"Weak-minded" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the hands of their trusty Anselmo, to the village of Alcantra, requiring the immediate attendance of the band of soldiers stationed there; and before the return of the carriage, they were admitted by Maria, and conducted to a room adjoining Clara's, the weak-minded Sebastiano being easily kept out ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... again, shaking him roughly by the shoulder. "Stop. Be yourself. This is dementia; but I shall NOT let you be demented. Think of what you are saying. Bring her back to you! Is that the way of God? I thought you were a man; this is the talk of a weak-minded girl." ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... story; and the doctor conceived the idea of getting out of his difficulty by transferring the dead body of the negro Jim to the despoiled empty grave of Onondaga! This done, he easily persuaded the Indians to go back and find the body of their chief all right: and so he succeeded in humbugging the weak-minded Indians, while the bones of old Onondaga were duly prepared and hung up to show students how Indians and all men are made of bone and muscle. The doctor thought he had done a good thing; but when I went into the ...
— Three Years on the Plains - Observations of Indians, 1867-1870 • Edmund B. Tuttle
... yearned for a sight of her early home; but gold had raised a barrier between her and the companions of her childhood. And what had the possession of gold done for the man who made it his idol? It had put snares in the path of his only son; it had made the weak-minded but head-strong youth be entrapped by the wicked for the sake of his wealth, as the ermine is hunted down for its rich fur. It had given to himself heavy responsibilities, for which he would have to answer at the bar of Heaven; for ...
— False Friends, and The Sailor's Resolve • Unknown
... Thorhall, "for work which would not be fitting for a weak-minded person, because of the apparitions which have been there lately. I will not ...
— Grettir The Strong - Grettir's Saga • Unknown
... years were passed at Sevenoaks, where he kept an establishment for imbeciles, or weak-minded youths. I often stayed with him (not as a patient), and a very comfortable and pretty place it was. Now and then he would call on me in London; and, with a face full of theatrical woe, tell me, with elaborate circumlocution, how the Earl of This, or the ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... it more lucidly. I was driving along the street when this weak-minded person flung himself in front of my car. He is out there now. Kindly come ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... 'sharps' are avid for any fact which sustains the particular theory they happen to hold. Not one in a hundred will go where the facts lead. Their investigation is all a process of self-glorification, wherein each one thinks he must prove all the others liars or weak-minded ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... halfbaked; having no head &c 498; not bright &c 498; inapprehensible^. weak headed, addle headed, puzzle headed, blunder headed, muddle headed, muddy headed, pig headed, beetle headed, buffle headed^, chuckle headed, mutton headed, maggoty headed, grossheaded^; beef headed, fat witted, fat-headed. weak-minded, feeble-minded; dull minded, shallow minded, lack- brained; rattle-brained, rattle headed; half witted, lean witted, short witted, dull witted, blunt-witted, shallow-pated^, clod-pated^, addle- ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... almost superfluous to add, that the apparent sincerity with which the accommodation man pleaded, had its effect on the weak-minded man. He loved dearly the girl, but poverty hung like a leaden cloud over him. Poverty stripped him of the means of gratifying her ambition; poverty held him fast locked in its blighting chains; poverty forbid his rescuing her from the condition necessity had imposed upon her; poverty ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... this city? You knew, all the while, the object of my journey, and yet now, in the eleventh hour, when an excellent opportunity presents itself for the accomplishment of that object, you seek to dissuade me from my purpose. Have I entirely mistaken your character? Are you really as weak-minded, and as devoid of courage and spirit, as your language would seem to indicate? When that young ruffian mutilated you in Philadelphia, didn't you consider that you acted perfectly right? Well, this Livingston has destroyed ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... reformers and co-operate in patriotic work, assisted by progressive ministers, whatever opposition might be raised by nobles and priests; and the second was to arm himself and put down the deputies. But how could this weak-minded sovereign co-operate with plebeians against the orders which sustained his throne? And if he used violence, he inaugurated civil war, which would destroy thousands where revolution destroyed hundreds. Moreover, the example of Charles I. was before him. He dared not run the risk. In such a torrent ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... world. They produced horrible strains in his mind. They might, he hoped, be misreported so as to seem more violent or less justifiable than they were. They might be the acts of stray criminals, and quite disconnected from the normal operations of the war. Here and there some weak-minded officer may have sought to make himself terrible.... And as for the bombardment of cathedrals and the crime of Louvain, well, Mr. Britling was prepared to argue that Gothic architecture is not sacrosanct if military necessity cuts through it.... It was only after the war had been going ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... felt much too keenly to continue in such a light strain. He was no weak-minded, pleasant conversationalist, but a prophet, who knew how ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... companions, Faust and Schoffer, ever have believed that, by the division of labor, their sublime invention would fall into the domain of ignorance—I had almost said idiocy? There are few men so weak-minded, so UNLETTERED, as the mass of workers who follow the various branches of the typographic industry,— compositors, pressmen, type-founders, book-binders, and paper-makers. The printer, as he existed even in the days of the Estiennes, has become almost an abstraction. The employment of women in ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... never said that my practice always squared with my principles. Helpless and troublesome creatures have sometimes an insinuating way with them, which forms an additional reason for avoiding them, especially if one is weak-minded. And——" ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... She's weak-minded. Always was; but sence her husband was drowned—he was my second son—she've lost whatever wits she had. The gal here was born about that time." Here the old man launched into some obstetrical guesswork, using the plainest words. It embarrassed the ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... there is no legislation whatever of any kind on the subject of women's suffrage—showing distinctly the refluent wave. In 1903 New Hampshire rejects a constitutional amendment for women's suffrage. Kansas restricts the marriage of epileptic and weak-minded persons. Several States reform their divorce laws, and Pennsylvania adopts Southern ideas giving divorce for a previous unchastity discovered after marriage. This matter has so far been covered ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... bewildered enough, just then, to wonder how such a weak-minded, malicious old dwarf as had been painted to him, could have managed to get and keep so high a position in so remarkably beautiful a place as Grantley. He said something about the village being so pretty; but Dick Lee had been staring eagerly in ...
— Dab Kinzer - A Story of a Growing Boy • William O. Stoddard
... the Northern traitor, 'that very abolition has done the whole mischief. If there had been no Abolitionists, there would have been no war. The Abolitionists are responsible for it all.' Softly, poor, weak-minded man! Does not any man's common sense tell him that wherever a wrong exists, it is in the nature of things that somebody should oppose it—that a desire should arise to get rid of it? It is the chief mercy of God to the world, next ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... alleged inconveniences of maintaining the "weak in mind and body" in our civilized societies (ch. v). As if thousands of weak-bodied and infirm poets, scientists, inventors, and reformers, together with other thousands of so-called "fools" and "weak-minded enthusiasts," were not the most precious weapons used by humanity in its struggle for existence by intellectual and moral arms, which Darwin himself emphasized in those same ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... and, what was worse, that it was obtained by dishonourable means. This idea was strengthened when the gala evening arrived, and our heroine was introduced to her father's principal patron, a vain and weak-minded man, who listened to his host's extravagant adulation with evident complacency, though to every one else it was palpably insincere. Beaufort insisted on his visiting his studio, to give his opinion of the grouping of a historical piece he ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... the fifth act, between Hamlet and Horatio (to the weak-minded Osrick the words spoken there are incomprehensible), the excellent qualities of Laertes are apparently judged. [69] This whole discussion is meant against Montaigne; and in the first quarto the chief points are wanting. Florio calls Montaigne's Essays ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... stranger, or make an acquaintance, if he could help it. Then, instinctively, she turned to Gregory. He was looking fixedly at the man, whose manner had attracted general attention. But he only said, "Then I am very weak-minded." ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... breath, while Mrs. Van Buren looked at him with entirely new sensations from what she had before experienced. There was some delicacy of feeling in his nature, after all—something which recoiled from her unwomanly attack upon his weak-minded brother—and she respected him at that moment, if she had never done so before. Something like shame, too, she felt for her cruel taunt, which had both roused and wounded him, and she would gladly have recalled all she said of Andy if she could, for she remembered now ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... always been a favourite weapon of theologians, and it is a very effective weapon against weak-minded, or ignorant, or superstitious, or ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... Cadiz had a privilege by which they had the right of receiving all merchandise coming from the West Indies. Now, to disembark these ingots at the port of Vigo was depriving them of their rights. They complained at Madrid, and obtained the consent of the weak-minded Philip that the convoy, without discharging its cargo, should remain sequestered in the roads of Vigo until the enemy ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... it may seem, I had a sort of weak-minded curiosity to see my sister once more." He walked over to the table, took a cigarette and lighted it, then stood regarding the burning match in his fingers. "She's the last of the family; I'll probably ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... sensations as to a thing believed and a thing known. If a man tells you that grass is red and the sky yellow, you merely think him color blind—It does not anger you nor alter your opinion. If he tells you that two and two make ten, you think him ignorant, weak-minded, but your view is not changed, nor are you enraged by him. But if he contradicts you on some religious dogma you are hurt and angry. Why? As a matter of direct ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... the cabin, Croft walked thoughtfully for a few moments, wondering what in the world the old woman could have meant by her strange words and gift to him. Concluding, however, that they could have been nothing but the drivelings of weak-minded old age, he dismissed them from his mind and turned his attention to his companion. "We were speaking," he said, "of Mr Null. Do you expect ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... he left France alone. Yet France was wretched, because when the wise Charles V. died in 1380, he left two children, Charles the Dauphin, and his brother, Louis of Orleans. They were only little boys, and the Dauphin became weak-minded; moreover, they were both in the hands of their uncles. The best of these relations, Philip, Duke of Burgundy, died in 1404. His son, John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, was the enemy of his own cousin, Louis of Orleans, brother of the Dauphin Charles, who was now king, under the title ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... I felt horrified to think what mischief I had done by being so weak-minded as to let her copy my work. Mabel Smith was white. But ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... had not been asked because, having quarreled with the Government of Athens, he had left that town. The thought that Alcibiades might have proved a true friend did not soften Timon's bitter feeling. He was too weak-minded to discern the fact that good cannot be far from evil in this mixed world. He determined to see nothing better in all mankind than the ingratitude of Ventidius ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... Mrs. Hamilton was convinced were completely the fruits of mistaken management. From being merely hasty, her passionate anger and hatred of her governess had now increased to such height, as to be really alarming not only to her weak-minded mother, but to Mrs. Hamilton, who, however, was certainly never aware of their extent; for before her Lilla was generally gentle and controlled. Something always occurred to call forth these bursts of passion in Lady Helen's presence, and consequently, the actual conduct of Lilla confirmed ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... with a craze, sir,' said Mr. Dick, 'a simpleton, a weak-minded person—present company, you know!' striking himself again, 'may do what wonderful people may not do. I'll bring them together, boy. I'll try. They'll not blame me. They'll not object to me. They'll not mind what ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... of Francis, and after he had learned that the sacrifice of Claude would not help him, he grew desperate, and determined to keep the English girl in his court at any price and by any means. So he hit upon the scheme of marrying her to his weak-minded cousin, the Count of Savoy. To that end he sent a hurried embassy to Henry VIII, offering, in case of the Savoy marriage, to pay back Mary's dower of four hundred thousand crowns. He offered to help Henry in the matter of the imperial crown in case of Maximilian's ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... feelings which might be expressed without the preliminary unmanning of aestheticism; and his distinction lies in the fact that he uttered them with vehemence and intensity. In Victorian times the average citizen thought of poetry as a somewhat weak-minded, effeminate pursuit—as very often it was. The poet who might be persuaded of the sublimity of his calling had necessarily to steel himself against the abuse of the matter-of-fact persons who have no traffic ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... therefore, should never be in the hands of the wicked or foolish, any more than firearms. It is potential or otherwise, in exact proportion to the artist's wisdom and dynamic mentality, and is useless in the hands of the idiotic or weak-minded. A Magic Wand requires brains and vigorous mental force to make it effective, just as the steam engine requires an apparatus for generating the steam, that moves it. With a determined will, and a mental conception of one's inward power, ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... for political power in the lobbies of Congress, that for money, the majority for husbands: they were wits, litterateurs, society women. But for a young girl to jog on from year to year striving neither for knowledge nor lovers, making her world of the whims and wants of a weak-minded old man, composedly building up every day models which she knew would prove failures to-morrow,—here was a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... were felt in the domestic circle. Like animals that hate the light and crawl out from their hiding-places when the world is abandoned by man, the members of those impious gatherings passed their nights in mysterious conclave. Fancy can paint the scene: weak-minded men of every shade of unbelief, men of dishonest and immoral sentiments, men who, if justice had her due, should have swung on the gallows or eked out a miserable existence in some criminal's cell, joined in league to ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... Even if I were a victim to that foolish disorder, I hardly see why the fact should arouse a feeling of terror in your breast. Only weak-minded ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... lunatics, reasoning, if they reason at all, in a manner too treacherous and devious for human comprehension. Their very usefulness, the service they render man, is founded on their own folly; were it not for that, man could not even catch them, let alone force them to submit, like weak-minded ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... school miss instead of a middle-aged woman. He doesn't love you. He wants a housekeeper and a governess. You don't love him. You want to be 'Mrs.'—you are one of those weak-minded women who think it's a disgrace to be ranked as an old maid. That's all there is ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... not feel some emotions of regret for his precipitate action. But, having assumed so decided a position in the matter, he could not think of retracing a step that he had taken. Hasty and positive men are generally weak-minded, and this weakness usually shows itself in a pride of consistency. If they say a thing, they will persevere in doing it, right or wrong, for fear that others may think them vacillating, or, what they really are, weak-minded. Just such ...
— Lessons in Life, For All Who Will Read Them • T. S. Arthur
... is not exactly what you want. He does not enjoy the trouble of laying before you a variety of things to choose from, and except in first-class shops he does not seem to care much whether you buy or not. The result often is, that you either are strong-minded enough not to buy at all, or so weak-minded as to take das erste beste that is put before you. Either is unsatisfactory. So far has this custom of knowing everything proceeded, that at a leading dressmaking establishment in Melbourne when a friend of mine was ordering a dress, the fitter after the lady had chosen the ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... too much hard work about it for him. He soon gives up trying it at all, and prefers to eke out an uncertain existence by sponging upon good-natured old Irish women and generous but weak-minded young artisans who have left their native village to follow him and enjoy the advantage of his ...
— Stage-Land • Jerome K. Jerome
... and more had gone by since that night on which I sat opposite to a wine-glass full of poison and was the prey of visions, when once again I received a call from Stephen Strong. With this good-hearted, though misguided man, and his amiable, but weak-minded wife, I had kept up an intimacy that in time ripened into genuine friendship. On every Sunday night, and sometimes oftener, I took supper with them, and discussed with Mrs. Strong the important questions of our descent from the ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... about Mr. Wilde was that a man of his marvellous intelligence and knowledge should have such a head. It was flat and pointed, like the heads of many of those unfortunates whom people imprison in asylums for the weak-minded. Many called him insane, but I knew him to be as ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... has discovered coal on his property, and by threatening him with arrest has gained a complete ascendency over the weak-minded old man. However, the fact remains that his daughter was married by me to M. d'Epernay some ten or twelve days ago ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... measures that would lead to difficulty or collision, to cries, complaints to the mother, or any of those other forms of commotion or annoyance, which ungoverned children know so well how to employ in gaining their ends. The mother may be one of those weak-minded women who can never see any thing unreasonable in the crying complaints made by their children against other people. Or she may be sick, and it may be very important to avoid every thing that could agitate ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... Epicurean Velleius, when he shrunk with horror from the "sempiternus dominus" and "curiosus Deus" of the Stoics. Such, surely, was the meaning of Tacitus, Suetonius, and Pliny. And hence, of course, the frequent reproach cast on Christians as credulous, weak-minded, and poor-spirited. The heathen objectors in Minucius and Lactantius speak of their "old-woman's tales." Celsus accuses them of "assenting at random and without reason," saying, "Do not inquire, but believe." ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... men very subtle and dangerous, well acquainted with the Languages, and able to twist you round their Little Fingers with False Rhetoric and Lying Persuasions. These Snakes in the grass got about my poor weak-minded Master, although we, as True Protestants and Faithful Servants, did our utmost to keep them out; but if you closed the Door against 'em, they would come in at the Keyhole, and if you made the Window fast, they would slip down the Chimney; and, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... truth, which alone constitutes the truth, incapacitates you from ever making an impression on the sober reason and sound common sense of the world. You may seduce thousands—you can convince no one. Whenever and wherever you or the advocates of your cause can arouse the passions of the weak-minded and the ignorant, and bringing to bear with them the interests of the vicious and unprincipled, overwhelm common sense and reason—as God sometimes permits to be done—you may triumph. Such a triumph we have witnessed in Great Britain. But I trust it is far distant here; nor can it, from its ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... problem studied in the book with such artistic fineness and scientific thoroughness is personally a certain Mrs. Hunter, who manages through the weak-minded and selfish Kitty Morrow to work her way to authority in the household of Kitty's uncle, where she displaces Mary Fairthorne, and makes the place odious to all the kith and kin of Kitty. Intellectually, she is a clever woman, or rather, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... fancied superiority of these knowing girls! They laughed at Rose because she was so much more like what God meant a woman should be than they. A weak-minded, shallow girl would have succumbed to their ridicule, and soon have become like them, but high-spirited Rose only despised them, and gradually sought out and found some companionship with those of the better sort in the large store. But ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... was no longer strange, but mournfully familiar—it was Martha Taylor on every lineament. I shall try to find a moment to see her again. She lives in a poor but clean and neat little lodging. Her mother seems a somewhat weak-minded woman, who can be no companion to her. Her father has quite deserted his wife and child, and this poor little, feeble, intelligent, cordial thing wastes her brains to gain a living. She is twenty-five years old. I do not intend to stay here, at the furthest, more ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... instilling their doctrine, that safety and life could only be ensured by submission to their chief; and they succeeded so well, that soon, instead of desiring to proceed to Switzerland, the major part of the multitude, weak-minded women, and dastardly men, desired to return to Paris, and, by ranging themselves under the banners of the so called prophet, and by a cowardly worship of the principle of evil, to purchase respite, as they hoped, from impending ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... details concerning the poet's private life. In consequence, the book is a deplorable one in many respects, and no plain-minded person can read it without feeling sorry that our sweet singer should be presented to us in the guise of a weak-minded hypocrite. One critic wrote a great many pages in which he bemoans the dreary and sordid family-life of the man who wrote the "Ode to the West Wind." I can hardly help sympathizing with the critic, for indeed Shelley's proceedings rather test the patience of ordinary mortals, who do not ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... grew weak-minded, his relatives, after a long palaver, decided that for once the time-honoured customs of the land should be overridden, and since there was no other method of treating the blind but that prescribed by precedent, he should be allowed to live in a great hut at the edge of the village ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... the top shelf of the hospital department of my library—the section devoted to literary cripples, imbeciles, failures, foolish rhymesters, and silly eccentrics—one of the least conspicuous and most hopelessly feeble of the weak-minded population of that intellectual almshouse. I open it and look through its pages. It is a story. I have looked into it once before,—on its first reception as a gift from the author. I try to recall some of the names ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... to,—who was inclined to regard the gilded splendors of the house as indicative of dangerous immorality; in restraining "Cousin" Morley Hewlett from considering the dining-room buffet as a bar for "intermittent refreshment;" and in keeping the weak-minded nephew, Phinney Spindler, from shooting at bottles from the veranda, wearing his uncle's clothes, or running up an account in his uncle's name for various articles at the general stores. Yet the unlooked-for arrival of ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... you may afterwards call me weak-minded and jealous? No, no, I will prove that this letter gave me no umbrage, and though you kindly allow me to read it, to justify myself, I ...
— Don Garcia of Navarre • Moliere
... friends," and the Doctor struck the table near him a mighty blow with his fist by way of emphasis, "that God can use no man who feels his own importance, and is inclined to take all the glory to himself. He is simply a weak-minded bungler, who gets into the way and frustrates whatever designs God might otherwise ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... she had chosen to represent a character now superfluous and out of date—the Lorelei who lured Teutonic yachtsmen to destruction with her singing some centuries ago. And that, in these times, was ridiculous, because, fortified by a visit to the nearest Destyn-Carr machine, no weak-minded young sailorman would care what a Lorelei might do; and she could sing her pretty head off and comb herself bald before any Destyn-Carr inoculated mariner would ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... without purpose, and altogether convinced me that, if not positively imbecile in mind and memory, there were yet some ugly symptoms of incapacity growing upon him which might one day result in the loss of both. I had always known him to be a weak-minded man, disposed to vanity and caprice, but the weakness had expanded very much in a brief period, and now presented itself to my view in sundry very salient aspects. It was easy now to divert his attention from the business which he had in hand—a single casual remark ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... had none to give her. The curtains were worn and shabby, the carpets full of holes, the furniture, though clean and well preserved, was totally insufficient. In vain the doctor assured her he had not the means; after the fashion of weak-minded women, she grumbled incessantly. On this night he felt overwhelmed with cares. The rent due the preceding June had not been paid; the gas and coal accounts were still unsettled; the butcher had sent in his "little bill;" the baker had looked anything but pleased at the ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... With a weak-minded prince, averse to anything except the gratification of his passions, and under the influence of such counsellors, France became almost of necessity a scene of rapacity beyond all precedent. The princes of the blood continued in their exclusion from official ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... 4. Coitus only with her husband before myself. Not very passionate. I know nothing about masturbation or homosexuality in her case. Very broad hips, large breasts, and well-developed nates. Deserted by her husband. No children. Rather foolish and weak-minded. Penetration difficult owing to ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... being as obstinate as a mule, was not likely to tell Cargrim anything he desired to learn. Bell, detesting the chaplain, as she took no pains to conceal, would probably refuse to hold a conversation with him; but Mrs Mosk, being weak-minded and ill, might be led by dexterous questioning to tell all she knew. And what she did know might, in Cargrim's opinion, throw more light on Jentham's connection with the bishop. Therefore, the next morning, Cargrim called on the archdeacon's ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... He spoke hastily, jerkily, as a man not sure of himself. "No doubt his life was Government property, and he had no right to risk it. Still he did it, and I am weak-minded enough to be grateful. My own life may be worthless; at least, it was then. And I would not have survived my Goorkhas. But he saved them, too. That, odd as it may seem to you, made all ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... Mrs. Twemlow's cheeks as she spoke of her mysterious affliction; and her husband, who knew that she was not weak-minded, consoled her by ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... associate vice with eyeglasses. So in a large city she would have passed for a well-dressed, prosperous, comfortable wife and mother who was in danger of losing her figure from an overabundance of good living; but with us she was a town character, like Old Man Givins, the drunkard, or the weak-minded Binns girl. When she passed the drug-store corner there would be a sniggering among the vacant-eyed loafers idling there, and they would leer at each other ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... man's hand slapped his back and the mouth parted to show ugly blackened teeth and the old man laughed so hard spittle spotted his beard. "As if you didn't know," he managed to say. "As if you didn't know, Martin Pinzon. It's that weak-minded sailor again, the one who claims to have a charter for three caravels from the Queen herself. Drunk as Bacchus and there's his pretty little daughter trying to get him to come home again. I tell you, Martin Pinzon, if he ...
— My Shipmate—Columbus • Stephen Wilder
... an appearance in the caricatures of the early part of the century. This was the renowned "Romeo" Coates, a vain, weak-minded gentleman, who had an absolute passion for figuring on the boards as Romeo, Lothario, Belcour, and other romantic characters, for which his personal appearance and lack of brains altogether unfitted him. His "readings," like himself, being of the most original character, ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... any girl," Dick retorted, sensibly, "and I think a fellow is weak-minded to talk about having a girl until he can also talk authoritatively on the ability to support a wife. But there's a good deal of social life going on at the High School, Mr. Pollock, and I'm very, very glad of this chance ...
— The High School Pitcher - Dick & Co. on the Gridley Diamond • H. Irving Hancock
... wouldn't have gone with him in the fust place. And he wa'n't real loony, nuther. 'Twas only when he got aboard that—that ungodly, kerosene-smellin', tootin', buzzin', Old Harry's gocart of his that the craziness begun to show. There's so many of them weak-minded city folks from the Ocean House comes perusin' 'round summers, nowadays, that I cal'lated he was just an average specimen, and never ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the impression made on me was concerned, it was the same as though he had said: 'Do you understand what an idiot you have been not to take that cardinal point into consideration at all? Open your Bible and read, and see how like a weak-minded ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... I did feel so glad that it was over. A whole year almost he never broke out, but took his food quietly when he came home from work, and then crawled into bed. All that time he broke nothing; he just slept and slept; at last I believed he had become weak-minded, and I was glad for him, for he had peace from those terrible ideas. I believed he had quieted down after all his disgraces, and would take life as it came; as the rest of his comrades do. And now he's broken out again ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... study. We also find that Hispanus discovered on an altar dedicated to Hermes a book on Cheiromancy, written in gold letters, which he sent as a present to Alexander the Great, as "a study worthy of the attention of an elevated and enquiring mind." Instead of it being followed by the "weak-minded," we find, on the contrary, that it numbered amongst its disciples such men of learning as Aristotle, Pliny, Paracelsus, Cardamis, Albertus Magnus, the Emperor Augustus, and ...
