"Feebleness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... men whose feebleness of sight, or bitterness of soul, or the offence given by the conduct of those who claim higher hope, may have rendered this painful creed the only possible one, there is an appeal to be made, more secure in its ground than any which can be addressed to happier persons. ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... anarchist's greatest activity was always a republic, not only to emphasize his impartial hatred of all government, but because of the inherent feebleness of that form of government, its inability to protect itself against any kind of aggression by any considerable number of its people having a common malevolent purpose. In a republic the crust that confined the fires of violence and sedition ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... he was seized by a dangerous illness, which sunk him to such weakness, that the congregation thought an assistant necessary, and appointed Mr. Price. His health then returned gradually, and he performed his duty, till (1712) he was seized by a fever of such violence and continuance, that from the feebleness which it brought upon him, he never ...
— The Psalms of David - Imitated in the Language of The New Testament - And Applied to The Christian State and Worship • Isaac Watts
... always endure. I have registered my protest against it. I recognize the feebleness of my effort, but fortunately I am not alone. There are multiplied thousands of others who, like myself, have come to realize that before we may truly enjoy the blessings of civilized life, we must reorganize society upon a mutual and co-operative basis; and to this ...
— The Debs Decision • Scott Nearing
... colonial rule, no sooner does private enterprise raise its head, and throw out the first feelers on the way to wealth, than a watchful government steps forward, and careful only to secure gain to itself, crushes out (in the first feebleness of existence,) ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... recollect that we left Mrs Forster in the lunatic asylum, slowly recovering from an attack of the brain-fever, which had been attended with a relapse. For many weeks she continued in a state of great feebleness, and during that time, when, in the garden, in company with other denizens of this melancholy abode (wishing to be usefully employed), she greatly assisted the keepers in restraining them, and, in a short time, established that superiority ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... murderers. Imagination exhausted itself in vain guesses at the causes which could by possibility have made the poor Weishaupts objects of such hatred to any man. True, they were bigoted in a degree which indicated feebleness of intellect; but THAT wounded no man in particular, while to many it recommended them. True, their charity was narrow and exclusive, but to those of their own religious body it expanded munificently; ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... Perceiving and pitying his feebleness, and sincerely believing strong measures the only rescue for Amy, the only hope for Guy, Philip found himself obliged to work on him by the production of another letter from his sister. He would rather, if possible, ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... wearisome to him; but he could not endure the idea that it should be written in history that he had allowed himself to be made a faineant Prime Minister, and then had failed even in that. History would forget what he had done as a working Minister in recording the feebleness of the Ministry which would ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... the body, which is as essential to the brain as the brain is to the soul. For without the brain there is no soul expression, and in proportion to the condition and development of the brain is the expression of all the soul faculties. A soft and watery brain is always accompanied by feebleness of character and mind. In like manner the manifestations of the brain depend for their strength upon the body, when the lungs and heart fail to send a vigorous current of arterial blood to the brain, its power declines proportionally; and when ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, June 1887 - Volume 1, Number 5 • Various
... had laid its hand right heavily. Even the building seemed to have shrunk: the pulpit was less massive and imposing, the darkness beyond the rafters less mysterious. The preacher had grown grey, and feebleness had taken the place of that physical vigour which was the distinguishing feature of his interpretations of the larger problems of theology. People I had never seen sat in the places of those I had known so well. There were only traces here and there of the old congregation, whose austere simplicity ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... the fevered activity which "refused his age the needful hours of rest." His activity indeed was the more wonderful that his health was utterly broken. An accident in early days left behind it an abiding weakness whose traces were seen in the furrows which seamed his long pale face, in the feebleness of his health, and the nervous tremor which shook his puny frame. The "pigmy body" was "fretted to decay" by the "fiery soul" within it. But pain and weakness brought with them no sourness of spirit. Ashley was attacked ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... mother's womb—called to be saints and to be ministers. He who called us will help us. With man the call seems quixotic, impossible; with Him all things are possible. At times when the call is loudest we can but reply, 'Ah! Lord, I am but a little child.' We are intensely conscious of feebleness and, what is worse, of treachery and meanness within; we half love what we are called upon to denounce; we play with the sin we are to teach men to abhor. Yet the call is sure, is definite, is ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson
... possible that any literature of the world now yields sentimental novels so vague and immature as those which America brings forth? Or is it that their Transatlantic compeers float away and dissolve by their own feebleness ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... autumn and winter of 1853-54 in Rome, seeking too late for such amendment as rest and change might give. He was too ill to take much pleasure in his sojourn there, but his bodily feebleness did not dull his mental vigor, and it is characteristic that he at once {p.xxxv} began to read Dante with Dr. Lucentini. He knew the language well, but wished to master the difficulties of the great poet, and so turned to the most accomplished of helpers, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... Grace, will be a law to me, if made on due reflection. This growing feebleness, however, alarms me; and I cannot justify it to myself not to send ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... retired to Pondicherry. North Arcot being now completely in the power of the English, Clive returned to Madras; and then sailed to Fort Saint David, to concert measures with Mr. Saunders for the relief of Trichinopoli. This place still held out, thanks rather to the feebleness and indecision of Colonel Law, who commanded the besiegers, than to any effort on ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... who impels men to divers sins, to ungodly opinions, to open crimes. This we may see in the philosophers, who, although they endeavored to live an honest life could not succeed, but were defiled with many open crimes. Such is the feebleness of man when he is without faith and without the Holy Ghost, and governs himself only by ...
— The Confession of Faith • Various
... 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 ever a man believed in his message, Wordsworth does. And though I cannot ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray
... illustrious. They could honor their States. They could do justice to the South. They could perpetuate their party. They could settle the slavery question. They could end sectional hatred, extinguish civil war, preserve the Union, save their country. Advanced age, physical feebleness, party bias, the political ardor of the youngest and the satiety of the eldest, all conspired to draw them under the insidious influence of such considerations. One of the judges in official language frankly ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... especially in the manufacturing towns, the suffering was fearful and the hatred of the Government most bitter. What is so lamentable in the history of those times is the undisciplined wildness and feebleness of the attempts made by the people to better themselves. Nothing is more saddening than the spectacle of a huge mass of humanity goaded, writhing, starving, and yet so ignorant that it cannot choose capable leaders, cannot obey them if perchance it gets them, and does not even know ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... because, I know she does indeed want to come. She'd like to be with father, of course; and I think she's—well, she intimated one day that she feared it might even happen that she wouldn't get to see him again. At the time I thought she referred to his age and feebleness, but on the boat, coming home, I remembered the little look of wistfulness, yet of resignation, with which she said it, and it struck me all at once that I'd been mistaken: I saw she was really thinking of her own ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... the ideas and dogmas of those whom he calls heretics, as with the religious opinions of the Mongols and the followers of the Lama of the Himalayan hills. The miserable attack which, in his rancorous feebleness, he has just committed on the Bible Society will redound merely to his own shame and ridicule, and the disgrace of the sect to which he belongs. What could persuade him to speak of the Vulgate? What could induce him to grasp that two-edged sword? Does it not cut off his own hands? Does ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... his son as he finished speaking, and some of the joy and cheerfulness that had shown in his eyes faded away, for he saw no return of his joy and happiness on his child's face; all that was written there was sorrow, pain, and feebleness. ...
— The Pastor's Son • William W. Walter
... studying. The ethnic differences so revealed are to him what organic variations are to the biologist and morphologist; they indicate evolution or retrogression, and show an advance toward higher forms and wider powers, or toward increasing feebleness and decay. ...
— An Ethnologist's View of History • Daniel G. Brinton
... hands with me gracefully, and made inquiries about my journey, then sank back into his chair listlessly, and allowed Helen to pull the tiger-skin which formed his lap-robe over his knees. There was a peculiar feebleness about his whole attitude as he sat—something almost abased in the sinking of his chin upon his breast. It was hard for me to realize that he was the owner of all this magnificence, and, dressed although he was with faultless elegance, and although luxurious appurtenances ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... must have perceived the change yourself. You must have noticed her want of appetite, her distaste for exertion of any kind, her increasing feebleness." ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... the organisation, so there is a gradual diminution of it connected with the decay of the body. As the imbecility of infancy corresponds to the weakness of organisation, so the energy of youth and the power of manhood are marked by its strength; and the feebleness and dotage of old age are in the direct ratio of the decline of the perfection of the organisation, and the mental powers in extreme old age seem destroyed at the same time with the corporeal ones, till the ultimate dissolution of the frame, when the elements are again ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... foes to the attack, the flute wavered, ran up to a height, cried out like a thing martyred; the violin gave forth a thin scream; on the derbouka the brown fingers of the player pattered with abrupt feebleness; the guitar died away; the little brass discs shivered and fell together. Another thin cry from the flute upon some unknown height, and there was silence, while Claude wrote furiously, and the ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... half-wild colt brought suddenly from the sere range into abundant and peaceful pasture, the physical side of her being rounded out, glowing with the fires of youth, at the same time that the poor old Captain sank slowly but surely into inactivity and feebleness. She did not perceive his decline, for he talked bravely of his future, and called her attention to his increasing weight, which was indeed a sign ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... its own support, hung for a moment, with apathetic lifelessness, upon his bosom; while her head, with an impulse not difficult to define, drooped like a bending and dewy lily upon his arm. But the passive emotion, if we may so style it, was soon over; and, with an effort, in which firmness and feebleness strongly encountered, she freed herself from his hold with an erect pride of manner, which gave a sweet finish to the momentary display which she had made of womanly weakness. Her voice, as she ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... deficiency in the means to carry on and enlarge our South American trade is but a part of the general decline and feebleness of the American merchant marine, which has reduced us from carrying over ninety per cent of our export trade in our own ships to the carriage of nine per cent of that trade in our own ships and dependence upon foreign shipowners for the carriage of ninety-one per cent. ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... being which establishes har- mony, enters into no compromise with finiteness and [15] feebleness. It undermines the foundations of mortality, of physical law, breaks their chains, and sets the captive free, opening the doors ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... stale. One may build on them as on a foundation of rock. If they ever seem to fail us, to be shaken and overthrown, it is an evil delusion, and the cause lies not in them but in ourselves. It is we who fail, who are shaken and overthrown through palsied will and feebleness of ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... the argument from Design, it was observed that Mill's presentation of it is merely a resuscitation of the argument as presented by Paley, Bell, and Chalmers. And indeed we saw that the first-named writer treated this whole subject with a feebleness and inaccuracy very surprising in him; for while he has failed to assign anything like due weight to the inductive evidence of organic evolution, he did not hesitate to rush into a supernatural explanation of biological phenomena. Moreover, he has failed signally in his analysis of ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... July 1881, I perceived that his health was weaker. His tendency to corpulence had entirely disappeared, his feebleness of step had become at certain moments painfully apparent, and his temper occasionally betrayed signs of bitterness. To myself, personally, he was at this stage as genial as of old, or if for an instant he gave vent to an unprovoked outburst of wrath, he would far more than atone ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... value of the color you see in nature at that point. Until you are enough of a master of your brush to get an effect in this way, do not meddle with the more complex methods of after-painting. You will never do good work by subsequent manipulation, if you have a groundwork of feebleness and indecision. Direct painting is the fundamental process ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... "This is I, and I am quite unaffected by my bodily condition." For what seemed to him a long time he was fairly successful in his effort; then the body began to show definitely the power of its weakness upon the Ego, to asset itself by feebleness. His will became like an invalid who is fretful upon the pillows. Soon his strong resolutions, cherished and never to be parted from till out of them the deeds had blossomed, lost blood and fell upon the evil day of anemia. He had a sensation of going out. When the midnight came he could not sleep, ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... But we have no proof that he has spoken and acted in the manner supposed. Moreover, good sirs, had we this proof, it would behove us to consider further the extreme simplicity of the man and the feebleness of his understanding. He was the laughing-stock of the children in the Public Square. He is ignorant; he has done a thousand extravagances. For my own part I believe he is beside himself. What he says is worthless ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... a simple attempt at confiscation supported by an organised system of crime. The argument is put with his usual downright force, and certainly shows no symptoms of any decline of intellectual vigour. He speaks, he says, impelled by the 'shame and horror' which an Englishman must feel at our feebleness, and asks whether we are cowards to be kicked with impunity? Sometimes he hoped, though his hopes were not sanguine, that a point would yet be reached at which Englishmen would be roused and would show their old qualities. But as a rule he ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... too young to know any better," returned Mrs. Challoner, relapsing into alarmed feebleness; "you are not able to judge. But I never liked my brother-in-law,—never; he was not a good man. He was not a person whom one could trust," continued the poor lady, trying to soften down certain facts to ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... pursuit, the Russian's retreat must have been turned into a rout and his artillery captured; if on the following day he had assaulted the Flagstaff Bastion, Sebastopol, Todleben owned, must have fallen. He would do neither; his hesitancy and apparent feebleness have already been explained; but to it, and to the sinister influence which held his hand, were due the subsequent ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... could not be) of spirit and movement in the battle-scene where Edward refuses to send relief to his son, wishing the prince to win his spurs unaided, and earn the first-fruits of his fame single-handed against the heaviest odds; but the forcible feebleness of a minor poet's fancy shows itself amusingly in the mock stoicism and braggart philosophy of the King's reassuring reflection, "We have more ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... The creature was well mounted (ominous, when he came to override my caprice!) and he looked bigger, and, yes, handsomer, though that doesn't signify, and still more determined than when I saw him last; although goodness knows that timidity and feebleness of purpose were not in striking evidence on that memorable occasion. I had drawn up under the shade of a tree ostensibly to eat some cherries, thinking that if I turned my face away I might pass unrecognised. It was a stupid plan, for ...
— The Diary of a Goose Girl • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... epilepsy, paralysis, vertigo, softening of the brain, delirium tremens, loss of memory and that general failure of the mental power called dementia. (b) Diseases of the lungs: one form of consumption, congestion and subsequent bronchitis. (c) Diseases of the heart: irregular beat, feebleness of the muscular walls, dilation, disease of the valves. (d) Diseases of the blood: scurvy, dropsy, separation of fibrine. (e) Diseases of the stomach: feebleness of the stomach and indigestion, flatulency, irritation and sometimes inflammation. (f) Diseases ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... adjured the young evangelist to remain and labor here. Calvin drew back in alarm. Timid and peace-loving, he shrank from contact with the bold, independent, and even violent spirit of the Genevese. The feebleness of his health, together with his studious habits, led him to seek retirement. Believing that by his pen he could best serve the cause of reform, he desired to find a quiet retreat for study, and there, through the press, ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... Stephen, hush. If the King heard you speak of his feebleness in such a way there would be a sudden end to ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... so that the ability to concentrate reserve troops on any threatened point is an indispensable element of safety. It may be assumed that Hooker was, at the moment of Jackson's attack, actually taking the offensive. But on this hypothesis, the feebleness of his advance is still more worthy of criticism. For Jackson was first attacked by Sickles as early as nine A.M.; and it was six P.M. before the latter was ready to move upon the enemy in force. Such tardiness as this could never win ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... of order in the French army's line of march as it went through Prussia was due principally to the ineptitude of Murat, who had assumed command after the departure of the Emperor, and later to the feebleness of Prince Eugne de Beauharnais, the ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... given in England to the discussion of the Problem of Society. The declared object of the work—which is of the class of philosophical novels—is to exhibit the miseries of the poor; the conventionalisms, hypocrisies, and feebleness of the rich; the religious doubts of the strong, and the miserable delusions and superstitions of the weak; the mammon-worship of the middling and upper classes, and the angry humility of the masses. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... was the child of poor parents, natives of Oederan in the Erzgebirge in Saxony. Her father was no ordinary man; he possessed enormous vitality, but in his old age showed traces of some feebleness of mind. In his young days he had been a trumpeter in Saxony, and in this capacity had taken part in a campaign against the French, and had also been present at the battle of Wagram. He afterwards became a mechanic, and took up the trade of manufacturing ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... state I was aroused by hearing a joyous shout in the tones of Bob's well-remembered voice; and, raising myself with difficulty, only to sink back in utter feebleness, I caught a momentary glimpse of the boat in the act of grounding ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... fall of temperature made the boy sensible that he was ill-clothed to encounter the change of weather. He had been unfortunate in the fact that his mother had for years used the vigilant tyranny of feebleness to enforce upon the boy her own sanitary views. Children are easily made hypochondriac, and under her system of government he became self-attentive, careful of what he ate and extremely timid. There had been many tutors and only twice long residence at schools in Vevey and for a winter ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... sir, be merry, let pass away the mare:[33] How say you, have I not hied me lightly? Here is your chair and lute to make you merry. CAL. Merry, quotha? nay, that will not be; But I must needs sit for very feebleness. Give me my lute, and thou shalt see How I shall sing mine unhappiness. This lute is out of tune now, as I guess; Alas! in tune how should I set it, When all harmony to me discordeth each whit, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... Terentia on her music and spoke of the Empress's admiration of her organ-playing, had a brief but kindly commendation for Manlia and Gargilia; praised Numisia highly for her efficient discharge of the duties devolving on her, and condoled with Causidiena on her blindness and feebleness, wording what he said so dexterously that she could not ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... world of letters has lost a true poet and a scholar of very varied accomplishments. His friends have lost much more. Since his last attack of influenza, those who knew him and loved him had been much concerned about him. The pallor of his complexion had greatly increased; so had his feebleness. As long ago as May last, when I called upon him at the Athenæum Club in order to join him at a luncheon he was giving at the Café Royal, I found that he had engaged a four-wheeled cab to take us over those few yards. The expression in his kind and wistful ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... nation, had shown their utter incapacity to manage its affairs, and their inclination to crouch before the enemy, I permitted my heart after some struggles to subside and repose in the cool of this reflection—Let them escape. It is only the French nation that ever dragged such feebleness to the scaffold,' Again, page 35—'Honest men, I confess, have generally in the present times an aversion to the Whig faction, not because it is suitable either to honesty or understanding to prefer the narrow principles ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... estimation. This, I remember, was wildly irritating to me. I knew myself infinitely superior to them; I knew the long creature's novel was worthless; I knew that I had fifty books in me immeasurably better than it, and savagely and sullenly I desired to trample upon them, to rub their noses in their feebleness; but oh, it was I who was feeble! and full of visions of a wider world I raged up and down the cold walls of impassable mental limitations. Above me there was a barred window, and, but for my manacles, I would have sprung ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... another distinctive mark in those veteran French soldiers, whom we see conveyed into Bruxelles, wounded and prisoners. They seem to retain a ferocious expression, even at the moment of sinking into the feebleness of death, and while every human succour is rendering to them. They cast a furtive glance around, and their countenances indicate all the horror of their minds at their late reverses, and to be thinking less of the bodily pains ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 570, October 13, 1832 • Various
... the woman he loved; but even as he brooded on the dreamlike strangeness of it, his mind was doing its practical work. If Winifred and Mrs. Martha were in the vehicle he had seen, what time they would gain while driving on the road they would be apt to lose by their feebleness on the mountain path, which he and Sophia could ascend so much more lightly. Wherever their goal, and whatever their purpose, he was sanguine that he would find and stop them before they joined the main party. He communicated the grounds of this hope ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... else. They would find more congenial associates in the Virginia colony. He would have no Achans to breed dissension in his camp. With bold heart and strong hand would he cast them out. His was the empire of the saints; an empire, not to be exercised with feebleness and doubt, but with ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... church has incurred heavy blame because of the feebleness of her testimony against such wrongs must now be confessed, and the least she can do to make amends for this infidelity is to speak now and henceforth, with commanding voice, against all the corporate wrongs that infest society. It may ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden
... fraud, and made no further opposition to his plans, but when on his death-bed he asked that his head be shaved like a priest's and that he be clothed in priestly robes so that he might expiate his crime of feebleness ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... good time, and that is all Consolations of religion Conversational non-combatants Didn't know Truth was such an invalid Essence of genius is truthfulness, contact with realities Faith dislikes being meddled with Fear of open discussion implies feebleness Genius Good many coarse people in both callings Happy to agree with all their beliefs, if that were possible Hardness in surgeons, just as there is in theologians Hating ourselves as we hate our neighbors Humility is the first ...
— Widger's Quotations from the Works of Oliver W. Holmes, Sr. • David Widger
... years of life, it gives the young girl no contact with the feebleness of childhood, the pathos of suffering, or the needs of old age. It gathers together crude youth in contact only with each other and with mature men and women who are there for the purpose of their mental direction. ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... this universe out of the eternal purpose because they are little. So our apparent littleness, the weakness, feebleness of our lives, need not disturb the grandeur of ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... state to the size of a pigmy." There would be nothing to hinder Congress "from plundering power after power at the expense of the new states," until they should be left empty shadows of domestic sovereignty, in a union between giants and dwarfs, between power and feebleness. In vivid oratory he conjured up this vision of an unequal union, into which the new state would enter, "shorn of its beams," a mere servant of the majority. From the point of view of the political theory of a confederation, his contention had force, and the hot- tempered ...
— Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 - Volume 14 in the series American Nation: A History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... a dreadful neatness; it smelt of disinfectant, furniture polish and soap, and Sophia, from the big armchair, said mournfully, 'They might have left it as it was. It feels like lodgings.' And as the very feebleness of her outcry smote her sense and waked echoes of all she left unsaid, her mouth fell shapeless, and she cried, 'She's gone!' in a tone of astonishment ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... been impossible even for the eagle eye of his Royal Highness, assisted as it was by his long black opera-glass, or for his fine ear, matured as it was by the most complete study, to discover there either inattention or feebleness. The house was perfectly silent; for when the Monarch directs the orchestra the world goes to the Opera to listen. Perfect silence at Reisenburg, then, was etiquette and the fashion. Between the acts of the Opera, however, the Ballet was performed; and then everybody might talk, and laugh, and ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... regarding it. But by little and little the feeling gave way, and the young man's thoughts taking another turn, he remained for some moments buried in a silent reverie. It was merely the result of his feebleness, though Cuchillo, ever ready to suspect evil, interpreted his silence as ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... which one experiences in dreams when one fancies himself falling. His fixed eyes were wide open with a stare. He lost ground little by little, nevertheless, his fingers slipped along the spout; he became more and more conscious of the feebleness of his arms and the weight of his body. The curve of the lead which sustained him inclined more and more ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... never have believed it would. It is not for a man, who is the father of a man, to show any weakness of the heart, or any over-sensitiveness, in those ties which bind him to his kin. And yet—yet, as you sit by your fireside, with your clear, gray eye feasting in its feebleness on that proud figure of a man who calls you "father,"—and as you see his fond and loving attentions to that one who has been your partner in all anxieties and joys, there is a throbbing within your bosom that makes you almost wish him young again,—that you might ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... moreover, by what has been remarked touching the feebleness of the particular waves, that it is not needful that all the particles of the Ether should be equal amongst themselves, though equality is more apt for the propagation of the movement. For it is true that ...
— Treatise on Light • Christiaan Huygens
... be at the mercy of a troublesome impression, certain precautions must be taken. In the state of weakness and feebleness in which you are, a disagreeable face, an unlucky word, antipathetic surroundings, a mere nothing would be enough to ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... absence, she rather dreaded the comments her father might be pleased to pass on it. But her kinsman, Lord Meadshire, Lord-Lieutenant of the county, a great magnate in the eyes of the world, was to her just a very kind and playful old man, whose jokes only, because of their inherent feebleness, caused her any discomfort. Cousin Humphrey would preserve her from the results of her fault ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... rather than develop a spiritual sturdiness—a sturdiness which Mr. Sedgwick says [footnote: H. D. Sedgwick. The New American Type. Riverside Press.] "shows itself in a close union between spiritual life and the ordinary business of life," against spiritual feebleness which "shows itself in the separation of the two." If one's spiritual sturdiness is congenital and somewhat perfect he is not only conscious that this separation has no part in his own soul, but he does not feel its existence in others. He does not believe there is such a thing. But ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... is evidence that in such cases the circulating blood is pale in colour, but certainly not less in quantity than normally. The condition of the pulse is an important indication of diminution of the quantity of the blood, though only when it is marked. It presents a peculiar smallness and feebleness in all ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich
... words; her wifehood was lovely, was intense; but her motherhood was greater. Day and night her love for her boy protected and guided him, like pillar of cloud, like pillar of fire. She knew no weariness, no feebleness; she grew constantly stronger and more beautiful, and the child grew stronger and more beautiful, with a likeness to her and a oneness with her which were marvelous. He was a loving and affectionate boy to all; his father, his grandparents, old Ike, and swarthy Hannah,—all alike ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... last from my stupor, making me understand that she was not dead, but in a deep swoon, the result of the shock she had undergone. A leech, for whom he had despatched a neighbour, came in as I rose, and taking my place, presently restored her to consciousness. But her extreme feebleness warned me not to hope for more than a temporary recovery; nor had I sat by her long before I discerned that this last blow, following on so many fears and privations, had reached a vital part, and that she ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... and looked all round, wondering how he got there, and moved off toward the T—— bridge. He was pale and his eyes were hot, and feebleness was in all his members, but he seemed to breathe easier. He felt that he had thrown off the old time which had been so oppressive; and in its place had come peace and light. "Lord!" he prayed, "show me my way, that I may renounce these ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... Fountain's reconciliation with the Church of her fathers, she had shown sometimes an anxious disposition to practise the usual austerities of good Catholics. But neither doctor nor director had been able to indulge her in this respect, owing to the feebleness of her health. And on the whole ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... astonishment at his victory swelled his weakness to violence; and he raved of duties and obligations, of paternal authority, of the obedience of children and children-in-law, in all the boundless, self-assured incoherence of feebleness suddenly let loose ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... could see better out'n my old eyes, and I had me something to work with and de feebleness in my back and head would let me 'lone, I would have me plenty to eat in de kitchen all de time, and plenty tobaccy in my pipe, ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... peace," and to have made proposals which "would not be tolerated for an instant if any of the other ten self-governing colonies were in question," and were only considered because of the "poverty and feebleness of Newfoundland." Lord Salisbury was, in his eyes, no worse a sinner in this respect than the Liberal Government of 1893, except that Lord Salisbury had also made concessions in giving up the existing situation secured by treaty in Madagascar, in Tunis, and in Siam, ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... turned to speak at last, I trembled to hear him, Feeling he now must speak of his love, and his life and its secret,— Now that the narrowing chances had left but that cruel conclusion, Else the life-long ache of a love and a trouble unuttered. Better, my feebleness pleaded, the dreariest doubt that had vexed me, Than my life left nothing, not even a doubt to console it; But, while I trembled and listened, his broken words crumbled to silence, And, as though some touch ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... they were "dangerous." These walked along with clanking chains on their limbs—chains which were more or less weighty, according to the strength and character of the wearer. Others there were so reduced in health, strength, and spirit, that the chain of their own feebleness was heavy enough for them to drag to their daily toil. Among these were some with hollow cheeks and sunken eyes, whose weary pilgrimage was evidently drawing to a close; but all, whether strong or weak, fierce or subdued, were made to tramp ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... sentence a, with want (of food) gives the cause of Mark's feebleness. This idea is expressed in Latin by the ablative without a preposition, and the construction is ...
— Latin for Beginners • Benjamin Leonard D'Ooge
... better head her glorious body fits Than his that shakes for age and feebleness: What, should I don this robe and trouble you? Be chosen with proclamations to-day, To-morrow yield up rule, resign my life, And set abroach new business for you all? Rome, I have been thy soldier forty years, And led my country's ...
— The Tragedy of Titus Andronicus • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... irritated everybody, like a new and incomprehensible music falling on slumbering ears. But he was listened to with respect, with the veneration inspired by his years and his unsullied career. His voice had the melodious feebleness of a muffled, silver bell; and his words rolled through the silence of the hall with a certain prophetic stateliness, as if the vision of a better world were passing before his eyes as he spoke, the revelation of a perfect society of the future, where there would ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Carey. She ran to take off her bonnet, while Henrietta went to announce her coming. She knocked at the door, Henrietta opened it, and coming in, she saw Fred lying on the sofa by the fire, in his dressing-gown, stretched out in that languid listless manner that betokens great feebleness. There were the purple marks of leeches on his temples; his hair had been cropped close to his head; his face was long and thin, without a shade of colour, but his eyes looked large and bright; and he smiled and held out his hand: "Ah, Queenie, ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... is often mistaken by fools for creative power. The morbid fancies and melancholy scorn of a Byron, for instance, such gentry reflect back from their foggy imaginations in exaggerated and distorted feebleness of whining versicles, and so on with other lights celestial or infernal. This, however, by the way. The only rational pursuit he ever followed, and that only by fits and starts, and to gratify his faculty of "wonder," I fancy, ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... Ephraim Q. Knickerbocker Natural Products Manufacturing Corporation, of Spread Eagle Springs, N.J. That the structure is itself an imposing one may well be imagined in view of the vast productive energy expended within its walls; and the feebleness and inefficiency of the productive operations of Nature are never so fully realized as after a visit to this marvellous factory, and a ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... should say that it was a lantern on board the ship of the captain of the expedition, and is shown to enable the other two to keep near him. I cannot say how far it is away, for I do not know at what height it hangs above the water; but I should imagine, from the feebleness of the light, that it must be some ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... Ruth was thinking it all out. Love was blinding her, dazzling her; and the giants that rose before her were dwarfed into pygmies, at which she tried to look gravely, but succeeded only in smiling at their feebleness. Love was an Armada, and bore down upon the little armament that thought called up, and rode ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... of physical deformity, increased by a fall which prevented the possibility of her ever being able to walk, nature had with unusual malignity stamped her with a feebleness of intellect that at ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... open handed frankness, reckless audacity, or the hated vices of feebleness, cowardice, deceit, humility. Those who have won fame by puissant feats and who die in battle are snatched by the Valkyrs from the sod to Valhalla. To die in arms is to be ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... time Shall be remembered. Men will praise an act By likening it to Bimbasara's gift. You offer me the half of your domain. I in return beseech you share with me Better than wealth, better than kingly power, The peace and joy that follows lusts subdued. Wait not on age—for age brings feebleness— But this great battle needs our utmost strength. If you will come, then welcome to our cave; If not, may wisdom all your actions guide. Ruling your empire in all righteousness, Preserve your country and protect her sons. Sadly I leave you, great and gracious king, But my work calls—a world that ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... good wife, and watched over him well; but there was no preventing his deficiency from increasing; it became acknowledged disease of the brain, and he did not survive his cousin six years. Happily none of his feebleness of intellect seems to have descended to Eustace the third, who is growing up a steady, sensible lad under his mother's management; and perhaps it is not the worse for Arghouse to ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... called it, to pass Park Chambers; and this was the sole amusement that in the lingering August days and the twilights sadly drawn out it was left her to cultivate. She had long since learned to know it for a feeble one, though its feebleness was perhaps scarce the reason for her saying to herself each evening as her time for departure approached: "No, no—not to-night." She never failed of that silent remark, any more than she failed of feeling, in some deeper place than she had even yet fully sounded, that one's remarks were as weak ...
— In the Cage • Henry James
... the other departments; that as all the effects of such a union must ensue from a dependence of the former on the latter, notwithstanding a nominal and apparent separation; that as, from the natural feebleness of the judiciary, it is in continual jeopardy of being overpowered, awed, or influenced by its co-ordinate branches; and that as nothing can contribute so much to its firmness and independence as permanency in office, this quality may therefore ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... she is very calm, and quiet, and dignified. She looks all that you would expect from what I have told you. The briskness of youth, the sedate firmness of middle-age, have years since given place, as you will see with some pain, to the feebleness produced by ill health and mental suffering—for she mourned grievously after those whom she had lost! Oh! how she dotes upon her surviving son and daughter! And are they not worthy of such ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... in all this a man of weak faith, feeding and nourishing his trust in God that his faith may grow strong. He uses the promise of a prayer-hearing God as a staff to stay his conscious feebleness, that he may lean hard upon the strong Word which cannot fail. He records the day when he thus takes this staff in hand, and the very petitions which are the burdens which he seeks to lay on God, so that his act of committal ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... weeks as the ripened old saint hovered about the border land between this and the spirit world her feebleness increased. Her loved ones would notice her lips moving. And thinking she might be needing some creature comfort they would go over and bend down to listen for her request. And time and again they found the old saint repeating over to herself one ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon
... and powerful presentation. It is probable that the great inequalities in many of his paintings, especially at this later time, are due to his leaving much of the execution to assistants. Whatever faults are in the work of the master himself, he is never, up to the last, guilty of any feebleness or insipidity, such, for instance, as in the painting of this ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell
... mental strength necessary for the discharge of its obligations. Strength of all kinds seemed to fail him. His physical vitality was low; the health he had gained in Madeira had been too severely taxed since his return. He had fought bravely against the mental feebleness that was creeping gradually over him with a paralyzing languor; but he knew he could not bear the conflict much longer. Everything was telling against him. He would fain have proved to his people that a man can live out a noble, ...
— Brought Home • Hesba Stretton
... household-treasures. For in a large proportion of those that have a successful hero, he obtains his success either by lying or some kind of deceit or treachery, by stealing, or by imposing upon the credulity or feebleness of age; and of those in which the hero is himself victorious over oppression, we are not able to recollect one which exhibits the beauty of moderation and magnanimity, not to say of Christian charity and forgiveness. Mr. Dasent ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... and his action, and held his hearers engaged, when his periods were such as pronounced by an ordinary speaker, would not have preserved the audience from that listnessness, which is instantly seen and felt by the speaker, and soon adds embarrassment and confusion to feebleness. In private society, to the last months of his existence, it gave him rather the air of a youth inexperienced in the realities of life, and entering it under the ardour of hope, than of a man who had almost reached the limits of human existence, in the ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... to her room and fling herself upon the bed in an impotent storm of tears. She stood thinking, her little fists clenched and her eyes flashing. Civilization has trained women to feebleness of purpose, but this girl stood outside of conventional viewpoints. It was her habit to move directly to the thing she wanted. Her decision was swift, the action following upon ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... atmospheric garbage, into his lungs; he becomes thin-blooded, his unwholesome pallor witnesses to his weakness of vitality, his muscles are atrophied, and even his hair is ragged, lustreless, ill-nurtured. In time he transmits his feebleness to his successors; and we have the creatures who stock our workhouses, hospitals, and our gaols—for moral degradation always accompanies radical degradation of ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... personal aggrandizement from its dissolution, the probability would be, that we should run into the project of conferring supplementary powers upon Congress, as they are now constituted; and either the machine, from the intrinsic feebleness of its structure, will moulder into pieces, in spite of our ill-judged efforts to prop it; or, by successive augmentations of its force an energy, as necessity might prompt, we shall finally accumulate, in a single body, all the most important prerogatives of sovereignty, and thus entail upon our ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... shame, but the young man who knows everything has come to pall upon me. According to Emerson, this is a proof of my own intellectual feebleness. The strong man, intellectually, cultivates the society of his superiors. He wants to get on, he wants to learn things. If I loved knowledge as one should, I would have no one but young men about me. There was a friend of Dick's, a gentleman from Rugby. At one time he had hopes ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... nothing else can be considered until some expression is made of them, and yet the impossibility of any adequate statement is so evident that it seems hopeless to begin. The event of his death was not unexpected. It has been imminent and threatening for years. His feebleness and the intense suffering of his later days relieve the grief that must be felt, and there springs by its side gratitude that rest and peace have come to him. And yet to those who loved him the world seems not quite the same since he has gone from it. There is an underlying ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... approached with considerable feebleness, passed slowly into the study, advanced to the table, and reached out his hands as if to lift something which he expected to find there. Seeing nothing, he glanced in astonishment up at the book shelves and then back to ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... is not the fault of the beef, but of my feebleness. Mistress Talbot will do it reason. But I, methinks I could eat better ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in the fiery hour, Their feebleness of mind defend; And in their weakness show thy power, And make them patient to ...
— The Liberty Minstrel • George W. Clark
... had said that 'the characteristics of Addison's style are feebleness and inanity.' He was thus happily ridiculed by Person:—'Soon after the publication of Sir John's book, a parcel of Eton boys, not having the fear of God before their eyes, etc., instead of playing truant, robbing orchards, annoying poultry, or performing ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... he, "hast thou said it. Thy silence and thy speech alike disgust me." Into the combat again they dash, feeble as they were. Ferocious indeed is the strife in which skill is not thought of, and strength itself is dead; in which valour rages instead of contends, and feebleness becomes hate and fury. Oh, the gates of blood that were set open in wounds upon wounds! If life itself did not come pouring forth, it was only because scorn ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt |
