"Enervate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... idea already hinted at in the early part of this article, regarding the speedy necessity of a new deluge. So far as these children are concerned, at any rate, it would be a blessing to the human race, which they will contribute to enervate and corrupt,—a greater blessing to themselves, who inherit no patrimony but disease and vice, and in whose souls, if there be a spark of God's life, this seems the only possible mode of keeping it aglow,—if every one of them could be drowned to-night, by their best friends, instead of being ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... with the cords of love? And besides, how much will faith facilitate this, and make this yoke to be cheerfully and willingly submitted to, because it delivers the soul from those unsufferable cares and fears, which did quite enervate its strength, and take away its courage? For, I pray you, what is there in a soul under the fear of wrath, that is not totally disabled by that heavy pressure for any willing or cheerful obedience? The mystery(442) of the spirit is spent that way, the courage of the soul ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... Hermes' son beheld the liquid stream, "Where masculine he plung'd, the power possess "To enervate his body, and his limbs "Effeminately soften; high he rais'd "His arms, and pray'd (but not with manly voice) "O, sire! O, mother dear! indulge your son, "Your double appellation bearing, this "Sole-urg'd petition. ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... spring advanced, Annie grew weaker. The mild air seemed to enervate rather than to brace her system, and she grew daily more emaciated. Her paroxysms of pain were less frequent, and she suffered most from languor and drowsiness. It was apparent to all but her fond parents that her days were numbered. They watched over her with the tenderest ...
— Live to be Useful - or, The Story of Annie Lee and her Irish Nurse • Anonymous
... monotonous drill, no outdoor life but a lounge over the level parade ground, and no amusements but cards and the sutler's shop. Their very comforts were noxious. The warm, close barracks in which they spent perhaps twenty hours out of the twenty-four, would enervate even a man trained to sedentary habits; and the abundant rations of hot food, consumed with the morbid appetite of men who had no other amusement, rendered them heavy and listless. In our regiment, at least, it was absolutely necessary ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... School-house" is more than a mere collocation of words, accurately descriptive. It is what Mat King would call a "symblem," and as such requires the music's dying fall to lull and enervate a too meticulous and stringent tendency to recollect that it wasn't little, or old, or red, or on a hill. It might have been big and new, and built of yellow brick, right next to the Second Presbyterian, and hence close to the "branch," so that ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... more common and extensive evil with youth of both sexes than is usually supposed." "A great number of the evils which come upon the youth at and after the age of puberty, arise from masturbation, persisted in, so as to waste the vital energies and enervate the physical and mental powers of man." "Many of the weaknesses commonly attributed to growth and the changes in the habit by the important transformation from adolescence to manhood, are ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... that I will not allow you to contaminate your innocent schoolmates with your gifts of surreptitious sweetmeats; they shall not be perverted with your pernicious peppermints, sir; you shall not deprave them by jujubes, or enervate them with Turkish Delight! I will not expose myself or them to the inroads of disease invited here by a hypocritical inmate of my walls. The ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... circumscribed by the same laws of decorum, and balanced by the same temper, which bound and regulate all the virtues. In a word, we ought to act in party with all the moderation which does not absolutely enervate that vigour, and quench that fervency of spirit, without which the best wishes for the public good must evaporate ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... family and similar town despots, calling him the Magnificent. It is the fashion at present to give Lorenzo only the leavings, as it were, of our admiration for the weaker, less original, nay, considerably enervate, humanistic exquisite Politian; and this absurd injustice appears to me to show that the very essence and excellence of Lorenzo is not nowadays perceived. The Renaissance produced several versatile and charming ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... the inward consciousness of intellectual elevation, of moral sublimity, of heroism, had no influence, as is ordinarily the case with day-dreams, to give Jane a distaste for life's energetic duties. They did not enervate her character, or convert her into a mere visionary; on the contrary, they but roused and invigorated her to alacrity in the discharge of every duty. They led her to despise ease and luxury, to rejoice in self-denial, and to cultivate, to the highest possible degree, all her faculties ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... nothing but pharmaceutical brews of an action as diversified as powerful. Several of these narcotic or exhilarators, which threw a man into an incredible moral prostration, or else into a fit of frenzy, were long employed among the Romans. The slave merchants used them to overcome and enervate their more unconquerable captives."—Philosophic ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue
... close and heavy. The oppression of that stooping position, the lamp-smoke, the unusual strain on the muscles, the realization of a whole world of gold above and all about them, seemed to strangle and enervate them. But steadily they kept on ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... feels herself a jewel of price and cherishes a natural and unaffected pride of birth. The chants and incense, the flowers and sacred images, whatever troubles the imagination and stimulates to prayer, all these things united to enervate his spirit and deliver him a trembling victim to the glamour of ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... a mean opinion of those gymnastic exercises, which did not contribute to invigorate the body, or improve health;(373) as well as of music, which they considered as a diversion not only useless but dangerous, and only fit to enervate ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... said Mr. Beckendorff; "they only tend to enervate our mental energies and paralyse all human exertion. It is the belief in these, and a thousand other deceits I could mention, which leach man that he is not the master of his own mind, but the ordained victim or the chance sport of circumstances, that makes millions ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... give to these words. Express this phrase in Latin—Res Caesaris Plancus diligenter curavit: one can arrange these words in a hundred and twenty ways, without injuring the sense and without troubling the language. The auxiliary verbs which eke out and enervate the phrases in modern languages, still render the French tongue little suited to the concise lapidary style. The auxiliary verbs, its pronouns, its articles, its lack of declinable participles, and finally its uniform gait, are injurious to the great ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... said he. "Spare your tears. He loves no one but himself, and his only aim in life is to enervate and weaken YOUR mind, that he ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... could charm you like your own, 5 Then tuneful Robinson,[64] and Tofts were known; Then Purcell touched the strings, while numbers hung Attentive to the sounds—and blest the song! E'en gentle Weldon taught us manly notes, Beyond the enervate thrills of Roman throats! 10 Notes, foreign luxury could ne'er inspire, That animate the soul, and swell the lyre! That mend, and not emasculate our hearts, And teach the love of freedom and of arts. Nor yet, while guardian ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... brother-in-law, and because he had let the interest run on for two years, Moss was likely enough to think that he should never be troubled about the principal. But Mr. Tulliver was determined not to encourage such shuffling people any longer; and a ride along the Basset lanes was not likely to enervate a man's resolution by softening his temper. The deep-trodden hoof-marks, made in the muddiest days of winter, gave him a shake now and then which suggested a rash but stimulating snarl at the father of lawyers, ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... person, that he may be admitted to exercise his gifts amongst that people; and for me to countenance the bearer of your Lordship's letter, were to procure me most impiously and dishonourably to wrong the majesty of God and violently to take away the Christian liberty of his afflicted people and enervate my own right, &c."[164] ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... enervate your frame And dim the lustre of your eye, No lapse of time can soil your name, For names like yours ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... argument which Mill follows in his advocacy of the State provision of education is that instruction is one of the cases in which the aid given does not foster and re-create the evil which it seeks to remedy. Education which is really such does not tend to enervate but to strengthen the individual. Its effect is favourable to the growth of independence. "It is a help towards ...
— The Children: Some Educational Problems • Alexander Darroch
... morning, for no other visible purpose but to enable themselves to pass the night in the most stuffy and unhealthy atmosphere, is beyond my comprehension. One thing is certain: it has a tendency to enervate both body and mind, and were it not for the revivifying effects produced by a winter residence in the country, where gentlemen take to field sports, and ladies to razeed dresses, sensible shoes, and constitutional walks, the mortality among our "upper ten thousand" would, I believe, ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... crest-tossing Hector then answered: "Bring me not genial wine, venerable mother, lest thou enervate me, and I forget my might and valour. But I dread to pour out dark-red wine to Jove with unwashed hands: nor is it by any means lawful for me, denied with blood and gore, to offer vows to the cloud-compelling ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... to nature in giving impress to character. The scenery by which a people is surrounded, will modify and almost control its mode of being. The soft, rich landscapes of Italy enervate, while the rough mountainous country of the North imparts force and vigor. Mountains and seas are nature's healthful stimulants. Man grows in their vastness and is energized in their strength. Whatever may be the scenery of a people, it will mirror itself in the mind, and stamp ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Even as I thought of it, a revolt rose in me. The revolt of all the higher instincts against enslavement by the lower. The rebellion of all the intellectual impulses against being ruled by the physical. What! weaken, enervate, starve, destroy the mental sinews to gratify the passion for a woman? Crush down the mental emotions to give reins to the physical? It would be the work of a fool. A rooting-up fruit trees to clear a space for weeds. And what of those twenty-six years of life that lay behind me? Did they count ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... value is derived by persons in general from a wide and various reading; but still more deeply convinced as to the actual mischief of unconnected and promiscuous reading, and that it is sure, in a greater or less degree, to enervate even where it does not likewise inflate; I hope to satisfy many an ingenuous mind, seriously interested in its own development and cultivation, how moderate a number of volumes, if only they be judiciously chosen, will suffice for ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... Hierocles enjoyed that honor; but he would have been supplanted by one Zoticus, had he not contrived, by a potion, to enervate the powers of his rival, who, being found on trial unequal to his reputation, was driven with ignominy from the palace. Dion, l. lxxix. p. 1363, 1364. A dancer was made praefect of the city, a charioteer praefect of the watch, a barber praefect of the provisions. These three ministers, with ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... garrote; ratten[obs3], silence, sprain, clip the wings of, put hors de combat[Fr], spike the guns; take the wind out of one's sails, scotch the snake, put a spoke in one's wheel; break the neck, break the back; unhinge, unfit; put out of gear. unman, unnerve, enervate; emasculate, castrate, geld, alter, neuter, sterilize, fix. shatter, exhaust, weaken &c. 160. Adj. powerless, impotent, unable, incapable, incompetent; inefficient, ineffective; inept; unfit, unfitted; unqualified, disqualified; unendowed; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... suspected of his murder. Though Boabdil was innocent of such a crime, he felt himself guilty of the causes which led to it; and a dark memory, resting upon his conscience, served to augment his superstition and enervate the vigour of his resolves; for, of all things that make men dreamers, none is so effectual as remorse operating upon a ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... superiority of numbers, and in November he demanded from the French senate the eighty thousand conscripts who, according to law, could not be drawn until September, 1807. This was the beginning of the fatal practice destined in the end to enervate France and demoralize the army. There was already little patriotism among the men, except what served as a pretext for plunder; the homogeneity of purpose, principle, nationality, and age ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... Moreover, it frequently produces either inflammation of the eyes, or stuffing of the nose, or inflammation of the lungs, or looseness of the bowels. Although I do not approve of cold water, we ought not to run into an opposite extreme, as hot water would weaken and enervate the babe, and thus would predispose him to disease. Luke warm rain water will be the best to wash him with. This, if it be summer, should have its temperature gradually lowered, until it be quite cold, if it be winter, a dash of warm water ought still to ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... Florida seemed to enervate him. California was too unsettled. Even in the Mountains, his Heart always bothered him after a Hearty Meal. And the Piney Woods only made him Pine ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... me much upon 705 T' enervate this objection, And prove myself; by topic clear No gelding, as you would infer. Loss of virility's averr'd To be the cause of loss of beard, 710 That does (like embryo in the womb) Abortive on the chin become. This first a woman did ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... are we here to look for eminent heroes, colossal talents, or those marvellous exploits which the history of past times presents in such rich abundance. Those times are gone; such men are no more. In the soft lap of refinement we have suffered the energetic powers to become enervate which those ages called into action and rendered indispensable. With admiring awe we wonder at these gigantic images of the past as a feeble old man gazes on ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... your Lordships will, when you reflect seriously upon this matter, consider. God forbid that the authority either of the prosecutor or of the judge should dishearten the prisoner so as to circumscribe the means or enervate the vigor of his defence! God forbid that such a thing should even appear to be desired by anybody in any British tribunal! But, my Lords, there is a behavior which broadly displays a want of sense, a want of feeling, a want of decorum,—a behavior which indicates an habitual ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... pore of my body; and in the end I began to get afraid that if I stopped much longer I should only be fit to sing the song of the sluggard:—"You have waked me too soon, let me slumber again." Seville is a dangerous place; it is worse than Capua; it would enervate Cromwell's Ironsides. Happily for me the mosquitoes found out my bedroom, and pricked me into activity, or I might not have summoned the courage to leave it for weeks, the more especially as I had a sort of excuse for staying. The Cardinal Archbishop had promised a friend of mine to let ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea |
