"Impotent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... decision of the Court, declines to ask the lawyers for farther help.[29] There is an end of that job and its fee. Nevertheless, his 'blatant brother' shall soon see if law is as inadequate, and advocacy as impotent, as he fancies. Providence is this time in their favour. Pompilia was consigned to the 'Convertite' (converted ones). She was therefore a sinner. Guido has been judged guilty: but there was no word as to the innocence of his wife. The sisterhood claims, ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... insult I stood with grinding teeth, but impotent. However, from that moment a deeper mood of brooding malice occupied my spirit. Indeed the humour of us all was one of dangerous, even murderous, fierceness. In that pursuit of riches into that region of cold, we had become almost ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... consequence of it. Let me put this proposition to them. Here is a vessel, it may be, out on a trackless ocean hundreds of miles from land, her forecastle hands consisting of a gang of murderous ruffians ready to make lawful authority impotent, and, if need be, to enforce their own by overpowering the captain and officers and making an opportunity for mutiny. Let the moralists think of it; four or five men at the mercy of a score of hang-dog scoundrels ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... took up the glove, thrust it in his bosom, and strode hastily away; only, when he had got some paces down the street, he turned back, and, shaking his clenched hand at Adrian, exclaimed, in a voice trembling with impotent rage—"Faithful to death!" ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Elizabeth, enacted in 1601, were at first intended to relieve the destitute poor, sick, aged, and impotent, but in their administration a share was given to all who begged it. Employers, of course, found it cheaper to hire labor partly paid for by the parish, and the independent farm-laborer who would not go on the parish found his own wages lowered by this kind ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... names are forgotten, the old people fade off the face of the earth. The romance of Matthew Haygarth seemed to come to a lame and impotent conclusion in this dull ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... lest an infuriated hippopotamus should follow them. One harpoon had missed; the other had fixed the bull of the herd, at which it had been surely aimed. This was grand sport! The bull was in the greatest fury, and rose to the surface, snorting and blowing in his impotent rage; but as the ambatch float was exceedingly large, and this naturally accompanied his movements, he tried to escape from his imaginary persecutor, and dived constantly, only to find his pertinacious attendant close to him ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... is to say, seaward—the tower does lean; though but by a foot or so, and now not perilously; the salt winds, impotent against its masonry, having bitten with more effect into the earth around its base. But the church has been restored, the mischief arrested, and the danger no longer haunts its vicar as it haunted the Rev. John Flood on a bright September ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... makes me grind my teeth;" and his brow blackened like night in his mental revolt, and his eyes were sternly fixed in honest, indignant arraignment of the Power he did not scruple to defy, though so impotent ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... There was an impotent, crushed look about him as of one nearing the end of his strength. The lips under the heavy grey moustache moved a little as though they formed soundless words. He drew his breath once or twice sharply through his teeth. Finally, with a curious groping movement ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... of Church Government. He was not much over thirty when he wrote those words: and they remained true of him to the end. For twenty years the strife was active and public; ever, in appearance at least, more and more successful: then for the final fourteen it became the impotent wrath of a caged and wounded lion. Never for a moment did his soul bow to the triumph of the idolaters: but neither could it forget them, nor make any permanent escape into purer air. Paradise Lost, Paradise ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... plaster setting for from four to six hours and give ample time for finishing the deer's face. This compo. will set immediately if used in a skin that has been treated with formaldehyde, sulphuric acid, or alum, as the glue becomes tanned and impotent by them. ...
— Taxidermy • Leon Luther Pray
... Impotent to resist the power that was drawing them down, Shad Trowbridge and Ungava Bob were certain beyond a doubt that presently they were to be hurled into this awful chasm, and that in all human probability but a few minutes more of life remained ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... listening. He wished to believe the whole fantastic story an invention of the keen-eyed old madame herself. Yet something within him confessed to its truth. A tumultuous storm of baffled desire, of impotent anger, swept over him. The ring he wore burned into his flesh. But he had no thought of removing it—the ring which had once belonged to the beautiful golden-haired woman who had come back from the grave ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... There was a sudden inquiry concerning my loose change, and I was furnished with a memorandum-book in which to write down my daily disbursements. Frequent visits to the opera (oh, the torture of those evenings!) had been an invariable rule with the Mountchessingtons; and, at the risk of rendering impotent the tympanum of both ears, I was compelled to continue that respectable custom. Persons occupying our position should be careful with whom they associated; and the character of my companions underwent a severe investigation. ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... those desires which came to me on my walks, but were never realized, as being shared by others, or as having any existence apart from myself. They seemed nothing more now than the purely subjective, impotent, illusory creatures of my temperament. They were in no way connected now with nature, with the world of real things, which from now onwards lost all its charm and significance, and meant no more to my ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... not your enemy," she continued. "There is enough of war in the world, is there not, Mr. Renault? And I shall soon be on my way to Canada. Were I your enemy, how impotent am I to compass your destruction—impotent as a love-sick maid who chooses as her gallant a gentleman most agreeable, gently bred, faultless in conduct and address, upon whose highly polished presence she gazes, seeking depth, ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... these two human beings, desolate woman, vice-ridden man, both fallen down in the deep mire, both almost whelmed in the flood of Fate. And he stood strong, faithful, clean-souled, brave-hearted, yet impotent, regarding them. For some power willed it that misery alone could hold out a helping hand to misery, that vice and degradation must rise to thrust back vice and degradation. The fallen creature was to be the protector, the unredeemed to be the redeemer. Doctor Levillier knew this when ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... and were not expecting their Messiah at that time, the Brahmans (the initiates, at any rate) knew of the coming of him whom they regarded as an incarnation of Divine wisdom, and therefore were well aware of the astrological date of his birth. If, in after times, in their impotent rage they destroyed every accessible vestige of the birth, life and death of Him, who in his boundless mercy to all creatures had revealed their carefully concealed mysteries and doctrines in order to check the ecclesiastical torrent of ever-growing superstitions, yet there had ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... that it must stand or fall with the luxurious society of which it forms but a part. This society had but one idea, to use its power as hard-heartedly and as craftily as possible in order to render the impotent—the people—ever more and more serviceable, base and unpopular, and to rear the modern workman out of them. It also robbed them of the greatest and purest things which their deepest needs led them to create, and through which they meekly expressed ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... other side beholde an Almain or Germain in the Pulpit, and hee would thinke him benummed, and impotent, or lame in all his members ...
— A Treatise Of Daunses • Anonymous
... salt sea, and so do flat, old scows, honest and rough and sea-going. Any boat in the bay is superior to the effeminate ferry. Even the boat to Sacramento has a bit more atmosphere. As for tug boats, they are little, but O-my as they pull the great, impotent barges after them. Pilot boats have quite an air making the big, dignified steamers look foolish being yanked here and there. The tidy fisherman's motor boats look rather unimaginative, all tied in rows at Fisherman's Wharf, but they go somewhere, sometimes away down the coast ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... territorial greed. Leopold hated Louis, but he hated also the rising Protestant "Brandenburger," he hated the "merchant" Dutch, hated everybody in short who dared intrude upon the ancient order of his superiority, who refused to recognize his impotent authority. So he would gladly have seen Louis crush every opponent except himself, would have found it a pleasant vengeance indeed to see all these upstart powers ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... raged Ben, stamping his impotent fury, "'tis him—'tis him! The Judas Iscariot, and he's left us to die so that he may ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... fed upon society, the murderer, the thief, the menace to the lives and property of law-abiding citizens, the scourge that for years New York had combated in the no more effective fashion than that of gnashing its teeth in impotent fury, had suddenly reappeared with a fresh murder to his credit. And New York had thought ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... say, it cannot amount to much. You are impotent, bound hand and foot in honour. You know me to be a man falsely accused, and even if you did not know it, from your position as my rival you have only the choice to stand quite ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... down. A woman had found her way in between the joints of an armour which he had grown to believe impenetrable, and henceforth life was a wreck. The old, quiet stoicism, which had been the inner stimulus of his career, was a thing altogether overthrown and impotent. He was too old to reconstruct life anew; the fragments were too many, and the wreck too complete. Only his philosophy showed him very plainly what the end must be. Across the sky of his vision it seemed to be written in ...
— Berenice • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... thou be'st the Elect of Heaven, The gift that God has largely given, Thou shouldst then for our good impart, To purify thy brother's heart. Yes, we are base, and vile, and hateful, Cruel, and shameless, and ungrateful— Impotent and heartless tools, Slaves, and slanderers, and fools. Come then, if charity doth sway thee, Chase from our hearts the viper-brood; However stern, we will obey thee; Yes, we will listen, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... and generous cooperation the editor is greatly indebted to the authors and publishers of all the plays included. He is equally grateful to other dramatists who were personally as cordial in intention but quite impotent to grant copyright privileges. In addition, he has received most friendly and cordial criticism from friends and friendly strangers to whom he appealed—among others, from Mr. Harold Brighouse; Mr. Theodore ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... consisted of royalists and Presbyterians; and to both these parties the dominion of the pretended parliament had ever been to the last degree odious. When that assembly was expelled by Cromwell, contempt had succeeded to hatred; and no reserve had been used in expressing the utmost derision against the impotent ambition of these usurpers. Seeing them reinstated in authority, all orders of men felt the highest indignation; together with apprehensions, lest such tyrannical rulers should exert their power by taking vengeance upon their enemies, who had so openly insulted them. A secret ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... helpless populations of Serbia and Belgium and northern France, are not matter of controversy; they have been proved by many extant military documents and by the testimony of many living witnesses. They were designed to reduce whole peoples to a state of impotent terror, beneath the level of humanity. The apology made for them, that by shortening resistance to the inevitable they were in effect merciful, is a blasphemous apology, which puts Germany in the place of the Almighty. The effect anticipated did not follow. The ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... whole land mourns. Secession smote him in her impotent death-rage, but the State lives on! The reins which dropped from his nerveless hand another grasped, and the nation lives. No revolution comes. No war of rival dynasties! The constitutional successor is in the chief seat of power, and ...
— Abraham Lincoln - A Memorial Discourse • Rev. T. M. Eddy
... these caverns, he had seen men fight as dogs—with teeth and claws and resounding yells; he had heard the screams of a woman and the cries of helpless children. A sufficient sense of prudence compelled him to be but an apathetic spectator of these infamies. The one battle he had fought had been impotent to save the object of ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... drawn, Nor even one martyred body cast To stain their footsteps, as they past; But of the many sworn at night To do or die, some fled the sight, Some stood to look with sullen frown, While some in impotent despair Broke their bright armor and lay down, Weeping, upon the fragments there!— If those, I say, who brought that shame, That blast upon GENEVA'S name Be living still—tho' crime so dark Shall hang up, fixt and unforgiven, In History's ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... sometimes twentie, the rest haue tenne Iulies a piece, or els a certaine number of other presents called Caxae. The meate that was ordained, as soone as the dead corps friends and all the Bonzii are gone, is left for such as serued at the obsequie, for the poore and impotent lazars. ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... line for herself and her children.[2324]—A fervent devotion, even humanness, the frivolity of the small literary spirit, graceful urbanity, profound ignorance,[2325] the lack or rigidity of the comprehension and determination are still greater with the princes than with the nobles.—All are impotent against the wild and roaring outbreak. They have not the physical superiority that can master it, the vulgar charlatanism which can charm it away, the tricks of a Scapin to throw it off the scent, the bull's neck, the mountebank's gestures, the stentor's lungs, in short, the resources of ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... arrested her liberties; and now the odium of defeat made the burdens it imposed intolerable. The temper of every class was strained to the danger point. The wretched government was held responsible, followed, as usual, by impeachments, murders, and impotent outbursts of fury. ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... Ah did," said his deliverer in English; and, recalling principle, the terrier bit at him—only to find himself muzzled by a horny, huge fist that caressed even while it rendered impotent. ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... field the arrows of the natives were quite impotent. A bullet could strike the heart at twice or three times the distance at which an arrow could be thrown. The Spaniards, hotly pursued, retreated from this broken ground several miles back into the open plain. Many ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... induced them to murmur against their general. Charles, however, felt by experience the prudence of those measures which sacrificed individual interests to the general good by making a desert of the whole country. Francis marked his impotent hatred by summoning the emperor before parliament by the simple name of Charles of Austria, as his vassal for the counties of Artois and Flanders. The charge was the infraction of the treaty of Cambray, the offence was laid as felony, to abide the judgment of the court of peers. On the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... nor even to be seen by such. Away then, sleepless Care, Complaint away, And Envy, with thy "jealous leer malign" 130 Nor let the monster Calumny shoot forth Her venom'd tongue at me. Detested foes! Ye all are impotent against my peace, For I am privileged, and bear my breast Safe, and too high, for your viperean wound. But thou my Father! since to render thanks Equivalent, and to requite by deeds Thy liberality, ...
— Poemata (William Cowper, trans.) • John Milton
... powder, but also a spark. Falling on ice, a spark is impotent, falling on powder, an explosion is inevitable. Wendell Phillips had already been aroused to sympathy with Garrison and hatred of slavery, and news of the murder of Lovejoy fell upon his heart ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... "A lame and impotent conclusion in the form of many other shells that evoked no reply; and beyond his feeble demonstration Tyler did nothing. It seemed to me that a determined dash at the bridge would have carried it. I was fretting and fuming about when a staff-officer ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... only too indisputable that under the system of private property and its inevitable consequence, the monopoly of economic power, the liberty of the man who does not share in this monopoly, is only an impotent and sentimental toy. And when the workers, with a clear consciousness of their class-interests, wish to make use of this liberty, then the holders of political power are forced to disown the great liberal principles, "the principles ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... transplanted from Europe. On the contrary, we had been taught to regard them as most unfortunate in the circumstances under which [11] they so gloriously conquered their merited freedom. We saw them free, but perfectly illiterate barbarians, impotent to use the intellectual resources of which their valour had made them possessors, in the shape of books on the spirit and technical details of a highly developed national existence. We had learnt also, until this new interpreter of history had contradicted the accepted ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... driving ground, nor well meadowed." Surely the writer does not mean that a pleasant or delectable island would not be fit for breeding horses? The most equitable translation, therefore, of the present text being thus halt and impotent, we may suspect corruption, and I hazard the following emendation, though I have not adopted it in my translation, as fearing that it would be deemed too ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... and aggressive powers, we have in the south three comparatively small and detached areas, in which rich floras have been developed with SPECIAL adaptations to soil, climate, and organic environment, but comparatively impotent and inferior beyond their own domain." (Wallace, ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... My feelings soon changed. Winterbotham continued to be very German, but Herbert and I began to wish to desert when we saw how overbearing success had made the Prussians, and how determined they were to push their successes to a point at which France would have been made impotent ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... words unfetter'd, might at full Tell of the wounds and blood that now I saw, Though he repeated oft the tale? No tongue So vast a theme could equal, speech and thought Both impotent alike. If in one band Collected, stood the people all, who e'er Pour'd on Apulia's happy soil their blood, Slain by the Trojans, and in that long war When of the rings the measur'd booty made A pile so high, as Rome's historian ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... masterful as the human intellect is in guiding and controlling the ordinary forces of nature, how impotent and insignificant it appears in the presence of such a transcendent disaster! It is well nigh inconceivable that a great section throbbing with populous towns, and resonant with the hum of industry, should be wiped out in the ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... and exhausted her epithets, was fain to pause a moment, though both her fists were shaken in the prisoner's face, and the whole of her wrinkled countenance was filled with fierce resentment. Deerslayer looked upon these impotent attempts to arouse him as indifferently as a gentleman in our own state of society regards the vituperative terms of a blackguard: the one party feeling that the tongue of an old woman could never injure a warrior, and the other knowing that mendacity and vulgarity can only permanently affect ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... cabin and came out with the little Marlin in his hands; but then he realized how utterly impotent he was to give his beleaguered chum a ...
— The House Boat Boys • St. George Rathborne
... panic rout:—but we will say nothing of it just yet. Polish Confederation—horror-struck, as may be imagined, at its auxiliary Brother of the Sun and Moon and his performances—is weltering in violently impotent spasms into deeper and ever deeper wretchedness, Friedrich sometimes thinking of a Burlesque Poem on the subject;—though the Russian successes, and the Austrian grudgings and gloomings, are rising on him as a very serious consideration. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... this place Negro labor was employed in its stead, notwithstanding the force of racial antipathy. Though this force is capable of accomplishing much, the probability is that in the face of economic stress it would have been rendered impotent by the action of employers just as it was in the recent emergency, and Negroes would have been hired freely according to the exigencies of industries, if foreigners had not been available in ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... gin. But most attend, ye persons of the press Who live (though why, yourselves alone can guess) In hope deferred, ambitious still to shine By hating me at half a cent a line— Like drones among the bees of brighter wing, Sunless to shine and impotent to sting. To estimate in easy verse I'll try The controversial value of a lie. So lend your ears—God knows you have enough!— I mean to teach, and ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... epistle. The Gentile with the law of nature, the Jew with the law of Moses, alike fail to achieve righteousness. 'All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.' All do what they would not, and do not what they would; all feel themselves enslaved, impotent, guilty, miserable. 'O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?' Hitherto we have followed Paul in the sphere of morals; we have now come with him to the point where he enters the sphere of religion." Paul ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... cracking his whip joyously, and followed by half a score of dogs, cantered on his rude pony down the Tilford Lane, and thence it was that with a smile of amused contempt upon his face he observed the comedy in the field and the impotent efforts of ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... lassitude. His nerves were all tremulous, he must needs do everything vehemently, and felt the while as if he were being whirled along, passive, in the grip of some force outside himself One moment he was dreaming himself capable of miracles, the next he was limp with weariness and utterly impotent. And naturally, as soon as he had food inside him, weariness won and he was overwhelmed with great waves of languor. He hardly dragged himself up to his attic before he ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... kind of trouble should develop the Council would be almost impotent in offering them assistance. On the face of it, there was no reason to expect trouble. But the peculiarly oblique opposition of the Markovian delegate in the Council continued to make ...
— Cubs of the Wolf • Raymond F. Jones
... obtaining a hearing from Englishmen. Thereafter, amid all the clouds of falsehood and ridicule which we had to encounter, there was one lighthouse fixed on a rock to which we could go for foothold, from which we could not be driven, and against which all assaults were impotent. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... which the spring is enclosed, and removed the steel spiral, but instead of relaxing itself, according to the laws of its elasticity, it remained coiled on itself like a sleeping viper. It seemed knotted, like impotent old men whose blood has long been congealed. Master Zacharius vainly essayed to uncoil it with his thin fingers, the outlines of which were exaggerated on the wall; but he tried in vain, and soon, with a terrible cry of anguish and rage, he threw it through the trap-door ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... regularly and incessantly, as the vapors rise and the springs run, and as the sun rises and the stars come up into the heavens, then we may be sure that great results will be attained and a great work done. And then it will most surely be seen that Masonry is not effete or impotent, nor degenerated nor drooping to ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... The Germans forced the passage of the Danube north and east of Belgrade and came south along the broad Morava River Valley, driving the Serbs before them. Thanks to the heavy artillery of the invaders Serbian resistance was impotent. The Austrians, meantime, crossed the Drin and came east from Bosnia. Think of Serbia as a rectangle and you can visualize two sides of the figure as closing in on the center, which was the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... have an influence on the actions and affections, it follows, that they cannot be derived from reason; and that because reason alone, as we have already proved, can never have any such influence. Morals excite passions, and produce or prevent actions. Reason of itself is utterly impotent in this particular. The rules of morality therefore, are not conclusions of ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... in shape, from the rather stately steamships to the little tug-boats that shoot to and fro like gnats upon the surface of a pool. I say rather stately, for the high and graceful hull of the steamer comes to a lame and impotent conclusion in its squat chimney, like a large-faced man with a mayhemed nose, and in its toy masts and rigging, like a stout woman with curl-papers or a thin wisp of ringlet. When two or three of these steamships are together down the harbor, their white volleys of smoke often present quite ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... Pharisees, would weigh a man down to hell itself; while to lie or to use other foul language, or to trample under foot the whole decalogue was, by comparison, a venial offence. The whole moral code was rendered impotent by them, while ceremonial cleansing was the be-all and end-all of their system. Christ was daily thrown into conflict with these "blind leaders of the blind"; His soul abhorred their whole religious system. He characterized them as "whited sepulchres." ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... her bewitching smile, was luring me into the fog and darkness, and now to be barring the front door to defend her from some unknown assailant, whose perpetual rapping rang like an echo through my brain. With the impotent strength of dreamland I struggled vainly to close the door, which was opening slowly to admit the nameless horror. I seemed to feel a hot breath on my cheek, and with a wild shriek I woke, to find the moonlight streaming in through the broad diamond-paned window, ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... could scarcely support its own weight, his limbs had been loaded. He sent Perez compassionate and encouraging messages, writing to him, "I will not forsake you, and be assured that their animosity (of the Escovedos) will be impotent against you;" while he regularly transmitted to Vasquez and the Escovedos the information which nourished and hardened their hatred. And finally, having constantly enjoined Perez to take heed that no one should discover the murder to have been perpetrated by the king, Philip, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... would accept the postponement of the measure till the new Parliament. But there are measures of urgency, measures of fundamental import, above all, measures which cut across the ordinary lines of party, and with which, in consequence, our system is impotent to deal, and on these the direct consultation of the people would be the most suitable ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... Venice. Like this was Pietro Paolo Baglioni, whose fault, in the eyes of Machiavelli, was that he could not succeed in being "perfettamente tristo." Beautiful, but inhuman; passionate, but cold; powerful, but rendered impotent for firm and lofty deeds by immorality and treason; how many centuries of men like this once wasted Italy and plunged her into servitude! Yet what material is here, under sterner discipline, and with a nobler national ideal, for ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... as tightly as he could; the sputtering fuse frightened the voice out of him; his breath stood still; he stood gazing and impotent; in two seconds, three seconds, four he would be flying toward the sky torn to fragments. Then he had an inspiration. He sprang at the fuse; severed the inch of it that was left above ground, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... her, when the father, first ascertaining by a hasty glance that no stranger remained, started up, clasped his hands wildly above his head, uttered a cry of the despair which he had hitherto repressed, and, in all the impotent impatience of grief, half rushed half staggered forward to the bed on which the coffin had been deposited, threw himself down upon it, and smothering, as it were, his head among the bed-clothes, gave vent to the full passion of his ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... kind that life is. And that in man which is most of kin with God languishes most when so cut off. And when we have blocked Him out from our field of vision, all that remains for us to look at suffers degradation, and becomes phantasmal, poor, unworthy to detain, and impotent to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... in a blind rage pushed Pinky from her room. The assault was sudden and unexpected—-so sudden that Pinky, who was the stronger, had no time to recover herself and take the offensive before she was on the outside and the door shut and locked against her. A few impotent threats and curses were interchanged between the two infuriated women, and ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... civil answer, the insolent wretch, beholding me with a fierce air, "Impotent villain,' said he, I would rather give my slave to a Jew for nothing than to thee for money.' Noor ad Deen,' I replied, without passion, though I had some reason to be a little warm,'you do not consider, that by talking in this manner ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 2 • Anon.
... set her heart to aching. Adelais knew that no natural power could dissuade him; he would go back with her; but she knew how constantly he had hoped for liberty, with what fortitude he had awaited his chance of liberty; and that he should return to captivity, smiling, thrilled her to impotent, heart-shaking rage. It maddened her that he ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... stay under longer than usual; at the flash of our rifles they would go down, and in a few minutes would be again on the surface sixty rods from us, laughing aloud, as it were, with their clear and quavering voices, at our impotent attempts ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... themselves, but no less than forty were held fast; and of these such as were not so fortunate as to be crushed to death in the first shock perished hopelessly in the flames before the eyes of a throng of impotent lookers-on. Some fifty-two or fifty-three persons were supposed to have lost their lives in this disaster, and more than forty others were injured; the exact number of the killed, however, could never be ascertained, as the telescoping of the carriages on top ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... ravings, even in the mouth of some impotent beldame, were enough to excite a shudder, but in that dreary epoch, these curses from the lips of clergymen were deemed sufficient to draw down celestial lightning upon the head, not of the blasphemer, but ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... smashed his heavy riding boot into the face of the dog. Black Bart toppled back against the base of the manger, struggled vainly to regain his poise, and it was then that he pointed his nose up, and wailed like a lost soul, wailed with the fury of impotent hate. Mac Strann caught Haw-Haw by the arm and dragged him ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... would hear from Dick Cronk before the middle of the forenoon. Until then he was to be harassed by doubts and fears that would not be easy to suppress in his present unquiet frame of mind. While he was obliged to stand idle and impotent, the very foundation of all the future happiness of the girl he loved might be irreparably shattered. Silent, deadly, purposeful forces were working toward that end. Her mother would, no doubt, prepare her in ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... altogether passive; a mean worm, organized to feel sensations of pain, but having no emotion of resentment? Did you imagine that there was no danger in inflicting on me pains, however great; miseries, however direful? Do you believe me impotent, imbecile, and idiot-like, with no understanding to contrive my escape and thy ruin, and no energy to perpetrate it? I will tell the end of thy infernal works. The country, in justice, shall hear me. I would that I had the language of fire, that my words might glow, and burn, and ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... family. You respect their feelings, smile and smile, and are villain enough to be civil with your lips, and hide the poison of asps under your tongue, till you have a chance to relieve your o'ercharged heart by shaking your fist in impotent wrath at his retreating form. You will receive the reward of your hypocrisy as you richly deserve, for ten to one he will drop in again when he comes back from his office, and arrest you wandering ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... not understand that he, like all men, was striving towards the truth, and that was why he had that confused unrest. He could not find his truth, and he became entangled, and was perishing." Liudmilla, however, had saved herself from the pettiness and provinciality of this "unclean, impotent earth" by creating a new world for herself. She, at any rate, had her beautiful legend, ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... of the river were intensely interested in the case; but they found themselves impotent before that head of a woman, who seemed to have never been seen upon earth in life. They could do nothing, therefore, but wait patiently for ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... I do it? Was it my fault? Could I help being born? And look at me now, blighted and blasted, just as life was at its sweetest. Talk about the sins of the father—how about the sins of the Creator?" He shook his two clinched hands in the air—the poor impotent atom with his pin-point of brain caught in ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... monastic establishments were hotbeds of superstition and fanaticism, from whence nothing of a useful or elevated nature could possibly emanate. They are too apt to suppose that the human intellect must be altogether weak and impotent when confined within such narrow limits; but truth and knowledge can exist even in the dark cells of a gloomy cloister, and inspire the soul with a fire that can shed a light far beyond its narrow precincts. ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... there is nothing for him to do now but to fall upon his sword and to kill himself, for his prisoners are free. 'Oh, death! I will be thy plague; oh, grave! I will be thy destruction.' 'The Breaker has gone up before us'; therefore it is not possible that we should be holden of the impotent chains that ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... the dreadful tempest borne High on the broken wave, They know Thou art not slow to hear, Nor impotent ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... traps, another slim yellow creature, larger than the first, leaped up, with a vicious cry, and almost reached her face. But, fortunately for her, it was held fast by both hind legs in the trap, and fell back impotent. ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Vedantic exegesis. With the help of the brothers Natu, who were the recognized leaders of Hindu orthodoxy, he carried his propaganda into the schools and colleges in the teeth of the Moderate party, and, proclaiming that unless they learnt to employ force the Hindus must expect to be impotent witnesses of the gradual downfall of all their ancient institutions, he proceeded to organize gymnastic societies in which physical training and the use of more or less primitive weapons were taught in order to develop the martial ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... canons of logic and our general science, while religion submits to the same process as do other departments of knowledge. But in Protestantism reason and the light of nature are in themselves as impotent as in the Roman Church. The Bible interpreted by man's unaided intelligence is as valueless as other writings, but it has a sacramental value when the Holy Spirit accompanies its teaching, and the power of God uses it and makes the soul capable of holiness. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... expressed myself decidedly opposed to any rash movement, and against the idea of secession at this time. I did so because I think that Lincoln's administration will fail, and be regarded as impotent for good or evil within four months after his inauguration. We are to meet ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... of all organic beings, man alone is to be regarded as essentially a destructive power, and that he wields energies to resist which Nature—that nature whom all material life and all inorganic substance obey—is wholly impotent, tends to prove that, though living in physical nature, he is not of her, that he is of more exalted parentage, and belongs to a higher order of existences, than those which are born of her womb and live in blind submission ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... In England training all this year. Still, if there's truth in what we hear, The Huns intend to ask for more Before they bolt across the Rhine." I watched them toddle through the door— These impotent old friends ...
— The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon • Siegfried Sassoon
... close of the last chapter we remarked the deterioration of the harem-ridden court in the early days of Artaxerxes; and as time passed, the spectacle of a Great King governing by treachery, buying his enemies, and impotent to recover Egypt even with their mercenary help had its effect. Belief gained ground that the ship of Empire was sinking, and even in Susa the fear grew that a wind from the West was to finish her. The Great King's court officers watched Greek politics during the ...
— The Ancient East • D. G. Hogarth
... the Indian made him look up. At the same instant the whip of the overseer, descending, cut him sharply across the shoulders. He sprang to his feet, the veins in his forehead swollen, his frame tense with impotent anger. The overseer, having gained his attention, thrust the whip ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... with what frantic but impotent hope, as the sinking decks and menacing plash of waters within told of the imminent last plunge, those thousands of eyes strained at the misty wall of grayish black that enclosed them on every hand. Not ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... tribes who, as we shall show, possess, but neglect, an Eternal Creator. He would do what, in the secular sphere, was done by the Mikado of Japan. The Mikado was a political Dendid or Ndengei—an awful, withdrawn, impotent potentate. Power was wielded by the Tycoon. A Mikado of genius asserted himself; hence arose modern Japan. In the same way, a religious reformer like Khuen Ahten in Egypt would preach down minor gods, ghosts and sacred beasts, and proclaim the primal Maker, Ndengei, Dendid, Mtanga. ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... therewithal, to win me, if you please (Without the which I am not to be won), You shall this twelvemonth term from day to day Visit the speechless sick, and still converse With groaning wretches; and your talk shall be, With all the fierce endeavour of your wit, To enforce the pained impotent to smile. ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... be unavailing; and shaking with impotent rage, he turned into the path which, after five weary miles, would lead him once ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... Here is a third barrier of a senseless qualification. Every deputy to the National Assembly must pay, in direct contribution, to the value of a mark of silver. Of all these qualifying barriers we must think alike: that they are impotent to secure independence, strong only to ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... father, his anger baffled and impotent before the child's weakness, "I won't bother you with it no more NOW. But you just wait till you 're well oncet! We'll see then if you'll tell me what I ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... more safety, with more favour; he had rather have his blood seen than his back, and disdains life upon base conditions. No man is more mild to a relenting or vanquished adversary, or more hates to set his foot on a carcase. He had rather smother an injury than revenge himself of the impotent, and I know not whether he more detests cowardliness or cruelty. He talks little, and brags less; and loves rather the silent language of the hand, to be seen than heard. He lies ever close within himself, armed with wise resolution, and ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... the sculpture of the walls; their magnificent proportions; their cascades, gardens, and forest adornments; the placid fiord between them; the great white and blue ice wall, and the snow-laden mountains beyond. Still more impotent are words in telling the peculiar awe one experiences in entering these mansions of the icy North, notwithstanding it is only the natural effect of appreciable manifestations of the ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... trembling lips, to terrify the congregation, but here the list of the whole seven but strengthens confidence. Faith delights to look steadily at its enemies, knowing that the one Helper is more than they all. This catalogue breathes the same spirit as Paul's rapturous list of the foes impotent to separate from the love of God. Mark, too, the long-drawn-out designation of the ark, with its accumulation of nouns, which grammatical purists have found difficult,—'the ark of the covenant of the Lord of all the earth'; where it leads they need not fear to follow. It ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... hand. Catullus had introduced him, which would add piquancy to her letting the din of the Forum succeed the babbling of Heliconian streams. Suddenly she laughed aloud, cruelly, as another thought struck her. How furious and how impotent Cicero would be! If she could play with this disciple of his, and then divest him of every shred of reputation, she might feel that at last she was avenged on the man whom she had meant to marry (after they had sloughed off Metellus and Terentia) and who had escaped her. Calling back her secretary ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... remind me that he claims for him no material potency; and I must own that no happier moment could have been chosen for the annunciation of an impotent God. But the plea does not quite tally with the facts. In the first place (as we have seen) the Invisible King is going to do things—he is going to do very remarkable things as soon as he knows how. And in the second place it is impossible to conceive that the tremendous psychical influence ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... persecution bred the spirit and created the weapons for its correction. When it was found that every American vessel was the possible spoil of any French or English cruiser or privateer that she might encounter; that our Government was impotent to protect its seamen; that neither our neutrality rights nor the neutrality of ports in which our vessels lay commanded the respect of the two great belligerents, the Yankee shipping merchants set about meeting the situation as best they might. They did not give up their effort to secure the ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... dared to do in overcoming the enemies Of his system, can hardly doubt his courage. Calumny or error has thrown an unmerited disgrace over his last wretched days. He has been supposed to have wounded himself in an impotent attempt to put an end to his life. It has been ascertained that such was not the fact, the pistol by which he was wounded having been fired by one of the soldiers by whom he was arrested. He is stated also to have wanted that firmness in death which so many of his victims displayed. ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... it was by far the most effective, weapon for compelling obedience to the mandate of the judge in any matter whatever. Indeed without this instrument of coercion the ecclesiastical judges would have been impotent. ...
— The Elizabethan Parish in its Ecclesiastical and Financial Aspects • Sedley Lynch Ware
... (though with slightly neurotic heredity on one side) practised sexual intercourse excessively between the ages of 20 and 23—often impelled more by amour propre (or what Adler would term the "masculine protest" of the organically inferior) than sexual desire—and then suddenly became impotent, at the same time losing all desire, but without any other loss of health. Six months later potency slowly returned, though never to the same extent, and he married. At the age of 35 symptoms of locomotor ataxia began to appear, and some years ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... present, who works with us, confirming the word with signs following, is the source of our power. Not till He is impotent shall we be weak. The unmeasurable measure of the gift of Christ defines the degree, and the unending duration of His life who continueth for ever sets the period, of our possession of the grace which is given to every one of us. He is ever bestowing. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... imprisoned mind heard him in the depths of its dark, degrading purgatory. But the lips moved and a long groan made answer; a far-off wail, a despairing appeal caused the glance Francoise and her son exchanged to overflow with impotent tears, and drew from them both a simultaneous cry in which their sorrows met: Pecaire! the local word expressive ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... agreement was directed. They, the feeble and powerless ones, with their necks ever bent under the yoke of the mighty and their feet ever stumbling into the traps of the crafty—they, too, would utter an impotent "Wicked!" if they knew. His voice had the note of gentle raillery in ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... should so refrain was a matter of course. Naturally! He still kept a hold on common sense. He would not only refrain, but be civil. If Claude were in need of anything or were short of cash he would probably write him a check. It was the irony of this kind of rage that it was so impotent. It was impotent and absurd. It might shake him to the foundations of his being, but it would come to nothing in the end. It both relieved and embittered him to foresee ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... dispense with the services of any particular miner. The miner, on the other hand, however expert, could not dispense with the companies. He needed a job; his wife and children would starve if he did not get one.... Individually the miners were impotent when they sought to enter a wage contract with the great companies; they could make fair terms only by uniting into trade unions to bargain collectively." It was of this state of affairs that President Taft spoke when he favored the modification of the ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... Who so furious?[4739] Amare ea aetate si occiperint, multo insaniunt acrius. Some dote then more than ever they did in their youth. How many decrepit, hoary, harsh, writhen, bursten-bellied, crooked, toothless, bald, blear-eyed, impotent, rotten, old men shall you see flickering still in every place? One gets him a young wife, another a courtesan, and when he can scarce lift his leg over a sill, and hath one foot already in Charon's boat, when he hath the trembling in his joints, the gout in his feet, a perpetual rheum in his head, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... that even now the banks might not do something which would help; still less do I wish to convey the impression that mankind must always remain passive and submissive, impotent to control these forces which so vitally affect his welfare. But I say that for any serious attempt to master this problem, the necessary detailed knowledge has still to be acquired, and the rudiments of organisation have still to be built up; and the problem is not one at this ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various
... impotent oath broke from him. Then he checked his impulse to rave. "Yes. See here, Nita," he went on, with a restraint which added deep impressiveness, "we've got to quit. We've got to get out—quick. Steve's hard on our trail. I've seen him to-day at Mallard's. He didn't see me. Only my back. But ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... somewhere seen, and are startled to remember it is the resolute face of the warrior and statesman, the king of men, the Kaiser Karl. Yes, this pitiable being was the descendant of the great emperor, and for that sufficient reason, although he was an impotent and shivering idiot, although he could not sleep without a friar in his bed to keep the devils away, for thirty-five years this scarecrow ruled over Spain, and dying made a will whose accomplishment bathed the Peninsula in blood. It must be confessed this institution of ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... itself with something that had not been there before, his impotent love. Hilda knelt down beside the bed and pressed her forehead against the hand upon the covering, the hand that had so little more ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... the important ones piled up in the hall to await our return. It is provoking, for, if the Bretherton party are not going to stay long in Venice, we may easily spend all our time in looking for each other; which will, indeed, be a lame and impotent conclusion. However, I have ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... whose plump round face was now distorted with impotent rage. "I'll be even with all of ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn
... overawe the delinquent states. General Gates had lately emerged from the retirement in which he had been fain to hide himself after Camden, and had rejoined the army where there was now such a field for intrigue. An odious aroma of impotent malice clings about his memory on this last occasion on which the historian needs to notice him. He plotted in secret with officers of the staff and others. One of his staff, Major Armstrong, wrote an anonymous appeal to the troops, and another, Colonel Barber, caused ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... began, by swearing, that sooner than consent to the dismemberment of Poland, he would lose his right hand. The three powers, tired of his impotent struggles, informed him, through their envoys at Warsaw, that there were limits to the moderation which decorum prescribed to governments; that they stood upon these limits, and awaited his speedy acquiescence to the act of partition. ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... that the display so frequently made of triumph in the hour of death by torture, indicates,[37] in part, an elevation of character, seldom found among more civilized men. It is, however, the elevation of a barbarian; and its manifestations are as much the fruit of impotent rage, as of a noble fortitude. The prisoner at the stake knows that there is no escape; and his intense hatred of his enemies takes the form of a wish, to deprive them of a triumph. While his flesh is crisping and crackling in the ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... your friend booby Grafton I'll e'en let you keep, Awake he can't hurt, and is still half asleep; Nor ever was dangerous, but to womankind, And his body's as impotent ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... both. I am proud of the country they serve. I have enjoyed at times her honors, at others endured her chastisements. I respect the power which our army and our navy give to our nation, but our army and navy are impotent in such ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... resolution without dollars? His purpose might be strong, but poverty, a Brobdingnagian giant, laid its hand on his shoulder, crushing him down, holding him there, impotent, until the stocky man and his cohorts of the private detective office should come over and get him—to send him to the little island he had thought of when ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... negroes, and living in a rude pomp where the fashions of St. James were somewhat oddly grafted on the roughness of the plantation,—what they wanted in schooling was supplied by an education which books alone would have been impotent to give, the education which came with the possession and exercise of political power, and the sense of a position to maintain, joined to a bold spirit of independence and a patriotic attachment to the ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... increased by the enemy driving the baggage-animals hither and thither, especially on to another half-battalion square of the Berkshire Regiment. Here, however, they were effectually checked. As the Atlantic billows burst in impotent turmoil on the cliffs of Cornwall, so the enemy fell upon and were hurled back by the steadfast Berkshire Regiment, which scarcely lost a man, while over two hundred of their opponents lay ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... them. They will see that if there is anything at the back of this vast process, with a consciousness and a purpose in any way resembling our own—a being who knows what he wants and is doing his best to get it—he is instead of a holy and all-wise God, a scatter-brained, semi-powerful, semi-impotent monster. They will recognise as clearly as they ever did the old familiar facts which seemed to them evidences of God's wisdom, love, and goodness; but they will find that these facts, when taken in connection with the others, only supply us with a standard in the nature of this Being himself by ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... No doubt he had been waiting for a propitious moment, that moment which never comes. Or had his instinct told him that anything he could say upon that subject to Rosamund would be utterly impotent, that there was a threshold his influence could not cross? Perhaps really his instinct had told him to wait, and he was not a moral coward. For to strive against a woman's deep feeling is surely to beat ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... in dreadful Whirles we hung High on the broken Wave, I knew thou wert not slow to Hear, Nor impotent to Save. ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... holds together. It is the basis of life, and more important than the tavern. Agreed: but that does not say that the tavern was not an excellent corrective influence to the villa, and that its disappearance has not had a vulgarising effect on artistic work of all kinds, and the club has been proved impotent to replace it, the club being no more than the correlative of the villa. Let the reader trace villa through each modern feature. I will pass on at once to the circulating library, at once the ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... the shrieking figure with fierce, impotent rage; then, with a look of disgust, he flung the robe off his knees and rose. Mr. Schwab, fearing bodily injury, backed ...
— The Scarlet Car • Richard Harding Davis
... us, that it is not wholly irresponsive to the behests of the soul. While in the course of physical evolution many important functions have undergone remarkable changes, and organs, once active and useful, have become stunted, impotent, and in some cases extinct, yet on the other hand we see that seeds which have lain dormant in arid soil for hundreds of years can spring into leaf and flower under the ...
— Second Sight - A study of Natural and Induced Clairvoyance • Sepharial
... chiefs of departments, and where I saw a body of artificers quite out of the common, but all of them misplaced in a badly situated establishment, the original plan of which was utterly defective, and in which they were forced to vegetate uselessly in spite of their own impotent efforts and endeavours. Thence we took our way across the Morbihan to Vannes, which during the whole of my father's reign was administered by the same prefect, and that with the esteem of every party. An exceptional case this (especially when the state of latent ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... I fear the most," resumed the Earl, "is, not the enemy without, but the jealousy within. By the side of Harold stands Tostig, rapacious to grasp, but impotent to hold—able to ruin, strengthless ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... never fought before, was bewildered; his sensations grew so entangled that he could never recall them distinctly; he had a dim reminiscence of some breathless impotent rush, of a sudden blindness followed by quick flashes of intolerable light, of a deadly faintness, from which he was roused by sharp pangs—here—there—everywhere; and then all he could remember was, that he was lying on the ground, huddled up and panting hard, while his adversary bent over ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... was fumbling feverishly at his bandaged shoulder. He scarcely knew what he was doing. In his impotent fury he sought only for freedom, not caring how he obtained it. Never in the whole of his life had he longed so overpoweringly to crush a ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... worth a fifth part of the enormous labour it has cost me. I assure you that all that is worth your doing (if you have time for so much) is glancing at Chapter VI., and reading parts of the later chapters. The facts on self-impotent plants seem to me curious, and I have worked out to my own satisfaction the good from crossing and evil from interbreeding. I did read Pangenesis the other evening, but even this, my beloved child, as I had fancied, quite disgusted me. The devil take the whole book; and ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... to them both. In such cases, the inherent desire for parenthood will "cry aloud and spare not." A "barren" woman greatly mourns her inability, and will shed bitter tears over the fact, if she be truly human; and an "impotent" man will be practically despised by all who are aware of ...
— Sane Sex Life and Sane Sex Living • H.W. Long
... is published by the Secretary of the American Iron-Association, and by authority of the same. This Association—now four years old—is not a common trades-union, nor any impotent combination to resist the law of supply and demand. Its general objects, as stated in the constitution, are "to procure regularly the statistics of the trade, both at home and abroad; to provide for the mutual interchange of information and experience, both scientific and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... again in the shadow of a hedge. I seem to remember talking, wanderingly, to myself during that last spurt. I was also very thirsty, and bitterly regretful I had drunk no more water. It is a curious thing that I felt angry with my wife; I cannot account for it, but my impotent desire to reach Leatherhead worried ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... impressive as a vision of the Host in a jewelled monstrance. Every accessory was gorgeous, the high room, the colour of the robes, the chains and crosses, and as the eye moved along to its climax it was met by a piece of dead white—as if glory was exhausted and declared itself impotent to tell the supreme secret. Scarlet and purple and gold were well enough for those who stood on the steps of the throne—they needed it; but for Him who sat there nothing was needed. Let colours ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... if the gods have breathed on him, and made him mad with the madness that men have called genius, there will be that in him greater than himself, which he knows,—and cannot know without some fierce wrench and pang,—will be numbed and made impotent, and drift away, lost for evermore, into that eternal night, which is all that ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... opened to its far horizon-line, and past and present were pictured in a single instant of clear vision. The dread moment which had blighted his life returned in all its terror. He felt the convulsive spring in the form of a faint, impotent spasm,—the rush of air,—the thorns of the stinging and lacerating cradle into which he was precipitated. One after another those paralyzing seizures which had been like deadening blows on the naked heart seemed to repeat themselves, as real as at the moment of their ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the sea and all his waves shuddered, and the deep land of Italy was startled, and Aetna's vaulted caverns moaned. But the tribe of the [675-709]Cyclopes, roused from the high wooded hills, run to the harbour and fill the shore. We descry the Aetnean brotherhood standing impotent with scowling eye, their stately heads up to heaven, a dreadful consistory; even as on a mountain summit stand oaks high in air or coned cypresses, a high forest of Jove or covert of Diana. Sharp fear urges ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... circumstances, does not care much for the printed or written messages of Congress. But under circumstances so little ordinary as those of 186l-62, while Washington was surrounded by hundreds of thousands of soldiers, Congress was absolutely impotent. Mr. Seward could snap his fingers at Congress, and he did so. He could not snap his fingers at the army; but then he could go with the army, could keep the army on his side by remaining on the same side with the ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope |
