"Feeble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the silence over Patusan was profound, and the feeble dry sound of a paddle striking the side of a canoe somewhere in the middle of the river seemed to make it infinite. "Why?" she murmured. I felt that sort of rage one feels during a hard tussle. The spectre was ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... young friend, for your hair is not yet whitened,—I am afraid you are too nearly right. No doubt,—no doubt. Teacups are not coffee-cups. They do not hold so much. Their pallid infusion is but a feeble stimulant compared with the black decoction served at the morning board. And so, perhaps, if wisdom like yours were compatible with years like mine, I should drop my pen and make no further attempts upon ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... majority of my respected contemporaries this reasoning will doubtless appear feeble, if not worse. However, to my mind, such are the only arguments by which the Chaldaean theology can be satisfactorily upset. So far from there being any ground for the belief that Ea, Anu, and Bel are, ...
— Hasisadra's Adventure - Essay #7 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... distinction, I perceive, is taken by one of the most feeble noblemen in Great Britain, between persecution and the deprivation of political power; whereas there is no more distinction between these two things than there is between him who makes the distinction and a booby. If I strip off the relic-covered jacket of a Catholic and ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... the remnants of German, Polish and Swedish institutions in the outlying provinces. In the other provinces he sought to counteract what he considered the excessive liberalism of his father's reign. For this purpose he clipped the feeble wings of the zemstvo, an elective local administration resembling the county and parish councils in England, and placed the autonomous administration of the peasant communes under the supervision of landed proprietors appointed ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... love to meet the old, the feeble, the widow, and the orphan, so numerous from the devastation of the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... slowly, putting a feeble hand to her dazed eyes. "You ain' ole miss come back agin, is you, ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... stimulus of this medicine the stomach is rendered torpid with consequent sickness, which continues many hours and even days, owing to the great exhaustion of its sensorial power of irritation; and the action of the heart and arteries becomes feeble from the deficient excitement of the sensorial power of association; and lastly, the absorbents of the cellular membrane act more violently in consequence of the accumulation of the sensorial power of association in the torpid heart and arteries, as explained ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... Larks, a feeble race of birds, rise higher in the air than any rapacious bird, and this is often a cause of safety. Their greatest enemy is the Hobby (Hypotriorchis sublutes). They fear him greatly, so that as soon as one appears singing ceases, and each suddenly closes his wings, falls to the earth and hides ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... of Patroclus. Shabak's conquest of the Lower Nile valley took place about B.C. 725 or 724. Exactly at that time Shalmaneser IV. was proceeding to extremities against the kingdom of Israel, and was thus threatening to sweep away one of the last two feeble barriers which had hitherto been interposed between the Assyrian territory and the Egyptian. Shabak, entreated by Hoshea, the last Israelite monarch, to lend him aid, consented to take the kingdom of Israel under his protection (2 Kings xvii. 4), actuated no doubt by an enlightened ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... forbid the admission of any one. But my route was necessarily circuitous, because the library looked not upon the quadrangle, but into the gardens. When I had reached a staircase, the windows of which opened upon the entrance court, I heard the feeble and intimidated tones of Syddall expostulating with rough voices, which demanded admittance, by the warrant of Justice Standish, and in the King's name, and threatened the old domestic with the heaviest penal consequences if he refused instant obedience. Ere they had ceased, I heard, to my unspeakable ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... feeble sort of opposition. I demurred against changing my name, for one thing, and I remember saying that I had no reason to believe that Mary cared for me. But, in his strong, imperious way, he swept down all my opposition. The influence of the past was strong upon ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... when some writer in a public cause His pen, to save a sinking nation, draws, While all is calm, his arguments prevail; The people's voice expands his paper sail; Till power, discharging all her stormy bags, Flutters the feeble pamphlet into rags, The nation scared, the author doom'd to death, Who fondly put his trust in poplar breath. A larger sacrifice in vain you vow; There's not a power above will help you now; A nation thus, who oft Heaven's call neglects, In vain from injured ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... those gestures and movements with which he has so gracefully combined it, and which address themselves but too powerfully to the senses and the imagination—what are they, but the very "poetry of motion," la poesie mise en action, rendering words a superfluous and feeble medium in comparison? ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... Wishart, stretched upon a bed covered with blankets, a moment of great anxiety followed, which was, however, much relieved when, on stepping into the boat, he was accosted by Wishart, though in a feeble voice, and with an aspect pale as death from excessive bleeding. Directions having been immediately given to the coxswain to apply to Mr. Kennedy at the workyard to procure the best surgical aid, the boat was sent off without delay to Arbroath. The writer then landed ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... calamities they suppose to be due to nature or chance; they do not try to punish or to prevent them from being what they are; they do but pity them. Who is so foolish as to chastise or instruct the ugly, or the diminutive, or the feeble? And for this reason. Because he knows that good and evil of this kind is the work of nature and of chance; whereas if a man is wanting in those good qualities which are attained by study and exercise and teaching, and has only the contrary evil qualities, other men are angry ...
— Protagoras • Plato
... de Ville; and to interrupt the communication between prince Henry and the capital of Saxony. On the fifth day of September, the garrison in the strong fortress of Koningstein surrendered themselves prisoners of war, after a very feeble resistance, to the prince de Detixponts, who forthwith took possession of the strong camp at Pima. When the king of Prussia therefore arrived at Dresden, he found the army of the empire in this position, and mareschal Daun in a still stronger situation at Stolpen, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... Charles is certainly less feeble than we feared. These past few days I have felt quite sure he is going to get well. Roger thinks ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... were drowning," said the Empress, "And they stretched their feeble arms to the sky; But the worst was—they mistook me for their mother, And cried as my children ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... "Wilhelm retired to his room, and indulged in the following reflections," is a mode of analysis which would not be practised nowadays; and all that fancifulness of nomenclature in Wilhelm Meister is very drolly sentimental and feeble. The adventures with robbers seem as if dreamed out of books of chivalry, and the tendency to allegorization affects one like an endeavor on the author's part to escape from the unrealities which he must have felt harassingly, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... chuckled the old man. "I remember! Six hills in a row. Busters!"—looking wonderfully knowing, and, with feeble forefinger raised, nodding and winking at his great-grandchild,—as it were across the slim gulf of a hundred years which divided the gleeful boyhood of Joe from the second childhood of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... See a very sensible preface of Lucas Holstenius to the Codex Regularum. The emperors attempted to support the obligation of public and private duties; but the feeble dikes were swept away by the torrent of superstition; and Justinian surpassed the most sanguine wishes of the monks, (Thomassin, tom. i. p. 1782-1799, and Bingham, l. vii. c. iii. p. 253.) Note: The emperor Valens, in ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... they will, I never will turn my back to a redcoat," he said a few minutes ago. He is on his knees now, wounded, but reloading his gun. The charge is rammed home, the priming in the pan, but his strength is going; his arms are weary; his hands feeble. The redcoats rush upon him, and a bayonet pierces his breast. ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... all was peace. Firby-Smith scratched away at his end, getting here and there a single and now and then a two, and Mike settled down at once to play what he felt was going to be the innings of a lifetime. Appleby's bowling was on the feeble side, with Raikes, of the third eleven, as the star, supported by some small change. Mike pounded it vigorously. To one who had been brought up on Saunders, Raikes possessed few subtleties. He had made seventeen, and was thoroughly set, when the Gazeka, who had the bowling, ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... faltering, grew almost inarticulate from sheet exhaustion of breath, and the rail, moreover, had drifted to such a distance that it was not likely the lad could hear him. Under this impression he had at length discontinued his feeble cries, and swam on in slow and gloomy silence, wondering why William had not obeyed his injunctions, feeling chagrin at his not doing so, and with good reason, since the lowering of the sail might have still given them some chance ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... in at the house, and found his wife still awake. "I am wet to the skin," he said. "I made up my mind to walk, and I would do it;—but I am a fool for my pains." She made him some feeble answer, affecting to be half asleep, and merely turned in her bed. "I must be out early in the morning. Mind you make them dry my things. They never do ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... Seigneur! A giant's garb? No—the carapace of an insect. The men of those days were cuirassed like beetles; their weakness was within them. To-day, on the contrary, our strength is interior, and our armed souls dwell in feeble bodies. ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... the Round Bend creeks. Between these two creeks is the prairie, in which once stood the ancient village of the Missouris. Of this village there remains no vestige, nor is there any thing to recall this great and numerous nation, except a feeble remnant of about thirty families. They were driven from their original seats by the invasions of the Sauks and other Indians from the Mississippi, who destroyed at this village two hundred of them in one contest, and sought refuge near the Little Osage, on the other side of the ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... there was some triumph. The man for whose love she had sighed and been sick had surrendered to her at last. The prize had been at her feet, but she had not chosen to lift it. "Poor Ralph," she said to herself; "he means to do as well as he can, but he is so feeble." She certainly would not tell Mary Bonner, nor would she say a word to her father. And when she should meet Ralph again,—as she did not doubt but that she would meet him shortly, she would be very careful to give no ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... "Don't you think Southold's the most adorable old town we've seen yet?" Of course, if my companion on the front seat had catechized me in this way, I should have been charmed to give her all my feeble fund of information concerning Huguenot and English settlers, dates, etc. (fortunately 1648 will do in most instances!), but it was a little disconcerting to hear these extraneous discords just when my heart was beating well in tune with the oldest ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... But it glimmers whenever a vital interest is at stake. On our personality, on our liberty, on the place we occupy in the whole of Nature, on our origin, and perhaps also on our destiny, it throws a light, feeble and vacillating, but which, none the less, pierces the darkness of the night in which the Intellect leaves us." [Footnote: Creative Evolution, p. 282 ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... wind was rising without, and seemed to rustle and whistle in the draughty passages of the old house. Thalassa placed one lamp at the head of the stairs, and others in the niches of the passage, where they flickered feebly and diffused a feeble light. Halfway down the passage he paused before a closed door. It was the room in which Sisily's mother had died. With an expressionless face he went in and left the last lamp burning dimly on the mantelpiece, like a votary candle on an altar of the dead. Issuing forth again he cast ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... This, at any rate, is a general mark of a deranged or defective mind. The idiot lacks power of attention. The maniac lacks control of his attention. The deluded lacks grasp and flexibility of attention. The crank can only attend to one thing. The old man is feeble in the attention, having lost his hold. So it goes. The attention is the instrument of the one sort of normal mental activity called Apperception, and so impairment of the attention shows itself at once in some particular form ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... our situation is becoming almost intolerable. I query if patience is justified under the circumstances. My distress of mind may be enhanced by my feeble condition of health, for today I am confined to my bed, almost too weak to get downstairs. This is owing to exposure after being heated over ...
— The Record of a Quaker Conscience, Cyrus Pringle's Diary - With an Introduction by Rufus M. Jones • Cyrus Pringle
... which I am well used in amassing. May this at all times be my offence, to exact contributions for the poor. And if they accuse me of defending myself by means of them, I am far from denying, I court the charge. The poor are my defenders, but it is by their prayers. Blind though they be, lame, feeble, and aged, yet they have a strength greater than that of the stoutest warriors. In a word, gifts made to them are a claim upon the Lord; as it is written, 'He who giveth to the poor, lendeth to God;' but a military guard oftentimes has no ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... it, but describing it as nothing to the cold of Paris. On the day that closed the old year he had gone into the Morgue and seen an old man with grey head lying there. "It seemed the strangest thing in the world that it should have been necessary to take any trouble to stop such a feeble, spent, exhausted morsel of life. It was just dusk when I went in; the place was empty; and he lay there, all alone, like an impersonation of the wintry eighteen hundred and forty-six. . . . I find I am ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... think that is a foolish idea?" Fred asked, with a feeble effort at a smile. "Do you fancy you, the regulators, or I, are so important that the whole force is laid off because of anything which may ...
— Down the Slope • James Otis
... Ramsay, speaking about the war, says that half the adult male population of Europe will be killed before it is over. Those who are left will be the feeble ones, the slackers, the unfit, and the cowards. It is good to be left to breed from ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... "I can't find the captain or chief, what shall I do?" He bent his head to catch the feeble answer from ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... it—was instantly lost in ashen whiteness at the recollection of his danger. After this, they had no news whatever, neither from Sir Philip, nor even from their brother Falconer. The case of Lady Forester was not indeed different from that of hundreds in the same situation; but a feeble mind is necessarily an irritable one, and the suspense which some bear with constitutional indifference or philosophical resignation, and some with a disposition to believe and hope the best, was ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... the Chickamin steamed to Roaring Springs, while the Waterbug came driving back. Five hours! And the skin, yes, even shreds of flesh, had come away in patches with Jack Junior's clothing when she took it off. She bent over him, fearful that every feeble breath would ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... torches, "The Habitation of the Dead." On entering, you find yourself in a dark wide hall, supported by broad stone pillars, with a low arched roof, the further end of which is hid in complete obscurity; but the walls of which, (as they are illuminated by the livid and feeble gleam of the torches), are discovered to be completely formed of human bones. All this, as far as I have yet described,—- the subterranean streets which you traverse,—the dark gate of the great hall, over which you read the simple but solemn inscription,—and the gloom and silence ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... to Guerra himself, he made but feeble resistance when he was seized. He had, in the first instance, left Mendez for dead; and he would have immediately fled when he heard he was alive, had not the news been accompanied with the further information that the Spaniard had pointed out Ripa as his assailant. He was exceedingly ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 419, New Series, January 10, 1852 • Various
... rivals, who, in the reign of the elder Andronicus, presumed to violate the majesty of the throne. On the approach of their fleets, the Genoese, with their families and effects, retired into the city: their empty habitations were reduced to ashes; and the feeble prince, who had viewed the destruction of his suburb, expressed his resentment, not by arms, but by ambassadors. This misfortune, however, was advantageous to the Genoese, who obtained, and imperceptibly abused, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... true," said he, "but though that might possibly incline me to tell a disagreeable truth, it would not make me invent one. He is losing his intellects from debility. He affects gallantry at his age, and I perceive the connection in his ideas is becoming feeble and irregular." The King laughed; but three months afterwards he came to Madame, saying, "Sechelles gives evident proofs of dotage in the Council. We must appoint a successor to him." Madame de Pompadour ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... her; and, springing up, she faced the bent and pointed with her finger, and she all deadly pale, and shaking so that she might scarce stand, and might speak no word, though a feeble gibbering came from ...
— The Wood Beyond the World • William Morris
... suicide. Or to the Romanising party in the Church? The movement sprang from the cloister, and he had breathed the bracing air of secular life. He was far too clear-headed not to see whither they were tending. To him they appeared to be simply feeble imitations of the real thing, dabbling with dangerous arguments, and trying to revive ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... of dust, and feeble as frail, In thee do we trust, nor find thee to fail; Thy mercies, how tender! how firm to the end, Our Maker, Defender, Redeemer, ...
— The Otterbein Hymnal - For Use in Public and Social Worship • Edmund S. Lorenz
... the gate, just opposite my face, there was a small sliding panel, not more than a few inches long; this was presently pushed aside from within. I saw, through a bit of iron grating, two dull, light gray eyes staring vacantly at me, and heard a feeble husky voice saying: ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... as they can have no friends worth speaking of; there are always plenty of coarse and brutal minds that take a pleasure in their torment, particularly if they at once recognise any innate superiority to themselves. Of this class was Barker. He hated Eric at first sight, simply because his feeble mind could only realise one idea about him, and that was the new boy's striking contrast with his own imperfections. Hence he left no means untried to vent on Eric his low and mean jealousy. He showed undisguised pleasure when he fell in form, and signs of disgust when he rose; ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... determination to claim his rights, stepped into the chapel rooms with his private key, just to walk round. They put another lock which his key did not fit, but he heaved the door open with a crowbar, and their case must have been feeble indeed when they could not even bring an action for trespass ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... La Tour, in a subdued voice, taking her hand respectfully, "for this night's kindness; for all that you have ever shewn me, words are too feeble to express my gratitude; may heaven watch over you, and make you as happy as you deserve to ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... hath slain the boar. But well I wot, said the hermit, and he be not holpen, that goodly man shall die of that wound, and that were great pity. Then that knight at the desire of the hermit gat a cart, and in that cart that knight put the boar and Sir Launcelot, for Sir Launcelot was so feeble that they might right easily deal with him; and so Sir Launcelot was brought unto the hermitage, and there the hermit healed him of his wound. But the hermit might not find Sir Launcelot's sustenance, and so he impaired and waxed feeble, both of his body and of his wit: ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... Ducler to Caudebec, had been granted to him for this purpose by Clovis IInd, or, more properly speaking, by Bathilda, his queen; for the whole administration of affairs was in reality under her guidance, though the reins of state were nominally held by her feeble husband. The territory[10] had previously borne the name of Jumieges, or, in Latin, Gemeticum, a term whose origin has puzzled etymologists. Those who hold it disgraceful to be ever at a loss on points of this nature, ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... things to all men. Hence there has probably sprung up the idle legend that in private life he is a gross romping voluptuary. Nothing, at least, can well be more surprising than the terms of his connection with the Princess. Older than her husband, certainly uglier, and, according to the feeble ideas common among women, in every particular less pleasing, he has not only seized the complete command of all her thought and action, but has imposed on her in public a humiliating part. I do not here refer to the complete sacrifice of every rag of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... there; and the agitation of her heart subsided suddenly into the melancholy stillness of defeated hope. She sadly admitted that she no longer knew herself, and that the Leonora of old had been supplanted by a creature of incalculable moods, a feeble victim of strange crises of secret folly. Through the open door of the drawing-room she could see Rose reading, and Millicent searching among a pile of music on the piano. Bessie emerged from the dining-room with a white cloth and ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... now that the shadow of bereavement was upon it, and the etiquette of mourning forbade her attendance upon public assemblages of whatever kind, except church, and did not allow even so much as a formal call upon strangers or acquaintance. The society of her now old, feeble, and depressed father was ...
— Grandmother Elsie • Martha Finley
... vain that Fortunato, uplifting his dull torch, endeavored to pry into the depth of the recess. Its termination the feeble light did not enable us ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... more men must be had. And on the 27th September, Congress passed an act extending the age of conscription from 18 to 45 years. But the exemption and substitute laws remained as effective as ever. True, some feeble moves were made toward narrowing the limits of the former; but while it stood a law in any form, enough could be found to read it in any way. The extension law, while it still further drained the almost exhausted ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... not there to listen to such a world-old hypothesis—to such a time-worn, long-ago-refuted, bald, feeble, illogical, vicious, patent sophistry—to an ancient, baseless, wearisome, ragged, unfounded, insidious, falsehood originated by women themselves, and by them insinuated, foisted, thrust, spread, and ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... Journal, 1892) says, that in practice nitro-glycerine vapour, carbon monoxide, and nitrous oxide, are also produced as the result of detonation, but he attributes their formation to the use of a too feeble detonator. ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford
... sovereignty in a long succession of wars. England by these wars grew to be the first colonial and maritime power in the world. Germany forfeited large tracts of territory, and lost still more in political power. She broke up into numerous feeble separate States, which were entirely void of any common sympathy with the German cause. But this very disintegration lent her fresh strength. A centre of Protestant power was ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... just starting on a tour abroad and persuaded her to go with him. He claimed that he could not openly marry her without forfeiting a large fortune from an aunt, whose only heir he was, and who was determined that he should marry the daughter of a life-long friend. She was in feeble health and wanted him to be married before he went abroad, as she feared she might not live until he should come back. This he refused to do, although he allowed her to believe that he intended to marry Miss Barton upon his return. But he did marry your ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... 'cool current of delight', and Dr. Johnson, in an often quoted passage, calls it 'the model of the middle style ... always equable and always easy, without glowing words or pointed sentences.... His page is always luminous, but never blazes in unexpected splendour. He is never feeble, and he did not wish to be energetic.... Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... joy and sorrow Where an infant first drew breath, While an aged sire was drawing Near unto the gate of death. His feeble pulse was failing, And his eye was growing dim; He was standing on the threshold When they brought ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... a thousand lifetimes I will never forget that night," he said. "Words are too feeble, entirely too inadequate, to portray the fear that clutched the human breast. The most graphic pen could not faithfully portray the ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... was put out of her course to serve the personal ends of this or that sailor, and ere long mutiny broke out among her passengers, headed by John C. Calhoun, of South Carolina. Finally, a man ignorant in the science of astronomy and navigation, feeble alike in heart and arm, became, nominally, commander, but really the cat's-paw, of his crew, at whose bidding the ship was steered. When Abraham Lincoln was called to the helm he found the once stanch, strong vessel in a leaky, damaged condition, with her compasses deranged, her rudder broken, and ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 3 • Various
... treacherous than other tribes. They go armed all the time with the bolo, a large knife carried in a wooden scabbard. From the oldest man down to little boys, they all carry the bolo or a big knife. I have seen old men, so feeble they could scarcely walk, carrying a fine bolo. They will not part with them day or night, but keep them as their only friend, refusing to let any one take them from their hands to merely look at them. These arms are ...
— A Soldier in the Philippines • Needom N. Freeman
... But the mingling of humanity on a broader basis and under new circumstances quickened the thoughts and sentiments of man in favor of his fellows. It gave an enlarged view of the life of man as a human creature. There was a thought engendered, feeble though it was at first, that the life on earth was really important and that it could be enlarged and broadened in many ways, and hence it was worth saving here for its own sake. The culmination of this idea appeared in the period of ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... conceptions. Professor Axel Key has shown from statistics of 18,000 Swedish school children that from the end of November and the beginning of December until the end of March or the middle of April, growth in children is feeble. From July-August to November-December their daily increase in weight is three times as great as during the winter months.[9] This is evidence in confirmation of a connection between maleness, slow growth, and either poor nutrition or cold ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... think it will. Practically my health is all right. You don't,' he added with a smile, 'regard me as an irresponsible person, whose feeble remarks are to be received ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... southern gentlemen who built and owned them. No Mansard roof here, no pseudo "Queen Anne" hybrid, with lowering, top-heavy projections like scowling eyebrows over squinting eyes; neither mongrel Renaissance, nor feeble, sickly, imitation Elizabethan facades, and Tudor towers; none of the queer, composite, freakish impertinences of architectural style, which now-a-day do duty as the adventurous vanguard, the aesthetic vedettes "making straight the way," for ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... sensible of the very flattering honour you have done me in turning any part of your attention towards a dejected old man, buried in the anticipated grave of a feeble old age, forgetting and forgotten in an obscure and ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... of 1848-49 must have been a time of unexampled misery to the Magyars of Transylvania. The nobles generally dared not remain in their lonely chateaux; it was not a question of bravery, for how could the feeble members who remained home from the war guard the castle from the torches of a hundred frantic, yelling wretches, who, with arms in their hands, spared neither age nor sex? For the time they were mad—these Eastern people are subject to ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... scanning the field between the road and the river, I espied five persons, half way across, and at the same distance from the water that we were from the coach. Two men, whom I supposed to be St. Auban and Vilmorin, were forcing along a woman, whose struggles, feeble though they appeared—yet retarded their progress in some measure. Behind them walked two others, ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... the tutor, stopping in the doorway leading to the inner rooms. "Take it off yourself." But Seryozha, though he heard his tutor's feeble voice, did not pay attention to it. He stood keeping hold of the hall porter's belt, and gazing ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... ceased and a cold sun shot feeble rays over the sullen December landscape. Again a halt was called; the brigadier-general, followed by two officers and several orderlies, galloped up, and a hurried consultation with our colonel took place. In a moment the battalion moved ahead only to come to a dead stop ...
— The Amateur Army • Patrick MacGill
... alone in the country the lad becomes maudlin—a callow lover of nature—and makes feeble attempts at verse. Returning to the city he melts and unbosoms—the tender shaft of the unknowable Eros has penetrated to his heart—Nature's subtle spell is on him, to disappear and reappear. Then follow discussions, more or less didactic, leading to the second ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... been lifted in her rocking chair and carried halfway over the Town and left beside the Spain cottage with her feeble life intact, while Mrs. Spain, upon whose shoulders the burden of mothering all seven of the Spains rested heavily, had had one of those valuable shoulders broken and was left crushed and bleeding beside the rocking chair in ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... principle explains why a great many people who carry large heads are endowed with but little intellectual power. Their heads are filled with "sawdust," in other words, a brain of poor quality, supported by a feeble body, or vitiated ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... "and he deserves Well of the Mermaid Inn for one good law, Rightly enforced. He pilloried that rogue Will Horold, who in Whittington's third year Of office, as Lord Mayor, placed certain gums And spices in great casks, and filled them up With feeble Spanish wine, to have the taste And smell of Romeney,—Malmsey!" "Honest wine, Indeed," replied the Clerk, "concerns the State, That solemn structure touched with light from heaven, Which he, our merchant, helped to build on earth. And, while he laboured for it, all things else Were added unto ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... "Humanity is so feeble in mind," says Renan, "that the purest thing has need of the co-operation of some impure agent." And this, we think, is the gist of Khalid's rhapsody on flounces and ruffles. But how is he to reconcile the fact with the truth in his case? For a single sanctified ruffle—a line ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... the debtors who found no acquaintances or relatives to welcome them as they came forth again helpless as at their first birth, into the world of bustle and sun and breeze. It was piteous to see them wandering about with feeble and sinewless steps, and vacant eyes, staring timidly at the noisy people, and shrinking dismayed from the throngs of sympathizing questioners which gathered round them. There were some whose names not even the oldest citizens could recall so long had they been ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... earth like it. In the infernal regions there may be, but elsewhere there is no compound addition of wild beasts that could produce its like for their total. The description of the wolves in Robinson Crusoe is the nearest thing; but it's feeble—very feeble—in comparison." Of the generally amiable side to all his eccentricities I am tempted to give an illustration from the same letter: "An alarming report being brought to me the other day that he was preaching, I betook myself to the spot, and found he was reading Wordsworth ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... board ship (ante, p. 231), and whom we brought home a tall, athletic youth, that might have been the pride and support of his widowed mother. There he lay, not over nineteen years of age, ruined by every vice a sailor's life absorbs. He took my hand in his wasted feeble fingers, and talked a little with his hollow, death-smitten voice. I was to leave town the next day for a fortnight's absence, and whom had they to see to them? The mother named her landlord,—she knew no one else able to do much for them. ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... feeble services. I am writing to the Baroness de Roner according to your instructions, and request that you will ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... not 'tote' my gun with the silencer on it. If it interests you, I may as well explain that I came by the silencer several years ago, when I was on the bench. A notorious Chicago gunman, on trial for murder here, and acquitted by a feeble-minded jury, made me a present of the very silencer he had used in killing his victim—an ironic gesture, a gesture of supreme insolence, but an entirely safe gesture, since he well knew that a man once ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... to hum again, and while humming in a voice which became more and more slow, and more and more feeble, he settled back into his arm-chair, and soon fell into a peaceful slumber, like the big baby that ...
— Parisian Points of View • Ludovic Halevy
... deference and gravity while he discoursed on the defacement of a beautiful boulevard to satisfy the greed of certain private individuals. Mr. Otto Bitter and myself, who appeared for the petitioners, had a similar reception. That struggle was a tempest in a tea-pot. The reformer raged, but he was feeble in those days, and the great public believed what it read in the respectable newspapers. In Mr. Judah B. Tallant's newspaper, for instance, the Morning Era, there were semi-playful editorials about "obstructionists." Mr. Perry Blackwood ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... eyes. "I wasn't asleep," he said in a hoarse, feeble voice: "I heard every word you fellows ...
— Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Illustrated by Arthur Rackham. With a Proem by Austin Dobson • Lewis Carroll
... little. But the constant gnawing ache at his heart, and the withdrawal of all object to live for, soon began to tell upon his always feeble constitution. ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... cried out: 'No, it was not that; it was because we were dull of hearing.' The fact was, that the seam was not only thick, but very hard. It was strange, indeed, though sounds are easily transmitted through rocks of considerable thickness, how our feeble taps had been heard at all. Day after day, and each day a black night, went on; every hour was to be the last of our captivity, according to the old man; as for me, I was almost worn out, and heavy ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... therefore, become comprehensible. We begin to see why he wore silks and satins and why he neglected what to us are necessities. We see why he could display such admirable carriage in rough-riding and lassoing grizzlies, and yet seemed to possess such feeble military efficiency. We comprehend his generous hospitality coupled with his often narrow and suspicious cruelty. In fact, all the contrasts of his character and action begin to be clear. His displacement was natural when confronted by a people who, whatever ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... Conseil replied, "had you ever heard of the Nautilus? No, yet here it is! So don't shrug your shoulders so blithely, and don't discount something with the feeble excuse that ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... that feeble, tottering old gentleman coming along the avenue? It is the Hon. David Daggett, LL.D., late Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Connecticut. He is a member, and, I believe, a deacon of one of the Congregational ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... attempt to do this was feeble enough. It was an effort to keep myself out of the reach of temptation by refusing to see ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... whole conception of the picture, and Mr. Scott's first impression was that, in this marvellous poet and possible painter, the new Tractarian movement had found its expositor in art. Yet this surely was no such feeble or sentimental echo as had inspired the declared Tractarian poets of eight or nine years earlier; there was nothing here that recalled such a book as the "Cherwell Water Lily" of Father Faber. This contained the genuine ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... over, they all returned ashore. Mr Forster and his party being out in the country botanizing, his servant, a feeble man, was beset by five or six fellows, who would have stripped him, if that moment one of the party had not come to his assistance; after which they made off with a hatchet they ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... upper story of a large but ruined granary. Here a sentry was posted, who permitting us to pass forward, I found myself in a small, mean-looking apartment, whose few articles of coarse furniture were dimly lighted by the feeble glimmer of a lamp. At the farther end of the room sat a man wrapped in a large blue cavalry cloak, whose face, covered with his hands as he bent downward, was completely concealed from view. The noise of the opening door did not appear to arouse him, nor did he ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... destroyed ones were feeble to guard the passage of the ravine. Evadne broke a way over fallen trees and stepping-stones imbedded in sea-sand, and gained the opposite bank. The solitude in which she found herself appeared deeper, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... were never Englishmen," he says, "left in a forreigne countrey in such miserie as wee were in this new discovered Virginia, Wee watched every three nights, lying on the bare ground, what weather soever came; ... which brought our men to be most feeble wretches, ... If there were any conscience in men, it would make their harts to bleed to hears the pitifull murmurings and outcries of our sick men without reliefe, every night and day for the space of six weekes: some departing out of the World, ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... long road thither, and is in need itself, perhaps, of aid, rather than capable of giving aid. Indeed, among the deeply pious its condition is a matter of affectionate concern. And especially is this the case when a little child dies; for it is thought that the soul of an infant is feeble and exposed to many dangers. Wherefore a mother, speaking to the departed soul of her child, will advise it, admonish it, command it tenderly, as if addressing a living son or daughter. The ordinary words said in Izumo homes to any Shin-botoke take rather the form of adjuration or counsel than ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... fact from others—the fear of death was on him; it was impossible to deceive his own heart. A fresh terror now seized him, coupled with a sense of shame. He was the fellow who had always expressed a wish to be a soldier, and go on active service; and now, before the first feeble spitting of the enemy's fire, all his courage was ebbing away. What if his comrades should notice that his limbs trembled and his voice was shaky? What if, when the advance was made, his nerve should fail him altogether, and ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... had ordered the driver to halt at the Pendleton mansion, and looking out of the window, he had seen with amazement the whole occurrence—had seen Sally Pendleton, who had always posed before him as a sweet-tempered angel—actually thrust a feeble-looking, poorly-dressed woman out of the house and into the street to face a storm so wild and pitiless that most people would have hesitated before even turning a homeless, wandering cur out ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... lay as man and mules passed on. Presently he passed a sentinel cow. She stood among the thorns guarding the calves of her sisters till they should return from getting their water. The desert cattle learn this shift, and the sentinel now, at the stranger's approach, lowered her head, and with a feeble but hostile sound made ready to protect her charge, keeping her face to the passing enemy. Farther along gaunt cows stood or lay under the perpetual yuccas, an animal to every plant. They stared at Genesmere passing on; some rose to look after him; some lifted their ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... our silver cell that if the molecular conditions of the anterior and posterior surfaces were exactly similar, there would be no current. In practice, however, this is seldom the case. There is, generally speaking, a slight difference, and a feeble current in the circuit. It is thus seen that there may be an existing feeble current, to which the effect of light is added algebraically. The stimulus of light may thus increase the existing current ...
— Response in the Living and Non-Living • Jagadis Chunder Bose
... since the Indian first gazed with terror and admiration upon the white strangers, and already three fourths of his inheritance are rent away, and three fourths of his race have vanished from the earth; while the sad remnant, few and feeble, faint and weary, "are fast traveling to the shades of their fathers, toward the setting sun."[200] Year by year they wither away; to them the close breath of civilized man is more destructive than the deadliest ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... found which may even be at right angles to the long axis of the magnets, causing them to point east and west. Such a compound needle requires very little force to turn it one way or the other. If one of the needles is placed within a coil of insulated wire a feeble current will act almost as strongly to deflect the system as if the other was absent, and the deflection will only be resisted by the slight directive tendency of the pair of needles. This is the basis of construction of the astatic galvanometer. Sometimes coils wound ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... slightest danger, as all the troops in that part of the country had been ordered to Fort De Russy, and were hourly expecting an attack; consequently they would find no one at home except George's mother, sisters, and a few old negroes who were too feeble to work on the fortifications. Besides as all the troops were now at Red River, their safest course would be to abandon, for awhile, at least, the idea of taking it as their guide to the Mississippi. ...
— Frank on a Gun-Boat • Harry Castlemon
... an instrument for increasing feeble sound, which he called a microphone. This consisted of a pair of rods to convey the sound vibrations to the ears, and does not at all resemble the modern electrical microphone. Other inventions in the transmission and reproduction of sound followed, ...
— Masters of Space - Morse, Thompson, Bell, Marconi, Carty • Walter Kellogg Towers
... had at least this distinction, that it was in a sense the birth-hour of the individual with regard to civil life, just as Luther's bursting the bonds of Monasticism had been the birth-hour of the {5} individual in religious life. The birth, however, was a feeble one, and in this respect, and for the social and domestic drawbacks of a trying time, it is interesting to look back and see how our fathers carried what to them were often felt to be heavy burdens, ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... Wordsworth is a first-rate man, and a fine preacher. I dare say you know he is a nephew or grand-nephew of the Poet. He is a most venerable old man, and worth looking at, merely for his exterior. He is so feeble with age that he can with difficulty climb the three short steps that lead into the pulpit; but, once in the pulpit, it is another thing. There is no feebleness when he begins to preach. He is one of the last voices of the old orthodox school, and I wish there were hundreds like him. If ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray
... loving, endearing little child; not so passionate and gifted and rare a creature as that star among children—Marjorie Fleming—but a natural and homely little flower of New England life; fated never to grow old or feeble or dull or sad, but to live forever and laugh in the glamour of eternal happy youth through the few pages of ...
— Diary of Anna Green Winslow - A Boston School Girl of 1771 • Anna Green Winslow
... Pratt was feeble and very long faced and repentant at breakfast. His appetite was gone. Mrs. Pratt said nothing, but pressed him to eat. "Come, Paw, a gill or two o' cawfee will do ye good," she said. "Cawfee is a great heatoner," she ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... the causes of this result. If Robert Clive, for instance, had chanced to have been there the end might possibly have been the same, but there would have been some bloody fighting before that end was reached. The explanation of the feeble abandonment of Boston lies in the stupidity of the English government, which had sown the wind and then proceeded to handle the customary crop ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge |
