"Weakling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... this in detail because few outsiders, very few indeed—save ambassadors and other jackanapes in uniform—had, until the arrest of the Romanoffs, ever trod within the hallowed precincts of the palace-fortress, the bomb-proof home of the incompetent weakling who had been crowned ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... type, that! He must be pretty strong!" he thought, with the genuine admiration of the weakling for the athlete. In fact, he began to speak to Sanine but the latter, leaning against the window- sill, was looking out at the garden. Volochine stopped short; the very sound of his own ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... felt great sympathy for me in the failure of the book, and was inclined—well, you have proof of it!—to pity me, of course a great deal too much, for being a weakling. She is the most tender—the most ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... its Alfred the Great in Alfonso Henriques (born 1111—a memorable date in two senses), who drove back the Moors as Alfred drove back the Danes. He founded a dynasty of able and energetic kings, which, however, degenerated, as dynasties will, until a vain weakling, Ferdinand the Handsome, did his best to wreck the fortunes of the country. On his death in 1383, Portugal was within an ace of falling into the clutches of Castile, but the Cortes conferred the kingship on a bastard of the royal house, John, Master of the Knights of Aviz; and he, aided by five ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... is seen that if a person happens to be unfortunate, he fails to acquire wealth, how great so ever his strength. On the other hand, if one happens to be fortunate, he comes to the possession of wealth, even if he be a weakling or a fool. When, again, the time does not come for acquisition, one cannot make an acquisition with even one's best exertion. When, however, the time comes for acquisition, one wins great wealth without any exertion. Hundreds of men may be seen who achieve no result even when they exert their best. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... People only wear boots and shoes in order not to gall their feet and be prevented walking. Now I ask you, have you ever noticed that I keep more within doors than others on account of the cold? Have you ever seen me battling with any one for shade on account of the heat? Do you not know that even a weakling by nature may, by dint of exercise and practice, come to outdo a giant who neglects his body? He will beat him in the particular point of training, and bear the strain more easily. But you apparently will not have it that I, who am ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... with all the vigor of his terrible rage. Kamrou's eyes narrowed; his smile grew fixed and hard, but in it Stern perceived the easy contempt of a bully toward any chance weakling. And through him thrilled a passion of hate such as he had never ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... 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 ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... 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 headlong with ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... first of yourself. But dress the child in white and go in white yourself. And set up a chantry of priests to pray the child grow sturdy. It was thus my cousin Surrey's life was saved that was erst a weakling.' ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... away between the bushes, like something floating out of a dream, Barlow stood at the open door, a resurge of abasement flooding his soul. In the combat between his mentality and his heart the heart was making him a weakling, a dishonourable weakling, so it seemed. He pulled the door shut, and went back to his bed and finally fell asleep, a ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... is it?" came a deep voice from the side of the car. There stepped into view a man whom Glen had not seen before. He was evidently associated with Mr. Jervice, but he did not in the least resemble him, for instead of being a cringy weakling, he was ...
— The Boy Scout Treasure Hunters - The Lost Treasure of Buffalo Hollow • Charles Henry Lerrigo
... long ago. Well, however that may be, he now let himself be persuaded easily enough. He was hearing on all sides that he had been here too long; and candidly, I think he was beginning to feel Louise a drag on him. I know of late they were not getting on well together. But to be such a coward and a weakling! To slink off in this fashion! Of course, when it came to the last, he was simply afraid of her, and of the scene she would make him. Bravery has as little room in his soul as honesty or manliness. He would always prefer a back-door ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... down the savage impulse that threatened to manifest itself in profanity whenever he thought of Honey's mother and his weakling brother-in-law. ...
— Skinner's Dress Suit • Henry Irving Dodge
... hospitality—my trust. Next to a cache robber you're the meanest kind of a thief I've ever known. I've read your story in the newspaper, and so has the old man who saved your rotten life. We know you for the lying braggart that you are. You made yourself out a hero when you were a weakling and a coward. ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... gallant father, long since dead and gone. 'Ah, but he was the lad!' She says, and sighs, and looks at me askance. How well I read the meaning of that glance - 'Poor son of such a dad; Poor weakling, dull and sad.' I could, but would not tell her bitter ...
— Poems of Purpose • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... them had already eaten at least half of the food, but I saw Muller wasn't touching his. The rest stopped now, as the words sank in, and Napier looked shocked. "No!" he said, but his tone wasn't positive. "He's a weakling, but I don't think he's insane—not ...
— Let'em Breathe Space • Lester del Rey
... is the biggest and strongest man for forty miles round," said the clergyman sternly. "I know you are no coward or weakling, but he could throw ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... with women, calling on Cypris for help and not on the mighty strength of Enyalius? And do ye look to doves and hawks to save yourselves from contests? Away with you, take thought not for deeds of war, but by supplication to beguile weakling girls." ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... 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 ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... a philanthropy which is the offspring of our mammon-worship. But surely our tender mercies are cruel. We don't like to hang people, however unfit they may be to live amongst their fellows. A weakling pity will petition for the life of the worst murderer—but for what? To keep him alive in a confinement as like their notion of hell as they dare to make it—namely, a place whence all the sweet visitings of the grace ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... were inconsistent with a true earnestness of purpose," said Mr. Brown. "And, after all, the girl we both love is no such weakling as to accept a man simply because he asks her. She will decide ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... trying to decide whether he would have a hard fight with him, if they met either during the war, or in single combat. He concluded that it would not be difficult to conquer the German. The Krzyzak's shoulder bones appeared quite large under his dress of grey broadcloth; but he was only a weakling compared with Powala or with Paszko Zlodziej of Biskupice, or with both of the most famous Sulimczyks, or with Krzon of Kozieglowy or with many of the other knights, ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... long ago, in having broken down into unconsciousness, to wake again, weak and enfeebled by his illness, no longer able to break through the spell that drew him towards her. He called himself, in his heart, a traitor, a coward, a weakling, a miserable wretch without strength, or faith, or honour. There were no bounds to his self-abasement, no depths to which he did not sink in his self-judgment. He recalled that morning eighteen months ago when he had come over to Sigmundskron ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... finding out where to direct our courage. We grew dismal; they called us fatalists. Our fate—it was the fulness, the tension, the storing up of powers. We thirsted for the lightnings and great deeds; we kept as far as possible from the happiness of the weakling, from "resignation"... There was thunder in our air; nature, as we embodied it, became overcast—for we had not yet found the way. The formula of our happiness: a Yea, a Nay, a straight line, ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... 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 the ...
— Pan and Aeolus: Poems • Charles Hamilton Musgrove
... jailbird, and Chester was still in some mysterious way to blame. Mrs. Cox was only concerned because the boy was ill and out of a job and apt to prove a burden, but the three girls, frankly curious about him, nevertheless reserved judgment. He had always been an idler, he had always been a weakling, but if he really were accused falsely, they could champion ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... 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
... privileged side of humanity, might occasionally disobey with impunity, but woe to the poor girl who dared set up a will of her own. A man who could not compel obedience from his daughter was looked upon as a poor weakling, and contempt was his portion in the eyes of his fellow-men—in the eyes of his fellow-brutes, I should ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... young and unlearned 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
... caught from time to time as one turns Miss Coleridge's pages, we seem to have heard before in the Arena chapel or at the end of a Bach fugue. It is the comment of sophisticated refinement that can neither sit still nor launch out into rapturous, but ill-bred, ecstasies, of the weakling who takes refuge in slang or jocularity for fear of becoming natural and being thought ridiculous. Miss Coleridge stood for Kensington and Culture, so she smiled and shrugged her shoulders at Medea, and called the Bacchae "Hallelujah ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... as they walked homewards over the sand-dunes. Yes, he had done that! Was he satisfied with the result? He had become a minor power in politics. Men spoke of him as a weakling—as one who had shrunk from the burden of great responsibility, and left the friends who had trusted him in the lurch. And then—there was the other thing. He had paid a great price for this woman's salvation. Had he succeeded? She had given up all her ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... are born to rule, other races are born to obey, to be "hewers of wood and drawers of water." The Slav is born a slave to be controlled by the Germans. The Serbian is born a serf to be controlled by the Austrians. The Bohemian is an outcast. The Pole is a drunkard. The Celt is a weakling. The Anglo-Saxon is a mercenary. The Russian is ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... cried, rising and pacing the floor. "You'll find I'm no such weakling, though I can weep for my wife when I lose her love. He shall find it so, too! I understand now what you meant by 'to-night of all nights.' He was to meet you to-night. He's quartered in the house, ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... heart and the seeing mind. What an awful thing for him to have brought another failure to the valley! Charley had had a sad life. Perhaps she had had dreams of her own, before she merged her destiny with Dick's. Dick was a poor weakling. But Felicia's death had saved him. Dick was a man now. If Felicia had seen him attack Ernest, she would have run away to her death, just as she had for Dick's frenzy. Potentially, he was a murderer too. But now he was ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... dramatists who say they are holding up the mirror to Irish peasant nature, but they reflect nothing but decadence. They delight in the broken lights of insanity, the ruffian who beats his wife, the weakling who is unfortunate in love and who goes and drinks himself to death, while the little decaying country towns are seized on with avidity and exhibited on the stage in every kind of decay and human futility and meanness. Well, it is good to be chastened in spirit, but ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... Service. I'm a thoroughly up-to-date analytical chemist and a passable mining engineer, and my doctor says that for a year at least I must work in the open air. Is there anything in this Forest Service for a weakling like me?" ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... his prayer will prove a great help in the desperately bad affair of this Diet. And you, my teacher, would do far better to imitate our father, the Doctor, also in this point. For with your miserable cares and your weakling tears you will accomplish nothing, but prepare a sad destruction for yourself and us all, who take pleasure in, and are benefited by nothing more than your welfare." (C. R. 2, 158f.; St. ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... smoky burning brandons of thy fear, But as a day shining with my new joy. Thou canst not fight with me for the coming heart Of man,—fear cannot fight with joy. And I Am setting such a war of joy against thee, It shall be as man's heart became a god Murdering thy mind of weakling darkness. All the hot happiness of being wroth And seeing a stroke leave behind it wound, The pleasures of wily hunting, and a feast After long famine, and the dancing stored Within the must of berries,—these, and all Gladdenings that make thrill the being ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... not answer; but her face lighted, as if to a new appeal. Jerome followed her look along the path. Marshby himself was coming. He was no weakling. He swung along easily with the stride of a man accustomed to using his body well. He had not, perhaps, the urban air, and yet there was nothing about him which would not have responded at once to a more exacting civilization. Jerome knew his face,—knew it from their college days ...
— Different Girls • Various
... reflection that, in the first place, a woman of her type never could have been his wife, and that, in the second place, it was not the man who was to blame, nor the woman so much, as Sharpe himself. Indeed, Bobby somehow gained the impression that the others flouted and despised Sharpe and held him as a weakling. ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... as well as he was able, but to no avail. Timotheus was simple and he was clumsy, but he was no weakling. Maguffin led the horse back into the stable, spread his litter, and replaced the bridle on the wall. Then he came out quite unruffled, and asked Timotheus if he would like him to use his new boots on the prisoner, to which that worthy replied with a grin: "I guess I've pooty nigh parlyzed his ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... the whole matter," he urged. "You are making me out a miserable weakling indeed when you think I ambled off toward perdition just because you dared me to assert ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... Johnson is not the man to be cheated out of a fortune without putting up a fight. Young Mitchell himself is neither fool nor weakling. He can shoot, too. We have had no news. Therefore—a conclusion that will not have escaped your sagacity—something has gone amiss with our little expeditionary force in the Gavilan. Johnson is quite the Paladin; ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... famous Frederick the Great, one of the most remarkable fighters that the world has ever seen. This prince had been brought up under strict discipline by his father. The old king had been insistent that his son should be no weakling. It is told that one day, finding Frederick playing upon a flute, he seized the instrument and snapped it in twain over his son's shoulder. The young Frederick, under this harsh training, became a fit leader of a ...
— The World War and What was Behind It - The Story of the Map of Europe • Louis P. Benezet
... you don't. He was no true man, but a weakling. I am glad I have never been thrown ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... the common 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! why needed you to ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... in the brood. Five were hardy little fellows that made the water boil behind them as they scurried across the lake. But the sixth was a weakling. He had been hurt, by a hawk perhaps, or a big trout, or a mink; or he had swallowed a bone; or maybe he was just a weak little fellow with no accounting for it. Whenever the brood were startled, he struggled ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... the world and the situation demand a statesmanship as able as Bismarck's, a political ideal as exalted as Washington's, a prompt and judicious dealing with an unprecedented crisis worthy of Peter the Great. And not finding this ample endowment, we call him a weakling. It is difficult for the Anglo-Saxon, fed and nourished for a thousand years upon the principles of political freedom and their application, to realize the strain to which a youth of average ability is subjected when he is called upon to cast aside all the things he ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... General Lee was threatened. The Spanish Minister at Washington, Senor de Lome, was exposed for having written to a friend a most insulting letter, describing President McKinley as a low politician and a weakling. For this he was recalled by Spain at the request ...
— History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and Other Items of Interest • Edward A. Johnson
... soil, and simple folk with no notions of independence, they suffered from famine, Indians, and yellow fever. They finally repurchased their lands, and upon the cessation of the border war gained some strength; but Gallipolis was never more than a weakling until Americans and Germans came in and put it on its ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... and protest—if you put it that way,' the weakling answered, once more extending his hand, the fingers of which closed lovingly round the bottle, 'I ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... 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 bring them to ...
— The Shadow Witch • Gertrude Crownfield
... the waves shoved the raft toward them, then, as the waters receded, the current sucked it out again. But the fisherman was strong and Larry was no weakling. They hauled until they had the raft out of reach of the rollers. Then, while there came a wilder burst of the storm, and a dash of spray from the waves, Bailey leaned ...
— Larry Dexter's Great Search - or, The Hunt for the Missing Millionaire • Howard R. Garis
... Drunkard and weakling as he was, Selim had his ambitions. He wished to signalise his reign by some great conquest, such as had added lustre to the rule of his father; and in consequence he laid claim to the island of Cyprus, then belonging to Venice, The Venetians, having strengthened the ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... the dependent woman. The woman whose instincts are maternal, who desires superior children more than anything else, never hesitates. She would take a thousandth share, if necessary, in a husband who was a man in a thousand, rather than have some comparatively weedy weakling all to herself. It is the comparatively weedy weakling, left mateless by polygyny, who objects. Thus, it was not the women of Salt Lake City nor even of America who attacked Mormon polygyny. It was the men. And very naturally. On the other hand, women object to polyandry, ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... rest and contentment in his own mental life, and is equally himself at the Corona d'Italia and on a western ranch; while the weakling runs back to earlier associations like a colt to its stable. But Homer is also Emersonian at times. What could be more so than Achilles's memorable saying, which is repeated by Ulysses in the Odyssey: "More hateful to me than the gates of death is ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... understand. He has never been willing to admit that I am a weakling, and refuses to see that my days are numbered in Woodford. I've been trying to get up courage enough to write him about myself, but I can't do it—yet." And then, as if fearing he had said too much, he added: "But don't say anything to the others, please. ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... before lunch, but she seemed altogether too timid to wish to venture out. She questioned me absently about various changes in the city, but she was chiefly concerned that she had forgotten to leave instructions about feeding half-skimmed milk to a certain weakling calf, "old Maggie's calf, you know, Clark," she explained, evidently having forgotten how long I had been away. She was further troubled because she had neglected to tell her daughter about the freshly-opened kit of mackerel in the cellar, which would ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... on a couch in utter weariness or pain, she had drifted off into the land of dreams, and he felt that he had a moment of respite. He could look and weigh the question: Love or a quick success? A weakling's paradise or the goal ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... beings in his eyes, and for this reason he did not talk to Sarah, whom he treated with the same contempt, in spite of being very proud of her looks and bearing; while George he considered a nincompoop and weakling, though he was secretly proud, too, of his fine manners and ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... Nevins' scoundrelism. Burleigh, whom the ex-captain had "bled" and blackmailed, had passed beyond the bar of human arraignment, "dying like a gentleman" even while captive in the hands of the authorities; and so did Nevins impress his uncontradicted tale of loyal service to the State on the old weakling in command, that Stevens had declared that there was no evidence on which to hold him, had ordered his release from custody on parole, unless the civil authorities desired to prosecute him for "personating an officer," and had written ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... on the faces of the two tramps. Maget was struck with pity for the unfortunate peon, who seemed to be suffering the tortures of the damned. He was not a bad man, was Maget, but rather a weakling who had a run of bad luck and was under the thumb of Durkin, a really hard character. Durkin, while astounded at the actions of Juan, showed ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... it seems that I owe my head to my father. He was a marvelously clever man, dexterous with hand and brain alike. Moreover, he was no weakling; perchance I should credit him with some of my agility, for he was famed as a gymnast, though not a powerful one. 'Twas he who taught me how to disable my enemy with a mere clutch of the neck ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... been if he'd never gone adrift and had never come to this rugged land. I wonder if his rich parents, or the luxuries and frivolities of civilization, would have spoiled him, and made him grow up into a selfish, cowardly, and perhaps dissipated, weakling? I wonder if it's the rugged country and the rugged, hard life he lives, that have given him a rugged, noble heart, or whether he'd have had ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... can not be doone without great perill and daunger / that such a weakling shuld vse an vnfaithfull Master / I thincke that he ...
— A Treatise of the Cohabitation Of the Faithful with the Unfaithful • Peter Martyr
... an early calf Staggers about with weakling frame; It is a sight that makes me laugh; I feel so ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 1, 1914 • Various
... go away, I know I should go away," he said, half under his breath. "And I can. I am no weakling. Because I have failed to remain away once, is no reason that I shall ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... thy friend; for his sake spare me: Thyself art mighty; for thine own sake leave me: Myself a weakling; do not then ensnare me: Thou look'st not like deceit; do not deceive me. My sighs, like whirlwinds, labour hence to heave thee: If ever man were moved with woman's moans, Be moved with my tears, my sighs, ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... all he can in reason to make his mother happy, save to turn against the wife he has promised to cherish, he is a cad and a weakling if he does the latter. He must learn that it is a larger duty to be a just man than to be ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... man of character and spirit could topple down the card-house to-morrow, pick out what he liked, and create for himself a new edifice—and a stronger one. I speak frankly. Von Stroebel is out of the way; the new Emperor-king is a weakling, and if he should ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... man whom everybody had for years regarded as a crank and a weakling, is now praised for his ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever
... rainbow in the heaven of youth, but it may go too far. It may be hurtful to the man who nourishes it and dangerous to society. The world classes it with lunacy and love and so forth among the nervous accidents of life; and the humdrum healthy-minded herd always call that man a fool and a weakling or else a fanatic and a madman, in whom the grand errors of human nature are due to an effort—may I not say, a vain effort?—to live up to a great ideal." There were nervous twitchings over the muscles of John's ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... well set—sagged with the weariness of excessive physical indulgence; while the sunken chest, the emaciated limbs, and the dejected posture of his misused body made him in appearance, at least, a wretched weakling. His clothing—of good material and well tailored—was disgustingly soiled and neglected;—the shoes thickly coated with dried mud, and the once-white shirt, slovenly unfastened at the throat, without collar or tie. The face which looked back from the mirror to ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... "I have little cause to fret me Either for your sword or wisdom, For your sword-point or your judgment. But, apart from this at present, I will draw no sword upon you, So contemptible a fellow, And so pitiful a weakling." 270 ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... weakling. Methodically she tried that door with her full, young strength, tried it all along its edge opposite its hinges, tried it at the middle, at the top, at the bottom. She made sure the door was not stuck or jammed; she was convinced that it was bolted ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... 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 each year, because of such infirmities, were added to their number ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... I am journeying now, Heavy the burden I'm bearing to-day; But I'm humming a song, as I wander along, And I smile at the roses that nod by the way. Red roses sweet, Blooming there at my feet, Just dripping with honey and perfume and cheer; What a weakling I'd be If I tried not to see The joy and the comfort you bring ...
— Just Folks • Edgar A. Guest
... worth spending lies in months of physical reeducation, of teaching his femininely soft body the hardness which stands for manliness; for him must be multiplied days of mental reorganization to change the will of a weakling into saving masterfulness; nor will these suffice unless, in the white heat of a moral revelation, the false tinsel woven into the fabric of his character be consumed. For months he must deny himself the luxuries, even many of the comforts, his mother's wealth ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... is highly possible in that romantic archipelago. War was attempted to be levied; but Tembinok' was too swift for the rebels, and the guilty brother escaped in a canoe. He did not go alone. Tembinatake had a hand in the rebellion, and the man who had gained a kingdom for a weakling brother was banished by that brother's son. The fugitives came to shore in other islands, but Tembinok' remains to this day ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... used to this fashion of getting about and hardly think of fatigue. It would be a poor weakling who could not stand a few miles. The roads are rough ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... stock ariseth weakling chief who bends the knee, As a withered fruitless sapling ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... the country for some time. But Travers' plan to inherit the Harris property was upset on account of the girl quarrelling with her parents, and his ardour seems to have cooled off noticeably. But he was as keen for the property as ever. Riles was a weakling in the hands of a man like Travers, and no doubt he betrayed the fact that Harris was taking his money with him into the hills. Then the two of them framed up the plan which has resulted in the death of one and the arrest of the other." During these exchanges ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... 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, ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... the table with a semblance of that swagger affected by the weakling in presence of women, yet permitting the wandering eye and uncertain gestures to betray his uneasiness. Something had evidently gone wrong ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... no God. There is nature. Up to the place where man puts on trousers it's a battle of thews and teeth. And nature never intended pants to mark the line where she changes the order of things. And the servile, weakling, groveling, charitable, cowardly philosophy of Christ—it doesn't fool me, Henry. I'm a pagan and I want the advantage of all the force, all the power, that nature gave me, to live life as a dangerous, exhilarating experience. ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... frailty she knew and nursed the secret for which he had girdled the world. He felt that he must tear it from her, that he must crush it out of her body as the pit is squeezed from a cherry. And the corroding part of it was that he had been outwitted by a woman, that he was being defied by a physical weakling, a slender-limbed thing of ribbons and laces whose back he could bend and break ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... Elliots, Scotts, and others across the Border, they were all of them—they and their forebears to the earliest times—of the stuff that prefers action, however stormy, to inglorious peace and quiet, and the man who "kept up his end" in their neighbourhood could be no weakling. ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... kindred reasons, was equally debarred from the pleasures and profits of society. At school, his teachers considered him clever, his fellows for the most part looked down upon him as a sentimental weakling. The death of his parents, when he was still a lad, left him to the indifferent care of a guardian nothing akin to him. He began life in an uncongenial position, and had not courage to oppose the drift of circumstances. The romantic attachment which absorbed his best years ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... 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 ...
— The Scarlet Stigma - A Drama in Four Acts • James Edgar Smith
... bad asset among 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 is ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... H. P. Blavatsky, an Adept; and had learnt his wisdom from the Teachers in the snowy Range of SiDzang or Tibet. His dynasty, called the Hia, kept the throne until 1766; ending with the downfall of a cruel weakling. Followed then the House of Shang until 1122; set up by a wise and merciful Tang the Completer, brought to ruin by a vicious tyrant Chousin. It was Ki-tse, a minister of this last, and a great sage himself, who, fleeing from the persecutions of his royal master, established monarchy, ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... social advance, and apparently for the reason that whereas in commerce a pig's tail is regarded as an important asset, in our social system the criminal and the weakling are regarded as a heavy liability. When the point of view is changed society will advance more rapidly. So, too, society finds that it must utilise its by-products and to devise means which it can bring to bear upon the criminal, so as to bring ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... 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, Mori ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... dusky tide. I fought as a man who gives his life for his brother's life, who knows that his time is short, that Death's doom above him hangs. But know ye, if 'Abdallah be dead, and his place a void, no weakling unsure of hand, and no holder-back was he! Alert, keen, his loins well girt, his leg to the middle bare, unblemished and clean of limb, a climber to all things high; No wailer before ill-luck; one mindful ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... a great power, but the thousand tons of this tree's vast weight must be lifted and sustained in defiance of it. So for a thousand years gravitation sees the tree rise higher and higher, till the great lesson is taught that it is a weakling compared with the power of life. There is not a place where one can put his finger that there are not a dozen forces in full play, every one of which is plastic, elastic, and ready to yield to any force that is higher. So the tree stands, not mere lumber and cordwood, or an obstacle ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... struck him in the face. It was a sound blow, for Jane was no weakling. That should have warned Flint that a struggle would not be worth while. But where's the drunken man with caution? The blow stung Flint equally in flesh and spirit. He would kiss this woman if it was the last thing he ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... through her own virtue, and none of his care! And now she was dead! and his child, but for the charity of a despised superstition, would have been left an outcast in the London streets, to wither into the old-faced weakling of a London workhouse! ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... 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 never ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... weakling or he would never have set out to shape his own course as he was now doing. He was a man of considerable purpose, self-reliant and reasonable, with sufficient easy good-nature to be compatible with strength. He liked his own experiences too, ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... steadfast, come what will, Keeps his mien unconquered still; Him the rage of furious seas, Tossing high wild menaces, Nor the flames from smoky forges That Vesuvius disgorges, Nor the bolt that from the sky Smites the tower, can terrify. Why, then, shouldst thou feel affright At the tyrant's weakling might? Dread him not, nor fear no harm, And thou shall his rage disarm; But who to hope or fear gives way— Lost his bosom's rightful sway— He hath cast away his shield, Like a coward fled the field; He hath forged all unaware Fetters ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... disappeared. The crack of the postilion's whip told Victurnien that the fair romance of his first love was over. While peril lasted, Diane could still see her lover in the young Count; but out of danger, she despised him for the weakling ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... from the lanterns. Beside her—whispering occasional words in Italian to her mistress—sat the Italian nurse, pale too, but motionless, a woman from the Campagna, of a Roman port and dignity, who would have scorned to give the master whom she detested any excuse for dubbing her a weakling. ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of population have been Canada's climate, her backwoods and prairie and frontier hardship—challenging the weakling, strengthening the strong. No country affords more opportunity to the fit man and none is crueler to the unfit than Canada. I like this fact that Canada is hard at first. It is the flaming sword guarding the Paradise ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... was the son of his old friend; aye, and his own friend. As there had been two personalities in Jeb, tugging for and against enlistment, so were there two beings in the Colonel's soul condemning and pleading for this weakling Hercules. He now turned anxiously to the ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... moments before Will answered her. He sat glaring at the table, the smoke of his pipe clouding the still air of the neat kitchen. He knew he was facing a critical moment in their lives. He saw dimly that he had, for his own interests, gone a shade too far. Eve was not a weakling, she was a woman of distinct character, and even in his dull, besotted way he detected at last that note of rebellion underlying her appeal. Suddenly he looked up and smiled. But it was not altogether a pleasant smile. It was against his ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... the Rigid Forefinger and warned him that he was merely a Grain of Dust and a Weakling and a poor juvenile Mutt whose Mission in Life was ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... shepherds, 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 height 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 power ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various
... feeling of guilt, which in another might perhaps have been lulled by the news of her death, began to burn on my conscience with greater intensity than ever. I abused myself as a coward, a weakling, an adulterer, for something that no man on earth would ever have ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... nearer his grave than ever before in all his wild experience, for somehow doom, shadowy and formless, like the atmosphere of an awful dream, enmisted those words; but he was no weakling to quit at the height of desperate conflict. He was strong, expert, and game to the ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... man had betrayed jealousy only a few minutes ago, and he had refused personally to return the chain to Haydon. And yet he stood there now, smiling and winking at the other, evidently with the desire to ingratiate himself. Sycophant, weakling, or fool—which was he? She shuddered with disgust, deliberately turned her back to Harlan, and began to walk ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... poured from the old leather purse on the desk. Instead the man bid the boy "keep the money until the note was due, then bring it here, not a day before nor a day after. If you think you are going to die, leave directions to pay the debt. The man who pays beforehand shows himself a weakling, he is afraid of himself, he is afraid he cannot hold the money. He usually spends his ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... he were afraid he should take mine, and he said the dearest things a man could say to a woman—how the stress of the situation last night had forced from him an avowal of his love for me. "I never meant to tell you, my sweet lady," he said. "I am no weakling, I hope, to go snivelling over what is not for me; and when I comprehended you were married, on the Lusitania, I just faced up the situation and vowed I'd be ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... he looked at it now. For had he been "good and true"? Alas! No—nothing but a sensual, ambitious weakling. ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... had been 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 old stolidness ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... must have been a weakling, for society is only useful to the puny. The savage and the philosopher, at either extreme of the moral scale, hold property in ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... shrill outcry called me from my couch! For the young child, before the sense is born, Hath but a dumb thing's life, must needs be nursed As its own nature bids. The swaddled thing Hath nought of speech, whate'er discomfort come— Hunger or thirst or lower weakling need,— For the babe's stomach works its own relief. Which knowing well before, yet oft surprised, 'Twas mine to cleanse the swaddling clothes—poor I Was nurse to tend and fuller to make white; Two works in one, two handicrafts I ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus
... and Tammas gave MacLure's hand a grip that would have crushed the bones of a weakling. Drumtochty felt in such moments the brotherliness of this ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... rehearse the story, How a weakling faint and worn, Was o'er rocks and through deep waters, To eternal glory borne: Jesus wholly, Shall absorb ...
— Favourite Welsh Hymns - Translated into English • Joseph Morris
... the pasty-faced weakling that left my office five years ago—and you, you husky giant, have brought me two thousand miles to see if you ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... of memory. He knew now it would never be a memory: it would be consciousness, ever-living, ever present; a compulsion not to be controlled because it was not his own; and never to be quenched because it burned within. If he had been a weakling, the seal would have been a seal to self; but because an elemental war for right was winnowing the self out of him, he knew it was a ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... are like jagged rocks jutting up in shifting sands and changing tide, the more dangerous to the unwary because they are few and unexpected, and no one can tell where they lie, just below the surface. Many a brave enterprise has gone to pieces upon the stupid, unforeseen obstinacy of a despised weakling. ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... was no weakling. The spark roused as though it had touched and scorched her. She cleared her mind for action. No useless hampering thoughts littered it now. Her intelligence reckoned nothing save the work on hand; its details she ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... who saw these things stood looking up, enveloped in his ulster with the grey cowl thrust upon his forehead, like a monk. One candle cast a grotesque shadow of him on the plastered wall. And when his chance came, though he was but a weakling, he too climbed and for some moments hugged the beam, and felt the madness of the swinging bell. Descending, he wondered long and strangely whether he ascribed too much of feeling to the men he watched. But no, that was impossible. There are emotions deeply seated in the joy of exercise, when ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... dictates. There is always much to be said for both sides of any question, and it cannot but be so in this. I wish to lay no stress on you in any way. You cannot make a good monk out of a man who longs to be a man-at-arms, nor a warrior of a weakling who longs for the shelter ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... obviously be one of the most rugged, virile, unconquerable races ever seen upon earth. Take this formidable people and train them for seven generations in constant warfare against savage men and ferocious beasts, in circumstances under which no weakling could survive, place them so that they acquire exceptional skill with weapons and in horsemanship, give them a country which is eminently suited to the tactics of the huntsman, the marksman, and the rider. Then, finally, ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... their cunning, And his magic gone to others. Thereupon the ancient minstrel Quick returning, heavy-hearted, To his native halls and hamlets, Thus addressed his brother-heroes: "Woman, he without his weapons, With no implements, a weakling! Sun and Moon have I discovered, But I could not force the Portals Leading to their rocky cavern In the copper bearing mountain. Spake the reckless Lemminkainen "O thou ancient Wainamoinen, Why was I not taken with thee To become, thy war-companion? Would have been ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... How far these representations may have deceived Tecumseh into the belief that he was dealing with a man who was tottering to the fall, is not certainly known. He determined at any rate, to make a show of force. If the Governor was a weakling who sat insecurely in his seat, and was fearful of public clamor, here was an opportunity to display that fact. As he remarked to Barron, he had not seen the Governor since he was "a very young man," sitting at the side of General Wayne. The Governor was younger in years than Tecumseh, ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... that the enemy of his health is driven out. He is then in a position to act for himself. He has legs to walk with, a brain to devise, and hands to execute his will What more does he need? What more can he ask without declaring himself a weakling or a fool? So it is with superstition, the deadliest disease of the mind. Freethought casts it out, with its blindness and its terrors, and leaves the mind clear and free. All nature is then before us to study ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... you, and worthy of an evil death, ye shall suffer them to abide with you; ye shall make them become children of the Bears, if they be goodly enough and worthy, and they shall be my children as ye be; otherwise, if they be ill-favoured and weakling, let them live and be thralls to you, but not join with you, man to woman. Now depart ye ...
— The Wood Beyond the World • William Morris
... done its work. Any remorse which he may have felt at first, for thus acting against his own will and better judgment, and for yielding like a weakling to persuasion, which had no moral rectitude for basis, was momentarily smothered by the almost childish delight of winning, of seeing the pile of gold growing in front of him. He had never handled money before; it was like a fascinating yet insidious toy which ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... he did not want her to see. She would be quite capable, he told himself savagely, of marrying him out of sheer pity if she ever guessed. And he was afraid—afraid, since he wanted her so much—that he would be fool and weakling enough to take her even on those ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... model village, but the world entire, with hateful forces of evil lying in wait for weakness. Who will not lay down "Ghosts" to watch, with a painfully beating heart, the progress of this living "Mrs. Alving" past the house, pleading, persuading, coaxing the burly weakling, who will be saved from a week's debauch if she can only get him safely home now, and keep him quiet till "the fit ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... tribe. Barbecue your whole hogs to your palate, steep them in shalots, stuff them out with plantations of the rank and guilty garlic, you cannot poison them or make them sharper than they are—but consider he is a weakling—a flower." ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... descended, baffled me, And hurled upon my soul a frenzied plague, To stain my hand with these dumb victims' blood. And those mine enemies exult in safety,— Not with my will; but where a God misguides, Strong arms are thwarted and the weakling lives. Now, what remains? Heaven hates me, 'tis too clear: The Grecian host abhor me: Troy, with all This country round our camp, is my sworn foe. Shall I, across the Aegean sailing home, Leave these Atridae ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... gone over in his mind many times the battle with the gorilla, and his first thought was to recover the wonderful little weapon which had transformed him from a hopelessly outclassed weakling to the superior of the ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... 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 music; but on the whole this scene is the strongest in the opera. ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... was performed so suddenly, so adroitly, it made the Mexican such a weakling, so like a tumbled tenpin, that the shrill jabbering hushed. Gale knew this to be the ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... been more bearable than this. There was nothing that I could say in my own defense except at the other man's expense—which would have been in questionable taste and would have been deemed the resort of a weakling. So I kept my counsel and brooded. The ignorance of the guards made the tragedy comic. It was very humiliating. I gritted my teeth and swore that I at any rate should go again in spite of their incredulous jeers. But it was all terribly ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson
... started at once on our arrival at Han Yuean Kai about the middle of the afternoon, and made the journey, twenty-five li each way, to Ch'ing Ch'i-hsien and back before night, bringing with him the two men who were to go on with me. Truly the West China man is no weakling. ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... the guide making preparations for the mountain burial, pictured the poor weakling tramping for hundreds of miles through rugged forest-land, doubtless with aching knee-joints and feet, that he might make upon his own skin justice for the skins which he had stolen, and so, in the only way he knew, square things with his wronged chum. ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... Roderic grudgingly. "By the saints, but you are no weakling novice, young man," and he ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... Shakspere's play? b. Hamlet must wait until he can justify his deed to the court; otherwise his act would be misunderstood and he might himself be put to death, and so fail of real revenge. Do you find indications that Shakspere takes this view? 2. Hamlet is a sentimental weakling, incapable by nature of decisive action. This was the view of Goethe. Is it consistent with Hamlet's words and deeds? 3. Hamlet's scholar's habit of study and analysis has largely paralyzed his natural power of action. He must stop and weigh every action beforehand, until ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher |
