion, must also be freely conceded. But his most partial friends were compelled to admit that he had absolutely failed to influence Republican action in Congress, ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... whole gospel of human hope without which no life may be lived at all? Alban had some glimmering of this, but he could not have set down his reasons in so many words. As for the little lad "Betty"—was not the affection they lavished upon him that which manhood ever owes to the weak and helpless. Search London over and you will not find elemental goodness in a shape more worthy than it was to be found in the caves—nor can we forego a moment's reflection upon the cant which ever preaches the vice ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... /n./ [In the authors' words, "A weak pun on Multics"; very early on it was 'UNICS'] (also 'UNIX') An interactive time-sharing system invented in 1969 by Ken Thompson after Bell Labs left the Multics project, originally so he could play games on his scavenged PDP-7. Dennis Ritchie, the inventor of C, is considered ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... time, the serious work of the Council was begun. A long dogmatic decree was distributed, in which the special theological, biblical, and philosophical opinions of the school now dominant in Rome were proposed for ratification. It was so weak a composition that it was as severely criticised by the Romans as by the foreigners; and there were Germans whose attention was first called to its defects by an Italian cardinal. The disgust with which the text of the first decree was received had not been foreseen. No real discussion ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... for him, if she had not been too overawed and palpitating to do anything. She quite forgot what she had come for, shook hands with him mechanically, and could hardly return an answer to his weak 'Dear Margery, you see how I ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... the prescriptive reverence of ancient names. But neither senate nor people could enforce their claims, whatever they might happen to be. Their sanction and ratifying vote might be worth having, as consecrating what was already secure, and conciliating the scruples of the weak to the absolute decision of the strong. But their resistance, as an original movement, was so wholly without hope, that they were never weak enough to ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... canvassed in Lucca. Hospitality is by no means a cardinal virtue in Italy. Even in the greatest houses, the bread and salt of the Arab is not offered to you—or, if offered at all, appears in the shape of such dangerously acid lemonade or such weak tea, it is best avoided. Every year there are dances at the Casino dei Nobili, during the Carnival, and there are veglioni, or balls, at the theatre, where ladies go masked and in dominoes, but do not ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... must be Wednesday or Thursday or even Friday or Saturday, now, and that the search had been given over. He proposed to explore another passage. He felt willing to risk Injun Joe and all other terrors. But Becky was very weak. She had sunk into a dreary apathy and would not be roused. She said she would wait, now, where she was, and die—it would not be long. She told Tom to go with the kite-line and explore if he chose; but she ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... hand it on until he had made himself master of its contents, though that did not prove to be very enlightening or interesting. The note, in fact, merely expressed gratification at the news that Dunn had secured steady work, a somewhat weak hope that he would keep it, and a still fainter hope that now perhaps he would be able to return the ten shillings borrowed, apparently from the writer, at some ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon
... wishes to Paul V. The latter forwarded a very touching letter in which he expressed his sympathy with the Irish Church, commended the fidelity of the Irish people, and exhorted them to stand firm in the face of persecution.[17] The only weak point that might be noted at this period was the almost complete destruction of the Irish hierarchy. O'Devany of Down and Connor, Brady the Franciscan Bishop of Kilmore, and O'Boyle of Raphoe were the only bishops remaining in the province of Ulster since the murder of Redmond ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... mind and body, and any one who writes his biography in detail will do well to pay great heed to this intricate interlocking. I can do no more than allude to it here. We have seen that Roosevelt from his earliest days had a quick mind, happily not precocious, and a weak body which prevented him from taking part in normal physical activity and the play and sport of boyhood. So his intellectual life grew out of scale to his physical. Then he set to work by the deliberate application of will-power to develop ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... Lehwald, lying at Trautenau, had heard the firing at sunrise; and instantly marched to help: he only arrived to give Nadasti a slash or two, and was too late for the Fight. One Schlichtling, on guard with a weak party, saved what was in the right wing of the Camp,—small thanks to him, the Main Fight being so near: Friedrich's opinion is, an Officer, in Schlichtling's place, ought to have done more, and ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... from the high interior; frequent blizzards form near the foot of the plateau; cyclonic storms form over the ocean and move clockwise along the coast; volcanism on Deception Island and isolated areas of West Antarctica; other seismic activity rare and weak; large icebergs may ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... the shabby easy-chair. "Try that, won't you?" he said. "It's really comfortable—not that one, that's a little weak in the legs; it ought to be put away; it's deceptive to ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... competition, of the environment, the old teleology lost an illustration and a proof. For the cogency of the proof in every instance depended upon the absence of explanation. Where the process of adaptation was discerned, the evidence of Purpose or Design was weak. It was strong only when the natural antecedents were not discovered, strongest when they could be ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... One morning on his arrival Evan was directed to the library where he found George Deaves in a state of prostration. He waved a letter at Evan in a kind of weak indignation. Evan ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... French, President of the Italian Republic, Mediator of the Swiss Republic, controller of Holland, absolute ruler of a great military Empire; Pitt, the Prime Minister of an obstinate and at times half-crazy King, dependent on a weak Cabinet, a disordered Exchequer, a Navy weakened by ill-timed economies, and land forces whose martial ardour ill made up for lack of organization, equipment, and training. Before the outbreak of war in May 1803, Napoleon had summed up the situation in the words—"Forty-five millions of people ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... as of old, and he found himself growing hotter and hotter until he burned and gasped and the room seemed about to stifle him. He arose from the bed, wondering that his feet should be so heavy and clumsy, and his knees so weak, when he felt otherwise so strong. His head, too, felt large, and there rang in his ears a singing of incessant quick beats. He made his way to the door, where he heard the voices of Prudence and Follett. It was good to feel the cool night ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... Islands,—alone in a small boat, endeavouring to row it towards the great Southern Continent that lay afar off in the invisible distance,—where few but the most adventurous travellers ever cared to wander. And as he pulled with weak, ineffectual oars against the mighty weight of the rolling billows, he thought he heard the words of an old Irish song which he remembered having listened to, when as quite a young man he had paid his first ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... circumstance that the berry can be preserved during a great number of years; whereas, notwithstanding every possible care, cacao spoils in the warehouses after ten or twelve months. During the long dissensions of the European powers, at a time when Spain was too weak to protect the commerce of her colonies, industry was directed in preference to productions of which the sale was less urgent, and could await the chances of political and commercial events. I remarked that in the ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... leaving the door. I find that, brace myself as I will against trouble, the spirit so sympathises with the body that its moods are in sad bondage to the physical health; the latter vanquishing the former. For the spirit is often willing and submits, while the flesh is weak and rebels. ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... set, John. Whether you can do it or not, is a different thing. I don't want you to marry Jane Harlow, but as you have set your heart on her, I have resolved to make the most of her strong points and the least of her weak ones. You had better ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... an instant too soon. A yell was uttered by the savages as they rushed at a weak point, where the thorn-bush defences had been broken down. The point appeared to be undefended. They were about to leap through in a dense mass when ten Dutchmen, who had reserved their fire, discharged a volley simultaneously into the midst of them. It was a ruse of the ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... it was the dim cause of my turning at the sound of a few singing voices, and entering that chapel. I found about a dozen people present. Something in the air of the place, meagre and waste as it looked, yet induced me to remain. An address followed from a pale-faced, weak-looking man of middle age, who had no gift of person, voice, or utterance, to recommend what he said. But there dwelt a more powerful enforcement in him than any of those,—that of earnestness. I went again, and again; and slowly, I ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... may be in fault three ways; firstly, the formative faculty, which may be too strong or too weak, by which is procured a depraved figure; secondly, to the instrument or place of conception, the evil confirmation or the disposition whereof will cause a monstrous birth; thirdly, in the imaginative power at the time of conception; ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... has laid down the finest cellar of snuff in Europe. It was he who ordered his valet to put half a dozen of sherry by his bed and call him the day after to-morrow. He's talking to Lord Panmure, who can take his six bottles of claret and argue with a bishop after it. The lean man with the weak knees is General Scott who lives upon toast and water and has won 200,000 pounds at whist. He is talking to young Lord Blandford who gave 1800 pounds for a Boccaccio the ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... this message, and would then have ordered him fresh breakfast; but he declared if I was fidgety he should have no comfort, and insisted on my sitting quietly down, while he drew a chair by my side, and made his own cold tea, and drank it weak and vapid, and eat up all the miserable scraps, without suffering me to call for plate, knife, bread, butter, or anything for replenishment. And when he had done, and I would have made some apology, he affected me for him a good deal by gravely saying, "Believe ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... grief. My heart bleeds. She was so still! Not a tear! Not an outcry! It was terrible! Weak women do not act in that manner. But you have suffered also, and I judge you have rested no ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... bad hack. Rather weak in the fore shoulder. Thirty bob, eh?" "Well it's cheap at that," said Hil, examining the horse. "Now this looks better. Come closer, I like the look of this one," and strolling into the yard ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... leading a solitary life of mourning, I mine by amusing myself the best way I can. If I were strong enough to follow your example, I should do so, but I can't live without distraction. You are strong; I am weak. I admire in you your power to humble your enemies before you. You were told, weren't you, that ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... her yet," he cried, "Bessie Lee shall know I tried," And for her sake then he halted in the shadow of a hill; From his chapareras he took With weak hands a little book; Tore a blank leaf from its pages saying, "This ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various
... Another leaf was placed in a solution of the same strength of nitrate of ammonia, and the glands were slightly darkened in 25 m., more so in 50 m., and after 1 hr. 30 m. were of so dark a red as to appear almost black. Other leaves were placed in a weak infusion of raw meat and in human saliva, and the glands were much darkened in 25 m., and after 40 m. were so dark as almost to deserve to be called black. Even immersion for a whole day in distilled water occasionally induces ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin
... thus spoke the lady with considerable austerity, and without sitting down herself. 'I find that your husband has behaved in this matter in a very weak and foolish manner.' ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... the North scarcely a month, the deep tan was still in his face, and tiny wind and snow lines crinkled at the corners of his eyes. He exuded the life of the big outdoors as he sat opposite pallid-cheeked and weak-chested Barrow, the Mica King, who would have given his millions to possess the red blood ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... was, and had not learnt to speak, That with His word the world before did make; His mother's arms Him bore, He was so weak, That with one hand the vaults of heaven could shake, See how small room my infant Lord doth take, Whom all the world is not enough to hold! Who of His years, or of His age hath told? Never such age so young, never ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... she said. "Listen kindly, and have pity on me. You are a strong man and wear a sword. You can cut your way through trouble and peril. I am a woman, weak, friendless, helpless. I was in distress and peril, and I had no arm to save, no knight to fight my battle. I do not love deceit. Ah, do not think that I have not hated myself for the lie I have been. But these forest ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston |
