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Defenseless   Listen
adjective
Defenseless  adj.  
1.
Destitute of defense; unprepared to resist attack; unable to oppose; unprotected. (Also spelled defenceless)
2.
Unarmed; used of persons or the military. Antonym: armed.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Defenseless" Quotes from Famous Books



... the forces with which will contends in vain. But the master phrase rings even yet more tyrannously in the passage of Clorinda's death, which sums up all of sentiment included in romance. Long had Tancredi loved Clorinda. Meeting her in battle, he stood her blows defenseless; for Clorinda was an Amazon, reduced by Tasso's gentle genius to womanhood from the proportions of Marfisa. Finally, with heart surcharged with love for her, he has to cross his sword in deadly duel with this lady. Malign stars rule the hour: he knows ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... her, she almost trembled, so violent was the emotion the little seemingly accidental caress caused. A feeling she had never realized in the whole of her life before. Why did he tease her so. Why did he always behave in this maddening manner! and choose moments when she was defenseless and could make no move. Of one thing she was certain, if she should stay on in Russia she must come to some understanding with him if possible, and prevent any more of these ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn

... as well as before and the man pushed the colonel back into the tent. The latter dragged the man in after him and stepped hurriedly aside, just as Chester brought the chair down upon the Austrian's defenseless head with all his power. The man ...
— The Boy Allies in Great Peril • Clair W. Hayes

... for you have money, talent, and you will quickly find aid, for, unfortunately, many are discontented. Furthermore, in this fight, which you are to begin, those who are going to suffer most are the defenseless, the innocent. The same sentiments which a month ago prompted me to come to you and ask for reforms, are those which now move me to ask you to reflect. The country, Senor, is not thinking of separating itself from the mother country. It asks only a little liberty, a little justice, ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal

... this moment was the strangest that had ever happened to her. By the light of the camp-fire she saw Dale's face, just as usual, still, darkly serene, expressing no thought. He was kind, but he was not thinking of these sisters as girls, alone with him in a pitch-black forest, helpless and defenseless. He did not seem to be thinking at all. But Helen had never before in her life been so ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey

... contrived to withdraw from the slave just that fiction of property relation which made it for the interest of some one to care for him a little, however imperfectly; and, having destroyed that, we turn him out defenseless to shift for himself in a community every member of which is embittered against him. The whole South resounds with the outcries of slaves suffering the vindictive wrath of former masters; laws are being passed ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... man, a kind man, a philanthropic man, but he is both harmless and defenseless now. He was a poor general in the capacity of commander-in-chief. Had he been mentally qualified, his physical condition would have disqualified him. His legs and one of his arms had been shot off ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins

... much astonished, to find its work baffling and difficult instead of simple and easy, but it had powerful allies in the shape of hunger, cold, fatigue, persecution, deception, and treachery; and opposed to this array nothing but a defenseless and ignorant girl who must some time or other surrender to bodily and mental exhaustion or get caught in one of the thousand traps ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... that they are an incomplete version of ourselves touches me. They actually seem defenseless, though ...
— Second Landing • Floyd Wallace

... upon the inhabitants in the exposed part of the country. In October a party made an incursion into a district called Crab Orchard. One of these Indians having advanced some distance before the others, boldly entered the house of a poor defenseless family, in which was only a negro man, a woman and her children, terrified with apprehensions of immediate death. The savage, perceiving their defenseless condition, without offering violence to the family, attempted to capture the negro, who happily proved an over-match ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott

... abroad, saying: "There now! I had kept it as a love token, close to my heart, little knowing it was a cold-blooded, cautious, legal proof, else it should have gone before, where it has gone now, to the winds! There now, Herman, I am your own wife, your own Nora, quite unarmed and defenseless before you; trusting only to your faith for my happiness; knowing that you will never willingly forsake me; but feeling that if you do, I should ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... the black storm clouds of doubt and despair were fading away, and that I was drifting into the safe harbor of the realms of truth. I felt as if everybody must believe him, for he clung to the truth, and I wondered how Mr. Hutchinson could so lie about a poor defenseless girl ...
— From the Darkness Cometh the Light, or Struggles for Freedom • Lucy A. Delaney

... then,—a harsh and sinister sound that filled her with inexpressible horror. For a moment she stood motionless in the center of that leering circle, her eyes wide, her face white as death,—a slight figure, trying to hard to stand straight, crushed and defenseless, only her eyes pleading in last appeal. Instinctively her lips whispered ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall

... manifest itself when we let ourselves drift. The tragedy of it is that we have drifted too far sometimes before we learn that we could have directed the course if we had willed. Ignorance is seemingly the most cruel foe we have to encounter, because we are so defenseless, not knowing ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn

... grasp. The long night had left him with little sympathy. The more he had thought of that blow, the greater the aversion he felt towards Arsdale. If the boy had n't struck her he would feel some pity for him, but that blow given in the dark against a defenseless woman—the one woman who had been faithful and kind to him—that was too much. It had raised dark ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett

... flushed with victory. Christian Europe was trembling before them. And now an army of three hundred thousand had crossed the Danube, sweeping all opposition before them, and were spreading terror and destruction through Hungary. The capture of that immense kingdom seemed to leave all Europe defenseless. ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott

... that since I came to live with him my uncle had been bitting and breaking his tongue. It occurred to me that Bill Seaver, whom I secretly despised, had spoilt him and that I had done wrong in leaving him all the afternoon defenseless in ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller

... fix my attention on the fixity of the bed. I put my hand over my eyes to shut out all thought save of the dead woman, defenseless already, reclining on that earth into which she will sink. But my looks, impelled by superhuman curiosity, escape between my fingers to this other woman, half revealed to me in the tumult of sorrow, and my eyes cannot ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse

... slay him, my son? For you must leave your club and your armor behind, and be cast to the monster, defenseless ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes

... depends. For it is they, rather than the parents, especially in the great cities and in communities of large foreign elements, who have its making in their hands. Without them the nation of to-morrow would be defenseless. She would have to increase her standing army of soldiers, and even then, with the multitudes of individual ignorances, malices, selfishnesses growing in her own valleys and being disembarked by millions at her ports, she would be powerless to ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley

... their places would have been supplied by persons whose characters would be softened by the appellation of savage—penitentiary outcasts and murderers? Who could believe that a human being could be so depraved as to fall upon a defenseless and unoffending traveler and murder him under the pretence of sheltering him from the storm and giving him a hearty welcome at his table? Who could believe that even devils in human shape could cut the throats of two traveling ...
— Narrative of Richard Lee Mason in the Pioneer West, 1819 • Richard Lee Mason

... England was overpopulated. There was much to justify the belief. The reign of Elizabeth witnessed a striking increase in the number of unemployed, the poverty-stricken, and the vagabond. The destruction of the monasteries left the poor and defenseless without their accustomed sources of relief; while steadily rising prices, due partly to the increased supply of silver from the Spanish-American mines, were not infrequently disastrous to those who were already living close ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker

... stores and factories, it is estimated that in the seven cities where the investigation took place approximately 65,000 women are adrift.[20] Since the majority of these are receiving less than the minimum cost of a decent living, they are "perilously defenseless ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various

... your face is the corpus delicti. Did you, taking advantage of the unconscious and hence defenseless condition of my client, that is, of Mr. Martin Dyke, lean over him ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... that kind of a snake with a hat-pin; you have to stamp on its head. But I rather believe it will be some time before Mr. Craig will again make the mistake of insulting a woman because she appears to be defenseless." Elsa's chin was in the air. The choking sensation in her throat began to subside. "The deadly hat-pin; can't you see the story in the newspapers? Well, I for one am not afraid to use it. You know and the purser knows what happened on the boat to Mandalay. He was plausible ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath

... cards face up!" Will interrupted impatiently. "Listen, Schillingschen. You're an all-in scoundrel. You're a spy. You're a bloody murderer of women and defenseless natives. If we could prove that we wouldn't argue with you. We know you burned that dhow with the women in it, but we've got no evidence, that's all. We know the German government wants that ivory, and we ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy

... one point of view in which this case seems to merit your most serious attention. The real prosecutor is the master of the greatest empire the world ever saw; the defendant is a defenseless, proscribed exile. I consider this case, therefore, as the first of a long series of conflicts between the greatest power in the world and the only Free Press remaining in Europe. Gentlemen, this distinction of the English Press is new—it is a proud and melancholy distinction. Before ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... Dog that I had seen looking at me very interestedly once before when my little girl carried my house past him. They kept him fastened with a chain, but somehow he had worked himself loose, and now he had come to make a late supper out of poor defenseless me. I would have talked to him, and tried to shame him out of it, but I was too scared even to speak, for he was biting and clawing at that wire net window as hard as he could, and I could see that it was never ...
— Hollow Tree Nights and Days • Albert Bigelow Paine

... man. But I know too well with what contempt the Germans view such pleas for beauty, for old memories and loves. They are but "sentimental weakness," in the words of the "War Book," along with respect for defenseless women and children. The people who gloried in the sinking of the Lusitania will hardly be moved to refrain from the destruction of a cathedral. Rheims—unless saved by a miracle—is doomed. And it is because neither beauty nor humanity, neither ancient tradition nor common pity can touch the modern ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick

... ten, it would be punishment for their misdeeds more than sufficient to be taken no further on the way to retribution than that. Whatever humiliation and disgrace they are capable of feeling or have cause to feel is at that first moment at its height; it strikes upon them unaccustomed and defenseless—never so acutely sensitive as then. Afterward, familiarity with misery and shame renders them progressively more and more callous, without adding one jot to the public odium of their position. They can never forget that first clang of the closing gates in their ears; the whole significance of ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne

... Shimerda liked to go with me, and we used to wonder a great deal about these birds of subterranean habit. We had to be on our guard there, for rattlesnakes were always lurking about. They came to pick up an easy living among the dogs and owls, which were quite defenseless against them; took possession of their comfortable houses and ate the eggs and puppies. We felt sorry for the owls. It was always mournful to see them come flying home at sunset and disappear under the earth. But, after ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather

... his successor arrived. When all others fled, he was faithful, and such conduct should never be forgotten. Mr. Morris not only risked his life, but he took a heavy responsibility, and laid himself open to severe attack for having protected defenseless people against the assaults of the mob. But his courageous humanity is something which should ever be remembered, and ought always to be characteristic of the men who represent the United States in foreign countries. When we recall the French Revolution, it is cheering to think ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt

... his own silver pen-knife, before he went away, so that I would "nevermore defenseless be," as he said, and we were quite friendly. But after he had gone, I heard Aunty May say that "Never would that absent-minded beggar take her boy away again"; and Aunty Edith said, "He's ...
— W. A. G.'s Tale • Margaret Turnbull

... weeks ago he stood there as the advocate of a powerful Company, then represented by the present defendant. He spoke then as the champion of strict justice against legal oppression; no less should he to-day champion the cause of the unprotected and the comparatively defenseless—save for that paramount power which surrounds beauty and innocence—even though the plaintiff of yesterday was the defendant of to-day. As he approached the court a moment ago he had raised his eyes and beheld the starry flag flying from its dome, and he knew that ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte

... rejoicing army. The Indians were still yelling and dancing, and, though they were no longer allowed to sink their tomahawks in the heads of their defenseless foes, they made imaginary strokes with them, and shouted ferociously as ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler

... Most often they are only transitory fires: one destroys another, and all are absorbed by the great blaze of the creative spirit. But if the heat of the furnace ceases to fill the soul, then the soul is left defenseless against the passions without which it cannot live: it must have passion, it creates passion: and the passions will devour the soul ...—and then, besides the bitter desire that harrows the flesh, there is the need of tenderness which drives a man who is weary and disillusioned of life ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland

... of the Marne the Prussians were pressing northward, venting their rage on the defenseless inhabitants, killing many such and carrying others away with them. It was desperate business that these brutal Prussians were engaged in. Finding themselves unable to whip the Allied soldiers, they sought to terrorize old men, ...
— The Children of France • Ruth Royce

... refuge have I none, Hangs my helpless soul on thee; Leave, oh, leave me not alone, Still support and comfort me. All my trust on thee is stayed, All my help from thee I bring, Cover my defenseless head With the shadow of ...
— Around Old Bethany • Robert Lee Berry

... she had always experienced with men seemed to have vanished. She had no sense of being on the defensive. This was no game. It was what she had been looking for and dreaming about. Before Billy she was defenseless, and there was an all-satisfaction in the knowledge. She could deny him nothing. Not even if he proved to be like the others. And out of the greatness of the thought rose a greater thought—he ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London

... furs went home in the ships to France. The colony depended upon its mother country even for its annual food supply, and when the ships from France failed to come the colonists were reduced to severe privations. A dispirited and nearly defenseless land, without solid foundations of agriculture or industry, with an accumulation of Indian enmity and an empty treasury—this was the legacy which the Company now turned over to the Crown in return for the viceroyal privileges given to it in good faith ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro

... that there were larger and more dangerous animals in the forests. There were bears prowling somewhere in those dim shadowy woods, eating the young buds and leaves, and capturing such defenseless birds and rabbits as they could. Once or twice they heard some heavy creature crashing through the underbrush, and looked at each other with startled eyes; but no harm came near them, and by the middle of the afternoon they reached the first ...
— A Little Maid of Old Maine • Alice Turner Curtis

... nine centuries before. [6] Then the barbarians entered the Peloponnesus, but were soon driven out by Stilicho, a German chieftain who had risen to the command of the army of Honorius. Alaric gave up Greece only to invade Italy. Before long the Goths crossed the Julian Alps and entered the rich and defenseless valley of the Po. To meet the crisis the legions were hastily called in, even from the distant frontiers. Stilicho formed them into a powerful army, beat back the enemy, and captured the Visigothic camp, filled with the spoil of Greek cities. In the eyes of the Romans Stilicho seemed a second ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER

... Into everlasting torment. Then the hero, Lemminkainen, Sang the foemen with their broadswords? Sang the heroes with their weapons, Sang the eldest, sang the youngest, Sang the middle-aged, enchanted; Only one he left his senses, He a poor, defenseless shepherd, Old and sightless, halt and wretched, And the old man's name was Nasshut. Spake the miserable shepherd: "Thou hast old and young enchanted, Thou hast banished all our heroes, Why hast spared this wretched shepherd?" This is Lemminkainen's ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.

... The defenseless girl watched furtively. When, at last, Hodges stirred from his indolent sprawl, knocked the dottle from his pipe, and looked up at her, she shrank visibly. The blood rushed back to her heart in a flood, leaving her pallid, and she was trembling. Even in the feeble light ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily

... reason and superiority above all else that moves on the earth or in the waters under it. But this man, Joe Newbolt, has debased that image and abused that reason and superiority which raises him above the beasts of the field. He has murdered a defenseless old man; he has, by that act and deed, forfeited his right to life ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden

... telling her all about the Voice of America—and that was only another trap. They wanted to make you leave your own land and your own country, and come far away to America and to the United States, so that you would have no friends and you would be defenseless. ...
— Hex • Laurence Mark Janifer (AKA Larry M. Harris)

... moment. I yelled to the others not to move; but they followed like sheep, and I heard them kick the candles flying, in their panic. One of them stepped on the Electric Pentacle, and smashed it, and there was an utter darkness. In an instant, I realized that I was defenseless against the powers of the Unknown World, and with one savage leap I was out of the useless Barriers, and instantly through the great doorway, and into the night. I believe I yelled with ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson

... it, if for no other reason than to see that the balance of power in Europe was not upset. On August 4, 1914, Sir Edward Grey said in the British House of Commons, "The French fleet is now in the Mediterranean, and the northern coasts of France are defenseless. If a foreign fleet engaged in war against France should come down and battle against those defenseless coasts, we could not stand aside. We felt strongly that France was entitled to know at once whether, in the event of attack on her unprotected coasts, she could rely on our support. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various

... horses really do what they appear to do? Is there no precedent for the marvel? Is there no transition between the Elberfeld stallions and the horses which we have known until this day? It is not easy to answer these questions, for it is only since yesterday that the intellectual powers of our defenseless brothers have been subjected to strictly scientific experiments. We have, it is true more than one collection of anecdotes in which the intelligence of animals is lauded to the skies; but we cannot rely upon these ill-authenticated stories. To find ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck

... customary for the women and children to flee to the mountains, taking with them the dogs, pigs, chickens, and valuable household effects. However, Bontoc pueblo, because of her strength, is not so evacuated — she expects no enemy strong enough to burst through and reach the defenseless. ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks

... the institution, and the natural wish, I suppose, of every parent, yet do not we all find that they are certain sorrows, and very uncertain comforts? and what is there, dear sir, to pay one for the heart-aches, what compensation for the many tender and disquieting apprehensions of a suffering and defenseless mother who brings ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various

... come to Washington, as men cannot address you for us. We have no power at all; we are totally defenseless. [Miss Smith then read two short letters written by her sister Abby to the Springfield Republican.] These tell our brief story, and may I not ask, gentlemen, that they shall so plead with you that you will report to the Senate ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... seen such a blood-thirsty female. She'd nearly laugh her head off when Kitty was gouging the eye out of one of these cunning little scamps. She said if I'd ever seen the nasty curs pile on to one poor defenseless little bunny I'd understand why she was so keen about my beetle-cat. That's ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... tracing figures in the sand with his shoe. Eleanor noticed the nice way his hair grew on the back of his neck and the white skin that met the clear brown skin at the collar-line. In spite of his bigness and his strength, he seemed very young and defenseless when it came to his ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice

... from beneath my head my sword convey'd; The door unlatch'd, and, with repeated calls, Invites her former lord within my walls. Thus in her crime her confidence she plac'd, And with new treasons would redeem the past. What need I more? Into the room they ran, And meanly murther'd a defenseless man. Ulysses, basely born, first led the way. Avenging pow'rs! with justice if I pray, That fortune be their own another day! But answer you; and in your turn relate, What brought you, living, to the Stygian state: Driv'n by the winds and errors of ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil

... giving the defenseless, surprised and chagrined corporal a shove, I threw him into the moat and my men forced the others to follow him, where, standing in water and mud to their arm pits and facing an unscalable wall, they yelled an alarm and hoarsely bawled ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt

... for me? Spirits of these hills," cried he, "pour not thus your rage on a banished man! A man without a friend, without a home." He started and smiled at his own adjuration. "The spirits of Heaven launch not this tempest on a defenseless head; 'tis chance!—but affliction shapes all things to its own likeness. Thou, oh, my Father! would not suffer any demon of the air to bend thy broken reed! Therefore rain on, ye torrents; ye are welcome to William ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... him on the Varsity, and forty-'leven coaches stood over his defenseless form and hammered football into him for eight solid hours on Wednesday and Thursday. And Bi took it all like a little woolly lamb, without a bleat. But it just made you sick to think what was going to happen to Bi when Jordan ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour

... could have been borne, but by and by men began to make bows and arrows, spears and knives, and other weapons, and began to use them on the defenseless animals. Then soon they began to eat the flesh of the animals, and presently they found that they preferred the meat thus obtained to the fruits and vegetables ...
— Algonquin Indian Tales • Egerton R. Young

... the inhuman policy of Weyler not less than four hundred thousand self-supporting, simple, peaceable, defenseless country people were driven from their homes in the agricultural portions of the Spanish provinces to the cities, and imprisoned upon the barren waste outside the residence portions of these cities and within the lines of intrenchment established a little way beyond. ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... protection of the officers, or the excited people would surely have maimed her, if they had done no more. On the next morning, I received a note, very handsomely written, in which I was told that "the within" was but a slight token of the gratitude due me for my effort in behalf of a poor, defenseless, but much loved, maiden. It was signed "Several Citizens," and contained one hundred dollars. Shortly afterward, the youth came to pay me all the money he could raise. I simply showed him the note I had received, and asked him if he would keep his ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill

... hostilities; had attacked by surprise isolated detachments; had indicated to the enemy the positions occupied by the troops; that women, old men, and even children had been guilty of horrible atrocities upon wounded and defenseless German soldiers, tearing out their eyes and cutting off fingers, nose, or ears; that the priests from their pulpits had exhorted the people to commit these crimes, promising them as a reward the Kingdom of Heaven, and had even taken ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... rhythm and rhyme, with due regard for euphony and cadence, is always safe, and is totally different from bursting out upon a defenseless woman with ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard

... and was always noted in Bible times for its fat cattle. But its rolling plains lie open and defenseless toward the desert. Here under Moses' leadership the Hebrews were able to conquer one or two of the petty local chieftains, and thus gained a foothold from which they might some time make a sally across the River Jordan into central ...
— Hebrew Life and Times • Harold B. Hunting

... of flowers moves through the streets. Abraham Lincoln has done his work. He is on his journey back to the scenes of his childhood! The boy who defended the turtles, the man who stretched out his arm over the defenseless Indian in the Black Hawk War, and who freed the slave; the man of whom no one ever asked pity in vain—he is going back to the prairies, to sleep his eternal ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth

... from it and working for the destruction of its indispensable ally, the lawgiving State. How is the rebel to be disarmed? Slain it cannot be by Godhead, since it is still Godhead's own very dearest soul. But hidden, stifled, silenced it must be; or it will wreck the State and leave the Church defenseless. Not until it passes completely away from Godhead, and is reborn as the soul of the hero, can it work anything but the confusion and destruction of the existing order. How is the world to be protected against ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw

... house, breaking in doors, smashing trunks, boxes, bureaus, and robbing them of all that was valuable, then leaving the house in flames. Helpless women, screaming children, babes in the arms, invalids on beds, jolted and jostled against the surging mob—none to help, none to advise—these defenseless sufferers rushed aimlessly about, their sole purpose being to avoid the flames and seek a place of safety. The fires originated principally in the southern section of the city, and as the fire eat its way up, the howling throng followed, driving ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert

... me! Here is the king's brother-in-law, Sansthanaka. Just because one monk committed an offense, now, wherever he sees a monk, whether it is the same one or not, he bores a hole in his nose and drives him around like a bullock. Where shall a defenseless man find a defender? But after all, the blessed Lord Buddha is ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka

... quarters in the village; the next were placed in the captured Russian camp; the others made themselves as comfortable as they could around huge fires. The poor prisoners had little or nothing. The ragged French were at least better clothed than they were in the morning. The defenseless had arms and the whole army had been fed. There was wine, too; the Russian commissariat was a liberal one. There was much laughter and jovialness in the camps that night. Of course, the guard and the other veterans expected nothing else, but to the youngsters the brilliant stroke of ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... Years' War; his brother, the Prince de Conti; the Count d'Artois, who, having always been the advocate of the most violent measures, was doubly bound to stand forward in defense of his king and brother, all fled, setting the first example of that base emigration which eventually left the king defenseless in the midst of his enemies. The Baron de Breteuil and some of the ministers made similar provision for their own safety; though it may be said, as some extenuation of their ignoble flight, that they had no longer ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge

... ugly snarl he closed upon his defenseless victim, but ere his fangs had reached the throat they thirsted for, there was a sharp report and a bullet entered the ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... absolutely in the strength and tenderness that watched over them, the mother building the cubs' future on the foundation of the two instincts which are strong in every wild creature born into a world of danger,—the instinct to lie still and let nature's coloring hide all defenseless little ones, and the instinct to obey instantly a stronger will than ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long

... of a terrible misfortune to which she had been exposed. This event, which was indeed terrible, was nothing less than violence and robbery committed on a fugitive woman defenseless and alone, by a band at the head of which was the famous Marquis de Maubreuil, [A French political adventurer, born in Brittany, 1782; died 1855.] who had been equerry of the King of Westphalia. I will recur in treating of the events of 1814 to this ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... Christian dromons; nevertheless they presented an appalling danger at that moment. The Christian fleet was watching Crete, the army was in the east winning back territory from the Arabs, and Constantinople lay almost defenseless. The great walls could be depended an to hold off a barbarian army, but a fleet was needed to hold the waterways; ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott

... then preparing at New York was designed to reinforce General Howe; and insisted that, should the troops then embarked at that place, instead of proceeding to the Delaware, make a sudden movement up the Hudson, it would be in their power, should Albany be left defenseless, to destroy the valuable arsenal which had been there erected, and the military stores captured with Burgoyne, which had been chiefly deposited ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing

... met hers and held them under a spell like hypnosis, and hers were wide and futile of concealment so that her heart and its secrets were at last defenseless. ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck

... violent measure," answered Elias. "You must be surprised that I, another unfortunate, young and strong, should propose to you, old and weak, peaceful measures, but it's because I've seen as much misery caused by us as by the tyrants. The defenseless are the ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... they were welcomed. But when the Mexicans saw the Americans rapidly growing in numbers they began to oppress them. The Mexican Government went so far as to require them to give up their private arms, which would leave them defenseless against the Indians as well as bad men. Then it passed a law which said, in effect, that no more settlers should come to Texas from the United States, so that the few thousand Americans could not ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy

... its government; their various practices to withdraw the affections of the people from it; the evident tendency of their arts, and those of their agents to countenance and invigorate opposition; their disregard of solemn treaties and the laws of nations; their war upon our defenseless commerce; their treatment of our ministers of peace, and their demands, amounting to tribute, could not fail to excite in me sentiments corresponding with those my countrymen have so generally expressed in their ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing

... on the 9th of December, I did so in a picho, called expressly for the purpose. Lerimo was present, and felt rather crestfallen when his exploit was described by Mohorisi, one of my companions, as one of extreme cowardice, he having made an attack upon the defenseless villagers of Londa, while, as we had found on our former visit, a lion had actually killed eight people of Naliele without his daring to encounter it. The Makololo are cowardly in respect to animals, but brave against men. Mpololo took all the guilt upon himself before ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... easily fancy himself in danger in this vast fenceless and defenseless space. Enormous herds were visible for miles in every direction, bulls roamed here and there, bellowing moodily, cattle and horses by hundreds waded and grazed in the shallow swamps across which the dyked path led. All the brilliant day "Mt. Tabor" ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck

... witnessed many revolting sights, but none that affected him more than this. He shuddered, as he reflected that the very barbarians who had wantonly inflicted his woe were the captors of the adored daughter of Captain Prescott, and that they had inflicted as shocking outrages even upon such defenseless captives ...
— Oonomoo the Huron • Edward S. Ellis

... country to strike France. Americans kept learning that Germany's promises to respect hospitals and hospital ships, stretcher-bearers and the Red Cross, not to interfere with non-combatants, not to use poison gas, not to bombard defenseless cities and towns were all "scraps of paper." They discovered even the naturalization papers which Germans in America took out in order to become American citizens were lies sworn to, for the German who declared his loyalty to his new ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood

... Vesuvius cannot burn With such destructive flame, As fires Love's victim of deceit Stung by the taunts that claim No truthful fountain as their source, No mild-voiced Justice to allay The cauldron of defenseless fraud ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite

... in exaggerated form in many an Eastern paper. What made it worse was that, as told in Boston, Philadelphia, and other far Eastern communities, where the Indian is little known and much considered, Button's interests were bound to suffer, for he was declared to have butchered defenseless women and children in a surrendered village—a most unjust accusation in spite of the fact that certain squaws and boys had died fighting with their braves by night, when bullets could not well discriminate. Button had but just got his promotion to regimental command, and friends ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King

... "You must be brave. Listen: if I try to take you away now, it may be that I should be killed and you left defenseless. But this evening you can be safe, ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope

... you heartily for your book on "Defenseless America." It is a capital book and I believe it is safe to say that no wise and patriotic American can fail to recognize the service that you have rendered in writing it. I hope it will have the widest possible circulation throughout ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... chattel-slavery in our country, the slave-laws, framed by men only, degraded woman by making her the defenseless victim of her slave-master's passions, and then inflicting a cruel stab, reaching the heart of motherhood, by laws which made her children follow the condition of the mother, as slaves; never that of the father, as free women or men. The clergy became slaveholders and defenders of slavery ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... was to become of him? A girl whom his brother had confided to him, whom he had brought up like a good father, and who was now—this temptress of twenty-five—a woman in her supreme omnipotence! He felt himself more defenseless, weaker ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola

... convenient," replied the Marquis, with still more vivacity, "but the proof that it is not true is that you yourself are filled with remorse at not having saved the soul so weak of that defenseless child. Ah, I do not mince the truth to myself, and I shall not do so to you. You remember the morning when you were so gay, and when you gave me the theory of your cosmopolitanism? It amused you, as a perfect dilettante, so you said, to assist in one of those dramas of ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget

... several hundred, and considering her defenseless position, the savages allowed her considerable liberty. From the first, however, she was made a slave and a drudge, and compelled to toil with the hardy squaws of their tribe, bearing their insults and sometimes even their blows. The hope ...
— The Ranger - or The Fugitives of the Border • Edward S. Ellis

... you'd have to stop your irresponsible practical joking and settle down. Some hard work wouldn't hurt you even if you did inherit a fortune. I don't mind so much when you pull these stunts on me, but when I think of how you practically drowned those poor, defenseless Earth-creatures...." ...
— Stairway to the Stars • Larry Shaw

... at the mouth of the tunnel. Sometimes enemies—other species of ants—draw near, and then the working white ants, being but poor, defenseless creatures, blind and unarmed, would be in danger of death were not their big fighting comrades on guard. The soldiers rush to the rescue and, with a few sweeps of their scythe-like jaws, clear the field. While the attacking party is carrying off its dead, the builders, unconscious ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey

... which was common to most of the despots shows itself on the largest scale. He undertook, at the cost of 300,000 golden florins, the construction of gigantic dikes, to divert in case of need the Mincio from Mantua and the Brenta from Padua, and thus to render these cities defenseless. It is not impossible, indeed, that he thought of draining away the lagoons of Venice. He founded that most wonderful of all convents, the Certosa of Pavia and the cathedral of Milan, 'which exceeds in size ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt

... publicly accused by the scoundrel Gauthier, I suppose many men said, "What a pity that so fair a woman should be so foul!" Others said gravely, "This matter ought to be judicially examined." Gismond was the only man who realised that a defenseless orphan was insulted, and the words were hardly out of Gauthier's mouth when he received "the fist's reply to the filth." The lovers walked away from the "shouting multitude," the fickle, cowardly, contemptible public, who did ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps

... sees the sullen pass, high-crowned with snow, Where Afghans cower with eyes of gleaming hate. He hurls himself against the hidden foe. They try to rally — ah, too late, too late! Again, defenseless, with fierce eyes that wait For death, he stands, like baited bull at bay, And flouts the ...
— The Spell of the Yukon • Robert Service

... came catastrophe. With the mad perversity of his kind, her sled deer, suddenly turning from his position beside the sled, whirled about in a wide, sweeping circle which threatened to overturn her sled and leave her alone, defenseless against the hungry pack. ...
— The Blue Envelope • Roy J. Snell

... military stores, without wealth, without strength, against the most powerful kingdom on the earth; a declaration of war made when the British navy, at that day the mistress of every sea, was hovering along the coast of America, looking after defenseless towns and villages to ravage and destroy. It was made when thousands of English soldiers were upon our soil, and when the principal cities of America were, in the substantial possession of the enemy. And so, I say, all things considered, it was the bravest political document ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll

... of a man who had learned strange facts and knew that a defenseless woman was a victim—called me to Finland. Therefore, with my passport properly vised and my papers all in order, I one night left Hull for Stockholm by the weekly Wilson service. Four days of rough weather in the North Sea and the ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux

... His own deceit loomed up before his soul, and the sky of faith grew black. One by one, the accusations of the elders repeated themselves to him, and he made no protest. His assenting conscience left him absolutely defenseless. ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland

... had so changed that, although the war was not yet over, they could look forward to the future with some degree of hope. The news brought from Rheims by occasional refugees was always sad. The Germans continued to shell the defenseless city, and the Cathedral sustained more and more injuries, but the beautiful stained-glass windows had been carefully taken down, the broken pieces put together as far as possible, and the whole shipped to safer places in France. The statue of Jeanne d'Arc within the ...
— The French Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins

... the clouds, they went, and down again, towards the defenseless Earth, that could not flee from the chariot of the Sun. Great rivers hid themselves in the ground, and mountains were consumed. Harvests perished like a moth that is ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various

... manufactured fine writing, or lapsed into a reminiscent and melting mood. In a pretty affectation, we were asked to meditate upon the old garret, the deserted hearth, the old letters, the old well-sweep, the dead baby, the little shoes; we were put into a mood in which we were defenseless against the lukewarm flood of the Tupperean Philosophy. Even the newspapers caught the bathetic tone. Every "local" editor breathed his woe over the incidents of the police court, the falling leaf, the tragedies of the boarding-house, in the ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner

... soldiers, as Gallipoli had been a staff head-quarters not long before and always has been a natural base for the defense of the Dardanelles, the attack was doubtless justified by the rules of war. It happens, however, that people who live in defenseless, bombarded towns are never interested in the rules of war. So a new and particularly disturbing rumor went flying through the crowded ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl

... sharp-sightedness, that are usually found only among birds. The consistency between the construction of their bodies and their mode of life is a beautiful example of fitness; only by extraordinary quickness of movement and sagacity could the little defenseless plant-eaters maintain the struggle for existence in the barren steppes and deserts. The formation of the bodies of the different members of the family varies according to their needs. The jerboa is the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various

... glad! I was afraid it was lost, and it is so tiny and defenseless to be out all alone in the cold and darkness. Thank you so much, Mr. Morrow. I suppose it was waiting for me, as it usually does, and grew restless at my delay, poor little thing! It was kind of ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander

... a moment with a sort of defenseless pain that made him ashamed; and then walked away from him towards the window, with a frank resentment that made him smile, as he continued, "But I suppose you would like to have some explanation of my motive in precipitating Don Ippolito upon ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells

... this belief in man's capacity for knowledge and in the possibility of knowing things is justifiable or not, and no matter how far it may be justifiable, it was in any case untested; so that when the skeptic approached with his objections the dogmatist was defenseless. All previous philosophy, so far as it had not been skeptical, had been, according to Kant's expression, dogmatic; that is, it had held as an article of faith, and without precedent inquiry, that we possess the power of cognizing ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... however, for his worm's progress across the reed bed had liberally besmeared his dark clothing and masked the skin of his face and hands, giving him better cover than any he could have wittingly devised. Though he felt naked and defenseless, the men who trailed the hounds to the river bank, thrusting out the torch over the edge to light the sand spit, saw nothing but the trunk of the tree wedged ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton

... other hand, there is every reason to believe that any manifestation of a design to remove them by force or to take possession of the territory allotted to them would be immediately retaliated by acts of cruelty on the defenseless inhabitants. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume - V, Part 1; Presidents Taylor and Fillmore • James D. Richardson

... it may be true that you did not break into my room with intent to rob or injure a defenseless woman, yet, by your own confession you came to torment a weaker person. You came to haze a freshman. ...
— Standard Selections • Various

... To injure purposely the defenseless, as in turning the guns on the city, was not in keeping with the nature of David Farragut as revealed in history. Power combined with gentleness were the marked traits of his character. This gentleness had its finest reflex in his delicate attentions to ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott

... you must remember that although governments begin wars it is the people who carry them on. Let the people of England and Holland hear, as they will hear, of the brutal ferocity of the French marshal on a defenseless people, and their sympathies will be strongly with you. They will urge their governments to action, and vote willingly the necessary sums for carrying on the war. Let them hear that with you too war is massacre, that you take no prisoners, and kill all that fall into ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty

... Never have I had my nails polished so often as during those days of waiting! Now—after six years—she must be dead. I shall not wrong her memory by recording that she was very partial to the bottle. The poor old soul was defenseless against those that I brought her and that I emptied with her, ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit

... me. She did not come back, and I began to fear that I would actually be dragged down to supper. It was as if I had been kidnapped. I felt like Gulliver among the giants. These people were all too—well, too much what they were. No chill of manner could hold them off. I was defenseless. I must get away. I ran to the top of the staircase and looked down. There was that fool Peppo, beleaguered by a bevy of fair women. They were simply looting him, and he was grinning like an idiot. I gathered up my train, ran ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather

... may protect himself by hoarding or may even find profit in the fluctuations of values; but the wage earner—the first to be injured by a depreciated currency and the last to receive the benefit of its correction—is practically defenseless. He relies for work upon the ventures of confident and contented capital. This failing him, his condition is without alleviation, for he can neither prey on the misfortunes of others nor hoard his labor. ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland

... I wandered on like a forsaken fugitive. I seemed to be the only human being left alive in a world of wrath and darkness. The rush and roar of the blast, the angry noise of waves breaking hurriedly on the shore, the swirling showers that fell on my defenseless head—all these things were unfelt, unheard by me. There are times in a man's life when mere physical feeling grows numb under the pressure of intense mental agony-when the indignant soul, smarting with the experience ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli

... the Romans. The Volscians rejected the proposition with a sort of scorn. "We see," said they, "from the fate of Saguntum, what is to be expected to result from an alliance with the Romans. After leaving that city defenseless and alone in its struggle against such terrible danger, it is in vain to ask other nations to trust to your protection. If you wish for new allies, it will be best for you to go where the story of Saguntum is not known." This answer of the Volscians was ...
— Hannibal - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... itself, but it would sail splendidly about the Earth in an orbit some four thousand miles up, and it would gird the world in four hours fourteen minutes and twenty-two seconds. It would carry atom-headed guided missiles, and every city in the world would be defenseless against it. Nobody could even hope for world domination so long as it floated on its celestial round. Which, naturally, was why there were such desperate efforts to ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster

... joined Sri Yukteswar in exhaustive criticism of others. Wise like the guru! Models of flawless discrimination! But he who takes the offensive must not be defenseless. The same carping students fled precipitantly as soon as Master publicly unloosed in their direction a few shafts from his ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda

... this in their usual fashion. Irregular troops were sent into Christian Bulgaria with orders to kill all they met. It was an order to the Mohammedan taste. The defenseless villages of Bulgaria were entered and their inhabitants slaughtered in cold blood, till thousands of men, women, and children had ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall

... were still huddled on the edge of the ravine when there came the thud of horses' hoofs and the crack of revolvers, accompanied by hoarse, triumphant yells and cries. Melissy knew instantly what it was—the attack of cattlemen upon her defenseless flock. They had waited until the sheep were on the edge of the precipice, and now they were going to drive the poor creatures down upon the rocks two hundred feet below. Her heart leaped to her ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine

... the standard. He was a kind of a martial band, too, on account of his aluminum cooking set rattling and jingling in the phonograph horn. He looked very severe. I guess the women and children will never forget when he passed through poor, defenseless Bridgeboro. They're laughing yet. Talk about ...
— Roy Blakeley's Bee-line Hike • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... that the blockading of even a defenseless coast would cost the blockading country a good deal of money, by reason of the loss of trade with that country. True; but war is always expensive, and the blockade would be very much more expensive to the blockaded country; and though it might hold out a ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske

... but when they were gone and he was once more alone with Nan, he was fighting desperately with a very manlike desire to smash something; to relieve the wrathful pressure by hurting somebody. Let it be written down to his credit that he did not wreak his vengeance on the defenseless. Thomas Jefferson, the boy, would not ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde



Words linked to "Defenseless" :   unarmed, defencelessly, defenselessly, vulnerable, defenceless, naked, defenselessness, unprotected



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