"Powerless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not, however, be unjust to the parties named in the quotation given above. The farmers and labourers were powerless for good, unaided by the landlords and the Government. The last-named gave the landlords the power of draining their estates on terms not merely just, but really easy, generous, and remunerative; they refused ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... who do not yet know that the emotions control the secretions, and a perfect circulation is a matter of mind. Anyway, what can the poor Galenite do in a case like this—his pills are powerless, his potions inane! Tilton knew that his wife loved Beecher, and he also fully realized that in this she was only carrying out a little of the doctrine of freedom that he taught, and that he claimed for himself. For a time Tilton was beautifully magnanimous. Occasionally ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... for this reason. The present promoters of spiritual phenomena divide themselves into two classes, one of which needs no demonstration, while the other is beyond the reach of proof. The victims like to believe, and they do not like to be undeceived. Science is perfectly powerless in the presence of this frame of mind. It is, moreover, a state perfectly compatible with extreme intellectual subtlety and a capacity for devising hypotheses which only require the hardihood engendered by strong ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... like manner we trace the steps of the misguided and infatuated Richard, treacherous at once and betrayed, from the hour when the news of Bolinbroke's hostile and successful measures reached him in (p. 059) Dublin to the day when he fell powerless into the hands of his enemy, we shall find much to reprehend; much to pity; little, perhaps nothing, which can excite the faintest shadow of respect. When the Earl of Salisbury left Ireland, Richard solemnly promised him that ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... current without metallic contact; he discovered liquids which, though competent to transmit the feeblest currents—competent therefore to allow the electricity of contact to flow through them if it were able to form a current—were absolutely powerless when chemically inactive. ...
— Faraday As A Discoverer • John Tyndall
... to-night. I can't tell you what it is. I'm not a coward and never shirked duty yet; but frankly I don't much like facing him for this reason. A madman's a madman, and we can't expect a madman to be any too reasonable if we oppose him, however tactfully. I should be powerless if he got off his head, or resented the advice I should have to give him, or went for me—powerless, I mean, to do anything but stop him with a bullet. But if he's got to be stopped that way, I don't want to be ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... grace of person or mind whereon to meditate. He had never approached a woman who possessed this power at once of fascinating his senses and controlling his intellect to a glad reverence. Whether in her presence or musing upon her in solitude, he found that the unsparing naturalism of his scrutiny was powerless to degrade that ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... of the big school is made of exquisitely polished oak, and is one of the glories of Fernhurst. It was admirably suited for the dance which within five minutes was in progress. It was a noble affair. Finnemore sat back in his chair powerless, impotent; Carter hammered out false notes on a long-suffering piano. Ferguson beat time at the top of the dais, with a pen gently waving between his fingers, as gracefully as the pierrots of Aubrey Beardsley play with feathers. Down below heavy feet pretended to dance to an impossible tune. Someone ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... relief, terrible as was all that remained; but I now knew I must go on, and that all my fears and horrors were powerless to ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... over the table and stared at the bulkhead in front of him. He clenched his fists. Needless to say, he agreed with Roger, he had the same feelings. But he was powerless to do ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell
... Terry's murder. Justice Lamar and Chief-Justice Fuller, adhering to effete state-rights notions, denied the right to so discharge him, holding he should answer for shooting Terry to state authority, that the Federal Government was powerless to protect its marshals from prosecution for necessary acts done by them in defence of its courts, judges or justices while engaged in the performance of duty.—In re Neagle, 135 U. ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... also my profound inability to do anything for —— readings which they could not do for themselves. She appeared fully to understand the explanation, and indeed to have anticipated for herself how powerless I must ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... the fulness of joy leaves me powerless to speak, Emotions which language can never define, When her sweet tears of transport drop warm on my cheek, And I feel her fond heart beat ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... simply, O Emperor, by the power of truth! The religion which we preach uses not force. Were the arm of Aurelian at this moment the arm of Probus, he could do no more than he now does with one, which, as the world deems, is in the comparison powerless as an infant's. In all that pertains to the soul, and its growth and purification, there must be utmost freedom. The soul must suffer no constraint. There must be no force laid upon it, but the force of reason and the appeal of divine truth. ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... irresistible law of nature, as well for the thousands of germs scattered to the winds by the oak, as for the ideas which grow in the brain of man. But persecutions, calumnies, criticisms, and opposition are powerless against an idea, if it carries within itself the germ of truth. Moreover, we should look upon this phenomenon of a repugnance in the average intellect (whether of the ordinary man or the scientist) for all new ...
— The Positive School of Criminology - Three Lectures Given at the University of Naples, Italy on April 22, 23 and 24, 1901 • Enrico Ferri
... on the irritable condition of my nerves. But ere long the old restlessness returned upon me. I walked slowly to and fro in the room, until I was weary of the monotony of the exercise. I took up a book, and laid it aside again. My attention wandered; the author was powerless to recall it. I got on my feet once more, and looked at Eustace, and admired him and loved him in his tranquil sleep. I went back to the window, and wearied of the beautiful morning. I sat down before the glass ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... is a Chinaman's second nature. Games of fan-tan and pie-gow are constantly in operation; and the police either tolerate or are powerless to stop them. Tong wars are of frequent occurrence, crime and its punishment being so mixed up that an outsider cannot unravel them. The San Francisco police have struggled with the question, but have finally left the Chinese to settle their own ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... her instantly. Another chorus burst, this time in astonishment; a dozen guns were leveled, covering her and our nest while every visage stared. But no shot belched; thank God, no shot, with me powerless to prevent, just as I was powerless to intercept her. The chief rode forward, at a walk, his hand ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... an unfortunate victim of lying circumstance, fearless to a fault of personal harm, yet bound by filial fetters in unswerving fealty to family prestige and parental name. Doting father and mother sit around a desolate hearth, helpless to help, powerless to temper or withdraw the barbed arrow which has transfixed their souls. Tenderly fostered, idolized daughter, modestly brilliant, grandly human, with strong, sweet penchant toward self-sacrifice and for lowly, unassuming ministry, yet love-loyal to banished suitor, must bide ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... Cape Town, that "the Church of England, in places where there is no church established by law, is in the same situation with any other religious body." In 1865 it adjudged Bishop Gray's letters patent, as metropolitan of Cape Town, to be powerless to enable him "to exercise any coercive jurisdiction, or hold any court or tribunal for that purpose," since the Cape colony already possessed legislative institutions when they were issued; and his deposition ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... are! 'Sludge the Medium' all over again, in a small way. Probably the girl didn't intend to deceive anybody at first, but she was tolled along from one fakery to another, till at last she found herself powerless in the grasp of her self-induced coma. She is anxious to escape her slavery; she revolts, and is most unhappy, but sees no way out. That's my present understanding of the case. Now, what is your advice? What can I do? I am deeply ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... anxious, blundering solicitude, would have the fat in the fire at that end—and the city, and the social firmament thereof, would be humming with the startling news of the disappearance of a well-known millionaire. The complications that would then ensue, with himself powerless to lift a finger, Jimmie Dale did not care to think about—such a contretemps must at all ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... genius bent upon wrecking my life had not taken in account one thing: a man crushed and utterly wretched cares less for himself than a happy one. In presence of that indifference fate becomes more or less powerless. I was and am still in that frame of mind that, if angry Fortuna came to me in person, and said: "Go to perdition," I should reply calmly: "Be it so,"—not out of sorrow for the loss of Aniela, but from mere indifference to ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... complaining. So sensitive to the sufferings of others that he must do all in his power to relieve even his comrades in the war when, injured or ill, what mental anguish must he have endured when his dearly loved wife was in want and he so powerless to relieve it. She read his heart with the sure sympathy of love, knew his bitter anguish of spirit, and suffered the more because he suffered. But bravely she cheered him, encouraged him, and spent all ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... of domestic policy it was possible to procrastinate, to defer deciding on relaxations of the penal laws or the removal of trade restrictions, but to delay putting the country into a state of defence against an armed enemy for a single moment was not to be thought of; yet the government was powerless. Of the regular army almost every available man was in, or on his way to, America, and the most absolute necessity, therefore, compelled the Irish to consider themselves as left to their own resources for defence. It was as impossible to levy a force of militia as one ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... knowledge and skill. Had Tau still been on his feet perhaps he could have traced that lead and brought order out of the chaos which was closing in upon the Solar Queen. But, though they reported their suggestion to the Captain, Jellico was powerless to do anything about it. If the four who had shared that upsetting friendship cup were immune to the doom which now overhung the ship, there was no possible way for them ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... on the 7th of September, a Uhlan obliged Mme. X. to undress, threatening her with his rifle; then he threw her on a mattress and raped her while her mother-in-law, powerless to intervene, endeavored to keep her grandson, 8 years old, from this ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... common school (a thing unknown, and held extremely dangerous in Carolina!) may be your much talked of guiding star to virtue; your early education is your bulwark against which the wave of vice is powerless; but unless you make it something more than a magnificent theory-unless you seek practical means, and go down into the haunts of vice, there to drag up the neglected child, to whom the word early education is a mystery, you leave untouched the festering ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... This great being, Mwetyi, witnesses covenants and punishes perjury. This people are ancestor-worshippers, but their Supreme Being is not said to receive sacrifice, as ghosts do, while he is so far from being powerless, like Unkulunkulu, that, but for fear of his wrath, 'their national treaties would have little or no force.'[18] Having no information about the mysteries, of course, we know nothing of other moral influences which are, or may be exercised by ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... had moved south; Lord Sussex was powerless in York; the Queen, terrified and irresolute, alternately storming and crying; Spain was about to send ships to Hartlepool to help the rebels; Mary Stuart would certainly be rescued from her prison at Tutbury. Then Mary had been moved to Coventry; then came ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... period to the contest. The red coils were seen to loosen, then fall off; and, although the reptile still writhed, it was only in its death-struggles. In a few moments its body lay along the grass, powerless and without motion. ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... more dangerous companion for a woman than the man who has loved her. It is easier to waken a woman's old love than to teach her a new affection. Strangely enough, the woman a man has once loved and then forgotten is powerless in the after years. A man's dead friendship may dream of resurrection, but never his ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... youthful "advantages," of an education, so called, from a sectarian college on a hill, he had never been taught that, while prudence may prosper in a static world, it is a futile virtue in a dynamic one. Experience even had been powerless to impress this upon him. For more than twenty years after leaving college he had clung to a clerkship in a Dolton mercantile establishment before he felt justified in marrying Hannah, the daughter of Elmer Wench, when the mercantile establishment amalgamated with a rival—and Edward's services ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... instantly augur that he brought bad news. The smith caught the alarm, and the uplifted hammer was arrested in its descent upon the heated iron, while the agitated arm that wielded it, strong before as that of a giant, became so powerless, that it was with difficulty Henry was able to place the weapon on the ground, instead of ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... holding Eleanor between himself and Ranulph, so as to shield his own person; but, fancying he saw an opportunity of dealing a blow without injury to his mistress, the latter was about to hazard the thrust, when his arms were seized behind, and he was rendered powerless. ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... devotional but not humanizing power. It carried along faith, obedience to ceremonial, abundant prayers, personal humility; but it had little restraint for passion whether corporal or revengeful. Its hand was powerless to restrain fury or prevent or relieve misery "The knight before the battle was as devout as the bishop; the bishop in the battle as ferocious as the knight."[5] Little better fate availed the women when Christians prevailed than when Turks won the day. ...
— Peter the Hermit - A Tale of Enthusiasm • Daniel A. Goodsell
... in the points, but it had hardly gotten under way before the crowd swarmed onto the playing grounds in such a way as to make fielding well-nigh impracticable, and batting dangerous. The police seemed powerless to restrain the people and the bad Italian of A. G. Spalding had, seemingly, no effect, in spite of the coaching given him by Minister Camphausen. Then we tried to clear the field ourselves, and, though we would ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... far vainer than we are. Their indifference to the little arts we practise shows it. A woman whose head is bald covers it with a wig. Without a wig she would feel that she was an outcast totally powerless to attract. But a bald-headed man has no idea of diffidence. He does not bother about a wig because he expects ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... of writing his own memoirs. In the fifth act we sup with horrors. The peasants rise in rebellion and wreak frightful vengeance on their oppressors. In the hope of controlling them, Gottfried, at their own request, puts himself at their head, but finds himself powerless to check their excesses, and on their defeat he is again taken prisoner. But the main interest of the last act is concentrated in Adelheid, who now reveals all the depths of her sensual nature and her unscrupulous ambition. Weislingen she has discovered to be a despicable ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... of the Transvaal: Brothers of our religion and language: Our hearts are burning for you all: when your brave men fall, we pray to God night and day to help you with His might; we are powerless by ourselves—the English are so angry with us that they have taken away our ammunition, all our powder and cartridges; if you can provide us each with a packet of ten and a Mauser, you will see what we can do; Englishmen won't stand before us, they will ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... faithfully defending the queen at the door of her chamber, were beheaded, and, their gory heads affixed to pikes, were carried by the windows of the carriage, and pressed upon the view of the wretched captives with every species of insult and derision. La Fayette was powerless. He was borne along resistlessly by this whirlwind of human passions. None were so malignant, so ferocious, so merciless, as the degraded women who mingled with the throng. They bestrode the cannon singing the most indecent ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... of feeling myself picked up and carried along by something quite outside myself, something I am powerless to analyze, or to master; yet something that I can help ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... showed him this; and in that one glance the terrified creature became utterly powerless and unable to ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... fell through the roof of the hospital to-day—evidently a part of one that had been fired at the Taube. It fell close beside the bed of one of our wounded, and he went as white as a ghost. It must be pretty bad to be powerless and have shells falling around. The doctors tell me that nothing moves them so much as the terror of the men. Their nerves are simply shattered, and everything frightens them. Rather late a man was brought in from the forts, ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... managed to conquer them thoroughly. He was empowered by the government to make a treaty with them and he insisted that they should make a treaty which they could not help keeping. He made them give up a large part of their land, and so arranged the boundaries as to make the Indians powerless for further harm. ...
— Captain Sam - The Boy Scouts of 1814 • George Cary Eggleston
... of all chieftains. His last words upon earth were, "Go ye—tell them." They were not the words of a dying chief, but of one gloriously alive and triumphant over death, the last and greatest enemy of all; not the command of one powerless in the presence of his foes, but one who could say, "All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth;" not a master who must send his obedient slave on a fearful and futile mission alone, but one who girds his courier with the assurance, "And lo, I am with you ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... house was filled to overflowing with kind and sympathetic neighbors who had come to do all that had to be done. David sat on the back doorstep until M'ri came; before the expression in his eyes she felt powerless ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... Punjab are utterly powerless and worthless. The great body of the nation is adverse to all control, and in no degree submissive to the authority of those who ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... knee: but he still remained firm, endeavoring to cover me with his body. You may conceive my rage and despair, whilst all my efforts to disengage myself were paralyzed by the excruciating pain in my thigh. Powerless and disarmed, I witnessed for some moments ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... instant obedience. Thus they stood, the one with his body painted black and representing the Evil One, frowning everlasting vengeance on the other, who sternly gazed him back with a look of exultation and contempt, as he held him in check and powerless under the influence ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... fatal consummation. Aware of her enemy, Lady Tippins tries a youthful sally or two, and tries the eye-glass; but, from the impenetrable cap and snorting armour of the stoney aunt all weapons rebound powerless. ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... westward, content with the satisfactions of each passing moment. "This," he said to himself, "is the joy of life. Past and future are alike powerless over me; I live in the glorious sunlight of this summer day, under the benediction of a greathearted wine. Noble wine! Friend of the friendless, companion of the solitary, lifter-up of hearts that are oppressed, inspirer of brave thoughts in them that fail beneath the ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... encumber the work; but the general effect is very pleasing, and more particularly the third book, which shows us the calm and innocent life of one, who, during the turbulent and bloody climax of political strife, sought in the great recollections of the past a solace for evils which he was powerless to cure, and whose end ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... fear." With a violent effort I succeeded at last in stretching out my hand toward the weapon on the table; as I did so, on the arm and shoulder I received a strange shock, and my arm fell to my side powerless. And now, to add to my horror, the light began slowly to wane from the candles,—they were not, as it were, extinguished, but their flame seemed very gradually withdrawn; it was the same with the fire,—the light was extracted from the fuel; in a few minutes the room ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... kept steadily to his seat, and though powerless to check the animal's course was able to guide it; but in spite of all his efforts the trap was at last upset, and he was thrown violently to the ground. He had no groom with him, and the accident took place on a lonely road, so that it was not till an hour later that help came, in ...
— Probable Sons • Amy Le Feuvre
... a flash of pleasure at the sight of the boy, then let his head fall wearily upon his breast. He felt very powerless. When he reached Piney's side he put out his hand and held to the boy's hand as though he found its warmth and ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... "Peace Congress," might temporarily have turned the tide it was wholly powerless to dam; but the arch seceder, Massachusetts, manipulated even that slight chance of compromise. The weaker elements in convention were no match for the peaceful Puritan whom war might profit, but could not injure. Peace ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... Might Be! Oh, May, Might, Could, Would, Should! How powerless ye For evil or for good! In every sense Your moods I cheerless call, Whate'er your tense Ye are imperfect, all! Ye have deceived the trust I've shown In ye! Away! The Mighty Must alone ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... paced that handsome woman, with bent head, locked hands, and restless steps. Some mental storm, swift and sudden as a tempest of the tropics, had swept over her and left its marks behind. As if in anger at the beauty now proved powerless, all ornaments had been flung away, yet still it shone undimmed, and filled her with a passionate regret. A jewel glittered at her feet, leaving the lace rent to shreds on the indignant bosom that had worn it; ...
— Pauline's Passion and Punishment • Louisa May Alcott
... if you don't" retorted Leslie, in a quiet, concentrated tone of voice that made the man addressed involuntarily shudder. "It is no good, men," he continued, "your comrades are prisoners ashore and utterly powerless to help you. The game is up. We are here to regain possession of this ship, and we mean to do it. And if either of you is foolish enough to offer resistance, you will be ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... weakest member. Overbury had no approach to the King save through the King's favourite. Rochester could have no real weight with the King, at least in affairs of State, except what he borrowed from Overbury. Divided, the two were powerless. No, more than that, there had to be no flaw ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... now for many years. I never saw it without emotion; I now view it with awe. What an emblem of eternity!—Its dominion is alone reserved to Him, who made it. Changing yet changeless—ever varying, yet always the same. How weak and powerless is man! how short his span of life, when he is viewed in connexion with the sea! He has left no trace upon it—it will not receive the impress of his hands; it obeys no laws, but those imposed upon it by Him, who called it into existence; ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... alone on the island. Now, men in all states of society are necessary to each other. Cyrus Harding knew this well, and sometimes he asked himself if some circumstance might not occur which they would be powerless to surmount. It appeared to him besides, that he and his companions, till then so fortunate, had entered into an unlucky period. During the three years and a half which had elapsed since their escape from Richmond, ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... affairs of men cut but a momentary figure; how puny they are, how transient! How the great changes, which in time amount to revolutions, go on over our heads and under our feet, and we rarely heed them, and are powerless to stay them! A summer shower carries the soil of my side-hill, which is mainly disintegrated Silurian rock and shale, into the river, and some millions of years hence, when it has become stratified ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... anchylosis, and position, is needed in the lower than in the upper limb. For a leg hanging like a flail, or shortened by some inches, is not so good for purposes of locomotion as a wooden leg is, while an arm, even though powerless at the elbow, and perhaps much shortened, can be so strengthened and supported by slings and bandages as to give a most useful hand, the complex movements and uses of the fingers of which no mechanism can ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... Donald was working hard in the harvest fields, and came to Glenoro very seldom. Duncan could not but guess the reason; the minister's attentions to Jessie Hamilton were growing more marked every day. Wherever he looked Duncan could see signs of trouble, which he was powerless to avert. ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... knowing that aid was far away, watched the scene that followed with distended eyes. He was powerless against three such men as the tramps that had attacked Hudson and Tom Binns, and the nearest station, as he knew, was eleven miles distant. But he felt that he must try to find out, at least, what the attack meant. Hudson, ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters - or Jack Danby's Bravest Deed • Robert Maitland
... required in their interest, but as we were not in Europe yet the redemption of the four little Pecks was stayed. Enjoying untrammelled leisure they swarmed about the ship as if they had been pirates boarding her, and their mother was as powerless to check their licence as if she had been gagged and stowed away in the hold. They were especially to be trusted to dive between the legs of the stewards when these attendants arrived with bowls of soup for the languid ladies. Their mother was too busy counting ...
— The Patagonia • Henry James
... and unobtrusive kindnesses, just as his father had done. But he lived much, like all poetical natures, in tender retrospect; and the ending of the bright days brought with it a heartache that even nature, which he worshipped like a poet, was powerless to console. But he loved his woods and sloping fields, and the clear river passing under its high banks through deep pools. It served to remind him sadly of his beloved Thames, the green banks fringed with comfrey and loosestrife, the drooping willows, ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... "But, O wondrous transformation! 'T was no bird he saw before him! 'T was a beautiful young woman, With the arrow in her bosom! "When her blood fell on the planet, 280 On the sacred Star of Evening, Broken was the spell of magic, Powerless was the strange enchantment, And the youth, the fearless bowman, Suddenly felt himself descending, 285 Held by unseen hands, but sinking Downward through the empty spaces, Downward through the clouds and vapors, Till he rested on an island, On an island, ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... lips even warmer with the father than with the friend. The young man again looked at both his companions, endeavoring to penetrate their real meaning or their real feelings with the utmost strength of his intelligence; but his look was powerless upon the smiling countenance of the musketeer or upon the calm and composed features of the Comte de la Fere. "Where are you going, Raoul?" inquired the latter, seeing that Bragelonne was preparing ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... they and what were they? Only imaginations? Or had he received a call from God? A few more years at longest, and he should be free of his family responsibilities, and then where should he turn? Questions, one after another, forced themselves upon him; but he was powerless ...
— The Hero of Hill House • Mable Hale
... and pretend you don't believe in it, you can tell yourself a thousand times that you are doing the sensible thing. You can blind yourself utterly to the truth for a time. But some day you've got to realize that the only real thing in life is love, and that you are powerless to make it ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... to play worth thousands of dollars, and rose paupers! They staked and lost their money, their slaves, their business and their homes. In the wild frenzy which such misfortunes kindle the most shocking crimes were committed, but the criminals were never called to account, for the law was powerless. ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... taken the precaution to disarm the wounded men, before they fairly recovered from their surprise, so that they were powerless to inflict harm; and after the two bushrangers who were uninjured stood before us, obedient to our will, we began to ask ourselves what we should take ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... experiences to which this little convent-bred Breton girl was forcibly subjected, had finally become registered in every fibre of her being until the forced demoralization has become genuine. She is as powerless now to save herself from her subjective temptations as she was helpless five years ago to save herself ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams
... adopt any other view.... The public journals print the most shocking anecdotes, together with the most degrading attacks on your Royal Majesty. As a sample of this, we append a copy of No. 5 of the Ulner Chronic. The vigilance of the police is powerless to check the circulation of these journals, and they are read everywhere.... Not only is the Government being jeopardised, but also the very existence of the Crown. Hence, the delight of such as wish ill to the Throne, ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... lean over the body; she appeared, indeed, to be endeavoring, with what remained to her of life, to reach her beloved mistress. Scarcely, however, had the loosely hanging limbs touched Ottilie's robe, and the powerless finger rested on the folded hands, than the girl started up, and first raising her arms and eyes toward heaven, flung herself down upon her knees before the coffin, and gazed with passionate devotion ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... stamping his feet and rubbing his legs he restored circulation sufficiently to totter across the room. Then he seized a brand and thrust it into the thatch of the house, having first put on his helmet and placed his sword and pistols in his belt. His hands were too crippled and powerless to enable him to fasten on the rest of his armour. He knew that he had no time to lose. Fortunately the women would not know how weak and helpless he was, for had they returned in a body they could easily have overpowered him; ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... that such a fancy should have entered your head! For, you see, I am engaged already—my uncle is intending to marry me to Doctor Kliachka, and I am powerless in ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... rare occurrence, a direct hit, all the sensations of an uncontrolled nose-dive are suggested to his senses. He hears the shriek of the up-rushing air, feels the helpless terror. It hurts him to know that he is powerless to save a friend from certain death. He cannot even withdraw his eyes from the falling craft. I was glad we had not viewed the disaster while we were in the air, for nothing is more unnerving than to see another ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... considerably impeded. Thus, the very forces of the air conspired for Jose, and ably were they seconded by other invisible and unknown agencies. Even before Hanson had reached the coast he found himself powerless "in the fell clutch of circumstance." He had taken cold in the mountains and for several weeks was too seriously ill even to contemplate with much interest his plan of revenge. And by the time that he had recovered sufficiently to ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... living as they please when they are bachelors, and then having their word of honour believed in when they choose to enter the married state. As long as women are powerless to put an end to that horrible privilege or to make themselves independent of it, so long will one half of the world continue to be sacrificed on account of the other half—on account of the other half's lack of self-control. That one privilege ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... his fear of exceeding his instructions from the head of the detective service, the chief-inspector was powerless to throw off the ascendancy which Rnine had acquired over him. ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... could, when it seemed good to her, get up and go out and join in the life of other people. While as for herself ... and again the feeling of impotent misery, of rebellion against her own destiny, came over Lady Gore like a wave whose strength she was powerless to resist. For since the rheumatic fever which five years ago had left her practically an incurable invalid, the effort to accept her fate still needed to be constantly renewed; an effort that had to be made alone, for the acceptance of such a fate ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... AND EXPOSURE.—I hear some of you say, cannot some influence be brought to bear upon this plague-spot? Will the legislature or congress do nothing? Is the law and moral right to continue to be trodden under foot? Are the magistrates and the police powerless? The truth is, the harlots and whoremongers are master of the situation; the moral sense of the legislators, the magistrates, and the police is so low that anything like confidence is at present out of ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... tragedy before it came to pass, but he was as powerless to prevent it as any other spectator in ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... ever at discovering the extent of their own demoralization. The bottle, one of those small-necked, big-bodied quart-bottles that Western topers carry in yellow-cotton handkerchiefs, was passed round. But even the whisky seemed powerless to neutralize their terror, rather increasing the panic by ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... moderate tone; though I think that I used some gesticulation. Said I: Personation of the Slave-power! predatory, grasping, black! thinkest thou a panting fugitive lies hid under my "delusion?" or wouldst thou seize a freeman? The AEgis of Massachusetts is over me. Gape! Yawn! Thou art powerless; but thy impudence is sublime.—Ten or fifteen voices then solemnly ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... power might find as ready an entrance to as many hearts as are taken by the love of gain, or the dislike to labor. We may find in this thought a partial explanation of the fact, that the thrift of the non-slaveholding States contrasted with the stagnation at the South, is so powerless an argument addressed to the slaveholders there; for you have not only to satisfy avarice of the superior profitableness of free labor; you have still to contend with the lust of dominion—the passion for power and superiority. To manage this passion is the heaviest charge of policy—to provide that ...
— The Growth of Thought - As Affecting the Progress of Society • William Withington
... I knew that I would have to get my letter back from H. Without it he was powerless. The trouble was that I did not know where he was staying. Even if he came out of a Cabinet, the Cabinet would have to be somewhere, ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... indeed hidden away, but my fame spreading throughout the whole world, till its echo reverberated mightily-echo, that fancy of the poet's, which has so great a voice, and nought beside. My former rivals, seeing that they themselves were now powerless to do me hurt, stirred up against me certain new apostles in whom the world put great faith. One of these (Norbert of Premontre) took pride in his position as canon of a regular order; the other (Bernard of Clairvaux) made it his boast that he had revived the true monastic ...
— Historia Calamitatum • Peter Abelard
... his failures. Whole nights and days together he lay upon his face crying to God, till he swooned in his agony. Everything his brother-monks could tell him he tried, but all the resources of their religion were powerless to comfort him or to beget a righteousness in which his ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss
... happiness. The demand is just. Grant it, and you place your prosperity and ours upon a solid foundation; you perpetuate the Union so necessary to your prosperity; you solve the problem of republican government. If it be demonstrated that the Constitution is powerless for our protection, it will then be not only the right but the duty of the slaveholding States to resume the powers which they have conferred upon this government and to seek new safeguards for their future protection.... We took the Constitution and ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... thus remain as they were, and these vassals are without any recourse, since they dare not interpose that plea before the Audiencia, as it is so powerless to exercise its functions; consequently, to state the case in few words, the archbishop does whatever suits his whim, without there being ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... reason nor my feelings can make head against the cold glazed glare of eye with which I am assured that I am not expected, and not wanted. The solitary man among the bottles would sometimes take pity on me, if he dared, but he is powerless against the rights and mights of Woman. (Of the page I make no account, for, he is a boy, and therefore the natural enemy of Creation.) Chilling fast, in the deadly tornadoes to which my upper and lower extremities are exposed, and subdued by the ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... me for thine own sweet sake, Whose kind blithe soul such seas of sorrow swam, And for my love's sake, powerless as I am For love to praise thee, or like thee to make Music of mirth where hearts less pure would break, Less pure than thine, our life-unspotted Lamb. Things hatefullest thou hadst not heart to damn, Nor wouldst have set thine heel ...
— Sonnets, and Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets (1590-1650) • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... originally propagated by the sword, and ever since, its votaries have been subject, above the people of all other creeds, to this form of madness. In a moment the fruits of patient toil, the prospects of material prosperity, the fear of death itself, are flung aside. The more emotional Pathans are powerless to resist. All rational considerations are forgotten. Seizing their weapons, they become Ghazis—as dangerous and as sensible as mad dogs: fit only to be treated as such. While the more generous spirits among the tribesmen become convulsed in an ecstasy of ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... her face, unable to bear it. When she turned her miserable eyes toward them again, allured by some strange fascination she was powerless to analyse, Edith was in his arms, her ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... way immature, Rossetti discovered, by the gratuitous revelation of a friend, that a copy of the youthful production—privately printed and never published—was actually in the library of the British Museum. Amazed, and indeed appalled as he was by this disclosure, he was powerless to remedy the evil, which he foresaw would some day lead to the poem being unearthed to his injury, and printed as a part of his work. The utmost he could do to avert the threatened mischief he did, and this was to make an entry in ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... back, don't you speak to me for a year. Now, I'm going home." And, feeling that words were powerless to express his emotions, Ben walked away, looking as grim as ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... to find in a physician's office!" I exclaimed. "Beautiful, is it not? An unusual work of art; but there is nothing in it to alarm you. You shouldn't allow yourself to be frightened at such a thing as that." And with a quick action, she was wholly powerless to prevent, I shut down the lid, which closed ...
— The Bronze Hand - 1897 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... knows the trying phases of her own working neighbor. But with all this, and with worse possibilities of harassment than I have even touched upon, the woman at the next desk is powerless, so far as I am concerned, if I choose to make ...
— Nerves and Common Sense • Annie Payson Call
... constitutionality, and so on. But being on the ground, I had before me the exhibition of its practical working, saw the oppression and excesses growing out of it, and in the face of these experiences even Mr. Hendricks's persuasive eloquence was powerless to convince me of its beneficence. Later General Lovell H. Rousseau came down on a like mission, but was no more successful ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 5 • P. H. Sheridan
... dismissed him from thought, as something out of the reckoning, dead and done with, powerless as yesterday's broken sword. I thought him gone out of our lives when he went out of prison—gone forever, like last year's snow. And here within the hour we encountered him, a naked sword in his hand, a smile on his lips. He said, in the flower ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... 'gainst trust in such a tide: For he sometimes is prophet, heavenly taught, Whose message is that he sees only nought. Nathless, discern'd may be, By listeners at the doors of destiny, The fly-wheel swift and still Of God's incessant will, Mighty to keep in bound, tho' powerless to quell, The amorous and vehement drift ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore
... being a new type of humanity, a product of evolution which fitted a certain need. Of such was Captain West, who, engaging hostile troops, was attacked by seven machines. Early in the engagement, one of his legs was partially severed by an explosive bullet and fell powerless into the controls, rendering the machine for the time unmanageable. Lifting his disabled leg, he regained control of the machine, and although wounded in the other leg, he manoeuvred his machine so skilfully that his observer was able to ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... was evidently powerless. The remonstrances of the European consuls were received by Arabi's council with contempt, and it was too evident to all that the riot had been but the beginning of a very much more serious affair. The women and children remained ...
— A Chapter of Adventures • G. A. Henty
... should have ease and comfort, while others suffer... that my father should take part in this mad struggle for money and power, in order to give me a sheltered life! I must make it impossible for that to continue! I must make you understand that all your money is powerless to bring me happiness... that it is poisoning my life ...
— The Machine • Upton Sinclair
... step has been watched; Professor Mayda's daughter-in-law has been made use of, through the confessional, to obtain information concerning his language, and they have found out about the meetings. The presence of Selva is enough to give them the character these people abhor, and as they are powerless against a layman, it seems they are trying to obtain the help of the civil law against Benedetto; they are appealing to the police and to the judges. You are surprised? But it is so. As yet nothing has been decided, nothing has been done, ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... larger than a boy of sixteen, and from eyes, ears, nose, and hair he was dripping streams, while his coat bulged with packages which he had struggled to protect, from the torrent through which he had forced his way up the hill. Keith liked him on the instant. He found himself powerless to resist the infection of Wallie's grin, and as Wallie hustled into the kitchen like a wet spaniel, he followed and helped him unload. By the time the little Jap had disgorged his last package, he had assured ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood
... and tries to explain that he was more accustomed to a boat than she was, while he reasoned that she would naturally be more familiar with an ice cream freezer. It certainly looks to us to have been a cold-blooded transaction, and while the young man might have been rattled, and powerless to grasp the situation as he would if he had it to do over again, the girl is certainly ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... bubbled from the bottom. The spot, visited by few, was rendered almost sacred by a cluster of broad-armed beech-trees that overshadowed it. Herbert encountered his Auriola in this retreat. Who shall tell their joy? Herbert urged his suit—Auriola followed him through bush and thicket, and was powerless before his ardent supplications. Wittehold surprised the pair. His fury and indignation were ungovernable. Herbert, in self-defence, had recourse to his good sword, but this was as a lath against the ire of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... out at the time, but her record was against her. She lay a day or two in a police cell, and by the time it was clear that it was not rum this time, the mischief was done. Probably it would have been done anyhow. The woman was worn out. What now lay on the hospital cot was a mere wreck of her, powerless to move or speak. She could only plead with her large, sad eyes. As she tried to make them say that which was in her soul, two big tears rolled slowly down the wan cheeks and fell on the coarse sheet. The visitor understood. What ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... terrific crash. The side was crushed in, and the water rushing over her, down she went. More ropes were hove to those still on board. Morton caught hold of a rope with his left hand, but, at the same time, a spar struck his right a blow which rendered it powerless. He held on with all the energy of despair, for he knew that if he let go he should be lost. A poor fellow, one of his companions, was washed away close to him. His own was an awful position. He had received a second blow from a fragment of the boat. The sea was surging up round him. ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... one State under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall in consequence of any law or regulation therein be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due," is powerless without specific legislation to enforce it. Now, on what ground would a member of Congress, who is opposed to slavery in the abstract, vote for a Fugitive law, as I would deem it my duty to do? Because there is a constitutional right which needs legislation ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... flesh, Ned Moran, himself, stripped naked from the waist upward, as if for pugilistic combat, and drawing towards him in silence. Larkin would have shouted, prayed, cursed, fled across the Park, but he was absolutely powerless; the apparition stopped within a few steps, and leered on him with a ghastly mimicry of the defiant stare with which pugilists strive to cow one another before combat. For a time, which he could not so much as ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... they are laughed at, may be truly called ridiculous, but those who can defend themselves may be more truly described as strong and formidable; for ignorance in the powerful is hateful and horrible, because hurtful to others both in reality and in fiction, but powerless ignorance may be reckoned, ...
— Philebus • Plato
... defects, failure to make the most of an opportunity was not among them. The influence he exercised in the palace through his sister-in-law was far more exacting and imperious than that exercised by Go-Shirakawa himself, and the latter, while bitterly resenting this state of affairs, found himself powerless to correct it. Finally, to evince his discontent, he entered the priesthood, a demonstration which afforded Kiyomori more pleasure than pain. On the nomination of Takakura to be Crown Prince the Taira leader ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... of the dictators came to an end after about a century, because it was found that none of the feudal states was any longer strong enough to exercise control over all the others. These others formed alliances against which the dictator was powerless. Thus this period passed into the next, which the Chinese call the period of the ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... handled than the widely scattered farmers of the country could hope to be. Besides, the Knights of Labor organization appears to be too unwieldy and cumbrous to be long successful, and internal dissension seems to have already brought it near its end. It is plain that the farmers are powerless to effect a reduction of the competition among themselves. Nor is this condition at all likely to change. Farming is unlike other modern productive industries in that the cost of production does not decrease as it is conducted on a larger scale. The most profitable farms are, and perhaps ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker
... blind confidence and supplication give it an unusual tone. His heavy eyebrows meet and mingle under the stress of his indomitable will; his soul makes such an effort that the immobility of his legs seems suddenly intolerable. Heavens! Can a man WILL so intensely, and yet be powerless to control ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel
... itself crush or weaken or damage its own constituent parts. The first duty of law is to keep sound the society it serves. Sanitary laws, pure food laws, and laws determining conditions of labor which individuals are powerless to determine for themselves are intimate parts of the very business of ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... every squalid fisherman? And the great diamond flashed as he put it back into his purse, and cried to me, 'Am I not queen of all the diamonds of the world? Must I house with this base rascal?' but I was powerless now to help. ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... pitched in several trunks, one after the other; and, in fact, it became perfectly clear that M. M. was taking possession. And Betty and Moggy, at their wits' end between terror and bewilderment, were altogether powerless to resist, and could only whimper a protest against the monstrous invasion, while poor little Sally Nutter up stairs, roused by the wild chorus of strange voices from the lethargy of her grief, and even spurred into active alarm, locked her door, and ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... you might have come to your senses and forgotten me! But what hope for you is there now? Do you still believe I exist? Look back at the night! Do you remember the portrait? You commanded me to stop—commanded, as you've always commanded my fate, and I was powerless. To me, that was a parental command—from you, you who deliberately wouldn't be my parent! Did you see me wince under it? If you hadn't done it, you'd have found me out right then! I'm not a physical thing, and I couldn't have moved it! I only ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... was,—the thing those lucky elect possessed without a thought or an effort. It was an indestructible possession, apparently, too. You couldn't throw it away. Dissipation, dishonesty, even a total collapse that brought its victim down to the sink that he himself had sprouted from, seemed powerless to efface ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... his foregrounds, paint the spots upon a dead trout, and the dyes upon a butterfly's wing, yet for the most part delighted to begin at that very point where the other branches of Pre-Raphaelitism become powerless. ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... pulses were still. The heart had ceased to beat. Volition had not departed, but was powerless. The senses were unusually active, although eccentrically so—assuming often each other's functions at random. The taste and the smell were inextricably confounded, and became one sentiment, abnormal and intense. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... we will not be turned into Imperialists and Catholics. We will hold to our Elector and our religion; we will not suffer and submit to our Elector's being any longer in dependence upon Emperor and empire, and nothing at all but a powerless tool in Schwarzenberg's hands. We want a free Elector, who has courage and power to defy the Emperor himself, and league himself with the Swedes against him. For the Swedes are our rightful allies, not merely because the mother of the little Queen Christina is sister to our Elector, but also ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... Then an uproar broke loose inside the igloo. Without premeditation, the circle swept forward into the passageway. On the inside, half a dozen repeating rifles began to chatter, and the Mandells, jammed in the confined space, were powerless. Those at the front strove madly to retreat from the fire-spitting guns in their very faces, and those in the rear pressed as madly forward to the attack. The bullets from the big 45:90's drove through half a dozen men at a shot, and the passageway, ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... which faces the Mediterranean, (called the "Marine Gate,") and by the rusty, broken image of Minerva, still keeping tireless watch and ward over the possessions it was powerless to save, and went up a long street and stood in the broad court of the Forum of Justice. The floor was level and clean, and up and down either side was a noble colonnade of broken pillars, with their beautiful Ionic and Corinthian columns scattered about them. At the upper end ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... whirling aloft on all sides! But the noble animal breathes shorter, his eye grows wild and staring, his nostrils are reddened with blood, the veins of his neck are distended like cords, his legs refuse longer service—he sinks exhausted and powerless, a picture of death. But at the same instant the pursuing steed likewise stands still and fixed as if turned to stone. An instant, and the Csikos has flung himself off his horse upon the ground, and inclining his body backward, to keep the noose tight, he seizes the cord alternately with the ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... the Upper House. Cash, places, and peerages, were the usual considerations paid for maintaining a Government majority. The Catholics, from three-quarters to five-sixths of the population, had neither votes nor members; the Dissenters scarcely any members and an almost powerless vote. The Irish Legislature, by an Act as old as 1495, the famous Poynings' Law, could neither initiate nor pass a measure without the consent of the English Privy Council, and the Declaratory Act of 1719 confirmed the power ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... many kind friends who had watched and wept beside her—and the aged Sioux women, who had crept noiselessly into the chamber. I remember them well, as they leaned over the foot of the bed; their expressive and subdued countenances full of sorrow. That small white hand, that lay so powerless, had ever been outstretched to welcome them when ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... as thus far developed. The South are now in just that state of high exasperation, at the sense of wanton injury and impertinent interference, which makes the influence of truth and reason most useless and powerless. ...
— An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism - With reference to the duty of American females • Catharine E. Beecher
... semitone. But that's all very well. "No have got nothing!" Ah, there lay the secret. Presently The Other Man, head of the general commissariat, spoke again with touching eloquence. He gave the boy to understand that we were powerless to alter or soften the conditions of the larder, that we were victims of a horrible destiny, that we entertained no stinging malice towards him personally—but ... could he do it? Either a great wrath or a great sorrow overcame the boy; he skulked ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... not expected that. She was powerless and knew it. Wide-eyed she sought his face, but he met her ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... John Dunn, doubting, raging, overwhelmed with spiritual agony as to the state of his own soul rather than fear, strove to enter that southwest chamber. He was simply powerless against this uncanny obstacle. Finally a great horror as of evil itself came over him. He was a nervous man and very young. He fairly fled to his own chamber and locked himself in ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... extraordinary ingenuity of a seventeen-year-old schoolboy, was now resuming the offensive and was winning all along the line from the first. Lupin's two great adversaries, Shears and Ganimard, were put away. Isidore Beautrelet was disabled. The police were powerless. For the moment there was no one left capable ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... his own making did not render them any lighter. So long as Margaret Henson was under the pressure of his thumb, money was no great object. But there were other situations where money was utterly powerless. ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... me to thy sphere. What though my power compell'd thee to appear, My art was powerless to detain thee here. In that great moment, rapture-fraught, I felt myself so small, so great; Fiercely didst thrust me from the realm of thought Back on humanity's uncertain fate! Who'll teach me now? ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... degree of punishment inflicted upon the soldiers, the poorly paid defenders of the Empire, with their casual offences. While he rebelled against the brutalities of some officers, he was powerless to prevent them. The sentencing powers conferred by court-martial were at that time beyond belief. A captain and two subalterns could order 999 lashes with a "cat" steeped in brine. It is on record that on one occasion a soldier was sentenced to 1,500 lashes for "marauding." ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... made his request he met with no refusal. Hearing thereof, the lords of Baux came down in wrath with a clangour of armed men. But music had already gained the day; and where the Phoebus of Provence had shone, the AEolus of storm-shaken Les Baux was powerless. Again, when Blacas, a knight of Provence, died, the great Sordello chanted one of his most fiery hymns, bidding the princes of Christendom flock round and eat the heart of the dead lord. 'Let Rambaude des Baux,' cries the bard, with a sarcasm ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... and pleaded with her. It was absolutely useless. Her whole life was bound up in this man before me. My daughter, gentlemen, is all that I have left to love, and it filled me with agony when I saw how powerless I was to save her from her ruin. My helplessness seemed to touch this man who was the cause of ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... already to be as submissive as one of your grenadiers," replied the clergyman, his acute features trembling with a sense of indignity, so as even to agitate his grey hair; "but beware, sir, I am not so powerless as you suppose. I will invoke every true Christian in Woodstock to gird up his loins, and resist the restoration of prelacy, oppression, and malignancy within our borders. I will stir up the wrath ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... States there are some who are now lumping it all under the head of 'mortal mind,' considering it all but the 'one lie' which Jesus so often referred to, and regarding it as the 'suppositional opposite' of the mind that is God, and so, powerless. Not a bad idea, I think. But whether the money-loving Yankee will ever leave his mad chase for gold long enough to live this premise and so demonstrate it, is a question. I'm watching its development with intense interest. We in the States have wonderful, exceptional opportunities ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... a pitiable object as she stood there, guilty, degraded, and powerless. Her wreath of lilies had been knocked off and trampled under foot in the scuffle. The bouquet of lilies that rested on her bosom was crushed. Her lace and swan's-down trimmings were torn. Her hair was disheveled, her face pale, and her eyes ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... Almighty God, being a generous and loving Father, must be offended at those of His children who do not trust Him; and their want of faith in Him is consequently the reason for His denying to them the help which is the life of their souls, and without which they are powerless to be useful servants in ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan
... first slight swerving of the heart, That words are powerless to express, And leave it still unsaid in part, Or say ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... suddenly to Tilly, with an authority which the girl's will was powerless to resist. "Since you will not go home, you must be cared for here. I will take you to a friend of mine, and you must do as she ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... could be reformed and redressed in the slave by a tardy liberation. Thrust into the midst of a society itself vitiated by the admixture of slavery, he only became more unrestrainedly, more dangerously bad. Manumission was thus no remedy for the deterioration of the citizens: it was powerless even to better the condition of ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... dissensions and were equally insincere and inefficient. The present constitution of 1867, as well as the previous constitutions of 1849, 1860 and 1861, was granted by the crown, to whom it was reserved to reverse or modify the same. The parliament is absolutely powerless in Austria. It is a mere cloak for absolutism, since the famous Paragraph 14 provides for absolutist government by means of imperial decrees without parliament in case of emergency. The dynasty took ample advantage of this clause during the first three years of this war ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... Combinations have been formed to keep up railroad passenger and freight charges. Their influence has been used in political offices through the issuing of free passenger tickets, etc. Various other minor abuses have centered around these corporations. The States have been powerless to provide a remedy for the roads have been mostly engaged in interstate commerce with which the States are forbidden by the constitution to interfere. To provide a remedy for the principal of these abuses Congress passed the act of February ...
— Government and Administration of the United States • Westel W. Willoughby and William F. Willoughby |
