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More "Weaken" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... say, if these two new lines do not too much lengthen out and weaken the amiability of the original thought and expression. You have a discretionary power about showing. I should think that Croker would not disrelish a sight of these light little humorous things, and may ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... the Renaissance tendency, not because he is greater than Shakespere, but because he is in another element, and has seen other things. I miss fragments here and there not needed for my purpose in the passage quoted, without putting asterisks, for I weaken the poem enough by the omissions, without spoiling it also ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... many years longer than it does now. The longest-lived men and women have, as a rule, been those who have attained great mental and moral development. They have lived in the upper region of a higher life, beyond the reach of much of the jar, the friction, and the discords which weaken and shatter most lives. ...
— An Iron Will • Orison Swett Marden
... the Popes such a theory was completely discredited by the excesses of its supporters at the Council of Basle, but it served to weaken the authority of the Holy See, and to put into the hands of its opponents a weapon which they were not slow to wield whenever their personal interests were affected. Henceforth appeals from the Pope to a General Council, although prohibited, were ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... its operations. It is because a State Church is by its very conception hostile to such a principle, that we are justified in counting it apart from the private Churches with all their faults, and placing it among the agencies that weaken the vigour of a national conscience and check the free play and access of ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... the prophecy of two diverse lines. One would gain great tusks and a long, mobile trunk and live its life in distant tropical jungles; and another branch was to sink still deeper into the swamp-water, where its hind-legs would weaken and vanish as it touched dry land less and less. And here to-day we watched a quartette of these manatees, living contented lives and breeding in ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... bill under consideration should become a law it would be regarded as a retrogression from the financial intentions indicated by our recent repeal of the provision forcing silver-bullion purchases; that it would weaken, if it did not destroy, returning faith and confidence in our sound financial tendencies, and that as a consequence our progress to renewed business health would be unfortunately checked and a return to our recent ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... and laugh at them—and by laughing at them destroy them? For your race, in its poverty, has unquestionably one really effective weapon—laughter. Power, money, persuasion, supplication, persecution —these can lift at a colossal humbug—push it a little—weaken it a little, century by century; but only laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand. You are always fussing and fighting with your other weapons. Do you ever use that one? No; you leave it lying rusting. As a race, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and periodical cicada. Buffalo treehoppers[26] (Fig. 15) and the periodical cicada[27] weaken twigs by inserting their eggs in them. The injured bark becomes roughened as it heals (Fig. 16), and the growth of the ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 41st Annual Meeting • Various
... peace abroad, of your safety, of your prosperity, of that very liberty which you so highly prize. But as it is easy to foresee that, from different causes and from different quarters, much pains will be taken, many artifices employed, to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth; as this is the point in your political fortress against which the batteries of internal and external enemies will be most constantly and actively (though often covertly and insidiously) directed, it is of infinite moment that you should ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... looking at him steadily. "It's going to be dirt easy, provided we don't weaken. You can't do things to your friends, but you can emphatically do them to your enemies. We have got to remember always that this girl, who has been so heartless to her old fool of a father, ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... same error, lad," said the captain, kindly. "The blame, if any, belongs to us all. Forget it, Charley, and don't let it weaken your self-confidence. Now what do you think of the ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... not weaken the charm, either for those born among these scenes who never voyaged beyond their native island, or for those to whom the streets of Paris and the streets of St. Pierre are equally well known. Even at a time when Martinique had been forsaken by hundreds of her ruined planters, and the paradise-life ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... regarded as immoral, it was certainly an annoyance, and the only protest against it, the only effort against that universal tendency in all human institutions to thicken and clog, to work loosely and badly, to rust and weaken towards catastrophes, came from the young—the crude unmerciful young. It seemed in those days to thoughtful men the harsh law of being—that either we must submit to our elders and be stifled, or disregard them, disobey them, thrust them aside, and make our little step of ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... steam may benefit. Gargling the throat or spraying the nose and throat is cleansing and helpful; but in children it is sometimes hard to do this, for they may struggle and thus injure and weaken themselves more than they can be benefited by the spraying or gargling. Swab the throat if you can with solution of corrosive sublimate, 1 to 1000. Peroxide of hydrogen, one-sixth to one- half to full strength, is good in many cases, used as a gargle and a swab. Wash out the nose ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... she reached that, she would be lost for ever, and the day would be lost beyond hope of redemption for the Chinese. To lose one powerful battleship, and to find another suddenly arrayed against them— for that is what it would of course amount to—would so weaken the already enfeebled Chinese strength that success would be out of the question; and the Englishman determined that, come what might, he would prevent the traitor prince from carrying out ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... these kites was given, and the sticks stayed in place by a string carried taut from stick to stick, which was notched at the ends to hold it; sometimes the sticks were held with a tack at the point of crossing, and sometimes they were mortised into one another; but this was apt to weaken them. The frame was laid down on a sheet of paper, and the paper was cut an inch or two larger, and then pasted and folded over the string. Most of the boys used a paste made of flour and cold water; but my boy and his brother could usually get paste from the printing-office; ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... her too much. Always on the watch that she should do exactly as Marion or Mrs. Armour, always so sensitive as to what was required of her, always preparing for this very time, now that it had come, and her heart and mind were strong, her body seemed to weaken. Once or twice during the day she had felt a little faint, but it had passed off, and she had scolded herself. She did not wish a serious talk with her husband to-night, but she saw now that it ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... from the Amalekites. They owe us a hundred loads still. Load the prisoners with some copper, to make them tired and the natives civil. What can we do to procure what we want, and yet not to weaken the forces ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... received from General Lee was that the enemy was collecting in strong force at Fredericksburg. "For this purpose," he wrote, "they must weaken other points, and now is the time to concentrate on any that may be exposed within our reach." He then suggested that, if Banks was too strong in numbers and position, Jackson and Ewell combined should move on Warrenton, where a Federal force was reported; or that Ewell and Field should ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... good word to have in mind. However complicated the composition may seem superficially, you may treat it simply. You will control it by not considering any part as of any importance in itself, but only as it helps the whole; and you may strengthen or weaken that part as you need to. Don't cut the thing up too much. Let a half a dozen objects count as one in the whole. Mass things, simplify the masses, and make the elements of the masses hold as only ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... sent into Egypt? Could it be done? To do so; it would be necessary to send with them a numerous escort, which would too much weaken our little army in the enemy's country. How, besides, could they and the escort be supported till they reached Cairo, having no provisions to give them on setting out, and their route being through a hostile territory, which we had exhausted, which presented ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... though they have the hearts and faces of lions, when at any time they shall be called forth to engage and fight with the King's foes, and the enemies of the town of Mansoul; yet a little discountenance cast upon them from the town of Mansoul will deject and cast down their faces, will weaken and take away their courage. Do not, therefore, O my beloved, carry it unkindly to my valiant captains and courageous men of war, but love them, nourish them, succour them, and lay them in your bosoms; and they ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... has, on the contrary, been founded on the opposite principle, on the voluntary and unqualified admission that the sovereignty belonged to the State and not to the United States, and that they could perform no act which should tend to weaken the power of the State or to assume any to themselves. All that they have done has been to appropriate the public money to the construction of this road and to cause it to be constructed, for I presume that no distinction can be taken between the appropriation of ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 2: James Monroe • James D. Richardson
... God. He knew from childhood how actively evil spirits ensnare mankind; he had learned from the Scripture that the Devil works against the purest to ruin them. On his path the busy devils were lurking to weaken him, to mislead him, to make innumerable others wretched through him. He saw their work in the angry bearing of the cardinal, in the scornful face of Eck, even in the thoughts of his own soul. He knew how powerful ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... made such a pursuit tempting in the extreme. Fortunately, the young musician was saved from such a career. In his zeal of practice and desire to attain a perfectly independent action for each finger on the piano, Schumann devised some machinery, the result of which was to weaken the sinews of his third finger by undue distention. By this he lost the effective use of the whole right hand, and of course his career ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... blood," said Yakov Tarasovich; "in hereditary blood. Therein lies all power! My father, I remember, told me: 'Yashka, you are my genuine blood!' There. The blood of the Mayakins is thick—it is transferred from father to father and no woman can ever weaken it. Let us drink some champagne! Shall we? Very well, then! Tell me more—tell me about yourself. How is it ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... to weaken, to disturb, to influence him, to shadow his peace, to wring his pride, to unman his resolve, as women do mostly with men. Was life not hard enough here already, that she must make it more bitter yet ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... stores, and ships which they captured and destroyed, whilst our efforts at rescue were too late to prevent the catastrophe impending over Burgoyne's unfortunate army. After one of those delays which always were happening to retard our plans and weaken the blows which our chiefs intended to deliver, an expedition was got under weigh from New York at the close of the month of September, '77; that, could it have but advanced a fortnight earlier, might have saved the doomed force of Burgoyne. Sed Dis aliter ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... throughout the United States that Mrs. Judson intended to accompany her husband to the mission field, and in all quarters her intention was denounced. She was accused of being both imprudent and lacking in modesty. These attacks caused Ann Judson considerable pain, but they did not weaken her determination to accompany her husband. They sailed for India on February 12, and landed at Calcutta on June 18. On the voyage they had for fellow passengers some Baptist missionaries, and the result of their intercourse with them ...
— Noble Deeds of the World's Heroines • Henry Charles Moore
... on the independence of the great nobles. But if feudalism proved too weak to conquer the monarchy, it was strong enough to paralyze its action. Neither of the two forces could master the other, but each could weaken the other, and throughout the whole period of their conflict England lay a prey to disorder within and to insult ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... first part of the statement no comment could be made which would not weaken its effect. Taking its principle and its tone together, it is a doctrine which has never been paralleled. Let it circulate throughout Europe, that a member of the United States Senate in 1849, has openly proclaimed that at ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... contribution to which was a couple of lady-birds, picked up one winter's day on a wall and immediately consigned to a box lined with cotton-wool, and labelled, 'Animals found surviving in the depths of a severe winter.' Nor did curiosity in this case weaken the power of sympathy. His passion for birds and beasts was the counterpart of his father's love of children, only displaying itself before the age at which child-love naturally appears. His mother used to read Croxall's Fables to his little sister and him. The ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... effect of the forward end of the current, or that part of it which is under the negative electrode, is to relax, expand and weaken; while that of the rear end, under the positive electrode, is to contract and strengthen. A moving ship disperses the waters at its bow, but draws them in at its stern. The bullet shot from a gun, in passing through a plank, leaves the perforation closed where it enters in, ...
— A Newly Discovered System of Electrical Medication • Daniel Clark
... only became the first pianist himself, but produced a set of compositions that had the effect of raising the art to the highest pitch of perfection; he was a zealous Catholic, and took holy orders, but this did not damp his ardour or weaken his power as a musician; he spent the greater part of his life at Weimar, but he practised his art far and wide, and his last visit to England in 1886, the year on which he died, created quite a flutter in ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... send him, weary and stupefied, out of some famous picture-gallery. But what is thus admitted with regard to art is not extended to the (so-called) natural beauties no amount of excess in sublime mountain outline or the graces of cultivated lowland can do anything, it is supposed, to weaken or degrade the palate. We are not at all sure, however, that moderation, and a regimen tolerably austere, even in scenery, are not healthful and strengthening to the taste; and that the best school for a ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... king smiled grimly as he saw them go. Phrontis and Melas went to where their mother was. But Medea stayed, and AEetes looked upon her with his great leopard's eyes. "My daughter, my wise Medea," he said, "go, put spells upon the Moon, that Hecate may weaken that man in his hour of trial." Medea turned away from her father's eyes, and went to ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum
... the doctrine of predestination as it appears to a devout and poetic soul whose conviction of the truth of such a doctrine has the strength of a divine revelation. Those elected for God's love can do nothing to weaken it, those not elected can do nothing to gain it, but it is not his to reason why; indeed, he could not praise a god whose ways he could understand or for whose ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... and knives and forks. The living room floor was covered with linoleum; the bedroom floor had a carpet. Swinging candlesticks were screwed into the wall here and there. It was more like the cabin of a ship than anything on land could ever be, and Jack Rotheram began to weaken towards it. ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas
... performance of our public duty, accidentally liable to degenerate into faction. Commonwealths are made of families, free Commonwealths of parties also; and we may as well affirm, that our natural regards and ties of blood tend inevitably to make men bad citizens, as that the bonds of our party weaken those by which we are held ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... blacks. Notwithstanding this consideration, which must weaken their respect for the laws of property, we find among them numerous instances of the most rigid integrity; and as many as among their better instructed masters, of benevolence, ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest
... afraid that Old Black Joe's mind is beginning to weaken. Sometimes he sits for hours babbling about the old plantation as it existed in the days ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... right," he said, "if you don't weaken!" He pulled my ears. "But why in the world, Ruthy——" he worried, "did she have to go and tuck that forty-three cents on to the end of ...
— Fairy Prince and Other Stories • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... which she divined the Via Alfieri. She saw herself again in the room wherein, doubtless, she never would enter again. The hours there passed had for her the sadness of a dream. She felt her eyes becoming veiled, her knees weaken, and her soul shudder. It seemed to her that life was no longer in her, and that she had left it in that corner where she saw the black pines raise their immovable summits. She reproached herself for feeling anxiety ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... requires simplicity and truth, to encourage him to be what he is not, or to personate a character which is not his own. We are taught that it is the general tendency of the diversions of the stage, by holding out false morals and prospects, to weaken the sinews of morality; by disqualifying for domestic enjoyments, to wean from a love of home; by accustoming to light thoughts and violent excitement of the passions, to unfit for the pleasures of religion. We are taught that diversions ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... not be improper, in this place, to examine the influence of bodily endowments, and of the goods of fortune, over our sentiments of regard and esteem, and to consider whether these phenomena fortify or weaken the present theory. It will naturally be expected, that the beauty of the body, as is supposed by all ancient moralists, will be similar, in some respects, to that of the mind; and that every kind of esteem, which is paid to a man, will have something similar ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... our policy is to avoid a general engagement. The end of this campaign is the reduction of Belgrade, and great precaution must be used if we are to succeed. I would divide the army, so as to begin operations at three points simultaneously, and weaken the enemy, by scattering his forces. By detaching, we can easily defeat them, and capture their arsenals. This accomplished, we proceed to Belgrade, and, with the conquest of this Turkish stronghold, we end not only the ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... the knights first, bidding them hold their horses well in hand, so as to avoid confusion. "Let no man," he said, "relying on his strength or horsemanship, get before the others and engage singly with the Trojans, nor yet let him lag behind or you will weaken your attack; but let each when he meets an enemy's chariot throw his spear from his own; this be much the best; this is how the men of old took towns and strongholds; in ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... floating bodies are disengaged from each other by the thaw, they sail away separately, maintaining their balance; but by degrees, as they near the south, where the water is relatively warmer, their base, shaken by the collision with other icebergs, begins to melt and weaken; it then happens that their centre of gravity is displaced, and, naturally, they overturn. Only, if that one had turned over two minutes later, it would have ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... the vegetable mold which the trees need for their sustenance. They progress slowly and kill or weaken the ...
— Studies of Trees • Jacob Joshua Levison
... said the Abbe Quillet; "the Cure is lost. But listen. God forbid, my son, that I, your old tutor, should seek to assail my own work, and attempt to weaken your faith! Preserve ever and everywhere that simple creed of which your noble family has given you the example, which our fathers possessed in a still higher degree than we, and of which the greatest captains of our time are not ashamed. Always, while you wear a sword, remember ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... not occur in consecutive minutes. It has been found that even the lowering of the curtain for one second to denote the lapse of an hour or a year, has a tendency to distract the minds of the audience from the story and to weaken the singleness of effect without which a ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... he spoke, they could see Craig's resistance begin to weaken. The tenseness of his form relaxed; Quest's will was triumphing. Slowly in the mirror they saw a little picture creeping from outline into definite form, a picture of the Professor's library. Craig himself was there with ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... King, none the less would Eyvind in no wise suffer himself to be persuaded. Then did the King offer him gifts, and the dues and rights of broad lands, but Eyvind put all these away from him. Then did the King threaten him with torture even unto death, but never did Eyvind weaken his resistance. Thereafter caused the King to be brought in a bowl filled with glowing coals, and had it set on the belly of Eyvind, and not long was it ...
— The Sagas of Olaf Tryggvason and of Harald The Tyrant (Harald Haardraade) • Snorri Sturluson
... away the feelings: as indeed it has, when no other mental habit is cultivated, and the analysing spirit remains without its natural complements and correctives. The very excellence of analysis (I argued) is that it tends to weaken and undermine whatever is the result of prejudice; that it enables us mentally to separate ideas which have only casually clung together: and no associations whatever could ultimately resist this dissolving force, were it not that we ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... and thus impair the beauty of the performance. In working a landscape, some recommend placing behind the canvas a painted sky, to avoid the trouble of working one. As a compliance with such advice would tend to foster habits of idleness, and thus weaken the sense of moral propriety which should in all we do be ever present with us, as well as destroy that nice sense of honor and sincerity which flies from every species of deception, we hope the fair votaries of this ...
— The Ladies' Work-Table Book • Anonymous
... one of those transitional epochs when institutions persist, after the beliefs and conditions which molded them have utterly disappeared. The inertia of such a rock-ribbed shell is terrible, and while sometimes the erosive power of agitation and discussion suffices to weaken and destroy it, more often the volcanic fires of social convulsion are alone strong enough. The first such shock came from within the English-speaking world itself, but not in Europe. The American colonies, appreciating and applying to their own conditions the principles of the ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... as labouring under the same delusion. Slavery is a bitter and a poisonous draught. We have but one consolation under it, that a Nation may dash the cup to the ground when she pleases. Do not imagine that by taking from its bitterness you weaken its deadly quality; no, by rendering it more palatable you contribute to its power of destruction. We submit without repining to the chastisements of Providence, aware that we are creatures, that opposition is vain and remonstrance impossible. But when redress is in our own power ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... to any good, the one essential to the saving of the world. One who can not obey is the merest slave—essentially and in himself a slave. The crisis of Tom's fever was at length favorably passed, but the result remained doubtful. By late hours and strong drink, he had done not a little to weaken a constitution, in itself, as I have said, far from strong; while the unrest of what is commonly and foolishly called a bad conscience, with misery over the death of his child and the conduct which had disgraced him in his own eyes and ruined his wife's happiness, ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... Emperor Nicholas was well aware," he told them, "that his power rested on very precarious ground, and that, though a despot in name, he knew that he was in the power of his own nobles. To liberate himself, he endeavoured to weaken, if not to destroy, the old nobility— first by leading them into all sorts of extravagance, and then by creating a new order between nobles and peasants, who should feel that they owed their ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... distillers in the Colony have hitherto proved strong enough to defeat the bills introduced for this purpose by the friends of the natives. Though some people maintain that the Dutch and anti-native party resist this much-needed measure because they desire through strong drink to weaken and keep down the natives, I do not believe in the existence of any such diabolical motive. Commercial self-interest, or rather a foolish and short-sighted view of self-interest,—for in the long run the welfare of the natives is also the welfare of the whites,—sufficiently ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... they were proud of it; it showed the magnanimity that was natural to the universal Grandissime heart, when not restrained and repressed by the stern necessities of the hour. But Agricola disappointed them. Why should he weaken and hesitate, and suggest delays and middle courses, and stammer over their proposed measures as "extreme"? In very truth, it seemed as though that drivelling, woman-beaten Deutsch apotheke—ha! ha! ha!—in ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... one for ourselves, and one for Dr. Macloghlen, with a third to dine in. We had bedding, and cushions, and drinking water tied up in swollen pig-skins, which were really goat-skins, looking far from tempting. We had bread and meat, and a supply of presents to soften the hearts and weaken the religious scruples of the sheikhs at Wadi Bou. 'We thravel en prince,' said the Doctor. When all was ready we got under way solemnly, our camels rising and sniffing the breeze with a superior air, as who should say, 'I happen to be going where you happen to be going; but don't for a moment ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... arrived, at a time wherein he could be of but little service to me. When he saw the strange inflammation in my eyes, he bled me several times; but it was too late. And those bleedings which would have been so proper at first, did nothing but weaken me now. They could not even bleed me in the condition I was in but with the greatest difficulty. My arms were so swelled that the surgeon was obliged to push in the lance to a great depth. Moreover, the bleeding being out of season had liked to have caused my death. This, ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... warning to him; but he would not accept warnings now—he was too deeply moved. Under the influence of her letters he developed a tremendous capacity for work. The greatest stimulus in the world had come to him, and remained with him. If it should be withdrawn at any time, it would weaken him. He did ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... motionless and silent. Mrs. Bowen broke out again with a sort of violence; the years teach us something of self-control, perhaps, but they weaken and unstring the nerves. In this opposition of silence to silence, the woman of the world was no ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... the making of man or nation. But in the history of the world the test of religions must be their effect on the character of those who believed in them: religion is no doubt itself an outcome of character, but it reacts upon it, and must either strengthen or weaken. We are not therefore justified in dismissing the 'Religion of Numa' without inquiry as to its relation to morality, for on our answer to that question must largely depend our ...
— The Religion of Ancient Rome • Cyril Bailey
... all ages. Violence and cruelty in the defense of the cause of Christ misrepresent him to the world. The act of Peter gave countenance to charges which would be preferred against Jesus, and further resistance would have compromised the position of his Lord. However well intended, such rash defenses weaken the cause they are ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... wounded, and wanting a cure. Some weakness had fallen on her, and strength must be given to her from another. He did not in the least doubt her love, but he knew that she had been associated, for a few weeks past, with two persons whose daily conversation would be prone to weaken the tone of her mind. He no more thought of giving her up than a man thinks of having his leg cut off because he has sprained his sinews. He would go up to town and see her, and would not even yet abandon all hope that she might be found sitting at his board when Christmas should come. By that day's ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... away and stop your ears against it. And should it still insinuate itself, at any rate do not repeat to others what has already so flattered and humbled and weakened you. Telling it to others will only humble and weaken you more. By repeating the praise that you have heard or read about yourself you only expose yourself and purchase well-deserved contempt for yourself. And, more than that, by fishing for praise you lay yourself open to all sorts of flatterers. ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... grave. They also concern, though less happily, the political world, in which the artist, a little intoxicated with his success, has thought himself able to exercise an influence by scoffing at the parliamentary regime. Forain's drawing has a nervous character which does, however, not weaken its science: every stroke reveals something and has an astonishing power. In his less known painting can be traced still more clearly the style and influence of his master Degas. They are generally incidents behind the scenes and at night restaurants, where caricatured types are painted ...
— The French Impressionists (1860-1900) • Camille Mauclair
... is good. Such energy of moral recoil from evil is perfectly consistent with honest love, for it is things, not men, that we are to hate; and it is needful as the completion and guardian of love itself. There is always danger that love shall weaken the condemnation of wrong, and modern liberality, both in the field of opinion and in regard to practical life, has so far condoned evil as largely to have lost its hold upon good. The criminal is pitied rather than blamed, and a ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... enough to cover the bottom of his glass, for that was another of Pete's ways; he could never afford to weaken his hand or deaden his eye with alcohol, and even now he stood sideways at the bar, facing Gregg and also facing the others in the room. But the larger man, with sudden scorn for this caution, brimmed ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... bosses. Our city governments have been notoriously corrupt and the cities harbor the great masses of foreigners. The high cost of living in the cities and the relatively low wages force the aliens into poor and crowded quarters which tend to weaken them physically and degrade them morally and socially. Among the Italians of the cities there appears to be a vicious element composed of social parasites who found gambling dens, organize schemes of black-mail, and are the agents of the dreaded ...
— History of the United States, Volume 6 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... to Newport, the former maid met all society there. A gifted lawyer fell a victim to Clarice's charms, and, on a moonlit porch overlooking the sea, warned her against young Stuyvesant. On learning that the roue had already attempted to weaken the girl's high principles, to rescue her he made her his wife. He was soon afterward elected Mayor of New York, but remained a suitor for his beautiful wife's approbation, waiting upon her in gilded halls with the fidelity of a ...
— Different Girls • Various
... stands revealed the whole secret of Longevity. We only die when our will ceases to be strong enough to make us live. In the majority of cases, death comes when the torture and vital exhaustion accompanying a rapid change in our physical conditions becomes so intense as to weaken, for one single instant, our "clutch on life," or the tenacity of the will to exist. Till then, however severe may be the disease, however sharp the pang, we are only sick or wounded, ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... subversion, is an assumption of superiority not warranted by the Constitution, insulting to the States interfered with, tending to endanger their domestic peace and tranquillity, subversive of the objects for which the Constitution was formed, and, by necessary consequence, tending to weaken and ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... grandfather's trouble is. If you knew something about automobile tires I would explain it by saying that he had a blow-out, but it's something like this. The pipe has an outer surface and an inner lining. At one time or another something happened to injure and weaken the former—disease does it sometimes—perhaps it may have been a severe strain or crushing blow on ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... and breathe with a view to what their neighbors think of them. When life resolves itself into a struggle for a bare existence, it makes for cowardice and selfishness. In time the strongest characters deteriorate with inferior associates and only small interests to occupy their minds. Wills weaken, standards lower unconsciously, ideals grow misty or vanish. Youth, enthusiasm, hope, die together. Ambition turns to bitterness or stolid resignation. Suspicion, meanness, cruelty, are the natural offspring of small ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... compelled me to accept it. My blankets and furs on the floor would have been better suited to my traveling life especially as the captain's bed was shorter than his guest. I think travelers will agree with me in denouncing the use of beds and warm rooms while a journey is in progress. They weaken the system and unfit it for the roughness of the road. While halting at night the floor or a hard sofa is preferable to a soft bed. The journey ended, the reign of luxuries ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... American element had been steadily increasing, and Santa Anna was, not unnaturally, afraid of its growing strength and influence. In order to weaken it, he substituted for the constitution under whose guarantee they had settled, military and priestly laws of the most oppressive kind; and the complaints and reprisals at length reached such a pitch, that all Americans were ordered to deliver up their arms to the Mexican ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... be like them. I hear among men so much vain speech, so much precious breath and precious time wasted in empty boasts, foolish anger, useless reiteration, blatant argument, ignoble mouthings, that I have learned to deem speech a curse, laid on man to weaken and envenom all his undertakings. For over two hundred years I have never spoken myself: you, I hear, are not so reticent. I only speak now because one of you said a beautiful thing that touched me. If we all might but ...
— The Nuernberg Stove • Louisa de la Rame (AKA Ouida)
... and give a guarantee of truthfulness which a simple affirmation does not give. Nor can any one, who knows the perfunctory formality and indifference with which such oaths are administered and taken, and what a farce 'kissing the book' has become, doubt that even judicial oaths tend to weaken the popular conception of the sin of a lie and the reliance to be placed upon the simple 'Yea, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... where they lie secluded, have, nevertheless, been producing seed without imported pollen while their showy sisters slept. But the later blooms, by attracting insects, set cross-fertilized seed to counteract any evil tendencies that might weaken the species if it depended upon self-fertilization only. When the European Venus' Looking-glass used to be cultivated in gardens here, our grandmothers tell us it was altogether too prolific, crowding out of existence its less fruitful, but ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... worthy to be placed close to Charles Darwin among eminent Englishmen, was the son of a blacksmith and a farmer's daughter. Such pedigrees are striking; and yet, as Frederick Adams Woods has remarked, they ought to strengthen rather than to weaken one's belief in the force of heredity. When it is considered how rarely such an ancestry produces a great man, it must be fairly evident that his greatness is due to an accidental conjunction of favorable traits, as the modern theory of genetics holds; and that ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... thereafter he was better. Then he began again, finally giving way altogether, with the melancholy result that you have all witnessed. I knew how injurious to his interests it would be, and how seriously it would weaken discipline if you men should once come to understand that your skipper was a drunkard; so I let it be understood among you that Mr Purchas was confined to his cabin through a slight illness; while, as a matter of fact, he was all the ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... collection is tolerably complete; the trouble, the difficulty, the shame of untying them late in life, is felt even by superior minds. "Sir," said Dr. Johnson, "I don't like to have any of my opinions attacked. I have made up my faggot, and if you draw out one you weaken ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... true; but these epoch-making scenes, which put the last mark of truth upon a story and fill up, at one blow, our capacity for sympathetic pleasure, we so adopt into the very bosom of our mind that neither time nor tide can efface or weaken the impression. This, then, is the plastic part of literature: to embody character, thought, or emotion in some act or attitude that shall be remarkably striking to the mind's eye. This is the highest and hardest ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... already the conflict had begun, and a picked part of the army was away in the western wilds, doing nothing for any phase of the public good. But a word further concerning the expedition in general. The sending of troops to Utah was part of a foul scheme to weaken the government in its impending struggle with the secessionists. The movement has been called not inaptly "Buchanan's blunder," but the best and wisest men may make blunders, and whatever may be said of President Buchanan's short-sightedness in taking this step, ...
— The Story of "Mormonism" • James E. Talmage
... as well as to cause friction when questions were raised affecting expenditure, accompanied by protests, even in those cases in which these questions were manifestly of a legitimate character. The result was discouraging, and in the opinion of Mr Main had done much to weaken financial control and to defeat the purpose of the order. It is unnecessary to detail the various changes that have been made by the institution of dockyard expense accounts in the department of the controller, and by various other alterations introduced. The treasury instituted an independent ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... not, because the same woman he loves as thyself. Such words weaken any cause. No wrong have I seen ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... sacred and things profane, I have, on one occasion, written and published a passage which accords to you this right, and which I maintain. I send you a copy of it. I hope you will find nothing in any other part of my researches, to contradict or weaken in any way whatever the sense of ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... brink began to radiate toward their advancing boat its vivid suggestion of social order, visitors' lists, Church services, and the bland inquisition of the table-d'hote. The mere fact that in a moment or two she must take her place on the hotel register as Mrs. Gannett seemed to weaken the ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... take the liberty occasionally, of troubling him with a letter. He considers the Count de Moustier as forming, with himself, the two end links of that chain which holds the two nations together, and is happy to have observed in him dispositions to strengthen rather than to weaken it. It is a station of importance, as on the cherishing good dispositions and quieting bad ones, will depend, in some degree, the happiness and prosperity of the two countries. The Count de Moustier ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... the latter clung to individualism. They had been accidentally united for the time in desiring the adoption of the Constitution, though Hamilton considered it only a temporary shift for something stronger, while Jefferson wished for a bill of rights to weaken the force of some of its implications. Now that the Constitution was ratified, what tie was there to hold these two to any united action for the future? Nothing but a shadow—the name of a party not yet two years old. As soon, therefore, as the federal party fairly entered upon a secure ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... and in view of the fact that further uncertainty on this point will be calculated to obstruct other much-needed legislation, to weaken the discipline of the service, and to unsettle salutary measures now in progress for the government and improvement of the Indians, I respectfully recommend that the decision arrived at by Congress at its last session be ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... of ours but from the inequality between our desires and the strength we have for fulfilling them? Our passions weaken us, because the gratification of them requires more than our ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... distinguished by innumerable vertical cracks. These seemed to run criss-cross and to weaken the structure, so that the various seracs formed by them had bent to different angles and shapes, giving a very irregular surface to the berg, and a face ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... by this time found the strength of the settlers, and saw that unless they made a powerful effort, and that speedily, they must forever relinquish all hope of reconquering Kentucky. Such an effort was determined upon for the next year; and in order to weaken the whites as much as possible, till they were prepared for it, they continued to send out small parties, ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley
... soon burst forth into open revolution throughout these oppressed and insulted colonies. Our movements here may lead to the opening scene of the great drama; and we must give our foes no advantages by our imprudence. If we are the first to appear in arms, it may weaken our cause, while it strengthens theirs. Let them be the first to do this—let us place them in the wrong, and then, if they have recourse to violence and bloodshed, we will act; and no fear but the people ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... so elaborately explained. Printer's ink, when used as a pigment or pencil, should be used sparingly, with a few, sharp, clear, bold touches, and without painful finish or niggling. What amplification would not weaken instead of heightening the effect of "the copse-wood gray that waved and wept on Loch Achray"? Breadth, distance and atmosphere are obscured by H. H.'s carefully itemized foregrounds. But the itemizing is done admirably and con amore by one who is a botanist, a poet and an observer. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... commences to recede,—and pushed out to the center of the channel by the time the tide is out. When the dam is built, it will be best to heavily sod, or otherwise protect its surface against the action of heavy rains, which would tend to wash it away and weaken it; and the bed of the creek should be filled in back of the dam for a distance of at least fifty yards, to a height greater than that at which water will stand in the interior drains,—say to within three feet of the surface,—so that there shall never ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... enduring institution."—Having exposed the system, M. Taine meant to consider its effects, those of surrounding institutions, and to describe the French family as it now exists. He had first studied the "tendency to marriage"; he had considered the motives which, in general, weaken or fortify it, and appreciated those now absent and now active in France. According to him, "the healthy ideal of every young man is to found a family, a house of infinite duration, to create and to rule." Why in modern France does he give his thoughts to "pleasure and of excelling ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... old when he landed at Quebec. If time had done little to cure his many faults, it had done nothing to weaken the springs of his unconquerable vitality. In his ripe middle age, he was as keen, fiery, and perversely headstrong as when he quarrelled with Prefontaine in the ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... painter of a sublime picture, nor the writer of an heroic poem, should introduce any trivial circumstances that are likely to draw the attention from the principal figures. Such compositions should form one great whole: minute detail will inevitably weaken their effect. But in little stories, which record the domestic incidents of familiar life, these accessary accompaniments, though trifling in themselves, acquire a consequence from their situation; they add to the interest, and realise the scene. In this, ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... latter, cheerfully. "All this small force could be expected to do has been already done. We have suffered but slightly, while we have caused the enemy considerable loss. That's all we set out to do. We're not strong enough to stand up to them; we're only trying to weaken them all we can. See, now they're crossing—and it's about time we ...
— The Raid From Beausejour; And How The Carter Boys Lifted The Mortgage • Charles G. D. Roberts
... An era remarkable in this respect was the great Northern war (1700-1721), at the end of which the population of Finland was reduced to a third, and its devastated land divided between hostile powers. Another division of the country (1743) only contributed still more to weaken the national strength. All that remained of this strength was required to maintain the union with Sweden, which was apparently the only salvation of the ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... qualified Unionists, who wished new compromises. Frank Blair was one of the leaders of the former, and he was joined by all the true men of the old parties. But the secessionists—they might as well be so called, for all their actions tended to weaken and discredit the Union—nominated an able ticket. The latter party were soon conscious of defeat, and began to hint mysteriously at a power stronger than the ballot-box, that would be invoked in defence of 'Southern rights.' To many, indeed to most persons, this seemed an idle threat. Not ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... experience does not receive the enrichment which it should; it is not fertilized by school learning. And the attitudes which spring from getting used to and accepting half-understood and ill-digested material weaken vigor and ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... fingers of an incoming tide. So many circumstances gave colour to her belief that the poison could be given without discovery that Sally found every detail too easy to conceive. Gaga would be sick again and again, would weaken, would.... Always her imagination refused to complete the story. She covered her face with her hands and sought frantically to hide from this loathsome whisper that pressed temptation upon her. Ill and frightened, she lay turning into ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... ix, 25 and 27. Those sixteen young fellows who will pull the oars in the race, have, for months, been undergoing strict physical training. This means abstinence from all that could be said to weaken the frame, or lower the action of the heart. There are only certain things they may eat and drink. They must have the right amount of sleep, and no more. Exercise of the most bracing kind they must take every day, and eschew ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... normal amount of nervous energy which must accompany the mental processes of deliberation and choice is not able to be supplied. For the same reason, lack of food and sleep, working in bad air, etc., are found to weaken the will for facing a difficulty, though we may nevertheless feel that it is something that ought to be done. An added reason, therefore, why the victim of alcohol and narcotics finds it difficult to break his habit is that ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... annoying, and we daily strengthened ourselves in our aversion from him. He could never have done with degrading religion and the sacred books for the sake of injuring priestcraft, as he called it; and thus produced in me many an unpleasing sensation. But when I now learned, that to weaken the tradition of a Deluge, he had denied all petrified shells, and only admitted them as lusus naturae, he entirely lost my confidence; for my own eyes had on the Baschberg plainly enough shown me that I stood on the bottom of an old dried-up sea, among the exuviae of its ancient inhabitants. ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... least such as no man ever survived to tell of—and the six hours of deadly terror which I then endured have broken me up body and soul. You suppose me a very old man—but I am not. It took less than a single day to change these hairs from a jetty black to white, to weaken my limbs, and to unstring my nerves, so that I tremble at the least exertion, and am frightened at a shadow. Do you know I can scarcely look over this little cliff without ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... more than 67,000, as Wellington had left 17,000 at Hal; but if this powerful detachment had been included, Napoleon's estimate would not have been far wrong. At St. Helena he gave out that his despatch of cavalry towards Hal had induced Wellington to weaken his army to this extent; but Houssaye has shown that the statement is an entire fabrication. The Emperor certainly believed that all Wellington's troops were ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... the unhappy are so stupid that compassion does them more good than anything else in the world. But I also hold that one should confine one's self to professions of pity and be very careful not to feel any. Pity is a passion which is wholly useless to a well-constituted mind; it can but weaken the heart, and it ought to be left to people who, carrying nothing out in a logical manner, require passion to constrain them to ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... practical grounds. He opposed too much public ownership, declaring that the government was as likely as any private employer to oppress labor. The approval of socialism, he maintained, would split the Federation on the rock of politics, weaken it in its fight for higher wages and shorter hours, and prejudice the public against it. At every turn he was able to vanquish the socialists in the Federation, although he could not prevent it from endorsing ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... get hold of and carry away annually the greater part of the eight-real pieces which are made in the said Nueva Espana, in exchange for grass, which is the substance of that coarse and harsh silk which is so plentiful among the Chinese. [53] Thus do they weaken our strength and increase their own; and consequently they can make war on us whenever they wish, without any cost to them as far as we are concerned. And since this money does not come to Espana, it cannot be invested ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XXII, 1625-29 • Various
... start again with his division for Damietta. Desaix is many days' journey to the south. Probably a force will march to Suez. I heard it said by some French officers that this would probably be the next move, and Napoleon will not care to further weaken the garrison of the city by sending ...
— At Aboukir and Acre - A Story of Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt • George Alfred Henty
... reached the ears of the Indians. They had a very great dread of Boone, and knew very well he would not be found sleeping or unprotected, at the springs. They shrewdly inferred that the departure of so many men must greatly weaken the garrison, and that they could never hope for a more favorable opportunity ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... plays in the lives of most men and women; considering how it permeates the literature and art of the World and is—as the basis of the home—the most potent factor in social life, its profanation is a terrible loss, and the habit of mind which such profanation engenders cannot fail to weaken the whole spirit of reverence. I must confess that the man who jests over sex relations is to me incomparably lower than the man who sustains clean but wholly illegitimate sex relations; and while I am conscious of a strong movement of friendship towards ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly
... utmost, and it is likely that we might live and work together; anyhow, it is certain that he would have my best influence and support. I don't know what I could say more if I tried. I might only weaken what is ill enough said as it is. I only add that if it is any claim on you to be in earnest, I am in thorough ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... were returned to their sheaths. The skipper, the seriously injured and the dead woman remained on the deck. The skipper was in a black mood. He knew his people well enough to see that this unfortunate affair would weaken his power among them. They would say that the saints were against his enterprises and ambitions; that his luck was gone; that he was a bungler and so not fit to give orders to full-grown men. He understood all this as if ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... her as he said it. She gave him no sign. She was silent for so long that a great anxiety arose within him. Yet he felt that to speak again would only be to weaken his plea. He looked at her. The shining head was studiously averted, the long ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... reader knows, was news to Deever. He seemed surprised to find the case supported and strengthened by the man whom he suspected of trying to weaken it. ...
— The Crime of the French Cafe and Other Stories • Nicholas Carter
... For him to attempt to add anything to the words of Taggarak would be to weaken them. They were the climax, and silence was golden. Throughout the eloquent appeal of the chief, Deerfoot stood with his hands idly folded behind him, his eyes fixed upon the face of Taggarak, whose pose gave a good view of his features, ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... she answered him, "lest your words should weaken me. Go now, and bear you bravely, as you will for your own honour and that of England, and for mine. Dead or living you are my darling, and dead or living we shall meet once more and be at rest for aye. My prayers be with you, Sir Peter, my prayers and my eternal love, ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... to consumption she may outgrow this period provided she is permitted to reach her full growth without subjecting her constitution to any strenuous physical or mental strain. If, however, this girl marries and becomes a mother, the incident effect upon her health will most likely weaken her to the extent of bringing to the surface the inherited tendency. Many mothers succumb to just such conditions, where had they remained single until a later period they could have assumed the responsibility of ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... paid my first visit to you, because you are the first in my esteem: don't weaken it by awkward and unseasonable ceremony—I must now about the business that brings me here: no interruption, if you wish to see me again let me have my own way, and I may, perhaps, be ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... them, and who are prepared to aid them at the first opportunity that shall offer to strike an effective blow, well knew that the victorious Republicans had neither the will nor the power to injure Southern property or to weaken the protection it enjoyed under the Constitution. Their hostility to the Union is purely gratuitous, or springs from motives of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... Royal George, in which 'brave Kempenfelt went down, with twice four hundred men,' and the deck of the Victory, on which Nelson died 'for England, home, and beauty,' have alone been supposed to supply material for snuff-boxes to an extent which, if known, must considerably weaken the faith of their ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... Husband, coming in, stept gently up to me, and putting his Arm about my Neck, sayd, "My dearest Life, never agayn, I beseech you, interfere between me and the Boys: 'tis as unseemlie as tho' I shoulde interfere between you and your Maids, when you have any,—and will weaken my Hands, dear Moll, more than you ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... on the magnetic needle through glass, metals, wood, water, and resin, through clay vessels and through stone, for when we placed a glass plate, a metal plate, or a board between the conductor and the needle the effect was not cut off; even the three together seemed hardly to weaken the effect, and the same was the case with an earthen vessel, even when it was full of water. Our experiments also demonstrated that the said effects were not altered when we used a magnetic needle which was in a ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... the key, and desired her to select what she pleased for her evening's reading. This was a great addition to Helen's comfort. She found there were many spare moments that would, without this resource, have been spent in vain regrets and recollections of the past, which only served to weaken her mind and prevent ...
— The Eskdale Herd-boy • Mrs Blackford
... of the Shogunate could find no opportunity for a successful attack until foreign aggression unexpectedly came to their aid. The most dangerous enemies of the government were the great clans of Satsuma and Choshu. Iyeyasu had not ventured to weaken them beyond a certain point: the risks of the undertaking would have been great; and, on the other hand, the alliance of those clans was for the time being a matter of vast political importance. He only took measures to preserve a safe balance of power, placing ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... books were arranged, and began to read out the names. It was a hard thing for her to have to award the three first prizes to a girl she detested; but Miss Pew knew the little world she ruled well enough to know that palpable injustice would weaken her rule. Ninety-nine girls who had failed to win the prize would have resented her favouritism if she had given the reward to a hundredth girl who had not fairly won it. The eyes of her little world were upon her, and ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... as he dragged me over some cliff, and I waked up cold with fear. No one knows what I suffered. I left the city. I went to Denver. I went to Butte. I traveled everywhere, but wherever I went night and day that dead man was hovering around me. I couldn't sleep and my mind began to weaken. One night I went into a gambling den. I thought the excitement might drive that vision out of my head. I played roulette. I bet on the black; the red won. And right before me I saw that printer's face ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman
... substitution of every tenth for the seventh day as a day of rest. It was not only a senseless outrage on an ancient observance, around which a thousand good and gentle feelings had clustered; it not only tended to weaken the bond of brotherhood between France and the other members of Christendom; but it was dishonest, and robbed the labourer of fifteen days of restorative and humanizing repose in every year, and extended the wrong to all the friends and fellow labourers of man in the brute creation. ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... begin a controversy was contrary to his deliberate practice. But now he had the choice of submitting to arbitrary dictation or securing himself from further aggressions by dealing a blow which would weaken the authority of the aggressor. For the growing antagonism between him and Owen had come to a head early in the preceding year, when the latter, taking advantage of the permission to use the lecture-theatre at Jermyn Street for the delivery of a paleontological course, ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... and peace in the we-group and that of hostility and war toward others-groups are correlative to each other. The exigencies of war with outsiders are what make peace inside, lest internal discord should weaken the we-group for war. These exigencies also make government and law in the in-group, in order to prevent quarrels and enforce discipline. Thus war and peace have reacted on each other and developed each ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... have made five holes, which will weaken it so that we may be able to break it off. However, I hope we shall find one hole sufficient. I shall make it fifteen inches deep, and then charge it with the contents of a dozen cartridges. I think that ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty
... which he attaches to the special movement at Brook Farm. We have never professed to be able to represent the idea of Association with the scanty resources at our command; nor would the discontinuance of our establishment, or of any of the partial attempts now in progress, in the slightest degree weaken our faith in the associative system or our conviction that it will sooner or later be adopted as the only form of society suited to the nature of man, and in accordance with the divine will. We have never attempted anything more than to prepare ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... that the acquisition of such a knowledge of science as is proposed, and the communication of that knowledge, are calculated to weaken your usefulness? Or may I not rather ask, is it possible for you to discharge your functions properly without ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... up and turned on the light, and took refuge in a novel I had in my bag. Presently I grew calmer. I had chosen. I had succeeded. And now that I had my finger at last on the nerve of power, it was no time to weaken. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... were a wise tree, you would not," laughed Tom. "Out there you would be the plaything of the winds. Your body would be exposed to the glaring sun, the full blast of every passing storm, and the bitter cold of winter, which would, unless you were very hardy, have a tendency to retard your growth and weaken your vigor. Trees, like humans, do not enjoy a lonely life, but when they get together they immediately enter into bitter competition. Isn't ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the Great North Woods • Jessie Graham Flower
... feminine weakness and cowardice. Similarly some savages imagine that contact with a woman in childbed enervates warriors and enfeebles their weapons. Indeed the Kayans of Central Borneo go so far as to hold that to touch a loom or women's clothes would so weaken a man that he would have no success in hunting, fishing, and war. Hence it is not merely sexual intercourse with women that the savage warrior sometimes shuns; he is careful to avoid the sex altogether. Thus among the hill tribes of Assam, not only ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... camp will incline them to answer more quickly when a German speaks to them." This was accompanied by a cruel smile, whose significance was hot lost on the Americans. The captain glared at them, but as they did not seem to weaken perceptibly, even under his high displeasure, ...
— Army Boys in the French Trenches • Homer Randall
... prime minister. In April all the duties were taken off, except the duty on tea, which the king insisted upon retaining, in order to avoid surrendering the principle at issue. The effect of even this partial concession was to weaken the spirit of opposition in America, and to create a division among the colonies. In July the merchants of New York refused to adhere any longer to the non-importation agreement except with regard to tea, and they ...
— The War of Independence • John Fiske
... one of her own family of about the same date, shows that her zeal for the conversion of the heathen, did not at all weaken her desire that her own kindred might be true followers of Jesus. After mentioning that a Burman teacher had been procured for them, &c., she says, "I often imagine myself in the midst of that dear family, where the happy hours of childhood flew away. Sometimes I fancy myself entering ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... contain? Is it a figure of resemblance, contiguity, or contrast? Is it a figure of diction or of thought? What is its effect? Does it give force or beauty to the sentence? How would the thought be expressed in plain language? Is it used consistently? In what way does it strengthen or weaken the sentence? Is the figure trite or original? Is it farfetched or natural? What percentage of sentences is figurative? Are figures more common in prose or poetry? Why? Do the minor or the ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... near the fire; and unable to master my impatience I unfastened a diamond brooch which pinned her ruffle. Dear reader, there are some sensations so powerful and so sweet that years cannot weaken the remembrance of them. My mouth had already covered with kisses that ravishing bosom; but then the troublesome corset had not allowed me to admire all its perfection. Now I felt it free from all restraint and from all unnecessary support; I have never seen, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... with a prestige that dumbs questioning and makes obedience a habit. Let that infallibility come to be doubted, as in Russia to-day, and natural impulses reassert themselves, the great impositions begin to weaken. The methods of the Chicago Commission would require a tyranny, a powerful, centralized sovereignty which could command with majesty and silence the rebel. In our shirt-sleeved republic no such power exists. The strongest force we have is that of organized money, and that sovereignty is too closely ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... of her popular novel Le Marquis de Villemer, first acted in 1864, is free from the defects that weaken most of her stage compositions. It is said that in preparing it she accepted some hints from Alexander Dumas the younger. Whatever the cause, the result is a play where characters, composition and dialogue leave little to ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... and his kind would become a terror instead of a provision. You are not oxen,— yet often you are as patient, as dull, as blind and reasonless as they! You form clubs, societies, and trades-unions;—but in how many cases do you not enter upon small and querulous differences which so weaken your unity that presently it falls to pieces and has no more power in it? This is what your tyrants in trade rely on and hope for; the constant recurrence of quarrels and dissensions among yourselves. No Society lasts which tolerates conflicting ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... reforms and decentralized economic decision making. Output quadrupled in the next 20 years and China now has the world's second largest GDP. Political controls remain tight even while economic controls continue to weaken. ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... in this place, to examine the influence of bodily endowments, and of the goods of fortune, over our sentiments of regard and esteem, and to consider whether these phenomena fortify or weaken the present theory. It will naturally be expected, that the beauty of the body, as is supposed by all ancient moralists, will be similar, in some respects, to that of the mind; and that every kind of esteem, which is paid to a man, will have something similar in its origin, whether it arise ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... preventing or repressing disturbance on their part. I earnestly concur in this recommendation. It is believed that the organization of such a body of Indian cavalry, receiving a moderate pay from the Government, would considerably weaken the restless element among the Indians by withdrawing from it a number of young men and giving them congenial employment under the Government, it being a matter of experience that Indians in our service almost ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Rutherford B. Hayes • Rutherford B. Hayes
... only cause of apprehension, this Government might last for ever—the last page of human history might contain a discussion in the American Congress upon the meaning of some phrase, the extent of the power conferred by some grant of the Constitution. It is, sir, these sectional divisions which weaken the bonds of union and threaten their final rupture. It is not differences of opinion—it is geographical lines, rivers and mountains—which divide State from State, and ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... first place, the opponents of caste should not weaken their case by talking nonsense; and, in the second place, they should remember, above all things, that, to use a common saying, "if you want a pig to go to Dublin, the best thing you can do is to start him off on the way to Cork." ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... while his speech was at intervals enlivened by remarks which elicited applause at the expense of the Democratic party, there was, nevertheless, not a single word which tended to impair the dignity of the speaker, or weaken the force of the great truths ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... manly in body or mind—Corpus virilemque animum effaeminat. That avarice weakens the mind, is generally admitted. But how does it weaken the body? The most satisfactory answer to this question is, in the opinion of Aulus Gellius (iii. 1), that those who are intent on getting riches devote themselves to sedentary pursuits, as those of usurers and money-changers, ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... You only weaken your power to heal through Mind, by any compromise with matter; which is virtually ac- [15] knowledging that under difficulties the former is not equal to the latter. He that resorts to physics, seeks what is below instead ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... done has, on the contrary, been founded on the opposite principle, on the voluntary and unqualified admission that the sovereignty belonged to the State and not to the United States, and that they could perform no act which should tend to weaken the power of the State or to assume any to themselves. All that they have done has been to appropriate the public money to the construction of this road and to cause it to be constructed, for I presume that no distinction can be taken between the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 2: James Monroe • James D. Richardson
... he could see his skin rise in giant blisters and heal almost at once to blister again. He screamed in agony, and heard a million screams around him. Then the other screams began to decrease in numbers and weaken in volume, and he knew that the slaves ...
— The Sky Is Falling • Lester del Rey
... are sunk in gross ignorance; and even in civilized nations, where education is free, the multitude have but a rude acquaintance with the elements of knowledge. Their ability to read and write hardly serves intellectual and moral ends; and such learning as they possess seems only to weaken their power to admire and love what is best in ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... himself in his letters and verses to have led just the life at Pisa which was most agreeable to former governments of Italy,—a life of sensual gayety, abounding in the small excitements which turn the thought from the real interests of the time, and weaken at once the moral and intellectual fiber. But how far a man can be credited to his own disgrace is one of the unsettled questions: the repentant and the unrepentant are so apt to over-accuse themselves. It is very wisely conjectured ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... old times and old writers to bear upon the taste and intellect of his day. What was in a manner foreign to his age, he naturalized and cherished. And he did this with judgment and great delicacy. His books never unhinge or weaken the mind, but bring before it tender and beautiful thoughts, which charm and nourish it as only good books can. No one was ever worse from reading Charles Lamb's writings; but many have become wiser and better. Sometimes, as he hints, "he affected that dangerous ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... represented by Mr. Lloyd George or Mr. Winston Churchill, had acted as arbitrator in every great industrial conflict, and had secured many minor concessions for the unions. As long as no critical conflict occurred that might materially weaken either the government or the capitalist or employing classes as a whole, this policy worked well. It was only by a railway strike, or perhaps by a seamen's or miners' strike that it could be put to a real test. By the settlement of the threatened railway strike of 1907 ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... any story that does not occur in consecutive minutes. It has been found that even the lowering of the curtain for one second to denote the lapse of an hour or a year, has a tendency to distract the minds of the audience from the story and to weaken the singleness of effect without ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... to me than I dreamt that anything ever could be again, to hear, in this perpetual obscurity, these extraordinary creatures—for even familiarity fails to weaken the inhuman effect of their appearance—continually piping a nearer approach to coherent earthly speech—asking questions, giving answers. I feel that I am casting back to the fable-hearing period of childhood again, when ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... when I past by Waltham, my foundation For men who serve the neighbour, not themselves, I cast me down prone, praying; and, when I rose, They told me that the Holy Rood had lean'd And bow'd above me; whether that which held it Had weaken'd, and the Rood itself were bound To that necessity which binds us down; Whether it bow'd at all but in their fancy; Or if it bow'd, whether it symbol'd ruin Or glory, who shall tell? but they were sad, And ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... to the bench with puckered eyes. Here was something he couldn't understand. It was a common thing to see pitchers gradually weaken, but Don had lost his effectiveness all in a moment. He dropped down on the bench and motioned for Don ...
— Don Strong, Patrol Leader • William Heyliger
... were arranged, and began to read out the names. It was a hard thing for her to have to award the three first prizes to a girl she detested; but Miss Pew knew the little world she ruled well enough to know that palpable injustice would weaken her rule. Ninety-nine girls who had failed to win the prize would have resented her favouritism if she had given the reward to a hundredth girl who had not fairly won it. The eyes of her little world were upon her, and she was obliged to give the ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... speak another word. To sing or speak thirty or forty counts with one breath is useful practice but poor performance. Occasionally, long runs in singing may compel an exception. Half-empty lungs lower the pitch of the tone, lessen the resonance, and weaken the voice, rendering the last note of the song and the last word of the sentence inaudible. The breathing must not be forced, but enough air must be furnished to produce ...
— Resonance in Singing and Speaking • Thomas Fillebrown
... the mind when men tell of finding gold in the ground, with the addition of this salt of science comes a savour of homely virtue, an aroma promising sustenance and strength. It confounds suspicion and sees unbelief, first weaken, and at last do reverence. There is something hypnotic in the terminology. Enthusiasm, even backed by fact, will scare off your practical man, who yet will turn to listen to the theory of "the mechanics of erosion" and one of its proofs—"up ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... this, when you interpose every sort of delay calculated to weaken Brutus, and to improve the position of Antonius? For how long will you keep on saying that you are desirous of peace? Matters are progressing rapidly; the works have been carried on; severe battles are taking place. ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... cruelty in the defense of the cause of Christ misrepresent him to the world. The act of Peter gave countenance to charges which would be preferred against Jesus, and further resistance would have compromised the position of his Lord. However well intended, such rash defenses weaken the cause they ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... were divided into a number of small communities; in the relation of these to each other, war or negotiation was constantly carried on; revolutions, conquests, and alliances frequently occurred among them. To raise the power of his tribe, and to weaken or destroy that of his enemy, was the great aim of every Indian. For these objects schemes were profoundly laid, and deeds of daring valor achieved: the refinements of diplomacy were employed, and plans arranged with the most accurate calculation. These peculiar circumstances ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... knew that Trebatius's skill in fight had grown rusty from want of use, and that as long as he remained inside the castle the spells which the fair Lindarasse had woven round him would weaken his arm and confuse his head. So the youth refrained from striking, and with his shield and sword defended himself the while from the blows which the emperor dealt in all directions—for his hand no longer followed his eye. And all the while the Knight of the Sun stepped gently backwards, drawing ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... which 'brave Kempenfelt went down, with twice four hundred men,' and the deck of the Victory, on which Nelson died 'for England, home, and beauty,' have alone been supposed to supply material for snuff-boxes to an extent which, if known, must considerably weaken the faith of their possessors in ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... is another proof of the excellence of our system, which contrasts favourably in this respect with the badgering and the prolonged moral torture to which a French prisoner is subject. Reforms, however, are needed which will not weaken these excellences. The absence of any plan for interrogating the prisoner avoids the abuses of the French system, but is often a cruel hardship upon the innocent. 'There is a scene,' he says, 'which most lawyers know by heart, but which I ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... of the white men, and many who professed to love the God of the palefaces now cast away such love and would have none of it. Taggarak was much grieved and indignant over the action of the white men, but nothing could weaken or ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... suppose I think there is a weak fibre in you? I've always adored the strength in you—even when it was rough enough to bruise me. Listen, dear; there's only one thing you might possibly weaken on. Promise you won't." ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... is one of the hardiest and most productive of fruits in the North, so is it often neglected, the patch allowed to become foul with grass, never thinned or trimmed, the worms eating the leaves until, in the course of time, the plants weaken and die. Along the fence is no place to plant currants, or, indeed, any other fruit; plant out in the open, at least 5 feet from anything that will interfere ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... furrowed by care and grief, but he held his white head high and stepped with an elasticity that he had not known in years. Defeat, disaster, sorrow, could not weaken him; he was of the old stock, the real beau-sabreur, a relic of the old regime, that grew young in the face of defeat, that died of a broken heart at the breath of dishonour. There had been no dishonour, as he understood it—there had been defeat, bitter defeat. ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... lines and forms are the stronger and more beautiful they will be. Whenever you break up forms you weaken them. It is as with everything else that ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various
... am just beginning to learn that there are other contagions than those of the body. Can we be sure, my good sir, that fear is not a disease? Do we know that love is not an infection? Can the criminal's gloves, saturated with his personality, be safe for the hands of an honest man? Don't we weaken by rubbing elbows with the weak? Are there not contagious ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... worlds—were all fused by a burning zeal for the salvation of souls. Such was Whitefield at twenty-five, and as such he was worthy of that ovation which he received at Boston, when governor and council went out in form to welcome him. The evangelist bore his honors meekly, and hospitality did not weaken the vials of wrath which he poured upon the unfaithful. He found, as he said, in New England 'a darkness which might be felt.' At Cambridge, he thundered at the deadness of Harvard and its faculty, and electrified the land by striking at its glory. The hearers alternately ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... my hands more than you weaken them," he said. "I am so sure that you would feel with me!—I know it so well! I have a long story to tell you, dear Faith,—some time, not now," he added, with a sort of shadow coming over his face. "Will you ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... ecclesiastical authority." Notwithstanding all this, the brethren took a hopeful view of their prospects. "To get a firm footing," they say, "among a people of a strange speech and a hard language; to inspire confidence in some, and weaken prejudice in others; to ascertain who are our avowed enemies, and who are such in disguise; to become acquainted with the mode of thinking and feeling, with the springs of action, and with the way of access to the heart; ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... was one of the ablest lawyers, most independent thinkers, and ardent republicans of the unquiet times. Witty and fearless, he had for years made a target of kingly rule; his acid cut deep, doing much to weaken the wrong side and encourage the right. His wife was as uncompromising a patriot as himself; his son, Brockholst, and his sprightly cultivated daughters had grown up in an atmosphere of political discussion, and in constant association with the best ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... relatively weak during sickness, for instance, because the normal amount of nervous energy which must accompany the mental processes of deliberation and choice is not able to be supplied. For the same reason, lack of food and sleep, working in bad air, etc., are found to weaken the will for facing a difficulty, though we may nevertheless feel that it is something that ought to be done. An added reason, therefore, why the victim of alcohol and narcotics finds it difficult to break his ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... process takes up the food, juices and gases, to support and augment the life of man. The pathological process, on the contrary, because the conditions for nutrition are ignored, reverses the upbuilding processes; and the organs of life wither, waste and weaken, until life goes out ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... narrowed the sphere of its operations. It is because a State Church is by its very conception hostile to such a principle, that we are justified in counting it apart from the private Churches with all their faults, and placing it among the agencies that weaken the vigour of a national conscience and check the free play and access of ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... endeavor to maintain; namely, that in the view of a court of equity this devise is no charity at all. It is no charity, because the plan of education proposed by Mr. Girard is derogatory to the Christian religion; tends to weaken men's reverence for that religion, and their conviction of its authority and importance; and therefore, in its general character, tends to mischievous, and not to ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... you in putting it in practice. There is nothing more injurious to the faculties than to sit poring over books continually without attempting to exhibit any of our own conceptions. We amass ideas, it is true; but at the same time we proportionally weaken our powers of expressing them; a power equally valuable with that of conceiving them, and which, tho' in some degree like it the gift of Nature, is in a far higher degree the fruit of art, and so languishes more irretrievably ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... first importance. Since old soil is often full of fungous spores left by previous crops, it is the wisest plan to use sterilized soil for the seed-bed. When the young plants are growing, constant watchfulness is required to avoid conditions that will weaken the seedlings and ...
— Tomato Culture: A Practical Treatise on the Tomato • William Warner Tracy
... all this time, he had received no hint that young Pyle had followed her from his house. He could only imagine the facts. When Lena left that place to go to Bishop Wycliffe's, she doubtless had an honest desire to escape from the unwelcome attentions she had told him of. She must have begun to weaken only after discovering that the man for whom she made the ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... into manlier mood, he said: "Don't worry about me, please don't. I can ride. I'm feeling better. You must not weaken. Please forgive my selfish complaints. I'm done! You'll never hear it again. Come, let us ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... sons and story. Fate must be met then, but the way in which it was met, that rested with a man himself, that, at least, was in his own power; there he might show his free will; and thus this principle, which might seem at first to be calculated to blunt his energies and weaken his strength of mind, really sharpened and hardened them in a wonderful way, for it left it still worth everything to a man to fight this stern battle of life well and bravely, while its blind inexorable nature allowed no room for any careful weighing of ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... continued his efforts, and in 1688 he put forth the most complete and masterly exposition of his beliefs, his 'History of the Variations of the Protestant Churches.' The Revolution of 1688-89 in England did not in the least, sad though it seemed, weaken his faith in the ultimate triumph of Catholicism. In France at that time the English revolution was not considered an assertion by the people of political and religious rights, but the carrying out of a detestable family conspiracy of a daughter ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... no part of his design to provoke Great Britain to measures which would convert her alarm for the Mediterranean peninsulas into open war with them, or in them, compelling France either to recede from thence, or to divert thither a force that might weaken his main effort. His aim was to keep anxiety keenly alive, and to cut short the resources of his enemy, by diplomatic pressure upon neutral states, up to the last extreme that could be borne without war ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... or soul that is unused or unexercised will weaken and die. The muscles if unused will grow weak, the mind if unused will weaken, and the will if unexercised will lose its power. Should God always keep us soaring aloft on the wings of peace and joy and blessings, without the exercise of the will, this important ...
— Food for the Lambs; or, Helps for Young Christians • Charles Ebert Orr
... the disasters and mistakes of the Northern campaigns. Naturally, it was magnified into a great military exploit, and raised the fame of Jackson to such a height, all over the country, that nothing could ever afterwards weaken his popularity, no matter what he did, lawful or unlawful. He was a victor over the Indians and over the English, and all his arbitrary acts were condoned by an admiring people who had but few military ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... Salter's" family, he found "Marryatt's Novels," "Sinbad the Sailor," "The Pirates' Own Book," "Jack Halyard," "Lives of Eminent Criminals," "The Buccaneers of the Caribbean Seas"; and being a great reader, he sat up nights to read these works. Their effect upon him was to weaken the ties of home and filial affection, diminish his regard for religious things, and create within him an intense desire for a seafaring life. Nothing but a long and painful sickness, together with ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... subdued, the provinces generally speaking remained quiet, and he counselled his parents to maintain a very firm attitude in face of the partial insurrection which was disturbing the South. In conclusion he told them that the foundation of their fortune was laid, if they did not weaken. ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... his life Graham saw his father weaken, the pitiful, ashamed weakness of a strong man. His voice broke, his face twitched. The boy drew himself up; they couldn't both go to pieces. He could not know that Clayton had worked all that night in that hell with the conviction that in some way his ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... They are akin to those who seek the theoretic poles of the earth, undaunted by endless defeats. With quickening breath they watch the electrons flame and fall, seeing the ultimate constitution of matter almost within their grasp, and yet they do not permit their dreams to blind or weaken them in their wearisome, ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... moralist! Your Lordship excites compassion as labouring under the same delusion. Slavery is a bitter and a poisonous draught. We have but one consolation under it, that a Nation may dash the cup to the ground when she pleases. Do not imagine that by taking from its bitterness you weaken its deadly quality; no, by rendering it more palatable you contribute to its power of destruction. We submit without repining to the chastisements of Providence, aware that we are creatures, that opposition is vain and remonstrance impossible. But when redress is in our ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... not drive out all the grace; it wounds the soul, it weakens it just as slight wounds weaken the body. If it falls very frequently into venial sin, it will fall very soon into mortal sin also; for the Holy Scripture says that he that contemneth small things shall fall by little and little. (Ecclus. 19:1). A venial sin seems a little thing, but if ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 4 (of 4) - An Explanation Of The Baltimore Catechism of Christian Doctrine • Thomas L. Kinkead
... you two. You carry on your shoulders the burden of other people's sufferings. It is well to feel and realise them, and the gift of sympathy is a beautiful thing, but our own individualism is also a sacred gift. It is not for us to weaken or destroy it by encouraging a superabundant sympathy for others. We each have our place in the world, whether we owe it to fate or our own efforts, and it is our duty to make the best of it. Our own happiness, indeed, is ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... some Encampments, likewise to the unwholesome Vapours of marshy Ground, and of corrupt stagnating Water: All which, joined to the other Hardships and Inconveniences unavoidably attending a military Life in Time of Service, often give Rise to numerous Diseases, which weaken an Army in a most surprising Manner; and therefore Commanders ought to use every Means in their Power, consistent with the necessary military Operations, to preserve ...
— An Account of the Diseases which were most frequent in the British military hospitals in Germany • Donald Monro
... have patience with her. Consider that she has been unfortunate in her associates. Consider that she has been a petted child all her life, and that you have helped to pet her. Consider how much your sex always do to weaken the moral sense of women, by liking and admiring them for being weak and foolish and inconsequent, so long as it is pretty and does not come in your way. I do not mean you in particular, John; but I mean that the general course of society releases pretty women from any ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... vain. The faith of Marcellus was too firmly fixed. It was founded on the Rock of Ages, and neither the storm of violent threats nor the more tender influences of friendship could weaken his determination. ...
— The Martyr of the Catacombs - A Tale of Ancient Rome • Anonymous
... continuing, Valerie fell to wondering what the two weeks would bring forth. That the fever would presently abate, and the ex-officer be spared his life, seemed highly probable. In fact, Valerie steadily refused to consider that he might weaken and die. What she was eternally asking was what would happen when the engine of the brain, at present running free, was once more engaged with the system it was used to control. Would the coupling break suddenly, and her man go ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... Krishna in the face. I grieve also for Draupadi who is bereft of her five sons like the Earth bereft of her five mountains. I am a great offender, a great sinner, and a destroyer of the earth! Without rising from this seat that I now occupy, I will weaken my body (by starvation) and meet with death. Know me who am the slayer of my preceptor as one that has sat down here in the observance of the Praya vow. An exterminator of my race, I must do so in order that I may not he reborn in any of other orders of beings![78] I shall forgo ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... in winter, by fishing through the ice. No sooner has the lake become frozen from shore to shore, usually after Christmas, than the whole surface becomes dotted with the shanties of fishermen, which remain until the ice begins to weaken in the spring. The typical fisherman's shanty on the ice-bound lake is about five by six feet in floor space, and six feet high. It has a window, and the floor is so arranged that it can be raised to keep the fisherman above the ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... Affairs a contemporary said of the low moral condition of the Fall River Indians in 1861: "The prejudice of color and caste, and the social proscription to which the colored people are subjected, has a twofold unfavorable effect upon them; first to detract from their self-respect and so to weaken the moral instincts, and then to throw them into the association of the more dissolute and degraded of other races, where they fall an easy prey to immoral habits. There are, however, in this tribe as well as the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... accord with the more or less uncertain materials dealt with. Complete safety, however, is assured, for it treats the arch as a series of blocks, and the cementing of these blocks into one mass cannot weaken the arch. Reinforcement can be proportioned in the same manner as for chimneys, by finding the tension exerted to pull these blocks apart and then providing steel ...
— Some Mooted Questions in Reinforced Concrete Design • Edward Godfrey
... want the kind of theology which is customary in the schools nowadays consigned to oblivion; I wish it to be rendered more trustworthy and more correct by the accession of the old, true learning. It will not weaken the authority of the Scriptures or theologians if certain passages hitherto considered corrupt are henceforth read in an emended form, or if passages are more correctly understood on which up till now the mass of theologians have entertained ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... stayed in place by a string carried taut from stick to stick, which was notched at the ends to hold it; sometimes the sticks were held with a tack at the point of crossing, and sometimes they were mortised into one another; but this was apt to weaken them. The frame was laid down on a sheet of paper, and the paper was cut an inch or two larger, and then pasted and folded over the string. Most of the boys used a paste made of flour and cold water; but my boy and his brother ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... expression of surprise to be a compliment to the ship's sailing powers; and so Fritz would not undeceive him by telling him his real opinion about the vessel. It would have been cruel to try and weaken his belief in the lubberly old whaler, every piece of timber in whose hull he loved with a fatherly affection almost equal to that with which ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... is akin to sacrifice; the body is tormented because the soul is beyond human reach. The fasting is done in order to render the body more accessible to the influence of the mind. Often, too, one fasts in order to weaken the body, in order to free the soul from its thralls and bring it into a closer relation with the powers regarded as supernatural. At all events, fasting and purifications were a sure sign that serious affairs were ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... Pitt studied her next day, and much doubted his mother's assertion. All the months of his last term in college had not been enough to weaken in the least Esther's love for him. It was real, honest, genuine love, and of very pure quality; a diamond, he was ready to think, of the first water. Only a child's love; but Pitt had too fine a nature himself to ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... couldn't live. Doesn't it seem too good to be true?" and Mrs. Allison watched Rodney's face as she added: "She is very poor. Captain Enderwood wished to marry her, he frankly told me so, but you know it would require more than poverty to weaken Lisbeth's resolution. The captain had heard her speak of me as her adopted aunt and he came all the way to Charlottesville to tell me about her. You see, her uncle and aunt in Philadelphia are dead and she has no kin in this country save ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane
... what until then had on my part been favor and friendship, would in future become so on hers. If her attachment was proof against my misfortunes, to this I knew she must become a victim, and that her grief would add to my pain. Should my disgrace weaken her affections, she would make me consider her constancy as a sacrifice, and instead of feeling the pleasure I had in dividing with her my last morsel of bread, she would see nothing but her own merit in following me wherever ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... with the hand, fill it with a little saltpetre mixed with the quantity of salt necessary, and lay it in a small stone pot, pour over it a small tea-spoonful of vinegar, and sprinkle a handful of salt over it, cover it closely and keep it for use. You must not wash it—that would weaken the gastric juice, and injure the rennet. After it has been salted six or eight weeks, cut off a piece four or five inches long, put it in a large mustard bottle, or any vessel that will hold about a pint and a half; put on it five gills of cold water, and two gills of rose brandy—stop it ...
— The Virginia Housewife • Mary Randolph
... players in first; it's the sitting with their pads on that upsets their applecart; that was another of my reasons for being so confoundedly close. You must try to forgive me. I couldn't help remembering how well you played up last trip, without any time to weaken on it beforehand. All I want is for you to be as cool and smart to-morrow night as you were then; though, by Jove, there's no comparison ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... time we hear no more of such disgraceful scenes as it has been necessary to record; but it was long before the old 'Family-Compact' party forgave the Governor who had dared to be impartial. By many kinds of detraction they sought to weaken his influence and damage his popularity; detractions probably repeated in all sincerity by many who were honestly incapable of understanding his real motives for forbearance. And as the members of this party, though they had lost their ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... of but little service to me. When he saw the strange inflammation in my eyes, he bled me several times; but it was too late. And those bleedings which would have been so proper at first, did nothing but weaken me now. They could not even bleed me in the condition I was in but with the greatest difficulty. My arms were so swelled that the surgeon was obliged to push in the lance to a great depth. Moreover, the ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... a trifle too big. Zaspar Makann was six inches shorter than Dunnan; there are some things no plastic surgery could do. Paytrik Morland, who had known Dunnan and had seen Makann on screen, ought to have known that too, but he either didn't think of it or didn't want to weaken a ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper
... industries of this nation must be a test of his loyal citizenship just as a man's attitude toward our army was a test. And Americans dare not continue to ignore the danger that lies in the work of those emissaries who are seeking to weaken the loyalty of our workmen and who by breeding class hatred and strife in our industries are trying to bring about the downfall of our government and replace the stars and stripes with the flag that is as ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... hold on power. Under the new conditions cliques or individuals among the gentry could only ally themselves with the possessors of military power, the generals or governors. In this last stage the struggle between rival groups turned into a rivalry between individuals. Family ties began to weaken and other ties, such as between school mates, or origin from the same village or town, became more important than they had been before. For the securing of the aim in view any means were considered justifiable. Never was there such bribery and corruption among ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... belonged, and the rivalry between the two sects had been brisk, not to say thoroughly bitter and almost mean, for a long time. Anything that would disgrace the family of the pastor of the opposing church would weaken the influence of the church itself, and the same would redound to the glory of the church in which the deacon officiated. I grant that this is a side issue, but side issues are often of more moment, in cases like this, ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith
... connected with the context, and how splendid it sounds!' He was answered, 'That is not the point. This modulation is forbidden; therefore it must not be made.'" The lack of really educative teaching, and the actual injustice for which Cherubini's disciplinary methods were answerable, did much to weaken Berlioz's at best ill-balanced artistic sense, and it is highly probable that, but for the kindliness and comparative wisdom of his composition master, Lesueur, he would have broken down from sheer lack of any influence ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... that "the English had made him high" and that he robbed and oppressed them. When the colonists demanded that he should give up to them any fugitive Pequots who had murdered white settlers, Uncas put off complying on one pretext or another, because he did not wish to weaken his tribe, which was still much smaller ...
— Once Upon A Time In Connecticut • Caroline Clifford Newton
... the old lady was powerless, he returned to the garden and tried once more to weaken the girl's resolution, but without success. It was with a very troubled mind that he took the train back to ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... Catholic ratepayers and by provincial grants. So far as the education of Protestant children was concerned Mr. Brown's advocacy was successful. He opposed denominational schools because he feared they would weaken or destroy the general system of free education for all. Under the agreement which was finally arrived at, this fear was not realized. In his speech on confederation he admitted that the sectarian system, carried to a ...
— George Brown • John Lewis
... encompassed in a year. So it seemed to Keith, who had known her only so long. With Mary Josephine the view-point was different. There had been a long separation, a separation filled with a heartbreak which she would never forget, but it had not served to weaken the bonds between her and this loved one, who, she thought, had always been her own. To her their comradeship was more complete now than it ever had been, even back in the old days, for they were alone in a land that was strange ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood
... forty thousand men, after being reinforced by Price from Missouri. This movable force could be thrown against either Corinth, Bolivar or Memphis; and the best that could be done in such event would be to weaken the points not threatened in order to reinforce the one that was. Nothing could be gained on the National side by attacking elsewhere, because the territory already occupied was as much as the force present could guard. The most anxious period ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... of this front is to choke off the lifeblood of terrorist groups—their access to territory, funds, equipment, training, technology, and unimpeded transit. This approach will therefore weaken terrorist organizations and their ability to conduct operations. Of particular importance is working to prevent terrorists from acquiring the capability to use chemical, biological, radiological, or ...
— National Strategy for Combating Terrorism - February 2003 • United States
... Lassiter, for what must hev been a second an' seemed like an hour, an' they went white en' strung. But they didn't weaken nor lose their nerve. ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... 1st Punjab Infantry from Bannu, and a wing of the 2nd Punjab Cavalry from Kohat. But events developed so rapidly that before the column was formed every one of these troops was otherwise employed. It was thought unwise to unduly weaken the Peshawar valley; the troop of Horse Artillery, therefore, stood fast, the 27th Foot was halted at Attock, and the 24th Foot and Kumaon battalion were kept at their stations ready to move towards the frontier. The Guides, 2nd Punjab Cavalry, and 1st Punjab Infantry were ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... England it may not be so, because the naturall coldenes of our Climate is sufficient without any assistance to further bitternesse, our best industry being to be imployed rather to get warmth, which may nourish and bring forth our labours, then any way to diminish or weaken ...
— The English Husbandman • Gervase Markham
... their sheaths. The skipper, the seriously injured and the dead woman remained on the deck. The skipper was in a black mood. He knew his people well enough to see that this unfortunate affair would weaken his power among them. They would say that the saints were against his enterprises and ambitions; that his luck was gone; that he was a bungler and so not fit to give orders to full-grown men. He understood all this as if he could hear ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... much blood-sucking to weaken one's prey out of a scrawny leg that resembles a twig wrapped round with leather. And the stoat found this out, too, and he would have shifted his hold to the bird's body like a flash, if he had been given a chance, ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... son, the heir to the title and estate. This necessity and this taste for wandering and exploring has helped in some degree to form the independence of character of our men, and also to strengthen rather than to weaken the ties of affection and kinship with the Motherland. Many men, "nobly born and gently nurtured," have thus learned self-dependence, to endure hardships, and to share manual labour with the humblest; and such an experience ...
— Native Races and the War • Josephine Elizabeth Butler
... been a great pity to worry so lovely a girl, in such a nervous state, with them. He remembered a savory text about being made all things to all men, which would bear application particularly well to the case of this young woman. He knew how to weaken his divinity, on occasion, as well as an old housewife to weaken her tea, lest it should ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... floor was covered with linoleum; the bedroom floor had a carpet. Swinging candlesticks were screwed into the wall here and there. It was more like the cabin of a ship than anything on land could ever be, and Jack Rotheram began to weaken towards it. ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas
... my Richard both in shape and minde Transform'd, and weaken'd? Hath Bullingbrooke Depos'd thine Intellect? hath he beene in thy Heart? The Lyon dying, thrusteth forth his Paw, And wounds the Earth, if nothing else, with rage To be o're-powr'd: and wilt thou, Pupill-like, Take thy Correction mildly, kisse the Rodde, And fawne on Rage with base Humilitie, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... bear!" Apart from that diversion, however, the debate, long and involved as it was, followed but three general lines. The whole is resolvable into three elements,—personalities, politics, and principles. There were the attacks which each made upon the other's record; the efforts which each made to weaken the other's position before the people; and the contrary views ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... said he. "The time is ripe, now, or will be in a week or so. Nothing can be gained by delaying any longer. Every day adds to their power and may weaken ours. Our organization, for the strike and the attack on the works, is as complete as we can make it. We must come to extreme measures, at once, or world-strangulation will set in, and we ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... 2nd, 1914, the Germans declared war on France, and the First field army of Austro-Germans crossed the Meuse near Liege. For two weeks the Germans delayed before Liege, expecting that the French would send several armies into Belgium and thus weaken the forces before Metz. The French generals refused the bait, and were ready when the German main army struck along the old road from Metz to Paris. The Germans were defeated and left 40,000 dead on the ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... into the same error, lad," said the captain, kindly. "The blame, if any, belongs to us all. Forget it, Charley, and don't let it weaken your self-confidence. Now what do you think of the ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... perceive their teachers and parents practically attaching more value to every other department of science than this. When young ladies are taught the construction of their own bodies, and all the causes in domestic life which tend to weaken the constitution; when they are taught rightly to appreciate and learn the most convenient and economical modes of performing all family duties, and of employing time and money; and when they perceive the true estimate accorded to these things by teachers and friends, ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... struggling now for mastery. It was not in the surrender of the box that he had felt David's triumph, but in the voluntary sacrifice of what that box contained. He wanted to rid himself of the picture, and quickly. He was filled with apprehension lest David should weaken again, and ask for its return. The locket meant nothing. It was a bauble—cold, emotionless, easily forgotten; but the other—the picture of the woman who had almost destroyed him—was a deadly menace, a poison to David's soul and body as long as it remained in his possession, and the Little Missioner's ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... as the immediate effect of such a law was concerned, it was against the interests of the democrats. The popular vote depended for its strength on the masses of poor who were crowded into Rome; and the tribune was proposing to weaken his own army. But the very name of an agrarian law set patrician households in a flutter, and Cicero stooped to be their advocate. He attacked Rullus with brutal sarcasm. He insulted his appearance; ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... should be done to impair or weaken the agencies at present engaged in the work of Indian education. Every such agency should be encouraged and promoted, except as other and better agencies are provided for the work. In particular, owing to the anomalous condition ...
— American Missionary, Volume XLII. No. 11. November 1888 • Various
... many fatal friends—the superciliously conscientious; the well-meaning but feeble-minded and blundering; the most offensive because least deceptive kinds of hypocrites. Mr. Malcolm, as acute as he was intellectually unscrupulous, well understood how to weaken or to ruin a just cause through these supporters. Sometimes he stood afar off, showering the poisoned arrows of raillery and satire. Again he was the plain-spoken friend of the cause and warned its honest supporters against these "fool friends" whom he ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... historical enquiry into the origin of religious creeds cannot, strictly speaking, invalidate, still less refute, the creeds themselves, though it may, and doubtless often does weaken the confidence with which they are held. This weakening of religious faith as a consequence of a closer scrutiny of religious origins is unquestionably a matter of great importance to the community; for society has been built and cemented to a great extent ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... strongly and an explanation of some kind was forthcoming. If so, it must be looked for among the secret archives of the Foreign Office. It was at once suggested that the Emperor made the revelation expressly to weaken, if not destroy, the Entente. One can conceive Bismarck doing such a thing; but it is more in keeping with the Emperor's character, and with the indiscreet character of the entire interview, to suppose it to be a proof of deplorable candour ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... is equal to the reflux; that to interrupt with unlawful recurrences, out of time, is to weaken the impulse of onset and retreat; the sweep and impetus of movement. To live in constant efforts after an equal life, whether the equality be sought in mental production, or in spiritual sweetness, or in the joy of the senses, is ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... extended his phalanx in long line and piled arms under the high cliffs; and to all appearance he was there encamping. The effect of this manouvre on the enemy in general was to relax the prepared bent of their souls for battle, and to weaken their tactical arrangements. Presently, however, wheeling his regiments (which were marching in column) to the front, with the effect of strengthening the beak-like (13) attack which he proposed to lead himself, at the same instant he gave the order, "Shoulder arms, forward," ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... horror of it—the getting rid of her! It don't weaken one bit, Simeon. I've brought her here for that, just that, and it shall be done. In some moods, for a minute or two, I rejoice in the thought of it. I want it. I'd even like to be there and see. Madame Vestris says that in my last incarnation I was a Roman ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... in this whole project of elevated lines was that for some time it was destined to be unprofitable. Its very competition tended to weaken the value of his surface-line companies. His holdings in these as well as in elevated-road shares were immense. If anything happened to cause them to fall in price immense numbers of these same stocks held ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... either that they should require Pompeius also to give up his force, or they should not take Caesar's troops from him: he said, "Whether they become private persons on fair terms or continued a match for one another by each keeping what he had, they would remain quiet; but he who proposed to weaken one of them would double the power which he feared." Upon this Marcellus the consul called Caesar a robber, and urged the Senate to vote him an enemy, if he should not lay down his arms. Yet Curio with the assistance ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... began against the Dardanelles the Government believed that the time had come for Greece to enter the war. The King refused to countenance the plan, arguing that the sending of forces to the Dardanelles would dangerously weaken the Greek defences on the Bulgarian frontier. Queen Sophia was regarded as bitterly opposed to the country joining the Allies, and was reported to have threatened several times to ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... entirely of a milky white stone from the quarries close to Toledo, rose in one single elevation from the base of the pillars to the vaulting, with no triforium to cut its arcades and to weaken and load the naves with superimposed arches. Gabriel saw in this a petrified symbol of prayer, rising direct to Heaven, without assistance or support. The smooth, soft stone was used throughout ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... but, as its influence thence originating does not extend beyond a certain limit, it is a matter of some importance to ascertain to what distance it does extend; because, if circumstances do not permit that the encampment be removed out of its reach, prudence directs that remedies be applied to weaken the ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... Excellencies that divert us from, or weaken a Publick Spirit, are always False and Hypocritical, that under a gaudy out-side conceals a rotten Carcass, full of Infectious Distempers that destroy the noblest end of our Being, The doing good to one another. Vanity has always been the Refuge ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... He grudged the hours of rest he must give his horse, pitying the poor beast for its lack of food and water, but compelled to urge it on and on. After what seemed a lifetime of hardship, both boy and beast began to weaken. The irresistible sleepiness that forebodes freezing began to overcome Little Wolf-Willow. Utter exhaustion was sapping the strength of the cayuse. But they blundered on, mile after mile, both with the pluck of the prairies in their red blood; colder, slower, wearier, they became. Little Wolf-Willow's ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... regarding the attitude of individuals toward questions of conduct, and the motives that impel toward this or that action. The question of ethical growth in society is a complicated one, and the most that can be said for any element of social constitution is that it tends to strengthen or weaken the individual's confidence in and regard ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... northeast to enliven his strokes. There was no wind, however, as yet, except, perhaps, an adverse stirring of the air—the first hint of a gale. On and on crept the punt. There was no lessening of the heat. Jimmie and Bagg fairly gasped. They fancied it had never been so hot before. But Jimmie did not weaken at the oars; he was stout-hearted and used to labour, and the punt did not lag. On they went through the mist without a mark to guide them. Roundabout was a wall of darkening fog. It hid ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan
... on the other hand, rested on Fisher's Hill, and between these two positions the wide plain lay like a chess-board between the players. And now began a series of moves, during which each side watched and waited for the adversary to weaken himself, or to make a mistake, or for some chance encounter to bring about an unlooked-for advantage. Finding his position at Cedar Creek, to use his own words, "a very bad one," Sheridan was about to retire to the extreme limit ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... he was peculiarly dear to the French, who were themselves speculating on such matters and preparing for their own revolution. It is of course easy to exaggerate the influence of sentiment in the case. France was glad to encourage America because the loss of the colonies would weaken the British Empire, and that was natural; but it is, I think, a mistake not to acknowledge the generous sentiments of the people and even of the grandees of the land. Voltaire and Rousseau had not been preaching in vain; the ...
— Benjamin Franklin • Paul Elmer More
... doubt that," said Laurence. "I'm positively sure that if a man is feeling the pinch all day long and everybody he comes in contact with is definitely against him, a momentary glimpse of someone who is seemingly sympathetic is far more likely to weaken his resolve than strengthen it. It makes him relax and even though you relax only a trifle it's the very deuce to get a grip on yourself again. You can see it when chaps are training—that extra cigarette—the whiskey and soda that isn't allowed plays the devil with their constitution. I ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... themselves all day, indulged in this sort of silent observation. Their window was narrow, and the mother, whose eyes were beginning to weaken as the result of hard usage, sat near the light against the drawn muslin curtain; her daughter's large armchair was a little farther away. She announced the approach of their daily passers-by. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... which slew, Sennacherib's Assyrian crew, Of him who's traitor hand shall dare To furl one fold that flutters there! And palsied be the traitor tongue, And from its root uptorn and wrung, That dares to utter but one word To weaken the soul-anchored cord, Which binds Canadians heart and hand In love to the old Mother Land! Bob Boyle, "I thank thee" that thy name Hath stirred the patriotic flame, In days like these, when treason's ...
— Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants • William Pittman Lett
... though you will not understand, that all laws weaken in a small and hidden community where there is no public opinion. When a man is absolutely alone in a Station he runs a certain risk of falling into evil ways. The risk is multiplied by every addition ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... one direction culture seems to weaken the moral fibre. The kind of courage which leads to quick heroic action in great emergencies is apt to be lost by the habit of balancing arguments for and against action. The gentleness which comes from quiet study ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... sensation to feel for the first time that you are in Granada. No amount of travelling can weaken the romantic interest which clings about this storied place, or take away aught from the freshness of that emotion with which you first behold it, I sit almost at the foot of the Alhambra, whose walls I can see from my window, quite satisfied for to-day with ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... the culture of piano music, with the result that he not only became the first pianist himself, but produced a set of compositions that had the effect of raising the art to the highest pitch of perfection; he was a zealous Catholic, and took holy orders, but this did not damp his ardour or weaken his power as a musician; he spent the greater part of his life at Weimar, but he practised his art far and wide, and his last visit to England in 1886, the year on which he died, created quite a flutter ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... forces in the recovery, from some diseases, at least, is the development in the body of a substance which acts as an antidote to the bacterial poison. So long as this antitoxine is not present the poisons produced by the disease will have their full effect to weaken the body and prevent the revival of its resisting powers to drive off the bacteria. Plainly, if it is possible to obtain this antitoxine in quantity and then inoculate it into the body when the toxic poisons are present, we have a means for decidedly ...
— The Story Of Germ Life • H. W. Conn
... while putting up the stovepipe. He had set his lip to bleeding because he forgot that it was cut, and drew it sharply between his teeth when the stovepipe fell apart just when he was sure it was up to stay. He had invented two new cuss-words. What he had not done was weaken in his determination to make that small schoolhouse a ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... the United States Marine Hospital authorities had stood back of their men. Now they began to weaken. The findings of the Federal Commission were kept out of the weekly service reports, and data of the epidemic were edited out of the public health bulletins, in disregard of the law. Even this subserviency ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... . . . . . . she eagerly heartened him: "Lo, the work of Weland shall not weaken or fail For the man who the mighty Mimming can wield, The frightful brand. Oft in battle have fallen 5 Sword-wounded warriors one after the other. 6 Vanguard of Attila, thy valor must ever Endure the conflict! The day is now come, 9 When fate shall award you ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various
... and Mr. Boston had been planned, she said, by the Malay; and when he and his native friends found that they could not induce Mr. Wright to further weaken his ship's company by sending another boat's crew on shore, so that the Union might the more easily be captured, she was ordered under the most awful threats to act as decoy. Resolved to upset their diabolical ...
— The Adventure Of Elizabeth Morey, of New York - 1901 • Louis Becke
... retain most accurately what you see? Can you reproduce either exactly or in correct substance what you read to yourself without any supporting aids to stimulate your memory? If you have this kind of mind develop it along that line. Do not weaken its power by letting it lean on any supports at all. If you find you can do without them, do not get into the habit of taking notes. If you can remember to do everything you should do during a trip downtown don't make a list of ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... appropriateness of the title, which is now inseparably linked with his baptismal name. He inherited the throne at the age of three years, and his early education was carefully attended to by his faithful guardians, who snubbed and scared him, in the hope that they might so far weaken his intellect as to secure a permanent control over him, and through him govern Russia as they pleased. They made a footstool of him sometimes, and a football at others, and, under their system of training, the development of those qualities of mind and heart for ...
— Strange Stories from History for Young People • George Cary Eggleston
... the force which he required, and Tostig set sail. William had not, apparently, much confidence in the power of Tostig to produce any great effect, but his efforts, he thought, might cause some alarm in England, and occasion sudden and fatiguing marches to the troops, and thus distract and weaken King Harold's forces. William would not, therefore, accompany Tostig himself, but, dismissing him with such force as he could readily raise on so sudden a call, he remained himself in Normandy, and commenced ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... character of John, and the little Henry of Winchester could have had no share in the crimes of his father. But the dead king had lately shown such rare energy that there was a danger lest the accession of a boy of nine might not weaken the cause of monarchy. The barons were largely out of hand. The war was assuming the character of the civil war of Stephen's days, and John's mercenaries were aspiring to play the part of feudal potentates. It was significant that so many of John's principal supporters were possessors of extensive ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... Charles Darwin among eminent Englishmen, was the son of a blacksmith and a farmer's daughter. Such pedigrees are striking; and yet, as Frederick Adams Woods has remarked, they ought to strengthen rather than to weaken one's belief in the force of heredity. When it is considered how rarely such an ancestry produces a great man, it must be fairly evident that his greatness is due to an accidental conjunction of ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... prone to fancies and superstitions in the night-time, and something in the sentiment saddened her. The unknown musician did not weaken the effect by playing another air; and Cecil towards morning fell into an unrefreshing slumber, in which her dreams seemed to parody the ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... father's feeling that it hasn't much to do with real life: especially now that he's got to make a speech in connection with the founding of this Missionary College. He may think that any hint of internecine strife will weaken his prestige. Mightn't you have ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... brought her, Proud she stood and calm and marvellously fair; Yet I saw her spirit—truth cannot dissemble— Saw her pure as gold, staunch and keen and brave, For she knows my worth and her heart was all atremble, Lest her will should weaken and make her ...
— Lundy's Lane and Other Poems • Duncan Campbell Scott
... to me so plain that, besides our religionists, our American education is playing in with the Kaiser's plans. It tends to weaken faith in our government. It makes unpatriotic citizens. Our colleges turn out young men who feel no political duties. We teach them to look for benefits without responsibilities. How different with the German universities! Our school histories, too, nurse active hatred of England, ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... China into Burmah, but among some of the wilder and more remote districts of Northern Szchuen, afforded reason to believe that henceforth traveling would be safer in China, and nothing that has since happened is calculated to weaken ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... great theologians ... Not that I want the kind of theology which is customary in the schools nowadays consigned to oblivion; I wish it to be rendered more trustworthy and more correct by the accession of the old, true learning. It will not weaken the authority of the Scriptures or theologians if certain passages hitherto considered corrupt are henceforth read in an emended form, or if passages are more correctly understood on which up till now the mass of theologians have entertained delusions: ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... and difficulties of life have more gradually and gently taught the lessons of endurance and silent courage that probably have to be learnt by all who are destined to develop and gather force as they go, and not to dwindle and weaken, as seems to be the lot of those less fortunate in circumstance or less well-equipped at birth for the struggles that in one form or another present themselves in ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... complete a masterpiece that its author probably did not care to weaken its effect by continuing at the time to bring out any of the supplementary treatises on Roman oratory for which his library, and still more his memory, had accumulated immense quantities of material. In the treatise De Republica, which was begun in 54 B.C., though not published till three ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... patients in bed and forbid them to rise or to make use of their muscles, we at once lessen appetite, weaken digestion in many cases, constipate ...
— Fat and Blood - An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria • S. Weir Mitchell
... When those floating bodies are disengaged from each other by the thaw, they sail away separately, maintaining their balance; but by degrees, as they near the south, where the water is relatively warmer, their base, shaken by the collision with other icebergs, begins to melt and weaken; it then happens that their centre of gravity is displaced, and, naturally, they overturn. Only, if that one had turned over two minutes later, it would have ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... grasp, and slackly hold, that which is good. Such energy of moral recoil from evil is perfectly consistent with honest love, for it is things, not men, that we are to hate; and it is needful as the completion and guardian of love itself. There is always danger that love shall weaken the condemnation of wrong, and modern liberality, both in the field of opinion and in regard to practical life, has so far condoned evil as largely to have lost its hold upon good. The criminal is pitied rather than blamed, and a multitude ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... almost if not quite at the same time as we had discovered them. I most fervently hoped it might be as I surmised, for, if so, I should have the fellow at advantage, inasmuch as he would doubtless have put a fairly strong prize crew on board the ship, which would proportionately weaken his own crew. Full of the hope that this Ishmael of the sea might be about to place himself within my power, I caused all hands to be called, and, having first made sail, sent them to quarters, the gunner at the same time descending to the magazine and sending up a plentiful supply ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... I was born either in Germany or Austria. That's all I know. And to tell you the honest truth, boy, it's the reason I've placed my woman-ideal so high. So long as I place her over my head I'm not foolish enough to weaken into thinking I can have her. What woman wants a man ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... distinction between the man and the scientist. It was no ordinary misanthropy that kept Captain Nemo and his companions sequestered inside the Nautilus's plating, but a hate so monstrous or so sublime that the passing years could never weaken it. ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... debate in the tribunate by a motion on the subject. He dwelt on the same motives as the senators had done. His proposition was carried with enthusiasm. Carnot alone had the courage to oppose the empire: "I am far," said he, "from wishing to weaken the praises bestowed on the first consul; but whatever services a citizen may have done to his country, there are bounds which honour, as well as reason, imposes on national gratitude. If this citizen has restored public ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... how my unhappiness increased in proportion as the social spheres on which I entered widened. God knows what efforts I made to weaken the decree which condemned me to live within myself! What hopes, long cherished with eagerness of soul, were doomed to perish in a day! To persuade my parents to come and see me, I wrote them letters full of feeling, too emphatically worded, it may be; but surely such ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... black strength if a rapid and uncontrolled increase in the number of black troops was to be avoided. And it had to be avoided, they believed, lest it create a disproportionately large pool of black career soldiers with low aptitudes that would weaken the Army. Using the quota to limit the number of black troops, they maintained, was not necessarily discriminatory. It could be defended as a logical reading of the Gillem Board's declaration that "the proportion of Negro to white ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... continual scolding and punishment in childhood, through its worriments and nocturnal enuresis; later on, beginning to affect him with all kinds of physical distortions and ailments, nocturnal pollutions, and other conditions calculated to weaken him physically, mentally, and morally; to land him, perchance, in the jail, or even in a lunatic asylum. Man's whole life is subject to the capricious dispensations and whims of this Job's-comforts-dispensing ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... proceeded on his way, halting every little while to catch his breath. When he turned a corner into a side street, recognizing every tree and gate and house, there came a gathering and swelling of his emotions and he began to weaken and shake. He was afraid he could not make it half way up the street. But he kept on. The torture now was more a mingled rapture and grief than the physical protest of his racked body. At last he saw the modest little house—and then he stood at the gate, quivering. ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... mentioned in Chap. III, Sec. 1, to all the ideas of descent, development and selection. That main objection is the permanence of species, observed through thousands of years; and the defense with which the descent and evolution theories successfully weaken it, is the statement of the fact that, since man appeared, no new species has originated, and that therefore the principle of the generation of species seems to have come to a stand-still. Now this fact is no ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... intellect than ordinarily falls to the share of human beings, and his education among Indians had taught him to treat those who were thus afflicted by Providence with more than common tenderness. Nor was there any thing in Hetty Hutter's appearance, as so often happens, to weaken the interest her situation excited. An idiot she could not properly be termed, her mind being just enough enfeebled to lose most of those traits that are connected with the more artful qualities, and to retain its ingenuousness and love of truth. It had often been remarked of ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... judgment was reversed, for now he knew that the jungle god would slay Simba and the old black was even more terrified of his own impending fate at the hands of the victor than he had been by the sure and sudden death which the triumphant lion would have meted out to him. He saw the lion weaken from loss of blood. He saw the mighty limbs tremble and stagger and at last he saw the beast sink down to rise no more. He saw the forest god or demon rise from the vanquished foe, and placing a foot upon the still quivering carcass, raise ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... a letter[373] which he addressed to the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, May 1, 1812, when he had received the recent British Order. He pointed out how astutely this step was calculated to undo the effect of Champagny's letter, and to weaken the American Administration at the critical moment when it was known to be preparing for war. He urged that the French Government should now make and publish an authentic Act, declaring the Berlin and Milan Decrees, as relative to the United States, to have ceased in November, 1810. "Such an act ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... was still clinging to him, with the ardent fervour of her own passion, she felt the rigid tension of his arms relax, the power of his embrace weaken, the wild love-light become dim ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... but it had upset her stomach. No doubt the thunder had shaken her stomach's confidence in the soundness of its opinions, so as to weaken its proselytising power. By and by, seeing that she ate a ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... withdraw a single man from here. They say it is so close to all those who have sought the shelter of the British Legation, so close to the women and children and those who are afraid, that it would be a crime to weaken this front. And yet there has been hardly a casualty among those sixty men during four weeks' siege, while elsewhere about one hundred and twenty have been killed ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... firm believer that the right use of hypnotism by intelligent persons does not weaken the will. Says he: "I do not believe there is any danger whatever in this. I have no evidence (and I have studied a large number of hypnotized subjects) that hypnotism will render a subject less capable of exercising his will when he is relieved from the ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... "rushed" and "snatched" lose rather than gain force by adding "hurriedly" and "hastily." Look up definitions of "rush" and "snatch." When we wish to express strong emotion or to describe action resulting from excitement, we only weaken the impression by using unnecessary words. Simple, direct sentences are most forceful. In aiming to secure sentence emphasis, then, we should avoid circumlocution, redundancy, tautology, and verbosity. (Look up these ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... major, "if our numbers were double; but it would weaken our attack by half—oh, by far more than half. No, Roby, I shall keep to the original plan. We don't know enough of the kopje, and in the darkness we could not ensure making the attack at the same moment, nor yet in the weakest places. ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... instructed by the leaders to make no effort to check it; it was deemed better strategy to tire out the opposition; it was decided to vote down every proposition to adjourn, and so continue the sitting into the night; opponents might desert, then, one by one and weaken their party, for they had no personal ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... history hitherto proves, however, that the popular form is practicable, and that with wisdom and knowledge men may govern themselves; and the duty incumbent on us is, to preserve the consistency of this cheering example, and take care that nothing may weaken its authority with the world. If, in our case, the representative system ultimately fail, popular governments must be pronounced impossible. No combination of circumstances more favorable to the experiment can ever be expected to occur. The last hopes of mankind, therefore, ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... well-merited compliment, that "it contained the ablest expositions of the true principles of finance ever delivered by an English statesman." Since that memorable defeat, Disraeli has lost no opportunity of attacking the member for Oxford University. To weaken his wonderful ascendency over the House has seemed to be the wish nearest his heart, and the signal failure which has thus far attended all his efforts only gives a keener edge to his sarcasm and increases the bitterness ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... just above which they remain, a little below the surface of the ground, with the head towards the root of the plant. Here they imbibe the sap by suction alone, and, by the simple pressure of their bodies become imbedded in the side of the stem. Two or three larvae thus imbedded serve to weaken the plant and cause it to wither and die. The second brood of larvae remains through the winter in the flax-seed, or puparium. By turning the stubble with the plough in the autumn and early spring, its imago may be destroyed, and thus its ravages may be checked. (Figure 237 represents ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... with a gloomy and despotic disposition to generate an unmitigated hostility to all innovations in religion; a feeling which the thought that his most formidable political opponents were also the enemies of his faith was not calculated to weaken. As his European possessions, scattered as they were over so many countries, were on all sides exposed to the seductions of foreign opinions, the progress of the Reformation in other quarters could not well be a matter of indifference to him. His immediate interests, therefore, ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... reached England in the beginning of 1787, from which period may be dated the commencement of her literary career. On her arrival in London she was affectionately received by the few friends whose attachment neither detraction nor adverse fortunes could weaken or estrange. During an absence of five years death had made inroads in the little circle of her connections; many of those whose idea had been her solace in affliction, and whose welcome she had delighted to anticipate, were ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... of milk, and hence its quality, is seriously affected by its adulteration. By this is meant the extraction of any of the food substances from whole milk; the addition of anything that tends to weaken or lower its quality or strength; the use of coloring matter to make it appear of greater value than it actually is; or the use of preservatives to prevent it from souring as soon as it ordinarily would. It is, of course, ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 2 - Volume 2: Milk, Butter and Cheese; Eggs; Vegetables • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... it was impossible ever to compassionate, and Hugh could not compassionate her now. She would have had no sort of tolerance for any melancholy or brooding grief; she would desire to be tenderly remembered, but she would have been utterly impatient of the thought that any grief for her should weaken or darken the outlook of her friends upon the world. Hugh resolved, with a great flood of strong love for his friend, that he would grieve for her as she would have had him grieve, as though they were but separated ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... my brave comrades. When I review these circumstances, I feel a secret and internal consolation which no reverse of fortune, no sentence in the power of this court to inflict, can deprive me of, or weaken in any degree. Under the flag of the French Republic I originally engaged with a view to save and liberate my own country. For that purpose I have encountered the chances of war amongst strangers; for that purpose ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... commanded at Boston, and to Sullivan and Greene, who commanded at Rhode Island. In his letter to General Heath he stated his fears "that the departure of the French fleet from Rhode Island at so critical a moment, would not only weaken the confidence of the people in their new allies, but produce such prejudice and resentment as might prevent their giving the fleet, in its present distress, such zealous and effectual assistance as was demanded by the exigency of affairs and the true interests of America;" and added "that it would ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... will be a just ground for reproach that we sacrificed their interests in a cause that was already hopeless. Moreover, if we refused the proposal which the British Government now makes to us, I am afraid that we shall considerably weaken our position in the eyes of the world, and thus lose much of the sympathy which to-day it ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... each spur. But I have watched the cultivators during the process, and observed the usual neglect; sometimes the spurs were shaved off completely, without a bud for next year's shoot, and at others too many buds were left, that would weaken and disfigure the parent stem. The instrument for pruning was similar to a very small reaping-hook, with a handle about a foot in length, and the delicate operation was conducted with a rapidity that rendered the necessary ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... that the whole group of concerns became insolvent (Oct. 1892), and the Liberator depositors and shareholders were defrauded of every penny of their investments. Many of them suffered great distress from the loss of their savings, and some were absolutely ruined. The result was to weaken confidence in building societies generally, and this was very marked in the rapid decline of the amount of the capital of the incorporated building societies. From its highest point (nearly 54 millions) reached in 1887, it fell to below 43 millions in 1895. On some societies, which ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... should be killed. That did not lessen the number of murders, and seems rather to have increased them; for the impulse to murder is commonly a very strong impulse, producing a brain condition in which consequences are not weighed. Also, when the community takes life for life, it appears to weaken the general respect for life, and men can be hired to do a killing job for small sums. Sentimental persons, too, insist on making heroes of convicted murderers, which in a degree, perhaps, counteracts the depressing conditions ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... custom. He therefore urgently begged Oberlin would go to his house, and conjure the ghost, for the purpose of either putting him in possession of the treasure, or of discontinuing its visits. Oberlin replied, that he did not trouble himself with the conjuration of ghosts, and endeavoured to weaken the notion of an apparition in the man's mind, exhorting him at the same time to seek for worldly wealth by application to his business, prayer, and industry. Observing, however, that his efforts were unavailing, he promised to comply with the man's request. On arriving ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 482, March 26, 1831 • Various
... and I make it with all my heart. Your brother favours me to the utmost, and it is likely that we might live and work together; anyhow, it is certain that he would have my best influence and support. I don't know what I could say more if I tried. I might only weaken what is ill enough said as it is. I only add that if it is any claim on you to be in earnest, I am in ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... is about to take an inspiration, he is sure to make a (previous) expiration; when he is going to weaken another, he will first strengthen him; when he is going to overthrow another, he will first have raised him up; when he is going to despoil another, he will first have made gifts to him:—this is called 'Hiding ...
— Tao Teh King • Lao-Tze
... do not hasten back we shall starve. Harry Powers has come to our rescue several times, but is beginning to weaken, and the outlook is very dreary. If you cannot come yourself, please ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... to the editors of a newspaper which had traduced him, with his name at full length. But after two nights' sleepless deliberation, the hopelessness of serving his friend, with a horror and disdain of being mistaken as one who would lend any arms to weaken government at this crisis, made him consent to repress it. I was dreadfully uneasy during the conflict, knowing, far better than I can make him conceive, the mischiefs that might follow any interference at this moment, in ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... helmets as the water poured into his suit. They saw him writhe and struggle desperately in the remorseless grip which held him. The two huge eyes of the cuttlefish surveyed his death throes minutely; watched his agonized struggles gradually weaken; watched his legs and arms relax, his head sink lower.... And then the tentacle let a lifeless body float ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... from stick to stick, which was notched at the ends to hold it; sometimes the sticks were held with a tack at the point of crossing, and sometimes they were mortised into one another; but this was apt to weaken them. The frame was laid down on a sheet of paper, and the paper was cut an inch or two larger, and then pasted and folded over the string. Most of the boys used a paste made of flour and cold water; but my boy and his brother could usually ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... he speaks of the air of Devon as "very healthy, temperate, sweet, and pure," and giving long life to the inhabitants, more particularly in the good old times, when men were content to live temperately and frugally, and did not weaken themselves with delicacies, but subsisted on the bare sustenance afforded by the earth. Indeed, in the most ancient times they lived on bark and roots, and on a certain "confection," of which if they took a small ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... is to say, if these two new lines do not too much lengthen out and weaken the amiability of the original thought and expression. You have a discretionary power about showing. I should think that Croker would not disrelish a sight of these light little humorous things, and may be ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... National Church in this its supreme hour, is that of assisting and sustaining it, if it be in our power, in the interest of dogmatic truth. I should wish to avoid everything, except under the direct call of duty, which went to weaken its hold upon the public mind, or to unsettle its establishment, or to embarrass and lessen its maintenance of those great Christian and Catholic principles and doctrines which it has up to this time ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... the same error, lad," said the captain, kindly. "The blame, if any, belongs to us all. Forget it, Charley, and don't let it weaken your self-confidence. Now what do you think of the plan ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... sacrifices for God and the salvation of the world. O fools and blind, not to see, that selfishness, idleness, luxury, pride, worldliness, slavery to fashion, neglect of the Bible, ignorance and lukewarmness are the things which disgrace and weaken the Church, and hinder ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... makes him eat the linen which envelops him. This reviving being, or oupire, comes out of his grave, or a demon in his likeness, goes by night to embrace and hug violently his near relations or his friends, and sucks their blood so much as to weaken and attenuate them, and at last cause their death. This persecution does not stop at one single person; it extends to the last person of the family, if the course be not interrupted by cutting off the head or opening the heart of the ghost, whose corpse is found in his coffin, ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... companies to call for hundreds of officers; it was merely a commando, whether it had ten men or ten thousand, and neither the subdivision nor the augmentation of a force affected the list of officers in any way. Nor would such a multiplication of officers weaken the fighting strength of a force, for every officer, from Commandant-General to corporal, carried and used ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas
... always as easy to give an account of it as to give an account what it is that shall keep together a material and immaterial substance. And yet the difficulty that there is to give an account of that, I hope, does not, with your lordship, weaken the credibility of the inseparable union of soul and body to eternity; and I persuade myself that the men of sense, to whom your lordship appeals in this case, do not find their belief of this fundamental point much weakened by that difficulty.... ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... Godhead He might have done, that he should not tempt Him, but permitted him to spend all his artillery, and received the strokes and assaults of Satan's temptations in His own body, to the end He might weaken and enfeeble the strength and tyrannous power of our adversary by His long suffering. For thus, methinks, our Master and Champion, Jesus Christ, provoked our enemy to battle: "Satan, thou gloriest ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various
... thick, and antiently wasted to a great depth: The Colliers, some Weeks agoe, having wrought as deep as they could, and being to remove into new Rooms (as they call them) did, by taking off, as they retired, part of the Coal that was left as Pillars to support the Roof and Earth over it, so much weaken them, that within a short space, after they were gone out of the Pitt, the Pillars falling, the Earth above them filled up the whole Space, where the Colliers had lately wrought, with its ruins. The Colliers being here-by out of work, some of them adventured to work upon old remains ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... twelve hundred and forty-three tons register, laden with sugar and rum. She was therefore a valuable recapture. She carried thirty-two passengers, and by great good luck her own British crew was also on board. It was not necessary, therefore, for me to weaken my own force by putting a prize crew on board her; my chief mate being quite sufficient to represent and watch over the interests of the Sword Fish and her owners. The individual who had been put on board her as prize-master, when she ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... orgasm, of turgescence in the fleshy envelopes, in the muscular layers which protect and inclose the abdomen, the thorax, the principal vascular trunks, and the bony surfaces, must essentially contribute to weaken, to deaden, to nullify, the effect of the blows. Is it not by means of an analogous state of orgasm, which an over-excited will produces, that boxers and athletes find themselves in a condition to brave, to a certain point, the dangers of their profession? In fine, it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... price controls and subsidies, but economic growth has remained sluggish. Sao Tome is also optimistic that significant petroleum discoveries are forthcoming in its territorial waters in the oil-rich waters of the Gulf of Guinea. Corruption scandals continue to weaken the economy. At the same time, progress in the economic reform program has attracted international financial institutions' support, and GDP growth will likely rise to at ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... should be tempted to waste their substance on white kids and "all-rounds," or to insist on becoming millionnaires at once, by anything I have said, I will give them references to some of the class referred to, well known to the public as literary diluents, who will weaken any truth so that there is not an old woman in the land who cannot take it with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... a pity," he murmured, with a sigh, "that men cannot select their mothers. My young friend John has builded, whether wisely or not, very well; but he has come back into the old life and carried away a part of it, and I fear that this addition will weaken the structure." ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... her reproachful eyes to Peg, and finished with a swipe at her offending nose with her sleeve, she had never looked more beautiful, and Peggy glanced away, fearing she might weaken. ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... and resolved to fulfil the object of his mission, or perish in the attempt. Whatever might be his own misgivings and apprehensions, he concealed them from his comrades, resolved that no disclosure of them should damp their confidence, or weaken ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... implanted gratitude in all living creatures. The lion, mentioned by Aulus Gellius, had it. [Footnote: Aul. Gellius, Lib. v. c. xiv.] It appears to me that culture, which brings luxury and selfishness with it, has a tendency rather to weaken than ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... charges on the grid. Since the stream of charged particles emitted by the filament must pass through the grid to reach the plate, the charges which the radio waves produce on the grid strengthen or weaken the stream of electrons emitted by the filament, and thus vary the current flowing in the telephone receiver circuit. The changes in this current cause the receiver diaphragm to vibrate, the vibrations causing sounds to be heard. Since the variation in the telephone receiver circuit is caused by ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte
... still in despair, breathing hard, but perfectly powerless. Its effects on him, too, were of a peculiar kind. They were not brutifying or blackguardizing. He was never intoxicated with the drug in his life; nay, he denies its power to intoxicate. Nor did it at all weaken his intellectual faculties any more than it strengthened them. We have heard poor creatures consoling themselves for their inferiority by saying, "Coleridge would not have written so well but for opium." "No thanks to De Quincey for his subtlety—he ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... be free, tho my name were accurst! What care I that I am called 'a blood-drinker!'" Well, let us drink the blood of the enemies of humanity, if needful; but let us struggle, let us achieve freedom. Some fear the departure of the commissioners may weaken one or the other section of this Convention. Vain fears! Carry your energy everywhere. The pleasantest declaration will be to announce to the people that the terrible debt weighing upon them will be wrested ...
— Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser
... of this was to weaken a little the friendship that had grown between Billy and Pete. Also Honey pulled a little way from Ralph and slipped nearer to his old place in ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... I am sure it is our duty to love it. I am sure we weaken ourselves if we do not. If I did not, I should be looking on mist, hearing a perpetual boom instead of music. I remember hearing Mr. Whitford say that cynicism is intellectual dandyism without the coxcomb's feathers; and it seems ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Divine care, is almost irresistibly driven to the belief that the soul's career is not completed with the present life upon the earth. Difficulties on theory he will naturally expect to meet in many quarters; but these will not weaken his faith, especially when he remembers that upon the alternative view the difficulties are at least as great. We live in a world of mystery, at all events, and there is not a problem in the simplest and most exact departments ...
— The Destiny of Man - Viewed in the Light of His Origin • John Fiske
... instructions on a matter so delicate as that "involving the rights and duties of sovereign and subject." He then declared that there was in England a strong desire for peace and for ending a contest in which the "two countries could only tease and weaken each other without any practical result," and at a time when England desired to carry her resources into the "more important field of European contest." He then gave Castlereagh's assurance, that the cartel-ship, the Neptune, should be respected, and expressed his own personal hope ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... Travis raged at it in the silent hours of his one-man watch; and the report had gone up the line now, three times since he had taken hold, of breaks on his division. And the engineer would by no means "weaken" on a question of the work, nor did the loyal watchman ask that any one should weaken, to spare him. He was all eyes and ears; he watched by daylight, he listened by dark, and the sounds that he heard in his dreams were sounds of water searching the banks, ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... think I've been in an incubator, don't ye?" snorted Harding. "Don't weaken! Don't be a coward, Jim! There's the line; toe it!" and he marked a crease in ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... cottage with Belinda, apprehensive that the talkative old dame might weaken the effect of her good sense and experience by a ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... with a view to what their neighbors think of them. When life resolves itself into a struggle for a bare existence, it makes for cowardice and selfishness. In time the strongest characters deteriorate with inferior associates and only small interests to occupy their minds. Wills weaken, standards lower unconsciously, ideals grow misty or vanish. Youth, enthusiasm, hope, die together. Ambition turns to bitterness or stolid resignation. Suspicion, meanness, cruelty, are the natural offspring of small intelligences ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... different from that which they had worn five years earlier. More and more France was drawn into the actual conflict of the Thirty Years' War, impelled by a sense of new and unparalleled opportunity to weaken the House of Hapsburg. This, in turn, meant the preoccupation of Richelieu with European affairs, and a heavy drain upon the resources of France in order to meet the cost of her more ambitious foreign ...
— The Founder of New France - A Chronicle of Champlain • Charles W. Colby
... who have ears to hear, what are the real enemies of love which can weaken it in its conflict with death. The Thracian women, those drunken bacchanals that own no law but their desires, stand for the lawless claim and attack of the lower life upon the higher. They but repeat, in exaggerated and delirious ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... bear the strain of the Mutiny, and to prove a source of strength and not of weakness. He put the right men in the right places and supported them with all his power. He broke up the old Sikh army, and reorganized the forces in such a way as to weaken tribal feeling and make it less easy for them to combine against us. He so administered justice that the natives came to know that an English official's word was as good as his bond. And, with the aid of Robert Napier and others, ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... passion for her will be stilled, but otherwise I cannot answer for myself. I shall fly, but flight will not bring me happiness. Leonilda charms me still more by her intelligence than by her beauty. I was sure that she loved me so well that I did not attempt to seduce her, lest thereby I should weaken my hold on her affections; and as I wanted to make her happy I wished to deserve her esteem. I longed to possess her, but in a lawful manner, so that our rights should have been equal. We have created an angel, Lucrezia, and I cannot imagine how the ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... into foreign countries; a proceeding which naturally tends to weaken their nursery, prejudice in favour of the Religion in which they were bred, and by removing them from all means of public worship, to relax their practical habits of Religion. They return home, and commonly are either hurried ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... my mission here may ensure the victory of freedom; may prevent torrents of martyrs' blood; may weaken the earthquake of impending war; and restore a solid peace. But be sure, the certainty of the European struggle does not depend upon your generous support; nor would my failure here even retard the outbreak ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... responsible for Viviette. That risk of horror he could not let her run. He had hoped, with a great agony of hope, that Dick would have seen it for himself. To formulate it had been torture. But he could not weaken. The barrier between Dick and Viviette was not of his making. It was composed of the grim psychological laws that govern the abnormal. To have disregarded it would have been a crime from which his soul shrank. All the despair in Dick's face, though it wrung his heart, could not move him. ...
— Viviette • William J. Locke
... President, who was against removing to Montargis and at the same time very averse to a civil war, embraced him, and, without giving the members time to consider what was urged by Broussel, Viole, and others to the contrary, caused him to be declared General, with a design merely to divide and weaken the party. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... with God? then live in prayer. Do you love to feel the holy flame of love burning in all its intensity in your soul? then enkindle it often at the golden altar of prayer. Without prayer the soul will weaken, famish, and die, the fountain of love dry up and become as a thirsty and parched desert. Do you admire the character Jesus? Behold his lowliness and humility, his gentleness and tender compassion. Have they any beauty and do you desire them to grace your soul? then draw them down from the skies ...
— How to Live a Holy Life • C. E. Orr
... universal to say that their sons, whose blood mingled so often upon the same field during the War of 1812 and who have more recently borne in triumph the flag of the country upon a foreign soil, will never permit alienation of feeling to weaken the power of their united efforts nor internal dissensions to paralyze the great arm of freedom, uplifted for the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 5: Franklin Pierce • James D. Richardson
... upon streets, upon public buildings, upon parks or almshouses or whatever the municipal government is concerned with. The head of a department is more or less dependent upon his committee, and in practice this is found to divide and weaken responsibility. The heads of departments are apt to be independent of one another, and to owe no allegiance in common to any one. The mayor, when he appoints them, usually does so subject to the approval, of the city council or of ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... quite as strongly as the moderate use of alcoholic liquors, to weaken and disturb the balance of action between the secerning and excerning systems of vessels, by which some persons become leaner and others ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... more than the diversion which such threats caused, by forcing Louis to take troops from the field for coast defence. It may be said generally of all these enterprises against the French coast, in this and later wars, that they effected little, and even as a diversion did not weaken the French armies to any great extent. If the French ports had been less well defended, or French water-ways open into the heart of the country, like our own Chesapeake and Delaware bays and the Southern sounds, the ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... England has raised the interest on * * * *'s mortgage one-third per cent., making an additional annual charge of L1,500 a year to him. I am very sorry for him, but I know nothing so likely to rouse the landed aristocracy from their apathy, and to weaken their idolatry of Peel so much as this warning note of the joint operation of his free trade and ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli
... intriguers and sycophants,—of persons who understand the art of managing minds which are at once arbitrary and weak, by allowing them to retain unity of will amid the most palpable inconsistencies of opinion, so that inconstancy to principle shall not weaken force of purpose, nor the emphasis be at all abated with which they may bless to-day what yesterday they cursed. Thus the abhorrer of traitors has now become their tool. Thus the denouncer of Copperheads has now sunk into dependence on their support. Thus the imposer of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... for Potemkin?" said he. "Spare your tears. He loves no one but himself, and his only aim in life is to enervate and weaken YOUR mind, that he may reign in ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... "That which tends to weaken life is the only evil, that which strengthens life the only good, and the result of this puritanical Catholicism ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... I was at our neighbor's and as a reward was presented with a little wooden cuckoo. Up to half past seven I was in good spirits and played with our pug-dog, at quarter to eight I began to weaken, but toward eight I was a man again, because Meta entered with a face full of malicious enjoyment, and I sat out courageously, the new primer, with John Ballhorn's egg-laying cock under my arm. My mother went with me in ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... was to weaken the armies invading Virginia, by harassing their rear. As a line is only as strong as its weakest point, it was necessary for it to be stronger than I was at every point, in order to resist my attacks.... It is just as legitimate to fight an enemy in the rear as in front. ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head
... United States.—'I do not fear bolshevism in this country. I do not mean that in congested centers foreigners and agitators will not have influence. But Americans as a whole have a deep love for America. It is a vital love that the sensational appeals of bolshevists and agitators cannot weaken'." ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... time, the invaders charged that wall of living horn. And two at a time they were swept against the walls, or slashed in two by the enormous mandibles. One against an army; but it was a full minute or so before the one began to weaken. ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst
... powers of endurance, but as a rule no Indian is the equal of his white brother, due as much perhaps to lack of mental force as to generations of insufficient clothing and inanition, so it was not surprising that as the long afternoon dragged to a close the Aleut guide began to weaken. He paused with more frequency, and it required more effort to start him; he fell oftener and rose with more difficulty, but the others were dependent upon his knowledge of the trail, and ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... the rest? Nay, the very torpor of the reasoning faculty has often kindled the imaginative. Lucretius composed his sublime poem under the influence of a delirium. The susceptibilities that we create or refine by the pursuit of one object, weaken our general reason; and I may compare with some justice the powers of the mind to the faculties of the body, in which squinting is occasioned by an inequality of strength in the eyes, and discordance of voice by the same inequality in ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... in the same manner in the Philippines, a similar bad result would ensue; the pressure of mill rollers would discolour the fibre, and the soaking with 48 per cent. of pulp, before being sun-dried, would weaken it. ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... place in the flooded cabin. Others landed, the whole story was told and knives were returned to their sheaths. The skipper, the seriously injured and the dead woman remained on the deck. The skipper was in a black mood. He knew his people well enough to see that this unfortunate affair would weaken his power among them. They would say that the saints were against his enterprises and ambitions; that his luck was gone; that he was a bungler and so not fit to give orders to full-grown men. He understood all this as if he could hear their grumbled words—nay, ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... things would be more distasteful to me than any attempt to laugh at Mr. Darwin; but I must own that I have myself to thank for the misconception, for I felt sure that my intention would be missed, but preferred not to weaken the chapters by explanation, and knew very well that Mr. Darwin's theory would take no harm. The only question in my mind was how far I could afford to be misrepresented as laughing at that for which ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... several Western States. In 1896 Democrats and Populists combined to nominate William Jennings Bryan as their candidate, with a programme the main plank of which was the free coinage of silver, which, it was thought, would weaken the hold of the moneyed interests of the East upon the industries of the Continent. The Eastern States, however, voted solid for the gold standard, and were joined, in the main, by those Southern States ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... the mendicant friars in the vigorous verse of the 'Franciscanus.' He encouraged by his presence the public performance of a play" which, by its exposure of the vices of the clergy, contributed greatly to weaken their influence. "He enforced the object of that remarkable drama by exhorting the bishops to reform their lives, under a threat if they neglected his warning that he would deal with them after the fashion of his uncle of England" or his cousin of Denmark. "He repeated the exhortation ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... the lecture. All that I could have said on this point has been so much more ably stated by one whose enlightened view of geological science has taken away some difficulties from its cultivators, and, I hope, removed a stumbling-block from many respectable individuals, that I should only weaken by adding to the argument. [I allude to the critique of Dr. Ure's Geology in the British Review, for July, 1829; an Essay, equally worthy of a ...
— Decline of Science in England • Charles Babbage
... the composition may seem superficially, you may treat it simply. You will control it by not considering any part as of any importance in itself, but only as it helps the whole; and you may strengthen or weaken that part as you need to. Don't cut the thing up too much. Let a half a dozen objects count as one in the whole. Mass things, simplify the masses, and make the elements of the masses hold as only parts of ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... avoid her mad rushes, the terrible tension of my nervous system produced by the spectacle of such exquisite and prolonged suffering, were weakening me beyond what I should have thought it possible an hour before for anything to weaken me. In fact, I felt my strength leaving me. A terror such as I had never yet felt was taking possession of my mind. I sickened at the sight before me, and at the thought of agonies yet to come. 'My God I exclaimed, 'must I be killed by my own horse in this miserable car!' ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... the nation to make the loan popular, treating it as sacred, and thus save twenty or thirty millions in interest annually by reducing interest one per cent, than to attempt to save two thirds that amount by taxes, which would inspire lenders with distrust, injure the credit of the nation, and weaken its resources ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... face. When his bedtime came, Mr Benson told him of the hour, although he feared that Leonard would have but another sorrowful crying of himself to sleep; but he was anxious to accustom the boy to cheerful movement within the limits of domestic law, and by no disobedience to it to weaken the power of glad submission to the Supreme; to begin the new life that lay before him, where strength to look up to God as the Law-giver and Ruler of events would be pre-eminently required. When Leonard had gone upstairs, Mr Benson went immediately to Ruth, ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... alone," she insisted, one morning of the last week. "What can you do by speaking to her about it? Don't you see that she is making the best fight she can? You will weaken her if you interfere. It's less than a week now, and if you can only hold out, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... savage fury of Swift, watch with a prophet's indignation the heedless waste of faculty and opportunity, the triumph of paltry motive and paltry aim, as if we were the flies of a summer noon, which do more than any active malignity to distort the noble lines, and to weaken or to frustrate the strong and healthy parts, of human nature. For practical purposes all these complaints of man are of as little avail as Johnson found the complaint that of the globe so large a space should be occupied by the uninhabitable ocean, ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... were often meant. (4) "Well fit". In this passage "wert", the reading of A and D, has been followed, instead of unwert of B and C, as it seems more appropriate to the sense. (5) "Dight", 'arrayed'; used by Milton. (6) "Brunhild". The following words are evidently a late interpolation, and weaken the ending, but have been translated for the sake of completeness. ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... Here Taine indicates how subversive parties may proceed to weaken a nation prior to ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... all to the periphery. Something has happened within the soul which can never be obliterated. As Eucken says: "The contradiction is now removed from the centre to the periphery of life; it can therefore only touch us from without, and is not able to overthrow what is within; it will not so much weaken as strengthen the certainty, because it calls life to a perpetual renewal and brings to fruition ...
— An Interpretation of Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy • W. Tudor Jones
... and internal dissensions in the leagues of cities helped to weaken the towns as guarantors of the trade of their citizens. As a result of these political influences, before the fifteenth century was over the distribution of commerce was much changed and municipal ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... by the process of unceasing elections. The spirit of the age and country is to accumulate power in the hands of the multitude: to shorten terms of service in high public places; to multiply elections, and diminish executive power; to weaken all agencies protective of property, or repressive of crime; to abolish capital punishments and imprisonment for debt. Slavery, intemperance, land-jobbing, bankruptcy, and sundry controversies with Great Britain, constitute ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... patriot army,—was distinguished by a remarkable dignity of manners and deportment: the style of his sentiments, naturally lofty, was now exalted by love: and finally he had in all probability saved Miss Walladmor's life. These were strong appeals to a young heart: doubtless it did not weaken them that the noble expression of his countenance was then embellished by the graces of early youth (for he was not twenty), and yet unsaddened by internal suffering—which has since given him the ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... expansions, new departments and publicity will compel the command of about that much money," Mr. Trimmer patiently explained; "and while we could appropriate that amount from our respective concerns, we ought not to weaken our capital, particularly as financial affairs throughout the country are so unsettled. This is not a brisk commercial year, nor ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... Caciques' idea that the Turk was to lose the strangers there, or to weaken them beyond resistance by thirst and hunger and hostile tribes. But the buffalo had come south that winter for the early grass. They were so thick they looked like trees walking, to the Spaniards as they lay on the ground and saw ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... we should examine the chances and changes which each man is likely to meet in marriage, and which may weaken him in that struggle from which our champion should ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... at Suzanna. The reaction from her days of hard and continuous work was setting in. She merely said: "Suzanna, we must make that dress last a long time. I made it so that it can be lengthened five inches. We can't weaken it by cutting the goods away from under the lace. Now, dear, go and see that the children aren't in ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... first demanded reinforcements as a right, that he must shift for himself. Then he would have kept these boats by him, and triumphantly fought his way in them to the Equator. But his trust in the Government, notwithstanding all his experience, led him to weaken his own position in the hope of facilitating their movements, and he found their aid a broken reed. In only one passage of his journal does Gordon give expression to this view, although it was always present to his mind:—"Truly the indecision of our Government has been, from a ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... his friends. If you have trouble with him, his friends will be against you when we want to nominate you for a second term. The county is getting close. If we go to conwention without your home delegation it would weaken you, and if we nominate you, every piece of trouble like this cuts down your wote. You ought to line him up and have him ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... the whole, and for the interest of us all, that it should be so: nor would I willingly in my own person manifest a disregard of such salutary feelings, nor in act or word do anything to weaken them; but, on the one hand, as my self-accusation does not amount to a confession of guilt, so, on the other, it is possible that, if it did, the benefit resulting to others from the record of an experience purchased at so heavy a price might compensate, by a vast overbalance, for any violence ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... although he would not gratify it: he loved me too well to sacrifise me to this inclination, and that he had now visited this house that by reviving the memory of my mother whom he so passionately adored he might weaken the present impression. This was possible; but it was a mere conjecture unfounded on any fact. Could there be guilt in it? He was too upright and noble to do aught that his conscience would not approve; I did not yet know of the crime there may be in involuntary feeling and ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... service. I was brought into communication with people of different nations, different characters, and different modes of thinking; of different politics, philosophy, and religion; all of which has a tendency to eradicate or weaken early prejudices, liberalize opinions, and inculcate charitable views of human nature. While such a relation with people of other countries can never diminish the feeling of patriotism in a well-balanced mind, it will lead a persons to discover, acknowledge, and respect, ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... rather depends upon it. But now I realised, if never before, that to betray the slightest sign of gentleness would be to forever forfeit my standing as master in my own house. Conrad saw no twinkle. He began to weaken. ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... institutions, the solitary dissociation of America from the history and the achievements of the Old World, the melancholy absence of monuments of past greatness and worth,—these and many other circumstances peculiar to our position all serve to weaken the general interest in what are called classical studies, and to direct the attention of the most ambitious and active minds far too exclusively to the pursuits of science. And when to these circumstances peculiar to ourselves is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... hammer was struck, by some inconceivable fortuity, at the moment when the Duchesse de Fontanges expired. Her death did not weaken my resolutions nor slacken my ardour. I got away quite often to cast an eye over the work, and ordered my architect to second my impatience and spur ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... the softness of the bones, induced by want of exercise, together with tight dressing, which tends to weaken the muscles that are thus thrown out of use. Improper and long continued positions in drawing, writing, and sleeping, which throw the weight of the body on one part of the spine, induce the same evil. This distortion is usually accompanied with some consequent disease ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... alternative of an early marriage presented itself. He might hasten the wedding, and then take Phillida to Europe, where the sight of a religious life quite different from her own would tend to widen her views and weaken the ardor of her enthusiasm. He wondered what would be the effect upon her, for instance, of the stack of crutches built up in monumental fashion in one of the chapels of the Church of St. Germain des Pres at Paris—the ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... African home, was almost completely destroyed, and in its place in America arose sexual promiscuity, a weak community life, with common dwelling, meals, and child nurseries. The internal slave trade tended further to weaken natural ties. A small number of favored house servants and artisans were raised above this—had their private homes, came in contact with the culture of the master class, and assimilated much of American civilization. ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois
... Grimm better than you do," she argued. "You think he will weaken; I know he will not. I am not arguing for him, nor for myself; I am arguing against the frightful loss that will come here in this room if the compact is ...
— Elusive Isabel • Jacques Futrelle
... he said, "Sir, you talk the language of a savage. What! sir, would you prevent any people from feeding themselves, if by any honest means they can do it?" It was "better to hang or drown people at once," than weaken them by unrelenting persecution. He felt some tenderness for Catholics, especially when oppressed, and a hearty antipathy towards prosperous Presbyterians. The Lowland Scotch were typified by John Knox, in regard to whom he expressed a hope, after viewing the ruins ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... the performer stands, and extracts a succession of soft tones, by striking on the gongs with two small sticks. Another circular instrument (the boundah) serves as a bass; it contains an equal number of different-sized drums, on which the musician strikes with violence, with a view perhaps to weaken the shrill, discordant notes of a very rude species of flageolet, and of an equally imperfect kind of trumpet, which are usually played with a total disregard of time, tune, or harmony. Two or three other instruments, similar in principle to the violin, complete the orchestra. To Europeans, there ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... go after them with the rifle," he said, "but they must now be very far away, and soon the night will fall and the tracks will be invisible. The buffalo is badly wounded, and I have a hope that he will fall. In any case he will weaken through loss of blood, and if he should rush at Saba, Saba will be able to run away. Yes! he may return during the night, ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... or vessels necessary to protect the landing, either real or pretended, of the Americans, should anchor in those channels. The enemy would then be obliged either to disperse among the forts, and thereby to weaken their lines, or else to leave the field open to the Americans, who, by a diversion upon the lines, would force the enemy to have them fully manned, and prevent them attending ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... the very reason that they are so elaborately explained. Printer's ink, when used as a pigment or pencil, should be used sparingly, with a few, sharp, clear, bold touches, and without painful finish or niggling. What amplification would not weaken instead of heightening the effect of "the copse-wood gray that waved and wept on Loch Achray"? Breadth, distance and atmosphere are obscured by H. H.'s carefully itemized foregrounds. But the itemizing is done admirably and con amore by one who is a botanist, a poet and an observer. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... They replied that they were from the Mountain of the Holy Priest, from the Hill of Tollan. When Quetzalcoatl heard this, he ordered them to be admitted, and asked their business. They offered him the pulque, but he refused, saying that he was sick, and, moreover, that it would weaken his judgment and might cause his death. They urged him to dip but the tip of his finger in it to taste it; he complied, but even so little of the magic liquor overthrew his self control, and taking the bowl he quaffed a full draught and ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... the trade routes from India to the Levant, he demonstrated that the Arabs were enriched at the expense of Christian Europe. Yet beyond the narrow confines of Syria were the Mongols, well disposed toward Christians, but enemies of Mohammedan Arab and Turk. First weaken the Moslem powers, said Sanuto, by an embargo on all exports of provisions and munitions of war to Syria and Egypt, and then overthrow them by a combined attack of Christian and Mongol armies. The great end would thus be attained: a Christian fleet on the Indian Ocean, ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
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