"Weakling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... or Regan's. Could it be that her sister, that bright and lovely creature, whose face she remembered as a sunbeam incarnate, could she have been swept away by the pestilence which spared neither youth nor beauty, neither the strong man nor the weakling child? Her heart grew heavy as lead at the thought that this stranger, by whose pillow she was watching, might be the sole survivor in that forsaken palace, and that in a few more hours he, too, would be numbered with the dead, in that ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... would thunder at us as if somehow we were responsible, "Bah! He is a weak imitator of Bulwer, that is all, and he has not Bulwer's power of construction. He is not Bulwer. No. He is a weakling. Bah!" ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... court dress and court cap on dust and ashes. In Chou's time he dwelt by the North Sea shore, waiting for all below heaven to grow clean. So, hearing the ways of Po-yi, the fool grows honest, and the weakling's purpose stands.'] ...
— The Sayings Of Confucius • Confucius
... usage of women to ask of men this little labour, which is a harder task than ever Hercules, that mighty-muscled king of heathenry, achieved. Nay, I, for all my sinews, am an attested weakling. The craft of other men I do not fear, for I have encountered no formidable enemy save myself; but that same midnight stabber unhorsed me long ago. I had wallowed in the mire contentedly enough until you came.... Ah, child, child! ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... for your midnight toil,— One you can study till your hair is white And never solve and never guess aright, Although you burn to dregs your midnight oil? O Sage, I give one that will make you moil. Just take one weakling little woman's heart. Prepare your patience, furbish up your art. How now? Did I not see you ...
— When hearts are trumps • Thomas Winthrop Hall
... destroy him, more than the temperament which he himself believed to be a blight, were a little more 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
... futile, and another day was wasted. Most annoying, too, was the fact that I dared not manifest the impatience which I naturally felt. I am not remarkable as a specimen of the strong man; quite the reverse indeed, for, while I am by no means a weakling, I am no adept in the fistic art. Hence, when my guide, Hippopopolis by name, as the sun sank behind the western hills, informed me that I was again to be disappointed, the fact that he stands six feet two in his stockings, when he wears them, and has a pleasing way of ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... There thou errest, Hiordis—and even now shall all men know that thou dwellest under a weakling's roof! ...
— The Vikings of Helgeland - The Prose Dramas Of Henrik Ibsen, Vol. III. • Henrik Ibsen
... 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 ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... a man who got his marriages inextricably entangled. It was not altogether his fault: his first wife should have been more open with him. If she had not been a bigamist, he would not have been a bigamist.... He was a self-indulgent weakling of the most despicable kind; and Mr. Flowerdew has worked out his character with ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... that he had never prayed at such length and to so little purpose. I thought it especially needless that he should petition, for the space of full five minutes, for the fruitfulness of our flocks, for by this time the ewes had all dropped their lambs, and not one of them was a weakling. ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... 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 of ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... assault of an army of small, brownish-black swine. With a frantic greed they tugged at their mother's flank. The old sow stirred sometimes uneasily or uttered a little grunt of pain. One small pig, the runt, the weakling of the litter, had been unable to secure a place at the banquet. Squealing shrilly, he ran backwards and forwards, trying to push in among his stronger brothers or even to climb over their tight little black ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... looked at the weakling child with the deepest interest, and said, "This chavo ought not to look like that—with such ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... from the room haughtily but in his heart he carried an odd misgiving that burned and spread like a slow fire, consuming his pride. Scott had withstood him, Scott the weakling, and in so doing had made him aware of a ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... 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 a submerged ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... know Him. Behold this same Peter on the day of Pentecost. He is charging home the murder of Christ. Fear is gone, and gone forever. He faces men and does not flinch an iota. Carnality, the source of cowardice, has been removed, and the weakling is turned into a Lord Nelson for bravery, and a Savonarola for faithfulness ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees
... Nearly all young cave males were good boys until the time came when their thews and sinews outmatched the strength of those who had borne them, and this, be it said, was at no early age, for the woman, hunting and working with the man, was no maternal weakling whose buffet was unworthy of notice. A blow from the cave mother's hand was something to be respected and avoided. The use of strength was the general law, and the cave woman, though she would die for her young, yet demanded that her young should ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... have been taught were the right answers to all questions! Believe me, you have no soul. So take what you can—a body! You certainly have that, one can see it—well, snatch what it can bring you, since you have not enough will to try for higher things. Grasp what you may, poor weakling. That is the wisdom sitting here for ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... eyes I'm a weakling because I come from off-world. Realize though, that this is also my strength. I can see things that are hidden from you by long association. You know, the old business of not being able to see the forest ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison
... sent her servants in our pain, If she have fought with Death and dulled his sword, If she have given back our sick again And to the breast the weakling lips restored, Is it a little thing that she has wrought? Then Life and Death and Motherhood ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren
... on his feet and had the Terran by the throat. Talbott gagged and flailed helplessly. He was no weakling, but still not a match for ...
— Before Egypt • E. K. Jarvis
... 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 to be the ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... procedure was decent and in order. But she chose a means to her end which was becoming progressively more and more inadmissible. Tirpitz describes the illegitimate means. Bethmann Hollweg describes the legitimate end. Tirpitz thinks Bethmann Hollweg was a weakling because he would not back up the means. Bethmann Hollweg, firm in his faith that the end was legitimate and thinking of this alone, dwells on it with little reference to what his colleague was about. ...
— Before the War • Viscount Richard Burton Haldane
... of twelve men as with any other. Kennedy then stepped forward. With an air that was a blend of his pretentious—if rather raw-boned—dignity as a coming statesman, of extreme deference toward Katherine's sex, and of the sense of his personal belittlement in being pitted against such a legal weakling, he outlined to the jury what he expected to prove. After which, he called Mr. Marcy to ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... this. He flung Ruth aside, careless whether she fell or not. There was only one idea in his head now—to batter and bruise and crush this weakling, then cast him at the feet of his love-lorn wife. He brought into service all his Oriental bar-room tricks. Time after time he sent Spurlock into this corner or that; but always the boy regained his feet before the murderous boot could reach ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... food in Cho-Sen), and the pickles ungodly hot but which one learns to like exceeding well. And there was drink, real drink, not milky slush, but white, biting stuff distilled from rice, a pint of which would kill a weakling and make a strong man mad and merry. At the walled city of Chong-ho I put Kim and the city notables under the table with the stuff—or on the table, rather, for the table was the floor where we squatted to cramp-knots in ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... 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 always said, his fear ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... 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 ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... vengeance sent a tingling current through the young man's veins. The moment had come. In the eye of a cautious man, he had been called upon for a dangerous declaration. He had a mighty man to accuse, no proof and little evidence at his command, and a weakling was to decide between them. But his cause equipped him with strength and a reckless courage. He faced the king fairly and made no search after ceremonious words. He spoke ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... 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 ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... said to the merchant, "I reckon it sarved me out right. I was purty ha'sh with the boy. He ain't naught but a weakling, after all. Marm, she does her best by us all, and we stick to her; but if Fred ain't fitten to work in the woods, or on the farm, we'll find him something to do in town—if he likes it better. ...
— Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp • Alice Emerson
... were the pasty-faced weakling that left my office five years ago—and you, you husky giant, have brought me two thousand miles to see ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... wedded, in the flower of her youth, to an Advocate of the Parlement, a man of a harsh temper and sorely set on the arraignment and punishing of unfortunate prisoners. For the rest, he was of sickly habit and a weakling, of such a sort he seemed more fit to give pain to folks outside his doors than pleasure to his wife within. The old fellow thought more of his blue bags than of his better half, though these were far otherwise shapen, being bulgy and fat and formless. But ...
— The Merrie Tales Of Jacques Tournebroche - 1909 • Anatole France
... penetrated to the other side of the Arabian Mountains. He still had that much freedom. He wanted to think things out. In bitter, frustrating reversal of all his former urges to get off the Earth, he wanted, like a desperate weakling, to ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... the Goths," died in 395 A.D., leaving the defense of the Roman world to his weakling sons, Arcadius and Honorius. In the same year the Visigoths raised one of their young nobles, named Alaric, upon a shield and with joyful shouts acclaimed him as their king. The Visigothic leader despised the service of Rome. His people, he thought, ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... was no weakling and when the doctor came into her room some time later, the effects of her potion wearing away, she awoke to full consciousness. He saw the imploring question in her eyes, before he took her pulse and answered ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... Doctrine anything but a subject of derision to whatever nation chooses to disregard it. We desire the peace which comes as of right to the just man armed; not the peace granted on terms of ignominy to the craven and the weakling. ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Supplemental Volume: Theodore Roosevelt, Supplement • Theodore Roosevelt
... creature. I can not find adjectives enough to describe him. Everybody avoided him. It surely was a testing time for me. Also, I had trying experiences thereafter with this particular soul; for, though he certainly found salvation, he was such a weakling that he was ever leaning upon the arm of flesh; in consequence of which I endured much persecution. He haunted me much of the time, morning, noon, and night, so that I was subjected to unkind remarks and ridicule; but, remembering the words of our Master in Matt. 5:11, 12 ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... 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 with firmness. ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... is a teaching of helplessness to which I cannot subscribe—the pitiful excuse of the coward who folds his hands in the hour of danger, or of the self-indulgent weakling who yields to seductive temptation because his heart inclines to seize the pleasure of the moment even when his conscience counsels otherwise. I hold that man is the master of his own fate. Most assuredly have I been the master of mine," he added ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... treatment. Arthur thinks he has come to this country to squander what little money his father left him and that his public career outside the limits of his little island will be brief. Yet according to your story the boy is no weakling but has power and knows how to ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... was so. He took a chair opposite the wan 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 ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... own the whale, you are but a provincial and sentimentalist in Truth. But clear Truth is a thing for salamander giants only to encounter; how small the chances for the provincials then? What befel the weakling youth lifting the dread goddess's veil ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... "Is America a weakling to shrink from the work that must be done by the world's powers? No! The young giant of the West stands on a continent and clasps the crest of an ocean in either hand. Our nation, glorious in youth and strength, looks into the future ...
— American Boy's Life of Theodore Roosevelt • Edward Stratemeyer
... all the patricians are seized by the guards; Rienzi shows himself unhurt, being protected by a breastplate; the conspirators are condemned to die and are led away. Then Adriano and Irene plead for Colonna; at first Rienzi is obdurate; then he, too, turns weakling and promises pardon. He pleads for his enemies with the people; in spite of two citizens who see nothing but danger, he prevails, and the act ends with another huge chorus. There is much very Italian stuff in the ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... period hard times befell Sweden. The small Northern country, half the size of Texas, with fewer people than the single city of London, never very rich, had trouble keeping her independence from Russia. Her king was a weakling, and lost part of his land. Then a gentleman of fortune, a man who had been a French lawyer's apprentice, and had risen to be a marshal, one whose sword had helped to carve out an empire for Napoleon, suddenly ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... and in the right frame of mind man is capable of stoic endurances that excite wonder and admiration. Mr Pickering was no weakling. He had once upset his automobile in a ditch, and had waited for twenty minutes until help came to relieve a broken arm, and he had done it without a murmur. But on the present occasion there was a difference. His mind was not adjusted ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... crowd, Aye, or let the nearest main Receive our gold, our jewels rich and proud: Slay we thus the cause of crime, If yet we would repent and choose the good: Ours the task to take in time This baleful lust, and crush it in the bud. Ours to mould our weakling sons To nobler sentiment and manlier deed: Now the noble's first-born shuns The perilous chase, nor learns to sit his steed: Set him to the unlawful dice, Or Grecian hoop, how skilfully he plays! While his sire, mature in vice, A friend, a partner, or a guest betrays, Hurrying, for an ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... fundamentally a PETTY taste (that is to say, a dangerous propensity—doubly dangerous among Germans—for quiet lyricism and intoxication of the feelings), going constantly apart, timidly withdrawing and retiring, a noble weakling who revelled in nothing but anonymous joy and sorrow, from the beginning a sort of girl and NOLI ME TANGERE—this Schumann was already merely a GERMAN event in music, and no longer a European event, as Beethoven had been, as in a still greater degree Mozart had been; with Schumann German ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... threshold of your mind, banish it. Remember, you as master of your mind control its every thought, and here is a good one to often affirm, "I have courage because I desire it; because I need it; because I use it and because I refuse to become such a weakling as cowardice produces." ...
— The Power of Concentration • Theron Q. Dumont
... for the gossips of Woodville, came back into his mind. He was no longer as young as he once was, and even at his prime he shrewdly doubted his ability to cope with Riley Sinclair. With the weight of Gaspar thrown in, the thing became an impossibility. Gaspar might be a weakling, but a man who was capable of murder ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... 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 the bank-clerks of Manchester ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... molest this camp will be molested in his turn, I promise you," laughed Harry. "I'm no weakling, so run right along, Holmesy. Even if serious trouble should arise, I have ...
— The High School Boys' Fishing Trip • H. Irving Hancock
... while some threw the quoit or played at boxing and leaping. After they had enjoyed looking at the games, Laodamas, a son of Alkinoos, said to his friends: "Let us ask the stranger to take part in the games. His strong arms and legs and powerful neck show that he is no weakling. Nor has he lost his youthful vigor after all his hardships, although nothing tires a man so much as being tossed about on ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer
... 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
... and she was mine. We loved ourselves to detraction. Maud lived a mile from any other house—except one brick barn. Not even a watch-dog about the place—except her father. This pompous old weakling hated me boisterously; he said I was dedicated to hard drink, and when in that condition was perfectly incompatible. I did not ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... 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 ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... in Yemameh,[FN64] dishevelled widows plain! How many a weakling orphan unsuccoured doth remain, For whom is thy departure even as a father's loss! To fly or creep, like nestlings, alone, they strive in vain. Now that the clouds have broken their promise to our hope, We trust the Khalif's bounty will ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... words to our use, it is from laziness, not from scruple. We desire to speak competently, but without affectation. We know that if our diction rises to this dual standard, it silently distinguishes us from the sluggard, the weakling, and the upstart. For such diction is not to be had on sudden notice, like a tailor-made suit. Nor can it, like such a suit, deceive anybody as to our true status. A man's utterance reveals what he ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... "Nevertheless," continued the weakling, "if you will but slacken your agile proficiency with the pole, chieftain, our supper to-night may yet consist of something more substantial than the fish which it is ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... 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 ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... 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 to have. For know that Poseidon is my sire. May ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... Belville crouched in its glare with one Indian club held by the end, like a footman with a stolen bottle. A good-looking, well-built, iron-gray, iron-jawed man; but a fool and a weakling at that moment, if he had ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... "Ayme, poor weakling! Pray now for thyself: if thou canst save thyself sinless a brief day or two, it may be well for thee and Levin. Thy grandmother is dreadful ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... lodge, if you glanced inside, where it was encumbered with furniture till no room was left, you could always make out a fat woman, motionless, very swarthy, in whose arms reposed a pale weakling of a child, long and thin, like a white earthworm. It seemed that above the window, instead of "Janitor" the legend should have read: "The Woman-Cannon and her Child," or some similar sign from the ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... proportion, that work would be the world's masterpiece of morality as well as of art. Partiality is immorality; for any book is wrong that gives a misleading picture of the world and life. The trouble is that the weakling must be partial; the work of one proving dank and depressing; of another, cheap and vulgar; of a third, epileptically sensual; of a fourth, sourly ascetic. In literature as in conduct, you can never hope to do exactly right. All ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... superfluous, for the net is sometimes exposed to severe tests. The Epeira cannot pick and choose her prizes. Seated motionless in the centre of her web, her eight legs wide-spread to feel the shaking of the network in any direction, she waits for what luck will bring her: now some giddy weakling unable to control its flight, anon some powerful prey rushing ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... 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 he if I did. I know the worth and the rarity of more than fifteen 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 and brain are set in the most perfect equipoise possible to conceive, ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... not them, and nothing they do can hurt me." Triumph sounded in his voice. "For I have faith in your love, not fear of their enmity. All things may go astray in this world, but not love. Love cannot go wrong unless it be a weakling that faints and stumbles by ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... the person who owns that name, as, for instance, if Mr. Long is tall—or, which naturally takes a still stronger hold upon them, in any manifest contradiction between the name and the name-bearer; if Mr. Strongitharm is a weakling, or Mr. Black an albino: the former striking from a sense of fitness, the latter from one of incongruity. Nor is this a mere childish entertainment. It continues with us through life; and that its roots ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... with terror, told All that I knew of that which he had done. Thereat he uttered piercing cries of grief, Such as had never come from him before, For in loud lamentations to indulge He ever held a craven weakling's part, And, stifling outcries, moaned not loud but deep, Like the deep roaring of a wounded bull. But in this plight, prostrate and desperate, Refusing food and drink, my hero lies Amidst the mangled bodies, motionless. That he is brooding on some fell design, His wails and exclamations plainly ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... on, 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 those who ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... laughed loud and disdainfully. "What has the Elf to give that could avail against me and my magic?" he exclaimed. "You amuse me, Black Shadow. Go to that weakling, the Ash Goblin, with such tales, if you will, but do not ...
— The Shadow Witch • Gertrude Crownfield
... body while on a ten days' leave. They were going back to face death, mutilation, and an experience which drives many men mad. There was no undue hilarity about them, but a quiet determination which has been reflected in the stand made by the armies. Here and there a weakling had tried to escape thought in drink, but the percentage of ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... frontier, in the early days, a weakling staked out an agricultural or mining claim. A ruffian appears, who is a sure shot, jumps the claim and drives the other out. It was the rule of the strong arm, and it was evident on the frontier all ...
— The Soul of Democracy - The Philosophy Of The World War In Relation To Human Liberty • Edward Howard Griggs
... the buzzard is thrown into the air. It flaps along heavily, and is immediately observed by the falcon, which thinks that the buzzard is carrying some heavy quarry in its talons. Now, the buzzard is a weakling among the raptores and all the other birds of prey despise it. Accordingly, the falcon, unmindful of the proverb which says that honesty is the best policy, swoops down on the buzzard with intent to commit larceny, and becomes entangled ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... no such consolation for poor abashed Cope. He had disclosed himself, for some reason or other, a weakling; and he had weakened at a conspicuously wrong time and in a conspicuously mistaken place. He had hoped, over the cigars and coffee, to lay the foundation of an acquaintance with the brother-in-law who ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... energy will be dissipated, his ambition, not being stimulated by the struggle for self-elevation, will gradually die away. If you do everything for your son and fight his battles for him, you will have a weakling on your hands ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... her dear face so well now that I realized it was not from personal sorrow, but a general regret that a man of Schuyler's ability and power should have been such a weakling, morally. I knew she had never loved her husband, but she had been a faithful and dutiful wife, and no word or hint of blame had ever escaped her lips regarding him. She had been a martyr, but I hadn't learned this from her. The sisters, though unconsciously, told me much ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... two centuries and more. In England, the passionate loyalty with which Elizabeth was regarded, at least during the latter part of her reign, scattered to the winds all John Knox's arguments against the 'Regiment of Women;' and a literature sprang up in which woman was set forth no longer as the weakling and the temptress, but as the guide and the inspirer of man. Whatever traces of the old foul leaven may be found in Beaumont and Fletcher, Massinger, or Ben Jonson, such books as Sidney's 'Arcadia,' ...
— Women and Politics • Charles Kingsley
... man can, of course, be dangerous, but he doesn't approach the vicious deadliness of a weakling—with a weapon! ...
— The Weakling • Everett B. Cole
... rede," she told him: "When at fall of day Come the kine for milking, I abroad will stay; I the castle portal every eve should close: Ye shall find it opened, free for tread of foes: I will say the weakling calves awhile I keep; 'Tis for milk, I'll tell them: come then while they sleep; Come, their castle enter, all its wealth to spoil; Only rests that serpent, he our plans may foil: Him it rests to vanquish, ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... alabaster of her neck was a shade off color—faith, an' it might have been Eleanor hersilf! It is obvious that any juryman who allows his mind to be influenced by the mere fact that one of the witnesses for the defense is a pretty woman—even if she recalls to him his wife or sweet-heart—is a poor weakling, a silly ass. ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... 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, sister, ...
— Hello, Boys! • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... the wine-bottles of the promises and drink rich draughts of vitalizing grace. And surely that is the best deliverance in all affliction, to be made so spiritually exhilarant that we can rise above it. I might be taken out of affliction, and emerge a poor slave and weakling. I might remain in affliction, and yet be king in the seeming servitude, "more than conqueror" in Christ Jesus. It is a great thing to be led through green pastures and by still waters; I think it is a greater ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... Locke, Eva, 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 which, to Balcom, ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... which, after all, was warmer than these people's welcome. Outside we met a young man who spoke German, and as he wanted to show off, he stopped to converse. We were joined by an older man who claimed to be his father. The father was really a jolly old boy. He said his son was a puny weakling, but as for himself he never had had a doctor in his life. So Jan tried his mettle with a cigar. An officer, a filthy old peasant in the remains of a battered uniform, joined the group, but he was not charming; however, Jan offered him a cigarette. The old yokel ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... Moreover, there is little virtue in what I do, since on the whole I prefer that prospect and am willing to take the risk of being hurried from an evil world. Hearken," he added, with a change of tone and gesture. "You think me a fool and a weakling; a dreamer also, you, the clear-eyed, hard-brained stateswoman who look to the glittering gain of the moment for which you are ready to pay in blood, and guess nothing of what lies beyond. I am none of these things, except, perchance, the last. I am only ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... run where Bethlehem blest appears. We bring the best of news; be not dismayed: A Saviour there is born more old than years, Amidst heaven's rolling heights this earth who stayed. In a poor cottage inned, a virgin maid, A weakling did him bear, who all upbears; There is he poorly swaddled, in manger laid, To whom too narrow swaddlings are our spheres: Run, shepherds, run, and solemnize his birth. This is that night—no, day, grown great with bliss, In which the ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... a timid and awkward ignorance. He did not leave the world because it frightened or bewildered him, but because he did not find in it the things of which he was in search. Neither, on the other hand, did he quit the life of affairs like a weakling or an inefficient person who had failed in it, and had persuaded himself that incompetence was unworldliness. Hugh became a remarkably efficient official, alert, sensible, practical, and prudent. He was marked out for promotion. He was looked upon as a man who got on well ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... tent his agony, prolong it here, Even here where I may feed upon 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 on—Ah! damned hypocrite!— The air ...
— The Scarlet Stigma - A Drama in Four Acts • James Edgar Smith
... in many things. He was completely enthralled and under her dominion—but he was naturally no weakling of body or mind. And this was ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... 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
... namely, the frequent changefulness of the physical environment, which forces animals to answer back or die; but the first three reasons have most to do with the very common assumption of some sort of disguise. Even when an animal is in no sense a weakling, it may be very advantageous for it to be inconspicuous when it is resting or when it is taking care of its young. Our problem is the evolution of elusiveness, so far at least as that depends on likeness to surroundings, on protective resemblance ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... the largeness of God's promises and the miserable contradiction to them which the average Christian life of this generation presents, what can we say? 'Hath His mercy clean gone for ever? Doth His promise fail for evermore?' Ye weak Christian people, born weakling and weak ever since, as so many of you are, open your mouths wide. Rise to the height of the expectations and the desires which it is our sin not to cherish; and be sure of this, as we ask so shall we receive. 'Ye are not straitened ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... bunch of the matches across the side of the box,—they spluttered and flamed, and she thrust them into the bush. It took light slowly, for there were yet the dregs of sap in it; but as it lighted, the deft rifleman squirted bullet after bullet all around her, aiming on the weakling flame she nursed with ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... kill her—why not? All the world knew that she was a weakling. And if it didn't kill her, it would make it infinitely less likely that she would marry Farrell—in any reasonable time. Nelly was not like other people. She was all feelings. Actually to see George die—and in the state that these ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... thing into another, in a seemingly endless procession of lives, experiencing all the peculiar sensations of the many bodies I temporarily inhabited. In some cases I was the big strong brute—either physically or mentally—taking advantage of the puny weakling. In others, I was the miserable weakling, being crushed by the over-powering strength of the bully. But whether strong or weak, either physically or mentally, I was always the moral coward and selfish creature, ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... are fed; Hence joyful cities thrive with boys and girls; And leafy woodlands echo with new birds; Hence cattle, fat and drowsy, lay their bulk Along the joyous pastures whilst the drops Of white ooze trickle from distended bags; Hence the young scamper on their weakling joints Along the tender herbs, fresh hearts afrisk With warm new milk. Thus naught of what so seems Perishes utterly, since Nature ever Upbuilds one thing from other, suffering naught To come to birth but through ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... he had told himself a thousand times to stop the longing he had to saddle his horse and go to her. What a weakling he was, he thought contemptuously, that he could not put her out of his mind and do the obviously right and proper thing by asking Beth to marry him, and so end forever this disquieting conflict within him—a conflict that had not been in his calculations when he had planned ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... 