"Infirmity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as manifestly capable of religion and of the religious life as any other intelligent persons during the lucid interludes that make up nine-tenths perhaps of their lives. . . . Suppose now one of these cases, and suppose that the infirmity takes the form of some cruel, disgusting, or destructive disposition that may become at times overwhelming, and you have our universal trouble with sinful tendency, as it were magnified for examination. It is clear that the mania which defines his position must be ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... every means within our knowledge to avoid the above-mentioned evils and distresses, and to acquire the grace of God and the praise of the world. And, since we have thought and advised, it has seemed to us, considering it has pleased God to visit our cousin with infirmity, that the remedy rests upon us and you. And to the end that every one might know that we withdraw not ourselves from it, nor from our part in it, we offer you to put our whole quarrel, with God's grace, between our person and yours. And if it should seem ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... abhorrence of sensuality and prevarication. They left little rewards in secret, as tokens of their approbation of the virtues they loved, and by their supernatural power afforded a supplement to pure and excellent intentions, when the corporeal powers of the virtuous sank under the pressure of human infirmity. Where they conceived displeasure, the punishments they inflicted were for the most part such as served moderately to vex and harass the offending party, rather than to inflict upon ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... foundation of Faith, I shall render joyous praise for the finished work to Him from whom the invitation comes. But if human nature has failed to reach beyond its limits, whatever is lost through my infirmity must be made good ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... parties existed in both colonies; but Judge Pedder did not participate the political sympathies of Judge Forbes, and made no pretence to popular applause. To those who check the abuses of irresponsible power something is due; but when the balance of human infirmity is struck, it will not be always found in ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... Abigail Prim detested Samuel Benham because he represented to her everything in life which she shrank from—age, avoirdupois, infirmity, baldness, stupidity, and matrimony. He was a prosaic old bachelor who had amassed a fortune by the simple means of inheriting three farms upon which an industrial city subsequently had been built. Necessity rather ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... that it is a suspicious sign of infirmity of faith in our modern moralists to make their exemplary young people always pretty; and dress them always in the height of the fashion. One may read Miss Edgeworth's 'Harry and Lucy,' 'Frank and Mary,' 'Fashionable Tales,' ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... taught that this Being was so different from all other beings, that He could not be expressed by the image of any visible thing; also, that He could not be looked upon, and that not so much from inherent impossibility as from human infirmity; further, that by reason of His power He was without equal and unique. (90) Moses admitted, indeed, that there were beings (doubtless by the plan and command of the Lord) who acted as God's vicegerents - that is, beings to whom God had given the right, authority, and power to ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part I] • Benedict de Spinoza
... who are getting fat are generally like that. For every added pound an added excuse, for each multiplying inch at the waistline a new plea in abatement to be set up in the mind. I see the truth of it now. When you start getting fat you start getting fatuous. With the indubitable proof of his infirmity mounting in superimposed folds of tissues before his very gaze, with the rounded evidence presented right there in front of him where he can rest his elbows on it, your average fattish man nevertheless refuses to acknowledge the visible situation. ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... melancholy. There is no more beautiful illustration of the principle of compensation which marks the Divine benevolence than the fact that some of the holiest lives and some of the sweetest songs are the growth of the infirmity which unfits its subject for the rougher duties of life. When one reads the life of Cowper, or of Keats, or of Lucretia and Margaret Davidson,—of so many gentle, sweet natures, born to weakness, and mostly dying before their time,—one cannot help thinking that the human race ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... man would be justified in concealing, without falsehood, the fact of a bodily lack or infirmity on his part which concerned himself alone, he would not be justified in concealing the fact that he was sick of a contagious disease, or that his house was infected by a disease that might be given to a caller there. Nor would he be justified in concealing a defect in a horse or ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull
... eighteen months Poe's connection with Graham was dissolved. The reason has not been made perfectly clear; but from what we already know, it is safe to charge it to Poe's infirmity of temper or of habit. His protracted sojourn in Philadelphia was now drawing to a close. It had been the most richly productive, as well as the happiest, period of his life. For a time, sustained by appreciation and hope, he in a measure overcame his intemperate ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... him—General Harrington, the invincible, the adored of so many hearts! "He would soon be an old man, and then the friendship, which was all her heart could ever give, would content him. He an old man—he who had solemnly determined never to know what age or infirmity was." The insult was too much. His outraged vanity hardened into absolute malice. For the first time he positively hated the man who could be loved better than himself. He forgot the self-sacrifice, the wealth given up to his use—the sublime devotion which had made James ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... distinction between lesser and more important regulations; in her view, all were of equal consequence. She took her share of the menial duties, which for the first years weighed heavily on the community in consequence of their having no lay Sisters. No indisposition or infirmity, no pressure of business or excess of fatigue could induce her to deviate in one iota from the practices of common life. Ever active and indefatigable, she might be seen, now teaching and tending her dear Indian children, now directing ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... the low ideal which leads us to worship success. From his earliest years a boy learns from his surroundings, if not by actual precept, to strive not so much to be something as somebody. The love of power rather than fame may be the "last infirmity of noble minds," but it is probably the first infirmity of many ignoble ones. Herein lies the justification of the criticism of a friendly alien. "You pride yourselves on your incorruptibility, and quite rightly; for in England there is probably less ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... Whatever is necessary they have, they receive it from the community, and the magistrate takes care that no one receives more than he deserves. Yet nothing necessary is denied to anyone. Friendship is recognized among them in war, in infirmity, in the art contests, by which means they aid one another mutually by teaching. Sometimes they improve themselves mutually with praises, with conversation, with actions, and out of the things they need. All those of the same age call one another brothers. They call all over twenty-two ...
— The City of the Sun • Tommaso Campanells
... that in which it is doing. You instantly acknowledge the power, while your curiosity is not quenched. For instance, in the cartoon of the "Beautiful Gate," you see the action at the word is just breaking into the miracle—the cripple is yet in his distorted infirmity—but you see near him grace and activity of limb beautifully displayed, in that mother and running child; and you look to the perfection which, you feel sure, the miracle will complete. This is by no means the best instance—it is the case in all his compositions where ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... pity for several reasons. First, because the tempter by his cunning had deceived our first father, Adam; secondly, because the spirit of man is encompassed by flesh and consequently by infirmity; thirdly, because his spirit, enclosed as it is in an earthly body, is frail as the vessel which enshrines it, easily overbalanced by every breath of wind, and unable to right itself again; fourthly, because the temptation in the Garden of Eden was great and over-mastering; ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... Paracelsus in his book of madness, who brags how many several persons he hath cured of it. Felix Platerus (de Mentis Alienat. cap. 3) reports of a woman in Basel whom he saw, that danced a whole month together. The Arabians call it a kind of palsie. Bodine, in his fifth book, speaks of this infirmity; Monavius, in his last epistle to Scoltizius, and in another to Dudithus, where you may read more of it."—Burton's Anatomy ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... conduct can ever induce us to forget. If he confessed him, self-liable, like the rest of us, to mistakes and shortcomings, we must remember that the great officers of the government who decreed his downfall were not less the subjects of human infirmity. ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... of these two antitheses of my text; and the other is no less profound and significant. 'He was rich; He became poor.' In this connection 'rich' can only mean possessed of the Divine fulness and independence; and 'poor' can only mean possessed of human infirmity, dependence, and emptiness. And so to Jesus of Nazareth, to be born was impoverishment. If there is nothing more in His birth than in the birth of each of us, the words are grotesquely inappropriate to the facts of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... been any appearance of weakness or infirmity before in the Recluse, it now vanished. Nothing could exceed the promptitude and energy of his movements. To rush to the water, to throw himself into a boat, to unfasten it from the stake to which it was tied, and with a vigorous ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... Further, according to the Apostle (2 Cor. 12:9): "Virtue [Douay: 'power'] is made perfect in infirmity." But infirmity is an evil. Therefore virtue is referred not only to ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... disadvantage (among others) of so limiting my upward view that I am unable to see more than about ten feet of the height of the house immediately opposite to me, although, by reaching as far out of the window as my infirmity will permit, I can see for a considerable distance up and down the canal, which does not exceed fifteen feet in width. But, although I can see but little of the material house opposite, I can see its reflection upside down in the canal, and I take a good deal of inverted interest in such ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... unsuspicious of the greatness of the cause she had for dread. Illness, a breaking up of the constitution, the payment of sudden infirmity and premature old age for the waste of unguarded health and strength,—these seemed to me the threats awaiting her; and great and grievous enough, yet how short of the ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... to treat the poor soul's want of memory as a common infirmity; pretended he was himself very often troubled in the same way, and advised him to read the newspapers. "My good wife," said he, "has brought me a whole file of the Cape Gazette. I'd read them if I was you. The deuce is in it, if you don't rake ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... him, unworthy incapacity of doing without a woman whom he despised and even occasionally hated. The very fits of moral hysterics, nay, of moral St. Vitus's dance, of which such love maladies largely consisted, sickened him, degraded him in his own eyes like some disgusting physical infirmity. In his twenty-second year he had such a love malady, he had been the scandal of all London in an intrigue with a certain very lovely Lady Ligonier, who, divorced by her husband for her guilt with the young Italian, was on the ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... and lurching from side to side. Ivar never drank, and Alexandra thought at once that one of his spells had come upon him, and that he must be in a very bad way indeed. She ran downstairs and hurried out to meet him, to hide his infirmity from the eyes of her household. The old man fell in the road at her feet and caught her hand, over which he bowed his shaggy head. "Mistress, mistress," he sobbed, "it has fallen! Sin and death for the young ones! God have ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... the inconsistency of our ideas, of our manners and of our laws, with regard to a question which concerns the life of almost all living beings, we did not endeavor to make plain, in a short peroration, the political causes of the infirmity which pervades all modern society. After having exposed the secret vices of marriage, would it not be an inquiry worthy of philosophers to search out the causes which ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... appearance from what he became subsequently. Far from having that fullness which approached to corpulence—that sallow puffiness of cheek which verged on the unhealthy—or that heaviness of limb, or general obesity, which threatened infirmity—he was slender in frame, but firm and well-proportioned; yet there was something which indicated premature wear, by hardship in the field and toil in the cabinet; he was quick and nervous in every movement, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... favored beyond all precedent, but that he adopted the habits and fell in with the vices of Oriental kings, and lost the affections of his people. He was exalted to the highest pinnacle of glory; he descended to an abyss of shame,—a sad example of the infirmity of human nature which all ages ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... me to be the maddest part of her conduct by any means. However, I'm glad the thing is cleared up: it relieves one's mind to have things cleared up. Yes, I'll keep it a secret, Mr. Betteredge. I like to be tender to human infirmity—though I don't get many chances of exercising that virtue in my line of life. You think Mr. Franklin Blake hasn't got a suspicion of the girl's fancy for him? Ah! he would have found it out fast enough if she had been nice-looking. The ugly women ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... conveyed to your executive, 'We are in peril of our lives; send us an army for defence'? Was that a 'petty affair' which drove families from their homes,—which assembled women and children in crowds, without shelter, at places of common refuge, in every condition of weakness and infirmity, under every suffering which want and terror could inflict, yet willing to endure all, willing to meet death from famine, death from climate, death from hardships, preferring any thing rather than the horrors of meeting it from a domestic assassin? Was ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... its passage through the valley field, was remarkable for nothing but a rare infirmity of purpose, which would never let it keep one course for many rods together. It twisted and curled about, making many little meadow promontories on one side and the other; hurrying along with a soft, sweet gurgle that sounded fresh, even under ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... our ears are closed to truth and friendship for some time after the triumphal course of composition. We are too sensitive for the gentlest touch; and when we really have the most infirmity, we are angry to be told ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... help feeling that she was so. We felt ourselves fairly imaged when standing before her, as in a clear plate-glass mirror. There were no distorted lines caused by her own imperfections; for although she considered herself "compassed with infirmity," no one else could take such a view of her, but only saw the abundant charity which could cover and forgive a multitude of failings in others. We felt that if there was any good in us, she knew it, and even when she saw them "with all our faults she loved us ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... be twelve feet high, so that, even without the glass, it would be impossible for anyone to get over it without assistance. As I stood there looking at it, resenting the threat of that broken glass, and pondering the infirmity of character which such a threat revealed, it suddenly struck me that the upper part of the wall differed slightly from the lower part. It was a little lighter in colour, a little newer in appearance; and, examining the wall more closely, I discovered that originally it had been ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... shook the credit of the New Bedford owners. And the act itself was simply murder. Tari's life must have hung in the beginning by a hair. In the grief and terror of that time, it is not unlikely he went mad, an infirmity to which he was still liable; or perhaps a child may have taken a fancy to him and ordained him to be spared. He escaped at least alive, married in the island, and when I knew him was a widower with a married ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... decays the wise{,} doth eve{r} make the better fool. Clown. God send you, sir, a speedy infirmity{,} for the better increasing of your folly."—Shakespeare. Twelfth Night{, ...
— Reflections - Or, Sentences and Moral Maxims • Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld
... him. In vain for the daughter as for the father. He replied to her with the quiet self-possession which should have convinced her that no man on earth was less entitled to indulgence for the gentlemanlike infirmity of shyness, and no man less needed the duties of any hostess for the augmentation of his comforts, or rather for his diminished sense of discomfort; but his replies were in monosyllables, and made with the air of a man who says in his heart, "If ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... these reasons for withholding it had passed away? This is a question that has often been put to me both in print and in conversation. And yet I should have imagined that the explanation was not far to seek. It was simply diffidence; in other words it was that infirmity which, though generally supposed to belong to youth, comes to a writer, if it comes at all, with years. Undoubtedly there was a time in my life when I should have leapt with considerable rashness into the brilliant ranks of our ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... not be put down to the fault of the Septuagint or the allegorists or Philo that the Alexandrian development of Judaism led on to Roman Christianity. It is to be ascribed rather to the infirmity of human nature, which requires the ideas of its inspired teachers and peoples to be brought down to the common understanding, and causes the progress towards universal religion to be a slow growth. The masses of the Alexandrian Jews in his own day cannot ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... other, that had I seen this face on a stranger, in a still more distant corner of the earth—it must have called to mind the hills of my native land. The old man was very deaf, but in spite of age and this infirmity his sharp blue eye expressed the enduring vigour of his mind. He had buried his wife in Scotland, and had left there a numerous family, that he might become its pioneer at the antipodes. He had thus far worked his way successfully, and was beginning ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... own flight, had the mortification to see all the lands assigned to charitable and to religious uses, the humane and pious foundations of themselves and their ancestors, made to support infirmity and decrepitude, to give feet to the lame and eyes to the blind, and to effect which they had deprived themselves of many of the enjoyments of life, cruelly sequestered and sold at the same market of violence and ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... ever arrested by the pages forming the object of this reference that rigour of discrimination has wholly and consistently failed, I gather, to constitute a part. In which fact there is perhaps after all a rough justice—since the infirmity I speak of, for example, has been always but the direct and immediate fruit of a positive excess of foresight, the overdone desire to provide for future need and lay up heavenly treasure against the demands of my climax. If the art of the drama, ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... of this foole Maluolio, doth he not mend? Mal. Yes, and shall do, till the pangs of death shake him: Infirmity that decaies the wise, doth euer make ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... came. A greater infirmity came instead, and at last Joyce suggested that her mother should not get up in bad weather. They both knew what this meant, but the episode passed as others do, and Mrs. Leach was bedridden. ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... shewing——That his father was extremely sick, that he had several necessary affairs at St. Andrews, and desired liberty to go there for that effect. Which petition being read, with a certificate of his father's infirmity, the council granted licence to the petitioner to go to St. Andrews, to visit his father, and perform his other necessary affairs; always returning when he should be called ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... London now to be of a little use to A——; not ostensibly, for I can neither go out, nor give parties: but I am the confidential friend to whom she likes to bring her social gatherings, as she can see something of the world with others. Age and infirmity seem to be overlooked in what she calls the harmony between us,—not perfect agreement of opinion (which I should regret, with almost fifty years of difference), but the spirit-union: can you say ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the fashion of this generation, but gave tokens of age never discerned in Mars for the last three or four thousand years. The form, though erect and even stately, was that of one who had felt the long since abolished infirmity of advancing years. The countenance alone bore no marks of old age. It was full, unwrinkled, firm in physical as in moral character; calm in the unresisted power of intellect and will over the passions, serene in a dignity too absolute and ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... Lastly, because nothing clearly was gained by causing the Gospel to end so abruptly that every one must see at a glance that it had been mutilated. No. The omission having originated in a mistake, was perpetuated for a brief period (let us suppose) only through infirmity of judgment: or, (as I prefer to believe), only in consequence of the religious fidelity of copyists, who were evidently always instructed to transcribe exactly what they found in the copy set before them. The Church meanwhile in her corporate capacity, has ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... the very front of the platform, and when we had finished the hymn I noticed that the smell of perspiration was beginning to overpower the oranges. It is my misfortune to have an unusually acute sense of smell. No one afflicted with such an infirmity ought to take any part in the politics of ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... teeth at his own impotence. But there was no strength, no virile grip to take his fate in his own hands and mould it like a man. He only mourned his disadvantages, and sometimes blamed destiny, sometimes a congenital infirmity of purpose, for the dreary course of his life. Nature alone could charm his sullen moods, and that not always. Now and again she spread over the face of his existence a transitory contentment and a larger hope; but the first contact ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... united two things before incompatible, monarchy and liberty; and Trajan is now daily augmenting the felicity of the empire; and the public security [6] has not only assumed hopes and wishes, but has seen those wishes arise to confidence and stability; yet, from the nature of human infirmity, remedies are more tardy in their operation than diseases; and, as bodies slowly increase, but quickly perish, so it is more easy to suppress industry and genius, than to recall them. For indolence itself acquires a charm; and sloth, however odious at first, ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... will only be patient, we shall grow better too, because we belong to the world and cannot be left behind. Once more I say in reply, that I am not content with no greater progress than the old States of Europe, burthened with the institutions of dark ages and tottering with infirmity, are able to make. It is for us to encourage them, by the spectacle of what may be accomplished by young and unshackled energies. It is for us to do the world a greater service than it has yet received through achievements wrought on this soil. We have asserted the ...
— The Religion of Politics • Ezra S. Gannett
... Whereas we are given to understand that upon some letters heretofore written, you are on the way repairing hither, forasmuch as we are informed by your son-in-law, Henry Seckford, that your sickness and infirmity is such as without danger you may not travel, we are very well contented if you shall not like to repair up, that you return again to the place where you were committed, there to remain until such time as further order shall be taken with you. ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... reverses was a physical one; he could not endure the hard life in the college of Montaigu. The addled eggs and squalid bedrooms stuck in his memory all his life; there he thinks he contracted the beginnings of his later infirmity. In the Colloquia he has commemorated with abhorrence Standonck's system of abstinence, privation and chastisement. For the rest his stay there lasted only ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... quadrangle of about four hundred yards square, with a cloistered wall all round; but I must not describe any more tombs.[15] Here, under a marble slab, lies the head of poor Dara Shikoh, who, but for a little infirmity of temper, had perhaps changed the destinies of India, by changing the character of education among the aristocracy of the countries under his rule, and preventing the birth of the Maratha powers by leaving untouched the independent kingdoms of the Deccan, upon whose ruins, under his bigoted ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... entrance hovers an enormous specimen of the American eagle, with outspread wings, a shield before her breast, and, if I recollect aright, a bunch of intermingled thunderbolts and barbed arrows in each claw. With the customary infirmity of temper that characterizes this unhappy fowl, she appears, by the fierceness of her beak and eye, and the general truculency of her attitude, to threaten mischief to the inoffensive community; and especially to warn all citizens, careful of their safety, against intruding on the premises ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... The infirmity of my temper has been a subject of eternal regret to me; yet it never displayed itself with much force, except under the lash of my brother's sarcasms. My indignation on those occasions had a strange mixture of fear in it, and both together suffocated ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... disoblige him; but having called the maid, conjuring her to tell her whether any thing passed between her and Octavio; she again told her lady the whole truth, in which there could be no discovery of infirmity there; she embraced her, she kissed her bosom, and found her touches soft, her breath and bosom sweet as any thing in nature could be; and now lost almost in a confusion of thought, she could not tell what to imagine; at last she being wholly possessed that all the fault was not in ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... weight and afford exciting sport; but I have no tackle with me, and did not even bring a gun, as I thought I should be too seedy to do anything but moon about. I did not then know the great exertion necessary to reach Kashmir, an exertion which any man with bodily infirmity would hardly venture on without first providing himself with an undertaker. Upon making enquiries I find that all the Coolies and supplies on the other road, have been sent over to this side, so I must keep to it and not cross as I intended. In the evening a slim young ...
— Three Months of My Life • J. F. Foster
... the infirmity of your natural disposition, my child. I know, too, what circumstances have done to embitter it. Our heavenly Father will take all that into account. Yet there is no one who has not within himself faults and temptations to contend with. Many have far ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... aside his uniform, he had yet never succeeded in looking the civilian, and his military title had clung to him through thirty years of practical life. Furthermore, if it must be admitted that he looked somewhat older than his sixty years, that fact was not to be accounted for by any acknowledged infirmity, unless, indeed, the stiff leg he had brought with him from his four years' service ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... chose a place where the trees have been cleared and the snow mountains spread themselves for the feast of the eyes of those who can see. He put his milk-can and his staff on the ground, and stood for a moment with head bowed as if crushed by his infirmity. Then he threw up his hands and raised his head, as though a sudden vision had come to him—his whole body tense and expectant, like that of a man who strains every nerve to catch a message from the hills across the valley. For a minute he remained still, as if receiving something in his hands ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... Colonel Wynyard took down the same story from Taniwha's lips in 1852, when he was supposed to be about ninety-three, and says: "His faculties were little impaired, and his great age perceptible more from a stoop and grey hairs than any other infirmity." Cook expressed very strong disapproval of Mr. ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... that bald, gray old man, his hands trembling with constitutional infirmity and age, upon whose consecrated head the vials of tyrannic wrath had been outpoured. Among the crowd of slaveholders who filled the galleries he could seek no friends, and but a few among those immediately around him. Unexcited, he raised his voice, high-keyed, as was usual with ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... to their own professionalism; no doubt they could laugh at it themselves. But there is always a danger that we shall be enslaved by it; and it is the business of criticism to free us from that slavery, to make us aware of this last infirmity of great artists. We are on our guard easily enough against a professionalism that is out of fashion. The Wagnerian of a generation ago could sneer at the professionalism of Mozart; but the professionalism of Wagner seemed to him to be ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... even that which he hath.' How cruel and yet how wise, how terribly striking and true! A healthy man! What more can he want, and what abundant gifts that best of all gifts will gain for him! If he is visited by infirmity—only look at me!—how much misery I have suffered from this curse, terrible enough in itself, and tainting everything ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... rendered mad by the bite of a dog, is surely excusable, and yet we ought to constrain him. In like manner, the man who cannot govern his passions, nor restrain them by the fear of the laws, though excusable on account of the infirmity of his nature, can nevertheless not enjoy peace, nor the knowledge and the love of God; and it is ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... the benefit of members of the Convention. But if she were a confiding miss of "sweet sixteen," instead of the "strong-minded woman" that she is, and the blushes of all those brilliant signs were transfused into her own lovely cheeks, we suspect (such is the infirmity or the perversity of "those odious men") that she would make more conquests than she can reasonably expect to do with the intellectual blaze and brilliancy of this week's Revolution—splendid new signs and all. We fear the time is rather ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... but it was also somewhat pathetic. These two good commonplace souls had travelled through life together side by side for over thirty years, and, despite age, infirmity, and "nearves", were still lovers at heart. Before the wife's eyes the figure of "Mr Macalister" loomed so large that it blocked out the entire world; to him, even in this hour of depression, "the wife" ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... answer that was promptly shot off at me in a brief tone of voice. I made with my head and my hand a courteous gesture, by which I seemed to sympathize gently with the infirmity that was thus revealed to me, after which I sat down, feeling more easy. I had drawn my adversary's fire. ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... speeches in the Canadian House of Commons have never been surpassed. But to his great {105} gifts were joined great weaknesses, among which may be set down an abnormal sensitiveness. He was peculiarly susceptible to the daily annoyances which beset a public man. So marked was this infirmity that men without a tithe of his ability, but with a better adjusted nervous system, would sometimes presume to torment him just for the fun of the thing. While he was minister of Justice, political exigencies ...
— The Day of Sir John Macdonald - A Chronicle of the First Prime Minister of the Dominion • Joseph Pope
... well-known Baptist clergyman in Brooklyn, who was a critic in her way, and who had a faint suspicion that anecdotes generally were "made up" for the occasion, went one day with her father to hear his Thanksgiving sermon. He told a melting story about his poor blind brother who, notwithstanding his infirmity, was always cheerful and happy. The audience was deeply impressed, and many, including the speaker himself, were moved to tears. On her return home, Mary, we will call her, said, with deep earnestness, "Papa, when you were telling that about Uncle Nat this morning, ...
— Harper's Young People, March 23, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... existing source anything comparable to it could be supplied. Mrs Hopgood seldom went to church. The church, to be sure, was horribly dead, but she did not give that as a reason. She had, she said, an infirmity, a strange restlessness which prevented her from sitting still for an hour. She often pleaded this excuse, and her husband and daughters never, by word or smile, gave her the least reason to suppose that they did not ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... tooth for a tooth and revenging bloodshed with bloodshed. For one who is second in doing unrighteousness acts no less unrighteously, when the difference is only one of order, doing the self-same work. But such a precept was, and is, in other respects just, because of the infirmity of those to whom the law was given, and it was given in violation of the pure law, and was not consonant with the nature and goodness of the Father of all; it was to a degree appropriate, but yet given under a certain compulsion. For he who forbids the commission of a single murder in that he ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... oft to them that be maidens, and eke to them that be corrupt; and this sin men clepe pollution, that cometh in four manners;" these four manners being (1) languishing of body from rank and abundant humors, (2) infirmity, (3) surfeit of meat and drink, and (4) villainous thoughts. Four hundred years later, Madame Roland, in her Memoires Particulieres, presented a vivid picture of the anguish produced in an innocent girl's mind by the notion of the sinfulness of erotic dreams. She menstruated ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... provide for the indigent who are not insane, and thus to transfer to the Federal Government the charge of all the poor in all the States. It has the same power to provide hospitals and other local establishments for the care and cure of every species of human infirmity, and thus to assume all that duty of either public philanthropy or public necessity to the dependent, the orphan, the sick, or the needy which is now discharged by the States themselves or by corporate institutions or private endowments existing under the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 5: Franklin Pierce • James D. Richardson
... he gave me a description of the studios and library, which are very curious, and offered to take me with him on his next visit, to renew my old acquaintance with the now celebrated artist. But my infirmity would have rendered awkward the introduction to his young wife, to whom the memories of ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... the tone of that close voice Conceived for that law a bitter distaste Conscious beauty Detached and brotherly attitude towards his own son Did not mean to try and get out of it by vulgar explanation Did not want to be told of an infirmity Dislike of humbug Dogs: with rudiments of altruism and a sense of God Don't care whether we're right or wrong Don't hurt others more than is absolutely necessary Early morning does not mince words Era which had canonised hypocrisy Evening not conspicuous for open-heartedness Everything ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of John Galsworthy • John Galsworthy
... of the people. There have been, however, several incidents which amused me, though scarcely worth telling. A passionate tavern-keeper, quick as a flash of gunpowder, a nervous man, and showing in his demeanor, it seems, a consciousness of his infirmity of temper. I was a witness of a scuffle of his with a drunken guest. The tavern-keeper, after they were separated, raved like a madman, and in a tone of voice having a drolly pathetic or lamentable sound mingled with its rage, as if he were lifting up his voice to weep. Then he jumped into ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... indifference, he would have been amused at the gravity with which the savages listened to the translation of this unusual request. No taunt, no smile mingled with their surprise, for Hetty had a character and a manner too saintly to subject her infirmity to the mockings of the rude and ferocious. On the contrary, she was answered ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... a skilful physician was Dr. H——, but his infirmity was a love of strong drink; and, therefore, was it that he softened not the terrible blow which must soon have fallen. I link with his memory no reproaches now, for all this is away down in the past; and that foe that sooner or ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... interior, Mr Paton one day encountered "a strange figure, with a long white beard, and a Spanish cap, mounted on a sorry horse"—this was no other than Holman, the well-known blind traveller, whom he had last seen at Aleppo, and who, having passed in safety, under the safeguard of his infirmity, through the most dangerous parts of Bosnia, was now on his way to Walachia. He instantly recognised Mr Paton's voice, and mentioned his name on being told where he had last seen him; and after a walk on the esplanade, in which the objects in view were described to him, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... a slim young man walked slowly past the group. He was well dressed, and carried himself with ease and some dignity, albeit with an air of listlessness—a weary and dragging gait, due in part to a slight infirmity of one foot. When some of the dalesmen bowed to him his smile lacked warmth. He was Hugh Ritson, the younger ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... Thus infirmity was made permanent; and the law (also) in the heart of the people with the malignity of the root; so that the good departed away, and the evil ...
— Deuteronomical Books of the Bible - Apocrypha • Anonymous
... and stayed with him about two months, watching the order of his life, and the purity of his manner; how frequent he was in prayers, how humble in receiving brethren, severe in reproving them, eager in exhorting them; and how no infirmity ever broke through his continence, and the coarseness of his food. But, unable to bear longer the crowd which assembled round Antony, for various diseases and attacks of devils, he said that it was not consistent to endure in the desert the crowds of cities, but that he must rather begin where Antony ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... his chair quite still, as indeed he always was, but now it was a deathlike quietness, without the least sign of the wonderful mobility of feature and cheerfulness of voice and manner which made people so soon grow used to his infirmity—sat until his room was prepared. Then he suffered himself to be carried to his bed, which, for the first time in his life, he refused ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... him "an errant mountebank"—though Evelyn sought his society, and was grateful for its stimulus. Lady Fanshawe, who met him at Calais, at the Governor's table, says he "enlarged somewhat more in extraordinary stories than might be averred.... That was his infirmity, though otherwise a person of most excellent parts, and a very fine bred gentleman." "A certain eccentricity and unsteadiness perhaps inseparable from a mind of such vanity," is Lodge's criticism. "The Pliny of our age for lying," quoth Stubbes. But ...
— The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened • Kenelm Digby
... happened? One of the big boys, as he called him, tripped him up at school, and he fell on his hip. It kept him in bed for a year, and he's never been the same since; he will always be a cripple," grieved the mother. She wiped her eyes; she never could think of her boy's infirmity without weeping. "And what seemed the worst of all," she continued, "was that the boy who did it never expressed any regret for it, or acknowledged it by word or deed, though he must have known that Ben knew who hurt him. He's a man here, now; and sometimes ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... rascality generally may be tolerated, but feebleness of mind or infirmity of body never! All through our penal administration and prison discipline this principle prevails, and ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... to the piano. The moment he sat down, I noticed the nervous infirmity of which Mrs. Harling had told me. When he was sitting, or standing still, he swayed back and forth incessantly, like a rocking toy. At the piano, he swayed in time to the music, and when he was ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... should arise in favour of drunkenness, as that it would enable you to face a degree of cold, or contagion, else menacing to life, a duty would arise, pro hac vice, of getting drunk. We had an amiable friend who suffered under the infirmity of cowardice; an awful coward he was when sober; but, when very drunk, he had courage enough for the Seven Champions of Christendom. Therefore, in an emergency, where he knew himself suddenly loaded with the responsibility of defending a family, we approved highly ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... his art, that the amorous spectator is cured of his infirmity by perceiving the evil effects of passion, and he who enters the theatre under a load of sorrow departs from it with a serene countenance, as though he had drunk of that ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... knew very well that Pink Mulgrum was deaf and dumb, he "jawed" at him as though his hearing was as perfect as his own, doubtless forgetting for the moment his infirmity. ...
— On The Blockade - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray Afloat • Oliver Optic
... which is very rare, they fear and respect him above every one else. This old man is frequently the great-grandfather, or the great-great-grand-father of the family, for those natives live to a very great age. I have seen some of them not able to walk, without having any other distemper or infirmity than old age, so that when the necessities of nature required it, or they wanted to take the air, they were obliged to be carried out of their hut, an assistance which is always readily offered to the old men. The respect paid to them by ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... settee in front of him, rose the lengthy and fishy person with the cowhide boots and enormous hands. His name was Josiah Badger and he was, according to Trumet's estimate, "a little mite lackin' in his top riggin'." He stuttered, and this infirmity became more and more apparent as ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... man! I am laughing at you, and at every one else, at everything except myself. Will you go to Unorna? You need not trust her any more than the natural infirmity ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... weakness &c adj.; debility, atony^, relaxation, languor, enervation; impotence &c 158; infirmity; effeminacy, feminality^; fragility, flaccidity; inactivity &c 683. anaemia, bloodlessness, deficiency of blood, poverty of blood. declension of strength, loss of strength, failure of strength; delicacy, invalidation, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... over an infirmity, a fault, or an obligation till they grow morbid," she thought. "I might not be able to show him what was best and right, but papa could if we ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... unfrequently met with in children—more especially boys—under twelve years of age. It is a mistake to suppose, as is done by some parents, that slothfulness or negligence is the invariable and only cause of this infirmity; on this point Dr. Vogel says:—'In most cases which I have observed, the children through their own sense of honor or on account of repeated punishments, had a lively interest in avoiding the accident, and yet were unable to do this without appropriate treatment ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... young puppy!" cried the man; and entirely forgetful of his infirmity, he took three or four paces toward them, with his stick raised ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... hold upon posterity. The same is true of many of my colleagues—the Billiken, for instance, and the Kewp. But the Billiken is a philosopher, and doesn't care; and the Kewp is a careless child. But I feel it, Sara; I have to confess to you that I am a prey to the 'last infirmity of noble minds.'" After a moment he added, less sadly but more irritably, "That creature, now, brainless as it is, is just a doll. ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... common idea was, they were of Jewish descent. Their unpleasant smell was again pressed into service. The Jews, it was well known, had this physical infirmity, which might be cured either by bathing in a certain fountain in Egypt—which was a long way from Brittany—or by anointing themselves with the blood of a Christian child. Blood gushed out of the body of every Cagot on Good Friday. No ...
— An Accursed Race • Elizabeth Gaskell
... stated, attracted Pope's notice, who made a curious note on a scrap of paper sent with it to a friend. Johnson is described as "a man afflicted with an infirmity of the convulsive kind, that attacks him sometimes so as to make him a sad spectacle." This seems to have been the chief information obtained by Pope about the anonymous author, of whom he had said, on first reading the ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... great bodily distress and perplexity of mind, and put forth no effort to release me, and thus restore me to useful activity in his service? Many, many, not in Herod's castle, but in other castles, such as beds of affliction, castles of poverty, castles of persecution, castles of bodily infirmity, castles of bereavement, castles of losses and crosses in one way and another, have had the same experiences, the ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... Berry, "than to deride infirmity." Having compassed the Place Royale, we returned to the Boulevard. "And now, if you've quite finished maundering over the beauties of a landscape which you can't see, supposing we focussed on the object with which we set out. I've thought out a new step, I want to show you. It's called 'The Slip ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... this very speculation on his own infirmity only affords him another occasion for indulging it. It is not from any want of attachment to his father or of abhorrence of his murder that Hamlet is thus dilatory, but it is more to his taste to indulge his imagination in reflecting upon the enormity of the crime and refining on ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... prosperous. She hated misery, and not only misery in the abstract, but miserable weak creatures. She was ready enough, as we have seen, to right a wrong, especially if the wrong was championed by those whom she despised; but for simple infirmity, at least in human beings, she had no more mercy than the wild animals which destroy any one of their tribe whom they find disabled. There was more than a chance, too, that Andrew would interfere with her own happiness. If he ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... of decrepitude, who seemed only dully conscious of Dan's appearance; but Aunt Winnie, seated in her armchair by the window, started up in tremulous rapture at sight of her boy. Despite her age and infirmity, she was still a trig little body, with snow-white hair waved about a kind old wrinkled face and dim soft eyes, that filled with tears at ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman
... young—not boys exactly, but at that stage of life when the physical powers are most active, and the heart most buoyant. That, to my thinking, would be a better arrangement than to grow old, even if we live on until we stumble at last from mere infirmity into the grave, looking forward in discontent one half of our lives, and backward in equal discontent ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... his nature clamoured for her, imperiously, as it clamoured for light and air. He had no concern with anyone but her—her only—and he could not let her go. It was not love; it was a bodily weakness, a pitiable infirmity: he even felt it degrading that another person should be able to exercise such an influence over him, that there should be a part of himself over which he had no control. Not to see her, not to be able to gather fresh strength from each chance meeting, ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... that we had not noticed this the first few days of our residence here, and could only account for it by our being so much taken up with the more obvious wonders of our novel situation. I have since learned, however, that this want of observation is a sad and very common infirmity of human nature, there being hundreds of persons before whose eyes the most wonderful things are passing every day, who nevertheless are totally ignorant of them. I therefore have to record my sympathy with such persons, and ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... hands on the ruler's daughter, and she awoke from the sleep of death to her father's love. You also remember how he healed the crooked woman. He said to her, "Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity," and he laid his hands on her, and immediately she was made straight, and she ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... meeting-house which stood close by. We were much struck by the solemn figure of the mother, a very old woman, as she walked toward her old home with some of her remaining children. I had not thought to see her again, knowing her great age and infirmity. She was like a presence out of the last century, tall and still erect, dark-eyed and of striking features, and a firm look not modern, but as if her mind were still set upon an earlier and simpler scheme ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... from the feebleness of age or from the infirmity I have mentioned, had great difficulty in walking, he had brought with him a small boy, whose business it was to direct his tottering steps ...
— The House in the Mist • Anna Katharine Green
... Lancastrian exiles who might take up the report. Her only safety was in being known, to the few who did meet her, as the convent-bred maiden whose home had been destroyed, and who was content to gain a livelihood as the assistant whom his wife's infirmity made needful. As to Sir Leonard, the knight's own grace and gratitude had endeared him, as well as the professional pleasure of curing him, and for the lady's sake he should ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... cannot, if I would, conceal my infirmity from myself or you; I hardly wish it to continue unknown to the world. If I have once esteemed you, if I have plighted to you my troth, and in my confiding folly forgot my higher duties, God has amply punished me for the weakness in your own ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... she insisted, "especially your infirmity of purpose. You said you were going to ride by yourself. But, do you know, I don't believe you are of a particularly ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... obeyed; and a cruel precaution involved in the same sentence the childhood and innocence of John, the son of the criminal. But the operation was so mildly, or so unskilfully, performed, that the one retained the sight of an eye, and the other was afflicted only with the infirmity of squinting. Thus excluded from the succession, the two princes were confined in the tower of Anema; and the piety of Manuel, the second son of the reigning monarch, was rewarded with the gift of the Imperial crown. But at the end of two years, the turbulence of the Latins and ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... less of limitation and infirmity. Its eyes, sometimes oblivious of the things most obvious, pierce the remotest future, read the innermost soul, discern the last and highest fruitions. The seed in its hand, hard, black, unbroken, is already a flower ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... living, and must be between seventy and eighty years of age; she has, for the last forty years, been an exemplary Christian. When I was a youth I took some pains to learn her to read; this is now a great consolation to her. Since age and infirmity have rendered her of little value to her "owners," she is permitted to read as much as she pleases; this she can do, with the aid of glasses, in the old family Bible, which is almost the only book she has ever looked into. This with some little mending for the black children, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... of December), that a "Committee be appointed to examine and report precedents of such proceedings as may have been had, in case of the personal exercise of the Royal authority being prevented or interrupted, by infancy, sickness, infirmity, or otherwise, with a view to provide for the same." [Footnote: Mr. Burke and Mr. Sheridan were both members of this committee, and the following letter from the former ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... geology, it reaches into the vast, undefined past; and like biology, it comprehends all life science; but unlike each, it has no limitation to any sphere. It is equally at home with living forms and with dead matter—equally at home in the humbler spheres of human life and human infirmity, and in the higher spheres of the spirit world, which we call heaven. It grasps all of biology, all of history, all of geology and astronomy, and far more than telescopes have revealed. It has ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, April 1887 - Volume 1, Number 3 • Various
... since I have been a witness and subject, not to tell you some times, that by your influence and example I have attained to such a step of goodness, as to be thankful, were both to accuse your power and judgment of impotency and infirmity. ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... the end of May or early in June, rebuking backsliders, and denouncing the Queen's rumoured marriage with any infidel, "and all Papists are infidels." Papists and Protestants were both offended. There was a scene with Mary, in which she wept profusely, an infirmity of hers; we constantly hear of her weeping in public. She wished the Lords of the Articles to see whether Knox's "manner of speaking" was not punishable, but nothing could be done. Elizabeth would have ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... forehead, and it was apparently one of his life's labours to get it to lie amid the mass, for his hand rarely ceased to be in motion without an impulsive stroke at the refractory forelock. He peered through his eyelashes ordinarily, but from no infirmity of sight. The truth was, that the man's nature counteracted his spirit's intenser eagerness and restlessness by alternating a state of repose that resembled dormancy, and so preserved him. Rosamund was obliged to give him credit for straightforward eyes when they did look out and flash. Their ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the voice of calamity, produces a powerful emotion in these vast regions; and when beneath these immense domes you hear some old man dragging his feeble steps along the polished marble, watered with so many tears, you feel that man is imposing even by the infirmity of his nature which subjects his divine soul to so many sufferings; and that Christianity, the worship of suffering, contains the true guide for the ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... ways, and would think nothing of any freak, however whimsical; but a stranger would look with different eyes. Few, indeed, were the strangers or visitors who ever came to Chetwynde Castle; but when one did come he would naturally be an object of suspicion to this poor soul, conscious of her infirmity, and struggling desperately against it. Such thoughts as these succeeded to the others which had been passing through the General's mind, and he was just beginning to think of some plan by which he could soothe this poor creature, when he was aware of a movement on her part which ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... and useful employment of whatever powers we possess. There are men, indeed, in whom an over-sensitive conscience is even a paralysing thing, which by suggesting constant petty and ingenious scruples holds them back from useful action. It is a moral infirmity corresponding to that exaggerated intellectual fastidiousness which so often makes an intellectual life almost wholly barren, or to that excessive tendency to look on all sides of a question and to ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... Patch as the King calleth him!" exclaimed Sir Thomas. "A man I have ever thought wore the motley rather from excess, than infirmity, ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... which led him to plan nobly; an accomplished writer; and as he was found worthy of the warm and unchanging friendship of Franklin, that sage who sought for excellence while he looked with a kindly eye upon human infirmity, we, too, may peruse the virtues of the man and smile upon ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... sometimes of one day, sees them, with fear, change toward her, who has remained the same. It is that they have developed in them to a very intense degree the imagination of the human soul, and that to observe is to them only a pretext to construe. That infirmity had governed Julien from early maturity. It was rarely manifested in a manner more unexpected than in the case of charming Alba Steno, who was possibly dreaming of him at the very moment when, in the silence of the night, he was forcing himself to prove that she was capable of ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... nevertheless, of the then standing Ministry of Scotland, many did suddenly and readily comply with that alteration of the Government, some out of Pride and Covetousness, or Man-pleasing, some through infirmity or weakness, or fear of Man, and want of Courage and Zeal for God; many faithful Ministers were thereupon cast out, and many Insufficient and Scandalous Men thrust in on their Charges, and many Families ruined, because they would not own them ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland |
