"Weak-minded" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... customs and privileges which Niger has himself accepted. An unworthy lawyer will urge litigation; a dishonest judge or police-magistrate will make popularity at the expense of equity and honour; a weak-minded official will fear the murmurs, the complaints, and the memorials of those under him, and the tomahawking which awaits him from the little army of negrophiles at home. But the most dangerous class of all is the mulatto; ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... recovers his patient, the doctor stands on tiptoe. Henceforward his success is determined by other than medical sciences: a pillbox and pair, a good house in some recognized locality, Sunday dinners, a bit of a book, grand power of head-shaking, shoulder-shrugging, bamboozling weak-minded men and women, and, if possible, a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... our novice, even let his wish be gratified— this hated youth is ours beyond reprieve, this Venoni whom Josepha preferred to me, this Venoni to whom alone I impute my disappointment. I had worked upon the superstition and enthusiasm of the weak-minded Hortensia; I had persuaded her, that happiness and virtue existed not, except within the walls of a convent; already she saw in fancy her daughter's head encircled with a wreath of sainted glory, and she placed her in the Ursuline convent, in hopes that the example of the nuns might induce her to ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... says the Northern traitor, 'that very abolition has done the whole mischief. If there had been no Abolitionists, there would have been no war. The Abolitionists are responsible for it all.' Softly, poor, weak-minded man! Does not any man's common sense tell him that wherever a wrong exists, it is in the nature of things that somebody should oppose it—that a desire should arise to get rid of it? It is the chief mercy of God to ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Plot" was a modest attempt to blow up Parliament, the King and his Counsellors. James of Scotland, then King of England, was weak-minded and extravagant. He hit upon the efficient scheme of extorting money from the people by imposing taxes on the Catholics. In their natural resentment to this extortion, a handful of bold spirits concluded to ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond
... theories of the day, and their evil effects were felt in the domestic circle. Like animals that hate the light and crawl out from their hiding-places when the world is abandoned by man, the members of those impious gatherings passed their nights in mysterious conclave. Fancy can paint the scene: weak-minded men of every shade of unbelief, men of dishonest and immoral sentiments, men who, if justice had her due, should have swung on the gallows or eked out a miserable existence in some criminal's cell, joined in league to trample on the laws and constitution of order, ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... school of discipline and struggle, is a beautiful and consistent creation, constantly showing masculine energy and endurance, yet losing nothing of womanly charm. Ruth, in "The Wept of the Wish-ton-Wish," Hetty Hutter, the weak-minded and sound-hearted girl, in "The Deerslayer," Mabel Dunham, and the young Indian woman, "Dew of June," in "The Pathfinder," are further cases in point. No one can read the books in which these women are represented ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... or female with a very low forehead should carefully avoid marriage with a person of like conformation, or their offspring will, in all probability, be weak-minded or victims to ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... this truth is being gradually put into practice in the education of the weak-minded and of the physically defective, sound physical health is one of the conditions of right moral activity. This truth Rousseau emphasised when he declared: "that the weaker the body, the more it commands; the stronger it is, the better it obeys. All the sensual passions find lodgment in ...
— The Children: Some Educational Problems • Alexander Darroch
... bewildered enough, just then, to wonder how such a weak-minded, malicious old dwarf as had been painted to him, could have managed to get and keep so high a position in so remarkably beautiful a place as Grantley. He said something about the village being so pretty; but ...
— Dab Kinzer - A Story of a Growing Boy • William O. Stoddard
... "You weak-minded old gazabo, is it to hear ye singin' topical songs thot Oi came down from Archery road? ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... shelf of the hospital department of my library—the section devoted to literary cripples, imbeciles, failures, foolish rhymesters, and silly eccentrics—one of the least conspicuous and most hopelessly feeble of the weak-minded population of that intellectual almshouse. I open it and look through its pages. It is a story. I have looked into it once before,—on its first reception as a gift from the author. I try to recall some of the names I see there: ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... and Saxony. He had obtained these legal privileges just in time, and could now deal with the poor fanatics at Herrnhaag. The situation there had come to a crisis. The old Count of Isenberg died. His successor, Gustavus Friedrich, was a weak-minded man; the agent, Brauer, detested the Brethren; and now Brauer laid down the condition that the settlers at Herrnhaag must either break off their connection with Zinzendorf or else abandon the premises. They chose the latter course. At one blow the gorgeous settlement ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... in New England. A number of his neighbors turned out to try and find the horse. They searched all through the woods and fields of the surrounding country, but in vain. None of them could find the horse. At last a poor, weak-minded fellow, who was known in that neighborhood as "simple Sam," started to hunt the horse. After awhile he came back, bringing the stray horse with him. The owner of the horse was delighted to see him. He stroked and patted him, and then, turning to the simple-minded ...
— The Life of Jesus Christ for the Young • Richard Newton
... this house, all it contains, the garden, the very trees I see from these windows, are so knitted into the fabric of my past life that I shrink—with a queer sense of homelessness—from any thought of their passing into the occupation of strangers.—Childish, pitifully weak-minded no doubt, and therefore the more natural that one should crave a voice, thus in the disposition of what one has learned through long usage so very falsely ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... my hand when I offered it to him—he was not able to speak. I wonder whether I am weak about Arthur? Say a kind word for him, when his conduct comes under notice—but pray don't mention this little frailty of mine; and don't suppose I have any sympathy with his weak-minded submission to Mrs. Romayne's prejudices. If I ever felt the smallest consideration for her (and I cannot call to mind any amiable emotion of that sort), her letter to Winterfield would have effectually extinguished it. There is something ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... had none to give her. The curtains were worn and shabby, the carpets full of holes, the furniture, though clean and well preserved, was totally insufficient. In vain the doctor assured her he had not the means; after the fashion of weak-minded women, she grumbled incessantly. On this night he felt overwhelmed with cares. The rent due the preceding June had not been paid; the gas and coal accounts were still unsettled; the butcher had sent in his ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... Lawrence people; but the officers had become cognizant of the bloody job they would have on hands, and were willing to be let off. And so the Governor patched up a peace, and sent his militia home again, with their curses diverted from the Lawrence Abolitionists to Gov. Shannon. Cowardly, weak-minded and infirm in purpose as this unhappy man was, he was not wholly a fool; and we may justly believe that he had in his heart a foreboding of that awful day of reckoning that would surely come, when inquisition would be made for the blood of these citizens, and the Governor himself would ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... blank when Malcolm knocked at his mother's door. Anderson received him with a beaming face. The old man had grown a trifle stiff and rheumatic of late years, but he still kept a sharp eye on his coadjutor—the weak-minded ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... strictly accurate. It is, quite simply and literally, a Bill for incarcerating as madmen those whom no doctor will consent to call mad. It is enough if some doctor or other may happen to call them weak-minded. Since there is scarcely any human being to whom this term has not been conversationally applied by his own friends and relatives on some occasion or other (unless his friends and relatives have been lamentably ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... to escape in this State," Mr. Flint went on, raising his head and meeting Austen's look; "the disease was too prevalent and too catching for the weak-minded. We had our self-seekers who attempted to bring ruin upon an institution which has done more for our population than any other. I do not hesitate to speak of the Northeastern Railroads as an institution, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... haunted by the suspicion you might skip all this. Were you sufficiently conscientious—or weak-minded enough—not to do so, I should, all said and done, succeed in conveying to you only an impression much better summed up in the simple words ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... people—ten per cent of the planetary population—on the wide concrete promenade around the spaceport landing pit. I came out among them and set down the hamper with my telecast cameras and recorders, wishing, as usual, that I could find some ten or twelve-year-old kid weak-minded enough to want to be a reporter when he grew up, so that I could have an apprentice to help ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... mule, was not likely to tell Cargrim anything he desired to learn. Bell, detesting the chaplain, as she took no pains to conceal, would probably refuse to hold a conversation with him; but Mrs Mosk, being weak-minded and ill, might be led by dexterous questioning to tell all she knew. And what she did know might, in Cargrim's opinion, throw more light on Jentham's connection with the bishop. Therefore, the next morning, ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... school miss instead of a middle-aged woman. He doesn't love you. He wants a housekeeper and a governess. You don't love him. You want to be 'Mrs.'—you are one of those weak-minded women who think it's a disgrace to be ranked as an old maid. That's ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... scientific 'sharps' are avid for any fact which sustains the particular theory they happen to hold. Not one in a hundred will go where the facts lead. Their investigation is all a process of self-glorification, wherein each one thinks he must prove all the others liars or weak-minded in ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... what you say, miss, and I think you're honest, but you may be mistaken. I saw her meet-up with fine young fellies in the East; I could see they admired her—but she turned them down easily. She's no weak-minded chippy, as I know on me own account—the more ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... made three gestures, without saying a word: first she pointed to herself, then she shook her forefinger, and lastly she jerked her thumb back in the direction of the door that led to the Senator's apartments. The weak-minded body was not Pina, but her master, since he had brought that handsome singer to teach Ortensia, who had never before exchanged two words with any young man, handsome or plain, except under the nose of the Senator himself; and that ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... when he heard that a woman who had till shortly before been kitchen-maid at the Abbey House, and was now living in the village, had been confined of a son which she fixed upon his brother, whose wife she declared herself to be. Investigation only brought out the truth of the story; his weak-minded brother had been ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... Weak-minded folly magnifies All that is rare and strange, And the dull herd's o'erwhelmed with awe At unexpected change. But wonder leaves enlightened minds, When ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... three brothers who had invited him to join the party, one, we have seen, was the hunter, Mestigoit; another, the sorcerer; and the third, Pierre, whom, by reason of his falling away from the Faith, Le Jeune always mentions as the Apostate. He was a weak-minded young Indian, wholly under the influence of his brother, the sorcerer, who, if not more vicious, was far more resolute and wily. From the antagonism of their respective professions, the sorcerer hated the ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... the chief sought the weak-minded Gunther, and to him he related all that the trustful Kriemhild had told him. And, until the midnight hour, the two plotters sat in the king's bed-chamber, and laid their cunning plans. Both thought it best, now they had learned the fatal secret, to give up the sham march against the North-kings, ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... raised a barrier between her and the companions of her childhood. And what had the possession of gold done for the man who made it his idol? It had put snares in the path of his only son; it had made the weak-minded but head-strong youth be entrapped by the wicked for the sake of his wealth, as the ermine is hunted down for its rich fur. It had given to himself heavy responsibilities, for which he would have to answer at the bar of Heaven; for ...
— False Friends, and The Sailor's Resolve • Unknown
... 4. Coitus only with her husband before myself. Not very passionate. I know nothing about masturbation or homosexuality in her case. Very broad hips, large breasts, and well-developed nates. Deserted by her husband. No children. Rather foolish and weak-minded. Penetration difficult owing ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... beg, Mother dear, that you won't have a row with Owen's dear little vacillating, weak-minded ma," said Sandy cheerfully. ...
— The Treasure • Kathleen Norris
... none, not even Odin and his Asa-folk. They all grow old and gray; and, if there were no cure for age, they would become feeble, and toothless and blind, deaf, tottering, and weak-minded. The apples which Idun guarded so carefully were the priceless boon of youth. Whenever the Asas felt old age coming on, they went to her, and she gave them of her fruit; and, when they had tasted, they grew young and strong ...
— Hero Tales • James Baldwin
... never divine! It is mesmerism. She is thrown into the magnetic trance twice a day; and the progress is manifest; and the hope for the future clear. Now, what do you both think? Consider what a case it is! No case of a weak-minded woman and a nervous affection; but of the most manlike woman in the three kingdoms—in the best sense of man—a woman gifted with admirable fortitude, as well as exercised in high logic, a woman of sensibility and of imagination ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... impression on the sober reason and sound common sense of the world. You may seduce thousands—you can convince no one. Whenever and wherever you or the advocates of your cause can arouse the passions of the weak-minded and the ignorant, and bringing to bear with them the interests of the vicious and unprincipled, overwhelm common sense and reason—as God sometimes permits to be done—you may triumph. Such a triumph we have witnessed in Great Britain. But I trust it is far ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... works of the music- cart, I DID find out, to be made of quill tooth-picks and wire; and I always thought that little tumbler in his shirt sleeves, perpetually swarming up one side of a wooden frame, and coming down, head foremost, on the other, rather a weak-minded person—though good-natured; but the Jacob's Ladder, next him, made of little squares of red wood, that went flapping and clattering over one another, each developing a different picture, and the whole enlivened by small bells, was ...
— Some Christmas Stories • Charles Dickens
... plaintiff, then the judge has the intention of setting that verdict aside, nullifying all the work of the jury, the witnesses, the clients, and the lawyers, and ordering a new trial. This is rather a weak-minded proceeding and shows the necessity of having a man in the referee's chair who knows how ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... consists in man's power of preserving, his own being; secondly, that virtue is to be desired for its own sake, and that there is nothing more excellent or more useful to us, for the sake of which we should desire it; thirdly and lastly that suicides are weak-minded, and are overcome by external causes repugnant to their nature. Further, it follows from Postulate iv. Part.II., that we can never arrive at doing without all external things for the preservation of our being or living, so as to ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... fellow with a craze, sir,' said Mr. Dick, 'a simpleton, a weak-minded person—present company, you know!' striking himself again, 'may do what wonderful people may not do. I'll bring them together, boy. I'll try. They'll not blame me. They'll not object to me. They'll not mind what I do, if it's wrong. ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... when the king's brother D'Anjou had accepted the crown of Poland, and the second brother, D'Alencon, a weak-minded, ambitious man, was secretly hoping for a crown somewhere, that Henry paid his debt for the king's mercy to him on the night of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... of the several battles and the many skirmishes of the miserable Wars of the Roses. These lasted from 1455, when the duke of York set seriously to work to displace the weak-minded Lancastrian king, Henry VI, until the accession of Henry VII, of the house of Tudor, thirty years later. After several battles the Yorkist leader, Edward IV, assumed the crown in 1461 and was recognized by Parliament, ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... not enjoy the trouble of laying before you a variety of things to choose from, and except in first-class shops he does not seem to care much whether you buy or not. The result often is, that you either are strong-minded enough not to buy at all, or so weak-minded as to take das erste beste that is put before you. Either is unsatisfactory. So far has this custom of knowing everything proceeded, that at a leading dressmaking establishment in Melbourne when a friend of mine was ordering a dress, ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... retreat, showing me by many and forcible arguments how unreasonably I act in leading the life I do; but as they know, that if I escape from this evil I shall fall into another still greater, perhaps they will set me down as a weak-minded man, or, what is worse, one devoid of reason; nor would it be any wonder, for I myself can perceive that the effect of the recollection of my misfortunes is so great and works so powerfully to my ruin, that in spite of myself ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... excellent. Miss ZELIE DE LUSSAN, gifted with a light, pleasant voice, sang admirably. Can't have "Trop de Zelie." Mr. BARTON McGUCKIN, as Don Jim-along-Jose, did all that can be done with this weak-minded soldier. No holes to be picked in Mr. McG.'s performance, though there was a portion of his costume that would have been the better for the attention of Signor SOANSO, the Spanish tailor. Perhaps he is one of the "Renters" of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 19 April 1890 • Various
... the cant or 'kennick' of thieves—a Whitechapel argot, familiarity with which at once tells its own tale. Fortunately, our existing law is sufficient to keep the nuisance in check, if only it be resolutely administered. The tramp, however, trades upon spurious sympathy. There will always be weak-minded folk to pity the poor man whom the hard-hearted magistrates have sent to gaol for sleeping under a haystack—forgetting that this interesting offender is, as a rule, no better than a common thief at large, who will ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... said Thorhall, "for work which would not be fitting for a weak-minded person, because of the apparitions which have been there lately. I will ...
— Grettir The Strong - Grettir's Saga • Unknown
... statement that the women of the South do not want the vote anyway and if they did they would only vote as their husbands do. To say that means what? That the women of the South in the estimate of those men are too weak-minded to have an opinion of their own; it means that they have no independence of character; it means that they have been reduced so far to nonentity that they will only echo their husbands' opinions. Is living in the homes of the white men of the ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... power. One was to join the reformers and co-operate in patriotic work, assisted by progressive ministers, whatever opposition might be raised by nobles and priests; and the second was to arm himself and put down the deputies. But how could this weak-minded sovereign co-operate with plebeians against the orders which sustained his throne? And if he used violence, he inaugurated civil war, which would destroy thousands where revolution destroyed hundreds. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... world. They produced horrible strains in his mind. They might, he hoped, be misreported so as to seem more violent or less justifiable than they were. They might be the acts of stray criminals, and quite disconnected from the normal operations of the war. Here and there some weak-minded officer may have sought to make himself terrible.... And as for the bombardment of cathedrals and the crime of Louvain, well, Mr. Britling was prepared to argue that Gothic architecture is not sacrosanct ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... the easier. She can no longer play the spotless saint—get weak-minded priests on her side—be all for strict convents. No, no; her time for that is past! Shut her up with trustworthy persons from whom she will hear nothing from without, and she will understand her case. The child? It will scarce be born alive, or at any rate she need not know whether it is. Then, ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... again, shaking him roughly by the shoulder. "Stop. Be yourself. This is dementia; but I shall NOT let you be demented. Think of what you are saying. Bring her back to you! Is that the way of God? I thought you were a man; this is the talk of a weak-minded girl." ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... take advantage of your position with—with any other, I would shrug my shoulders and stand on one side, but this mad Englishman's wife, or rather his widow, has been mentally ill. She is still weak-minded, just as she is tender-hearted. I watched her as she passed through the hall with you just now. She turns to you for love as a flower to the sun after a long spell of cold, wet weather. Von Ragastein, you are a man of honour. You must ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... shore I onderstands you. As to the real thing in hypnotism, however, thar arises as I recalls eevents but few examples in Arizona. The Southwest that a-way ain't the troo field for them hypnotists, the weak-minded among the pop'lation bein' redooced to minimum. Now an' then of course some hypnotic maverick, who's strayed from the eastern range, takes to trackin' 'round among us sort o' blind an' permiscus. But he never stays long, an' is generally tickled to death when some vig'lance ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... the top and to permeate downwards. This has been the case with the decline in the birth-rate, but it is already well marked among the working classes, and has only failed to touch the lowest social stratum of all, too weak-minded and too reckless to be amenable to ordinary social motives. The rational method of meeting this situation is not a propaganda in favour of procreation—a truly imbecile propaganda, since it is only carried out and only likely to be carried out, by the very class which we wish to sterilise—but ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... agreed in other respects. Miss Battledown was generally believed to have very proper ideas as to her duties and responsibilities as an heiress. Since poor Archibald Malmaison lost his wits, she had received more than one offer which a young lady who was weak-minded enough to regard only personal attractions might have been tempted to accept; but she had needed no elder person to counsel her to refuse them. In fact, she had at one time allowed it to be inferred that she deprecated the idea of being married to any one; ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... purpose, and altogether convinced me that, if not positively imbecile in mind and memory, there were yet some ugly symptoms of incapacity growing upon him which might one day result in the loss of both. I had always known him to be a weak-minded man, disposed to vanity and caprice, but the weakness had expanded very much in a brief period, and now presented itself to my view in sundry very salient aspects. It was easy now to divert his attention from the business which he had in ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... conceived the idea of getting out of his difficulty by transferring the dead body of the negro Jim to the despoiled empty grave of Onondaga! This done, he easily persuaded the Indians to go back and find the body of their chief all right: and so he succeeded in humbugging the weak-minded Indians, while the bones of old Onondaga were duly prepared and hung up to show students how Indians and all men are made of bone and muscle. The doctor thought he had done a good thing; but when I went into the office and saw the ...
— Three Years on the Plains - Observations of Indians, 1867-1870 • Edmund B. Tuttle
... kindly toward him. Winter lasted full four months out there. It was a good ninety miles to the railroad, an' so when the mornin's begun to get frosty every one else scooted for humanity, an' I, bein' more or less weak-minded, took the job o' watchman, at forty a month an' my needin's. I always was a hog for litachure, so I got a bushel o' libraries an' started in to play ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... self-deceitful. What cares he for the Duke of Bedford, whom he scarcely sees from one end of the year to the other, and why should he care? They have very little in common—neither the idem velle nor idem nolle; and a more uninteresting, weak-minded, selfish character does not exist than the Duke of Bedford.[3] He is a good-natured, plausible man, without enemies, and really (though he does not think so) without friends; and naturally enough he does not think so, because there are many who pretend, like Brougham, a strong affection ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... Twemlow's cheeks as she spoke of her mysterious affliction; and her husband, who knew that she was not weak-minded, consoled her ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... not fitted with a single hard definition, rigidly observed, all repetition is a kind of delicate punning, bringing slight differences of application into clear relief. The practice has its dangers for the weak-minded lover of ornament, yet even so it may be preferable to the flat stupidity of one identical intention for a word or phrase in twenty several contexts. For the law of incessant change is not so much a counsel of ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... becoming, for many reasons, a cause of serious disquietude to my friends, and of positive injury to myself. I grew self-willed, addicted to the wildest caprices, and a prey to the most ungovernable passions. Weak-minded, and beset with constitutional infirmities akin to my own, my parents could do but little to check the evil propensities which distinguished me. Some feeble and ill-directed efforts resulted in complete failure on their part, and, of course, in total triumph on mine. ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... wipe out the social disgrace of leaving neglected wanderers on the highways of human effort who are unable to find the path of safety and of success, and to make a protected place of guidance and possible training for all the weak-minded and abnormal. We can, now we increasingly understand, do more than this; we can help with ever more ingenious and devoted care to give the merely slow and backward a better chance at life's opportunities and help ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... Inspector General, the Chief Justice, the Speaker of the Legislative Council, and the Honorable and Reverend Chaplain of the Legislative Council. The Upper House was the mere instrument of some designing confidential secretary to a weak-minded or, at least, credulous governor. Nay, it was said that "ruffian magistrates" abounded in those days along the banks of the St. Lawrence, from Brockville to Cornwall, inclusive, the Lieutenant-Governor ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... and more had gone by since that night on which I sat opposite to a wine-glass full of poison and was the prey of visions, when once again I received a call from Stephen Strong. With this good-hearted, though misguided man, and his amiable, but weak-minded wife, I had kept up an intimacy that in time ripened into genuine friendship. On every Sunday night, and sometimes oftener, I took supper with them, and discussed with Mrs. Strong the important questions of our descent from the lost Tribes and whether or no the lupus from which ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... She would go back to Max, and all thought that it might be weak-minded of her, humiliating to her self-respect, was swept aside. Love, the great teacher, had brought her through the dark places where the lesser gods hold sway, out into the light of day, and she knew that to return ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... afflicted persons, bent upon playing with long sticks and bits of wood, now invaded the upper deck. Their weak-minded cries filled the air. Sam and the ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... work with or without means, and that he could work over and above means and do whatsoever seemeth him good to the glory of his grace and the salvation of the world. There is no doubt in my mind that, with weak-minded, ignorant, and superstitious persons, there was a great deal of sympathetic feeling with many that claimed to be under the influence of this jerking exercise, and yet with many it was perfectly involuntary. It was on all occasions my practice to recommend ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... the subject of women's suffrage—showing distinctly the refluent wave. In 1903 New Hampshire rejects a constitutional amendment for women's suffrage. Kansas restricts the marriage of epileptic and weak-minded persons. Several States reform their divorce laws, and Pennsylvania adopts Southern ideas giving divorce for a previous unchastity discovered after marriage. This matter has so far been covered by no Northern State, though it had been law from ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... corner in a waste-room at least two cart-loads of old books in a cobwebbed dusty pile. Out of that pile I raked the thirteenth known copy of Blind Harry's famed poem, a black-letter Euphues Lely, an Erra Pater (a very weak-minded friend actually shamed me out of making a copy of this great curiosity, telling me it was silly and childish of me to be so pleased with old trash), and many more marvels, which were so little esteemed in Princeton, that one of the professors, seeing ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... trifle envious of her evident success. I fear that Miss Arnot, in response to their anxious inquiries, did not state entirely the truth, but, without actual assertion, led them to believe that she had, at a very early stage of the proceeding, completely subjugated this weak-minded giant, and had brought him triumphantly to her feet. From telling this story two or three times, she got finally to believing that she had some foundation for it, then to a vague sort of desire that it would eventually prove to be true, and then to an equally vague yearning to hasten that ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... piece of presumption to present such a picture as that of the church. As if it were in its last stages of decay, indeed! It was well such a weak-minded idiot as Robert Elsmere died at the beginning of his career. I could never forgive the author if she hadn't killed him," she was saying ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... panting for breath, while Mrs. Van Buren looked at him with entirely new sensations from what she had before experienced. There was some delicacy of feeling in his nature, after all—something which recoiled from her unwomanly attack upon his weak-minded brother—and she respected him at that moment, if she had never done so before. Something like shame, too, she felt for her cruel taunt, which had both roused and wounded him, and she would gladly have recalled all she said of Andy if she could, for she remembered now what Aunt Barbara ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... give him credit for his discovery nor even for his apparent innocence. It was, as the captain had said, a serious business, and Uncle Sam was taking no chances where spies and traitors were concerned. Probably they thought Tom was a weak-minded tool of ...
— Tom Slade on a Transport • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... superior men, true mothers do not like this forced abdication; they would rather keep their children small and still requiring protection. Perhaps that is the secret of their predilection for feeble, deformed, or weak-minded offspring. ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... replies Remy de Gourmont; Tolstoy may be wildly mistaken, but he is never weak-minded. We think it is his strength, his intensity that sends him caracoling on a dozen different roads ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... grew weak-minded, his relatives, after a long palaver, decided that for once the time-honoured customs of the land should be overridden, and since there was no other method of treating the blind but that prescribed by precedent, he should be allowed to live in a great hut at the edge of the ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... deal too much hard work about it for him. He soon gives up trying it at all, and prefers to eke out an uncertain existence by sponging upon good-natured old Irish women and generous but weak-minded young artisans who have left their native village to follow him and enjoy the advantage of his company ...
— Stage-Land • Jerome K. Jerome
... this matter was very brief. Blinky lasted just long enough to make a great discovery, to brag about it as was Blinky's way, and then pass on to find his reward in whatever hereafter is set apart for weak-minded crooks whose heads are not hard enough to withstand the crushing impact of a ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... such a house as no mortal ever built before—something to make everybody wonder what manner of people they are who live in such a habitation—something to convince our neighbors that we are no weak-minded time-servers, but are able to be an architectural as well as domestic law unto ourselves—something to make them stop and stare—a sort of local Greenwich from which the community will reckon their longitude—'so many miles from the ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... I should tell her you are weak-minded enough to be jealous, she would immediately disown such a ...
— The Love-Tiff • Moliere
... "Then, I fear, poor, weak-minded Hetty has not been altogether able to see all the vanity, and rudeness and folly, that lie hid behind the handsome face and fine form of Hurry Harry. She talks of him in her sleep, and sometimes betrays the ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... the ceiling. Carlos, standing behind his chair, opened his mouth a little in a half smile. I was really angry with O'Brien by that time, with his air of omniscience, superiority, and self-content, as if he were talking to a child or someone very credulous and weak-minded. ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... horrified to think what mischief I had done by being so weak-minded as to let her copy my work. Mabel Smith was white. But Miss Vinton ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... Bahander Shah, the Mogul whom the mutineer leaders had proclaimed Emperor of India, were thrust into a dungeon, starved for five days and then hacked to pieces in the beautiful courtyard. The new emperor, a weak-minded old man with no energy or ability, and scarcely intellect enough to realize his responsibilities, pronounced judgment and issued the orders prepared for him by the conspirators by whom he was surrounded. But retribution was swift and ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... with you. You have a great deal to do this time. You no doubt will write before Sunday. Do not flatter that wretch ——. He is a miserable, weak-minded fellow. I embrace you. My health ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... felt sure of Elizabeth, she would have gone through with the proposed policy; distrusting the English Queen she resolved to end it. She made a desperate and successful attempt to recover her ascendancy over her weak-minded son. She played upon his terrors, and prepared for one of the most ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... who, in "Anatol," saw nothing but a rather weak-minded restlessness in woman's inconstancy, recognizes in "Intermezzo" woman's right to as complete a knowledge of life and its possibilities as any man may acquire. The same note is struck by Johanna in "The Lonely Way." "I want a time to come when I must shudder at myself—shudder ...
— The Lonely Way—Intermezzo—Countess Mizzie - Three Plays • Arthur Schnitzler
... felt rather flattened out; but then one's mother might have a heavier hand than any one else. He had not thrown up the House of Commons to amuse himself; he had thrown it up to work, to sit quietly down and bend over his task. If he should go abroad his parent might think he had some weak-minded view of joining Julia and trying, with however little hope, to win her back—an illusion it would be singularly pernicious to encourage. His desire for Julia's society had succumbed for the present at any ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... well for Diana to people the corridor with imaginary monks; she knew they were images of her own creation; the more weak-minded of her form mates, however, were frankly frightened. Nothing spreads more readily than a ghost scare. Sadie, Jess, and Peggie were bolting squealing along the passage one evening, when they almost collided with Geraldine. ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... Annie's loud neighbor, contemptuously. "A grown man is very weak-minded to believe in any ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... Catabria. A baron favorable to the Moors, "too weak-minded to be independent." When the Spaniards rose up against the Moors, the first order of the Moorish chief was this: "Strike off Count Eudon's head: the fear which brought him to our camp will bring him else in arms against us now" (ch. xxv.). ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... brain, and threatened to undermine her influence over her. She cut short her visit to her at this point, and returned home uncomfortable and disturbed, wishing she had never offered the shelter of her roof to her nephew's unhappy and weak-minded wife. ...
— Brought Home • Hesba Stretton
... keeper of a bar was exposed to much temptation. A weak-minded man, mingling continually in the company of topers, might possibly end by giving way to drink. Now, Josiah was an exceptionally weak-minded man. It had also to be borne in mind that he had a shrewish wife, and that her whole family had come to live with him. Clearly, to place Josiah in ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... get in? Didn't I send a message? Didn't I write? This on the top of everything else! Are even my printers conspiring against me? Well, even if it ruins me, I shall go on! They shall find out what I can do. How on earth can I be expected to help it if a weak-minded fellow dies, or if my printers are drunk or my manager has delirium tremens! I shall pursue my end through all chances and in spite of all their tricks, and I shall crush them, crush them—I shall—. (Gives way to a paroxysm of rage. At this moment the MAID comes in ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... school. There opportunities were few. She coaxed her teacher to let her study book-keeping, and took one disagreeable lesson in its first principles; but she accomplished nothing else that day except the putting of a general check upon weak-minded inclinations to be frolicsome. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - No 1, Nov 1877 • Various
... somewhere, having a good time and not caring a flip of her tail feathers what becomes of him. I believe in being goodhearted, but there is such a thing as overdoing the matter. Thank goodness I'm not so weak-minded that I can be imposed on in ...
— The Burgess Bird Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... performer, she would as often as not begin to cry, and leave the room. My company from this, of course, fancied I was a tyrant over her; whereas I was only a severe and careful guardian over a silly, bad-tempered, and weak-minded lady. ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... difference between the exhibition of the stage and the gloating of the broadsheet; they are both "the agents by which the exploits of the gay highwayman are realised before his eyes, amid a brilliant and evidently sympathising" public. We deprecate both, as tending to excite the weak-minded to gratify "the ambition of this kind of notoriety;"—and yet we say, with the Times, there should be ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... not weak-minded, but she was very tender-hearted and exceedingly susceptible to personal charms. She ought not, she knew she ought not, to have yielded, but she did. She promised. Yet in her friend's own interest, she contended that Milly must confess to a certain failure of memory from over-fatigue, if only as ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... neither church nor Sunday school nor home brings to him any knowledge of the great hymns of religion.[15] In the churches that use these hymns the child is frequently not in the Sunday services; he is in the children's service or the school, while in the majority of churches a weak-minded endeavor for amusement has substituted meaningless rag-time trivialities for rich and dignified hymns. Perhaps the custom of encouraging congregations to jig, dance, cavort, or drone through the frivolities of "popular" gospel songs is only a ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... were arrested; some were executed while others were sent to prison; she herself was confined in the convent where she had found a retreat. Peter was now the czar, although he conducted the government in his own name and in that of his weak-minded brother Ivan. ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... and the Queen of the piano. The prince made his maiden speech at a meeting for the abolition of the slave-trade, speaking in a low tone, and with 'the prettiest foreign accent.' While she was driving up Constitution Hill, an attempt was made upon the Queen's life by a weak-minded youth, but luckily neither of the pistol shots took effect. There have been at least seven other happily futile attempts on ...
— Queen Victoria • Anonymous
... accused of having written an immoral story. The funny part of the incident was that the letter in question closed with the following: "I will admit that I have not read any of these books. I would not soil my mind by reading them; but I think the titles are quite sufficient to lead many a weak-minded person astray." I leave the reader ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... attention. Weakness and fasting and horror had overpowered a delicate body and a sensitive mind, and he lay senseless by the shattered relic of happier times. Antoine the gaoler (a weak-minded man, whom circumstances had made cruel), looked at him with indifference while the Jacobin remained in the place, and with half-suppressed pity when he had gone. The place where he lay was a hall or passage in the prison, into which several ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... from time to time, and especially of late, had visited us of strange experiments in connection with these outlandish sciences, if sciences they can be called; but we had received these with incredulity, mingled with compassion for such weak-minded persons as could be easily duped by the clever ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... fostered lunacy. Whole families withdrew from certain districts. Consanguineous marriages became more frequent. Weak-minded cousins wedded to ...
— What's the Matter with Ireland? • Ruth Russell
... been allowed to drink when at home and now he frequently drank on the sly when down to Cedarville. On these excursions he was generally joined by a weak-minded boy named Hurdy, who was usually willing to do whatever ...
— The Rover Boys in Camp - or, The Rivals of Pine Island • Edward Stratemeyer
... a weak-minded young fool!" cried Poynter, who had now thoroughly become roused, so withering was the contempt written in Rich's ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... man to dream that he is a girl, he will be weak-minded, or become an actor and play ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... work on his hands in England that he left France alone. Yet France was wretched, because when the wise Charles V. died in 1380, he left two children, Charles the Dauphin, and his brother, Louis of Orleans. They were only little boys, and the Dauphin became weak-minded; moreover, they were both in the hands of their uncles. The best of these relations, Philip, Duke of Burgundy, died in 1404. His son, John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, was the enemy of his own cousin, Louis of Orleans, brother of the Dauphin Charles, who was now ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... new business to me that I feel certain of a failure, and we business men, Mr. Mall, do not like to fail in our undertakings. You really will have to excuse me from taking part in such a peculiar proceeding. If we have such a poor weak-minded boy in our employ as you describe, I feel very sorry for him, and would recommend his mother to take him home and keep him ...
— Three People • Pansy
... it leads you than if you had got there by a proper flight of stairs. So—very often—has finding yourself face to face with the accomplishment of what you have been striving for, if you happen to be weak-minded. ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... from something outside oneself, and God can have no passions; God cannot be moved by the sins and follies of such paltry atoms as we human beings are: the answer is, Man's anger—even just anger—is, too often, a passion; weak-minded persons, ill-educated persons, especially when they get together in mobs, and excite each other, are carried away when they hear even a false report of cruelty or injustice, by their really wholesome indignation, and say and do foolish, and cruel, and unjust things, the ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... he was a prosy, weak-minded creature, who, although time was so precious, would have stood talking to me of its great value by the hour, if I had patience to listen. I thanked him for his offer, but assured him I would pay his usual price for the work. Mrs. Blake, however, stipulated ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... cases, attributes the victory of the common rat over the large Mus coninga to its superior cunning; and this latter quality may probably be attributed to the habitual exercise of all its faculties in avoiding extirpation by man, as well as to nearly all the less cunning or weak-minded rats having been continuously destroyed by him. It is, however, possible that the success of the common rat may be due to its having possessed greater cunning than its fellow- species, before it became associated with man. To maintain, independently of any direct evidence, that no animal ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... a few days to let opposition subside, and then began his tricks. Charley's first victim was Aunt Hitty. She was a gentle, weak-minded person, easy to persuade, and when Charley put his head into her lap and called her coaxing names, and was sure she was too kind to disappoint him in the thing he was set upon, her heart softened, and she ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... life here. I beseech you, do not put away such thoughts as this, with the notion that I am brandishing before you some antiquated doctrine, fit only to frighten old women and children. The writer of the Book of Ecclesiastes was no weak-minded, superstitious fanatic. He was far more disposed to scepticism than to fanaticism. But for all that, with all his sympathy for young men's breadth and liberality, with his tolerance for all sorts and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... considerable shame. Horace would be furious when he knew; more furious with Edith than Lucia. Therefore Edith was furious with Sophia Roots, the cause of this disaster, who must have known that even if Lucia was too weak-minded to refuse her most improper invitation, that invitation ought never to have been given. Edith had her pride, the pride of all the Jewdwines and the Hardens; and her private grievances gave way before a family catastrophe. She did not want Lucia at Hampstead; but at all cost ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... was now a beautiful old lady, with snow-white hair and the most charming smile; and Miss Dora, who was only fifty, retained the natural colour of her own scanty light-brown locks, which wavered in weak-minded ringlets over her cheeks; but Miss Leonora was iron-grey, without any complexion in particular, and altogether a harder type of woman. It was she who held in her hands the fate of Skelmersdale and of Frank Wentworth. Her terrible glance ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... emperor, accompanied by the princes and leaders of the German states, began to cruise the border and northern seas of the Fatherland, where they would be safe from listening ears, prying eyes, newspapers, telephones and telegraphs. It became known that the Kaiser was cultivating the weak-minded Russian czar in an attempt to win his country from its alliance with England and France. There were no open rumblings of war, but the air was charged with electricity like ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... supported a pretty large family, was not rich, although, by industry and economy, he had gathered together a few thousand dollars, and owned, besides, two or three neat little houses, the aggregate annual rent of which was something like six hundred dollars. His wife, a weak-minded woman, however, considered him independent, in regard to wealth, and valued herself accordingly. Few held their heads higher, or trode the pavement with a ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... an extremity any and every doctrine, though tending to the instant disorganization of society. To lecture against war, and against taxes as directly supporting war, would wear a most colorable air of truth amongst all weak-minded persons. And these would soon appear to have been but the first elements of confusion under the improved views of spiritual rights. The doctrines of the Levellers in Cromwell's time, of the Anabaptists in Luther's time, would ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... feel really better now. She rather wondered that she had never told Count Paul about that strange visit to the fortune-teller, but she had been taught, as are so many Englishwomen of her type, to regard everything savouring of superstition as not only silly and weak-minded, but ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... therefore has no excuse for taking up with bad objects. Cricket, Rowing, Volunteering, and such-like, are healthy, and easily obtainable recreations. Gambling, drinking, loitering, are not to be thought of for a moment, they are the curse of the lazy and weak-minded. Theatres are very good if you keep out of the cheap and nasty ones. Music halls are much better avoided. I do not say that it is necessarily wrong to go there, or that you are certain to come to harm if you frequent them, but there is ...
— Boys - their Work and Influence • Anonymous
... the laws; then she assumes her identity just long enough to receive the penalty. When the husband dies poor, leaving the widow with small children (here the speaker pictured thrillingly the suffering of a poor, weak-minded, helpless woman, with small children dependent on her), she is then acknowledged the guardian of her children. But any property left them takes away her right of control. If there is property the law steps in as guardian of it and therefore of the children. The widowed mother is their guardian, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... proper, to a certain extent, he said, resuming his seat; but, o' course, like everything else, some people carry it too far—they'd believe anything. Weak-minded they are, and if you're in no hurry I can tell you a tale of a pal o' mine, Bill Burtenshaw by name, ...
— Sailor's Knots (Entire Collection) • W.W. Jacobs
... less insanity, probably, than we. Monkeys' (and elephants') minds seem precariously balanced, unstable. The great cats are saner. They are intense, they would have needed sanitariums: but fewer asylums. And their asylums would have been not for weak-minded souls, ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... is born with a weak mind is found to be very backward in all the normal developmental attainments of the growing child. A normal baby holds up its head at four months and should be able to sit erect at six months. The weak-minded baby will not do this, and often as late as two years it will not make any attempt to walk or to talk. There is an unnatural expression—a vacant look—to the face, while there is often much ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... questionable antecedents, and was the father of a large family. Three hundred and ten of his descendants are mentioned, of whom many are still young. Of these 310, 74 died in early childhood, 55 are or were vagabonds, 58 were weak-minded or idiotic and 23 were criminals. Fifty-two were of illegitimate birth. Although some are counted in more than one category, the record is appalling. In this family however, the marriages were nearly all with foreign women, and the effect of consanguinity was only the intensification ...
— Consanguineous Marriages in the American Population • George B. Louis Arner
... have one interest, one thought, one feeling in common; while the old affection between mother and daughter had now so large an element of bitterness mingled with it that all its original sweetness seemed lost. As for her degenerate, weak-minded, tippling father, Miss Churton regarded him with studied indifference. She never spoke of him, and tried never to think of him when he was out of the way; when she saw him, she looked through him at something ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... the confessed superiority of her opinion to mine is that I give way to it sometimes even when I am not quite convinced, but only helped by a little weak-minded reason of my own in the background. I gave way in this instance, not altogether to her argument (for I am sure my biography will not be the history of a mind, but only a record of small facts important to no one but myself), but ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... of the fifth act, between Hamlet and Horatio (to the weak-minded Osrick the words spoken there are incomprehensible), the excellent qualities of Laertes are apparently judged. [69] This whole discussion is meant against Montaigne; and in the first quarto the chief points are wanting. ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... Her confidence died with her gayety; her vanity began to suffer. And she caught at her admission that Jean Isbel was different; she resented it in amaze; she ridiculed it; she laughed at her naive confession. She could arrive at no conclusion other than that she was a weak-minded, ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... with this snake and, his weak-minded brother?" asked Jeff dryly. "Tie 'em up and ship 'em ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock
... tendencies of the age. And they have been able to do so because they themselves are among the best men and women of their time. But, unfortunately, as the nineteenth century has many evil characteristics, and as depraved and weak-minded persons are often endowed with some literary capacity, a great deal of poisonous matter has unavoidably come to the surface in English fiction. The writers who have prostituted their talents in pandering to the low tastes of their readers, have carefully avoided any such open representation ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... schools for the deaf, dumb, blind, weak-minded, and crippled children, supported by the state, and reform schools for the correction and restraint of the depraved. Technical schools, with day and night classes, for teaching the trades to young men ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough
... her father to marry again for she feared there would be more children, and she desired to come to power after his death by managing the affairs of her two weak brothers. Feodor, as we have seen, was a hopeless invalid; and the other son, Ivan, was weak-minded, almost an idiot, manifestly incapable of ever coming ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... Agnes; then after a pause she added, "Or maybe I won't. I 'ates yer Methody sort o' weak-minded folks. That's the worst o' you, Connie; you're real weak-minded, for all ye're so purty, what wid yer 'prays' an' ...
— Sue, A Little Heroine • L. T. Meade
... became weak-minded, and babbled of cooling streams of water and delicious food until Ned Scudd, losing all patience, threatened to throw the nervous man overboard if he did not cease. This had the effect of quieting him for ...
— Bob the Castaway • Frank V. Webster
... carefully from any measures that would lead to difficulty or collision, to cries, complaints to the mother, or any of those other forms of commotion or annoyance, which ungoverned children know so well how to employ in gaining their ends. The mother may be one of those weak-minded women who can never see any thing unreasonable in the crying complaints made by their children against other people. Or she may be sick, and it may be very important to avoid every thing that could agitate or ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... I'd want you to sit up all night sewing clothes to wear to your school-teaching when you can buy better ones already made that have real style. It tickles me that some women have learned that it's weak-minded to massage and paraffine their wrinkles out—those things, Sylvia, strike me as downright immoral. What I've been wondering is whether I can do anything for the kind of girls we have at Elizabeth House beyond giving them a place to sleep, and I guess you've struck the ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... ruler of nearly 130,000,000 semi-savages, his lightest word their supreme law, while the chiefs of the robber hordes of Central Asia acknowledge him their official head. Such tremendous power in the hands of a weak-minded, vacillating monarch like Nicholas II—descended from Catherine the Courtesan, and having in his veins the blood of cranks—may well cause western Europe to lie awake. Bonaparte declared that in a hundred years the continent would be all Russian or all Republican—by which he meant that unless ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... be troubled by demons or by the disturbed spirits of his ancestors, or be struck by thunderbolts. Indeed, there are numerous annoyances, but they become as Heaven-sent blessings in comparison to a self-opinionated and more than ordinarily weak-minded son-in-law. Of what avail is it that I have habitually sold one idol for the value of a hundred? The very objectionable man in possession sits in my delectable summer-house, and the unavoidable legal documents settle around me like a flock of ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... develop insanity in the child, while drunkenness in the father may impel epilepsy, or mania, in the son. Ungoverned passions in the parents may unloose the furies of unrestrained madness in the minds of their children, and the bad treatment of the wife may produce sickly or weak-minded children. ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... courage and that necessary presence of mind which knows how to direct or repress multitudes, how to command obedience and obtain popularity; but when a man is entrusted with the safety of an Empire, and assumes such a brilliant situation, he must be weak-minded and despicable indeed, if he does not show himself worthy of it by endeavouring to succeed, or perish in the attempt. The French emigrant, General Dumas, evinced what might have been done, even with the dispirited Neapolitan troops, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... her with any such plain expressions as had so much shocked Lionel; for he held that most subtle and perilous of all views partaking of unbelief,—that Christianity was the best and most beautiful form of religion yet promulgated, that it was all very well now for women and weak-minded people, and it was a step to some wonderful perfectibility, which was a sort of worship of an essence ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge |
