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Weakness   /wˈiknəs/   Listen
Weakness

noun
1.
A flaw or weak point.  Synonym: failing.
2.
Powerlessness revealed by an inability to act.  Synonyms: helplessness, impuissance.
3.
The property of lacking physical or mental strength; liability to failure under pressure or stress or strain.  "The weakness of the span was overlooked until it collapsed"
4.
The condition of being financially weak.
5.
A penchant for something even though it might not be good for you.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Weakness" Quotes from Famous Books



... (road) vojo. Way (sea) marrodo. Way (manner) kutimo, maniero. Way, Milky lakta vojo. Way, in that tiel, tiamaniere. Way out (exit) eliro. Wayfarer vojiranto. Waylay inside ataki. Wayward memvola. We ni. Weak malforta. Weak (to become) malfortigxi. Weaken malfortigi. Weakness malforteco. Weal felicxeco. Wealth ricxeco. Wealthy ricxega. Wean (a child) debrustigi. Wean (alienate) forigi, forigxi. Weapon batalilo. Wear (use as clothes) porti. Wear away (decay by use) eluzi. Wear away (to decline) konsumigxi. Weariness enuo, laceco. Wearisome ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... I admit, but age and experience will teach him that logic does not rule the world; some of its greatest actions could not bear the pressure of a syllogism. We must meet the world as it is, not as we would make it. Is it not you who show logical weakness in preparing for this ideal world that has no existence outside your own dreams and ignoring the world of hard facts you will have ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan

... carefully, but Tom had preceded and originated, and Mr. Furze had followed, and, in order not to appear slow of comprehension, had frequently assented when he did not understand—a most dangerous weakness. To his surprise he found that his tender of 850 pounds was accepted. There was much work to be done which was not in his line, but had been put into his contract in order to save subdivision, and consequently arrangements ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford

... maternal uncle Hugh Brodie of Langcroft, a small landowner in Lochwinnoch, evidenced poetic powers by composing "A Speech in Verse upon Husbandry."[75] When a mere youth, Tannahill wrote verses; and being unable, from a weakness in one of his limbs to join in the active sports of his school-fellows, he occasionally sought amusement by composing riddles in rhyme for their solution. As a specimen of these early compositions, we submit the following, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various

... and Upanishads mix up ritual with physical and metaphysical theories in the most extraordinary fashion, their main motive deserves sympathy and respect. Their weakness lies in their inability to detach themselves (as the Buddha succeeded in doing) from a ritual which though elaborate was neither edifying nor artistic: they seem unable to see the great problems of existence except through the mists of altar smoke. Their merit is their evident conviction that ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... rose again, but ere he reached the chapel fell once more, and now his will was paralyzed. In mortal terror he clung to a cross, and as his senses failed, thought of "the word." It seemed as if some one had called the right one, and from pure Weakness and fatigue, he ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... consumption, and who, in the mysterious providence of our race, wander abroad in search of health and find a Realm. His alertness, however, and the brilliance of his eye; his winning, almost obsequious address, and the hooked clutch of his gestures betrayed an energy that no physical weakness could conquer. He invited me to enter, and begged ...
— On Something • H. Belloc

... was her return to the village strand on any previous occasion, whether baptismal, or hymeneal, more numerously attended than on that day; for men, women, naked children, and snarling dogs came to the water's side to greet her, without any reference to numerical force, or moral weakness. ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross

... was shouted, and the room rang with it. John Baxter, whose weakness had hitherto been so great that he could not turn himself in bed, was leaning on his elbow and pointing with outstretched finger ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... himself should be enjoyed by her. 'I have lost my rank,' he said, 'forfeited it, if you will; but she is the Countess Katarina of Montepone, and I should like to know that she and my descendants after her should live the life that my ancestors lived. It is a weakness, a folly, I know; but we have all our weak points and our follies. At any rate I see that that fancy could not well be carried out in France or in Italy, but it may be in England.' At any rate, after all he has told me I feel that he has it in his power ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty

... bed quiet, content, and happy. It wakes up a little demon, bristling with crossness, and determined not to "be good." The breath of life carefully shut out, death has begun its work, and you are responsible. And the same criminal blunder causes not only the child's suffering, but also the weakness which makes many a delicate woman complain that it "takes till noon to ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell

... be sympathetic or agreeable about Lady Mary's engagement. Firstly, she had not been consulted about it. The thing had been done, she considered, in an underhand manner; and Lady Maulevrier, who had begun by strenuously opposing the match, had been talked over in a way that proved the latent weakness of that great lady's character. Secondly, Miss Mueller, having herself for some reason missed such joys as are involved in being wooed and won, was disposed to look sourly upon all love affairs, and to take a despondent view of ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... an unusual international situation in China which immediately involved several European nations and eventually affected America. The Chinese-Japanese War, which came to a close in 1895, had uncovered to the world the weakness of China as a military power and had weakened the hold of the reigning monarch upon the people of the Empire. Thereupon the leading commercial nations of Europe began to seize portions of China in order to extend their trade relations in the Far East. ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley

... mistake to take the word of political adversaries for a man's character, but adversaries sometimes only say out aloud what is already suspected by friends. The coarse account given by the Count of Provence shows us where Turgot's weakness as a ruler may have lain. He was distant and stiff in manner, and encouraged no one to approach him. Even his health went against him, for at a critical time in his short ministry he was confined to bed by gout for four months, and he could see nobody save clerks and secretaries. The very austerity, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Turgot • John Morley

... claim," remarks Engelmann, "that woman in her natural state is the physical equal of man, and constantly point to the primitive woman, the female of savage peoples, as an example of this supposed axiom. Do they know how well this same savage is aware of the weakness of woman and her susceptibility at certain periods of her life? And with what care he protects her from harm at these periods? I believe not. The importance of surrounding women with certain precautions during the height of these great functional waves of her existence ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... they are still constant in resistance to an invasion dangerous in an altogether different way,- -that of modern civilisation, destructive as it is of local variations and national types. Ireland in particular (and herein we perhaps have the secret of her irremediable weakness) is the only country in Europe where the native can produce the titles of his descent, and designate with certainty, even in the darkness of prehistoric ages, the race ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various

... danger that now overshadows us does not arise from real grievances. Plotters for disunion avail themselves of the weakness of the executive to precipitate revolution. South Carolina has taken the lead. The movement would be utterly insignificant if confined to that state. She is still in the Union, and neither the President nor Congress has ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... By merely keeping a deadlock for the rest of the war, and forcing a truce under the guise of peace, the Menace will win; provided, however, that it is not expelled by the German people themselves. This is the strength—and the weakness—of the foe against which we ...
— The Spirit of Lafayette • James Mott Hallowell

... months, he lived this false and wicked life, of a different mind every day, and lacking the courage to meet the difficulty. At last he became sure that his love belonged where his faith was due,—that, if he would not live a wretched hypocrite, he must humble himself to confess his criminal weakness, and return ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various

... of weakness through improper food, or possibly as the result of too much eagerness, but the aim was unsteady and the bullet only grazed ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace

... all his capacity for enthusiasm there was a strain of weakness in Hyacinth. More than once after the glories of an Independent Ireland had been preached to him he had found himself growing suddenly cold and dejected, smitten by an east wind of common-sense. At the time when he first recognised the loftiness of his ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham

... and resumed my work, and continued it till its completion. I cannot describe to you the feelings of that time—of the writing of the last verse. I could hardly believe that I was in the world, so difficult was it for me to realise the fact that my labour of years was completed. Whether it was from weakness or overstrained mental exertion, I cannot tell; but a feeling came over me that I would die, and I felt perfectly resigned. To overcome this I went back again to my manuscript still to be printed, ...
— Robert Moffat - The Missionary Hero of Kuruman • David J. Deane

... essence of Pyrrhonism as presented by Sextus Empiricus, it now remains to briefly note the characteristics that formed its strength and weakness, and the causes of its final downfall. Herbart says that every philosopher is a Sceptic in the beginning, but every Sceptic remains always in the beginning. This remark may well be applied to Pyrrhonism. ...
— Sextus Empiricus and Greek Scepticism • Mary Mills Patrick

... which is yet more real than the real person. That collapse and humorous confession of futility was much of the force in Charles Lamb and in Stevenson. There is nothing of this in Shaw; his wit is never a weakness; therefore it is never a sense of humour. For wit is always connected with the idea that truth is close and clear. Humour, on the other hand, is always connected with the idea that truth is tricky and ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... easy to see that the very ferocity—as it seems to us the utter and inconceivable ferocity—of these enactments is in the main a proof of the pitiable and deplorable weakness of those who passed them, and to this weakness we must look for their excuse, so far as they admitted of excuse at all. Weakness, especially weakness in high places, is apt to fall back upon cruelty to supply false strength, and a government that found itself face to face ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless

... the charge, being weak in the knees), and Captain Fred Langdon, of General Harris's staff. Whitcomb was one of the most notable shots on our side, though he was not much to boast of in a rough-and-tumble fight, owing to the weakness before mentioned. General Ames put him among the gunners, and we were quickly made aware of the loss we had sustained, by receiving a frequent artful ball which seemed to light with unerring instinct on any nose ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... sparkling linens waving welcome to her as she hailed in from the train. Also, she admitted the same starch mistake we made, that of stiffening handkerchiefs when she first tried out the process. So perhaps that's a regular human weakness and not peculiar to raw scouts, rookies, I suppose ...
— The Girl Scouts at Sea Crest - The Wig Wag Rescue • Lillian Garis

... liars and tricksters like the rest. It is eaten up by little men who wrap themselves in priestly garments and hide their ignorance behind oracular silences. They play up to the superstitious weakness of the mob, and replace one religion by another. They don't care what beastly misery and evil they keep alive so long as they can pull off their particular little stunts. You mustn't be like that, Stonehouse. To be free—to be free—and ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie

... no rejoinder, but mentally thanked God. She had read her son's heart, and perceiving his hesitation and weakness she had supplied the stimulus he needed. Now she saw him as she wished to see him. Now he was ready to reproach himself for his lack of courage and his weakness in displaying his feelings. And as a test of his powers of endurance, he decided not to question Madame Vantrasson till four or ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau

... Chicova, treated us with his former hospitality. Our men were all much pleased with his kindness, and certainly did not look upon it as a proof of weakness. They meant to return his friendliness when they came this way on a marauding expedition to eat the sheep of the Banyai, for insulting them in the affair of the hippopotamus; they would then send word to Chitora not to run away, ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone

... Hawthorne believed she saw the heralds of death in Mrs. Browning's excessive pallor and the hectic flush upon the cheeks, in her extreme fragility and weakness, and in her catching, fluttering breath. Even the motion of a visitor's fan perturbed her. But "her soul was mighty, and a great love kept her on earth a season longer. She was a seraph in her flaming worship of heart." "She lives ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp

... Reverence's holy college. That is a proposition for which credit may be given me, but the time gives space only to suffer; and thus do we have to accommodate ourselves to it, and to check our desires, drawing strength from weakness. I must content myself with writing, which would be a pleasant task, if I could do it at my leisure, and not so hastily as I have made known in certain letters that I have sent to your Reverence—not losing ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various

... and industrial life in England in the manufacturing districts fifty years ago, "Hard Times" will always be valuable, though allowance must be made here as elsewhere for the novelist's tendency to exaggeration—exaggeration of virtue no less than of vice or weakness. In Josiah Bounderby and Stephen Blackpool this characteristic is pronounced. The first, according to John Ruskin, being a dramatic monster, and the second a dramatic perfection. The story first appeared serially in "Household ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... a public school; but there was nothing the matter with me except a nervous turn of mind, overexcitable and overstrained by the slightest circumstance. This lasted until I was eighteen, when it suddenly disappeared, and left me strong and well; but the form which this weakness took may be illustrated by the fact that, although I did not believe in ghosts, I have known myself at the age of sixteen walk many miles round to avoid ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn

... for esteem, the very early emotions of shame and vanity, help to pull away from the self-indulgent or selfish impulse. The spontaneous admiration of others for their virtues and anger at them for their sins is applied involuntarily by a man to himself; contempt for his own weakness and joy in his superiority according to the generally accepted code are powerful deterrents. The consciousness of the resentment that others will feel if he does evil, the instinctive application to himself of a trace of the resentment he would feel toward him ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake

... schools, moved steadily toward its destination, the solo melody, yet the end was not reached till the madrigal had worked itself to its logical conclusion, to wit, a demonstration of its own inherent weakness. We must not be blind to the fact that while the Netherland art at first powerfully affected that of Italy, the latter in the end reacted on the former, and these two influences crossed and recrossed in ways that demand the closest scrutiny of the analytical ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson

... that: pluck strength out of weakness, Sancho, as I mean to do," returned Don Quixote, "and let us see how Rocinante is, for it seems to me that not the least share of this mishap has fallen to the lot ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... energies had given way when the necessity for their exertion was removed. When he had come to himself, he appeared to be particularly thankful that there had not been a spectator of (what he deemed to be) his unpardonable foolishness in giving way to a weakness that he considered should be indulged in by none other than faint-hearted women; and he earnestly begged the Squire to be silent on this little episode ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede

... it had this good effect,—it cured me of all such ridiculous weakness then and for ever. I shook off the love fit, ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie

... the compact was regarded as sacred in the eye of honor and indispensable for the great experiment of civil liberty, which, environed by inherent difficulties, was yet borne forward in apparent weakness by a power superior to all obstacles. There is no condemnation which the voice of freedom will not pronounce upon us should we prove faithless to this great trust. While men inhabiting different parts of this vast continent can no more be expected to hold the same ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin Pierce • Franklin Pierce

... joy at meeting him overshadowed everything else with her, and the prodigal was received by her with that forgiveness which is both the weakness and the strength of a mother's heart. The father, however, had been struck as deeply as the mother. His ambition, if of a different kind, had been quite as great as that of Mrs. Wickersham, and the hard-headed, ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page

... the other hand, urged the necessity of steadiness and prudence. It was too late for such policy. The time between the first step in revolution and action is the most trying to the courage and faith of undisciplined men. In this instance it produced fatal results. The weakness of the timid increased, and the courage of the boldest was quelled. Suspicion was aroused, and desertion was the inevitable consequence. O'Mahony found it impossible to withstand the clamorous urgency of the ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny

... to run,' she said, with a little laugh of shame at her weakness. 'Shall we get the spades out of the boat ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various

... disposition renders them potent for good or evil, hence the necessity of regulating the heart and of never losing control over its movements. When their soul is swayed by a pure and generous sentiment, and when the natural weakness of their sex gives place to an energy which few men are capable of displaying, their ardor in doing good is truly admirable. God alone knows all the treasures of virtue stored up within them daily, ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi

... over to the great white building which is the salvation of the Monegasques—their symbol of freedom from taxes and military service—and know that the strength of Monaco is the weakness of the world. I return to the Place du Palais. The Artist is reluctantly strapping up his tools. We glance for a brief moment at the best sunset view on the Riviera. Ships sail by unmolested. No more have they fear of the Tete du Chien and of the huge stone boulet that Fort Antoine used ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons

... great weakness is increased by the state of the system which follows child-bearing. Of this description are consumption, dropsy,' &c. In these cases it is evident that the process of lactation, by adding to the debility already present, must prove highly ...
— Remarks on the Subject of Lactation • Edward Morton

... you never will know what good eating is till you've been down to the Fulton Market, and feasted on oysters there; you can't get 'em first-rate in any other place. Try it, and you'll find 'em weak as weakness compared to these. Hot, plump, delicious! The very memory of them is enough to keep a reasonable person from being hungry a week. Talk of Delmonico's! I never was there; but if it beats this room in the Fulton Market in the way of shell-fish, I'll ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens

... recoiled backward to his heart, and the sickening sensation that beset his brain threatened to up-set his reason. But the shock passed, on the instant leaving him erect, and seemingly proud and firm as ever, and certainly with no evidence of mortal weakness that human eye ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper

... accentuate the weakness or strength of a man's character. Marcos was intensely practical at this moment—more practical than ever. He had only one thought—the thought that filled his life—which was Juanita's welfare. If he could not make her happy he could, at all events, shield her ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman

... just as daring as ever! That is his one weakness, I'm afraid!" he remarked, as they saw the other make a sudden swoop that must have been particularly trying in the ...
— The Airplane Boys among the Clouds - or, Young Aviators in a Wreck • John Luther Langworthy

... all right, as far as it went. But," he went on, as though regretting his momentary weakness in making any concession to a criminal of the deepest dye, "what good would his telling the truth have done, if I'd been lying at the foot of the hill with a ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport

... peace; the clamor and battle only rose the higher. Despite his struggles, Absalon was dragged to the high seat, but as they were about to force him into it, he asked leave to say a single word, and instantly appealed his case to the Pope. So there was an end; but when the aged Eskild, on the plea of weakness, begged him to pronounce the benediction, he refused warily, because so he would be exercising archiepiscopal functions and would be de facto incumbent ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis

... his eyes and rolled over on his back. If there was one weakness he had it was the native half-breed love of romancing. He was ever ready to yarn. He revelled in it when he had a good audience. Nick was the very man for him, simple, honest, superstitious. So he sat up and ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum

... such a step, and declined the invidious honour. Her lover was obstinate, and himself forced the patent into her hands. She at last accepted it on one condition, which shows her confidence in her own power and in his weakness. She made him give her a solemn promise, not that he would never quit her, but that, if he did so, he would himself announce his resolution to her, and grant ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... romantic rot," the doctor observed coldly. "No life is ruined in that way. One life has been wrecked; but you, you are bigger than that life. You can recover—bury it away—and love and have children and find that it is a good thing to live. That is the beauty of human weakness—we ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... had a weakness. To look at him—to know him—no one would have thought it, but he had. And at least two of those present were aware of his secret. He was in love with Jacky. That is to say, he coveted her—desired her. When Lablache desired anything in that little world of his, he generally ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum

... proposition, will they not suspect our purpose, or take it as a confession of weakness ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis

... I awoke suddenly at four o'clock in the morning, with a strong impression on my mind that my father was dead. At the same time my soul was in a very great contentment, yet my love for him affected it with sorrow, and my body with weakness. Under the strokes and daily troubles which befell me, my will was so subservient to Thine, O my God, that it appeared absolutely united to it. There seemed, indeed, to be no will left in me but Thine only. My own disappeared, and no desires, tendencies or inclinations were left, but ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon

... inclined to rule the law out of account, to disregard completely the historical element in development, and this was perhaps the chief weakness of the neo-vitalist systems which took their origin in ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell

... Dreams, no doubt, induced by some childish malady; a common enough form of nightmare, suggested by previous knowledge of a story likely to impress children. But to the day of his death—and he died an old man, a successful colonist, prosperous and respected, a man in no way prone to superstitious weakness—the dreamer ever maintained that it was something more than a dream that had come to him those nights in Blenkinsopp Castle. He could feel yet, he said, and shuddered to feel, the clasp of her arms and the kiss on his cheek from the cold lips of the White Lady; and ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang

... now doomed. The excitement occasioned by his trial, and his increasing firmness, as it darkened on through all its stages to the final sentence, now had—in a considerable degree abandoned him, and left his heart, at present, more accessible to natural weakness than it it had been to the power of his own affections. The image of his early-loved Una had seldom since his arrest been out of his imagination. Her youth, her beauty, her wild but natural grace, and the flashing ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... the south. Because it is recognized only by Turkey, it has had much difficulty arranging foreign financing and investment. It remains heavily dependent on agriculture and government service, which together employ about half of the work force. To compensate for the economy's weakness, Turkey provides grants and loans to support economic development. Ankara provided $200 million in 2002 and pledged $450 million for the 2003-05 period. Future events throughout the island will be highly influenced ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... lies that involve such a business. The letters of the foreign ministers, and ours from Brussels, say he has been at council; in the city he is believed dead: I hope not! We should make a bad exchange in the Dauphin. Though the King is weak and irresolute, I believe he does not want sense: weakness, bigotry, and some sense, are the properest materials for keeping alive the disturbances in that country, to which this blow, if the man was any thing but a madman, Will contribute. The despotic and holy stupidity(751) of the successor would quash ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole

... we search the place. If we do not, we must take it that they either died from an outbreak of some epidemic or from hunger. And it is quite probable that the two skeletons on the steps were two of their companions who were going out to seek for food, and that they fell from weakness; one clearly died in the act of trying to lift the other. What do you ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty

... '"Whither I go thou canst not follow Me now, but thou shalt follow Me afterwards." You see, St. Peter couldn't bear his cross then, but he went on doing his best, and grieving when he failed, and by-and-by he did bear it almost like his Master. He got to be made strong out of weakness.' ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge

... advancement of the very man who had been keenest in running him to cover, the great Colbert. It was well for France, it was well for the artistic industry whose history occupies our attention, that these things happened; but we, nevertheless, feel a weakness towards the man of genius and energy caged and fretted by prison bars, for he had shown initiative and daring, qualities of which the ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee

... of the boundary have been accurately tested, and whether some points which had been corrected by really efficient officers have been omitted, if not suppressed, in order to cover certain discrepancies. And if so whether it was an expedient to avoid showing the weakness of the maps (on which certain names figure prominently) which were taken as a ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... continent that we cannot judge how far actual occurrences are based on fact or probability. But CYNTHIA STOCKLEY has some of the mysterious qualities of a possible South African laureate. Perhaps she will contrive to put away a little weakness for tall and scornful aristocratic women; but, in any case, I can commend her book confidently to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 19th, 1914 • Various

... discerned the weakness of this young man. I ought to have detected the passions that were working in him. I was misled by one great and prolonged effort of self-control in him. I appointed an unworthy officer to the care of the lives and safety of the whites. Many of them have gone to lay their ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau

... hard endurance we strike our only light. For what? To show us what dupes we are,—creatures of accident, tools of circumstance, blind instruments of the scorner Fate; the very mind, the very reason, a bound slave to the desires, the weakness of the clay; affected by a cloud, dulled by the damps of the foul marsh; stricken from power to weakness, from sense to madness, to gaping idiocy, or delirious raving, by a putrid exhalation! A rheum, a chill, and ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... grandest, and most delicate harmonic colouring, fall short of perfection. They are too long, not because they cover so many pages, but because there is a lack of balance; at times, indeed, the composer seems to lose all sense of proportion. Then, again, the weakness of Schubert in the art of development is specially felt; the noble themes, on the whole, lose rather than gain by the loose, monotonous, and, in some places, even trivial treatment to which they are subjected. And what is more fatal than a lack of ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock

... awful thing hanging over me! I don't know what you mean, Aunt Abby! There can't be anything worse than to have a stranger come in here and remark on my unfortunate weakness in sometimes giving way to my sense of righteous indignation! I resent it! I won't have it! Mason, you brought Mr. Stone here —now ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells

... folk of herdsmen, living on the produce of their buffaloes, averse to agriculture, though not inhibited from it by the nature of their country, therefore prone to seek any escape from that uncongenial employment,[1355] and relying on the protected isolation of their habitat to compensate for the weakness inherent in the small number of ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... I do not think she has, nor have you try'd her; In that you have not only disoblig'd me, But now you would impose upon my Weakness —Did I not see how unconcern'd you were, And hardly paying her a due respect; And when she even invited thee to speak, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn

... uncorrupted by a false education. She loved the wayward and the desolate: pretentiousness in any disguise was the one thing she suspected and could not tolerate. It may be questioned whether she ever deceived herself; but it must be said, that on the whole she flattered weakness—and excused, by enchanting eloquence, much which cannot always be justified merely on the ground that it is explicable. But to explain was something—all but everything at the time of her appearance in literature. Every novel she wrote made for charity—for a better ...
— Mauprat • George Sand

... against the power of the committees. The Dantonist in the Mountain endeavoured to detach Robespierre from the other Decemvirs; Billaud-Varennes, Collot- d'Herbois and Saint-Just, alone appeared to them invincibly attached to the Reign of Terror. Barrere adhered to it through weakness—Couthon from his devotion to Robespierre. They hoped to gain over the latter to the cause of moderation, through his friendship for Danton, his ideas of order, his austere habits, his profession of public virtue, and his pride. He had defended seventy-three imprisoned Girondist deputies ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet

... would have His Church not only free from every spot, but also from "every wrinkle, or any such thing." The spot is the mark of sin, but the wrinkle is the sign of weakness, age, and decay, and He wants no such defacing touch upon the holy features of His Beloved; and so the Holy Ghost, who is the Executor of His will, and the Divine Messenger whom He sends to call, separate, and bring home His Bride, is jealously ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson

... the presence of an appendix or sequel. Reed, of course, went over the same ground as Dodsley had already traversed with inferior ability and less ample resources at his command, and there were repetitions, as might be expected, of the same particulars. There seemed to be two forms of weakness—redundancy on the one hand and meagreness on the other. Again, all the information collected by Dodsley and Reed was to be found elsewhere, with innumerable improvements and corrections of mistakes, the subject itself ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley

... may be so. Where is the high-soul'd Stratford?—The same weakness That yielded there is obstinacy now, To the last drop of the pride-tainted blood That through the melancholy Stuart's veins Doth creep ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards

... possessed of an authority so unbounded should often abuse his power is not to be wondered at; and that the abuse of power thus tolerated should degenerate into tyranny is but the natural consequence of human weakness and depravity. The question is—Is it consistent with prudence to allow an individual to assume and retain such power? Most of the Company's officers enter the service while yet very young; none are so young, however, as not to be aware of the privileges ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean

... "Three Moorish Princesses of the Alhambra." Jeannie and Elinor were to be Zayda and Zorahayda. As for Leslie, she liked well enough, as we know, to look pretty; it was, or had been, till other thoughts of late had begun to "crowd it out," something like a besetting weakness; she had only lately—to tell the whole truth as it seldom is told—begun to be ashamed, before her higher self, to turn, the first thing in the morning, with a certain half-mechanical anxiety toward her glass, to see how ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... Louisa M. Eaton, of Lynn, probably a shoe-worker. During the preceding year Miss Hannafin had taken an active part in protecting the girls discharged in a lock-out in a Philadelphia shoe factory, not only against the employer, but even against the weakness of some of the men of her own assembly who were practically taking the side of the strike-breakers, by organizing them into a rival assembly. The question came up in the convention for settlement, and the delegates voted ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry

... of a mile, and I'll warrant that you will feel amply repaid, tempting as the shadow of yonder tree looks," Smith said, having guessed my weakness for repose. ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes

... stars, the order of rushing worlds brought light, just as it had brought darkness: first a gleam; then a curving thread; then a silver sickle; then, magnificently! a shield of light—and the moon's unaltered face looked down at them. Maurice had an overwhelming impulse to drop his weakness into endless, ageless, limitless Power; his glimmer of self-knowledge, into enormous All-Knowledge; his secrecy into Truth. An impulse to be done with silences. "God knows; so Eleanor shall know." The idea of telling the truth was to Maurice—slipping and sinking into bottomless lying—like ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland

... contractions begin slowly and weakly, and no awareness of them occurs in the mind. As they grow stronger, consciousness becomes a sensation rather like an itch somewhere in the upper abdomen, and accompanied sometimes by a sense of general weakness. The vegetative activity going on as a current almost on the outside of the stream of feeling has swelled and warmed, and so forced itself, in a manner of speaking, into the center of the stream. Or if you will, the rest of the stream has to arrange ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.

... was exceedingly warm, and if there was one thing on earth for which Radical Ted had a weakness it was his native nut—brown ale. He looked at Margaret and grinned—the grin of compromise. Margaret, still smiling, slowly filled the beaker, a beautiful creamy head bubbling over ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)

... and ripe pollen, and flecks of withered bracken and moss. I heard trees falling for hours at the rate of one every two or three minutes; some uprooted, partly on account of the loose, water-soaked condition of the ground; others broken straight across, where some weakness caused by fire had determined the spot. The gestures of the various trees made a delightful study. Young Sugar Pines, light and feathery as squirrel-tails, were bowing almost to the ground; while the grand old patriarchs, whose massive boles had been tried in a ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir

... complained of the weakness, or humanity, of their commander towards his prisoners, and they now turned him out and elected a new captain, and marooned England and three others on the Island of Mauritius. The captain and his companions set about building a small boat of some old staves and pieces of ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse

... came home sad, tired, and heavy-hearted. On reaching her room, she stood still, with hands clasped, and stared at the floor. She suddenly realized, to her horror, that in her relations with Sarudine she had gone too far. For the first time since that strange moment of irreparable weakness she perceived what a humiliating hold this empty-headed officer had over her, inferior as he was to herself in every way. She must now come if he called; she could no longer trifle with him as she liked, submitting to his kisses or laughingly resisting ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef

... what gadfly has stung you? Your doubt is a weakness unworthy of your intellect; and even were it not, genius is destiny and will be obeyed: you must write, despite yourself—and your writing must bring fame, whether you ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... wife spoke of living in an antiquated Roman palace and buying an estate with an old title attached to it, which the King might graciously be pleased to ratify, he playfully tapped his wife's sallow cheek with two fat fingers and smiled in a way that showed how superior he was to such weakness. It was not even ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... reason must be sacrificed? What honour do I injure that is not factitious? What evil threatens our union, that is not imaginary? In the general commerce of the world it may be right to yield to its prejudices, but in matters of serious importance, it is weakness to be shackled by scruples so frivolous, and it is cowardly to be governed by the customs we condemn. Religion and the laws of our country should then alone be consulted, and where those are neither opposed nor infringed, we should hold ourselves superior ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)

... need not the great archangel's voice to tell us, 'is to be miserable.' All weakness is suffering and humiliation, no matter for its mode or its subject. Beyond all other weakness, therefore, and by a sad prerogative, as more miserable than what is most miserable in all, that capital weakness of man which regards ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... the rate things were going she would soon, so far from being above her companions, be below them on account of her weakness. She recognised that superiority of mind would count little after a while with these minds, incapable of distinguishing grades, or values, beyond money value and the distinction of master from man, and that sex so far from being a ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole

... now in hourly expectation of an attack from the British, and, knowing his own weakness, he considered his situation very critical. In vigilance alone ...
— The Military Journals of Two Private Soldiers, 1758-1775 - With Numerous Illustrative Notes • Abraham Tomlinson

... which he had fought this battle of the salmon around Squitty Island. Yet Gower by his own admission was a hard man. He had lived with a commercial sword in his hand. He knew what it was to fall by that weapon. He had been hard on the fishermen. He had exploited them mercilessly. Therein lay his weakness, whereby he had fallen, through which MacRae had beaten him. But had he beaten him? MacRae was not now so sure about that. But it was only a momentary doubt. He struggled a little against the reaction of kindliness, this curious sympathy ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... true. But for making a mark in the world, for rising to supremacy in art or thought or affairs—whatever those aims may be worth—a man possibly does better to indulge, rather than to chide or grudge, his genius, and to pay the penalties for his weakness, rather than run any risk of mutilating those strong faculties of which they happen to be an inseparable accident. Versatility is not a universal gift among the able men of the world; not many of ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley

... suffer tortures surpassing those to which he has so often consigned the heretic and the apostate Morisco; there he will expire amid horrors that scarce ever before encompassed a death-bed;—but no groan will reveal the weakness of the flesh; the soul, triumphant over nature, will bear aloft her colors to the last, and plant them on the breach through which she passes into the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various

... with her arms about Peter's shaggy head, Nada stared wildly at the clump of timber, and in a moment she saw a man break out of it, and stand still, as if the mellow sunlight blinded him, and made him unable to move. And the same choking weakness was at her own heart as she rose up from Peter, and reached out her arms toward the gray figure in the edge of the wood, sobbing, trying to speak and yet ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood

... knows few, if any, of her friends; and that, because known, they are extraordinarily interesting. She will see Rachel drawn out of the haven of her staunch and critical common sense by her infatuation for Louis; threatened by the shipwreck of despair when she realises his weakness and her irrevocable mistake, and again putting into a new harbour of determination to pay the price of her love and make the best of things. And I should not be altogether surprised if even our romantic library-subscriber finds ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 21, 1914 • Various

... exploration. The Lavusi hills are a relief tothe eye in this flat upland. Their forms show an igneous origin. The river Kazya comes from them and goes direct into the Lake. No observations now, owing to great weakness; I can scarcely hold the pencil, and my stick is a burden. Tent gone; the men build a good hut for me and the luggage. S.W. ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone

... allowed himself to be swindled, he replied that the Mexican "spoke so well." They are so delighted at hearing their language spoken by a white man, that they lose all precaution and are completely at the mercy of the wily whites, who profit by their weakness. ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz

... immigration. But local disloyalty is a poor reed for an assailant to rest upon, and to sustain it in vigorous action commonly requires the presence of a force which will render its assistance needless. Whatever inclination to rebel there might have been was effectually quelled by the energy of Brock, the weakness of Hull, and the impotence of Dearborn and ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan

... man," he said, shaking his head; "take care not to make him your model. If you want a proper model to imitate, you need not go far. Modesty, which is my weakness, prevents my ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke

... quest of the spirit's gain— Lured by the graces of pleasure, And lashed by the furies of pain. Thy weakness shall sigh for an Eden, But the sword shall flame at the gate; For far is the home of thy vision And strong is the ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair

... slept well; and on waking, soon after daylight, jumped at once out of bed; and was glad to feel that, except for a certain amount of weakness in the legs, and stiffness in his wounds, he was all right again. He dressed quietly and, as soon as he heard persons moving about in the hotel, made his way down to the shore, and sat down there to wait for a boat from the ship; which was lying some distance out, and would, ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty

... hard he had tried in his feebleness and weakness to teach her the way! How sure he had seemed to feel that she would follow him! And how had she wandered! How far away she was! Oh, blessed Spirit of God, to seek after her all these years, through all ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy

... children was the termination of his proud career. The image of the Princess, which lately, during his estrangement from her, had but seldom come into his mind, and then only to be angrily repulsed, seemed now, as the sense of his weakness and humiliation grew, to take stronger hold of him. She was the goal, the destiny of his life! Such was the height to which she was now raised in his estimation. And in these high thoughts of her he was influenced, not by her rank, but by the glow ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson

... resources of the north. The economy remains heavily dependent on foreign aid and has received assistance from Communist countries, Sweden, and UN agencies. Inflation, although down from recent triple-digit levels, is still a major weakness and is showing signs of accelerating upwards again. Per capita output is among the world's lowest. Since late 1986 the government has sponsored a broad reform program that seeks to turn more economic activity over to ...
— The 1991 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... was to advance to the nearest intruders at the gate and say, "Do go away, please;" but she was doubtful of its efficiency, and was already too exalted by the situation to be satisfied with its prosaic weakness. But her newly developed diplomacy again came to her aid. "You may tell them so, if you choose, I cannot answer for them," she said, with ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte

... he said in a milder tone; "that is my weakness. Some day I will tell you the whole story but for the moment it were better that it were not told. I will tell you this," he turned round and faced the detective squarely, "Kara tortured ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace

... in English literature was universally acknowledged, and his love of the poets amounted to enthusiasm. He was formed for all the bustle of variegated life, and his conversation was crystallized with the sparkling attractions of wit and humour. Subject to the weakness to which genius is ever liable, he was both eccentric and wayward, but he had the good sense to guard his failing from general observation; and although he often shot his arrows anonymously, he never dipt them in the gall of prejudice or ill-nature. I have dwelt upon his character with ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle

... should undoubtedly have perished, if, on the third day, a band of friendly Indians of another tribe had not gone to Taos and reported the fight to the commanding officer of the troops there. These Indians had heard of our trouble with the Utes, and knowing how strong they were, and our weakness, surmised our condition, and so hastened ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman

... joyously. Indeed, the appearance of the dish, when it was borne in, had nothing to discourage my appetite—the odour was savoury; I prepared myself for a treat. Out of pure kindness, for she saw me tremble in my weakness, the good woman offered her aid in the carving; she took hold of the bird by the two legs, rent it asunder, tore off the wings in the same way, and then, with a smile of satisfaction, wiped her hands upon her skirt. If her hands had known water (to say ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing

... not persuade me against my knowledge, against what I find and feel in myself: I do not, I know, I do not believe.—Mr. Hooker's own words follow.—"Well then, to favour such men a little in their weakness, let that be granted which they do imagine; be it, that they adhere not to God's promises, but are faithless, and without belief: but are they not grieved for their unbelief? They confess they are; do they not wish it might, and also strive ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton

... god, the greater the slave; and so it was that, falling plumb down from that skyey exaltation, human again with the weakness that follows divine moments, Antony returned from the morning ...
— The Worshipper of the Image • Richard Le Gallienne

... my spirit so dragged and torn as when I had my trial in the thorny way of distrust. I have had my days of conceit when I felt equal to the work of Washington, but there was no conceit in me then. Face to face with the looming peril, of which warning had come to me, I felt my own weakness and the ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller

... for another, and worked without a penny of wages. It was you yourself who set me against you, by giving me a task against which my soul revolted,—by making me a spy over your unfortunate wife, whose weakness is as pitiable as are her misfortunes and your rascally treatment of her. Flesh and blood could not bear to see the manner in which you used her. I tried to help her to escape from you; and I would do it again, if the opportunity ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray

... advocates compromise, because "the democratic party have failed so far to be indorsed and inforced by popular consent." It acknowledges that the power of the Crown is "great and even temporarily overwhelming," but discourages opposition to monarchy for the reason that monarchy rests on the ignorance and weakness of the people and not on sheer physical coercion.[136] The New Age opposes those democratic proposals, the referendum and proportional representation, considers that the representative may so thoroughly embody the ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling

... understood, and tried to raise himself, nearly reaching to a sitting position, but falling back from sheer weakness, and gazing shrinkingly at us as if ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn

... and amaze hath he heard that you, O Harold, his sworn liege-man, have, contrary to oath and to fealty, assumed the crown that belongs to himself. But, confiding in thy conscience, and forgiving a moment's weakness, he summons thee, mildly and brother-like, to fulfil thy vow. Send thy sister, that he may gave her in marriage to one of his Quens. Give him up the stronghold of Dover; march to thy coast with thine ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... cure and refine a stippled or blotched skin; To cure and prevent wrinkles; Wash for wrinkles; To remove wrinkles; How to have brilliant, beautiful eyes; To cure weak eyes; To improve the eyelashes; To cure weakness of eyes; How to have beautiful eyelashes; To cure watery and inflamed eyes; To strengthen the sight; What to do for nearsightedness; How to have a beautiful mouth and lips; To make lip salve; French lip salve; German lip salve; To care for the teeth; To ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous

... long struggle, but at last honestly, that he certainly did love her. He then asked himself whether he did not also love her money, and he again answered himself that he did so. But here he did not answer honestly. It was and ever had been his weakness to look for impure motives for his own conduct. No doubt, circumstanced as he was, with a small living and a fellowship, accustomed as he had been to collegiate luxuries and expensive comforts, he might have hesitated to marry ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... get out of this," whispered he. "In another moment I should have knocked the conceited ass down. Oh, my Flavia! my poor Flavia! your weakness of to-day will yet cost ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau

... friendship. Whatever the white man wanted and asked of the Indian, the latter willingly gave. At that time the Indian was the lord, and the white man the suppliant. But now the scene has changed. The strength of the red man has become weakness. As his neighbours increased in numbers, his power became less and less; and now, of the many and powerful tribes who once covered the United States, only a few are to be seen,—a few whom a sweeping pestilence has left. The northern tribes, who were once so numerous ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies

... are to be read for information and mental strength. The hunger of the body for bread and fruit is not more real than the hunger of the intellect for facts and principles. Knowledge stands in as vital relation to the growth of reason as iron and phosphate to the enrichment of the blood. Ignorance is weakness. Success is knowing how. Ours is a world in which the last fact conquers. In addition to his own experience and reflection, the young artist must stand in some gallery that brings together all the best masters. ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis

... fatigued by the discussion and struggle, the painter reached out his hands to his friend, who pressed them in his. Suddenly he looked at Amedee and saw his eyes shining with tears, and, partly from sorrow, but more from want of will and from moral weakness, to ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee

... reverently. In one passage he says: "To be thrown into a panic whenever a comet appears, on account of the ill effects which some few of them might possibly produce, if they were not under proper direction, betrays a weakness ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... thing. For fourteen years I have not had a day's real health; I have wakened sick and gone to bed weary; and I have done my work unflinchingly. I have written in bed, and written out of it, written in hemorrhages, written in sickness, written torn by coughing, written when my head swam for weakness; and for so long, it seems to me I have won my wager and recovered my glove. I am better now, have been rightly speaking since first I came to the Pacific; and still, few are the days when I am not in some physical distress. And the ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... woman's intention to move, and I knew where she would go; but I had not been informed she would go on that day. As I followed on their path, I soon ceased to suffer from cold, and felt that sleepy sensation which I knew preceded the last stage of weakness in such as die of cold. I redoubled my efforts, but with an entire consciousness of the danger of my situation; it was with no small difficulty that I could prevent myself from lying down. At length I lost all consciousness for some time, how long I cannot tell, and, ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... she, "for Monsieur de Cleves, to whom I gave it to read, returned it to the Duke of Nemours, who came early this morning to beg him to get it of you. Monsieur de Cleves had the imprudence to tell him he had it, and the weakness to yield to the entreaties the Duke de Nemours made that he would restore it him." "You throw me into the greatest embarrassment I can possibly be in," replied the Queen-Dauphin; "and you have given this letter to the Duke de Nemours. Since it was I that gave it you, ...
— The Princess of Cleves • Madame de La Fayette

... phrase, "J'ai enonce les memes idees...que M. Darwin" (volume ii.) is shown by his subsequent writings to mean no more than this.) None of us dreamed that, in the course of a few years, the strength (and perhaps I may add the weakness) of "Darwinismus" would have its most extensive and most brilliant illustrations in the land of learning. If a foreigner may presume to speculate on the cause of this curious interval of silence, I fancy it ...
— The Reception of the 'Origin of Species' • Thomas Henry Huxley

... afflict fewer persons than that of some one who had bonds and ties of one sort and another.... My work goes on without interruption, and I think with little variation in my mode of performing it; and I make efforts of this kind, sometimes under such circumstances of physical suffering and weakness, that I am almost hard-heartedly incredulous about the difficulty of doing anything that one has to do—which is not very reasonable either, for the force of will, the nervous energy, which carries one through such efforts, depends itself on physical ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... said the monk, vehemently. "You served as instrument to those dastardly villains who dared not kill her themselves. You had no pity on her youth, her beauty, her weakness! You killed her!" ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various

... was born his first and only child, a girl whom they called Lotty. Lotty, as she grew up, gradually developed an unfortunate combination of her parents' qualities; she had her mother's weakness of mind, without her mother's moral sense, and from her father she derived an ingrained stubbornness, which had nothing in common with strength of character. Doubly unhappy was it that she lost her mother so early; the loss deprived her of gentle guidance during her youth, ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing

... not be doubted but the King was in a condition of continuing the war with honour, so it could not be looked on as a mark of weakness in His Majesty to break the silence he had kept since the conferences at Gertruydenberg; and that, before the opening of the campaign, he now gives farther proof of the desire he always had to procure the repose of Europe. But after what ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift

... occasion by, While nature lent her aid to bless Their labours with unbought success. Never for anger, lust, or gain, Would they their lips with falsehood stain. Inclined to mercy they could scan The weakness and the strength of man. They fairly judged both high and low, And ne'er would wrong a guiltless foe; Yet if a fault were proved, each one Would punish e'en his own dear son. But there and in the kingdom's bound No thief or man impure was found: None of loose life or evil fame, No tempter ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... bent, supposes a refined and delicate moral sense and though sometimes perverted by sophistry or circumstance, and sometimes failing through weakness; can always, at least, comprehend and feel, the grandeur of honour ...
— Zophiel - A Poem • Maria Gowen Brooks

... moments they may be safely analyzed and unraveled." Again he wrote of these years as, "Years of solitude, of desolation, years of shattered nerves, dread often of instant insanity, consumptive weakness, of sleepless nights and weary days, and hours of tears ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke

... days Cyrus Harding and his unfortunate companions husbanded their provisions with the most extreme care, eating only what would prevent them from dying of starvation. Their weakness was extreme. Herbert and Neb began to show symptoms ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne

... him that he must drift and delay no longer, but make up his mind quite definitely what course he was going to take. He was not a man who could live comfortably in indecision. He hated it, indeed, as an attribute of weakness. ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens

... were daintily painted, and the sure touch of the little white line used to accentuate the colours, was noticeable. After several pages, the letters became less true and firm. The lines had a tendency to slant to the right; a weakness could be detected in the formerly strong man. Finally the writing grew positively shaky. The ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison

... the jury, it now becomes my duty to address to you such words as may best suit to point out to you the weakness of the evidence against the prisoner—to explain to you the different objects we had in our lengthened cross-examination of the witnesses—to inform you what we intend to prove on behalf of the prisoner from further witnesses—and, ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope

... Langius, says, that this bird when attacked with constipation at some distance from the river, and not able to fly from weakness, would be seen to crawl to the water's edge with drooping wings and there take its rectal treatment, when in a few minutes it would fly away in full ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell

... is all right," said the medical man, as he released the trembling American, "but you have long believed in the weakness of your heart and it has, on that account, become so. You must banish all fear from your thoughts. You perhaps know that we have a place specially prepared for those who are not physically sound. I am sorry that you do ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben

... of the king, who was but eleven years old at his accession, the weakness of the royal council amidst the strife of the baronial factions, above all the disasters of the war without and the growing anarchy within the realm itself, alone made possible this startling assumption of the executive power by the Houses. The shame of defeat abroad was being ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green

... animal can never become a pet, though it may be in the small but bright spark of consciousness that is all the little yellow-eyed creature wants. The quality that makes it so valuable is the final disqualification. Strength can be a weakness. Its nervous system is too powerful for a man in good health, upsetting the delicate balance of the human body in a variety of unusual ways. How the energy-transfer takes place has never been determined ...
— Bolden's Pets • F. L. Wallace

... that I am too imaginative to be a really courageous man, but that I have an overpowering fear of seeming afraid. This was the power which now carried me onwards. I simply could not slink back with nothing done. Even if my comrades should not have missed me, and should never know of my weakness, there would still remain some intolerable self-shame in my own soul. And yet I shuddered at the position in which I found myself, and would have given all I possessed at that moment to have been honorably free of the ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle

... which he would enter by his enthronement at God's right hand. As Luther pointedly puts it: "Therefore do I go, he saith, where I shall be greater than I now am, that is, to the Father, and it is better that I shall pass out of this obscurity and weakness into the power and glory in which the Father is." In the light of this interpretation the meaning of our Lord's words above quoted does not seem difficult. The Paraclete was to communicate Christ to his church,—his life, his power, ...
— The Ministry of the Spirit • A. J. Gordon

... to be done again; and as the days slipped by, bringing him closer to the end, he looked about for some agent. Had he a man that he could trust to hold the mine, while he went into town to gain title to it? He looked them all over but, knowing Blount as he did, and the weakness of human nature, he hesitated and decided against it. No, it was better by far that he should hold the mine—for possession, in mining, is everything—and send someone to pay over the money. That would be perfectly legal, and ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge

... of the Mathematical Sciences, where the operation may fail, but the Art doth never fail; nor do I make this discourse but to shew you, that if I have left some faults in my Book, they are the effects of my weakness, and not of my negligence. Suffer me then to discover unto you all the resorts of this frame, and let you see, if not all that I have done, at leastwise all that I have ...
— Prefaces to Fiction • Various

... an artistic little weakness we scribblers have of seducing our dramatis personae into tableaux vivants, and deserting them abruptly. In a story of this kind, which depends rather on action than fine writing for interest, this species of autorial clap-trap is very effective, if cleverly done. So we will make ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich



Words linked to "Weakness" :   tenuity, imperfection, lassitude, imperfectness, feebleness, lethargy, fatigue, vulnerability, flaw, inadequacy, weak part, faintness, weak, insufficiency, fragility, slackness, inanition, smallness, soft spot, littleness, impotence, misfortune, insubstantiality, taste, penchant, weak spot, delicacy, bad luck, ill luck, fatigability, strength, property, flimsiness, adynamia, predilection, shoddiness, attenuation, impotency, powerlessness, tough luck, enervation, preference



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