"Paralyse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the course of this operation General De Lisle, of the 2nd Cavalry Brigade, thought he saw a good opportunity to paralyse the further advance of the enemy's infantry by making a mounted attack on his flank. He formed up and advanced for this purpose, but was held up by wire about 500 yards from his objective, and the 9th Lancers and 18th Hussars suffered ...
— Sir John French - An Authentic Biography • Cecil Chisholm
... reinforcements, and all the other troops on duty round Pylos, except the garrison on the fort. The tactics of Demosthenes had divided them into companies of two hundred, more or less, and made them occupy the highest points in order to paralyse the enemy by surrounding him on every side and thus leaving him without any tangible adversary, exposed to the cross-fire of their host; plied by those in his rear if he attacked in front, and by those on one flank if he moved against those on the other. In short, wherever he ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... ship, he had been hurled athwart the deck and against the lee rail of the poop, the impact of his body upon the hard wood was so severe that the breath was completely knocked out of him, while the pain must have been so great as practically to paralyse him for the moment and render him quite unable to do anything to help himself. Hence the probability was that, once in the water, he would have sunk for good and all, and that but for my promptitude in diving after him he would never again have been seen. And ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... with himself, and with that inbred antipathy of temperament which seemed to paralyse both will and judgment. Was the secret of it that in their profound unlikeness they ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... shape of a strike by the metal-workers, led by radicals of a pronounced type, who used the strike idea to further their revolutionary aims, and who devoted themselves to bringing about a general sympathetic strike in order to paralyse the business of the city and thus help their enterprise. The radicals succeeded in securing a general strike even to the post office staff and mail clerks, and this led to similar sympathetic movements in Brandon, Saskatoon, Edmonton, Calgary and Vancouver. ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... kind of chase; it is, exactly, the coursing which Man has merely had to direct for his own benefit. Wild dogs pursue their prey united in immense packs. They excite each other by barking while they frighten the game and half paralyse his efforts. No animal is agile and strong enough to be sure of escaping. They surround him and cut off his retreat in a most skilful manner; Gazelles and Antelopes, in spite of their extreme nimbleness and speed, are caught at last; Boars are rapidly ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... very heavy tax on all imported goods, hoping thereby to beguile the Boers into paying taxes without knowing it, and at the same time strike a blow at the trading community, which is English in its proclivities. The result has been to paralyse what little trade there was left in the country, and to cause great dissatisfaction amongst the farmers, who cannot understand why, now that the English are gone, they should have to pay twice as much for their sugar and coffee as they ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... do discuss any (and it will perhaps be expected of you), I should think that you could not select a better case than that of the sand wasps, which paralyse their prey, as formerly described by Fabre, in his wonderful paper in the 'Annales des Sciences,' and since amplified ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... pains to impress upon Philip the necessity of getting rid of Orange as the chief obstacle to the pacification of the Netherlands, and advised that a price should be placed upon his life. "The very fear of it will paralyse or kill him" was the opinion of the cardinal, who ought to have had a better understanding of the temper and character of his old adversary. Accordingly at Maestricht, March 15, 1581, "a ban and edict ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... few years and you'll see a strike that will paralyse you. Look at these teamsters. They're powerful now. They'll get licked, but they'll come back. When the next big money panic comes—it'll be in my day, too—you'll see the streets of Chicago running with blood. These fellows ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... persistence in a course, in spite of antagonisms. That is what trouble does to a man when it is rightly borne. Of course the Apostle is speaking here of its ideal operation, and not of the reality which alas! often is seen when our tribulations lash us into impatience, or paralyse our efforts. Tribulation worketh patience, 'and patience experience.' That is a difficult word to put into English. There underlies it the frequent thought which is familiar in Scripture, of trouble of all kinds as testing a ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... wishes, not a breath came to my lips; and the old woman, bending over me between the curtains, fixed her stony stare upon me with a strange unearthly smile. I wanted to call for help, I wanted to drive her from me, but her petrifying stare seemed to fascinate and paralyse me, just as that of the serpent fixes the little bird ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... punishments. Under the reign of Liberal Governments the writ of these courts runs where the King's writ cannot run, and the law of the League has been allowed in great measure to supersede the law of the land. We have also an increasing force in Irish Nationalism which seeks to paralyse the government of Ireland by means of the general or sympathetic strike. This organisation seeks to establish courts in Ireland in opposition to the ordinary law courts, and to enforce their decrees by means ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... tenderness, love, pity for the weak and the helpless, protection of the helpless against the strong—if you forget the whole of that, and act as a brute even would not act, in cruelty and wickedness to men and animals alike, you will degrade the body you are trying to preserve, you will paralyse the body you are trying to save from disease, and you will go back into the savagery which is the nemesis of cruelty, and ruin these nobler bodies, the inheritance of ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant
... demonstration and for a moment or two stood in amazed silence. The audacity of the youngster appeared to paralyse his ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... weeps, and the Church weeps too. She owns that her relics fail to guard her altars from these Barbarian devils.[13] Had she not better call upon the arm of that wayward child whom she was going to bind fast, the arm of that young giant whom she wanted to paralyse? This movement in two opposite ways fills the whole ninth century. The people are held back, anon they are hurled forward: we fear them and we call on them for aid. With them and by means of them we throw up hasty barriers, defences that may check the Barbarians, while sheltering the priests ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... of the Red Rover. They gave Philistinism many a shrewd blow, but perhaps at the same time helped to some degree—with other far deeper and stronger forces—to produce that sceptical and centrifugal state of mind, which now tends to nullify organised liberalism and paralyse the spirit of improvement. The Benthamites, led first by James Mill, and afterwards in a secondary degree by John Mill, had pushed a number of political improvements in the radical and democratic direction during the time when the Edinburgh so powerfully represented ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... far at least as they consisted of Lady Edward, Lady Bellhouse and Mrs. Pouncer, who had engaged to muster, at the signal of tea, on the 14th—prepared, as it were, for the worst. There was of course always the chance that Lady Wantridge might take the field, in such force as to paralyse them, though that danger, at the same time, seemed inconsistent with her being squared. It didn't perhaps all quite ideally hang together; but what it sufficiently came to was that if she was the one who could do ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... overspread Zeppa's face. We have already said that his smile had fascination in it. The effect on the savage was to paralyse him for the moment. Zeppa advanced, took Ongoloo's face between both hands, and, placing his nose against that of the chief, ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... a remedy. But what remedy? That Himself should pay the penalty, and effect a full redemption. How? By becoming a creature, and so lifting up the race to Himself through so generous a condescension. I show that it was antecedently probable that the Divinity should come in humble form, not to paralyse our reason by outward glories,—that He might even die as a seeming malefactor; this was the guess of Socrates: and that for the trial of our faith there are likely to be permitted all manner of difficulties and mysteries for us to gain personal ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... measures of emergency which became more or less necessary. Of the bulk of the Democrats it would probably be fair to say that their conscious intention throughout was to be true to the Union, but that throughout they were beset by a respect for Southern rights which would have gone far to paralyse the arm of the Government. Lastly, there were Republicans, by no means in sympathy with the Democratic view, who became suspect to their Radical fellows and were vaguely classed together as Conservatives. This term may be taken to cover men simply of moderate and cautious, or ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... Agar was staring at him with something in his face that was almost strong. When this man had entered the room, Arthur felt his heart give one great bound which almost choked him. There was a strange physical feeling of vacuity in his breast which seemed to paralyse his breathing powers, ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... critical, just, impartial, with a mind always open to conviction, but refusing to move until convinced. Such men are an invaluable element in the deliberative stages of every question; but their very critical powers paralyse action, and when movement becomes necessary their hesitations are a drawback. I fancy that Cornewall Lewis was just such another, but I did not know so much ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... other's hands, and were almost too horrified to move at the sight. "Look! Look!" cried Sylvia, gasping, "the mouth!" Deborah looked and gave a moan. Aaron's mouth was rigidly closed under a glittering jewel. Deborah bent down, still moaning, so great did the horror of the thing paralyse her speech, and saw the lights flash back from many diamonds: she saw bluish gleams and then a red sparkle like the ray of the setting sun. It was the opal serpent brooch, and Aaron's lips were fastened together with the stout pin. On his mouth and across his agonised face in which the ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... which fell the thick waves of her light hair. The horror which had seized him yielded to the most ardent yearning. Pressing his hand upon his throbbing heart, he watched her every movement. He longed to go forward to meet her, yet a supernatural spell seemed to paralyse his energy. He would sooner have dared clasp in his arms the image of a beautiful Madonna than this embodiment ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... most painful and most stunning effects of a blow upon any part of the body, not only of man but of brutes, is a blow on the nose. Many animals, such as the seal and others, are killed by it immediately, and there is no doubt but a severe blow on that tender part will paralyse almost any beast for the time and give him a dread for the future. I believe that repeated blows upon the nose will go farther than any other means to break the courage of any beast, and I imagine that these are resorted to: but it is only ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... exist; and they can't imagine how its far slighter difficulties could ever be smoothed over. They are not the least staggered by the appalling reality of the Duke of Westminster or the Duke of Sutherland; not the least staggered by the sinister power of a conspiracy of coal-owners to paralyse a great nation with the horrors of a fuel famine. But they are staggered by their bogey that State ownership of land might give rise to a certain amount of jobbery and corruption on the part of officials. They think it better that the dukes and the squires ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... been requested to present himself with his letters of credence in the camp. Henry was unwilling that he should enter Paris, being convinced that he came to do his best, by declamation, persuasion, and intrigue, to paralyse the enterprise. Sully's promises to Ubaldini, the former nuncius, that his Holiness should be made king, however flattering to Paul V., had not prevented his representatives from vigorously denouncing Henry's monstrous scheme to ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... mathematician, who should mistake the x's and y's, with which he works his problems, for real entities—and with this further disadvantage, as compared with the mathematician, that the blunders of the latter are of no practical consequence, while the errors of systematic materialism may paralyse the energies and destroy the beauty of ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... pencil sketches from nature, really very like; and the blue mountains, the solemn sunsets, and purple shadows among the woods, or falling on the tawny sands, girdling the sea, whose blue-gray melts into the horizon, throw us into quick ecstasies of delight that almost paralyse the adventurous hand as it seeks, often vainly, to transfer the quick-changing loveliness to the enduring canvass. And then we fling away our pencils in despair, and worship, with all the devotion of which ignorance is the mother, (for we ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... breathing. Its activity depends on the volatile oil, contained in the proportion of six per cent. in the nut. This when given at all largely is essentially narcotic. Four Nutmegs have been known to completely paralyse all nervous sensibility, and have produced a sort of wakeful unconsciousness for three entire days, with loss of memory afterwards, and with more or less ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... shall be spared. But I will paralyse the strength you have criminally abused. Doctor David, do ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... they themselves will be in a better condition, to form capitals, without being able to fix the limits to this ever-increasing facility of realising equality and well-being? Would it not be madness in them to admit such doctrines, and to act in a way which would drain the source of wages, and paralyse the activity and stimulus of saving? Let them learn this lesson, then; doubtless, capitals are good for those who possess them: who denies it? But they are also useful to those who have not yet been able ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat
... they could not think of revolting, the Czecho-Slovaks at home tried to paralyse the power of Austria in every way. Not only individuals but also Czech banks and other institutions refused to subscribe to the war loans. Their newspapers published official reports with reluctance, and between the lines laid stress on news unfavourable ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... fighting powers and suppressing the Monarchy, preparing for her the same fate as Roumania met with. I meant to say that Austria-Hungary, if she allowed the Entente troops to enter, would prove such a terrible danger to Germany that she would be compelled to use every means to forestall us and paralyse the move. Whoever imagines that the German military leaders would not have seized the latter eventuality knows them but badly, and has a poor opinion of their spirit. In order to be able to form an objective ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... that the progress of human civilisation has been very largely due to the successful efforts of man to resist and to remove pain. The most successful and progressive races of mankind are those which inhabit regions of the world where the conditions of life are neither so severe as to paralyse all exertion, or even to preclude its possibility, nor so favourable that men can avoid the pain of hunger or of cold without strenuous and unremitting effort. The stimulus of pain has been the means of perfecting the animal nature of man, and ...
— Gloria Crucis - addresses delivered in Lichfield Cathedral Holy Week and Good Friday, 1907 • J. H. Beibitz
... sonnet in which he called the Pope his Medusa, he might well have been thinking of Leo, though the poem ought probably to be referred to the earlier pontificate of Julius. Certainly the Medici did more than the Delia Rovere to paralyse his power and turn the life within him into stone. Writing to Sebastiano del Piombo in 1521, Michelangelo shows how fully he was aware of this. He speaks of "the three years I ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... streets were still few and were laid out mainly as avenues for processions and as ample spaces for great facades.[4] Private houses were still of small account. The notion that the City was the State, helpful and progressive as it was, did something also to paralyse in certain ways the development ...
— Ancient Town-Planning • F. Haverfield
... clear of the tunnel, and I believe that had it not been for that hand I should have sunk to the rocky floor, for the sight before me seemed to paralyse my brain. Nor was this to be wondered at, for I doubt whether the world can ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... a battue, each man independently. There were a few section volleys tried, the soldiers pausing for an instant to deliver their fire. Once or twice also, the rear rank was closed up, and joined in the fusilade. One effect was to paralyse the deer and birds within range. I noticed that the tip-filed bullets did not usually spread, and that their man-stopping quality was something of a myth. Even the dum-dum does not invariably "set up" on striking an object. For the Omdurman Campaign a new hollow-nosed bullet was issued for ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... the blow was to paralyse the second-hand department. As far as new books went Isaac was fairly safe. If the Public was tricky he was generally up to its tricks. But with second-hand books you never knew where you were, not unless you had made ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... drink on that!" he screamed; and I let him take a full glass of spirits, for I wanted to secure the Derringer. The drink appeared to paralyse him, and I slipped down to the landlord's room. The worthy man took things very coolly; none of his trade ever like to see a man drunk, but they become hardened to it in time, and talk about delirium tremens as if it were measles. ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... man into utter passivity or resignation. An Afrikander Cabinet, with a nationalist element reporting its confidential councils with the Governor to Mr. Hofmeyr, the Bond Master, and President Steyn, the secret ally of President Krueger, would have been sufficient in itself to paralyse the faculties of any ordinary administrator at such a crisis. But this was not the only adverse influence with which circumstances brought Lord Milner into collision. Incredible as it may seem, it is none the less the fact that Sir William Butler, the General-in-Command ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... mingled in my dazed mind with the sighs of the troubled sleeper and the crying of the wind about the tent. Nothing seemed to paralyse my powers of realisation so much as these twin stains of mysterious significance ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... Holiness's bed-room. He had feared one of those overwhelming attacks of emotion which madden or paralyse one. He had been told of women reaching the Pope's presence in a fainting condition, staggering as if intoxicated, while others came with a rush, as though upheld and borne along by invisible pinions. And suddenly the anguish of his own spell of waiting, his intense feverishness, ceased ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... were actively at work, and soon turned Tippoo's wonderful garden into a scene of desolation. The sultan saw that his situation was becoming desperate, and made an attempt to negotiate, but at the same time thought to paralyse the efforts of the English and end the war, by procuring the assassination of their chief. A number of horsemen, drugged and maddened by bhang, vowed to bring to the sultan the head of his foe, and lay it at his feet as an offering. They made a dash ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... unlimited series of advancing lives and advancing experiences unfolded before their eyes would not only dismay and bewilder, but would also paralyse their energy for good, and terribly augment their capacity ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... which was vigorously replied to by the battery of horse artillery under Brigadier Brooke, which was soon joined by the two light field-batteries. The rapid and well-directed fire of our artillery appeared soon to paralyse that of the enemy; and as it was necessary to complete our infantry dispositions without advancing the artillery too near to the jungle, I directed the cavalry under Brigadiers White and Gough to make a flank movement on the enemy's left, with a view of threatening and turning that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... branch of the civil administration to carry out all the menial work of government? If the Indians, untrained, and indeed forbidden, to bear arms, were unable at once to overthrow British rule, could they not at least paralyse its machinery, as Bepin Chandra Pal was preaching, by refusing to take any ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... moments he clung there, the nervous thoughts of what might be if he slipped and were caught in the whirlpool being sufficient to half paralyse him; then turning angry at his feeling of cowardice, he reached boldly out again, found fresh hand-hold, and did the same again and again, till he was a dozen yards beyond the sink-hole, and had to stop and think. For the wall ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... will admit that the Wasp may gradually have acquired, as being highly beneficial to her posterity, the instinct by which she first of all so judiciously drags the victim from its refuge, in order there to paralyse it without incurring danger, provided that you will explain why the Segestria, possessing an intellect no less gifted than that of the Pompilus, does not yet know how to counteract the trick of which she has so long been the victim. What would ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... meet his view, as he reaches the height, and he is deeply moved. Any reflective mind might well have been stirred by the thought of the masses of men gathered there. Nothing is so futile as an arithmetical numbering of people, for after a certain point figures paralyse the imagination, and after that they tell the mind little or nothing. But here was actually assembled the Jewish people, coming in swarms from all the world, for the feast; here was Judaism at its most pious; here was ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... smallpox. But I did not. From the beginning there has been something about this terrible disease which physically and morally has exercised so great an influence over my destiny, that seemed to paralyse my mental powers. In my day I was a doctor fearless of any other contagion; typhus, scarletina, diphtheria, yellow fever, none of them had terrors for me. And yet I was afraid to attend a case of smallpox. From the same cause, in my public speeches I made light ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... revealed and illustrated from various sources. Pickle was not only able to keep the Duke of Newcastle and George II. well informed as to the inmost plots, if not the most hidden movements of Prince Charles, but he could either paralyse a serious, or promote a premature, rising in the Highlands, as seemed best to his English employers. We shall find Pickle, in company with that devoted Jacobite, Lochgarry, travelling through the Highlands, exciting hopes, ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... We find allusions in Justin where the various incidents in the history of the incarnate Logos are conceived as a series of arrangements meant to form part of the history of salvation, to paralyse mankind's sinful history, and to regenerate humanity. He is thus a forerunner ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... "War of the three Henries"—Henry III., Henry of Navarre, and Henry of Guise—was in full progress. The King, professing to support the League, was in fact doing his best to play into the hands of his nominal opponent, Navarre, and to paralyse his nominal adherent, Guise, who had Philip of Spain behind him. Philip, aware of this ambiguous position—as also was Elizabeth—found himself unable to trust to France for support, or absolutely to repudiate her demands ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... "War, my dear sir, is indiscriminate. War spares not the child; it spares not the barrow of the harmless scavenger. No more," he concluded, beaming, "no more do I. Whatever may strike fear, whatever may confound or paralyse the activities of the guilty nation, barrow or child, imperial Parliament or excursion steamer, is welcome to my simple plans. You are not," he inquired, with a shade of sympathetic interest, "you are not, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... secure for Elizabeth a vast auriferous colony, the proceeds of which might rival the revenues of Mexico and Peru. But we must not make the mistake of supposing him to have been so wise before his time as to perceive that the real wealth which might paralyse a selfish power like that of Spain would consist in the cereals and other products which such a colony ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... places immediately threatened. He has to keep the Boers from penetrating that long and flexible line, for if once they forced a passage in large numbers they would sweep like a torrent southwards, envelop his rear, cut the railway and telegraph to pieces, stop all convoys, paralyse the movements of all troops up beyond Kroonstad, and once more raise the whole of the Free State, and very possibly a great portion of the ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... initiated, after 1766 could have prevented or even materially delayed the declaration of American independence; but to the politicians of that time the coming event had not yet cast so dark a shadow before as to paralyse all action, and if any man could have allayed the growing discontent of the colonists and prevented the ultimate dismemberment of the empire, it would have been Lord Chatham. The fact that he not only did nothing to remove existing difficulties, but remained ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... last he spoke in a soft full voice: "Oh, pardon me, most lovely Egypt, if I have thus been stricken dumb before thee: but too great beauty, like Death himself, doth paralyse the tongue and steal our sense away. The eyes of him who looks upon the fires of the mid-day sun are blind to all beside, and thus this sudden vision of thy glory, royal Egypt, overwhelmed my mind, and left me helpless and unwitting of ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... Myles Crawford repeated, clenching his hand in emphasis. Wait a minute. We'll paralyse Europe as Ignatius Gallaher used to say when he was on the shaughraun, doing billiardmarking in the Clarence. Gallaher, that was a pressman for you. That was a pen. You know how he made his mark? I'll tell you. That was the smartest piece of journalism ever known. That was in ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... critical necessity of lying quite still; so that, when I at last awoke and felt that as I lay with my face toward the roof, there was a thick, heavy, cold, creeping thing upon my chest, I stirred not, nor uttered a word of panic. Danger and fear may occasionally dull the sense and paralyse the faculties, but they more frequently sharpen both, and ere I could wink my eye, I was broad awake and aware that, coiling and coiling itself up into a circle of twists, an enormous serpent was on my breast. When I tell you that the whole of my chest, and ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... he lifted his hunting-crop to strike, but it didn't take long to get that from his hand or to paralyse the arm with which he was lunging ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... direct employment of the great mass of the able-bodied people by the state, has an unavoidable tendency to paralyse industry, and to ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... feet—that military gargoyle, half lout and half fop, offends the roving eye. No doubt a handsome man, by German standards—even, perhaps a celebrated seducer, a soldier with a future—but the mere sight of him suffices to paralyse an American esophagus. Besides, there is the smell of chocolate, sweet, sickly, effeminate, and at two in the afternoon! Again, there is the music of Grieg, clammy, clinging, creepy. Away to the Mathaeserbraeu, two long blocks by taxi! From the Munich of Berlinish decadence and Prussian epaulettes ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... had been an ugly rush from Sydney on the news of the coming annexation, and most of whom as promptly retreated on finding the proclamation to be a reality. But at the same time his treaty and his proclamation were bound to paralyse settlement, to exasperate the entire white population, and to plunge the infant colony into a sea of troubles. Outside the missionaries and the officials every one was uneasy and alarmed. All the settlers were either landowners, land claimants, or would-be land purchasers. ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... subsequent organisation of sanitary effort as may be required to extirpate this unquestionably preventable evil. I wonder how long such a state of affairs would have been permitted to interfere with the health and to paralyse the industry of urban communities. Had the hookworm, instead of lurking in country lanes, walked the streets, how would ...
— The Rural Life Problem of the United States - Notes of an Irish Observer • Horace Curzon Plunkett
... indulgent to those of the emigrants whose monarchical prejudices he knew were incompatible with liberal opinions. By the presence of emigrants who acknowledged nothing short of absolute power, he thought he might paralyse the influence of the Royalists of the interior; he therefore granted all such ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... last given way, to find that the hour or two had not done it, for the night had passed; it would soon be broad day, with the elephants being driven to water and a sentry resuming his post; and a chill was beginning to paralyse him, while hope grew more and more dull for the searcher for ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... my long vigil, over limbs and brain. The faculty, the godlike power of knowing and imagining, all actually less to me than my own tiny and fragile sensations. Such moods as these are strange things, because they bring with them so intense a desire to know, to perceive, and yet paralyse one with the horror of the darkness in which one moves. One cannot conceive why it is that one is given the power of realising the multiplicity of creation, and yet at the same time left so wholly ignorant ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... productive country by which she is backed, and to turn into her own channel a portion of its commerce. Building is everywhere going forward; land has doubled and trebled in value; improvements are in steady progress; and, should the present prosperous course of things meet with no untoward check to paralyse the industry of the people, Albany will in a few years assume an importance more profitable to its citizens than the empty honour it derives from being styled the capital of ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... general feeling is despondent. The unfortunate landowners, house proprietors, and many of the merchants, complain bitterly that they are delivered into the hands of a "convict," whose ticket of leave enables him to paralyse the industry ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... been perfectly equal to his task; and it is, in fact, the very cruelty of his fate that the crisis of his life comes on him at the one moment when he cannot meet it, and when his highest gifts, instead of helping him, conspire to paralyse him. This aspect of the tragedy the theory quite misses; and it does so because it misconceives the cause of that irresolution which, on the whole, it truly describes. For the cause was not directly ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... stronger will and the stern order, Dick, who had been striking out with all his might, calmed down and began to swim steadily, but with a great dread seeming to paralyse his limbs, while Josh, who ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... circumstances, equally withdrawn from the sphere of volition. The antagonism of the abdominal muscles to the diaphragm being necessary, in order that the pelvic viscera may be acted upon, if the cord be injured in the lower dorsal region, so as to paralyse the abdominal walls and the perinaeal muscles, the downward pressure of the diaphragm alone could not evacuate the pelvic organs voluntarily, for the abdominal muscles are now incapable of deflecting the line of force backwards and downwards ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise
... moonlight, and Lord Rosmore started back, so close was the pistol to his head. He looked along it, and along the man's extended arm, and into his face, and a half-smothered cry broke from his lips. He had been caught unawares. Physically he was no coward, but the sight of the brown mask seemed to paralyse him. ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... paralyse the action of the Second Bureau agent, old Vagualame, and I, the false Corporal Vinson, will be all the more free ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... what is going on around us, it is easy to see that the anti-militarist movement is rapidly reaching a stage when it will be easily able, even unaided, to paralyse any war immediately and automatically. The pioneers in the movement have played the same part as was played in the seventeenth century by the Quakers. In the name of the Bible and their own consciences, the Quakers refused to recognize ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... which portrayed the paternal emotions of his long-lacerated heart, that every other feeling was paralysed for a moment, in exultation at the apparent unanimity between the Sovereign and his people. But it did not,' continued the Ambassador, 'paralyse the artful tongue of Bailly, the Mayor of Paris. I could have kicked the fellow for his malignant impudence; for, even in the cunning compliment he framed, he studied to humble the afflicted Monarch by telling the people it was to them he owed the ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 6 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... to know is life eternal. I die happy, resting in His love, with the thought also that I have preserved your life to be a blessing to one who is worthy of you. I am going quickly, but do not mourn aloud, lest you paralyse the ...
— Villegagnon - A Tale of the Huguenot Persecution • W.H.G. Kingston
... miles on either side. I don't think we were ever quite so thoroughly washed by the sea-air from all quarters as here—the weather is fine, and we do well enough. The sadness of the war and its consequences go far to paralyse all our pleasure, ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... campaigns of the Palais Royal, will have all the others tearing it to fragments. The custom will spread; every new drop of blood will let loose a torrent in retaliation; and when France has thus been drained of her fever, will be the time, either to restore her, or to paralyse for ever her power ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... join him at Khartoum, that Zobeir's presence would paralyse the Mahdi, that Zobeir must succeed him in the government of the country after the evacuation. Did not Sir Evelyn Baring, too, have the mystic feeling? Sir Evelyn Baring confessed that he had not. He distrusted mystic ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... caution is, indeed, altogether commendable. On the other hand, it cannot be doubted that, carried to excess, it is at times apt to paralyse all effective and timely action, to disqualify those who exercise it from being pilots possessed of sufficient daring to steer the ship of state in troublous times, and to exclude them from the ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... rest unable to do even so much for themselves. They are beaten already, and they will see their conquerors fall on them before they dream of an approach, before their ranks are formed or their preparations made, and the sight will paralyse them. [22] If we wish to sleep and eat and live in peace and happiness from this time forth, let us not give them leisure to take counsel or arrange defence, or so much as see that we are men, and not a storm of shields and battle-axes and flashing swords, sweeping on ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... was followed by the chorus, and Okiok was about to resume, when a terrific rending sound seemed to paralyse every one. Well did they know that sound. It was the rending of the solid ice on which they stood. The advancing spring had so far weakened it that a huge cake had broken off from the land-ice, and was now detached. A shriek from some of the women drew attention to the fact that the ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... Galatz to Focshani formed, together with the lower reaches of the Danube, a strong barrier against attack from the north. Rumania's geographical position is such that a successful offensive from Hungary could soon penetrate to the capital, and by cutting the country in two could completely paralyse its organization. Such arguments acquired a magnified importance in the light of the failure of the negotiations with Bulgaria, and found many a willing ear in a country governed by a heavily involved landed class, ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... a missionary's duty to sow beside all waters, and to lose no opportunity, even if his chance of doing good be but small. The sower of the seed has need of much patience; and though he need not actually be expecting and looking for disappointment, as that would paralyse his efforts for good, he must yet be prepared for it." [2] In this spirit of patience and perseverance Mary Whately carried on her work, and though her work was largely pioneering, she was not without encouragement. Her hand was the first ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... man," Henneford declared grimly. "How are you going to get it back, eh? Show us. We are powerful up here. We could paralyse trade from the Clyde to the Thames, if we thought it would do any good. What's your text to-night, ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... he could paralyse the movements of the Greeks by terrific cruelty. On Easter Sunday, April 22, the Patriarch Gregorios and three other bishops were executed in Constantinople—a deed which caused a thrill of horror from the Moslem capital to the mountains of Greece, and the palaces of St. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... merely a sort of donative for their own private tutors, or the chaplains of their noble friends, or as provision for a relative, dependent, or the brother of a Treasury clerk, they not merely degrade the office, but they paralyse the church. Of the living prelacy we do not speak: but it is impossible to look upon the list of archbishops and bishops (a few excepted) during the last century, without surprise that the inferior clergy have done so much, rather than that they have done so little. Where there was no ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... the other pressed hard to her side as though to repress a hard pain." Meanwhile she wrote a bosom friend: "There is in our nature a disposition to indulgence, a secret desire to escape from labor, which unless hourly combated will overcome the best faculties of our minds and paralyse our most useful powers.... I have often entertained a dread lest I should fall a victim to my besieger, and that fear has saved me ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... rather than a Christian to rely upon Providence or fate alone, and make no effort for its own preservation. Individuals never fall into this error among you, drink as deeply as they may of fatalism; that narcotic will sometimes paralyse the moral sense, but it leaves the faculty of worldly prudence unimpaired. Far otherwise is it with your government: for such are the notions of liberty in England, that evils of every kind—physical, moral, and political, are allowed their free range. As relates to infectious diseases, ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... a clean choice between attack and defence. In aggressive operations the question always is, how far must defence enter into the methods we employ in order to enable us to do the utmost within our resources to break or paralyse the strength of the enemy. So also with defence. Even in its most legitimate use, it must always be supplemented by attack. Even behind the walls of a fortress men know that sooner or later the place must fall unless by counter-attack on the enemy's siege works or communications they ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... Hastings, every man taken would be at once hung. Sivajee did not appear put out about it. I do not think he expected any other answer, and imagine that his real object in writing was simply to let them know that I was a prisoner, and so enable him the better to paralyse the attack upon a position which he no doubt considered all ...
— Tales of Daring and Danger • George Alfred Henty
... interest, but it is endowed with such prestige that it does not appear to us as it really is, but with all its accompaniment of historic memories. The special characteristic of prestige is to prevent us seeing things as they are and to entirely paralyse our judgment. Crowds always, and individuals as a rule, stand in need of ready-made opinions on all subjects. The popularity of these opinions is independent of the measure of truth or error they contain, and is solely regulated by ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... unknown to the simple pilgrim, is one of the rocks on which my plans have been shipwrecked, and the other is the certain censure of relatives, who, not fond of walking themselves, and having no taste for noonday naps under hedges, would be sure to paralyse my plans before they had grown to maturity by the honest horror of their cry, "How very unpleasant if you were to meet any one you know!" The relative of five hundred years back would simply have said, ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... the natural progress of life. They paralyse all of it that is not devoted to their tyranny and caprice. This makes the difference between the laughing innocence of childhood, the pleasantness of youth, and the crabbedness of age. A load of cares lies like a ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... cunning—risking capture, using neutral flags, and finding other subterfuges for new restrictions. The embargo would tie up the ships to rot, throw seamen out of employment, destroy perishable commodities like breadstuffs, and paralyse trade. From the moment of its passage, therefore, merchants and shipowners resisted it, charging that Napoleon's Decree had provoked the British Orders, and that if the former would recede, the latter ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... into such careless or incompetent hands, and that some man was not at its head who could have managed to have thrown upon Canadian soil, at Fort Erie and one or two other points, a force to act separately or in conjunction with sufficient effect to completely paralyse all opposition in Western Canada, among an already excited and incongruous host, who could have been easily swept before a compact handful of troops fired by a spirit so lofty and a resolve so unconquerable as that which actuated the brave little band of patriots who have made the 2d ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... you, no, mum. This here's our schoolmarm. Didn't you never hear tell about her?" This damning proof of his companion's aloofness from village gossip seemed to paralyse the gravedigger. ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... his entrance into the palace, except when he had flared out at the King, he had moved and stood and sat in a solemn bewilderment. The effect of the changed atmosphere had been to paralyse his simple and sturdy faculties; and his face had grown unintelligent during the process. More than once Chris had been seized with internal laughter, in spite of the tragedy; the rustic squire was so strangely incongruous with the situation. But ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... countries alone. "I would be very thankful," he added rather wistfully, "if Ireland would leave us alone." But his appeal fell on deaf ears, for, at the instance of Mr. T. P. O'CONNOR, the House spent most of the evening in discussing the threat of the Irish dock-labourers in Liverpool to paralyse the trade of the port unless the Government released the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 5, 1920 • Various
... that positivism, if accepted fully, must either destroy or paralyse; it is this, therefore, that in imagination we must now try to eliminate. To do this—to see what will be left in life to us, without this faculty, we must first see in general, how much is at present dependent ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... tumult in Great Britain perhaps ten years ago. When Queen Victoria died it was inaudible; search Punch, search the newspapers of that tranquil age. In 1914 it kicked up so great a dust that the Germans counted on the Suffragettes as one of the great forces that were to paralyse England in the war. ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... of Koll was Gotwar, who used to paralyse the most eloquent and fluent men by her glib and extraordinary insolence; for she was potent in wrangling, and full of resource in all kinds of disputation. Words were her weapons; and she not only trusted in questions, but was armed with stubborn answers. No man ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... equally clear, that on the arrival of one of those critical conjunctures that will periodically occur in all states, and which such an unimpassioned system is even calculated ultimately to create, all power of resistance will be wanting: the barren curse of political infidelity will paralyse all action; and the Conservative Constitution will be discovered ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... his own doings and ideas. Such a disgust seemed to be mounting now through all his veins, taking all the savour out of life and work. No doubt it would be the same to the end,—the politician in him just strong enough to ruin the man of letters—the man of letters always ready to distract and paralyse the politician. And as for the book, there also he had been the victim of a double mind. He had endeavoured to make it popular, as Chateaubriand made the great argument of the Genie du Christianisme popular, by the introduction of an element of poetry and romance. For the moment ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... door. But Byrne believed neither in walls nor bolts now. Unreasoning terror turning everything to account, his old time boyish admiration of the athletic Tom, the undaunted Tom (he had seemed to him invincible), helped to paralyse his faculties, added to ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... greatly increased when large numbers of certain poisonous microbes (e.g. those of typhoid fever) get into the blood. Again, by other chemical substances produced in it, the blood may, without actually killing the invading bacteria, only paralyse them, and cause them to "agglutinate" (that is, to adhere to one another as an inactive "clot" or "lump"). As the "agglutinating" poison is peculiar (or nearly so) for each kind of microbe, we can tell whether a patient has typhoid by drawing a drop of his blood into a tube, and ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... thus enforced will not in the end be missed, although it may require a considerable time to be fully understood. Officialism is a foe to inventive progress; and whether it exists under a regime of collectivism or under one of autocracy, it must paralyse industrial enterprise to that extent, thus rendering the country which has adopted it liable to be ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... in comparative comfort, perhaps on the shores of Bering Straits—if we ever reached them! My notes between Bassarika and Tchaun Bay are very incomplete, for they were generally made at night, when the temperature inside the tent seemed to paralyse the brain as completely as it numbed the fingers. Oddly enough there is nothing colder than paper, and when the bare hand had rested upon it for a few moments it had to be thrust back into a fur mit to ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... third alternative, however, is supplied by the conception of moral evolution. Knowledge of the conditions on which good can be attained—a knowledge that amounts to conviction—is the spring of all moral effort; whereas an attitude of permanent doubt as to the distinction between good and evil would paralyse it. Such a doubt must be solved before man can act at all, or choose one end rather than another. All action implies belief, and the ardour and vigour of moral action can only come from a ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... among the advancing troops, crushing and mutilating, and leaving behind a streak of mangled bodies. But though the ordeal was terrible, and the sound and sight of wounded and bleeding were enough to paralyse the stoutest heart, the ever "gay" Gordons plodded on, passing higher and higher, while their officers leading, cheered and roared them up the precipitous ascent. Thus they clambered and plodded, with men dropping dead at their elbows, with torn ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... which roared at him now was different from the dingoes Tasman had known. With massive, bony skull held low, and saliva dripping from his short, powerful jaws, the old wolf sent forth his most terrible snarl of challenge and defiance; the cry which had been used in bygone years to paralyse his victims into a condition which made them easy prey for his tearing claws and lance-like tusks. But the horrible sound was powerless so far as Finn was concerned, and the Wolfhound gathered himself together now for the administration of punishment which should be as ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... flats We move, with scanty space to sit on, Flanked by stout girls with steeple hats, And waists that paralyse ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... hands grasping the arms of the chair. "Well, I'll tell you something, Bingle, that will paralyse you. I—I didn't ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... indescribable. I can compare it to nothing but the rushing in upon my brain of a whole churchyard of spectres. The very possibility of hearing a sound, in such a mood, and at such a time, was almost enough to paralyse me. So I could scare myself in broad daylight, on the open hillside, by imagining unintelligible sounds; and my imagination was both original and fertile in the invention of such. But my mind was too active to be often subjected to such ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... strength and spirit visibly, till, on the 23d July the afflicted husband makes this entry:—"It pleased God to visit me with the deep and terrible affliction of taking away my friend, companion, and adviser of twenty-nine years." It was a heavy blow, and for a time it seemed to paralyse the Dean. This journal, never regular, becomes from this ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... routine of daily thought. And I was but sixteen when I resolved to tell my mother that I must decline to believe any longer in a God. She was leaning against the chimney-piece in the drawing-room. I expected to paralyse the household with the news; but although a religious woman, my mother did not seem in the least frightened, she only said, "I am very sorry, George, it is so." I was ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... McDowell held the approaches; and if Fremont himself were beaten back, the strategic situation could be in no way affected. In fact a defeat, if it had followed an attack so hotly pressed as to paralyse Jackson for the time being, would have been hardly ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... this strong-minded female paralyse the Pecksniffian energies; and so she swept out of the room, and out of the house, attended by her daughters, who, as with one accord, elevated their three noses in the air, and joined in a contemptuous titter. As they passed the parlour ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... oppose breech-loader. A strong party maintained that "the defensive had now become so strong that true science lay in forcing the adversary to attack. Let him come on, and then one might fairly rely on victory." As Boguslawski observes—"This conception of tactics would paralyse the offensive, for how can an army advance if it has always to wait till an enemy attacks?" After much exercitation the Germans determined to adhere to the offensive. In the recent modest language of Baron von der Goltz: [Footnote: The Nation in Arms, ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... to remain with me in this last, and to him alas, fatal journey, was now no more. For an instant, I was almost tempted to wish that it had been my own fate instead of his. The horrors of my situation glared upon me in such startling reality, as for an instant almost to paralyse the mind. At the dead hour of night, in the wildest and most inhospitable wastes of Australia, with the fierce wind raging in unison with the scene of violence before me, I was left, with a single native, ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... summoned me to come forth;—yet I dared not. I stood doubting— far from the strife—in my lonely castle. At times it seemed as though the Lord God himself were calling me; but then would come the killing dread again to paralyse my will. "Who will win?" that was the question that was ever ringing in my ears. 'Twas but a short spring that had come to Norway. Herlof Hyttefad, and many more with him, were broken on the wheel during the months that ...
— Henrik Ibsen's Prose Dramas Vol III. • Henrik Ibsen
... into their eventful beauty.... I am myself growing better, and shall by and by be a worthy object of love, one that will not anywhere disappoint or need forbearance.... I have no child, and the woman in me has so craved this experience that it has seemed the want of it must paralyse me...." ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... who wants no coins away, Tuesday the use of a push that does not paralyse the rubbing, all day, the resemblance to no blame, Sunday a movement of a little water. Persons with a face and no spitting. Alluding to a fresh man shows no signs of wear. That is the meaning of a measure. There is every remains ...
— Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein - With Two Shorter Stories • Gertrude Stein
... Play Green Lake, they amused themselves one day by catching some very large jack fish, or pike, in the usual way. It seems very surprising that the mere concussion of the air caused by the firing of blank charges of gunpowder could so stun or paralyse such enormous fish. ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young
... fortunate trio at Stormberg. French had to deal with an opponent whose confidence must now be presumed to be at its height. Moreover, reinforcements might reach the Boer leader at any moment. It had become more than ever necessary to paralyse him before he could initiate even the semblance of an organised incursion into territory where disloyalty might largely increase his numbers in a night. Only by incessant activity could French hope to attain this object, and fortunately the force under ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... deprived of speech. That any girl could possibly look so beautiful was enough to paralyse his faculties; but that this ethereal being straight from Fairyland could have stooped to love him—him—an earthy brute who wore sock-suspenders and drank coffee for breakfast . . . that was what robbed George of the power to articulate. He could do nothing but ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... a precaution against attack, it was determined to transfer the meeting of the Councils to St. Cloud. Bonaparte had secured the support of almost all the generals and troops in Paris. His brother Lucien, now President of the Council of Five Hundred, hoped to paralyse the action of his own Assembly, in which the conspirators were ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... and mope," explained M. Fille. "He was at work the next day after his daughter's flight just the same as before. He is a man of great courage. Misfortune does not paralyse him." ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... strong—never could be known in our happy country. Yes, gentlemen; but since that time it has been known in our happy country. Since that time false telegrams about the entry of the Russian army into Constantinople have been sent home to disturb, and paralyse, and reverse the deliberations of Parliament, and have actually stopped these deliberations, and led experienced statesmen to withhold their action because of this intelligence, which was afterwards, and shortly afterwards, shown to be wholly without ground. ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... communion with Him. The idea conveyed by 'walking before God' is not precisely the same. It is rather that of an active life, spent in continual consciousness of being 'naked and opened before the eyes of Him to whom we have to give account.' That thrilling consciousness will not paralyse nor terrify, if we feel that we are not only 'ever in the great Task-Master's eye,' but that God's omniscience is all-knowing love, and is brought closer to our hearts and clothed in gracious tenderness in Christ whose 'eyes were as a flame of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... for instance), then, perhaps, the natives, when finding themselves in conflict with this well-known principle of imperishable tenacity, would be liable to a sentiment of despair, as in a contest with fate. And that sentiment would paralyse the Hindoos when entering upon a struggle for unrooting the British from Hindostan. But here suddenly, Woman steps in to aid the Hindoo. For the Briton, it is notorious, would never loosen his hold, more than his ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... the pure-spirit; that sense to whose refinement all breeding and all education is devoted; that sense which, ever an inch at least in front of man, is able to retard the development of nations, and paralyse all social schemes—this Sense of Smell awakened within him the centuries of his gentility, the ghosts of all those Dallisons who, for three hundred years and more, had served Church or State. It revived the souls of scents he ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... pernicious influence. Magic was practised by some of the chief men in the State, and the belief was widely spread that it was possible by charms, incantations, and the use of waxen images, to bewitch men, or paralyse their limbs, or even to cause their deaths. Hags were to be found about the court as wicked as Canidia, who were willing to sell their skill in the black art to the highest bidder. The actual person of the monarch was not sacred from the plottings of this nefarious crew, who planned assassinations ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... at an important crisis in England's history all depended upon the attitude of the city of London. "The key of the situation was in the hands of the city, which had it in its power to paralyse the army by simply maintaining an attitude of passive resistance."(865) But great as was the detestation in which the army was held by the majority of citizens, their distrust of the royalists, should they regain the upper hand, was greater. Under the circumstances the City resolved ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... is indispensable. God's work goes on uninterrupted. The instruments are changed, but the Master-hand is the same, and lays one tool aside and takes another out of the tool-chest as He will. Moses is dead,—what then? Does his death paralyse the march of the tribes? No; it is but the ground for the ringing command, 'Therefore arise, go over this Jordan.' The immediate installation of his successor, and the uninterrupted continuance of the advance, do ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... depth of girth, long shoulders, long haunches, and a benevolent, quiet countenance. There was nothing very attractive about him when walking about at Stafford prior to his trial, but the moment he was down he seemed to paralyse his opponent, as he went half as fast again. It was calculated that he went fifty miles an hour, and at this tremendous pace he would stop as if petrified, and the momentum would cover him with earth and dust. He did not seem capable of making a mistake, and his birds were always ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... cause. With regard to future attacks from Asia, he might reasonably hope that one victory would inspirit all Greece to combine against common foe; and that the latent seeds of revolt and disunion in the Persian empire would soon burst forth and paralyse its energies, so as to leave ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A. |