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 arms ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... "What a weakling!" sneered Jeppe. "In these days a man can't take a boy as apprentice and inoculate him a bit against boils! One ought to anoint the boobies back and front with honey, perhaps, like the kings of Israel? But you are ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... Olive, just because he is a pitiful weakling who, in spite of all his good intentions, has made a consistent mess of everything he's tried to do. Because a man is weak, he isn't necessarily more lovable. Because he has an incurable disease, he isn't, of necessity, any more a subject for idolatry. No; I ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... the Miuesovs. How it came to pass that an heiress, who was also a beauty, and moreover one of those vigorous, intelligent girls, so common in this generation, but sometimes also to be found in the last, could have married such a worthless, puny weakling, as we all called him, I won't attempt to explain. I knew a young lady of the last "romantic" generation who after some years of an enigmatic passion for a gentleman, whom she might quite easily have married at any ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... the two lines and played with swords and spears and turned over all the Capitula of combat till men of choicest wits were confounded. Then he cried out, saying, "Who is for fighting? Who is for jousting? Let no sluggard come out nor weakling!" Whereupon there rushed at him a horseman of the Kafirs, as he were a flame of fire; but Sahim let him not stand long before him ere he overthrew him with a thrust. Then a second came forth and he slew him also, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... panic-stricken for she knew that pretty Mrs. Wiley would indifferently laugh off the idea that ownership of a dog could mean returned health to her little son. Upon Frank Wiley III Miss Beaver felt no reliance could be placed; he was an uxorious weakling. Her unfounded hope rested on old Mr. Wiley alone; old Mr. Wiley whose firm mouth and implacable dark eyes made her feel that he, and he alone, held the key to the situation. That he had realized young Frank's need and had filled it, ...
— Old Mr. Wiley • Fanny Greye La Spina
... 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 The phosphorescent billows where the hand of ...
— Pan and Aeolus: Poems • Charles Hamilton Musgrove
... a nature that not even her womanly charms could have increased her power or retarded her ruin. All hearts were therefore filled with hope when they saw this respectable, active, and energetic woman take her place at the side of Claudius the weakling, for she brought back the memory of the most venerated personages ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero
... regarded as the duty not only to one's self and one's family, but to the country as well: it is a patriotic duty. I saw a cartoon in a native Chinese paper the other day in which there were held up to especial scorn and humiliation the weakling officials who had lost their offices by reason of failure to shake off opium. In short, the opium-smoker, instead of being a sort of "good fellow with human weaknessess"—and with possibilities, of course, of going ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... worry about me, honey; I'm no weakling. I wish Dick could be with me when the fight comes, but he will have his hands full, and the strike will not help him any. Don't you worry. Father always felt that there would be trouble some day. He held a large bundle of bank-stock and railroad bonds, and the income from ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... had borne Much staunchly, but that look I could not bear! What man may front a god and live? I fell Prone, as if stricken by a thunderbolt; And though I died not, somewhat of me died That made me man; when my long stupor passed I was no longer Maximus . . . I was A weakling with a piteous woman soul, All strength and pride, joy and ambition gone! My Claudia, dare I tell thee what foul curse Is mine because I looked ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... into haggard lines, but the next instant he got a fresh grip of himself. He would show her, he would let her see that he was no weakling, no lovelorn swain pleading for denied favours. He squared his shoulders. He took up his hat and went into the street again. He called a taxi and gave the address of the hotel where Christine and her mother ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... may tell; It was all of a piece and a 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 ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... his men friends. Had the Vondeplosshe fortunes remained intact and Gay met Trudy he would still have pressed his attentions upon her, though they might not have taken the form of an offer of marriage. Trudy's virile, magnetic personality would have commanded this weakling's attention and admiration at any time and in any circumstances—which ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... region yields, and what denies. Here blithelier springs the corn, and here the grape, There earth is green with tender growth of trees And grass unbidden. See how from Tmolus comes The saffron's fragrance, ivory from Ind, From Saba's weakling sons their frankincense, Iron from the naked Chalybs, castor rank From Pontus, from Epirus the prize-palms O' the mares of Elis. Such the eternal bond And such the laws by Nature's hand imposed On clime and clime, e'er since the primal ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... earnings, no strong, manly, courteous, thoughtful fellow to help her into her cloak and out of her troubles. The days lengthened, and so did the faces at home; so would the bills have done had she ever yielded to the importunities of her Mrs.-Nickleby-like mother or Mart's weakling of a wife; but Jenny was Spartan in self-denial; what she couldn't pay for on the spot she ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... obstinate buckle declined to be coerced. The more it resisted, the more determined he was to make it obey. Go in it must, if sheer strength would do it. The vice-president of the Americo-African Mining Company was no weakling. A six-foot athlete and captain of the Varsity football team in his college days, his muscles had been toughened in a thousand lively scrimmages and in later life plenty of golf, rowing and other out-of-door sports had ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... fear. The old foreboding of his father's letter had come upon him, the mysterious thread of that elusive, intangible Thing, great enough to break the will and resistance of a strong man and turn him into a weakling—silent, white-haired—sitting by a window, waiting for death. What had it been? Why had it come upon his father? How could it be fought? All so suddenly, Robert Fairchild had realized that he was in the country of the invisible ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... the contents of the windows as he passed; at the barrows of the costers and hawkers crowding up the side-streets; at the coarse-haired, bare-headed girls and women standing about in their shawls and big white aprons; at the weakling babies in their arms or about the thick, clumsy folds of their stained skirts; at the grimy, shuffling figures of their men-folk, against the accustomed background of the public-house corner, with its half-open ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... eternity of lung-bursting struggles, he came out upon the bare summit of the ridge, his tongue was like a dry stick in his mouth, refusing to shape the curses that his soul was heaping upon the alcohol which had made him a wind-broken, gasping weakling in ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... with the new administration, and were received into favor, but the more violent of the loyal party remained defiant and abusive. Philip Ludwell, Beverley, Hill, Ballard and others openly denounced Jeffreys as a weakling, entirely unsuited for the important office he now occupied, and did their best to render him unpopular with the people.[844] The Lieutenant-Governor retaliated with considerable spirit, depriving some of their lucrative offices, and suspending others from the Council. ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... her death. This project, after much deliberation, he relinquished, as too difficult. By a new mode of management, much of the homeliness and rude horror, that defaced and encumbered the reality, is thrown away. The Dauphin is not here a voluptuous weakling, nor is his court the centre of vice and cruelty and imbecility: the misery of the time is touched but lightly, and the Maid of Arc herself is invested with a certain faint degree of mysterious dignity, ultimately represented as being in truth ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... silly, but she knew also that there was an aspect of it which was not silly. She was reminded by it that she had found no solution of the problem which had distracted her in Hornsey. 'What is your present condition?' Her present condition was still that of a weakling and a coward who had sunk down inertly before the great problem of sin. And now, in the growing strength of her moral convalescence, she was raising her eyes again to meet the problem. Her future seemed to be bound up with the problem. As she breasted the top of the Sytch under the invisible lowering ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... Roderic grudgingly. "By the saints, but you are no weakling novice, young man," and he stepped ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... fathers is a moral coward, and a moral coward is more contemptible than a physical coward. He also was convinced that a boy or man afraid or ashamed to acknowledge his religious belief could only be a mental weakling. ...
— The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador - A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell • Dillon Wallace
... thoroughly out of luck before—and borne it as being part of his life's burden. He had a thick skull and a broad back—what good were they but for burdens; it was not his business to whimper or play the weakling. And fate had heaped troubles upon him: if he could bear that, then he can bear this!—till at last he would break down altogether under the burden. But his ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... hours we sat down. The safari of twenty men was a very miscellaneous lot, consisting of the rag-tag-and-bobtail of the bazaars picked up in a hurry. They were soft and weak, and they straggled badly. The last weakling—prodded along by one of our two askaris—limped in only at the end of half an hour. Then we took a ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... her little foot and faced Carr valiantly. "See here, Mr. Carr Parker!" she stormed. "I'm no weakling. I'm the daughter of my father and where he goes I go. You'll take me or I'll ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... stand it!" she burst out. "I won't be lectured to. You and your suffering! You're just a pitiful weakling and you ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald |
