"Paralyze" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... shock. But the autopsy, if it had been performed by Coroner Lunkhead, might have told a different story. Magnus is as good an electrician as he is a chemist, and he could easily rig up some kind of transformer reducing the power of the current just enough to paralyze the victim—death by a myriad of small shocks instead of one big one. Now it is plain why the spider will not come to spring his trap unless the sun shines on the 21st of March. If it doesn't, the play goes over to the next clear day, only that ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... variety that cuts the nostrils like a razor, Constantinople stands forever and alone on a plinth of infamy, and no language that can be dragged into the arena of expression can be utilized to describe them. They paralyze the intellect and dull the sense of punishment and acute agony. No gladiator could enter the lists with them in deadly combat and live to tell the tale. They arise in part from the debris and remnants of cheese whose position in the flight of time was contemporaneous with that of Alexander ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... until that fleet can be destroyed or neutralized. It corresponds very closely to "a position on the flank and rear" of an enemy, where the presence of a smaller force, as every military student knows, harasses, and may even paralyze offensive movements. When such a force is extremely mobile, as a fleet of armored cruisers may be, its power of mischief is very great; potentially, it is forever on the flank and rear, threatening the lines of communications. It is indeed ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... revenues were placed under the control of the Assembly in return for the voting of a fixed Civil List. This well-meant half-measure made matters worse, because it left the Assembly just as powerless as before over the details of legislation and administration, while giving it the power to paralyze the Government by refusing all, instead of only part, of the supplies. This it proceeded to do, and in the next five years large deficits were piled up, and the Colony ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... body with unblocked sense channels, and put the mind to sleep, paralyze the central nervous system with alcohol in sufficient quantity so that the undamaged peripheral nervous system—the senses—can obtain no response or recognition from it, and that perfect body is as useless for the time as if dead. ...
— Applied Psychology for Nurses • Mary F. Porter
... but "a part of a large empire, ... a member of the American union; and that union has a constitution ... which imposes limits to the legislatures of the several states." In the case of McCulloch vs. Maryland, decided in 1819, he declared void an act of the Maryland legislature designed to paralyze the branches of the United States Bank established in that state. In the same year, in the still more memorable Dartmouth College case, he annulled an act of the New Hampshire legislature which infringed upon the charter received by the college from King George long before. That charter, ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... be relied upon. In the midst of all other fears one was predominant, and was all comprised in one magic word—the name of that one man who alone, in our age, has shown himself able to draw nations after him, and by the spell of his presence to paralyze the efforts of kings. ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... decided, as the less of two evils, to follow the hazardous course of himself announcing his approach. He trusted that the boldness of such a course, together with the shock of his utterly unexpected appearance, would paralyze his opponents and incline the wavering to favor him. So he released the prisoner and sent him in ahead, with a letter to the people of Vincennes. By this letter he proclaimed to the French that he was that moment about to attack ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... the party in power, forgetting that no great evil was ever yet effectually counteracted by opposition, which only fans the flame and makes the fire burn hotter. And while no good can be effected by such opposition, its direful effect is to divide the councils of the nation, to paralyze the executive arm in all times of great emergency, to render but half effectual every great national enterprise, to make wavering the national policy, to exasperate political parties more and more against each other, thereby dividing the people ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... Deposit, and staring miserably at her reflection in the dressing-table mirror. Of what use were youth and grace and good looks, if one drop of poison distilled from the envy of a narrow-minded woman was enough to paralyze them? Of course Madame de Trezac knew and remembered, and, secure in her own impregnable position, would never rest till she had driven out ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... to her, "you will at least understand that by leaving Paris now you paralyze its defence, and thereby endanger your crown, but I see that you ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... Arab; Bertuccio, my steward, takes me for a Roman; Haidee, my slave, thinks me a Greek. You may, therefore, comprehend, that being of no country, asking no protection from any government, acknowledging no man as my brother, not one of the scruples that arrest the powerful, or the obstacles which paralyze the weak, paralyzes or arrests me. I have only two adversaries—I will not say two conquerors, for with perseverance I subdue even them,—they are time and distance. There is a third, and the most terrible—that is my condition as a mortal being. This alone can stop me in ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the universe is the beginning of infidelity. The chief object of her upbringing, which differed in no essential particular from that of every other well-born and well-bred Southern woman of her day, was to paralyze her reasoning faculties so completely that all danger of mental "unsettling" or even movement was eliminated from her future. To solidify the forces of mind into the inherited mould of fixed beliefs was, in the opinion of the age, to achieve the definite end of all education. ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... combination of the love of liberty and the habit of self-restraint as very few nations have yet shown themselves capable of; and though this extremity were avoided, to expect that the two authorities would not paralyze each other's operations is to suppose that the political life of the country will always be pervaded by a spirit of mutual forbearance and compromise, imperturbable by the passions and excitements of the keenest party struggles. Such ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... absurdity! The State, as I have remarked, must scrupulously abstain from violating any of those rights which it was organized to protect. It must not paralyze or take away the industry of the individual, family, or private institutions by substituting for it its own industry. The State should rather protect and promote the industry of its subjects, as well as other rights and liberties. Let me speak more plainly: the State, for instance, should ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... for anything? No; and I never shall be. The fact is that no one understands me. I shall live and die misunderstood, or never comprehended at all,—which is worse." Fired by emulation, he shut himself up to create masterpieces which should surpass Meissonier and paralyze the world; and in a short time he showed his friend Lacroix twelve colossal canvases on which he had painted revolting realistic pictures which he called the "Abominations of Paris." "What do you think of Meissonier now?" ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... shattered under the same gigantic force; felt a thrill of triumph when a lucky shot exploded some huge munition dump, on which the enemy depended for his reserve store; exhausted their stock of bombs in demolishing an important railway junction, so as to paralyze the transportation of reinforcing bodies of ...
— Air Service Boys Flying for Victory - or, Bombing the Last German Stronghold • Charles Amory Beach
... Scott will paralyze McClellan as he did Lyon and Butler. Scott always pushed on his spit-lickers, or favorites, rotten by old age. But Scott has pushed aside such men as Wool and Col. Smith; refused the services of many brave as Hooker and others, because they ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... of Edward. His eyes were then fixed upon Edward as if to scrutinize into his character by his features, while the former bathed his temples and washed the blood from his mouth with the water brought by the boy, who appeared in a state of grief so violent as to paralyze his senses. After a minute or two, another effusion of blood choked the wounded man, who, after a short struggle, fell ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... escaping prisoners. Each of the inmates of the Rock wore small metal disks welded to a thin chain around their waists. The disk was sensitive to radar impulses, and with no more effort than snapping a thumb catch on the rifle, the guard could locate and paralyze ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell
... who can take a lot of beating and still win out. Then there's another thing that's no small factor in their strength: They are idolized by the students, and rooting at Place is a science. They have a yell that beats anything you ever heard. It'll paralyze a fellow at a critical stage. But that yell is peculiar in that it rises out of circumstances leading to almost certain victory. That is, Place has to make a strong bid for a close, hard game to work up that yell. So if it comes to-day you be ready for it. ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... the classics possess the power of curdling all the milk of human-kindness, all the streams of tender sympathy in a woman's nature, as rennet coagulates a bowl of sweet milk? Can an acquaintance with literature, art, and science so paralyze a lady's energies, that she is rendered utterly averse to and incapable of performing those domestic offices, those household duties, so pre-eminently suited to her slender, dexterous busy little fingers? Why, my own wise precious little mother is a living refutation of so grossly ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... covering from her face. Oh! what a countenance was then revealed to me—a countenance of such sovereign beauty that, though of the same sex, I was struck with admiration; but, in the next moment, a thrill of terror shot through my heart—for the fascination of the basilisk could scarcely paralyze its victim with more appalling effect than did the eyes of that lady. It might be conscience qualms, excited by some unknown influence—it might even have been imagination; but it nevertheless appeared as if those large, black, burning orbs shot forth lightnings which seared ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... character and vitality to action; on the other hand our conduct exerts a powerful reflex influence on the affections and purposes. Nothing tends more to give strength and spirit to a mental principle than accordant action; and nothing tends more to obliterate an emotion from the breast, or to paralyze a resolution, than the neglect of its appropriate manifestations. However deeply the one may be engraven on the soul, or however solid the texture or vigorous the life of the other, a few instances of neglect or violation will strike them with ...
— The Faithful Steward - Or, Systematic Beneficence an Essential of Christian Character • Sereno D. Clark
... need to markets now closed by law. Wherever employment depended upon commerce, distress was immediate. The seamen, improvident by habit, first felt the blow. "I cannot conceive," said Representative [afterwards Justice] Story, "why gentlemen should wish to paralyze the strength of the nation by keeping back our naval force, and particularly now, when many of our native seamen (and I am sorry to say from my own knowledge I speak it) are starving in our ports."[233] The Commandant of the New York Navy Yard undertook ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... started with an irrepressible tremor, like a man struck with a shot; he felt like one suddenly stabbed in the dark by a sure and a cruel hand. The insult and the amazement of the words seemed to paralyze him for the moment, the next he recovered himself, and lifted his head with as haughty a gesture as his father's, his features perfectly composed again, and sterner than in all his careless, easy life they ever yet ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... that, searching well around you, you might perhaps find a female counselor to take with you to your brother, whose eloquence might paralyze the ill-will of the ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... intellectual functions of the brain is in itself capable of producing vaso-motor paralysis—that is, of becoming a cause of haemorrhage; or, in other words, stimulation of the brain cannot be likened in its effect to galvanic stimulation of a spinal nerve. But if stimulation of the brain does not paralyze, it must increase the tonicity of the vaso-motor centre, and hence the force and regularity of the circulation. Up to a certain point, these characters do indeed increase, with increase of pressure in the cerebral blood-vessels. They increase also during intellectual ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... the most dangerous is Isernia. Whilst he lives you walk amid swords. His death may spread a panic that will paralyze the others." ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... they brimmed all belonging to His lips who tasted bitterness for me. Then, if seeking to drain another's wine, I raised the chalice to my lips and found it gall, or felt it steal into my old veins to poison the heart and paralyze the hand which had kept it from the Master, what further good would there be for me in the world? Who doesn't know, in some friend's house, a closet containing that worst of skeletons—the skeleton which, in becoming naked, grim and ghastly, tears its way ...
— A Brace Of Boys - 1867, From "Little Brother" • Fitz Hugh Ludlow
... to strike out politically or not, the ruling class supplied the necessary vital impulsion. While in Chicago the courts were being used to condemn the labor leaders to death or prison, in the East they were used to paralyze the weapons of offense and defence by which the unions were able to carry on their ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... and mounted on a slide, so that you can examine a tentacle with a very strong magnifying power. You will then see that it is dotted over with cells, in which are coiled fine threads. The animal uses these threads to paralyze the creatures on which it feeds, for at the base of each thread there is ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... Mr. Oldfield's habit of beginning by admiring his adversaries, together with his knowledge of law and little else, and his secret conviction that Sir Charles was unsound of mind, combined to paralyze him; and, not being a man of invention, he could not see his way out of the wood at all; he could negative Mr. Angelo's suggestions and give good reasons, but he could not, or did not, suggest anything ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... quitting the service he made himself notorious by trying to organize a political riot in London, for which he was tried and acquitted. He subsequently collected round him a secret society of disaffected citizens, and proceeded to arrange a plan by which he hoped to paralyze Government and establish a Reign of Terror ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... from no danger, he dreads no foe, he yields to no superior. No shoals are too dangerous, no seas too boisterous, no climate too rigorous for him. The burning sun of the tropic cannot make him effeminate, nor can the eternal winter of the polar seas paralyze ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... say the word that will save us all. He must swear he made a mistake—that he did sign those checks for the amounts drawn from the bank. That will paralyze ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... said upon this point. The opponents of corporal punishment usually approach the subject either from the sentimental or the moral standpoint. The argument on either of these grounds can be made strong enough, one would suppose, to paralyze every hand lifted to strike a child. But the question of the direct and lasting physical effect of blows—even of one blow on the delicate tissues of a child's body, on the frail and trembling nerves, on the sensitive organization ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... inevitable. Mayor Opdyke, President Acton, Governor Seymour, with several prominent American citizens, were present, and witnessed this disagreement with painful feelings. They knew that it would work mischief, if not paralyze the combined action they hoped to put forth in the morning. General Brown, finding Wool inflexible, turned away, determined to retire altogether. The Mayor and others followed him, and begged him not to abandon them in the desperate ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... the sentimental aspect of Vincent's remark. "Yes, that might paralyze the arm of valor; but, then, you and Jack have met before, when duty demanded one thing and affection another: I don't see that the dilemma softened the blows, or that either of you are any the ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... boat-spade from the captain's hands back into our midst, where it struck the tub oarsman, splitting his head in two halves. The horror of the tragedy, the enveloping darkness, the inexplicable revivifying of the monster, which we could not have doubted to be dead, all combined to stupefy and paralyze us for the time. Not a sound was heard in our boat, though the yells of inquiry from our companion craft arose in increasing volume. It was but a brief accession of energy, only lasting two or three minutes, when the whale collapsed finally. Having recovered from our surprise, we took no further ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... the Protestant Cantons being preponderantly Radical, the Catholic generally Conservative. Of the precise questions in dispute I know little and shall say nothing; but I do trust that the controversy will not enfeeble nor paralyze the Republic, now seriously menaced by the Allied Despots, who seem to have almost forgotten that there ever was such a man as WILLIAM TELL. Let us drink, in the crystal current leaping brightly down from the eternal glaciers, to his glorious, inspiring memory, and ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... conquered individually higher mountains was not understood, but people were quick once more to take hope and remember the plant's normal distaste for cold or think there was perhaps something in the rarefied atmosphere to paralyze the seeds or inhibit the stolons, so preventing further progress. Even through the comparatively low passes it came at such a slow pace methods tried fruitlessly in Los Angeles were successful in keeping it back. Everyone was quite ready to wipe off the Far West if the grass were going to spare ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... poor had best squat in their holes when they see anything out of the way. Quiescence is a power. Shut your eyes, if you have not the luck to be blind; stop up your ears, if you have not the good fortune to be deaf; paralyze your tongue, if you have not the perfection of being mute. The great do what they like, the little what they can. Let the unknown pass unnoticed. Do not importune mythology. Do not interrogate appearances. Have a profound respect for idols. ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... determine the optical error in astigmatic and farsighted eyes it is essential to place drops in the eye, which dilate the pupil and paralyze the muscles that control the convexity of the crystalline lens, and to use instruments and methods of examination, which can only be properly undertaken and interpreted by one with the general and special medical training possessed ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume II (of VI) • Various
... of expectation and hope delayed had prevented her from doing so; now another day would be lost, and yet it was necessary to live. Those overwhelming sorrows, which deprive the poor of the faculty of labor, are doubly dreaded; they paralyze the strength, and, with that forced cessation from toil, want and destitution are often ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... wounded by ingratitude and abuse. It seemed to check and paralyze for the moment his generous nature. Fetis saw him at Coblenz soon after the Bonn festival, at which he had expended such vast sums. He was sitting alone, dejected and out of health. He said he was sick of everything, tired of life, and nearly ruined. But that mood never lasted long ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... using contained chemical compounds invented for the purpose by the chemists. Some of the chemicals and the gases produced when the bombs exploded were so powerful that men and animals in the range of the fumes were killed instantly. The effect was to paralyze them in some cases and it was reported that many of the soldiers were found dead standing upright in the trenches or in the attitudes which they had assumed at the ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... regular means of subsistence,—what could I be but a venal adventurer? Place would become so vitally necessary to me that I should feed but a dangerous war between my conscience and my wants. In chasing Fame, the shadow, I should lose the substance, Independence. Why, that very thought would paralyze my tongue. No, no, my generous friend. As labour is the arch elevator of man, so patience is the essence of labour. First let me build the foundation; I may then calculate the height of my tower. First let me be independent of the great; I will then be the champion ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a narrow escape," he thought, breathing more freely. "I hated to paralyze that policeman, but he might have sent a bullet after me. Anyhow, he'll be all right again in an hour, so I ...
— The Master Key - An Electrical Fairy Tale • L. Frank Baum
... by the neck, and shake him till his teeth rattle. This, being done with a new glove on the right hand, will generally unfit that glove for further use. For the bully must be taken with a grip so firm and sudden as shall serve to paralyze his nervous system for the time. And never once have I found the bully fail to prove a whimpering coward. The punishment is well deserved, of course; and it is a terribly severe one in ordinary cases. It is a serious thing, in the estimation both of the bully and his companions, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... than enough! I had my ghost—a first-hand, authenticated article. I would write to the Society for Psychical Research—I would paralyze the Empire with the news! But I would, first of all, put eighty miles of assessed crop land between myself and that dak-bungalow before nightfall. The Society might send their regular ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... this, it is more surprising that some among them should be very pleasing, than that none should be highly instructed. But, whatever may be the talents of the persons who meet together in society, the very shape, form, and arrangement of the meeting is sufficient to paralyze conversation. The women invariably herd together at one part of the room, and the men at the other; but, in justice to Cincinnati, I must acknowledge that this arrangement is by no means peculiar to that city, or to the western side of the Alleghanies. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... between civil and criminal contempts, is still maintained in English law[131]." Nor was any new or special danger to be apprehended from this view of the pardoning power. "If," says the Chief Justice, "we could conjure up in our minds a President willing to paralyze courts by pardoning all criminal contempts, why not a President ordering a general jail delivery?" Indeed, he queries further, in view of the peculiarities of procedure in contempt cases, "may it not be fairly said ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... until circumstances of themselves precipitate her into the arms of the Commonwealth with less grace than she might otherwise have fallen into them, let her feel the blighting influence of the cold clouds that cannot fail to envelope her and paralyze all her energies in the interim. There is no need of mincing the matter—Canada beneath the skull and cross-bones of St. George, must ever remain a poor, puny starveling; while under the proud and ample folds of the glorious ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... and sole cause of all things, is no doubt able to excite in the human imagination phantasms corresponding to the supernatural thoughts produced in the intellect, and to impede or paralyze the rebellious stirrings of concupiscence which resist the grace of the will,—either by infusing contrary dispositions or by allowing spiritual joy to run over into the appetitus sensitivus. The existence of such graces ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... little army, which I represent here to-night, is at this moment guarding these great roadways against incursions of desperate men who would stop the cars and interfere with the mails and travel, which would paralyze the trade and commerce of the whole civilized world, that now passes safely over the great Pacific road, leading to San Francisco. Others are building roads north and south, over which we soldiers pass almost ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... old men and women who, after the lapse of half a century, cannot speak of Samuel Lount without a dimness of vision and a huskiness of the voice.[187] Though a zealous loyalist, he was an enthusiastic Reformer, and vehemently opposed to the domination of the faction whose selfishness went far to paralyze the life of the Province. He was an excellent speaker, and during election contests did much to awaken public opinion on the fruitful subject of Executive abuses. He now, in response to pressing solicitations, allowed himself to ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... to accept. "I'll call in the newspaper men and let them tell the whole story of your life, and of our little jamboree to-day—they'll fix up a yarn that'll paralyze the hold-up gang. Together we'll swoop down on the town. I've been planning a clean-out for some weeks, and I need you to help me turn ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... his glance simply paralyze her—not figuratively, but positively. Her physical power to move towards him, to make a further appeal to him, is gone. Speech is dried upon her lips, wiped from them as a handkerchief passed over ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... the pride of your own humanity, to believe that, like untimely blossoms, these must fall from off the boughs of the tree of life, and come to nothing at all—a theory that may do for the preacher, but will not do for the worker: him it would paralyze?—or, still worse, infinitely worse, that they were doomed, from their birth, to endless ages of a damnation, filthy as that in which you now found them, and must probably leave them? If you could come to this, you had better withhold your hand; for ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... superstition upon mind can be so efficacious, what results are possible by a judicious use of the truth? Mental causation is abundantly proved by the well-known effects of fear, anger, envy, anxiety, and other passions and emotions, upon the physical organism. Acute fear will paralyze the nerve centres, and sometimes turn the hair white in a single night. A mother's milk can be poisoned by a fit of anger. An eminent writer, Dr. Tuke, enumerates as among the direct products of fear, insanity, idiocy, paralysis of various muscles and organs, profuse ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... possible worlds! No two things in it, meant to go together, fitted! He fought hard for Barbara, strained his strength with himself to be content beforehand with whatever she might do, or think, or say. One thing only he could not bear—to think less of Barbara! That would kill him, paralyze his very soul!—of a man make him a machine, a beast outright at best! In all the world, Barbara was likest the God she believed in: if she—the idea of her, that was, were taken from him, he must despair! He could stand losing herself, he said, but not ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... imaginings, wherein true freedom reigns; wherein the legalized tyranny of the chartered libertines of a so-called learned profession shall be finally relegated, in common cause to the limbo of a sordid and degraded past. For these are they who seek to maintain a strangle-hold on science, who paralyze the arm of individual research and, even in this advancing age, still block the path of progress and of peace, of universal freedom and equality of intellect, to all beyond the narrow limits of their ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... this insurrectionary movement in one of the most populous parts of the State has been so far successful as to overawe the local ministers of justice and paralyze the ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... Cartagena and Nombre de Dios came next. Then Carleill was to raid Panama, with the help of the Maroons, while Drake himself was to raid the coast of Honduras. Finally, with reunited forces, he would take Havana and, if possible, hold it by leaving a sufficient garrison behind. Thus he would paralyze New Spain by destroying all the points of junction along its lines of communication just when Philip stood most in need of its help for completing the ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... snake charmer, and the charming of birds by snakes. How much hypnotism there is in these performances it would be hard to say. It is probable that a bird is fascinated to some extent by the steady gaze of a serpent's eyes, but fear will certainly paralyze a bird as effectively ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... monopolies is much better understood. The strikes which paralyze industry and send want and distress in ever widening circles are universally recognized to be a waste of wealth whose annual amount is enormous. The cost to employers and workmen of the strikes in the State of New York in 1886 and 1887, was $8,507,449. Reckoning from this as a basis, it ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker
... join my command," it ran, "for a raid in force on Howrah, where the rebels are supposed to have been concentrating for months past. The idea is to paralyze the vitals of the movement before concentrating somewhere on the road to Delhi, where the rebels are sure to make ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... point gained, the Government recovered its confidence; and its next care was to awaken the jealousy of each order against its coadjutors, and thus to paralyze the influence of the Assembly. In this attempt it was perfectly successful; and the general welfare of the country was overlooked in the anxiety of the several parties to carry out their own individual views. The clergy demanded the publication of the decrees ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... unavailable, and yet filled with a vague kindliness of intent, Mrs. Tucker loathed him. A sickening perception of her own weakness in sending for him, a new and aching sense of her utter isolation and helplessness, seemed to paralyze her. ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... the distance with his keen eyes, glowing now like two terrible spots of yellow fire in his wrinkled, snarling face. He could do it—this time he was sure. One terrific roar that would paralyze the poor creature ahead of him into momentary inaction, and a simultaneous charge of lightning-like rapidity and Numa, the lion, would feed. The sinuous tail, undulating slowly at its tufted extremity, ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... cried; and astonishment seemed wholly to paralyze this young and unhappy beauty. The flush which had animated her at first gave place to a deadly pallor, her cries to a motionless silence, her wandering looks to a frightful fixedness of her large eyes, which ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... was indeed one to paralyze that pachydermic collegian, T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., the sunny-souled, irrepressible Senior, danced madly about on the tiger-skin rug in midfloor, evidently laboring under the delusion that he was a lunatical Hottentot at a tribal dance; he waved his ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... by the wayside; go up in smoke, end in smoke &c (fail) 732. render powerless &c adj.; deprive of power; disable, disenable^; disarm, incapacitate, disqualify, unfit, invalidate, deaden, cramp, tie the hands; double up, prostrate, paralyze, muzzle, cripple, becripple^, maim, lame, hamstring, draw the teeth of; throttle, strangle, garrotte, garrote; ratten^, silence, sprain, clip the wings of, put hors de combat [Fr.], spike the guns; take the wind ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... speechless with surprise and terror, the astonishing intelligence seeming to paralyze all his powers; at last he made out to loosen his ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... again with Willett, and presently all were trying and gradually mastering the new step, and when it was time to separate for dinner it was solemnly agreed that they would tell no one of their practice, but that very night at the hop they would simply paralyze the entire assemblage by dancing ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... of things. But Charlotte is such a spitfire, one does not like to offer help. I would be only too glad to put things right, but I should give offence," etc. "The poison of asps under the tongue," and a very little of it, can paralyze and irritate ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... thus saith the Lord God...your covenant with death shall be disannulled, and your agreement with hell shall not stand...and the hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies, and the waters shall overflow the hiding-places." Thus said the Lord! We may silence a fort, but we cannot paralyze the truth. Amid all the material convulsions of the day the supremacy of truth remains unshaken. "The mouth of the Lord hath ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... headache, severe, easily going on to the kind known as sick-headache. The nerves which move the eyes in various directions lie next to the pituitary. If, in its expansion, it moves sufficiently outward, it may press upon, irritate them or paralyze, and so evolve various eye disturbances in association with the headache. No one can overrate this conception of migraine, for a number of men of genius have suffered from sick-headache ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... outcry against 'Coercion,' that they may paralyze the Government, cripple the exercise of the great powers with which it was invested, finally to change its form and subject us to a Southern despotism. Do we not know it to be so? Why disguise this great truth? Do we not know that they have been anxious for a change ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... seem the words of poets in the presence is Nature!... The enormous silent poem of color and light—(you who know only the North do not know color, do not know light!)—of sea and sky, of the woods and the peaks, so far surpasses imagination as to paralyze it—mocking the language of admiration, defying all power of expression. That is before you which never can be painted or chanted, because there is no cunning of art or speech able to reflect it. Nature realizes your most hopeless ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... At Chicago the small force of 66 Americans was surprised and massacred by the Indians. Meanwhile, General Brock, the British commander, advanced against Hull with a rapidity and decision that seemed to paralyze his senile and irresolute opponent. The latter retreated to Detroit, where, without striking a blow, he surrendered 1,400 men to Brock's nearly equal force, which consisted nearly one half of Indians under Tecumseh. On the Niagara frontier, an estimable and ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... country a revolution and armed sedition, and they favour by every means the {124} Salonica movement by continuing the vexatious measures and restricting all freedom of thought and action. The Entente Ministers paralyze all Government. Thus the ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... the Border States are pledged to Secession. They will wheel into line when we give the word. But the North will not fight. The Democratic party sympathizes with us, and some of its influential leaders are pledged to our side. They will sow division there, and paralyze the Free States; besides, the trading and manufacturing classes will never consent to a war that will work their ruin. With the Yankees, sir, the dollar ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore
... no mistaking the sudden fear that for a moment seemed to paralyze the man. His gray face turned a sickly white, his eyes were staring, his jaw dropped, his body shook as if with a chill. He looked about as if he would call for help, and started as if to seek ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... 'great unknown,' and clean out the whole gang. We told Pa that he must remember that roller skates were different from ice skates, and that maybe he couldn't skate on them, but he said it didn't make any difference what they were as long as they were skates, and he would just paralyze the whole crowd. So we got a pair of big roller skates for him, and while we were strapping them on, Pa looked at the skaters glide around on the smooth wax floor just as though they were greased. Pa looked at the skates on his feet, after ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... public debt, approving all the important suggestions of the Secretary of the Treasury and recognizing the proper protection of American industry. He was in favor of the great interests of labor, and opposed to such tinkering with the tariff as would make vain the toil of the industrious farmer, paralyze the arm of the sturdy mechanic, strike down the hand of the hardy laborer, stop the spindle, hush the loom, extinguish the furnace fires, and degrade all independent toilers to the level of the poor in other lands. The architect of his own fortune, he had a strong and ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... all right. Anyhow, she got me to write your publisher man and ask him not to give you any satisfaction about those royalties, so's she could be the fust one to paralyze you with 'em. And," with a frank outburst, "if you ain't paralyzed, Al, I own up that I am. Three thousand poetry profits beats me. I don't ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... various parts are well illustrated by the effects of alcohol upon the mind. If a man takes too much alcohol, its first apparent effect will be to paralyze the higher or cortical center. This leaves the mid-brain without the check-rein of a reflective intellect, and the man will be senselessly hilarious or quarrelsome, jolly or dejected, pugnacious or tearful, and would be ordinarily described as ...
— Psychology and Achievement • Warren Hilton
... the battle for two worlds. They had wanted action, but they had no weapons except their invisibility and the atomic hydrogen. It would not sink a plane. It would only break open its armor, and they hoped, paralyze its crew. And on this alone ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell
... this life in every class of existence that the strong triumph over the weak, why should not I use my strength, why let it be fettered by those much-belauded soporifics which our prudent ancestors concocted to cool the hot blood of such men as I, and to paralyze our sinewy fists. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... advance planning, cooerdination, provision of synchronizing parts in organization, the whole notion of our hit-or-miss system is repugnant. A budget system is not the remedy for all administrative ills, but it provides a basis of organization that at least does not paralyze administrative efficiency as our system does today. Through it, the cooerdination of expenditure in government department, the prevention of waste and overlapping in government bureaus, the exposure of the ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg
... the old books, the mother loves them best; They leave no bitter taste behind to haunt the youthful breast: They bid us hope, they bid us fill our hearts with visions fair; They do not paralyze the will with problems of despair. And as they lift from sloth and sense to follow loftier planes, And stir the blood of indolence to bubble in the veins: Inheritors of mighty things, who own a lineage high, We ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... Hamlet's antithesis of thought and resolution to the elucidation of his own character, concluding that Hamlet "procrastinates from thought." Gervinus, while following Schlegel as to "the bent of Hamlet's mind to reflect upon the nature and consequences of his deed, and by this means to paralyze his active powers," adds to this defect a deplorable conscientiousness, which unfits Hamlet for the great duty of revenge. And Mr. Dowden, while most ably collating these various kinds and degrees of irresolution, concludes that Hamlet is "disqualified for action by his excess ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... stunning effects of a blow upon any part of the body, not only of man but of brutes, is a blow on the nose. Many animals, such as the seal and others, are killed by it immediately, and there is no doubt but a severe blow on that tender part will paralyze almost any beast for the time and give him a dread for the future. I believe that repeated blows upon the nose will go further than any other means to break the courage of any beast, and I imagine that these are resorted to: but it is only ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... war, and by the unpopularity of the draft, which would soon have to be enforced as a defensive measure. They overrated the influence of the Copperhead or anti-war party, and prophesied that a rebel invasion would be followed by outbreaks in the principal cities, which would paralyze every effort to reinforce the ...
— Chancellorsville and Gettysburg - Campaigns of the Civil War - VI • Abner Doubleday
... The communists tell the young that honesty is not the best policy. They say that the rich man teaches the poor to be honest so that the rich can do all the stealing. They say that the moral code is "dope" given by the strong to paralyze the weak and keep them down. It is not so. Honesty is the power that lifts men and nations up to greatness. It is a law of nature just as surely as gravity is a natural law. But one is physical nature and the other moral nature. A fool can see that physical laws are eternal and unbreakable. ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... a terrible interest in our joint deliverance of bliss Trevanion. But so heroically had the poor soldier sought to resist his own fears, that on the way he shrank to put to me the questions that might paralyze the energies which, whatever the answer, were then so much needed. "For," said he to my father, "I felt the blood surging to my temples; and if I had said to Pisistratus, 'Describe this man,' and by his description I had recognized my son, and dreaded lest I might be too late to arrest ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... with her, Mary did not care a straw for the world besides. She was too much occupied with obedience to trouble her head about opinion, either her own or other people's. Not until a question comes puzzling and troubling us so as to paralyze the energy of our obedience is there any necessity for its solution, or any probability of finding a real one. A thousand foolish doctrines may lie unquestioned in the mind, and never interfere with the growth or bliss of him who lives in active subordination of his life to ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... capture of his cities. The large number of slaves rushing to our lines, and the still greater number rendered restless under restraint, and preparing to escape, may be expected, in any other year, to make even his supply of bread precarious, and still further to paralyze his strength and destroy his means of resistance. But in addition to these accumulating difficulties and misfortunes, our armies are everywhere moving down upon him apparently with irresistible force, and threaten to anticipate ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... sound of a name has upon others which is to be thoughtfully considered: the effect that his name produces on the man himself is perhaps still more important. Some names stimulate and encourage the owner; others deject and paralyze him: I am a melancholy instance of that truth. Peter has been for many generations, as you are aware, the baptismal to which the eldest-born of our family has been devoted. On the altar of that name I have ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... domain in 1181, though he recalled them in 1198. Yet the example had been set, and the security of the Jews was done for. The lords and bishops united to persecute them, destroy their literary treasures, and paralyze their intellectual efforts. They found the right king for their purposes in St. Louis, a curious mixture of tolerance and bigotry, of charity and fanaticism. "St. Louis sought to deprive the Jews of the book which in all their trials ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... conscription; but when we come to think of the nation—what might not be done by a State with a national labor army under its control? Public works might be undertaken at a cost greatly below that which would otherwise be incurred, and the estimates which now paralyze the State, when it considers this really needed service or that, would assume a different appearance, as it would be embracing in one enterprise technical education and the accomplishment of beneficial works. With such ...
— National Being - Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity • (A.E.)George William Russell
... kind—a kind never dreamed of before. It was a prodigious power, an illustrious power; he resolved to discover its secret. The announcement of it would resound throughout the world, penetrate to the remotest lands, paralyze all the nations with amazement—and carry his name with it, and make him renowned forever. It was a wonderful piece of luck, a splendid piece of luck; the glory of it made ...
— The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... without the notice of the party ascending. The wild disorder of the room; the corpse thrust, with the head downward, up the chimney; the frightful mutilation of the body of the old lady; these considerations, with those just mentioned, and others which I need not mention, have sufficed to paralyze the powers, by putting completely at fault the boasted acumen, of the government agents. They have fallen into the gross but common error of confounding the unusual with the abstruse. But it is by these deviations from the plane of the ordinary, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... and a criminal. He ruins throats. He likes to cut, and he likes to spray. He sprays those poisons that relieve colds and paralyze the throat and cords. Americans sing? It is to laugh! They have too many doctors; they take too many pills. Do you know what your national emblem should be? A dollar-sign—yes. But that for all nations. No, a pill—a pill, I ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... He could not hope to hold his position before such a mass of the enemy, with the little force at his disposal. His only chance of escape, to come off victor, was to strike them so swiftly and with such force as to paralyze pursuit. Already the reinforcing warriors were sweeping forward to attack, two thousand strong, led fiercely by Little Raven, an Arapahoe; Santanta, a Kiowa, and Little Rock, a Cheyenne. Dismounting his men he prepared for a desperate resistance, although the troopers' ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... and hoped and believed that he was in her heart. While he thus mused, one moon after another rose, each at a different phase, till three were at once in the sky. Adjusting the electric protection- wires that were to paralyze any creature that attempted to come within the circle, and would arouse them by ringing a bell, he knocked the ashes from his pipe, rolled himself in a blanket, and was soon asleep beside ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... pamphlet derided the law and the state, and urged the complete destruction of private ownership. It predicted the coming of the revolution in a few weeks, naming the day, of a general strike of all industries which would paralyze all the functions of commerce. It was Bolshevik in ideal, Bolshevik in inspiration and it opened Peter's eyes as to the venality of the gentleman with the black mustache. Brierly also told him that whisky had been smuggled into the ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... work his way to the windward as the only point of safety, but the fire was now becoming so broad in its sweep that to do this was difficult. The awful event he had witnessed seemed partially to paralyze him; for he knew that the oath, hot as the scorching flames, was scarcely uttered before Mr. Ludolph's lips were closed forever. He and his ambitious dream perished in a moment, and he was summoned to the other ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... blue dimness I saw that she was holding one of the Martian cylinders. The smaller size: it would paralyze but ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... between the two lies perhaps in that the man with strong passions lives them, while the man with weak passions is lived by them, so that while weak passions paralyze the will, strong passions urge man to action. It is such an urge towards life, such a vitality ever awake, which inspires Unamuno's multifarious activities in the realm of the mind. The duties of his chair of Greek are the first claim upon his ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... highest products of the struggle for existence, we are strugglers by constitution; and when we relapse into repose we degenerate. Only on condition of living for the morrow can we remain human. Put a sound limb on crutches and you paralyze it; wear smoked glasses and your eyes become intolerant of light, or wear glasses that make the muscle of accommodation superfluous and it atrophies; take pepsin and hydrochloric acid and the stomach will become incapable of producing them; cease to chew and ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... themselves had proved ineffective, even betraying a half-hearted sympathy with the union men, who were not slow to profit by it. Even so, the day passed rather quietly, as did the next. But in time the agitation became so general as to paralyze a wide section of the water-front, and the city awoke to the realization that a serious conflict was in progress. The handful of fishermen, hidden under the roof of the great warehouse, outnumbered twenty to one, and guarded only by a thin line of pickets, ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... surprise, amusement, and remonstrance spread through the rooms; and the company crowded towards the table. Lucian rose, white with rage, and for a moment entirely lost his self-control. Fortunately, the effect was to paralyze him; he neither moved nor spoke, and only betrayed his condition by his pallor and the hatred in his expression. Presently he felt a touch on his arm and heard his name pronounced by Lydia. Her voice calmed him. He tried to look at her, ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... evils of irresponsible authority, with whomsoever it may be vested, in her hands it becomes the most tremendous instrument that Providence in its indignation can employ to crush, degrade, and utterly to paralyze the nations within its reach. The former position will readily be conceded; and the history of Rome under the Emperors, or of France during the last century, affords but too striking an exemplification of the second. It is, then, of the last importance to society, that clear and accurate ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... Maurice asked himself, that the accident of noble blood should paralyze a man's volition, and that the bearing of a noble name should render his life inertly ignoble? He recognized that, in the seeming curse which condemned man to "work," God had hidden the richest blessing, even ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... religious dissensions of Bohemia and the attacks of the Turks upon Hungary fully occupied his attention and demanded the employment of all his troops and treasure; and finally the capture of Constantinople by Mahomet at this very time (1458) seemed to paralyze the energies of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... white folks, I got to scratch my head so's I kin 'member. I's been paralyze so I can't git my tongue to speak good. It ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... not know why it was that I locked up those four letters of Esther Wynn's and did not look at them for many months. I felt very guilty in keeping them; but a power I could not resist seemed to paralyze my very hand when I thought of opening the box in which they were. At last, long after I had left Uncle Jo's house, I took them out one day, and in the quiet and warmth of a summer noon I copied them slowly, carefully, word for word. Then I hid the originals in my bosom, and walked alone, without ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... too great, had obliged them to stop; they had abandoned one-half of their destructive creed, retaining only the other half, the effect of which, less imminent, was less apparent. If they no longer dared paralyze individual acts in the man, they persisted in paralyzing in the individual all collective acts.—There must be no special associations in general society; no corporations within the State, especially no spontaneous bodies endowed with the initiative, proprietary and permanent: ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... the best we can do is to stalemate," Bradley argued. "Even if they can't paralyze us, we can't hurt them, and we ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... could hardly be said to know any thing. Fever from loss of blood; uneasiness, perhaps, from the presence in her system of elements elsewhere fashioned and strangely foreign to its economy; the remnants of sleep and of the dream; the bewilderment of sudden awaking—all had combined to paralyze her judgment, and give her imagination full career. When she opened her eyes, she saw a beautiful face, and nothing else, and it seemed to her itself the source of the light by which she saw it. Her dream had been one of great trouble; ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... countries to their warm climate.[17] Buckle attributes a highly wrought imagination and gross superstition to all people, like those of India, living in the presence of great mountains and vast plains, knowing Nature only in its overpowering aspects, which excite the fancy and paralyze reason. He finds, on the other hand, an early predominance of reason in the inhabitants of a country like ancient Greece, where natural features are on a small scale, more comprehensible, nearer the measure of man himself.[18] ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... penetrate through gases, liquids and all ordinary solids, even through many inches of the hardest steel. On a comparatively short exposure it has been known to partially paralyze an electric charged bar. ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... idea—a surprise party which would enter the billiard-room at a moment when the "flashy," flushed with victory, would be uttering his loud-mouthed challenge; a surprise party which would quietly "take him on and paralyze him stony," as ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... of you stay here: patrol around, and use your paralyzers on anybody who even twitches a muscle." Ultrasonics were nice, effective, humane police weapons, but they were unreliable. The same dose that would keep one man out for an hour would paralyze another for no more than ten or fifteen minutes. "And be sure none of ...
— Temple Trouble • Henry Beam Piper
... opportunity to see some of their comrades dropping with moans and shrieks. A few lay under foot, still or wailing. And now for an instant the men stood, their rifles slack in their hands, and watched the regiment dwindle. They appeared dazed and stupid. This spectacle seemed to paralyze them, overcome them with a fatal fascination. They stared woodenly at the sights, and, lowering their eyes, looked from face to face. It was a strange pause, ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... unfavorable. Such hope as he had been able to distil out of his desire was sadly dampened by an ever-present premonition of failure, which he could not entirely throw off. Too keen an insight for the truth often stands in a man's way, and too clear a view of an overwhelming obstacle is apt to paralyze effort. Hope must always ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... cradle is ready, the mother Wasp goes spider-hunting. Whenever she can find a spider, she pounces on it, and with her sting, she stabs it in the body, so as to paralyze it, but not kill it. Then she carries it to the mud cell and packs it in, at the far end. Many spiders are caught and preserved this way, for they do not usually die ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... enemy resolved to paralyze the resistance he could not conquer. One evening he mixed a powerful narcotic with my water. Scarcely had I finished my repast, when I felt myself sink by degrees into a strange torpor. Although I was without mistrust, a vague fear seized me, and I tried to struggle against sleepiness. ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... leads to Universalism and to rank infidelity; that it sanctions all the errors that were ever promulgated; that it furnishes a complete justification of the worst conduct of the worst men, that ever lived, tends to paralyze all effort to resist temptation, and condemns as impious any opposition to the commission of sin by our neighbors, and, finally, that it is worse than the ...
— The Calvinistic Doctrine of Predestination Examined and Refuted • Francis Hodgson
... took both her hands and held them in his. They walked home in silence, and the rest of the afternoon seemed long. The dinner was simple and did not last long, contrary to the usual Norman custom. A sort of embarrassment seemed to paralyze the guests. The two priests, the mayor, and the four farmers invited, alone betrayed a little of that broad mirth that ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... skilfully applied to lessen it. He wrote to Dr. Camidge, then the organist of the Cathedral, begging to be allowed to attach one of his levers in a temporary way to one of the heaviest notes of his organ. Dr. Camidge admitted that the touch of his instrument was "sufficient to paralyze the efforts of most men," but financial difficulties stood in the way of the remedy being applied. Barker offered his invention to several English organ-builders, but finding them indisposed to adopt it, he went to Paris, in 1837, where he arrived about the time that ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller
... expedition was to strike the roads inland, so to paralyze the rebel forces that we could take from the defense of the Mississippi River the equivalent of a corps of twenty thousand men, to be used in the next Georgia campaign; and this was actually done. At the same time, I wanted to destroy General Forrest, ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... promotion, thus giving to the poor and meritorious at least an equal chance with the man of wealth and the base hireling of party. In actual service the system of exclusive seniority cannot exist; it would deaden and paralyze all our energies. Taking advantage of this, politicians will drive us to the opposite extreme, unless the executive authority be limited by wholesome laws, based on the just principles ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... will your beer contract disease. But their germs are in the air, in the vessels employed in the brewery; even in the yeast used to impregnate the wort. Consciously or unconsciously, the art of the brewer is directed against them. His aim is to paralyze, if he ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... been so greatly disturbed. No harm could come to him, or to her. He was too strong, too self-contained, to be menaced by little creatures. The bigness of him, the penetrating, kindly candor of his eyes, would paralyze base minds and violent hands seeking to do him an injury. The law had sanctioned their union, ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... and paralyze the world. Now, in Russia and China and India, our societies are organizing and growing. They will handle the weakened, powerless nations, and I shall be ruler of the universe, surface and beneath, with Krenski to aid me, you see. It it wonderful, is it not? And, knowing what you do, having seen ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... dreadful." And even if the theories on which Zola has based his works were, as they are not, acknowledged truths, what a lack of pity to represent life in such a way to the people, who must live just the same! Does he do it in order to ruin, to disgust, to poison every action, to paralyze every energy, to discourage all thinking? In the presence of that, we are even sorry that he has a talent. It would have been better for him, for France, that he had not had it. And one wonders that he is not frightened, that when a fear seizes even those who did not lead ...
— So Runs the World • Henryk Sienkiewicz,
... conscious exercise of my senses, when I revived, came to me by way of my ears. Leaden weights seemed to close my eyes, to fetter my movements, to silence my tongue, to paralyze my touch. But I heard a wailing voice, speaking close to me, so close that it might have been my own voice: I distinguished the words; I knew ...
— The Guilty River • Wilkie Collins
... perspiration, fluttered in the wind, and the waves splashing over the side threw their icy spray in his face—but they did not cool him. The thought was hot within him that Noemi might be in danger on the island. But the idea did not paralyze his arms. The Danube and the wind are two mighty powers—but stronger still are the passions and the will of man. Timar felt this. What activity in his mind, what muscle in his arm! It was a superhuman task in which he succeeded, to ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... with persistent energy for a few years. The South was impoverished, and while a remunerative trade might be built up from it, patient and exceedingly aggressive labor would be required to secure such a result. It is the curse of opium, however, to paralyze energy, and to render all effort fitful and uncertain. He should have written scores of letters daily, and attended to each commission with the utmost promptness and care, but there were times when the writing of a single letter ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... admitting dictatorial claims for Jesus. First, it is an unplausible opinion that God would deviate from his ordinary course, in order to give us anything so undesirable as an authoritative Oracle would be;—which would paralyze our moral powers, exactly as an infallible church does, in the very proportion in which we succeeded in eliciting responses from it. It is not needful here to repeat what has been said to that effect in p. 138. Secondly, there is no imaginable criterion, by which we can ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... his genius form and the son of his jealous love. And as he listened, planning, sufficient strength crept back to the worn body. He could play out his part to the end, and La Mothe would carry with him no sense of his master's frailty to paralyze action. In loyalty for loyalty's sake ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... nodding in the breeze. With the speed of madness and the recklessness of despair I tore my way through the thickly standing groups upon the steps; I could not speak, I could not utter. Once more the frightful cry swelled upward, and in its wild notes seemed to paralyze me; for with my hands upon my temples, I stood motionless and still. A heavy footfall as of persons marching in procession came nearer and nearer, and as the sounds without sank into sobs of bitterness and woe, the black ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... has accomplished all he set out to do and the result is peace and happiness. I was sentimentalizing, no doubt, for I have never been able to live in the country. But as I stood there, looking back, the spell was broken. I heard a roar of a horn, one of those ear-shattering inventions that paralyze one's faculties, a grinding of gears and a slither of rubber tyres, and then the yell of a human voice. As I turned to jump I was nearly blinded by two enormous headlights. And the voice that had yelled, a half-familiar voice, shouted, 'What the blazes do you go to sleep in ...
— Aliens • William McFee |
