"Weakling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Yoshitane, himself receiving the office of kwanryo. Eleven years later, on his return to the south, he was followed by many nobles from Kyoto, and his chief provincial town, Yamaguchi, on the Shimonoseki Strait, prospered greatly. But his son Yoshitaka proved a weakling, and being defeated by his vassal, Suye Harukata—called also Zenkyo—he committed suicide, having conjured another vassal, ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... night Tom came home very much the worse of drink, and in maudlin affection insisted on taking the baby from its cradle. The baby shrieked. Tom was angry with the weakling, rated him soundly for ingratitude to "the author of his being," and shook him roughly to teach him the good manners of the ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... Mrs. Lancaster was no weakling. The spark roused as though it had touched and scorched her. She cleared her mind for action. No useless hampering thoughts littered it now. Her intelligence reckoned nothing save the work on hand; its details she had by heart. ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... his throat—hair without a kink in it, a hand with no grip, a meek, hang-dog countenance. a falsehood done in flesh and blood; for while every visible sign about him proclaimed him a poor, witless, useless weakling, the truth was that he had the brains to plan great enterprises and the pluck to carry them through. That was his reputation, and it was a ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 7. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... strong enough, perhaps?—or clever enough?—and yet Alexander was a little man, and the Petit Caporal, and Nelson, and Caesar, too; and so was Saul of Tarsus, and weakly he was into the bargain. AEsop was a dwarf, and so was Attila; Shakspeare was lame; Alfred, a rickety weakling; Byron, clubfooted;—so much for body versus spirit—brute force ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... Brother Purdy!" He took from the correspondence-file the entire box of cigars and forced them on his guests. He pushed their chairs two inches forward and three inches back, which gave an hospitable note, then leaned back in his desk-chair and looked plump and jolly. But he spoke to the weakling grocer ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... am a weakling's symbol of a power That spins the luminous girdle of Saturn in sure hands, And frames the awful face of God in the shifting boreal light. My soul is destiny and immortality; It flashes in the eyes of the tempest, glows along ...
— Pan and Aeolus: Poems • Charles Hamilton Musgrove
... lived in a fair-sized stick-and-wattle house. He was a dapper little man, with a cleverish, weakling cast of face, and was all on the jump with the turn things had taken. He had just opened the door to us, and was eyeing us uncertainly, when the Colonel and the Chief, returning on foot from their inspection, having left their ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... Paul, and Zita was being enacted the two partners in the library were disputing hot and heavy. As they argued, almost it seemed as if Balcom's very face limned his thoughts—that he desired Brent out of the way, as a weakling in whom he had discovered some traces of conscience ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... heart beat so violently that the veins in his throat swelled and threatened to burst. But he was no weakling. He summoned all his will. He must act, and act ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... "Weakling!" It taunted me. "Puny from of old, how should you prevail? By your fear, the woman stays mine. Miserable earth-crawler, in whose hand the weapon was laid and who shrinking let it ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... history there ran stories of terrible crime, cruelties, infamies, immoralities and degradation. Following the death of Ivan the Terrible came Fedor, one of his sons, who was a weakling in the hands of the Duma of five, one of whom was Boris Godounoff. Fedor reigned but a few years, and Godounoff was elected Czar. He was ambitious, and was founder of the system of serfdom, and also of the Russian State Church, and like many of the other ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... was not to be seen, and I could almost read the expression on each man's features, so close did the glasses draw them up. And failing to see her started me thinking that after all she might have given them the slip. I hoped it might be so. Lyn was no chicken-hearted weakling, to sit down and weep unavailingly in time of peril. Bred on the range, on speaking-terms with the turbulent frontier life, her wits weren't likely to forsake her in a situation ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... vegetables and flowers, the most important precaution to be taken against insects and disease is to have them in a healthy, thriving, growing condition. It is a part of Nature's law of the survival of the fittest that any backward or weakling plant or tree seems to fall first prey to ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell
... At the moment he was strangely employed, for across his great breast lay the broad belly-band of a horse, and by its means, harnessed between the shafts, he dragged a laden cart covered with an old sail. Moreover the load must have been heavy, for notwithstanding his strength and that of Foy, no weakling, who pushed behind, they had trouble in getting the wheels up a little rise at ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... looked at the weakling child with the deepest interest, and said, "This chavo ought not to look like that—with such a ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... man. "Dammit! Then come in!" And to this invitation he added blasphemy in Peter's own tongue that made his heart turn sour. It was the useless, raving blasphemy of a weakling. It was the man as Peter had known him of old. But a little worse. He still wore what remained of his Marconi uniform, tattered, grease-stained coat and trousers, with the ragged white and blue emblems of the steamship line by which ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... were fifteen dollars a month, and every cent of it had been levied against by my Wall Street creditors. Not until I was seventy years old would any of the money I earned be coming to me. The other hired men looked on me as a weakling, and laughed at the torn golf suit ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... objected, "is an impotent question. It is not I who had the moulding of your brother's character. It is not I who made him a forger and a weakling." ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... intelligence. It presumed ability where there was not the slightest trace of any. It gave the idiot the same political standing as the wise man, the crackpot the same political opportunity as the man of well-grounded common sense, the weakling the same voice as the strong man. It was government by emotion rather than ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... one day amongst my people, and I found two precious things: one, a lovely little fact, the other a lovely little primrose. This was a pinched, dwarfish thing, for the spring was but a baby herself, and so could not mother more than a brave-hearted weakling. The frost lay all about it under the hedge, but its rough leaves kept it just warm enough, and hardly. Now, I should never have pulled the little darling; it would have seemed a kind of small sacrilege committed on the church of nature, seeing she had but this one; ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... eyes, terrible with their command that the weakling should break and confess, were upon Dexter Sprague. But Sprague did not break. ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... long ago there came to this land one Telemus, a prophet, and dwelt among us even to old age. This man foretold me that one Ulysses would rob me of my sight. But I looked for a great man and a strong, who should subdue me by force, and now a weakling has done the deed, having cheated me with wine. But come thou hither, Ulysses, and I will be a host indeed to thee. Or, at least, may Poseidon give thee such a voyage to thy home as I would wish thee ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... He was hearing on all sides that he had been here too long; and candidly, I think he was beginning to feel Louise a drag on him. I know of late they were not getting on well together. But to be such a coward and a weakling! To slink off in this fashion! Of course, when it came to the last, he was simply afraid of her, and of the scene she would make him. Bravery has as little room in his soul as honesty or manliness. He would always prefer a back-door exit. Such things ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... the aged Vainamoinen, "I have little cause to fret me Either for your sword or wisdom, For your sword-point or your judgment. But, apart from this at present, I will draw no sword upon you, So contemptible a fellow, And so pitiful a weakling." 270 ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... fought as well as he was able, but to no avail. Timotheus was simple and he was clumsy, but he was no weakling. Maguffin led the horse back into the stable, spread his litter, and replaced the bridle on the wall. Then he came out quite unruffled, and asked Timotheus if he would like him to use his new boots on the prisoner, to which that worthy replied with ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... then!" she cut him short. And his arms were suddenly empty, to his huge relief. "Indeed they had warned me that thou wouldst tell this story and deny me—why, I know not, unless it be that thou art unworthy of thy lineage, a coward and a weakling!" Her small foot stamped angrily and on every limb of her round body bracelets and anklets clashed and shimmered. "And so thou hast returned only to forswear me and thy kingdom, O thou of little spirit!" The scarlet lips curled and the eyes grew cold ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... forswear society, and to escape mortification in future, by refusing all invitations. If he had been a weakling such an outcome would have followed a false start. It is only a man who can pluck the blossom of success out of the ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... is young. Her latest birth, This weakling man, my craft shall girth With cunning strength. Him I will take, And in stern arts my scholar make. This smoking reed, in which hold The empyrean spark, shall mould Rock and hard steel to use of man: He shall be as a god to plan And forge all things to his ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... When the King sees what a weakling Sir James has brought him, he will be but too glad to exchange Patie for me, and leave me safe ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... trained them to endurance and to daring. They lived habitually in an atmosphere of peril which taxed all their energies. Their activity was extreme, and their passions corresponded to their vehement vitality. About such men there could be nothing on a small or mediocre scale. When a weakling was born in a despotic family, his brothers murdered him, or he was deposed by a watchful rival. Thus only gladiators of tried capacity and iron nerve, superior to religious and moral scruples, dead to national affection, perfected in perfidy, scientific in the use of cruelty and ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... misery. Glenn not only seemed content; he was happy. "This is great," he said. His coat was open, his hands uncovered, and he watched the storm and listened with manifest delight. Carley hated to betray what a weakling she was, so she resigned herself to her fate, and imagined she felt her fingers numbing into ice, and her sensitive nose ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... new light which was thus thrown upon the performance of what he considered his religious duties. Then I told him that he had the chance of his life to make himself a man. If in the past he had been more or less a weakling, he could now, by the help of God, rise up in the strength of his manhood and become a hero. His mother and sisters no doubt had loved him and taken care of him in the past, but they would love him far more if he did his duty now, "For", I said, "All women love a brave man." I ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... virtue, and none of his care! And now she was dead! and his child, but for the charity of a despised superstition, would have been left an outcast in the London streets, to wither into the old-faced weakling ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... you are not afraid of work, you are fairly accurate. I have an idea that you take pride in turning out a good piece of work. But you must learn to stand criticism and profit by it. We must all take it sometime, every one of us. A weakling goes under. A strong man or woman learns to value it, to make every bit of it count. That is what I hope you ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... a philanthropy which is the offspring of our mammon-worship. But surely our tender mercies are cruel. We don't like to hang people, however unfit they may be to live amongst their fellows. A weakling pity will petition for the life of the worst murderer—but for what? To keep him alive in a confinement as like their notion of hell as they dare to make it—namely, a place whence all the sweet visitings of the ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... had felt great sympathy for me in the failure of the book, and was inclined—well, you have proof of it!—to pity me, of course a great deal too much, for being a weakling. She is the most tender—the most ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of this conversation, which aroused her curiosity, Lady Kew sent a letter that night to Lady Ann Newcome, desiring that Ethel should be sent to see her grandmother; Ethel, who was no weakling in character despite her youth, and who always rebelled against her grandmother and always fought on her Aunt Julia's side when that amiable invalid lady, who lived with her mother, was oppressed ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... permit his sister to address his throne," she said with quiet sarcasm, "I shall esteem it a gracious favor. Let us be frank with each other. My mother is a saint and my father a good man. My brother, Paul, is a genius in music—and a weakling—but, as you say, each of them is without power. Each of them is a parasite and you are the oak upon which they grow and bloom. But as for me—" She stopped and laughed, and suddenly Hamilton Burton realized that his sister Mary was not the child he had always regarded ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... about you?" continued the shrewd Hugh, well knowing that by making an individual appeal he would be more apt to receive a favorable response, because it goes against the average boy's pride to be accounted a weakling, or one addicted to believing old wives' fairy stories of goblins, and all ...
— The Chums of Scranton High on the Cinder Path • Donald Ferguson
... very evil. He sneered. He stole. He bullied. He was a drunkard and a person without cleanliness of speech. Tim, the hatter, was a loud-talking weakling, under Pete's domination. Tim wore a dirty rubber collar without a tie, and his ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... to be said! I have behaved as vilely as you please. I have forfeited your friendship. But I should be an even greater fiend and weakling than you think me if, in cold blood, I could let your sister run the risk of marrying me. I could not trust myself—you may think of the statement as you like—I should make her miserable. Last night I had not parted from her an hour before I was ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the Tlahuicos, marrying among themselves, had greatly increased in numbers; and so far from remaining a weakling race, the had become, by reason of their frugal mode of living and of the wholesome, hearty labor in which they constantly were engaged, exceptionally hale and strong; the weak and crippled among them being mainly ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... United States Army, and such as he, the prisoner inside might have become in time. Our house is separated from the guardhouse by a little park only, and I could plainly see the whole thing—the strong man and the weakling. ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... her—whispering occasional words in Italian to her mistress—sat the Italian nurse, pale too, but motionless, a woman from the Campagna, of a Roman port and dignity, who would have scorned to give the master whom she detested any excuse for dubbing her a weakling. ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... tears smarted in her eyes, but she held them back grimly. If Willa Murdaugh was a self-pitying weakling, Gentleman Geoff's Billie was not, and she would see the game through! Because of all that the old name had meant she would not be a quitter, though her own happiness be forever lost. What was her happiness? she demanded ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... repentance as flings the worst of blame upon the other one, will grant himself lost, it is true, but "proud to feel such torments," to "pay the price of his deed" (ready with phrases now, he also!), as, poor weakling, he stabs himself, leaving his final word to her who had been for him all that she as yet knew how to ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... never could have been his wife, and that, in the second place, it was not the man who was to blame, nor the woman so much, as Sharpe himself. Indeed, Bobby somehow gained the impression that the others flouted and despised Sharpe and held him as a weakling. ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... Ilderic, the son of Honoric, the son of Gizeric, next received the kingdom, a ruler who was easily approached by his subjects and altogether gentle, and he shewed himself harsh neither to the Christians nor to anyone else, but in regard to affairs of war he was a weakling and did not wish this thing even to come to his ears. Hoamer, accordingly, his nephew and an able warrior, led the armies against any with whom the Vandals were at war; he it was whom they called the Achilles of the Vandals. During ...
— History of the Wars, Books III and IV (of 8) - The Vandalic War • Procopius
... have yielded, but the unemphasised contempt in that last sentence was more than he could bear. It demonstrated to him more completely than set terms could have done what a paltry weakling he would appear in Amy's eyes if he took his hat down from the peg and set ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... good old days in Germany the elector was always an archbishop. Our bishops now are a weakling lot. With no army to back their edicts the people smile at their proclamations, try on their shovel hats, and laugh at their gaiters. Or if they be Methodist bishops, who are only make-believe bishops, having slipped the cable that bound them ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... has sounded, in three or four years my youth will be as a faint haze on the sea, an illusive recollection; so now while standing on the last verge of the hill, I will look back on the valley I lingered in. Do I regret? I neither repent nor do I regret; and a fool and a weakling I should be if I did. I know the worth and the rarity of more than ten years of systematic enjoyment. Nature provided me with as perfect a digestive apparatus, mental and physical, as she ever turned out of her workshop; my stomach ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... buttress of the river-bank, lived under the care of experienced parents ever ready and resolute in their defence, and became as shy and furtive as the wood-mice dwelling in the hollows of the hedge beside the pond, they were not always favoured by fortune. The weakling of the family died of disease; another of the youngsters, foraging alone in the wood, was killed by a bloodthirsty weasel; while a third, diving to pick up a root of water-weed, was caught by the neck in the fork of ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... baneful eye, Even as mine arm descended, baffled me, And hurled upon my soul a frenzied plague, To stain my hand with these dumb victims' blood. And those mine enemies exult in safety,— Not with my will; but where a God misguides, Strong arms are thwarted and the weakling lives. Now, what remains? Heaven hates me, 'tis too clear: The Grecian host abhor me: Troy, with all This country round our camp, is my sworn foe. Shall I, across the Aegean sailing home, Leave these Atridae and their fleet forlorn? How shall I dare to front my father's eye? ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... honest than that. They had fought him according to their own rules, which debarred nothing, with every foul trick they knew. If there was a weak spot in a man's record, go after it; if he had been a weakling, temporarily a fool, seek it out. There were human bloodhounds always sniffing to come upon such a scent. Hunt it down; ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... fame. He was reputed rich. It was known that the Regent desired his acquaintance. And thus, Fortune speeding the wheels of his cabriolet and Fashion running to meet him with smiles and roses in St. James's, he might well, had he been worldly or a weakling, have yielded his soul to the polite follies. But he passed them by. Once he was settled in his suite, he never really strayed from his toilet-table, save for a few brief hours. Thrice every day of the year did ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... Drunkard and weakling as he was, Selim had his ambitions. He wished to signalise his reign by some great conquest, such as had added lustre to the rule of his father; and in consequence he laid claim to the island of Cyprus, then belonging to Venice, The Venetians, having strengthened ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... one. The young man straightened. His face was even more familiar, but I could not place him. His lips were set; in their grim line—determination; whatever his exhaustion there was still a will. Somehow one had a respect for this weak one; he was not a mere weakling. Yet I was not so sure that he was not afraid of the Rhamda. He spoke to the waiter. The Rhamda began talking. I noted the poise in his manner; it was not evil, rather was it calm—and calculating. He made an indication. The young man drew back. He smiled; it was feeble and weary, but ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... slender, girlish creature; to know her, was to know a soul which dwarfed your own, yet retained all the elements of the eternal feminine. This was the woman who urged and encouraged her husband in his Northland quest, who broke trail for him when no one was looking, and cried in secret over her weakling ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... same view in gross and unmistakable fashion. Wit is not a native product in Germany, it all has to be imported, so they could not satirize us; but their caricatures of the typical Englishman showed us what they thought. He was a young weakling with a foolish face, and was dressed in cricketing flannels. It would have been worth their while to notice what they did not notice, that his muscles and nerves are not soft. They learned that later, when ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... fifty years old, but he looks to be scarcely forty. The younger of the sons, Emanuel, technician by calling, is a complete duplicate of David, though a little darker and more robust than the latter, who, as you know, is no weakling. The mother, Ellen by name, an American by birth, who—thanks, evidently, to David's reports of me—received me with a truly motherly welcome, must be, judging from the age of her children, about forty-five, but ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... me, Mr. Bryant; you mustn't do that. In a few minutes more I'll be entirely recovered. I should be foolish to pretend that the happening wasn't a shock to me, but I'm not a weakling—I've health and strength. I'll not permit the thought of the operation to depress my spirits. Indeed, I know I'll be very proud of what I did this afternoon, for it was a chance to do a real, disinterested service. And I can guess what father will say ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... was performed so suddenly, so adroitly, it made the Mexican such a weakling, so like a tumbled tenpin, that the shrill jabbering hushed. Gale knew this ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... kitten's, held its life on the frailest tenure; there was doubt at first whether it could draw breath at all, and the nurse never expected it to live till the second day. At the end of a week, however, it still survived; and Alma turned to the poor weakling with a loving tenderness such as she had never shown for her first-born. To Harvey's surprise she gladly took it to her breast, but for some reason this had presently to be forbidden, and the mother shed many tears. After ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... was no weakling. For a time she took in washing, what little she could get, devoting the intermediate hours to dressing the children, cooking, seeing that they got off to school, mending their clothes, waiting on her husband, and occasionally weeping. Not infrequently she went ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... listen to the words of thy betters. No warrior art thou, but a weakling. One king only hath Zeus given to us. Hearken then ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... be as quick and definite and certain as the body. Nor was the spirit made alone for immortal dreaming. Like the flesh, it must strive and toil. It must be workaday as well as idle day. She could understand a weakling singing sweetly and even greatly, and in so far she could love him for his sweetness and greatness; but her love would have fuller measure were he strong of body as well. She believed she was just. She gave the flesh its due and the spirit its due; but she had, over and above, her own choice, ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... was not the puerile, shiftless creature the foregoing sentences may have led you to suspect. He was simply a weakling in the strong grasp of circumstance. He could not help himself; to save his life, he could not be ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... I'm concerned," said Francesca, "she may pity all the other women if she'll only not pity me. If I have a headache she not only pities me, but despises me as a weakling utterly unfitted to manage a household. No, my dear, I can't face it. Your Aunt Matilda's too ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 5, 1917 • Various
... all I care. I'm not afraid of their God. There is no God. There is nature. Up to the place where man puts on trousers it's a battle of thews and teeth. And nature never intended pants to mark the line where she changes the order of things. And the servile, weakling, groveling, charitable, cowardly philosophy of Christ—it doesn't fool me, Henry. I'm a pagan and I want the advantage of all the force, all the power, that nature gave me, to live life as a dangerous, exhilarating experience. I shall live life to the full—live it hard—live it beautifully, ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... while he watched the guide making preparations for the mountain burial, pictured the poor weakling tramping for hundreds of miles through rugged forest-land, doubtless with aching knee-joints and feet, that he might make upon his own skin justice for the skins which he had stolen, and so, in the only way he ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... it out after this manner, but there must be considerable chance that matters would not work so smoothly. For one thing it must be considered that Oswald Kearns was no weakling, but a more or less athletic figure, accustomed to feats of strength and agility beyond the measure of an ordinary man. Then, too, he was known to be irrational, even to the length of being considered dangerous when thoroughly aroused and it went without saying ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... decide whether he would have a hard fight with him, if they met either during the war, or in single combat. He concluded that it would not be difficult to conquer the German. The Krzyzak's shoulder bones appeared quite large under his dress of grey broadcloth; but he was only a weakling compared with Powala or with Paszko Zlodziej of Biskupice, or with both of the most famous Sulimczyks, or with Krzon of Kozieglowy or with many of the other knights, sitting at the ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... whole yard wide, and the name of the brand was "Hell". We heard the call and we staked our all; we were plungers playing blind, And no man cared how his neighbor fared, and no man looked behind; For a ruthless greed was born of need, and the weakling went to the wall, And a curse might avail where a prayer would fail, and the gold ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... that Mr. C. KENNETT BURROW wields a practised and often picturesque pen, the whole affair remains a literary exercise and declines to come alive. Perhaps in justice I should except two characters, Roland, the sturdy-son born out of wedlock to Tony, and Phil, weakling child of old Heron by a second marriage. Both these and the relation of the pair to each other furnish a pleasant contrast to the anaemia which seems to affect the rest of the tale. Stay, there is yet another, Kenrick, the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 15, 1919 • Various
... thought Wanda, who, now that the object of her search was in sight, approached very slowly and wearily, her breast rent by fierce pangs of jealousy. Why had Edward wished at such a critical time for this useless weakling? What possible good could she be to him in what might be his dying moments? And all the time, Helene, fixing her sad eyes upon this wild girl of the woods, noting her drenched, ragged and earth-stained ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... of the postilion's whip told Victurnien that the fair romance of his first love was over. While peril lasted, Diane could still see her lover in the young Count; but out of danger, she despised him for the weakling that ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... said softly, still clinging to the fingers, every throb of which struck appealingly on his heartstrings. "Forgive me, and—yet—don't. Joan, little Joan, I can't take your money. It would make me a weakling. But I can make the Cross win. If it never had a chance before, it will have now. It must! God wouldn't let it ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... highway lined with woods on one side and on the other snowy fields melting into haze. Then he began to talk, and, as he talked, he slowed down. This by no means suited my book, and I seriously wondered whether I should pitch him out and take charge of the thing. He was obviously a weakling, left behind in the conscription, and I could have done it with one hand. But by a fortunate chance I left ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... continuance could be ensured only by bequeathing it to descendants who had sufficient energy and prudence to consolidate its weaker elements, and build up the tottering materials which were constantly threatening to fall asunder. As soon as the government had passed into the hands of the weakling Rehoboam, who had at the outset departed from his predecessors' policy, the component parts of the kingdom, which had for a few years been, held together, now became disintegrated without a shock, and as if by mutual consent. The old order of things which existed ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... came a deep voice from the side of the car. There stepped into view a man whom Glen had not seen before. He was evidently associated with Mr. Jervice, but he did not in the least resemble him, for instead of being a cringy weakling, he was big and ...
— The Boy Scout Treasure Hunters - The Lost Treasure of Buffalo Hollow • Charles Henry Lerrigo
... shoulders—naturally well set—sagged with the weariness of excessive physical indulgence; while the sunken chest, the emaciated limbs, and the dejected posture of his misused body made him in appearance, at least, a wretched weakling. His clothing—of good material and well tailored—was disgustingly soiled and neglected;—the shoes thickly coated with dried mud, and the once-white shirt, slovenly unfastened at the throat, without ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... carrying the daughter's picture alive in his soul. As long as the Swede spoke, he could not help wavering between repugnance and admiration, and he kept asking himself whether this man was really the sort of person that Arthur Stoss had described him to be, no gentleman, a weakling, an idle ragamuffin. ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... weakling in irons, Here as a weanling in bands, As a prey that the stake-net environs, Our life that we looked for stands; And the man-child naked and dear, Democracy, turns on us here ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... me like a fat nincompoop. Such a weakling as great women must necessarily, it seems, "fall for." But he was an efficient manager. Possessed of a large voice and an insistent manner, he sold books by the dozen before and after ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... stooped from her fair height and laid her arm around the shoulders of the youth, drew his head against the beadwork of McElroy's gift, and kissed him upon the lips,—once, twice, yearningly, as a mother kisses a weakling child. ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... dropped to the floor. A tear trickled from his eye. His voice had risen, and crumbled to a weakling falsetto, and ceased. He was an old, old man about to be bereft of a son that ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... have felt it long; we stand, two weakling children, Under too huge a burden, while temptations Like adders swarm up round: I must be led— But thou alone ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... that they do, it will give me double pleasure to ennoble it by working with them. Putting out the flames will not degrade me, and will make the women better. So, forward! See how the fire is blazing yonder! Help is needed there and, thank Heaven, I am no weakling. Besides, there are women who want assistance and, to women in peril, the most ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... it; Not send him hence beyond my reach. Aye! I'll fight with death to keep him for mine own. But, now— O, I must calm myself or miss my aim! For, like a hunter when first he sees the buck, My nerves are all unstrung. This weakling trick Of overearnestness betrays the fool In me; and yet we know it, though we profit not, The eager hand doth ever spill the cup That lifted carefully would quench our thirst. I must assume a wise placidity; As he puts ...
— The Scarlet Stigma - A Drama in Four Acts • James Edgar Smith
... to feel that one must explain everything; but this impossible fellow was not an actual fool on all points, and he did not seem to be a weakling. He might learn certain things in time, and at all events one was no further personally responsible for him and his impossibilities than the business concerns of his estate would oblige any legal firm to be. Clients, whether highly desirable or otherwise, were no more than ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... that private ever get in here?" asked a corporal of a captain as he looked at a boy who seemed to be a physical weakling. ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... "reward of shortening term for good behavior in prison." Good behavior inside prison walls gives no proof of ability to take good care of one's self outside those walls; it may be only a proof that the moral weakling has to have an external conscience and a strict watch in order to be amenable to even simple rules. The parole system is also liable to great misunderstanding and serious social dangers when it is used without the most ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... divine Olympus. Ay, that she is a Goddess shalt thou know When to thine heart the brazen spear shall pierce Sped by my might. Patroclus' death I avenged On Hector, and Antilochus on thee Will I avenge. No weakling's friend thou hast slain! But why like witless children stand we here Babbling our parents' fame and our own deeds? Now is the hour when prowess ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... I know you would experience small trouble eluding the Spaniards, or even cutting your way through them, were I not with you. Yet this is not beyond remedy. I had sincerely hoped to prove of service when I usurped the slave's place in the boat; instead, I am an encumbrance, a weakling whom you must protect at the risk of your own lives. Fortunately it is not yet too late to leave you free; it cannot be many miles back to New Orleans, and the current would bear me swiftly downward. I have loyal friends in the town to hide the daughter of Lafreniere, should the Spaniards ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... wasn't an 'Instrument of National Policy'. It was a chance for the individual warrior to demonstrate his skill and bravery. His code put a high premium on individual courage in combat, and the weakling or coward was crushed contemptuously. I don't even attempt to justify the Indian treatment of captured civilians and noncombatants, but nevertheless, I absorbed quite a few of my grandfather's ideals and views about war, and it's downright disgusting to see him so falsely represented by ...
— Pushbutton War • Joseph P. Martino
... She pointed to the square of some six feet, to the rings fastened in the rafters. "Don't carry self-will to extremes. Here you are to be stripped, hauled up to those rings, and beaten until the bow breaks. Look at it and take warning. Kin is no weakling." She shoved back her sleeve, showing an arm as hard and brawny as that of a stevedore. With disapproval she observed O'Iwa. The latter stood unresisting, eyes on the ground. Only the lips twitched from time to time. As the only person ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... from his path, and his sound right arm leaped to Ray's throat in a death grip. For that one instant his old-time strength returned to him,—as to Samson as his arms went about the pillars of the temple. They found him no weakling, in that first instant, but a deadly, fighting beast, the "Wolf" Darby of the provinces,—his finger nails sinking ever deeper into the flesh of Ray's throat, his body braced against Chan's attack. And for all that Beatrice's ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... criticised. How often, how often, have those long months of infinite toil been in vain! How often has the actor led the child of his imagination to the footlights, only to realise that he has brought into the world a weakling or a deformity which may not live! And how often he has sat through the long night brooding over the corpse of this dear figment of his fancy! It has lately become customary with many actor-managers to avoid these pangs of childbirth. They have determinedly declined the responsibility ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... my parents can't be held responsible for my faults. You must know that rather surprising variations are apt to appear in a family strain. It's possible I'm what gardeners call a sport; a throwback to some inferior type. There may have been a weakling even among ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... brave are strong. The coward is a weakling; if he has strength, he dares not use it. We must be brave, for life is a battle. The forces of good and evil are in deadly combat. You can not avoid having a part in the conflict. You must fight whether you will to do so or not. There will be obstacles to meet no matter where your path may lie. ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... article on Nathan," said Lousteau. "Do you see now what journalism is, Lucien? Your revenge is beginning to tell. The Baron Chatelet came here this morning for your address. There was a cutting article upon him in this morning's issue; he is a weakling, that buck of the Empire, and he has lost his head. Have you seen the paper? It is a funny article. Look, 'Funeral of the Heron, and the Cuttlefish-bone's lament.' Mme. de Bargeton is called the Cuttlefish-bone now, and no mistake, and Chatelet is known ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... type, that! He must be pretty strong!" he thought, with the genuine admiration of the weakling for the athlete. In fact, he began to speak to Sanine but the latter, leaning against the window- sill, was looking out at the garden. Volochine stopped short; the very sound of his own squeaky voice ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... than ever before in all his wild experience, for somehow doom, shadowy and formless, like the atmosphere of an awful dream, enmisted those words; but he was no weakling to quit at the height of desperate conflict. He was strong, expert, and game to the ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... "An Oracle foretold it, but I waited for some man of might who should overcome me by his valor,—not a weakling! And now"—he lifted his hands and prayed,—"Father Poseidon, my father, look upon Odysseus, the son of Laertes of Ithaca, and grant me this revenge,—let him never see Ithaca again! Yet, if he must, may he come late, without a friend, after long ...
— Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew • Josephine Preston Peabody
... her: "The author ignores, or will not admit, that, despite all his efforts, he never produces anything but a half-dead child. The talented actor animates, nurses, consolidates, fortifies and clothes it, suggests the proper gestures and attitudes, infuses his own health and strength into this weakling, gives it blood and, so to speak, makes it live. The playwright contributes the soul, it is true; but, the soul being intangible, it is only a pitiable gift so far as the ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... her face lighted, as if to a new appeal. Jerome followed her look along the path. Marshby himself was coming. He was no weakling. He swung along easily with the stride of a man accustomed to using his body well. He had not, perhaps, the urban air, and yet there was nothing about him which would not have responded at once to a more exacting civilization. Jerome knew his face,—knew ...
— Different Girls • Various
... with tender devotion as a father, a wise, kind friend, and preceptor, and whom he reverenced and feared as though he were a god. To plot to hide impending trouble from him, as if he were not a man but a feeble weakling, was absurd and contemptible, and must introduce an error of unknown importance and extent into his sovereign's far-seeing predeterminations. Many other reasons against the praetor's demands crowded on him, and as each occurred to his mind he cursed ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... man—for his is no fancy picture—a poor weak creature, or was he a strong, heroic soul? Many will write him down the weakling; perhaps all but those who have themselves known much of that hope deferred which maketh the heart sick, and drains away the moral life-blood drop by drop. It may be that the registers of Heaven held appended to his name a different epithet. It is harder to wait than to work; hardest of all to ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... they are full grown, will often walk in single file, a half-dozen of them sometimes following a wise leader, stepping in his tracks and leaving but a single trail. It is partly, perhaps, to fool their old enemy, the wolf, and their new enemy, the man, by hiding the weakling's trail in the stride and hoof mark of a big buck; but it shows also the old habit, and the training which begins when the fawns first learn to follow ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... mental weakling, known as the Mongolian idiot, which may arise right out of the heart of an apparently sound family. But the number of these is comparatively small. The number of feeble-minded, who are feeble-minded because of their heredity, is dishearteningly and astonishingly large. Every ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... of a drum and the shouts of the crowd, rising and falling with the wind, I felt a little sad, that the age, in its advancing refinement, is setting itself against these old-fashioned merry-makings, and shrinking like a weakling from all out-of-doors festivals, on the plea of their being disorderly, but in reality because they are believed to be vulgar. They come down to us from rough old days; but they are relics of a time when life, if rough, was at least kind and ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... more—was encased, to the fashionable bowler that contrasted with his own tweed cap, to the umbrella that protected the bowler from the dripping rain—ay, even to the comforter. It was as he had feared. Garstin was an office-desk weakling, and a mere boy into the bargain. The Works Committee had added insult to the injury they ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... moral individuals—has a similar eruptive tendency when it gets into the hands of a weak professor. It will behave well enough for a fortnight, then a morning comes when nothing can control it. This was a morning of the kind. The lecturer, who was an able man but a weakling, had begun by apologizing for the condition of his voice, on the ground that he had a bad cold. Instantly every man in the class was blowing his nose. One fellow, of a most portentous snout, who could trumpet like an elephant, ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... walked the streets with pallid face and downcast eyes. The coarser-grained men with whom he was thrown in contact had no conception of the mental tortures he suffered, and their rude jests stung him to the quick. He despised himself as a weakling and a coward, but he did not get more than a transient victory over his enemy. The spark had struck a sensitive organization, and the fire of hell, smothered for the time, would blaze out again. He was fast becoming a common drunkard, ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... physical incapacity seems to have had no real foundation. It had been made against some of his predecessors. It was afterward hurled at Napoleon the Great, and also Napoleon the Little. In France, unless a royal personage was openly licentious, he was almost sure to be jeered at by the people as a weakling. ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... loud call of drums, out of the idler and the weakling comes The hero valiant with self-sacrifice, ready to pay the price War asks of men, to help a suffering world. And out of the arms of pleasure, where they whirled In wild unreasoning mirth, behold the splendid women of the earth Living new selfless lives—the toiling mothers, ...
— Hello, Boys! • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... bath must be determined and regulated by the necessity and idiosyncrasies of each case. The amount of bathing that a strong, full-blooded person could endure would mop out the life of a thin, bloodless weakling. ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... free expression of the popular will had been possible the Turkish army would never have been sent against either the Englishmen or the Frenchmen. But long years of German propaganda had done their work. The power of Enver Pasha was greater than that of the weakling Sultan and the war was forced upon the Turkish people by German tools and ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... honestly accommodate and plan, and so we remain at sixes and sevens. We've all a touch of Gladstone in us, and try to the last moment to deny we have made a turn. And so our poor broken-springed world jolts athwart its trackless destiny. Try to win into line with some fellow weakling, and see the little host of suspicions, aggressions, misrepresentations, your approach will stir—like summer flies on a high road—the way he will try to score a point and claim you as a convert to what he has ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells |
