"Weakness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... if we may use the expression, was by that time considerable, but he felt that it was not sufficient for the work that lay before him; besides, what knowledge he possessed could not make up for the want of a companion and a rope, while, to add to his distress, weakness, resulting partly from hunger, ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... solemn massiveness of the vast bulk towering above me, now barely thirty feet away. For the first time I realized fully the desperation of my task, and my heart sank. But the gesticulations of the wrathful guard could no longer be ignored, and, smothering an exclamation of disgust at my momentary weakness, I nerved myself ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... Who sows in weakness, cannot reap in strength, That which we plant, we gather in at length. Great God of Justice, be Thou just to me, And as my thoughts, so let my ...
— Poems of Experience • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... no means fools. He is then a medium sort of a man, and his education, reading, relations, and daily conversation have procured him a number of acquaintances whom he will try to use. Now for his mind. We know the weakness of his character; soft, feeble, vacillating, only acting in the last extremity. We have seen him shrinking from decisive steps, trying always to delay matters. He is given to being deceived by illusions, and to taking his desires for accomplished events. In short, he is a coward. And what ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... man is only too liable to have the nicety of his sensitiveness spoiled. Certainly, he had a kind heart and good principles. He would lend any man money, or give any man help,—even to the extent of weakness and imprudence. This was one reason why he died no better off,—and one reason why his friends have so much exerted themselves to pay a tribute to his memory in the shape of an addition to the provision he had made for his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... is said that we ought to interfere between contending sovereigns and their subjects for the purpose of overthrowing the monarchies of Europe and establishing in their place republican institutions. It is alleged that we have heretofore pursued a different course from a sense of our weakness, but that now our conscious strength dictates a change of policy, and that it is consequently our duty to mingle in these contests and aid those who are struggling ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume - V, Part 1; Presidents Taylor and Fillmore • James D. Richardson
... a man, soul and body, heart, hand, and spirit, stood beside the other, who was a shadow, and beside her, who was a woman—and the tragedy began in the prologue of contrast. Strength to weakness, motion to immobility, the grace and carriage of manly youth to the sad restfulness of helpless, hopeless limbs that never again could feel and bear weight; that was the contrast from which there was no escaping. On the steps of ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... defend them against a force so greatly superior in number and equipment, a part of the men are said to have left their wives, old men, and children in their forest retreat, confident that if discovered, feminine weakness and the helplessness of infancy or of extreme old age would secure better terms for them than could be hoped for in case of a brave, but ineffectual defence by unarmed men.[490] It was a confidence misplaced. Unresisting, gray-headed men were ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... his bidding; then he took up the thread of the discourse, and talked long and earnestly upon the beauty and necessity of worship—a necessity consequent upon the nature of man, upon his own weakness, and his consciousness of the Divine Spirit within him. His whole heart was stirred, and he poured himself out towards us as if he longed, like the prophet of old, to breathe a new life into us. I could see that he reproached himself for not having spoken out in this way before, but his enfranchised ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... After having been witness to those infamous actions, says he, I believed all women to be that way naturally inclined, and that they could not resist those violent desires. Being of this opinion, it seemed to me to be an unaccountable weakness in men to make themselves uneasy at their infidelity. This reflection brought many others along with it; and, in short, I thought the best thing I could do was to make myself easy. It cost me some pain indeed, but at last I effected it; and, if you will take my advice, you ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... late," said Isaura, with hollow tones, but with no trace of vacillating weakness on her brow and lips. "Did I say now to that other one, 'I break the faith that I pledged to you,' I should kill him, body and soul. Slight thing though I be, to him I am all in all; to you, Mr. Vane, to you a memory—the memory ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... rising smoke, may have drawn them from the road to investigate. Such coincidences had been. Such untoward happenings had misled people into useless self-betrayal. My case was too desperate for such weakness. Flight at this moment might save all; I would at least attempt it. The door was shaking on its hinges; these ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... yourself!" retorted the young man. "You've suited—God knows what!—your pride, your despair, your resentment." As he looked at her, the secret history of her weakness seemed to become plain to him, and he felt a mighty rage against the man who had taken a base advantage of it. "Gertrude!" he cried, "I entreat you to go back. It's not for my sake,—I'll give you up,—I'll go a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... ranks of excellent family men. He was moulded for the threshold, poor boy, neither for the revolutionary camp nor for the scaffold, and it was thwarted domestic instinct which led him to steal. There was good nature in his face and weakness; it was the face of a youth easily led, easily influenced for good or bad. As a revolutioniser of his species he was predestined to failure, for years would certainly show him the error of his ways. Old age seemed to be his proper state, and youth in him was altogether ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... confidence in woman, by the frankness to which it gives birth, and it merits indulgence by its privations. She who writes this, is not insensible to the merit of men of this bold calling. Admiration for the sea, and for those who live on it has been her weakness through life; and her visions of the future, like her recollections of the past, are not entirely exempt from a contemplation of its pleasures. The usages of different nations—glory in arms—change of scene—with constancy ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... But this burst of weakness did not continue long, for he did not forget that he was still in danger. Hastily dashing the tears from his eyes, he rose to his feet, and prepared to cross the stream. Holding his rifle and ammunition above his head with one hand, he swam with the other, reached the opposite bank ...
— Frank on a Gun-Boat • Harry Castlemon
... those colours may they shine, Free as thy stroke, yet faultless as thy line; New graces yearly like thy works display, Soft without weakness, without glaring gay; Led by some rule, that guides, but not constrains; And finish'd more through happiness than pains. The kindred arts shall in their praise conspire, One dip the pencil, and one string the lyre. 70 Yet should the Graces all thy figures place, And breathe an air divine on every ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... September 1911 she was again drawn out of her shed to be transferred to the mooring-post; in the process she broke her back, and became a total wreck. The ensuing court of inquiry pronounced that the accident was due to structural weakness; the naval officers and men ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... building, chattering about her treasures she had brought from France. "Le Bon Dieu will not let to burn up my mothair's picture—my harp—my confirmation veil—all, all I have of my youth left!" chattered the excited little Frenchwoman, and because of her distress and her weakness, Ruth helped remove the harp and likewise the featherbed on which the French teacher always slept and which had come with her from ...
— Ruth Fielding in Moving Pictures - Or Helping The Dormitory Fund • Alice Emerson
... apprehensions of the fate of Scott and Swift; whether warned by some monitory experience, or whether he had merely chanced to be thinking of the two great men who outlived themselves. To him death had come almost as a friend in the fullness of his powers; there was no touch of weakness or decay, and he was mourned like a king by his Samoans, by his family, by all who had known him, and by many thousands who had never seen his face. There was mourning at home in Scotland (where we hoped against hope that the news was untrue), in England, in Europe, in America, in Australia ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... years longer; for her life was prolonged through three full generations. 'In the intervals of domestic duty, her book and her pen were her constant companions.' 'The process of committing her thoughts to paper was rendered tedious, latterly, by the weakness and tremor of her hand; and her mind not unfrequently outran her pen, leaving blanks in her composition, which she did not always detect so as to enable her to fill them up. And this circumstance sometimes rendered her meaning a little obscure. ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... that she never had seen a person at Mrs. Kitson's advanced stage of life with such a healthy, rosy visage. But every one has some pet weakness. Mrs. Kitson's was always fancying herself ill and nervous. Now, Flora had no very benignant feelings towards the old lady's long catalogue of imaginary ailments; so she changed the dreaded subject, by inquiring after the health of the old Captain, ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... which lie in the path of all who strive to move forward and to gain higher planes. It is not possible to advance except along the road of toil, of struggle, and of suffering. We cannot emerge even from childish ignorance and weakness without experiencing a sense of loss. Mental work in the beginning and for a long time is weariness, is little better than drudgery. We labor, and there seems to be no gain; we study and there seems to be no increase of knowledge or power; and if we persevere, we are led ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... troubles, had thrown aside his plough to bear to the army far more zeal than talent. But still that diversion was too weak; and by a note which a spy who had been taken swallowed, but which was recovered by an emetic, it was seen that Clinton was aware of his own weakness. Burgoyne, abandoned by the savages, regretting his best soldiers, and Frazer, his best general, reduced to five thousand men, who were in want of provisions, wished to retreat; but it was then too late: his communications were no longer open; and it was at Saratoga, some miles in the rear of his ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... a Western city is the pivot about which the action of this clever story revolves. But it is in the character-drawing of the principals that the author's strength lies. Exciting incidents develop their inherent strength and weakness, and if virtue wins in the end, it is quite in keeping with its carefully-planned antecedents. The N.Y. Sun says: "We commend it for its workmanship—for its smoothness, its sensible fancies, and for its ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... head and tear-blinded eyes, her heart filled with weakness and pain. She was like a child justly punished, yet resenting it, and mingled with her resentment was a growing love and admiration for the man whose blunt words had bruised her soul in the ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... sleeves of the coat are all frayed at the end, The seams of the waistcoat have "started," But I have a weakness for elderly friends, And now we need never be parted; No more when I wear it shall people esteem The bardlet in need of compassion; They'll merely consider him rather extreme In his fervent ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 1, 1914 • Various
... and from a more elevated point of view, and recognise in the number of trophies taken by the enemy, and their relation to the number of killed and wounded, only too easily and well, the measure of their own weakness and inefficiency. ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... to that extent, from a military standpoint, a sign of weakness. Another sign of weakness is the adoption of illegal methods of fighting, such as spreading poisonous gas. It is a confession by the Germans that they have lost their former great superiority in artillery and are, at any cost, seeking another ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... said that if I had died at that time, there was not a doctor in London would have approved of his treatment. He gave a description of my case some years ago, in a lecture I think at Brighton—but of course without the name. The particular weakness was valvular disease of the heart, the consequence of rheumatic fever, and this treatment was founded on the principle that Nature always works towards compensation. He told me many years ago that that particular mischief was fully ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes
... conveying the passions, by those means which we have already mentioned, fully compensate for their weakness in ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... of the Empire polygamy prevails for those who can afford it, in Tibet polyandry crops up. Which is the more offensive to good morals we need not decide; but is it not evident that Confucianism shows its weakness on one side as Buddhism does on the other? A people that tolerates either or both hardly deserves to be regarded ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... give too much to ladies. It's a weakness of mine, and that's the way I ruin myself," said old Joe. "That's your account. If you asked me for another penny, and made it an open question, I'd repent of being so liberal and knock ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... data that we, too, have somewhere disregarded, the only means of nullification that I can think of would be demonstration that this object is a mass of iron pyrites, which sometimes forms geometrically. But the analysis mentions not a trace of sulphur. Of course our weakness, or impositiveness, lies in that, by anyone to whom it would be agreeable to find sulphur in this thing, sulphur would be found in it—by our own intermediatism there is some sulphur in everything, or sulphur is only a localization or emphasis of something that, ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... the heroic plays, he confessed, even in the heat of argument, that Rhyme, though he was brave and generous, and his dominion pleasing, had still somewhat of the usurper in him. A more minute inquiry seems to have still further demonstrated the weakness of this usurped dominion; and our author's good taste and practice speedily pointed out deficiencies and difficulties, which Sir Robert Howard, against whom he defended the use of rhyme, could not show, because he never aimed at the excellencies which they impeded. The perusal of Shakespeare, ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... her hiding-place should be discovered. She was a strange compound of reckless courage and timidity—if such a compound be possible. Indignation at the man who had slighted her bosom friend Hafrydda, besides insulting herself, caused her to feel at times like a raging lion. The comparative weakness of her slight and graceful frame made her at other times feel like a helpless lamb. It was an exasperating condition! When she thought of Gunrig, she wished with all her heart and soul that she had been born a big brawny man. When she thought of Bladud, nothing could make ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... drugs have encouraged indiscriminate and unnecessary operations to such an extent that at least nine-tenths of all the surgical operations performed today are uncalled for. In most instances these ill-advised mutilations are followed by lifelong weakness and suffering, which far outweigh the temporary pains formerly endured when unavoidable operations were performed without ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... is a fawning and flexible art, which accommodates itself to human feelings, and flatters the weakness of men in order that it may ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... committees, and active in the management of details. He also had his uses as the conductor of a public press, though, owing to the erratic and ill-balanced mind of its editor, the Advocate was in some respects a source of weakness rather than of strength. His influence was pretty much confined to the farmers and mechanics of that portion of the country where his paper was chiefly circulated; and even there his influence would never have been anything like so great as it actually ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... World; but he has brought with him such an Inclination to Talebearing, that he disturbs both himself and all our Neighbourhood. Notwithstanding this Frailty, the honest Gentleman is so happy as to have no Enemy: At the same time he has not one Friend who will venture to acquaint him with his Weakness. It is not to be doubted but if this Failing were set in a proper Light, he would quickly perceive the Indecency and evil Consequences of it. Now, Sir, this being an Infirmity which I hope may be corrected, and knowing ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... testimonials, and one or two putting questions. Most of them indulgent to his embarrassment and even sharing it. Dr Ponsford, however, massive, stern, with his shaggy eyebrows and pursed mouth, was above any such weakness. ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... himself to be, the opening solemnities of the trial had nevertheless oppressed him with a vague uneasiness, his being a nature sensitive to even the smallest alarms; but from the moment that the poverty and weakness of Wilson's case lay exposed to the court, he was comfortable once more, even jubilant. He left the courtroom sarcastically sorry for Wilson. "The Clarksons met an unknown woman in the back lane," he said to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... any evil might befall the children that would bring sorrow and shame to her home; but nevertheless it came and Lucy, her youngest child, the pet and pride of the household returned home with a great sorrow tugging at her heart and a shadow on her misguided life. It was the old story of woman's weakness and folly and man's perfidy and desertion. Poor child, how wretched she was till "peace bound up her bleeding heart," and even then the arrow had pierced too deep for healing. Sorrow had wasted her strength and laid the foundation of disease and an early death. Religion brought balm to ...
— Trial and Triumph • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... returned with the men and some heavy slave-chains, and Stanley declared that if any behaved in the same way again he would fasten them together and make them march like slaves. Shaw also showed an unwillingness to go forward, and kept tumbling from his donkey, either purposely or from weakness, till at last Stanley consented to allow him to ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... agree with me in any form. We are now reduced to it alone, and we manage to get from four to five pounds a day between us. . . . It seems to give us no nutriment. . . . Starvation on nardoo is by no means very unpleasant, but for the weakness one feels and the utter inability to move oneself, for, as far as appetite is concerned, it gives me the ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... possible!" exclaimed Mr. Smalls, violently interrupting himself in the perusal of Tintinnabulum's Life, while some private signals were rapidly telegraphed between him and Mr. Larkyns; "ah! you'll soon get the better of that weakness! Now, as you're a freshman, you'll perhaps allow me to give you a little advice. The Germans, you know, would never be the deep readers that they are, unless they smoked; and I should advise you to ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... more. The stab in my upper arm had bled a little, and the shirt-sleeve could not be pulled from it without pain. He drew a pair of scissors from his side-pocket and cut the linen away from around the wound: and then, having noted my weakness, helped me to wash and dress, drew on stockings and boots for me, nor left me until he had buckled on my sword-belt, and then only with an excuse that he must change his coat before waiting at table. Sir Luke and Lady Glynn (he ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... the Czar kept upon the West, and that he was ready to crush even the smallest of those countries in which the spirit of liberty should show itself. Had San Marino lain within his reach, he would have been induced neither by its weakness nor its age to spare it. The struggle with the Circassians was long, vexatious, and costly. Finally, the Revolutions of 1848, leading, as they did, to the invasion of Hungary, in the first place, and then to the war with the Western Powers, operated to prejudice the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... two-sided character of the Irish Question and the never-to-be-forgotten inter-dependence of the sentimental and the practical in Ireland. I admit that this condition which adds to the interest of the problem, and perhaps makes it more amenable to rapid solution, is an indication of a weakness of moral fibre to which must be largely attributed our failure to be master of our circumstances. Indeed, as I come into closer touch with the efforts which are now being made to raise the material condition of the people, the more ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett
... of infatuated love was not easily exorcised. She may have been unconscious of degradation in the boundless spirit of self-sacrifice which she was willing to make for the object of her devotion, but she lost both dignity and fame. She entreated him who was now quoted as a reproach to human weakness, since the languor of passion had weakened his power and his eloquence, to sacrifice her to his fame; "to permit her no longer to adore him as a divinity who accepts the homage of his worshippers; to love her no longer, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... and powerful in this region; he also had near relatives at the imperial court; so he was able to march against the capital. The emperor in his weakness was ready to abdicate but died before that stage was reached. His son, however, defeated Wang Tun with the aid of General Yue Liang (A.D. 323). Yue Liang was the empress's brother; he, too, came from a northern family. Yuean Ti's successor also died early, and the young son of Yue Liang's sister ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... smiling. "But if I do not go, I must send," he added after a minute's silence, during which perhaps some feeling of weakness came in aid of the doctor's orders.—"And I do not think it would ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... and in all circumstances. Such an appeal failed also by discouraging the habit of thinking about the facts and problems of the day; and right-minded men like Cicero and Cato the younger both suffered from this weakness of a purely literary early training. Another drawback is that this teaching inevitably exaggerated the personal element in history, at the very time too when personalities were claiming more than ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... parted, since his last glimpse of her as the black waters swallowed the slim white figure, and seemed to laugh scornfully at its smallness and weakness. ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... next thing is to git you furder south. Wust of it is that, seein' as you got sich a weakness fur tellin' the truth, we'll jess have to sort o' slide you along fum one Union man to another; sort o' hole fass what I give ye, as you used to say yourself, I reckon. But you've got one strong holt." His eye went to his sister's, and he started away without a word, and ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... what the little grandmother would have said to such a confession of weakness. "There isn't anything in this world that you can't help," the dear old lady would say, "and if you're born with a bad temper, why, that's all the more reason you should choose to live ...
— Judy • Temple Bailey
... as I stammered in my attempts to avoid expressing the thought that hid in both our minds. My sister had a weakness for dabbling in the various "new" theories of the day, and Mabel, who before her marriage had belonged to foolish societies for investigating the future life to the neglect of the present one, had fostered this undesirable tendency. Her amiable, impressionable temperament ...
— The Damned • Algernon Blackwood
... the vial quickly to Pipelet's lips, insisted on his swallowing the contents. Alfred in vain struggled courageously: his wife, profiting by the weakness of her victim, held his head with a firm grasp in one hand, and with the other introduced the neck of the vial between his teeth, and forced him to drink the absinthe; after which she cried triumphantly: "Well done! you are again on your pins, ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... universe and the hunger and thirst of his soul for God. It is in response to the imperative necessities of his nature that he moulds for himself these outward emblems of his ideas and aspirations. Yet they are only emblems; and since, like all other human things, they partake of the ignorance and weakness of the times in which they were framed, it is inevitable that with the growth of knowledge and the expansion of thought they must presently be outgrown. When this happens, there follows what Carlyle calls the "superannuation of symbols." Men wake to ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... lose His temper with their more bigoted and narrow supporters. Especially one loves His readiness to get at the spirit of religion, sweeping aside the texts and the forms. Never had anyone such a robust common sense, or such a sympathy for weakness. It was this most wonderful and uncommon life, and not his death, which is the true centre of ...
— The New Revelation • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to us in such moods is a world of forms and shapes that we can neither modify nor obliterate. All we can do is to reflect their impact upon us and to note the pleasure of it or the pain. But when even in the depths of our weakness we come to recognize that these forms and shapes are, all of them, the bodily expressions of souls resembling our own, the nostalgia of the great darkness is perceptibly lifted and a strange hope is born, full of a significance which cannot be ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... born at Newark; was bishop of Gloucester; was author of the famous "Divine Legation of Moses," characterised by Gibbon as a "monument of the vigour and weakness of the human mind"; is a distracted waste of misapplied logic and learning; a singular friendship subsisted between the author ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... thing he realised, that even in the mad stories he had heard, when they had been divested of their madness, the chief figure in them had always stood out an honest, strong, fair thing, dwarfed by no petty feminine weakness, nor follies, nor spites. Rules she broke, decorums she defied, but in such manner as hurt none but herself. She played no tricks and laid no plots for vengeance, as she might well have done; she but went her daring, lawless way, with her head up and ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... have abashed a man whose courage had been less, or whose expectations had been greater; but Mr Morrice, though he had hazarded every danger upon the slightest chance of hope, knew too well the weakness of his claims to be confident of success, and had been too familiar with rebuffs to be much hurt by receiving them. He might possibly have something to gain, but he knew he had nothing ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... light; a fervent hand is cold; and the warmth which glowed through so many friends and disciples is like a trodden ember, extinguished." It was Celia Thaxter's hurrying footsteps which traced her friend to the spot where, in extreme weakness, he fell in death. She wrote, "It was that pretty lake where my wild roses had been blooming all summer, and where the birds dipped and sang ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... Confederacy. Of course it mattered not what was their former rank, or what service, if any they had seen, all expected places as generals. President Davis being a West Pointer himself, had great partiality for graduates of that institution. It was his weakness, this favoritism for West Pointers; and the persistency with which he appointed them above and over the generals of the volunteers, gave dissatisfaction. These appointments caused such resentment and dissatisfaction that some of our very best generals resigned their commissions, refusing to serve ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... letter I had found in his tracks, and read it aloud to him. He never told me who the writer of it was. He listened to all I had to tell him with an expression of amazement, which soon gave place to one of weariness—the weariness of utter weakness. He asked me to carry him outside into the sun, and I did so, afterwards squatting down beside him and opening up another conversation. He then told me his name was Gibson, and that he had been a member of the Giles Expedition of 1874. From that moment I never left ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... straight at her aunt as she spoke, fearing to see a look of disapprobation over her weakness; but Miss Latimer's face was as calm as ever, only the eyes seemed softer and full of such a tender, ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont
... answered, That he did not want to fight nor to have any strife with him, but to pass on with his people. And they drew nearer and invited him to come out, and defied him, saying that he feared to meet them in the field; but he set nothing by all this. They thought he did it because of his weakness, and that he was afraid of them: but what he did was ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... here anyhow," said Nancy, rolling them up in a hard ball and giving them a sudden fling at Ellen. They just missed her face and struck the wall beyond. Ellen seized them to throw back, but her weakness warned her she was not able, and a moment reminded her of the folly of doing anything to rouse Nancy, who for the present was pretty quiet. Ellen lay upon her pillow and looked on, ready to cry with vexation. All her nicely-stowed piles ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... Cadmus were now pursuing their weary way, with no companion but each other. The queen leaned heavily upon her son's arm, and could walk only a few miles a day. But for all her weakness and weariness, she would not be persuaded to give up the search. It was enough to bring tears into the eyes of bearded men to hear the melancholy tone with which she inquired of every stranger whether he could tell her any news ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... arm-chair, dressed in a black petticoat and a scarlet bedgown, sat a strong old woman. Weakness was there as well as strength, certainly, for she could not leave her chair, and the palsy of excitement was shaking her head, but the one idea conveyed by every wrinkle of the aged face and hands, by every line of the bowed figure, was strength. One brown toil-worn hand held the head of a thick ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... A, N—but, by gad, I won't give ye her name here in company. She don't live a hundred miles off, however, and she wears the prettiest cap-ribbons you ever saw. Well, well, 'tis weakness! She has little, and I have much; but I do adore that girl, in ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... their own rivers when they are punctured by nails carelessly driven too far within their borders; when the rust that corrupts the metal of which they are commonly composed has eaten their substance from the under side perhaps, their weakness undiscovered till the torrent breaks through; when they become choked with leaves and dust and overflow their banks; when they are torn asunder by their efforts to accommodate themselves to changes of temperature, and when ice cakes ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... for Mrs. Hamilton, and she paused to think what was right, and to ask for guidance from on high. It seemed to her that Arthur's dissatisfaction arose from his own weakness of spirit, rather than from anything really disagreeable in his situation. They were kind to him; he was not over-worked; could attend a good school; and would it not be an injury to him, to indulge this excessive love for home, and yield to his entreaties? Would he ever be a man, ...
— Arthur Hamilton, and His Dog • Anonymous
... been speaking a defiant pride had sprung up in her, instigating her to conceal every weakness. He had opened the carriage door and stepped out. She ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... water he could not excel nor endure, however, even in dalliance; nor persevere even when adopted as the fidus Achates of a good and beautiful woman—the poor little weather-cock. He was essentially weak, and weakness is worse than wickedness. There is hope for the strong bad man. He may become a strong good one. Your weak man can ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... had looked up to Alec as a great strong creature. Her faith in him had been unquestioning and unbounded. Even his wrong-doings had not impressed her with any sense of his weakness. But now, rejected and disgraced, his mother dissatisfied, his friend disappointed, and himself foiled in the battle of life, he had fallen upon evil days, and all the woman in Annie rose for his defence. In a moment ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... men upon the deck of a ship which has struck a rock, and consider what opportunities there would be to deplore the drowned. In Russia each plays for his own safety and does not care a rouble what becomes of the man next door. Such a fact is both our strength and our weakness—our strength because opportunities make men, and our weakness because we have no unity of plan which will enable us to fight such a combination as is now being pitted against us. I myself believe that the old order is at an end. That ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... and widely combined critical effort of Germany formed for Goethe, when he lived and worked. There was no national glow of life and thought there as in the Athens of Pericles or the England of Elizabeth. That was the poet's weakness. But there was a sort of equivalent for it in the complete culture and unfettered thinking of a large body of Germans. That was his strength. In the England of the first quarter of this century there was neither a national glow of life and thought, such as we had in the age of ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... best flavoured I had ever tasted. It resembled beef, but had a richer and sweeter taste. During the time of our stay in this part of the Cupari, we could get scarcely anything but fish to eat, and as this diet disagreed with me, three successive days of it reducing me to a state of great weakness. I was obliged to make the most of our Coaita meat. We smoke-dried the joints instead of salting them, placing them for several hours upon a framework of sticks arranged over a fire, a plan adopted by the natives to preserve fish when they have no salt, ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... the grey balustrade. With her it was a moment of weakness. She was suddenly conscious of the fact that she was no longer a young woman. The time when she might hope to find in life the actual flavour and joy of passionate living was nearing the end. And a little while ago they had seemed so near! The pity of it ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... debonnair bachelor past middle age into a penurious miser of the Blueberry-Jones type is bold, and in less skilful hands would be a blemish, but Mr. Synge has amply justified it, and admirably uses it to cement the structure of his plot. There is no weakness in any chapter, and as we read so secure do we feel in the author's strength that, had he chosen to end the story in sorrow and not in joy, we should submit as though to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... your favors of the 21st of March, in which you both seem concerned lest I have imbibed some erroneous opinions. Doubtless I have my share, and when the natural weakness and imperfection of human understanding is considered, the unavoidable influence of education, custom, books, and company, upon our ways of thinking, I imagine a man must have a good deal of vanity who believes, and a good deal ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... indeed," Latour answered, and a flush came into his face as he turned away from his visitor as though to hide some weakness in his character. "How was ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... over Leaoutung and Manchuria. The fourth and fifth of these dynasties, named the Later Hans and Chows, ran their course in less than ten years; and when the last of these petty rulers was deposed by his prime minister a termination was at last reached to the long period of internal division and weakness which prevailed for more than seven hundred and fifty years. The student reaches at this point firmer ground in the history of China as an empire, and his interest in the subject must assume a more definite form on coming to the beginning of that period of united ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... choice, it would not be a very desirable ideal, would it? And if we could get everybody to think exactly the same thoughts, to admire exactly the same things, to have exactly the same mental powers and exactly the same measure of moral strength and weakness, I do not think that would be a very desirable ideal. The world of human beings would then be just as dull and uninspiring as a waxwork show. Imagine yourself in a city where every house was exactly like ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... fact that he was a part, the centre, of any project of international emprise, questionable or otherwise, was to him the very breath of life. Innuendo, political intrigue, diplomatic tergiversation—in all these he was a master. Nor did he neglect the color, the atmosphere. Here was his weakness. Vague hints, a significant smile here, a shrug there, a lifting of the brows—all temptations too great for him to resist, had at times the effect of setting his effectiveness in certain ventures partially if not completely at naught. Temperamental proclivities ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... attempts to license the social evil are a practical confession of the weakness, profligacy and general unfitness of men to legislate for women, and should be regarded with alarm as a proof that their firesides and liberties are in constant peril while men alone make and execute ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... I do," the voice interrupted. "If I had not, I dare say I would have sat on the station platform until—until you had finished fussing with that old machine of yours. Oh! I have heard all about your pet weakness. It was by the car I identified you. But I forgive you. You have waited a whole train for me. Go on with your tinkering. Only let me have a seat in the car, and tell the agent to bring ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... the moment they set foot in Italy, they are seized with the ambition of becoming connoisseurs in painting, musick, statuary, and architecture; and the adventurers of this country do not fail to flatter this weakness for their own advantage. I have seen in different parts of Italy, a number of raw boys, whom Britain seemed to have poured forth on purpose to bring her national character into contempt, ignorant, petulant, rash, and profligate, without ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... type of petit mal consists of a temporary blurring of consciousness, with muscular weakness. The victim drops what he is holding, and is conscious of a strange, extremely unpleasant sensation, a sensation which he is usually quite unable to describe to anyone else. The view in front is clear, he understands what ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... work like that of Mr. Meeker is like the seed sown which is not quickened except it die. Sown in weakness, it is raised in power; sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. The three years of the ministry of Jesus on earth ended in defeat, disaster, and death. Was his life thereby a failure? Who has won the triumph's ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... were settled between him and his black-eyed daughter. He felt to-day like telling this young aristocrat from the Pine Tree Ranch that it would be agreeable to both himself and Jane if he would seek other company. Only physical weakness kept him from following as Jane walked away by Job's side patting Bess' neck. She would see him to the end of the valley, she said; she did not mind the walk. Well, if she would—and what did Job want better than that?—she must mount Bess and let him walk. How pretty she looked on ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... accepted, that the Chinese people at large have little if any effectual sense of nationality; their patriotism appears to be nearly a negligible quantity. This would appear to an outsider to have been their besetting weakness, to which their successful subjection by various and sundry ambitious aliens has been due. But it appears also to have been the infirmity by grace of which this people have been obliged to learn the ways of submission, and so have had the fortune to outlive their ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... been one of the first to scorn another man in such a position, to mock his weakness and despise him. Well, let that be so. He despised himself but—he could ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... probably find an opportunity, by a rapid movement through the passes, to strike him in rear or flank, and thus add another to your many claims to your country's gratitude.... We must be prompt to avail ourselves of the weakness resulting from the exchange of the new and less reliable forces of the enemy, for those heretofore in service, as well as of the moral effect ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... a method of examination without its drawbacks, and the chief weakness of the English system is that it tends to excite a spirit of rivalry which is apt to resort for aid to cramming processes. As yet, however, the examinations have been conducted in such a manner that the special ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... be to the poor, assuring those present that she would be a mother to the sick, nursing them with her tender woman's hands, an angel of mercy to the hungry, feeding them in the hour of their distress, a friend and sister to the little children, succouring them, caring for them, pitiful of their weakness and their sins. His face lit up with enthusiasm as he went on, and Anna was thankful that Susie could not understand. This crowd of children, the women, the young parson, her coachman, were all hearing promises made on her behalf that she had no thought ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... drive with you, and to talk to you, and sing your songs; she will take care of you, and pray for you, and cry when you go to the war; if she is not your daughter or your sister, she will, perhaps, in a moment of weakness or insanity, marry you; she will be a faithful wife, and float you to the end; but if you wish to be her love, her hero, her ideal, her delight, her spontaneity, her utter rest and ultimatum, you must attune your soul to fine issues,—you must bring ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... broken idols. All this would have been as Sanscrit to the Rector of Carlingford; and the only resource he had was to make in his own mind certain half-pitying, half-affectionate remarks upon the inexplicable weakness of women, and to pick up the stocking which his wife was darning, and finally to stroke her hair, which was still as pretty and soft and brown as it had been ten years ago. Under such circumstances a man does not ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... the eyeball so deeply that they never pass away. During the time, all the dread enginery of hell is planted in the victim's brain and he subject to its terrible torments. Most persons laugh at the idea of one having the tremens, and think it a sign of weakness. But there is more disgrace and shame for the man who can drink liquor to intoxication for ten years, and escape the drunkard's madness, than there is for the man who has had the tremens two or three times during that period. Tremens are brought about by the effects of the liquor upon the brain ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... close to mine, and as he knew my special weakness, the scamp continued: "Just think what a swaggering thing it will be to do and how amusing to tell about; the whole army will talk about it, and it will give ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... into verse, or on a sceptical, personal effusion. He even decided to speak about this difficulty to Mariana, a very sure sign of confidence and intimacy! He was again surprised to find her sympathetic, not towards his literary attempts, certainly, but to the moral weakness he was suffering from, a weakness with which she, too, was somewhat familiar. Mariana's contempt for aestheticism was no less strong than his, but for all that the main reason why she did not accept Markelov was because ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... question that comes to every student of the life of Judas must be, "Why was he chosen?" but as Joseph Parker has said, "We may well ask why were we chosen ourselves, knowing our hearts as we do and appreciating our weakness as we must." It has been said that if we study the Apostles we will find them representatives of all kinds of human nature, which would go to show that if we but yield ourselves to God, whatever we may be naturally, he can use us for his glory. It ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman
... our own heart and our sharp and hard endurance we strike our only light. For what? To show us what dupes we are,—creatures of accident, tools of circumstance, blind instruments of the scorner Fate; the very mind, the very reason, a bound slave to the desires, the weakness of the clay; affected by a cloud, dulled by the damps of the foul marsh; stricken from power to weakness, from sense to madness, to gaping idiocy, or delirious raving, by a putrid exhalation! A rheum, a chill, and Caesar trembles! The world's ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... soon showed its weakness in an emergency and had to be replaced with a better machine which had an adjustable diaphragm, a timing apparatus, a focusing scale and a front like an accordion. One afternoon it had happened that while ...
— If You Don't Write Fiction • Charles Phelps Cushing
... Street. It was fortunate the distance was short; for Mr. Smouch, besides possessing no very enchanting conversational powers, was rendered a decidedly unpleasant companion in a limited space, by the physical weakness to which we ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... Grimaud was still the same, and therefore he retained the entire confidence of his superior, La Ramee, who now relied upon him more than he did upon himself, for, as we have said, La Ramee felt at the bottom of his heart a certain weakness ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... serious matter, as our animals were not of the strongest, nor had they been recently trained for a long journey without water. This was the evening of the third day from Berber, and many of the poor brutes were showing signs of weakness. We resolved, therefore, to hurry on at once to the next well, that of Ariab; so we left the inhospitable wadi, and started at three in the morning on our next stretch of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various
... to pieces. The "Governor," which had been steaming along near the "Wabash" since the time of leaving Hampton Roads, had become separated from her consort during the gale of the first day. On the second night, those aboard her perceived that she was showing signs of weakness, and was likely to go down with all on board unless aid could be obtained. Not a sail, however, was in sight; and every wave seemed about to overwhelm or dash to pieces the frail craft. She labored heavily in the furious sea. By and by the strain ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... mock barony was replaced by a wealth that might buy real titles. But the crime still lived, and woe to Mark Bower, the financial magnate, if it was brought home to him! He had not risen above his fellows without making enemies. He well knew the weakness and the strength of the British social system, with its strange complacency, its "allowances," its hysterical prudery, its queer amalgam of Puritanism and light hearted forbearance. He might gamble with loaded dice in the City, and people would applaud ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... subject with M. Joly de Fleury, I made a report upon it to the King. I informed his Majesty of the embarrassments of Congress, and of their inability to provide for their necessities by means of taxes, which the imperfections or the weakness of a rising Administration did not permit them to levy. The King had already, by great sacrifices, fulfilled in their behalf, the duties of a most tender father, during the continuance of their moral infancy. Since the nation reached the period of maturity, consecrated by its emancipation ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. XI • Various
... intentions. He secretly endeavoured to persuade Hamd to return, and finding the latter resolved to fulfil his engagements, he declared that he had now shown us enough of the way, that we had only to follow the shore to reach Akaba, and that the weakness of his camel would not allow it to proceed farther. I replied that he was at liberty to take himself off, but that, on my return to the convent, I should pay him only for the three days he had travelled with me. This ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... unmanly," cried the emperor with displeasure. "It is a miserable weakness to sink so ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... which the strongest and bravest had been forced to flee? "Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord."(346) "God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty." "Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White |