— Palmistry for All • Cheiro
... daughter, Freydis, with her husband and his two brothers. Freydis is described as a cruel, hard-hearted, enterprising woman, "mindful only of gain." The chronicle says her husband, named Thorvald, was "weak-minded," and that she married him because he was rich. During the voyage she contrived to destroy her husband's brothers and seize their ship, for which evil deed she was made to feel her brother Leif's anger on her return. The same chronicle ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... Husband and wife had long ceased to have one interest, one thought, one feeling in common; while the old affection between mother and daughter had now so large an element of bitterness mingled with it that all its original sweetness seemed lost. As for her degenerate, weak-minded, tippling father, Miss Churton regarded him with studied indifference. She never spoke of him, and tried never to think of him when he was out of the way; when she saw him, she looked through him at something beyond, as if he had no more substance than one of Ossian's ghosts, through ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... stage and the gloating of the broadsheet; they are both "the agents by which the exploits of the gay highwayman are realised before his eyes, amid a brilliant and evidently sympathising" public. We deprecate both, as tending to excite the weak-minded to gratify "the ambition of this kind of notoriety;"—and yet we say, with the Times, there should ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 20, 1841 • Various
... the wide concrete promenade around the spaceport landing pit. I came out among them and set down the hamper with my telecast cameras and recorders, wishing, as usual, that I could find some ten or twelve-year-old kid weak-minded enough to want to be a reporter when he grew up, so that I could have an apprentice to help me with ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... you. You have a great deal to do this time. You no doubt will write before Sunday. Do not flatter that wretch ——. He is a miserable, weak-minded fellow. I embrace you. ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... infidel writers, had studied the Bible quite carefully, and could argue against it in the most plausible manner. Courteous and kind to all, few could be offended at his frank avowal of infidel principles, or resent his keen, half-jovial sarcasms upon the peculiarities of some weak-minded, though sincere members of ...
— Children's Edition of Touching Incidents and Remarkable Answers to Prayer • S. B. Shaw
... Plot" was a modest attempt to blow up Parliament, the King and his Counsellors. James of Scotland, then King of England, was weak-minded and extravagant. He hit upon the efficient scheme of extorting money from the people by imposing taxes on the Catholics. In their natural resentment to this extortion, a handful of bold spirits concluded ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond
... myself; and, in my general habits of accuracy and punctuality, I am not to be beat by a clock. Moreover, my occupations have been always made to chime in with the ordinary habitudes of my fellowmen. Not that I feel the least indebted, upon this score, to my exceedingly weak-minded parents, who, beyond doubt, would have made an arrant genius of me at last, if my guardian angel had not come, in good time, to the rescue. In biography the truth is every thing, and in autobiography ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... of running counter to ladies of that class—all that we venture to assert is that she made a dead halt on the porch, looked up and down the garden, observed in an under-tone "It was raining cats and dogs yet," devices by which a weak-minded woman might have insinuated, that she had taken the subject of going home alone into consideration and thought ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... to some better retreat, showing me by many and forcible arguments how unreasonably I act in leading the life I do; but as they know, that if I escape from this evil I shall fall into another still greater, perhaps they will set me down as a weak-minded man, or, what is worse, one devoid of reason; nor would it be any wonder, for I myself can perceive that the effect of the recollection of my misfortunes is so great and works so powerfully to my ruin, that in spite of myself I become at times like a stone, without feeling or consciousness; ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... were to take advantage of your position with—with any other, I would shrug my shoulders and stand on one side, but this mad Englishman's wife, or rather his widow, has been mentally ill. She is still weak-minded, just as she is tender-hearted. I watched her as she passed through the hall with you just now. She turns to you for love as a flower to the sun after a long spell of cold, wet weather. Von Ragastein, you are a man of honour. You must find means to deal with this situation, ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... his first nocturnal visit to the spot; often, as his prototype divined, had the mimic would-be desperado sat trembling on his hoary screw, revolvers ready, while the red eyes of the coach dilated down the road; and as often had the cumbrous ship pitched past unscathed. The week-kneed and weak-minded youth was too vain to feel much ashamed. He was biding his time, he could pick his night; one was too dark, another not dark enough; he had always some excuse for himself when he regained his room, still unstained by crime; and so the unhealthy ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... part in this matter was very brief. Blinky lasted just long enough to make a great discovery, to brag about it as was Blinky's way, and then pass on to find his reward in whatever hereafter is set apart for weak-minded crooks whose heads are not hard enough to withstand the crushing ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... place, persecution comes in with double effect. It scares off some of the weak supporters, true, but it soon turns strong ones into stubborn ones. And then, presently, it changes the tide of public opinion. The great public is weak-minded; the great public is sentimental; the great public always turns around and weeps for an odious murderer, and prays for-him, and carries flowers to his prison and besieges the governor with appeals to his clemency, as soon as the ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... had said or done. There are people who fancy that in church everybody is looking at them, when in truth no mortal is taking the trouble to do so. It is an amusing, though irritating sight, to behold a weak-minded lady walking into church and taking her seat under this delusion. You remember the affected air, the downcast eyes, the demeanor intended to imply a modest shrinking from notice, but through which there shines the real desire, "Oh, for any sake, look at ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... between his conscience and God, whether he should press to an extremity any and every doctrine, though tending to the instant disorganization of society. To lecture against war, and against taxes as directly supporting war, would wear a most colorable air of truth amongst all weak-minded persons. And these would soon appear to have been but the first elements of confusion under the improved views of spiritual rights. The doctrines of the Levellers in Cromwell's time, of the Anabaptists in Luther's time, would exalt themselves upon the ruins of society, if governments ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... attention. Weakness, and fasting, and horror had overpowered a delicate body and a sensitive mind, and he lay senseless by the shattered relic of happier times. Antoine, the gaoler (a weak-minded man whom circumstances had made cruel), looked at him with indifference while the Jacobin remained in the place, and with half-suppressed pity when he had gone. The place where he lay was a hall or passage ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... stung with compunction and considerable shame. Horace would be furious when he knew; more furious with Edith than Lucia. Therefore Edith was furious with Sophia Roots, the cause of this disaster, who must have known that even if Lucia was too weak-minded to refuse her most improper invitation, that invitation ought never to have been given. Edith had her pride, the pride of all the Jewdwines and the Hardens; and her private grievances gave way before a family catastrophe. She did not want Lucia at Hampstead; but at all cost to herself Lucia ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... friend. She did more than that; she married her son to his second daughter, the Lady Anne. However agreeable this marriage was to the new friends, it was very disagreeable to the Duke of Clarence, who perceived that his father-in- law, the King-Maker, would never make him King, now. So, being but a weak-minded young traitor, possessed of very little worth or sense, he readily listened to an artful court lady sent over for the purpose, and promised to turn traitor once more, and go over to his brother, King Edward, when a fitting ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... no more?" sobbed Clarinda, for she was weak-minded, and could not bear to think that Bony never, never let ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... the whole figure. What do you say to beginning anew and building such a house as no mortal ever built before—something to make everybody wonder what manner of people they are who live in such a habitation—something to convince our neighbors that we are no weak-minded time-servers, but are able to be an architectural as well as domestic law unto ourselves—something to make them stop and stare—a sort of local Greenwich from which the community will reckon their longitude—'so many miles from the ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... married an Italian woman of questionable antecedents, and was the father of a large family. Three hundred and ten of his descendants are mentioned, of whom many are still young. Of these 310, 74 died in early childhood, 55 are or were vagabonds, 58 were weak-minded or idiotic and 23 were criminals. Fifty-two were of illegitimate birth. Although some are counted in more than one category, the record is appalling. In this family however, the marriages were nearly all with foreign women, and the effect of consanguinity ...
— Consanguineous Marriages in the American Population • George B. Louis Arner
... of afflicted persons, bent upon playing with long sticks and bits of wood, now invaded the upper deck. Their weak-minded cries filled the air. ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... the first day she shows aggressively red eyes and a damp pocket-handkerchief; the second day she writes lengthy letters home, begging to be allowed to return immediately and have lessons with a private governess; the third day she wanders about, trying to get sympathy from anyone who is weak-minded enough to listen to her, till in desperation somebody drags her into the playground, and makes her have a round at hockey. That cheers her up, and she begins to think life isn't quite such a desert. By the ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... but these," added Nisida, glancing toward Flora, "would now be painful to unfold. And yet," she continued, hastily, as a second thought struck her, "it is impossible, my sweet Flora, that you can be weak-minded—for you have this day seen and heard enough to test your mental powers to the extreme possibility of their endurance. Moreover, I feel that my conduct toward you requires a complete justification; and that justification will be found ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... school nor home brings to him any knowledge of the great hymns of religion.[15] In the churches that use these hymns the child is frequently not in the Sunday services; he is in the children's service or the school, while in the majority of churches a weak-minded endeavor for amusement has substituted meaningless rag-time trivialities for rich and dignified hymns. Perhaps the custom of encouraging congregations to jig, dance, cavort, or drone through the frivolities of "popular" gospel songs is only a passing craze, but ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... bore a whole family, and they were singing, 'Nearer my God to Thee.' In the midst of their song the raft struck a large tree and went to splinters. There were one or two wild cries and then silence. The horror of that time is with me day and night. It would have driven a weak-minded person crazy. ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... the unworthiness with which I had stood before this girl who had so trusted to my magnanimity, appraising her like a sensualist when I should have been on my knees before her. A reaction of compunctious loyalty made my very heartstrings ache. I saw now how well it had been for a weak-minded fool like myself that she had not chanced to be beautiful or even pretty, for then I should have cheated myself of all that distinguished this solemn meeting from the merest lover's antics. I won in that moment an impression ...
— A Positive Romance - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... that Plum and Jasniff and Merwell were!" cried Phil. "He was one of the weak-minded kind who thought it was smart to follow the others in ...
— Dave Porter and His Double - The Disapperarance of the Basswood Fortune • Edward Stratemeyer
... to be dreadful careful an' not lose him," urged Mrs. Topliff. "Yes, sir; he 's a proper coon dog as ever walked the earth, but he's terrible weak-minded about followin' 'most anybody. 'Bijah used to travel off twelve or fourteen miles after him to git him back, when he wa'n't able. Somebody 'd speak to him decent, or fling a whip-lash as they drove by, an' off he 'd canter on three legs right after the wagon. But 'Bijah said he wouldn't trade him ...
— The Queen's Twin and Other Stories • Sarah Orne Jewett
... Adolph of Schaumburg-Lippe, son of Prince George of that ilk, the prince at that time serving as Captain of Hussars at Bonn. Soon afterwards, Emperor William learning that Prince Waldemar of Lippe was dying, took advantage of the fact that he was rather weak-minded to induce him to sign a species of will bequeathing the regency of the principality at his death to Prince Adolph of Schaumburg-Lippe, the next heir to the throne of Lippe; his brother Alexander of Lippe being an incurable lunatic. On ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... or idleness but their own; at least, it is safe to say that few well-regulated and economically administered modern charities would have the patience of the Abbot of Clairvaux, who, instead of calling up the weak-minded tombeor and sending him back to the world to earn a living by his profession, went with his informant to the crypt, to see for himself what the strange report meant. We have seen at Chartres what a crypt may be, and how easily one might ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... so much shocked Lionel; for he held that most subtle and perilous of all views partaking of unbelief,—that Christianity was the best and most beautiful form of religion yet promulgated, that it was all very well now for women and weak-minded people, and it was a step to some wonderful perfectibility, which was a sort of worship of an ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... mistress named Miss Gregory—removed to Dublin, and sent for his son to join him. He seemed very fond of the boy, and the woman Gregory for a time pretended to share in this affection, until she conceived the idea of supplanting him. She easily persuaded her weak-minded lover to go through the form of marriage with her, under the pretence that his wife was dead, took the title of Lady Altham, and fancied that some of her own possible brood might succeed to the title, for the estates were by this time well-nigh ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... her influence over her. She cut short her visit to her at this point, and returned home uncomfortable and disturbed, wishing she had never offered the shelter of her roof to her nephew's unhappy and weak-minded wife. ...
— Brought Home • Hesba Stretton
... I'd want you to sit up all night sewing clothes to wear to your school-teaching when you can buy better ones already made that have real style. It tickles me that some women have learned that it's weak-minded to massage and paraffine their wrinkles out—those things, Sylvia, strike me as downright immoral. What I've been wondering is whether I can do anything for the kind of girls we have at Elizabeth House beyond giving them a place to sleep, and I guess you've struck the idea with that word efficiency. ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... child, while drunkenness in the father may impel epilepsy, or mania, in the son. Ungoverned passions in the parents may unloose the furies of unrestrained madness in the minds of their children, and the bad treatment of the wife may produce sickly or weak-minded children. ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... smiled, and made three gestures, without saying a word: first she pointed to herself, then she shook her forefinger, and lastly she jerked her thumb back in the direction of the door that led to the Senator's apartments. The weak-minded body was not Pina, but her master, since he had brought that handsome singer to teach Ortensia, who had never before exchanged two words with any young man, handsome or plain, except under the nose of the Senator himself; and that had always been at those great festivals to which the Venetian nobles ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... Bill both for brevity and because the description is strictly accurate. It is, quite simply and literally, a Bill for incarcerating as madmen those whom no doctor will consent to call mad. It is enough if some doctor or other may happen to call them weak-minded. Since there is scarcely any human being to whom this term has not been conversationally applied by his own friends and relatives on some occasion or other (unless his friends and relatives have been lamentably lacking in spirit), ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... Weak-minded folly magnifies All that is rare and strange, And the dull herd's o'erwhelmed with awe At unexpected change. But wonder leaves enlightened minds, When ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... rather large sum of money in his pocket, he travelled on foot for pleasure. He was a good-tempered fellow, and not without wit, but so very thoughtless and flighty that people looked upon him as being rather weak-minded. His doublet buttoned awry, his periwig flying to the wind, his hat under his arm, he followed the banks of the Seine, at times finding enjoyment in his own thoughts and again indulging in snatches of song; up at daybreak, supping at wayside inns, and always charmed with this stroll of ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... not give him credit for his discovery nor even for his apparent innocence. It was, as the captain had said, a serious business, and Uncle Sam was taking no chances where spies and traitors were concerned. Probably they thought Tom was a weak-minded tool ...
— Tom Slade on a Transport • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... laughed, even in her disgust. "I am not weak-minded, Babe, but those things do not appeal ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... became weak-minded, and babbled of cooling streams of water and delicious food until Ned Scudd, losing all patience, threatened to throw the nervous man overboard if he did not cease. This had the effect of ...
— Bob the Castaway • Frank V. Webster
... yer dance an' Gander-Pullin' I'm pirootin' about the Center when I meets up with Jule James;—Jule bein' the village belle. "Goin' to the dance?" says Jule. "No," says I. "Why ever don't you go?" asks Jule. "Thar ain't no girl weak-minded enough to go with me," I replies; "I makes a bid for two or three but gets the mitten." This yere last is a bluff. "Which I reckons now," says Jule, givin' me a look, "if you'd asked me, I'd been fool enough to ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... you. As to the real thing in hypnotism, however, thar arises as I recalls eevents but few examples in Arizona. The Southwest that a-way ain't the troo field for them hypnotists, the weak-minded among the pop'lation bein' redooced to minimum. Now an' then of course some hypnotic maverick, who's strayed from the eastern range, takes to trackin' 'round among us sort o' blind an' permiscus. ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... America like a plague of locusts, the wicked unbaptized Antichrist at the head of them, waving a cross held in reversed fashion. Don't ask me the meaning of this crazy symbolism. The sect to which my mother's friend belonged—God bless her, for she was a dear weak-minded lady—must have set great store by these signs. I admit that as a boy they scared me. Sitting here now, after forty years, I can still see those cryptograms. However, to my tale. About ten years ago I was in Paris, and in my capacity as Monsignor ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... Princeton Theological College. There was in one corner in a waste-room at least two cart-loads of old books in a cobwebbed dusty pile. Out of that pile I raked the thirteenth known copy of Blind Harry's famed poem, a black-letter Euphues Lely, an Erra Pater (a very weak-minded friend actually shamed me out of making a copy of this great curiosity, telling me it was silly and childish of me to be so pleased with old trash), and many more marvels, which were so little esteemed in Princeton, that ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... his jackass, let me recommend him, instead of beating it, to slay and eat it. Donkey is now all the fashion. When one is asked to dinner, as an inducement one is told that there will be donkey. The flesh of this obstinate, but weak-minded quadruped is delicious—in colour like mutton, firm and savoury. This siege will destroy many illusions, and amongst them the prejudice which has prevented many animals being used as food. I can most solemnly assert that I never wish to taste a better ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... mercenaries. And surely we must suppose, that Paeonians and Illyrians, and all such people, would rather be free and independent than under subjection; for they are unused to obedience, and the man is a tyrant. So report says, and I can well believe it; for undeserved success leads weak-minded men into folly; and thus it appears often, that to maintain prosperity is harder than to acquire it. Therefore must you, Athenians, looking on his difficulty as your opportunity, assist cheerfully in the war, sending embassies where required, ...
— The Olynthiacs and the Phillippics of Demosthenes • Demosthenes
... standards of equity simply to economize his moral effort, not because there is anything true or sublime about justice, but because he knows he is too egoistic and weak-minded and obsessed to do any perfect thing at all, because he cannot trust himself with his own transitory emotions unless he trains himself beforehand to observe a predetermined rule. There is scarcely an eventuality in life that without the help of these generalizations ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... of this afternoon, I might have expected this; but I did not," the principal began. "You appear to have intimidated Poodles to such an extent that he has entirely modified and reversed the statements he made this afternoon. He is a weak-minded boy, and it was not difficult ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic
... an indolent, weak-minded man, had promised Mr. Brooke the government of the country; but, among other obstacles with which he would have to contend in accepting it, I do not think my friend calculated on jealousy, low cunning, and treachery, or the dangerous enemy ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... fell from the fence unheeded; the stovepipe smoked, and the chickens laid away in the neighbor's yard. The house assumed the appearance of a deserted sty. Divorce was suggested inwardly—that modern refuge to which the weak-minded flee in seeking a drastic cure for a temporary ailment; and all this disruption in two hearts which had tripped along together so smoothly and pleasantly. Surely love, misapplied, is a curse. It is surely sometimes ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... return to crime on their discharge; incapable of resisting temptation: while prisoners, they are perpetually involved in difficulties. A very bad man will pass through the different stages of his sentence without reproach, while the weak-minded are involved in endless infractions of discipline and successive punishments. Nothing retards the release of the artful villain when his time is expired, while the warm and incautious, but better man, accumulates a catalogue ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... with this snake and, his weak-minded brother?" asked Jeff dryly. "Tie 'em up and ship 'em ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock
... "Anatol," saw nothing but a rather weak-minded restlessness in woman's inconstancy, recognizes in "Intermezzo" woman's right to as complete a knowledge of life and its possibilities as any man may acquire. The same note is struck by Johanna in "The Lonely Way." ...
— The Lonely Way—Intermezzo—Countess Mizzie - Three Plays • Arthur Schnitzler
... opportunities were few. She coaxed her teacher to let her study book-keeping, and took one disagreeable lesson in its first principles; but she accomplished nothing else that day except the putting of a general check upon weak-minded inclinations to be frolicsome. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - No 1, Nov 1877 • Various
... lavished in favour of Lucullus and the artless multitude in praise of Pompeius. Pompeius in particular consented to be praised, and praised himself, in such a fashion that people might almost have reckoned him still more weak-minded than he really was. If the Mytilenaeans erected a statue to him as their deliverer and founder, as the man who had as well by land as by sea terminated the wars with which the world was filled, such a homage might not seem too extravagant ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... answer. "Let us get at once to the point. I am planning to go into the work long carried on by that weak-minded Colonization Society; but on certain ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... coninga to its superior cunning; and this latter quality may probably be attributed to the habitual exercise of all its faculties in avoiding extirpation by man, as well as to nearly all the less cunning or weak-minded rats having been continuously destroyed by him. It is, however, possible that the success of the common rat may be due to its having possessed greater cunning than its fellow- species, before it became associated with man. To maintain, independently of any direct evidence, that no animal ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... write? This on the top of everything else! Are even my printers conspiring against me? Well, even if it ruins me, I shall go on! They shall find out what I can do. How on earth can I be expected to help it if a weak-minded fellow dies, or if my printers are drunk or my manager has delirium tremens! I shall pursue my end through all chances and in spite of all their tricks, and I shall crush them, crush them—I shall—. (Gives way to a paroxysm of rage. At this moment the MAID comes ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... manage her companions. Miss Wentworth, who had been very pretty in her youth, was now a beautiful old lady, with snow-white hair and the most charming smile; and Miss Dora, who was only fifty, retained the natural colour of her own scanty light-brown locks, which wavered in weak-minded ringlets over her cheeks; but Miss Leonora was iron-grey, without any complexion in particular, and altogether a harder type of woman. It was she who held in her hands the fate of Skelmersdale and of Frank ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... place, and this truth is being gradually put into practice in the education of the weak-minded and of the physically defective, sound physical health is one of the conditions of right moral activity. This truth Rousseau emphasised when he declared: "that the weaker the body, the more it commands; ...
— The Children: Some Educational Problems • Alexander Darroch
... in the face. He was old and bald and appeared weak-minded. His age protected his impudence. I turned my back on him. Then my eyes fell on the cat again. She was still ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... to think that a schoolmaster will find it better in the long run, for both the character and morals of his school, if he is not too anxious to play the detective, and refrains from encouraging the more weak-minded or cowardly boys to save themselves ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... into superior men, true mothers do not like this forced abdication; they would rather keep their children small and still requiring protection. Perhaps that is the secret of their predilection for feeble, deformed, or weak-minded offspring. ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... tinkling works of the music- cart, I DID find out, to be made of quill tooth-picks and wire; and I always thought that little tumbler in his shirt sleeves, perpetually swarming up one side of a wooden frame, and coming down, head foremost, on the other, rather a weak-minded person—though good-natured; but the Jacob's Ladder, next him, made of little squares of red wood, that went flapping and clattering over one another, each developing a different picture, and the whole enlivened by small bells, was ...
— Some Christmas Stories • Charles Dickens
... I should tell her you are weak-minded enough to be jealous, she would immediately disown such a ...
— The Love-Tiff • Moliere
... She smiled to herself—the comment of the younger generation upon the older. Sin it might have been; but, worse than that, it was a stupidity—to let a man make a fool of her. Lorella must have been a poor weak-minded creature. ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... already of the mental suggestions planes—mere force planes—plus a wonderfully developed power of suggestion. They do most of their damage by mental impression. Remember, we have heard already of the mental suggestions of horrible things that drove one fleet of the weak-minded colonists mad. ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... had found his elder son again he began to dote upon him, as in such a case the old and weak-minded often do, and would walk about the gardens and palaces with his arm around his neck babbling to him of whatever was uppermost in his mind. Moreover, his soul was oppressed because he had done Kari ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard
... teaching that the prophecies refer to events yet to occur, are perpetuating a most stupendous fraud upon Christendom, and an earnest and efficient protest should be inaugurated against the further agitation of the monstrous delusion of second adventism, which is frightening thousands of weak-minded people into insanity and causing a vast ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill
... lived a Negro, named Henry Smith, a well-known character, a kind of roustabout, who was generally considered a harmless, weak-minded fellow, not capable of doing any important work, but sufficiently able to do chores and odd jobs around the houses of the white people who cared to employ him. A few days before the final tragedy, this man, Smith, was accused of murdering ...
— The Red Record - Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... stuck to his last as Mazzini did, he might have made a revolution in England. I'm not a Socialist, never was, any more than Mazzini, and there was something fine to me about the way he told these boiling, ignorant, weak-minded mobs of Italian workmen that they had duties as well as rights. There's too much talk of rights nowadays. Anybody would think that because a man works with his hands and takes wages, he's free to do as he pleases. I remember the Old Man once when I had trouble with ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... should seek it if I bought pictures. If Degas were to tell me that a picture I had intended to buy was not a good one I should not buy it, and if Degas were to praise a picture in which I could see no merit I should buy it and look at it until I did. Such confession will make me appear weak-minded to many; but this is so, because much instruction is necessary even to understand how infinitely more Degas knows than any one else can possibly know. The art patron never can understand as much about art as the ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... suffer your understanding to be lulled asleep, because the weak-minded Mr Arnott's could not be kept awake! I thought, after such cautions from me, and such experience of your own, you could not again have ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... vestments in order; on occasion, it was said, she had even served the Mass for the Abbe's predecessor. She was garrulous and ill-tempered, but was devoted to Mouret, of whom she took the greatest care, and she was also kind to his weak-minded sister, Desiree. ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... have a right to my own property," said the showily dressed lady in a tone of authority, which quite imposed upon the weak-minded salesman. ...
— Helping Himself • Horatio Alger
... impulses contending with a fatal love of admiration, holding us fascinated with a constant interest in her fate, which, with consummate skill, we are permitted rather to conjecture than to know; and Hetty, scarcely less beautiful in person, weak-minded, but wise in the midst, of that weakness beyond the wisdom of the loftiest intellect, through the power of conscience and religion. The character of Hetty would have been a hazardous experiment in feebler hands, but in his it ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... can the ministers say anything when they are the chaplains of these gilt-edged frauds called "lodges"? It does not take much calculation to show that an institution which spends three dollars in giving away one has no right to exist. Some of the more weak-minded and puerile of the clergy are doubtless in fear lest their "tongues should be torn out by the roots and their hearts buried in the rough sands of the seashore." Brave men are ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees
... superstition only; for as to the Christian religion, I respect and love it, like you. Courage, Brethren! Preach with force, and write with address: God will bless you.—Protect, you my Brother, the Widow Calas all you can! She is a poor weak-minded Huguenot, but her Husband was the victim of the WHITE PENITENTS. It is the concern of Human Nature that the Fanatics of Toulouse be confounded." (The case of Calas, SECOND act of it, getting on the scene: a case still memorable to everybody. Stupendous bit of French judicature; and Voltaire's ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle |
