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More "Infirmity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that a son cannot be exempted under this clause unless both the parents are 'aged or infirm.' Thus it may happen that, by reason of bodily or mental infirmity, a father, with a family of helpless children, may be totally dependent upon the exertions of the mother and a draftable son. But the law pitilessly takes the son without possibility of exemption, throwing the entire burden of support upon ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... the mule, and something of a soul trying to wander out of the forest of misfortune; his little, tip-tilted nose that never grew on pure-blooded Frenchman; under a scant moustache his thick lips, disfigured by infirmity of speech, whence passed so continually a dribble of saliva—sick British workman was stamped on him. Yet he was passionately fond of washing himself; his teeth, his head, his clothes. Into the frigid winter he would go, and stand at the 'Source' ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... Her mother's infirmity of purpose set Anne thinking, and she was suddenly filled with a conviction that in such a case she ought to have some purpose herself. Mrs. Garland's complacency at the miller's offer had, in truth, amazed her. While her mother had held up her head, and recommended Festus, ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... Even now, when sixty or seventy years have passed over my head since my boyhood received the impression which my grandmother gave it, though my judgment is wholly free, my imagination is not wholly so. My infirmity was not unknown to the servants. It was a permanent source of amusement to ply me with horrible phantoms in all imaginable shapes. Under the pagan dispensation, every object a man could set his eyes on had been the seat of some pleasant adventure. At Barking, in the almost solitude of which ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... for with his life." Colonel Wynyard took down the same story from Taniwha's lips in 1852, when he was supposed to be about ninety-three, and says: "His faculties were little impaired, and his great age perceptible more from a stoop and grey hairs than any other infirmity." Cook expressed very strong disapproval of ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... account in St. Luke xiii: 10-17, of the miracle he performed on the woman who had "a spirit of infirmity." This means that she was a cripple. Her body was bound down, so that she had no power to straighten herself or to stand upright. She had been in this condition we are told for eighteen years. How hard to bear—and how discouraging this trial must have been to her! No doctor could give ...
— The Life of Jesus Christ for the Young • Richard Newton
... he could free his eyes from the cloak he looked at the rescuer, who, unaware of his infirmity, ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... of the stableyard. The yard itself was the summit of Monkey Hill. It lay between two brick buildings and up the hill, from the walk, one looked into the gloomy cavern of the stable and under the low roof, on one side there were dump carts and old coaches in varying stages of infirmity. There was an old iron shop, that stood flush with the sidewalk, flanking the stableyard. A lantern and a mammoth key were suspended above the door and hanging upon the side of the shop was a wooden stair ascending to the chalet The latter had a sheathing of weather-worn clapboards. It stood on the ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... with "The Courting of T'nowhead's Bell," but it never found shelter until it got within book-covers. In time, however, I found another paper, the British Weekly, with an editor as bold as my first (or shall we say he suffered from the same infirmity?). He revived my drooping hopes, and I was again able to turn to the only kind of literary work I now seemed to have much interest in. He let me sign my articles, which was a big step for me and led to my having requests ...
— Better Dead • J. M. Barrie
... limitation and infirmity. Its eyes, sometimes oblivious of the things most obvious, pierce the remotest future, read the innermost soul, discern the last and highest fruitions. The seed in its hand, hard, black, unbroken, is already a flower to its thought; out of the bare, stern facts of the present its ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... Shepherds trade, And strictly meditate the thankles Muse, Were it not better don as others use, To sport with Amaryllis in the shade, Or with the tangles of Neaera's hair? Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise 70 (That last infirmity of Noble mind) To scorn delights, and live laborious dayes: But the fair Guerdon when we hope to find, And think to burst out into sudden blaze. Comes the blind Fury with th'abhorred shears, And slits the thin spun life. But not the praise, Phoebus ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... parish constable was to present to the justices "a true list in writing of all men between the ages of 18 and 45 years, distinguishing their ranks and occupations, and such as laboured under any infirmities, in order that the truth of such infirmity might be inquired into [for they frequently did feign infirmities!] and the list amended." The drawing took place at Arrington (at the "Tiger"), and at Buntingford, and the old constable's accounts show frequent entries of "caring ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... servant befitted the occasion: "The simplest words are best where all words are vain. Ten days ago a great artist in the noon of life, and with his glorious mental faculties in full power, but with the shade of physical infirmity darkening upon him, took his accustomed place among friends who have this day held his pall. Some of them had been fellow-workers with him for a quarter of a century, others for fewer years; but ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... the state of the case is as follows: that if we look through mankind in order to find out who make up the world, and who do not, we shall find none who are not of the world; inasmuch as there are none who are not exposed to infirmity. So that if to shun the world is to shun some body of men so called, we must shun all men, nay, ourselves too—which is a conclusion which ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... many more like it. All night long he raved and tore. His oaths were blood-curdling. He covered every past portion of his life. His army life was mainly in his mind. He fought the whole war over. Sometimes he prayed fervently; prayed against his infirmity; prayed that his chains might be broken. Then he would grow calm for awhile. One thing recurred constantly: he had sold his honor, betrayed his cause. This was the order again and again, and each time the ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... 1809, I think, when I was twenty-one years old, a man in the vicinity where I resided, in Brooke co. Va. near West Liberty, by the name of Morgan, had a little slave girl about six years old, who had a habit or rather a natural infirmity common to children of that age. On this account her master and mistress would pinch her ears with hot tongs, and throw hot embers on her legs. Not being able to accomplish their object by these means, they at last resorted to a method too indelicate, and too horrible to describe ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... increase his self-respect. He abandoned shaving as a dangerous exercise, and being shaved in a barber's shop meant exposure of his infirmity. He could not see that his clothes were properly brushed, and since he had never taken any care of his personal appearance he became every known variety of sloven. A blind man cannot deal with cleanliness till he has been some months ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... Austen had abandoned the idea of taking Orders, and had joined the Oxford Militia as lieutenant, in 1793, becoming adjutant and captain four years later. Though he was endowed with many attractive gifts there was a certain infirmity of purpose in his character that was hardly likely to be remedied by a marriage to ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... loving work of the Father and of the Son to be equal in the forgiveness of sins and redemption of mankind; that what is done by the Father is in reality done also by the Son; and that it is by a mere accommodation to human infirmity of understanding that the doctrine of the Trinity is revealed to us in language, inadequate indeed to convey divine truths, but still the only language possible; and I asked whether some such feeling ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... the eye, a pearle, or any humour that comes out of the head. My father laboured under this infirmity, and our learned men of Salisbury could doe him no good. At last one goodwife Holly, a poore woman of Chalke, cured him in a little time. My father gave her a broad piece of gold for the receipt, which is this:-Take about halfe a pint of the best white wine vinegar; put ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey
... slight deafness. He uses it to avoid arguments, assignments, conventions, parlor parties—and bores—and deftly evades a whole lot of "duty" conversations as well. Of course I know all this now, but in those days I thought his lack of complete hearing an infirmity calling for a sort of sympathy on my part. Anyway it was three o'clock ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock
... in the country, man and woman alike, will be entitled, with scarcely any exception, to an old-age pension from the State at the age of seventy—that fact makes it ever so much cheaper to insure against invalidity or infirmity up to the age of seventy. And, with the various insurance schemes which are in preparation, we ought to be able to set up a complete ladder, an unbroken bridge or causeway, as it were, along which the whole body of the people may move with a certain assured measure of security and safety against ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... elderly, yet seemed bent more by sorrow and infirmity than by the weight of years. He wore a mourning cloak, over a dress of the same melancholy colour, cut in that picturesque form which Vandyck has rendered immortal. But although the dress was handsome, ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... and 1898 no conventions were held, on account of the absence of several of the officers from the Territory. Through the efforts of Mrs. Hadley (herself prevented by physical infirmity), H. B. Fergusson, delegate to Congress for New Mexico, represented the Territory and made a speech in the convention of the National Association at Washington ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... was not occupied by more than the latter, he should be able to introduce a little more regularity into the phenomena. (Here the honourable luminary gave a sort of modest libration, which convulsed the meeting with laughter.) They might laugh at his natural infirmity if they pleased, but he could assure them it arose only from the necessity he was under, when young, of watching the motions of his worthy primary. He then moved a resolution highly laudatory of the alterations which appeared in the New ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... have more than one wife; in the matter of marriage, the rights of man alone are regarded. All over India, however, among the educated classes, Mahomedans excepted, public opinion is now requiring a justification for a second marriage, as, for example, the barrenness, insanity, infirmity, or misconduct of the first spouse. The temptation of a second dowry is still, however, operative with men of certain high castes in which bridegrooms require to be paid for. The writer well remembers the ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... was a bodily infirmity, which the perfectibility of the human mind (so happily commenced by the French subversion) would completely eradicate! Let us not altogether condemn the ignorant, perhaps designing, priests of Tao-tse, and the still more ignorant ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... his many excellences Vespasian had an infirmity. This was an ungovernable itch for brushing whites. If he was talking with one of that always admired, and now beloved, race, and saw a speck of dirt on him, he would brush him unobtrusively, but effectually, ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... a peasant, the son of a Norman farmer. As long as his father and mother lived, he was more or less taken care of; he suffered little save from his horrible infirmity; but as soon as the old people were gone, an atrocious life of misery commenced for him. A dependent on a sister of his, everybody in the farmhouse treated him as a beggar who is eating the bread of others. At every meal the very food he swallowed was ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... character, and was accused, accordingly, of insulting arrogance and bad-heartedness. In this reversed character, we repeat, it was never our chance to see him. We know it from hearsay, and we mention it in connection with this sad infirmity of physical constitution; which puts it upon very nearly the ground of a temporary and almost ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... knocked down a hundred beggarly pandours who respect neither sex nor infirmity. For the benefit of those who are not satisfied, I will state that I call myself colonel Fougas of the 23d. And ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... enactment be directed against the robbing of temples. No well-educated citizen will be guilty of such a crime, but one of their servants, or some stranger, may, and with a view to him, and at the same time with a remoter eye to the general infirmity of human nature, I will lay down the law, beginning with a prelude. To the intending robber we will say—O sir, the complaint which troubles you is not human; but some curse has fallen upon you, inherited from the crimes of your ancestors, of ...
— Laws • Plato
... fancy therefore must be good for something if one knew it. But Gerarde, who calls the plant Red Rattle, (it having indeed much in common with the Yellow Rattle), says, "It groweth in moist and moorish meadows; the herbe is not only unprofitable, but likewise hurtful, and an infirmity of the meadows." ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... comfort; he is not overpowered by the weight of aliments; his ideas are clear and easy; he fulfills all his functions properly; he conducts his business with intelligence; his old age is exempt from infirmity; he does not spend his money in remedies, and he enjoys, in mirth and gladness, the wealth which chance and his own prudence have procured him. Thus, from one virtue alone, ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... in many things," said The Master gently, "but not in all. Remember that you have much to learn, hijo mio. I have taught you to prepare my little medicine, it is true. That is so you can take my place if age infirmity shall carry me away." The Master folded his hands with an air of pious resignation. "But you must learn policy. The Senorita Canalejas belongs ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... them; and now may the heavens weep for me and the earth weep for me in temporal affairs; I have not a farthing to make as an offering in spiritual affairs. I have remained here on the Indian islands in the manner I have before said in great pain and infirmity, expecting every day death, surrounded by innumerable savages full of cruelty and by our enemies, and so far from the sacraments of the Holy Mother Church that I believe the soul will be forgotten when it leaves the body. Let them weep for me who have charity, truth and justice. I did ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... there has been no real restriction to immigration. Our policy has been selective rather than restrictive. Of those arriving certain individuals are rejected by the immigration authorities because of some defect of mind, of body, or of morals, or because of age infirmity, or some other cause by reason of which the aliens are likely to become public charges. For the official year 1914, of the 1,218,480 applying for admission 15,745 were excluded because they were likely to become a public ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... his recent self-conquest or pause to reason why he should not love this little wisp of the wilderness. The barriers he had built went down in the sight and touch of his love and disappeared; his hesitation and infirmity seemed childish now—yes, more than that, cowardly. He realized all in a moment that he had been supremely selfish, that his love was a covenant, a compact, which he had entered into with her and had no right ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... continued to see the ghost, and gave no heed to all they could say, while he addressed it with distracted words, yet so significant, that his queen, fearing the dreadful secret would be disclosed, in great haste dismissed the guests, excusing the infirmity of Macbeth as a disorder he was ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... the bride, Or he the bridegroom may appoint? Not he That is not of the house, but from the street Stain'd with the mire thereof. I had been so true To Henry and mine office that the King Would throne me in the great Archbishoprick: And I, that knew mine own infirmity, For the King's pleasure rather than God's cause Took it upon me—err'd thro' love of him. Now therefore God from me withdraws Himself, And the King too. What! forty thousand marks! Why thou, the King, the Pope, ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... "As grandmother's infirmity increased, and her strict supervision relaxed, I met Cuthbert more frequently, but as yet without her knowledge; and gradually be won my childish heart completely. His father, General Rene Laurance, was a haughty wealthy planter ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... could not only read, but she read very well: and she read a great deal aloud to the old people, and in the infirmary. She talked unlike the rest, too. She said little; but her language was good, and always correct. She could not do much on account of her infirmity: but she was always willing to do what could be done with one hand; and she must have been very handy when she had ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... fundamental importance that I will venture, even at the risk of tedious repetition, to give three parallel quotations from English authorities. Grose, in his Military Antiquities, says: "By the Saxon laws every freeman of an age capable of bearing arms, and not incapacitated by any bodily infirmity, was in case of a foreign invasion, internal insurrection, or other emergency obliged to join the army."[4] Freeman, in his Norman Conquest, speaks of "the right and duty of every free Englishman to be ready for the defence of the Commonwealth with ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw
... the wily, crafty, Machiavellian reptile, whose calculating wickedness should form a contrast to the daemonic, reckless, almost maniacal fiendishness of old Francesco Cenci. But this conception of him wavers; his love for Beatrice is too delicately tinted, and he is suffered to break down with an infirmity of conscience alien to such a nature. On the other hand the uneasy vacillations of Giacomo, and the irresolution, born of feminine weakness and want of fibre, in Lucrezia, serve to throw the firm will of Beatrice into ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... memory. He was a straught, tall, old man, with a shining bell-pow, and reverend white locks hanging down about his haffets; a Roman nose, and two cheeks blooming through the winter of his long age like roses, when, poor body, he was sand-blind with infirmity. In his latter days he was hardly able to crawl about alone; but used to sit resting himself on the truff seat before our door, leaning forward his head on his staff, and finding a kind of pleasure in feeling the beams of God's own sun beaking on him. A blackbird, ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... sorrow should be borne, nor sunk in shame, For that his destiny decreed to moan— His Muse had been triumphant over Time As still she is o'er Passion; still sublime— Having subdued her soul's infirmity To aliment; and, with herself o'ercome, O'ercome the barriers of Eternity, And lived through all the ages, with a sway Complete, and unembarrassed by the doom That makes ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... however, He took pity for several reasons. First, because the tempter by his cunning had deceived our first father, Adam; secondly, because the spirit of man is encompassed by flesh and consequently by infirmity; thirdly, because his spirit, enclosed as it is in an earthly body, is frail as the vessel which enshrines it, easily overbalanced by every breath of wind, and unable to right itself again; fourthly, because the ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... perhaps, who walk so deviatingly—seeing, knowing—those that stammer out nightly ere they rest, in confession, their fears that they have been acting if not speaking the untrue thing, and praying for strength in their infirmity, and more simplicity of heart; and would in their penitence shun the concourse that besets them, and hide their heads in some retired quiet spot of peace, out of reach of this assault of temptation. And ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... that Charity was not his wife seemed hardly the most reassuring thing to do. He let the word go and ignored Skip's cynical intonation. Jim's knuckles ached to rebuke him, but he had not fought a waiter since his wild young days. And Skip was protected by his infirmity. ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... mistress, with others their associates: see to what a condition they have reduced me by their incantations and witchcraft:" upon which he laid bare his arm, all shrivelled and decayed. But the counsellors, who knew that this infirmity had attended him from his birth, looked on each other with amazement; and, above all, Lord Hastings, who, as he had since Edward's death engaged in an intrigue with Jane Shore,[*] [20] was naturally anxious concerning the issue of these ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... oversight of larder and dairy. Such care was then the delight of many an unsophisticated laird's helpmate; and, to the contented Lady of Staneholme, it had quite made up for the partial deprivation of social intercourse to which her infirmity had subjected her. Joan, Madge, and Mysie, wearied of haughty Nelly after they had grown accustomed to the grand attire she wore, denied that they had ever been dazzled with it, and ceased to believe that she had danced minuets in the Assembly Rooms before Miss Jacky Murray. They had ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... idiot, who had of late assumed all the port of coherence; he snatched and held a part in the colloquy, so did the dignity of labor annul the realization of his infirmity, "then I'd be obleeged ter him ef—ef—ef ...
— The Raid Of The Guerilla - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... late Mr. Augustus Mortimer had begun to show a degree of infirmity which sometimes made his son uncomfortable that he should have to live alone. To bring those joyous urchins and little, laughing, dancing, playful girls into his house was not to be thought of. What was ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... Lord, the Son of God. It puts into the most vivid possible contrast the age of "the law" and that of Christ as to the priestly conception and institution. Somehow, under the law, there was a need for priests who were "men, having infirmity." For certain grave purposes (not for all, by any means, even in that legal period) it was the will of God that they should stand between His Israel and Him. But the argument of this chapter, unless it elaborately ...
— Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews • Handley C.G. Moule
... poope of the hollow bird; such an accident happend in this entertainment you know—Proprio laus sordet in ore; be a mans breath never so sweet, yet it makes ones prayses stink, if he makes his owne mouth the conduit pipe of it; But for my part I am content to dispense with this Roman infirmity of B. now that time hath snowed upon his pericranium. You know Ovid, and (your) Horace were subject to this humour, the first bursting ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... rose, then, that bald, gray old man, his hands trembling with constitutional infirmity and age, upon whose consecrated head the vials of tyrannic wrath had been outpoured. Among the crowd of slaveholders who filled the galleries he could seek no friends, and but a few among those immediately around him. Unexcited, he raised his voice, high-keyed, as was usual with ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... and may I live upon his offerings. Let me salute the Mistress of the Land (i.e. the Queen) who is in his palace, and let me hear the greetings of her children. O would that my members could become young again! For now old age is stealing on me. Infirmity overtaketh me. Mine eyes refuse to see, my hands fall helpless, my knees shake, my heart standeth still, the funerary mourners approach and they will bear me away to the City of Eternity, wherein I shall become a follower of Nebertcher. She will declare to me the beauties of her children, ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... doubt, of his present reserve, in abstaining from all such miscellaneous haunts, was the sensitiveness, so often referred to, on the subject of his lameness,—a feeling which the curiosity of the public eye, now attracted to this infirmity by his fame, could not fail, he knew, to put ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... their lives are spent, from day to day, at least among the waving trees, and not in the midst of dreadful engines which make young children old before they know what childhood is, and give them the exhaustion and infirmity of age, without, like age, the privilege to die. God send that old nursery tales were true, and that gypsies stole such children ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... unspotted darling, that never wilfully sinned against God and holy Church? Child, if our holy Father the Pope were to tell me himself that she was there, I would not believe him. Do the angels go to Purgatory? Nay, I do verily believe that, seeing her infirmity, Christ our Lord did all the work of salvation for her, and that she sings now before ...
— Our Little Lady - Six Hundred Years Ago • Emily Sarah Holt
... who have unfortunately a sensitive palate, and have been accustomed to a luxurious variety of savoury sauces, and highly seasoned viands; those who, from the infirmity of age, are become incapable of correcting habits created by absurd indulgence in youth, are entitled to some consideration; and, for their sake, the Elements of Opsology are explained in the most intelligent ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... the case of those who are able and willing to work. There remain still the uncounted thousands who by accident or illness, age or infirmity, are unable to maintain themselves. For these people, under the older dispensation, there was nothing but the poorhouse, the jail or starvation by the roadside. The narrow individualism of the nineteenth century refused to recognize the social duty ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... companion again to apply to him the invidious epithet I have already quoted. What had happened was simply that Flora had at the eleventh hour broken down in the attempt to put him off with an uncandid account of her infirmity and that his lordship's interest in her had not been proof against the discovery of the way she had practised on him. Her dissimulation, he was obliged to perceive, had been infernally deep. The future in short assumed a new complexion for him when looked at through the grim glasses ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... old man's health had certainly improved. Whether it was the link to his earlier and happier life, which had been furnished by the late relenting of his wife's father, or from some other cause, he seemed to have laid aside much of his infirmity, and to have returned from his premature old age to ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 2 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... Her infirmity of deafness was troublesome to some extent when she was young, making her shy and retiring. At forty she was absolutely incapable of hearing conversation. She also was lame in one foot and had a withered hand. In spite of this, I think she was an active and spirited girl, about ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... his fellows. We are accustomed to read of brave men, of original thinkers, of great statesmen, of men of genius in different departments of life, but we seldom read of one who was so entirely free from what Milton calls the last infirmity of great men—the love of fame—that he was willing to be nothing that the cause he had espoused might triumph. When Columbus first saw the River Orinoco, some one remarked to him that he must have discovered ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... to no one else; she says, and in this sentence she gives the secret of much which has appeared inexplicable to the world: "One thing more in regard to myself. The absence and wandering of mind and forgetfulness that so often vexes you is a physical infirmity with me. It is the failing of a mind not calculated to endure a great pressure of care, and so much do I feel the pressure I am under, so much is my mind darkened and troubled by care that life seriously holds out few allurements,—only my children." ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... long been aware of her friend's infirmity, and more than once had sought with delicacy and yet with faithfulness to open her eyes to the consequences of her indulgence. But Mrs. Haldane, unfortunately, was incapable of taking a broad, and therefore correct, view of anything. She was governed far more by her prejudices and feelings than ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... by the bite of a dog, is surely excusable, and yet we ought to constrain him. In like manner, the man who cannot govern his passions, nor restrain them by the fear of the laws, though excusable on account of the infirmity of his nature, can nevertheless not enjoy peace, nor the knowledge and the love of God; and it is ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... carnivorous animal, we shall easily discover him to be very necessitous, but if we turn our eye to his make and temper, his agility, his courage, his arms, and his force, we shall find that his advantages hold proportion with his wants.... In man alone this unnatural conjunction of infirmity and of necessity may be observed in the greatest perfection. Not only the food which is required for his sustenance flies his search and approach, or at least requires his labour to be produced, but he must be possessed of clothes and lodging to defend him ...
— The Children: Some Educational Problems • Alexander Darroch
... deferred not daily to die in myself. Loving a happy life, I feared it in its own abode, and sought it, by fleeing from it. I thought I should be too miserable, unless folded in female arms; and of the medicine of Thy mercy to cure that infirmity I thought not, not having tried it. As for continency, I supposed it to be in our own power (though in myself I did not find that power), being so foolish as not to know what is written, None can be continent unless Thou give it; and that Thou wouldest give it, ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... was near-sighted, and this infirmity had deterred him from an amusement which he would have enjoyed very much; but that day, however, he wished to make the attempt, and, having expressed this. wish, the Duke of Montebello handed him a gun, and M. de Beauterne had the honor of giving the Emperor ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... addressed was about to return a verbal reply, but remembering our friend's infirmity, he substituted for this kind of answer some fifty nods. Then taking up the slate and printing on it a gigantic 'Yes,' he handed it across the table, and rubbing his hands as he looked round upon our faces, protested that he and the deaf gentleman ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... me, from engaging in the laudable undertaking you preach; but since my weak age and the injuries of time deprive me of this desirable benefit (for approaching years bring with them many comforts, which those that are passed take away), if I cannot, owing to the infirmity of my body, attain a full merit, yet suffer me, by giving a tenth of all I possess, to attain a half." Then falling down at the feet of the archbishop, he deposited in his hands, for the service of the cross, the tenth of his estate, weeping bitterly, and intreating ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... coming to church for. Preaching, if it is of the right kind, is the voice of God. This we venture to say while well aware of its imperfections. In the best of preaching there is a large human element beset with infirmity; yet in all genuine preaching there is conveyed a message from Heaven. And, while it is good for people to go to church that they may speak to God, it is still better to go that He may speak to them. Nor, where God is authentically heard speaking to the heart, will the response of the heart ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... sleeping; and the sin cometh oft to them that be maidens, and eke to them that be corrupt; and this sin men clepe pollution, that cometh in four manners;" these four manners being (1) languishing of body from rank and abundant humors, (2) infirmity, (3) surfeit of meat and drink, and (4) villainous thoughts. Four hundred years later, Madame Roland, in her Memoires Particulieres, presented a vivid picture of the anguish produced in an innocent girl's mind by the notion of the sinfulness ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... lines introduce us to Jonathan Swift. Nature, together with the character of his time, made the great Dean a misanthropist. Physical infirmity, disappointed hopes, and a long series of humiliations destroyed the happiness which should have belonged to his rare union of noble gifts,—his tall, commanding figure, his awe-inspiring countenance, his acute wit, and magnificent intellect. Naturally proud and sensitive ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... of a career so memorable as Mr. Gladstone's should be composed. That, to be sure, is not at all inconsistent with our regarding party feeling in its honourable sense, as entirely the reverse of an infirmity. ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... good use of the immense force you concentrated at the price of innumerable sacrifices and privations. The horrible misery and the ignorance through which my beloved wife had suffered, the dangers to which they had exposed her, the cruel infirmity of her guardian, all these bitter things were a lesson to me; Mariette, her godmother and myself have tried, as far as it lay in our power, to spare ...
— A Cardinal Sin • Eugene Sue
... was something wrong with that woman's husband. Nothing infectious, I believe, but they didn't seem to consider him a desirable citizen. They make a warning example of somebody with a physical infirmity now and then. The man, they decided, must be put ashore again. In the meanwhile, somebody else had hustled the woman forward, and it looked as if they would take her on without him. The tug was almost ready to ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... scarcely believe that Rome, where I have spent so many happy years, is now the capital of united Italy. I heartily rejoice in that glorious termination to the vicissitudes the country has undergone, and only regret that age and infirmity prevent me from going to see Victor Emmanuel triumphantly enter the capital of his kingdom. The Pope's reliance on foreign troops for his safety was an ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... was the son of one of them, he knew, but he hardly guessed whom until he marked the paternal pride and content that had made unwontedly placid the brow of the irate miller while the ovation was in progress. Nehemiah greatly preferred the adult specimen of the race, and looked upon youth as an infirmity which would mend only with time. He was easily confused by a stir; the gurglings, the ticklings, the loud laughter both in the deep bass of the hosts and the keen treble of the guest had a befuddling effect upon him; his powers of observation were numbed. As the great, burly forms shifted to and ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... of Jesus as the Christ were decisively established by the Divine power which He manifested. It had been foretold that certain extraordinary recoveries from disease and infirmity would be witnessed in the days of the Messiah; and these predictions were now literally fulfilled. The eyes of the blind were opened, and the ears of the deaf were unstopped; the lame man leaped as an hart, and ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... due and weighty reasons of state, the prince's grace shall hide his infirmity in all ways that be within his power, till it be passed and he be as he was before. To wit, that he shall deny to none that he is the true prince, and heir to England's greatness; that he shall uphold his princely dignity, and shall receive, without word or sign of protest, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... nothing more needful in this world nor anything whereunto they were more bounden than here to live in their duty and to train their whole life, according to their calling. Therefore whereas men are in many things weakly by nature, and subject to much infirmity; I think in this one point they pass all other creatures living, that they have the ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... been my practice, and it has been eminently successful, and therefore I commend it to others, treating with pity the infirmity of those who ignorantly condemn it, as "They know not ...
— An Epitome of Homeopathic Healing Art - Containing the New Discoveries and Improvements to the Present Time • B. L. Hill
... the city, accounting this a miracle, proclaimed this Arrigo a saint and running all to the house where he lay, bore his body, for that of a saint, to the Cathedral, whither they fell to bringing the halt, the impotent and the blind and others afflicted with whatsoever defect or infirmity, as if they should all be made whole by the ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... a cheery invalid, for he was a bright, patient little fellow. He had a beautiful little face, too, though perhaps the eyes were a trifle too large for the thin features; but Dot was my pet, and I could see no fault in him; nothing angered me more than when people pitied him or lamented over his infirmity. When I first came home the sound of his crutch on the floor was the sweetest music in my ear. But I had no eyes even for Dot after my first look at father. Oh, how changed, how terribly changed he was! The great wave of brown hair over his forehead ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... in this cold season huddled before the fires covered with furs, a tiger-skin over his knees, his pale hands clasping his wrappings together at the throat. He was considerate for my mother's comfort, as a host should be, and he betrayed an eager curiosity and interest concerning my infirmity; which showed his care for me, but which I resented as an intrusion. For I had reached the point when it was easy for me to endure the fact that I was unlike other men in my physical strength, but was not yet sufficiently resigned ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... presumptuous self-will, which in Greek tragedy we have so often seen stumbling against the altar of Nemesis. Our consciousness that the decay of old age contributes to this condition deepens our pity and our sense of human infirmity, but certainly does not lead us to regard the old King as irresponsible, and so to sever the tragic nexus which binds together his ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... history of Marie Francoise-Clay, who attained such celebrity for her obesity. She was born in poverty, reached puberty at thirteen, and married at twenty-five, at which age she was already the stoutest woman of her neighborhood notwithstanding her infirmity. She followed her husband, who was an old-clothes dealer, afoot from town to town. She bore six children, in whom nothing extraordinary was noticed. The last one was born when she was thirty-five years old. Neither the births, her travels, nor her poverty, which sometimes forced her to beg at ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... poor soul's want of memory as a common infirmity; pretended he was himself very often troubled in the same way, and advised him to read the newspapers. "My good wife," said he, "has brought me a whole file of the Cape Gazette. I'd read them if I was you. The deuce is in it, if you don't ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... Both descriptions have acted as became them. When I could no longer serve them, the ministers have considered my situation. When I could no longer hurt them, the revolutionists have trampled on my infirmity. My gratitude, I trust, is equal to the manner in which the benefit was conferred. It came to me, indeed, at a time of life, and in a state of mind and body, in which no circumstance of fortune could afford me any real pleasure. But ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... clergy, or any clergy, should show themselves vicious beyond the fair bounds allowed to human infirmity, and to those professional faults which can hardly be separated from professional virtues, though their vices never can countenance the exercise of oppression, I do admit that they would naturally have the effect of abating very ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... of them, seeing that he was starving, brought him a saucerful of honey and two cakes of bread. So he ate a little and they sat with him till sunrise, when they went about their occupations. He abode with them in this state for a month, whilst sickness and infirmity increased upon him, and they wept for him and pitying his condition, took counsel together of his case and agreed to send him to the hospital at Baghdad. Meanwhile, there came into the mosque two beggar women, ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... attracted Pope's notice, who made a curious note on a scrap of paper sent with it to a friend. Johnson is described as "a man afflicted with an infirmity of the convulsive kind, that attacks him sometimes so as to make him a sad spectacle." This seems to have been the chief information obtained by Pope about the anonymous author, of whom he had said, on first reading ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... sober fact is that the life was a hard one, with few rational pleasures, few wholesome appliances. The strong ones lived, and some even attained great length of years; but to the many age came early and was full of infirmity and pain. If we could go back to what our fore-fathers endured in clearing the Western wilderness, we could then better appreciate our obligations to them. It is detracting from the honor which is their due to say that their ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... and good-nature engages every body to him, so that when he is pleasant upon any of them, all his family are in good humour, and none so much as the person whom he diverts himself with: On the contrary, if he coughs, or betrays any infirmity of old age, it is easy for a stander-by to observe a secret concern in the looks of ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... not slaves to their own professionalism; no doubt they could laugh at it themselves. But there is always a danger that we shall be enslaved by it; and it is the business of criticism to free us from that slavery, to make us aware of this last infirmity of great artists. We are on our guard easily enough against a professionalism that is out of fashion. The Wagnerian of a generation ago could sneer at the professionalism of Mozart; but the professionalism of Wagner seemed to him to be inspiration made constant and certain ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... a Master of Judgment, as he was an Instance of Wit, would have laid the Errours of an establish'd Writer on a pardonable Want of Care, or excus'd them by the Infirmity of Human Nature; he would have wondred at the corrupt Palates now a-days, who quarrel with their Meat, when the Fault is in their Taste. To reform which, if our Moderns would lay aside the malicious ...
— Discourse on Criticism and of Poetry (1707) - From Poems On Several Occasions (1707) • Samuel Cobb
... reverses was a physical one; he could not endure the hard life in the college of Montaigu. The addled eggs and squalid bedrooms stuck in his memory all his life; there he thinks he contracted the beginnings of his later infirmity. In the Colloquia he has commemorated with abhorrence Standonck's system of abstinence, privation and chastisement. For the rest his stay there lasted only ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... of this world's goods—possibly a hundred dollars in the savings' bank, and the furniture in the cottage. Though he was as prudent and thrifty as Scotchmen generally are, and was not beset by their "often infirmity," he had not been very prosperous. The business of ship-building had been almost entirely suspended, and for several years only a few small vessels had been built in the city. Ramsay had always obtained ...
— The Yacht Club - or The Young Boat-Builder • Oliver Optic
... accounts, I suppose, for the name he gave his daughter. His habit of quoting is troublesome to me; because I cannot always translate what he says. But he has a feeling for my infirmity and a tactful way of ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham
... also being deaf and at the same time anxious to conceal his infirmity, understood ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... magnificence of the great is to him vanity; the hilarity of youth, folly; he considers how soon the gloom of death must overshadow the one and disappoint the other. The world presents little to attract and nothing to delight him. A few more years of infirmity, inanity and pain must consign him to idiocy or the grave. Yet this was the gay, the generous, the high-souled boy who beheld the ascending path of life strewn with flowers without a thorn. Such is human life; but such cannot be the ultimate ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... more knowledge of him will make thee take better heart; thy earnest desires shall not be attended with such burning fears; thou shalt hereafter say, "This is my infirmity." ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... admits, however, that the intemperate, profligate, and criminal classes, whose duration of life is low, do not commonly marry; and it must likewise be admitted that men with a weak constitution, ill health, or any great infirmity in body or mind, will often not wish to marry, or will be rejected. Dr. Stark seems to have come to the conclusion that marriage in itself is a main cause of prolonged life, from finding that aged married men still have a considerable advantage in this respect over the unmarried of the same ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... the tombs, the transfiguration, the marriage of Cana, the feeding the multitudes: ({GREEK SMALL LETTER GAMMA}) the meaning of Jesus when he appeals to miracles. In Discourse II. he selects for examination the miracle of the woman with the issue of blood, and also her with the spirit of infirmity; also the narrative of the Samaritan woman, the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, the temptation, the appearance of the spirits of the dead at the resurrection. In Discourse III. he selects the cursing of the fig-tree, and the miracle of the pool of Bethesda. ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... miasmic only. The life of man seemed as ever a brief and sad and simple thing, the stretching of impotent hands, unable to grasp and hold; the interlacing of shadows; the unclosing, a moment before nightfall, of exquisite and fragile blossoms. The sense of the infirmity of life, the consciousness that it had no more than the signification of a dream with passing lights, or halting steps in the snow, or an old half-forgotten story, had mixed a deep wistfulness and melancholy into the very glamour ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... entertaining them; the effect upon the church would, we think, have been favorable, and unity of sentiment might have been promoted. That a different impression has been made on many minds is, doubtless, owing to the human infirmity and passion that mingled in the contest. Which party exhibited the largest amount of this weakness, we will not undertake to decide, although we doubt not, that here as in most other cases, the judgment of the Leyden cobbler would ...
— American Lutheranism Vindicated; or, Examination of the Lutheran Symbols, on Certain Disputed Topics • Samuel Simon Schmucker
... June, rebuking backsliders, and denouncing the Queen's rumoured marriage with any infidel, "and all Papists are infidels." Papists and Protestants were both offended. There was a scene with Mary, in which she wept profusely, an infirmity of hers; we constantly hear of her weeping in public. She wished the Lords of the Articles to see whether Knox's "manner of speaking" was not punishable, but nothing could be done. Elizabeth would have found ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... however, in the course of a single campaign. A battle is fought; the vanquished seldom think of rallying again; the whole inhabitants become panic-struck, and the conquerors have only to bind the slaves, and carry off their plunder and their victims. Such of the prisoners as, through age or infirmity, are unable to endure fatigue, or are found unfit for sale, are considered as useless, and I have no doubt are frequently put to death. The same fate commonly awaits a chief, or any other person who has taken a very distinguished part in the war. And here it may be observed, that, notwithstanding ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... spiritual punishment? Could the lust of blood be changed by a document into the love of one's brother? "I gave my youth in that war," he thought, "and I won from it—what? Disillusionment." With the reflection he felt again the exhaustion of the nerves, the infirmity of purpose against which he had struggled ever since his return. "If there were only something worth fighting for, worth believing in! If I could only believe earnestly, ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... regulations; in her view, all were of equal consequence. She took her share of the menial duties, which for the first years weighed heavily on the community in consequence of their having no lay Sisters. No indisposition or infirmity, no pressure of business or excess of fatigue could induce her to deviate in one iota from the practices of common life. Ever active and indefatigable, she might be seen, now teaching and tending her dear Indian children, now directing the building of the ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... Bible—find out and understand all I can; and on the strength of that, swallow the rest in a lump, by simple faith. Think me vain, if you will. Worldly greatness requires so much littleness to grow up in, that an infirmity more or less is not a matter ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... leaving more than one eye visible through its smother of tangled silk. She was very brown then and very bony, and so ridiculously soft of heart that her tenderness was regarded by her schoolmates as an unfortunate infirmity. She was tall still, taller than himself, with large limbs and a sort of manly squareness of the shoulders and erectness of the figure, but neatly gowned, with little feminine touches of flower and ribbon ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... errant mountebank"—though Evelyn sought his society, and was grateful for its stimulus. Lady Fanshawe, who met him at Calais, at the Governor's table, says he "enlarged somewhat more in extraordinary stories than might be averred.... That was his infirmity, though otherwise a person of most excellent parts, and a very fine bred gentleman." "A certain eccentricity and unsteadiness perhaps inseparable from a mind of such vanity," is Lodge's criticism. "The ...
— The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened • Kenelm Digby
... lifted her hand to wipe away a tear, hoping to escape observation the while, but, to her dismay, Harold stood by her side, and his eyes met hers with an expression of pained understanding. Any reference to her infirmity seemed to distress him so acutely that the first instinct was to comfort him instead of herself, and she smiled through her tears, saying in the sweetest tones of her ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... keeping under the majesty of his spirit that might otherwise have grown into a revolting and self-sufficient pride. It is so vain to struggle against these fetters and restraints; God knows what we need, and it may be ever the mightiest souls that are curbed while on earth by some physical infirmity. ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... civilian, and his military title had clung to him through thirty years of practical life. Furthermore, if it must be admitted that he looked somewhat older than his sixty years, that fact was not to be accounted for by any acknowledged infirmity, unless, indeed, the stiff leg he had brought with him from his four years' service ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... heal this infirmity, which is so natural to the best and wisest of men, I have taken a particular pleasure in observing the conduct of the old philosophers, how they bore themselves up against the malice and ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... undertaking, however, Calvin had to encounter no little opposition in the very city of Geneva. It was this, even more than bodily infirmity, that bore severely upon his spirits, and robbed him of the rest demanded alike by his overtaxed body and mind. His advocacy of strenuous discipline procured him relentless enemies among the Genevese of the "Libertine" party. Those were stormy ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... interpreter, is it our duty, and should be the business of our lives, to bring into subjection the rebellious passions, the fainting weaknesses and erring reason. Inspired by this grand truth, behold thousands of devoted men and women, weak with human infirmity, but sustained by courage from on high, renouncing the dulcet, but transitory enjoyments of this life, to encounter, for the salvation of their souls, and of others, privation and sorrow, and painful death. Quoe terra non plena nostri laboris? Yet, ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... resolutions. Examples on this subject might be cited without number; and from proceedings within the United States, as well as from the history of other nations. But a position that will not be contradicted, need not be proved. All that need be remarked is, that a body which is to correct this infirmity ought itself to be free from it, and consequently ought to be less numerous. It ought, moreover, to possess great firmness, and consequently ought to hold its authority by a tenure of considerable duration. Thirdly. Another defect to be supplied ...
— The Federalist Papers
... winced. It was a thrust with a double-edged sword. He was what we now call, an exquisite, in person, and one to whom the idea of chewing tobacco was abhorrent, whilst he was actually and distressingly troubled with the infirmity hinted at. For a moment, the suavity of his manner was destroyed, and he forgot the respect ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... about Antonet, might disoblige him; but having called the maid, conjuring her to tell her whether any thing passed between her and Octavio; she again told her lady the whole truth, in which there could be no discovery of infirmity there; she embraced her, she kissed her bosom, and found her touches soft, her breath and bosom sweet as any thing in nature could be; and now lost almost in a confusion of thought, she could not tell what to imagine; at last she being wholly possessed that all the fault was ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... temperament, had especially one well-marked phobia, the fear of falling downstairs. It had never been absent all his life, and he had grown used to making the descent of the stairs clinging firmly to the stair-rail. Family tradition assigned this infirmity to a fall downstairs in early childhood. But all children fall downstairs and are none the worse. The persistence of the fear was due, I make no doubt, to the attitude of the parents or nurse, who made much of the accident, impressed the occasion strongly on the child's ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... disease. Though it may supervene on blow, injuries, and exposures, it is much more commonly connected with faulty conditions of the system—as indigestion, heart disease, lung or liver disease, imperfect blood formation, or assimilation; in short, it is rather the attendant on a constitutional infirmity than ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... that the chain of argument might be preserved, so far as it goes, uninterrupted, the dialogue is printed entire in the present number, despite its length. Of the writer, but little can be said. He was an artist; but ill health, almost amounting to infirmity—his portion from childhood—rendered him unequal to the bodily labour inseparable from his profession: and in the course of his short life, whose youth was scarcely consummated, he exhibited, from ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... see something of Ireland'; and with this wise resolve they had set out on that half-fishing excursion, which, having taken them over the Westmeath lakes, now was directing them to the Shannon, but with an infirmity of purpose to which lack of sport and disastrous weather were contributing powerfully at the moment we have presented ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... family. It was my first acquaintance with him. His image is before my mind's eye at this moment; slowly approaching me with a lamp in his hand, his hair gray, his face solemn and pale, his tall and portly figure bent with heavier infirmity than befitted his years. His dress, though he had improved in this particular since middle life, was marked by a truly scholastic negligence. He greeted me kindly, and with plain, old-fashioned courtesy; though I fancied that ...
— Biographical Sketches - (From: "Fanshawe and Other Pieces") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... all I ascribe to my own imbecility. No fault in thee Lord but in my infirmity, And want of respect in such gifts ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous
... he testified, he bore his torch. Confined as he was in a mahogany pen, born and brought up in the odor of drugs, and surrounded by every ignominious sign of disease and infirmity, his dream was yet of cleanness, of health, and the splendor of physical perfection. The thing that young Ransome most loathed and abhorred was Flabbiness, next to Flabbiness, Weediness. The years of his adolescence were one long struggle and battle against these two. He had them ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... another expedient, which however does not always prove equally efficacious; that is, to apply red hot iron to the part affected. Indeed, these Arabs are subject to few diseases. I have seen many old people, of both sexes, who were oppressed with no kind of infirmity. Sore eyes, and colics, are the most usual disorders among them. Children, above all, are exposed to these, though in other respects strong and robust. In the morning it is difficult for them to open their eyelids. With regard to the colic, ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... sir—Sir Munko, as you say; a pleasant, good-humoured gentleman as ever—To be spoken with, did you say? O ay, easily to be spoken withal, that is, as easily as his infirmity will permit. He will presently, unless some one hath asked him forth to breakfast, be taking his bone of broiled beef at my neighbour Ned Kilderkin's yonder, removed from over the way. Ned keeps an eating-house, sir, famous for pork-griskins; ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... sobbed Kate. Then, looking up, she said, "I little thought to like you so well. My heart is willing, but my infirmity will not let ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... "Perfection" (bringing unto the end) "was not by the Levitical priesthood." "The law perfected nothing, but it was the additional introduction of a better hope by which we draw near unto God." "The law maketh men high priests which have infirmity, which are not suffered to continue, by reason of death; but the word of the oath after the law maketh the Son perfect for evermore," bringeth him to the end, namely, an everlasting priesthood in the heavens. That Christian ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... murmuring voices of the pines, in the sunset's glory, or the moonlight's mystical radiance,—above all, deeper than all, pervading all, was their joy in each other. Hers was a nature essentially childlike; his very infirmity rendered him in experience less than a child; and so, devoid of worldly wisdom,—like Earth's first pair of lovers, without knowledge of good or evil,—all unconsciously they entered ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... of distrust and indifference, but it was plain that the ambiguous language of the juggler, as usual, had succeeded in awakening interest. With the affectation of a mind secretly conscious of its own infirmity, he pretended to be indifferent to what the other professed a readiness to reveal, while with the rapacity of a grasping spirit he betrayed a ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... helpfulness for me in all the confusion and perplexities into which I fell. This did not last to the end of his life. I was the child of his middle years, and suddenly, in a year or less, the curtains of age and infirmity fell between us. There came an illness, an operation, and he rose from it ailing, suffering, dwarfed and altogether changed. Of all the dark shadows upon life I think that change through illness and organic decay in the thoughts ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... attacks you there, that coward has you at disadvantage. I stood in those hideous shambles of Smithfield: upwards I looked to the clouds, downwards to the earth, for vengeance. I trembled with excessive wrath—such was my infirmity of feeling at that time, and in that condition of health; and had I possessed forty thousand lives, all, and every one individually, I would have sacrificed in vindication of her that was thus cruelly libelled. Shall I give currency to his malice, shall I aid and promote it by repeating it? No. ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... connection with the Presbyterian Church, and, at the call of the most numerous and talented as well as wealthy congregation ever preached to, up to that time, in New Orleans; established himself as an independent, and continued to preach for many years—indeed, until age and infirmity compelled him ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... drunkenness, as that it would enable you to face a degree of cold, or contagion, else menacing to life, a duty would arise, pro hac vice, of getting drunk. We had an amiable friend who suffered under the infirmity of cowardice; an awful coward he was when sober; but, when very drunk, he had courage enough for the Seven Champions of Christendom. Therefore, in an emergency, where he knew himself suddenly loaded with the responsibility of defending a family, we approved highly of his getting ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... entirely brought back later on, for the bad heredity of the increased number of defectives tends to be still further propagated, even though in an attenuated form. As a matter of fact, Tschuriloff found that the proportion of exemptions from the army for infirmity increased enormously from 26 per cent. in 1816-17, to 38 per cent. in 1826-27, declining later to 34 per cent. in 1860-64, though he is careful to point out that this result must not be entirely ascribed to the reversed selection of wars. There could, however, be no doubt ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... surprise, although we never could have had a worse specimen of them than what this excursion presented to us, yet the norman hunter upon which I was mounted, carried me over the deepest ruts, and abrupt hillocks, without showing the least symptom of infirmity which so much prevails amongst his brethren of the Devonshire breed. The norman horses are remarkable for lifting their feet high, and the safety and ease with which they carry their riders. In the morning of the day in which the ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... up, but the magistrate stated that his evidence could not be received, on the ground of his mental deficiency and general infirmity. ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... one instance, I have had to regret, and censure the appearance of that perversity which made an important part of his character. But happily this fit of turbulence was of short duration; and some months have passed since, without witnessing a repetition of the infirmity. Were I this evening asked to name a man in the Colony, who would most carefully guard against offending, or causing even a momentary pain to any of his fellow-men, I should not hesitate to say that in my judgment, the man is L. C. On this point I insist, because it was precisely ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... common idea was, they were of Jewish descent. Their unpleasant smell was again pressed into service. The Jews, it was well known, had this physical infirmity, which might be cured either by bathing in a certain fountain in Egypt—which was a long way from Brittany—or by anointing themselves with the blood of a Christian child. Blood gushed out of the body of every Cagot on Good Friday. No ...
— An Accursed Race • Elizabeth Gaskell
... had not noticed this the first few days of our residence here, and could only account for it by our being so much taken up with the more obvious wonders of our novel situation. I have since learned, however, that this want of observation is a sad and very common infirmity of human nature, there being hundreds of persons before whose eyes the most wonderful things are passing every day who nevertheless, are totally ignorant of them. I therefore have to record my sympathy ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... produced effects so decisive as would result from a similar disorganization in Broadway or Washington Street; for the charioteers still "drave them heavily." Hence we may infer that the wheels were of rude workmanship, making the chariots little less liable to the infirmity of friction than those Western vehicles called mud-boats, used to navigate semi-fluid regions which pass on the map ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... very pale nails are subject to much infirmity of the flesh and persecution by neighbors ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... remedy. Asaph began to cure himself when, instead of saying, "All things are against me," he said, "This is my infirmity," my fault; I am enough to turn a beehive sour. His cure was almost perfect when he said, "I will remember the years of the right hand of the Most High." The cure for the blues is simple, then. First, own up to it that the largest part of your miseries ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... perhaps have been more dignified; to speak at all was an indication of infirmity. As soon as the reading was finished, the archbishop was formally arrayed in his robes, and when the decoration was completed, Bonner called out ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... continue to be easier for a time to strike the colored man than to strike off his shackles. There is a mean and low side of humanity, a sort of defiled infirmity, that runs into a disposition to strike the helpless. This is the bravery of ruffianism. There is apt to be a shrinking away from duty, when the contest involves a conflict with arrogant power. This is the cowardice ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... is the spur, that the clear spirit doth raise, (That last infirmity of noble mind) To scorn delights, and live laborious days; But the fair guerdon, when we hops to find, And think to burst out into sudden blaze, Comes the blind fury with th' abhorred shears, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... first breaking out of the parliament's separation from the royal party, when the public mind, full of consternation in that new anarchy, shook with the infirmity of childish terrors, the most extravagant reports were as eagerly caught up as the most probable, and served much better the purposes of their inventors. They had daily discoveries of new conspiracies, which appeared in a pretended correspondence ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... Neither in the Laws, when the daylight of common sense breaks in upon him, does he retract his error. In the state of which he would be the founder, there is no marrying or giving in marriage: but because of the infirmity of mankind, he condescends to allow the ...
— The Republic • Plato
... anything irritate him, he perhaps would fly into a rage beyond all self-control, in which, if he could, he would kill a man as quickly as he would a fly. Still, an officer of the needed prudence and skill, by studying his infirmity and managing with due discretion, would have but little trouble with him, and he would readily earn his living. He would be an unsafe man to go at large, as dangerous, if fired with anger, as any raving maniac. He should ever be under firm control somewhere, ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... might barely permit himself to breathe its fragrance! His mother had been a strong and prosperous woman; there was little he could ever do for her. It was well for him to feel the weight of helpless infirmity in his arms, as he lifted Dorothy's mother from side to side of her bed, while Dorothy's hands smoothed the coverings. It was well for him to see the patient endurance of suffering, such as his youth and strength defied. It was bliss to wait on Dorothy, ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... the latter evidently alive with vermin. The woman, on my wife's refusing to give her anything, deliberately told her poor neglected child to rub up against her—in order, no doubt, to communicate some of her infirmity. To relieve only a portion of the beggars of all kinds who pursue you wherever you go in Italy, although this pest has been greatly reduced of late years, would leave you with very ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... a good deal at his "luck," and was heartily seconded by Buckley. In addition to this, Jack's spirit was much troubled by his promise to Daniel Buckley on his deathbed. He shrank, with a strength of feeling that surprised himself, from speaking to Jacob about his infirmity, yet he felt the duty lying strong upon him, for he knew well that, if nothing was said, the man would certainly go back to his old habits on returning to the neighbourhood of the store where drink ...
— Philosopher Jack • R.M. Ballantyne
... risque of his life, suit his cloaths to the mode of the season. For example, though the weather should be never so cold, he must wear his habit d'ete, or demi-saison. Without presuming to put on a warm dress before the day which fashion has fixed for that purpose; and neither old age nor infirmity will excuse a man for wearing his hat upon his head, either at home or abroad. Females are (if possible) still more subject to the caprices of fashion; and as the articles of their dress are more manifold, it is enough to make a man's heart ake to see his wife surrounded by a multitude ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... re-asserted herself, and I thought my last hour was come. The haemorrhoidal veins were swollen to such an extent that the pressure on them gave me almost unbearable agony. To this fatal time I owe the inception of that sad infirmity of which I have never been able to completely cure myself. The recurrence of the same pains, though not so acute, remind me of the cause, and do not make my remembrance of it any the more agreeable. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... healed those who were maimed from their birth ([Greek: tous ek genetaes paerous] [Endnote 280:2]). The word [Greek: paeros] is used specially for the blind, and the fourth Evangelist is the only one who mentions the healing of congenital infirmity, which he does under this same phrase [Greek: ek genetaes], and that of a case of blindness (John ix. 1). The possibility urged in 'Supernatural Religion,' that Justin may be merely drawing from tradition, may detract from the force of this but cannot altogether remove it, especially ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... right glad to hear that you are with child, although your infirmity is very grievous unto me. Consider and tell me those things that you deem will be to your healing, and I will seek and ...
— French Mediaeval Romances from the Lays of Marie de France • Marie de France
... the penalties prescribed by law. These proclamations, however, had little effect. The second day was attended with still further atrocities upon negroes. The mob in its brutality regarded neither age, infirmity, nor sex. Whenever and wherever a colored population was found, death was their inexorable fate. Whole neighborhoods inhabited by them were ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... here, Sammy,' replied the old gentleman, 'that wot they drink, don't seem no nourishment to 'em; it all turns to warm water, and comes a-pourin' out o' their eyes. 'Pend upon it, Sammy, it's a constitootional infirmity.' ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... periodically to majorities, as the wisest and most natural, as well as the most just mode of disposing of them. Such a government, well administered, and with an accurate observance of its governing principles, would probably be the best that human infirmity will allow men to administer; but when the capital mistake is made of supposing that mere numbers are to control all things, regardless of those great fundamental laws that the state has adopted for its own restraint, it may be questioned if so loose, and capricious, and ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... he marked the paternal pride and content that had made unwontedly placid the brow of the irate miller while the ovation was in progress. Nehemiah greatly preferred the adult specimen of the race, and looked upon youth as an infirmity which would mend only with time. He was easily confused by a stir; the gurglings, the ticklings, the loud laughter both in the deep bass of the hosts and the keen treble of the guest had a befuddling effect upon him; his powers of ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... affects us like a sudden puff of icy-cold air—the revelation of a singular and powerful personality. Yet she was only a poor old broken-down woman in a Wiltshire village, held fast in her chair by a hopeless infirmity. With her legs paralysed she was like that prince in the Eastern tale on whom an evil spell had been cast, turning the lower half of his body into marble. But she did not, like the prince, shed incessant tears and lament her miserable destiny with ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... understand when you talk of men different to him in form or robustness. If however, the Evil Spirit makes one of our children be born deformed, or with a defect, he is treated with the care necessary to his state but he cannot transmit his infirmity to others because, first of all our customs compel him to lead a life of chastity, and secondly, no woman of our tribe would consent to a union ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... covert sigh, half-pain, half-pleasure, resumed the old oversight of larder and dairy. Such care was then the delight of many an unsophisticated laird's helpmate; and, to the contented Lady of Staneholme, it had quite made up for the partial deprivation of social intercourse to which her infirmity had subjected her. Joan, Madge, and Mysie, wearied of haughty Nelly after they had grown accustomed to the grand attire she wore, denied that they had ever been dazzled with it, and ceased to believe that she had danced minuets in the Assembly Rooms before ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... occupation they no longer talked together, but followed each other with the blind instinct of animals—yet always unerringly, as if conscious of each other's plans. Strangely enough, it was the REAL animal alone—their nameless dog—who now betrayed impatience and a certain human infirmity of temper. The concealment they were resigned to, the sufferings they mutely accepted, he alone resented! When certain scents or sounds, imperceptible to their senses, were blown across their path, he would, with bristling back, snarl ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... Unthriftyhead, Lewd Losse of Time, and Sorrow seeming dead, Inconstant Chaunge, and false Disloyalty, Consuming Riotise, and guilty Dread Of heavenly vengeaunce; faint Infirmity, Vile Poverty, and lastly ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... you," says I, "if you've got the Mary-Jane infirmity at your age. I thought it wasn't going to take on you. And patent leather shoes! All this ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... sinew of the city,—these are not in favor of change either in religion, laws, manners, or customs. But Khosrul is old,—and that the King humors his vagaries is simply out of pity for his age and infirmity, Niphrata,—not because of fear! Our Monarch knows ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... uses to no one else; she says, and in this sentence she gives the secret of much which has appeared inexplicable to the world: "One thing more in regard to myself. The absence and wandering of mind and forgetfulness that so often vexes you is a physical infirmity with me. It is the failing of a mind not calculated to endure a great pressure of care, and so much do I feel the pressure I am under, so much is my mind darkened and troubled by care that life seriously holds out few allurements,—only my children." She used to say laughingly sometimes in later ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... remarked it as one of the austere Roman features in the mind of Wordsworth, that of all poets he has the least sympathy, effeminate or not effeminate, with romantic disinterestedness. He cannot bear to hear of a man working by choice for nothing, which certainly is an infirmity, where at all it arises from want of energy or of just self-appreciation, but still an amiable one, and in certain directions a sublime one. Walker had no such infirmity. He laboured in those fields which ensure instant payment. Verily he had his reward: ten per cent., at least, beyond ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... for myself. And now let me, as I go, say a parting word to him with whom in politics I have been for many years more in accord than with any other leading man. As nothing but age or infirmity would to my own mind have justified me in retiring, so do I think that you, who can plead neither age nor infirmity, will find yourself at last to want self-justification, if you permit yourself to be driven from the task either by pride ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... favour of drunkenness, as that it would enable you to face a degree of cold, or contagion, else menacing to life, a duty would arise, pro hac vice, of getting drunk. We had an amiable friend who suffered under the infirmity of cowardice; an awful coward he was when sober; but, when very drunk, he had courage enough for the Seven Champions of Christendom. Therefore, in an emergency, where he knew himself suddenly loaded with the responsibility of defending a family, we approved highly of his getting drunk. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... when they could not resist, or did not wish to resist, their impregnation by newer and better doctrine? This interest was not deliberately sinister or malignant. It may be more correctly as well as more charitably explained by that infirmity of human nature, which makes us very ready to believe what it is on other grounds convenient to us to believe. Nobody attributes to pure malevolence the heartiness with which the great corporation ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... France are very bad; but, to my surprise, although we never could have had a worse specimen of them than what this excursion presented to us, yet the norman hunter upon which I was mounted, carried me over the deepest ruts, and abrupt hillocks, without showing the least symptom of infirmity which so much prevails amongst his brethren of the Devonshire breed. The norman horses are remarkable for lifting their feet high, and the safety and ease with which they carry their riders. In the morning ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... the greatest pleasures upon reaching home was to find that his mother showed less marks of increasing infirmity than he had expected from the accounts in letters. She was still in full possession of her intellectual powers, and though less able than of old to move about, was fully capable of appreciating the delight of welcoming back the son who had filled so much of her thoughts. I may here note ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... be with us now in the evening, and enjoys society as much as ever. But please take no notice of his infirmity, and make no inquiries beyond the usual 'How do you do.' He is sensitive, and hates to be considered an invalid ...
— The Abbot's Ghost, Or Maurice Treherne's Temptation • A. M. Barnard
... of frailty, may be readily inferred the dissoluteness of those females, who had neither rank nor marriage to render chastity a virtue. But, alas! one need not visit the South Seas, to become acquainted with the possible extent of human infirmity. A cynic might, without such travel, be tempted to parody the words of Sir Robert Walpole, and say, that every woman had her price. The proposition is a harsh one, and the more so as obviously irrefutable. It does, however, read this most important lesson, that there is much greater ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... affectation only, the misfortunes and calamities of life, or the imperfections of nature, may become the objects of ridicule. Surely he hath a very ill-framed mind, who can look on ugliness, infirmity, or poverty, as ridiculous in themselves: nor do I believe any man living who meets a dirty fellow riding through the streets in a cart, is struck with an idea of the Ridiculous from it; but if he should see the same figure descend from his coach and six, or bolt from his chair ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... send us an army for defence'? Was that a 'petty affair' which drove families from their homes,—which assembled women and children in crowds, without shelter, at places of common refuge, in every condition of weakness and infirmity, under every suffering which want and terror could inflict, yet willing to endure all, willing to meet death from famine, death from climate, death from hardships, preferring any thing rather than the horrors of meeting it from a domestic assassin? Was that ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... out an electioneering letter recommending Philip Schuyler for governor and George Clinton for lieutenant-governor. This was sufficient to secure for these candidates the conservative vote. It showed, too, Jay's unconcern for high place. He was modest even to diffidence, an infirmity that seems to have depressed him at times as much as it did Nathaniel ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... Feuillide—his senior by some ten years. Intended originally for the Church, Henry Austen had abandoned the idea of taking Orders, and had joined the Oxford Militia as lieutenant, in 1793, becoming adjutant and captain four years later. Though he was endowed with many attractive gifts there was a certain infirmity of purpose in his character that was hardly likely to be remedied by a marriage ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... this infirmity, which is so natural to the best and wisest of men, I have taken a particular pleasure in observing the conduct of the old philosophers, how they bore themselves up against the malice and detraction ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... else. This old man is frequently the great-grandfather, or the great-great-grand-father of the family, for those natives live to a very great age. I have seen some of them not able to walk, without having any other distemper or infirmity than old age, so that when the necessities of nature required it, or they wanted to take the air, they were obliged to be carried out of their hut, an assistance which is always readily offered to the old men. The respect paid to them by their family is so great, that they are looked ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... to these objections, and at the same time renders it so difficult to give a satisfactory answer to them, is the natural infirmity and unsteadiness both of our imagination and senses, when employed on such minute objects. Put a spot of ink upon paper, and retire to such a distance, that the spot becomes altogether invisible; you will find, that upon your return and nearer approach ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... danger; and there were Lancastrian exiles who might take up the report. Her only safety was in being known, to the few who did meet her, as the convent-bred maiden whose home had been destroyed, and who was content to gain a livelihood as the assistant whom his wife's infirmity made needful. As to Sir Leonard, the knight's own grace and gratitude had endeared him, as well as the professional pleasure of curing him, and for the lady's sake he should still be ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... ridiculous theory about the degrading effects of civilization, and wanted to go back to a state of barbarism. He said the wilderness was the only true home of man. My father, instead of bearing with what I believe was his infirmity, dryly offered him the means to try his experiment. He started for some place in Texas, saying we would never hear from him again. A month after he wrote for more money. My father replied rather impatiently, ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... not readily brook opposition, especially when that seemed to him to be the result of stupidity or of prejudice rather than of reason, and his own reason was of a very clear, decided, and exact order. He had little sympathy with vacillation of any kind, whether it arose from mere infirmity of purpose or from the temperament which delights in balancing opposing considerations. He said on ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... sold his birthright for a mess of pottage, Gen. xxv. 29. When we yield to these propensities of the flesh, we lay a snare for our own souls, and expose our weakness to an adversary, ever ready to take advantage of our infirmity. It is a common fault in children to desire with greedy appetite such food as is pernicious, and to wish for more than even a mouth opened wide requires—till at length they learn to lust after forbidden things. And what does it lead to? Frances, you began to pick and steal, and your own iniquity ...
— Fanny, the Flower-Girl • Selina Bunbury
... it with that detested word; the State document which accompanied Governor Altgeld's pardon gave these ungenerous critics a further opportunity, because a magnanimous action was marred by personal rancor, betraying for the moment the infirmity of a noble mind. For all of these reasons this first modification of the undisturbed control of the aggressive captains of industry could not be enforced without resistance marked by dramatic episodes and revolts. The inception of the ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... feel how great is the infirmity of our flesh which lusts after these present things with eager desire but fails to rejoice in the certainties of the life to come. How is it possible that a fact should not be most certain which has for witnesses not only Abel and Enoch and Elijah, but also Christ himself, the head and the ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... which many parents have with undutiful children who are favor'd with health, especially their sons, I could perceive very few whose troubles and exercises, on that account, did not far exceed ours. The weakness and bodily infirmity of our sons tended to keep them much out of the way of the troubles and temptations the world; and we believ'd that in their death they were happy, and admitted into the realms of peace and joy: a reflection, the ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... are charming, and your face would make a beautiful picture. Turn round a little, if you please. You could not find anything better anywhere. Let me see you walk. You have a well-shaped body, free and easy, as it should be, and one which gives no sign of infirmity. ...
— The Miser (L'Avare) • Moliere
... event of good behaviour, of obtaining liberty from his master. In other respects all formed a common household. The slaves were, like the larger cattle, not bred on the estate, but purchased at an age capable of labour in the slave-market; and, when through age or infirmity they had become incapable of working, they were again sent with other refuse to the market.(6) The farm- buildings (-villa rustica-) supplied at once stabling for the cattle, storehouses for the produce, and a dwelling for the steward and ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... so much as the contrary good of virtue is more akin to charity than the good of the body or of external things. Therefore fraternal correction is an act of charity rather than the healing of a bodily infirmity, or the relieving of an external bodily need. There is another correction which applies a remedy to the sin of the wrongdoer, considered as hurtful to others, and especially to the common good. This correction is an act of justice, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... tone of his tales grew out of the calculations of self-culture. It was the infirmity of an admirable scholar, who loved the world out of gratitude; who knew where libraries, galleries, architecture, laboratories, savants, and leisure, were to be had, and who did not quite trust the compensations of poverty and nakedness. Socrates loved Athens; Montaigne, Paris; and Madame ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... to excite your disdain than your love. Yet you do love me; I feel and know that you do, and thence I draw my most cherished hopes. If pride guided you, or even reason, you might well reject me. Do so; if your high heart, incapable of my infirmity of purpose, refuses to bend to the lowness of mine. Turn from me, if you will,—if you can. If your whole soul does not urge you to forgive me—if your entire heart does not open wide its door to admit me to its very centre, forsake me, never speak to me again. I, though sinning ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... the case of a man who is thrown out of correspondence with a part of his environment by some physical infirmity. Let it be that by disease or accident he has been deprived of the use of his ears. The deaf man, in virtue of this imperfection, is thrown out of rapport with a large and well-defined part of the environment, namely, its sounds. With regard to that ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... trade, And strictly meditate the thankles Muse, Were it not better don as others use, To sport with Amaryllis in the shade, Or with the tangles of Neaera's hair? Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise (That last infirmity of Noble mind) To scorn delights, and live laborious dayes; But the fair Guerdon when we hope to find, And think to burst out into sudden blaze, Comes the blind Fury with th'abhorred shears, And slits the thin spun life. But not the praise, Phoebus repli'd, and touch'd ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... Mortimer had begun to show a degree of infirmity which sometimes made his son uncomfortable that he should have to live alone. To bring those joyous urchins and little, laughing, dancing, playful girls into his house was not to be thought of. What was wanted was some young relative to live ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... gave to Kidderminster, and to Bedford, and to Down and Connor, and to Sodor and Man, and to Anwoth, and to Ettrick, and to New England, and to St. Andrews, and places too many to mention. With all its infirmity and all its inefficiency, what a truly heavenly power the pulpit is when it is filled by a man of God who gives his whole mind and heart, his whole time and thought to it, and to the pastorate that lies around it. His mind ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... man, who had never taken any share in the agitation against the excise. Brigadier-General White appears to have been chiefly responsible for the brutal treatment of the captives. When one of them, a veteran of the Revolution, lagged behind, owing to physical infirmity, White ordered him fastened to a horse's tail, and dragged along. The cruel command was not obeyed. On the following day, of about three hundred prisoners, all but ten were discharged, there being no evidence against ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... change, Macquarie established the rule that no convict should be returnable, except for infirmity, sickness, or crime; but when the supply exceeded the demand, this condition was evaded, and the result—an accumulation in the hands of the government. A large proportion were from the manufacturing districts of Great Britain: they were utterly ignorant ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... contrive to effect a discrimination between those who are paupers by vice, unthrift, and idleness, and those whom God has striken for no fault that humanity is entitled to pass judgment upon; between the fitting inmates of the workhouse, and those—helpless from age, infirmity, accident, and disease—to whom the associations of the workhouse are humiliating, painful and demoralizing. Nothing is more essential, under democratic rule, than the maintenance of due severity towards those who will not work; nothing more likely to relax that needful ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... his lot, and a desire to justify the kindness and expectations of his patrons. Still, Kirke White was unhappy; and, since no other cause then existed for his mental wretchedness, it must be ascribed to a morbid temperament, induced partly by ill health, and partly by constitutional infirmity. The uncertainty of his early prospects, and the fear of ridicule if he expressed his feelings, rendered him reserved, and made him confine his thoughts to his own bosom, for ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... that this would occasion. So he determined to shadow her and ascertaining her residence, find some means of restoring the ring without the knowledge of her friends, as he had no desire to do anything which might cause them to learn of her unfortunate infirmity, especially, as this last experience might have worked a cure. She did indeed enter a stately mansion of the Lake Shore Drive—but by ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... my life. Even now, when sixty or seventy years have passed over my head since my boyhood received the impression which my grandmother gave it, though my judgment is wholly free, my imagination is not wholly so. My infirmity was not unknown to the servants. It was a permanent source of amusement to ply me with horrible phantoms in all imaginable shapes. Under the pagan dispensation, every object a man could set his eyes on had ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... feel themselves ready for the leap they slip, go whirling and drowning downstream past the stepping-stones that are called Infirmity of Purpose. Or they may creep close enough the rock, only to find they have delayed over their hobbling progression until the rock is already so crowded by others who have been bolder over the stones as to show no foothold remaining. ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... inconceivably small; poor Tari's wages, which were thus economised, would scarce have shook the credit of the New Bedford owners. And the act itself was simply murder. Tari's life must have hung in the beginning by a hair. In the grief and terror of that time, it is not unlikely he went mad, an infirmity to which he was still liable; or perhaps a child may have taken a fancy to him and ordained him to be spared. He escaped at least alive, married in the island, and when I knew him was a widower with a married son and a granddaughter. But the thought of Oahu haunted him; its praise ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was elderly, yet seemed bent more by sorrow and infirmity than by the weight of years. He wore a mourning cloak, over a dress of the same melancholy colour, cut in that picturesque form which Vandyck has rendered immortal. But although the dress was handsome, it was put on with a carelessness which showed ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... care of them; for, in the first place, as for those who were able to provide their own food, he distributed to them their proportion of corn in the exactest manner; but for those many that were not able, either by reason of their old age, or any other infirmity, to provide food for themselves, he made this provision for them, the bakers should make their bread ready for them. He also took care that they might not be hurt by the dangers of winter, since they were in great want of clothing also, by reason of the utter destruction and consumption ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... him that hath not shall be taken even that which he hath.' How cruel and yet how wise, how terribly striking and true! A healthy man! What more can he want, and what abundant gifts that best of all gifts will gain for him! If he is visited by infirmity—only look at me!—how much misery I have suffered from this curse, terrible enough in itself, and tainting everything with ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... where all words are vain. Ten days ago a great artist, in the noon of life, and with his glorious mental faculties in full power, but with the shade of physical infirmity darkening upon him, took his accustomed place among friends who have this day held his pall. Some of them had been fellow-workers with him for a quarter of a century, others for fewer years; but to know him well was ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... ground all day and yet preserve a properly pedagogical demeanor was the first question to be settled. That there was nothing even remotely resembling a chair in camp she felt reasonably assured, as "paw" was sitting on an inverted soap-box under a pine-tree, and "paw," by reason of age and infirmity, appropriated all luxuries. Mrs. Yellett, with her usual acumen, ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... front, which contained a live rooster. It was a pity that so sturdy a representative of the agricultural classes should have worn spectacles, and blue ones at that, and he had a troubled, peering, blind look that caused Grace a momentary pang. But he seemed a jolly, hearty fellow in spite of his infirmity, and coming up to her he gave her a ...
— The Motormaniacs • Lloyd Osbourne
... Infirmity itself seemed conquered in the rejoicing thankfulness with which Henriquez regarded this fulfilment of his wishes. He appeared actually to regain strength and energy; his alarming fainting fits had not recurred since his nephew's visit, and Marie hoped he would be spared her longer than ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... ago you may remember that I came forward in the character of a dilettante in murder. Perhaps dilettante may be too strong a word. Connoisseur is better suited to the scruples and infirmity of public taste. I suppose there is no harm in that at least. A man is not bound to put his eyes, ears, and understanding into his breeches pocket when he meets with a murder. If he is not in a downright comatose state, I suppose he must see ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... rebuking backsliders, and denouncing the Queen's rumoured marriage with any infidel, "and all Papists are infidels." Papists and Protestants were both offended. There was a scene with Mary, in which she wept profusely, an infirmity of hers; we constantly hear of her weeping in public. She wished the Lords of the Articles to see whether Knox's "manner of speaking" was not punishable, but nothing could be done. Elizabeth would have found ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... my own and being ignorant (in the darkness) that it bore the first gentleman's name. It was a mischance, sir, but so far as I can see one that might have happened to anybody. You say that even after apologising—for on reflection I am always willing to apologise for any conduct into which my infirmity of temper may have betrayed me—it is impossible for me to continue here as your assistant. I am glad, then, that prudence counselled me to provide two strings to my bow, and engage myself to Dr. Mathers of Bath, on the chance that you proved unsatisfactory; and I thank you for the month's salary, ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... think of the thing. For time is here deprived of efficacy, and if it does nothing, it is nothing. Radical mechanism implies a metaphysic in which the totality of the real is postulated complete in eternity, and in which the apparent duration of things expresses merely the infirmity of a mind that cannot know everything at once. But duration is something very different from this for our consciousness, that is to say, for that which is most indisputable in our experience. We perceive duration as a stream against which we cannot go. ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... prudently in comparison to him; for they enjoy some pleasure, or acquire some gain here, in lieu of their salvation hereafter, but this fondling offendeth Heaven, and abandoneth happiness, he knoweth not why or for what. He hath not so much as the common plea of human infirmity to excuse him; he can hardly say that he was tempted thereto ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... neighbours; and, if he be a man of strong parts, he often does so with great effect. He pleads as if he were pleading for his life, with tears, and pathetic gestures, and burning words; and he soon finds with delight, not perhaps wholly unmixed with the alloy of human infirmity, that his rude eloquence rouses and melts hearers who sleep very composedly while the rector preaches on the apostolical succession. Zeal for God, love for his fellow-creatures, pleasure in the exercise ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... ascribe to my own imbecility. No fault in thee Lord but in my infirmity, And want of respect in such gifts as ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous
... — N. disease; illness, sickness &c. adj.; ailing &c. "all the ills that flesh is heir to" [Hamlet]; morbidity, morbosity|; infirmity, ailment, indisposition; complaint, disorder, malady; distemper, distemperature[obs3]. visitation, attack, seizure, stroke, fit. delicacy, loss of health, invalidation, cachexy[obs3]; cachexia[Med], atrophy, marasmus[obs3]; indigestion, dyspepsia; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... that it were now unjust, when they had become old and worn out, and were encumbered with wives and families, to deprive them of their substance, when they looked to enjoy repose after all their fatigues and dangers; being unable from age and infirmity to go in search of new countries and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... before their own flight, had the mortification to see all the lands assigned to charitable and to religious uses, the humane and pious foundations of themselves and their ancestors, made to support infirmity and decrepitude, to give feet to the lame and eyes to the blind, and to effect which they had deprived themselves of many of the enjoyments of life, cruelly sequestered and sold at the same market of violence and fraud where their demesne ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the King calleth him!" exclaimed Sir Thomas. "A man I have ever thought wore the motley rather from excess, than infirmity, of wit." ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... shown in the Second Part (II-II, Q. 24, A. 10). And therefore it belongs to this sacrament to forgive venial sins. Hence Ambrose says (De Sacram. v) that this daily bread is taken "as a remedy against daily infirmity." ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... should they have wondered at God's faithfulness in keeping his promise, as though he could ever have forgotten it or failed to bring it to pass? Why should we ever wonder at the faithfulness of God? Doubtless in some degree because of our human infirmity. Our sense of unity with God and trust in him have been weakened by sin until we are ready to doubt him as though he were one of ourselves. His promises also are so far-reaching and great, splendid and blessed, they so far surpass our thoughts of wisdom and mercy, that, even though they ...
— A Wonderful Night; An Interpretation Of Christmas • James H. Snowden
... some one, father," said the latter, looking wistfully, but distrustfully at her parent, as if wondering at his yielding to his infirmity so early in the day; "can I be ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the groom to know how to give a leg up in the Persian fashion, (7) so that in case of illness or infirmity of age the master himself may have a man to help him on to horseback without trouble, or, if he so wish, be able to oblige a friend with a man to mount ...
— On Horsemanship • Xenophon
... Montgomery is unfortunate. He stutters. You should apologize. To jeer at the infirmity of others is the depth of ill-breeding," interposed Miss Maitland, hastily crossing the room and laying a reproving hand upon the girl's shoulder. Then she continued, smiling affectionately upon the lad: "But we who all know and love Montgomery ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... carried into effect the spontaneous bounty of the crown. Both descriptions have acted as became them. When I could no longer serve them, the ministers have considered my situation. When I could no longer hurt them, the revolutionists have trampled on my infirmity. My gratitude, I trust, is equal to the manner in which the benefit was conferred. It came to me, indeed, at a time of life, and in a state of mind and body, in which no circumstance of fortune could afford me any real pleasure. But this was no fault in the royal donor, or ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... committed, have mercy upon them,—the misdeeds I have committed, scatter them to the winds—and my numerous faults, tear them to pieces like a garment." Sin in the eyes of the Chaldaean was not, as with us, an infirmity of the soul; it assaulted the body like an actual virus, and the fear of physical suffering or death engendered by it, inspired these complaints with a note of ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... the house she felt the infirmity of her knees; but in other respects, though she had been out only once before since her illness, she was conscious of a sufficient strength. A disinclination for any enterprise had prevented her from taking the air as she ought to have done, ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... What thinke you of this foole Maluolio, doth he not mend? Mal. Yes, and shall do, till the pangs of death shake him: Infirmity that decaies the wise, doth euer ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... told that Dr. Spencer's recent visit to London had been to consult Sir Matthew Fleet. The foundations of mortal disease had been laid in India, and though it might long remain in abeyance, there were from time to time symptoms of activity; and tedious lingering infirmity was likely to ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the hollow bird; such an accident happend in this entertainment you know—Proprio laus sordet in ore; be a mans breath never so sweet, yet it makes ones prayses stink, if he makes his owne mouth the conduit pipe of it; But for my part I am content to dispense with this Roman infirmity of B. now that time hath snowed upon his pericranium. You know Ovid, and (your) Horace were subject to this humour, ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... fain have last forever. She was not thin, he thought; she was slender; in love with love, and loverless; and delicate in spite of her strength. Her foibles, exaggerated by her manner, took his fancy; for youth sets out with a love of hyperbole, that infirmity of noble souls. He did not so much as see that her cheeks were faded, that the patches of color on the cheek-bone were faded and hardened to a brick-red by listless days and a certain amount of ailing health. His imagination fastened at once ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... Mr Sudberry's character, he was afflicted with a chronic tendency to dab his pen into the ink-bottle and split it to the feather, or double up its point so as to render it unserviceable. This infirmity, coupled with an uncommon capacity for upsetting ink-bottles, had induced him to hire a small clerk, whose principal duties were to mend pens, wipe up ink, and, generally, to attend to the removal ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... any agreement of witnesses. If some, gifted with acute spiritual insight, really perceived that dreadful warping of a diseased will, and clothed it with a material image for their own grosser senses; or if Barney, through dwelling upon his own real but hidden infirmity, had actually come unconsciously to give it a physical expression, and walked at times through the village with his back bent like his spirit, although not diseased, Thomas Payne could only speculate. He finally began to adopt the latter belief, as he himself, sometimes on meeting ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... enemies; and, above all other considerations, for making sure of a burial, and possibly of burial rites; to want which, in the judgment of the ancients, was the last consummation of misery. Thus occupied, and thus distracted—sternly attracted to the grave by his creed, hideously repelled by infirmity of nature—he was suddenly interrupted by a courier with letters for the master of the house; letters, and from Rome! What was their import? That was soon told—briefly that Nero was adjudged to be a public enemy by the senate, and that official orders ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... least five hundred years before Columbus. They recount wonderful voyages out into the Atlantic and the discovery of new land. But all these tales are mixed up with obvious fable, with accounts of places where there was never any illness or infirmity, and people lived for ever, and drank delicious wine and laughed all day, and we cannot certify to an atom of ...
— The Dawn of Canadian History: A Chronicle of Aboriginal Canada • Stephen Leacock
... only wagged his head, and moved his jaws; but this pantomime stood for volumes with those who knew his infirmity. ...
— The Airplane Boys among the Clouds - or, Young Aviators in a Wreck • John Luther Langworthy
... resignation and endurance that had so long upheld her, was unable to contend against bodily weakness and infirmity. She fell sick. She dragged her tottering limbs from the bed to visit her son once more, but her strength failed her, and she sank powerless on ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... to hear rather of frailty and infirmity, of petty transgressions, of occasional failings, of sudden surprisals, and of such other qualifying terms as may serve to keep out of view the true source of the evil, and without shocking the understanding, may administer consolation ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... effect on the digestive functions; it is also believed that these months have an enervating effect on the system generally. In so far as the heat of summer produces disease, it at the same time tends to produce crime. Persons suffering from any kind of ailment or infirmity are far more liable to become criminals than are healthy members of the community. The intimate connection between disease and crime is a matter which must never be forgotten. In the present instance, however, the closeness of this connection is not sufficient to account for the growth ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... Reason are the guide of Faith, and by night the ear of Faith is the guide of Reason. As is wont with those who labour under these privations respectively Reason is apt to be eager, impetuous, impatient of that instruction which his infirmity will not permit him readily to apprehend; while Faith, gentle and docile, is ever willing to listen to the voice by which alone truth and wisdom can effectually ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... Josh as ever having been young. His hair, his complexion, his eyes, and even his coat, all seemed nearly of a color—a kind of snuff-colored red. He had a limping, rolling gait, affected by some infirmity of lameness which had, perhaps, prevented him from engaging in farming or fishing, which employed most men of the village; so he went ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various
... was a well-founded one. Before the case was tried, Mr. Clifford was generally regarded, among those who knew him intimately, as little better than an imbecile; and so rapid was the progress of his infirmity, that when the judgment was given, as it was, against him, he was wholly unable to understand or fear its import. His own sense of guilt had anticipated its effects, and his intense vanity was saved from public shame only by the substitution of public pity. The decree ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... one Johnson who put in for a Publick-school in Shropshire, but was disappointed. He has an infirmity of the convulsive kind, that attacks him sometimes, so as to make him a sad Spectacle. Mr. P. from the Merit of this Work which was all the knowledge he had of him endeavour'd to serve him without his own application; & wrote to my Ld gore, but he did not succeed. Mr. Johnson published ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... life of a single man. And your speech I must not accept as a grace, for it wrongs both my King and his Council. These charges ye have made, but ye have not proved them. Armed men are not proofs; and granting that hot blood and mortal infirmity of judgment have caused Tostig to err against you and the right, think still of his qualities to reign over men whose lands, and whose rivers, lie ever exposed to the dread Northern sea-kings. Where will ye find a chief with arm as strong, and heart as dauntless? By his mother's side he is allied ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... moving of the water. For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in, was made whole of whatsoever disease he had. And a certain man was there, who had an infirmity thirty and eight years. When Jesus saw him lie, and knew that he had been now a long time in that case, he saith unto him, Wilt thou be made whole? The impotent man answered him, Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool; but while I am coming, ...
— Medica Sacra - or a Commentary on on the Most Remarkable Diseases Mentioned - in the Holy Scriptures • Richard Mead
... Ticonderoga. The French knew they were beaten, and therefore, instead of fighting, abandoned the famous stronghold and Crown Point, and retreated down to Isle aux Nois, whither Amherst should have followed them. Instead of doing so, he took to building and repairing fortifications—the last infirmity of military minds of a certain order —and finally went into winter quarters with nothing further done. Amherst, at the end of the war, received the routine rewards of a well-meaning and not defeated commander-in-chief; but it ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... thoughtfully, "that holy Church lays much stress on images. I should think, if ye prefer to pray without them, she would allow you to do so. I cannot understand how ye can pray without them; for what is there to pray to? It is your infirmity, I suppose." ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... said to the Englishman, Lady Merton's friend and travelling companion. A father overborne by misfortunes and poverty, disowned by a prosperous and Pharisaical son—admitting a few peccadilloes, such as most men forgive, in order to weigh them against virtues, such as all men hate. Old age and infirmity on the one hand; mean hardness and cruelty on the other. Was Elizabeth already contemplating ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... manhood, it is my infirmity to look back upon those early days. Do I advance a paradox, when I say, that, skipping over the intervention of forty years, a man may have leave to love himself, without the imputation ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... eyes, and a brow kept resolutely wide open, as if, again, he had resolved in his youth to be truthful, magnanimous, and incorruptible, but had never succeeded in making that habit of mind automatic and unconscious. Still, he is by no means to be laughed at. There is no sign of stupidity or infirmity of will about him: on the contrary, he would pass anywhere at sight as a man of more than average professional capacity and responsibility. Just at present he is enjoying the weather and the sea too much to be out of patience; ...
— You Never Can Tell • [George] Bernard Shaw
... been hailed by the prisoners in the Lions' Den with such noisy joy, and whose denunciation was to be so fatal to Germain, was a man of middle stature; notwithstanding his obesity and his infirmity, he seemed active and vigorous. His bestial physiognomy, as was the case with most of his companions, much resembled a bull-dog's; his low forehead, his little yellow eyes, his falling cheeks, his heavy jawbones, ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... O happy thou! O easy remedy! One poor faint sigh cures love's infirmity! Thy heart thy tool, o'er every passion queen, Beyond all change and chance thou sit'st serene! In easy flow can pass thy love new-born From cold indifference to colder scorn; Such resolution is the equal mate Of god or monster, love, aversion, hate. This fine-spun adamant Ithuriel's ...
— Polyuecte • Pierre Corneille
... not refuse; help your friend to bear with his troubles, his infirmity. I have also greatly improved my piano-forte playing. I hope this journey may also turn to your advantage; afterwards you will always remain with me. I have duly received all your letters, and although I have answered only a few, you have ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... that the intemperate, profligate, and criminal classes, whose duration of life is low, do not commonly marry; and it must likewise be admitted that men with a weak constitution, ill health, or any great infirmity in body or mind, will often not wish to marry, or will be rejected. Dr. Stark seems to have come to the conclusion that marriage in itself is a main cause of prolonged life, from finding that aged married men still have a considerable advantage in ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... by infirmity to retire from the active discharge of his duties, he was succeeded by Thomas Brown (1778-1820). Brown had shown early precocity, and at the age of fifteen had attracted Stewart's notice by some remarks on a psychological point. He published at twenty ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... who will. I am the same man and do not alter, it is you who change, since in fact you took my advice while unhurt, and waited for misfortune to repent of it; and the apparent error of my policy lies in the infirmity of your resolution, since the suffering that it entails is being felt by every one among you, while its advantage is still remote and obscure to all, and a great and sudden reverse having befallen you, your mind is too much depressed to persevere in your resolves. For before what is sudden, ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... Whatever is necessary they have, they receive it from the community, and the magistrate takes care that no one receives more than he deserves. Yet nothing necessary is denied to anyone. Friendship is recognized among them in war, in infirmity, in the art contests, by which means they aid one another mutually by teaching. Sometimes they improve themselves mutually with praises, with conversation, with actions, and out of the things they need. All those of the same age call ...
— The City of the Sun • Tommaso Campanells
... did all that devoted ignorance could do to make certain a periodic repetition of the convulsive seizures. This was but the first of a series of concessions which involved his professional, social and financial future, which her "infirmity" exacted of him as the years passed. Later old Jake died and the doctor's share of his big farms was an opportune help. But Mrs. Platt had a certain far- reaching ambition; therefore, they soon moved to Houston. He would have done well where he started; his education, ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... Even earth's friendships are priceless. Yet the best and truest of them are only fragments of the perfect friendship. They bring us only little cupfuls of blessing. Their gentleness is marred by human infirmity, and sometimes turns to harshness. Their helpfulness at best is impulsive and uncertain, and ofttimes is inopportune ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... stopped he had to hold firmly to the seat to prevent its slipping under him; but after soup and a glass of champagne he felt much better, and began to enjoy an infirmity which had brought such solicitude ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... and they agreed it would be a good thing 'to see something of Ireland'; and with this wise resolve they had set out on that half-fishing excursion, which, having taken them over the Westmeath lakes, now was directing them to the Shannon, but with an infirmity of purpose to which lack of sport and disastrous weather were contributing powerfully at the moment we have ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... to them that are in need. For some by too free feeding contract an infirmity in their flesh, and do injury to their bodies; whilst the flesh of others, who have not food, withers away, because they want sufficient nourishment, ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... leaving of a banana peel upon a public platform is in its very nature "negligent," the company's lawyer would recommend settlement. Thus "Banana Anna" was able to live in comfort if not in luxury; and an infirmity that might under other circumstances have been a curse became, in fact, a blessing. Of course she took a new name and hired—temporarily—a new residence for each accident; but, as she moved from city to city, she was able to keep up the same old ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... thirty-five-years-service list. Besides these they now ordered out on active service the troops retained at the beginning of the campaign in attendance on the magistrates at the government offices. Agesilaus being still disabled by his infirmity, the city imposed the duty of command upon his son Archidamus. The new general found eager co-operators in the men of Tegea. The friends of Stasippus at this date were still living, (19) and they were stanch in their ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... five times the actual worth of these buildings had been extracted from the Treasury. Sir Sanford Freeling, on the other hand, while being no screener of jobbery and peculation, had not the strength of mind whereof jobbers and peculators do stand in dread. In evidence of that poor ruler's infirmity of purpose, we would only cite the double fact that, whereas in 1883 he was the first to enter a practical protest against the housing [70] of the diseased and destitute in the then newly finished, but most leaky, House of Refuge on the St. Clair Lands, by having the poor ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... live upon his offerings. Let me salute the Mistress of the Land (i.e. the Queen) who is in his palace, and let me hear the greetings of her children. O would that my members could become young again! For now old age is stealing on me. Infirmity overtaketh me. Mine eyes refuse to see, my hands fall helpless, my knees shake, my heart standeth still, the funerary mourners approach and they will bear me away to the City of Eternity, wherein I shall become a follower of Nebertcher. She will declare to ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... of poor parents, was of the Franciscan order, and famed as a preacher; was elected successor to Gregory XIII., during whose pontificate he affected infirmity, to reveal himself a vigorous pontiff as soon as he was installed; set himself at once to stamp out disorder, reform the administration, and replenish the exhausted treasury of the Church; he allowed freedom of worship to the Jews, and yet was zealous to put down all heresy in the Christian ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... very glad,' said he. 'Will you trust me to drive you the rest of the way, if I displace Mr. Gotham? I share your infirmity of impatience sometimes.' ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
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