"Paralyse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... but he didn't need one, really. The vocal cords are all stretched—he said the specialists might help her and take away a great deal of the hoarseness, but that in his opinion she can never stand the strain of public singing again: he thinks excitement alone would paralyse the cords." ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... fingers, the agony of terror I instantly experienced is indescribable. I can compare it to nothing but the rushing in upon my brain of a whole churchyard of spectres. The very possibility of hearing a sound, in such a mood, and at such a time, was almost enough to paralyse me. So I could scare myself in broad daylight, on the open hillside, by imagining unintelligible sounds; and my imagination was both original and fertile in the invention of such. But my mind was ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... said Mr. Beckendorff; "they only tend to enervate our mental energies and paralyse all human exertion. It is the belief in these, and a thousand other deceits I could mention, which leach man that he is not the master of his own mind, but the ordained victim or the chance sport of circumstances, that makes millions pass through life unimpressive as shadows, and has gained for ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... at Khartoum, that Zobeir's presence would paralyse the Mahdi, that Zobeir must succeed him in the government of the country after the evacuation. Did not Sir Evelyn Baring, too, have the mystic feeling? Sir Evelyn Baring confessed that he had not. ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... blow was to paralyse the second-hand department. As far as new books went Isaac was fairly safe. If the Public was tricky he was generally up to its tricks. But with second-hand books you never knew where you were, not unless you had made a special study ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... cannot fulfil, what remains our plain duty, notwithstanding our inability to discharge it—viz., 'To do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God.' To think of God's requirements, and of my own failure, is the sure way to paralyse all activity; just as that man in the parable who said, 'Thou art an austere man,' went away and hid his talent in the earth. To think of God's requirements and my own failures, if heaven has nothing more to say to me than this stern 'Thou shalt,' ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... had controlled his married life appeared in his memory as a form of moral apathy. Was a human soul so small a thing that it could perish at his side and he be none the Wiser? What was his boasted intellect worth if it could paralyse the human part of him and exhaust the fount of his compassion? In his widening vision he saw that in the spirit of things humanity is one and indivisible, a single organism held together by a common pulse of life. To live or to die apart ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... the Sudan, and upon still more numerous legions of Indians in every branch of the civil administration to carry out all the menial work of government? If the Indians, untrained, and indeed forbidden, to bear arms, were unable at once to overthrow British rule, could they not at least paralyse its machinery, as Bepin Chandra Pal was preaching, by refusing to take any kind ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... who should mistake the x's and y's, with which he works his problems, for real entities—and with this further disadvantage, as compared with the mathematician, that the blunders of the latter are of no practical consequence, while the errors of systematic materialism may paralyse the energies and destroy the beauty of ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... general, the strange circumstantial rumour of the Queen's death, which, being set afloat on Easter Monday, when no business was doing, was not the offspring of the money market. Mr. and Mrs. Charles Kean, who were here the other day, spoke of it, saying truly that for the moment it seemed to paralyse the very heart of England.... [May 4th.] The great talk now is Mrs. Beecher Stowe and spirit-rapping, both of which have arrived in England. The universality of the latter phenomena renders it a curious study. A feeling seems pervading all classes and all sects that the world stands on the brink ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... became sly and cunning—risking capture, using neutral flags, and finding other subterfuges for new restrictions. The embargo would tie up the ships to rot, throw seamen out of employment, destroy perishable commodities like breadstuffs, and paralyse trade. From the moment of its passage, therefore, merchants and shipowners resisted it, charging that Napoleon's Decree had provoked the British Orders, and that if the former would recede, the latter would be modified. It revived the ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... dollars for the necessary research work and for such subsequent organisation of sanitary effort as may be required to extirpate this unquestionably preventable evil. I wonder how long such a state of affairs would have been permitted to interfere with the health and to paralyse the industry of urban communities. Had the hookworm, instead of lurking in country lanes, walked the streets, how would ...
— The Rural Life Problem of the United States - Notes of an Irish Observer • Horace Curzon Plunkett
... illegal punishments. Under the reign of Liberal Governments the writ of these courts runs where the King's writ cannot run, and the law of the League has been allowed in great measure to supersede the law of the land. We have also an increasing force in Irish Nationalism which seeks to paralyse the government of Ireland by means of the general or sympathetic strike. This organisation seeks to establish courts in Ireland in opposition to the ordinary law courts, and to enforce their decrees by means of illegal intimidation ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... withdrawn from the sphere of volition. The antagonism of the abdominal muscles to the diaphragm being necessary, in order that the pelvic viscera may be acted upon, if the cord be injured in the lower dorsal region, so as to paralyse the abdominal walls and the perinaeal muscles, the downward pressure of the diaphragm alone could not evacuate the pelvic organs voluntarily, for the abdominal muscles are now incapable of deflecting the line of force backwards and downwards ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise
... is far too large a question to be taken up at this stage of my essay, though there are various suggestions which I should like to make. Some disappointed men take to gardening and farming; and capital things they are. But when disappointment is extreme, it will paralyse you so that you will suffer the weeds to grow up all about you, without your having the heart to set your mind to the work of having the place made neat. The state of a man's garden is a very delicate and sensitive test as to whether he is keeping hopeful ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... he lifted his hunting-crop to strike, but it didn't take long to get that from his hand or to paralyse the arm with which he was lunging ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... unhappy figure shift indecisively as he rose from his seat in front of me, glance hurriedly about as if for a way of escape, then moving unsteadily round the pier, to my surprise he shuffled off in the direction of the organ. The music seemed to fascinate him, to paralyse his will, even as the sphex paralyses its ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... placed over the wrist and forearm to hit the ball with; and the game is much as in tennis, only there is no central net: merely a line. Each man's ambition, however, is less to defeat the returning power of the foe than to paralyse it by hitting the ball out of reach. It is as though a batsman were out if he ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... spared. But I will paralyse the strength you have criminally abused. Doctor David, do as ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... been injured by their fall. The man at the helm had been killed at his post, and the wheel itself was shivered to atoms; whilst the darkness of the night, and the roar of the breakers against the cliff, added to the horrors of a catastrophe of which the suddenness alone was sufficient to paralyse the energies of ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... dictation of the proletariat by these "impossibilists," in order to bring capitalist industry to its knees. For that purpose strikes are to be brought about as frequently as possible on no matter what pretext, provided that pretext calls out enough "hands" to paralyse capitalist industry. It may be increased wages one day, shorter hours the next, shop conditions the day after, anything that will cause ...
— Bolshevism: A Curse & Danger to the Workers • Henry William Lee
... millions of men, well accoutred and armed and provisioned, to come over to help us. If America placed all her mighty weight on the side of England at this moment, it would paralyse the German Army. If America said, as we are saying, that this war should never cease until Germany was powerless ever to make war again, you would do more for peace than if all the talkers in America ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... common is a laugh; a harsh, senseless laugh. The effect is to terrorise, to paralyse its prey. It is wicked. It climbs up into piercing, high, falsetto tones; all maniacal. . . . So insane that though one knows perfectly well what it is, it chills one's blood. This keeps on a long time, with variations. Every change seems worse than the last. But ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... rank firing as at a battue, each man independently. There were a few section volleys tried, the soldiers pausing for an instant to deliver their fire. Once or twice also, the rear rank was closed up, and joined in the fusilade. One effect was to paralyse the deer and birds within range. I noticed that the tip-filed bullets did not usually spread, and that their man-stopping quality was something of a myth. Even the dum-dum does not invariably "set up" on ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... Dante.[1] It is still more appalling to remember that the external hell which one sees, does not represent one tithe of the dreariness which lies hidden behind the eyes of the inhabitants. To imagine amid such scenes is to paralyse compassion with agony. The craving, never far from one's thoughts, is the age-old desire, "O that one might plead with God, as a man pleadeth for ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... last, and to him alas, fatal journey, was now no more. For an instant, I was almost tempted to wish that it had been my own fate instead of his. The horrors of my situation glared upon me in such startling reality, as for an instant almost to paralyse the mind. At the dead hour of night, in the wildest and most inhospitable wastes of Australia, with the fierce wind raging in unison with the scene of violence before me, I was left, with a single native, whose fidelity I could not rely upon, ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... fail to guard her altars from these Barbarian devils.[13] Had she not better call upon the arm of that wayward child whom she was going to bind fast, the arm of that young giant whom she wanted to paralyse? This movement in two opposite ways fills the whole ninth century. The people are held back, anon they are hurled forward: we fear them and we call on them for aid. With them and by means of them we throw up hasty barriers, defences that may check ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... details of these abuses it will be well to specify some of the general causes which tended to paralyse the energies and lower the tone ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... mobilization left upon the Allies was that of the preventive character of this war. For it could have had no other mainspring than a resolve to paralyse the arm of the Entente, which, if allowed to wax stronger, might smite in lieu of being smitten. For the moment, however, Germany was neither attacked nor menaced. Far from that, her rivals were vying with each other in their strivings to maintain peace. Her condition ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... not—according to our way of thinking, at all events; but we must not let that thought paralyse our energies. The vacant pulpit has its lesson for each one of ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... few years and you'll see a strike that will paralyse you. Look at these teamsters. They're powerful now. They'll get licked, but they'll come back. When the next big money panic comes—it'll be in my day, too—you'll see the streets of Chicago running with blood. These fellows will go ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... clear of the tunnel, and I believe that had it not been for that hand I should have sunk to the rocky floor, for the sight before me seemed to paralyse my brain. Nor was this to be wondered at, for I doubt whether the world can ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... Liberal Camp) as the best type of conservatism; cool, patient, keen, sceptical, critical, just, impartial, with a mind always open to conviction, but refusing to move until convinced. Such men are an invaluable element in the deliberative stages of every question; but their very critical powers paralyse action, and when movement becomes necessary their hesitations are a drawback. I fancy that Cornewall Lewis was just such another, but I did not ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... is a very curious thing," he said in a voice unnecessarily loud. "I've seen it take hold of men of proved courage and paralyse them. It's just like an epileptic fit—beyond a man's control. I've known a fellow—the most reckless, hare-brained daredevil you can imagine—to stand petrified with fear on the bank of a river, and let a wounded comrade drown before his eyes. And ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... strong barrier against attack from the north. Rumania's geographical position is such that a successful offensive from Hungary could soon penetrate to the capital, and by cutting the country in two could completely paralyse its organization. Such arguments acquired a magnified importance in the light of the failure of the negotiations with Bulgaria, and found many a willing ear in a country governed by a heavily involved landed class, and depending almost ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... intrigue, and superstition invaded the court, where the eunuchs and concubines exercised a pernicious influence. Magic was practised by some of the chief men in the State, and the belief was widely spread that it was possible by charms, incantations, and the use of waxen images, to bewitch men, or paralyse their limbs, or even to cause their deaths. Hags were to be found about the court as wicked as Canidia, who were willing to sell their skill in the black art to the highest bidder. The actual person of the monarch was not sacred from the plottings of this ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... alexin) which is usually present in normal blood, but is greatly increased when large numbers of certain poisonous microbes (e.g. those of typhoid fever) get into the blood. Again, by other chemical substances produced in it, the blood may, without actually killing the invading bacteria, only paralyse them, and cause them to "agglutinate" (that is, to adhere to one another as an inactive "clot" or "lump"). As the "agglutinating" poison is peculiar (or nearly so) for each kind of microbe, we can tell whether a patient has typhoid by drawing a drop of ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... been requested to present himself with his letters of credence in the camp. Henry was unwilling that he should enter Paris, being convinced that he came to do his best, by declamation, persuasion, and intrigue, to paralyse the enterprise. Sully's promises to Ubaldini, the former nuncius, that his Holiness should be made king, however flattering to Paul V., had not prevented his representatives from vigorously denouncing Henry's monstrous scheme to foment heresy ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... when human means are available, it becomes a Mahommedan rather than a Christian to rely upon Providence or fate alone, and make no effort for its own preservation. Individuals never fall into this error among you, drink as deeply as they may of fatalism; that narcotic will sometimes paralyse the moral sense, but it leaves the faculty of worldly prudence unimpaired. Far otherwise is it with your government: for such are the notions of liberty in England, that evils of every kind—physical, moral, and political, are allowed their free range. As relates to infectious ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... Wallingford, men noted fearfully that he fell three times from his horse. Terror spread among the barons, whose interests lay altogether in anarchy, as they saw the rapid increase of Henry's strength; and they sought by a mock compromise to paralyse the power of both Stephen and his rival. "Then arose the barons, or rather the betrayers of England, treating of concord, although they loved nothing better than discord; but they would not join battle, for they desired to exalt neither of the two, lest if the ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... is going on around us, it is easy to see that the anti-militarist movement is rapidly reaching a stage when it will be easily able, even unaided, to paralyse any war immediately and automatically. The pioneers in the movement have played the same part as was played in the seventeenth century by the Quakers. In the name of the Bible and their own consciences, the Quakers refused ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... his demonstration and for a moment or two stood in amazed silence. The audacity of the youngster appeared to paralyse his ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... "Only let the police paralyse the action of the Second Bureau agent, old Vagualame, and I, the false Corporal Vinson, will be all the more ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... assembly. But then, when the time did come for taking the plunge, he took it boldly and unshrinkingly. It was a delight to watch him during this Session, and especially when it became necessary to use the guillotine against the revolutionary and iniquitous attempt to paralyse the House of Commons by sheer shameless obstruction. The "guillotine" was a most serious, a most momentous, and even portentous departure from all precedent, except, of course, the Tory precedent of 1887; but the Old Man, when the proper time came, proposed the ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... were soon in movement for the imperial city. Their operations were skilfully and courageously directed, and spread such dismay as to paralyse the efforts of the usurper to retain possession of his throne. After a vain resistance, he abandoned the city to its fate, and fled no one knew whither. The aged and blind Isaac was taken from his dungeon by his subjects, and placed upon the throne ere the Crusaders were apprised of the flight ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... treachery, is now to be revealed and illustrated from various sources. Pickle was not only able to keep the Duke of Newcastle and George II. well informed as to the inmost plots, if not the most hidden movements of Prince Charles, but he could either paralyse a serious, or promote a premature, rising in the Highlands, as seemed best to his English employers. We shall find Pickle, in company with that devoted Jacobite, Lochgarry, travelling through the Highlands, exciting hopes, consulting the chiefs, unburying ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... Cabinet, with a nationalist element reporting its confidential councils with the Governor to Mr. Hofmeyr, the Bond Master, and President Steyn, the secret ally of President Krueger, would have been sufficient in itself to paralyse the faculties of any ordinary administrator at such a crisis. But this was not the only adverse influence with which circumstances brought Lord Milner into collision. Incredible as it may seem, it is none the less the fact that Sir William Butler, the General-in-Command ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... began. 'War, my dear sir, is indiscriminate. War spares not the child; it spares not the barrow of the harmless scavenger. No more,' he concluded, beaming, 'no more do I. Whatever may strike fear, whatever may confound or paralyse the activities of the guilty nation, barrow or child, imperial Parliament or excursion steamer, is welcome to my simple plans. You are not,' he inquired, with a shade of sympathetic interest, 'you are not, I trust, ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... representatives of their intangible foe. But the general feeling is despondent. The unfortunate landowners, house proprietors, and many of the merchants, complain bitterly that they are delivered into the hands of a "convict," whose ticket of leave enables him to paralyse the industry ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... universe is solved for Eucken through life and action. While continual contemplation and thought is apt to paralyse us, "action is the best defensive weapon against the dangers and trials of human existence." "Doubt is not cured by meditation, but by action." He believes that we can attain certainty through action of much that cannot be justified on rational grounds. If we wish to understand the ...
— Rudolph Eucken • Abel J. Jones
... to paralyse him. He had probably never been asked for his card before. He went lumbering off in the darkness, muttering "My ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... the worst of it was, he had no clear notion of what was the matter. He was changing. The world was changing too. It had suddenly expanded. He felt that he, also, ought to expand. There was so much to learn, to see, to know—so much, that it seemed to paralyse his initiative. Could he absorb all this? Would he ever get things in order once more, and recapture his self-possession? Would he ever again be satisfied with himself? It was an invasion of his tranquillity, from within and without. He was restless. Bright ideas never came to ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... height, and he is deeply moved. Any reflective mind might well have been stirred by the thought of the masses of men gathered there. Nothing is so futile as an arithmetical numbering of people, for after a certain point figures paralyse the imagination, and after that they tell the mind little or nothing. But here was actually assembled the Jewish people, coming in swarms from all the world, for the feast; here was Judaism at its most pious; here was the pilgrim centre with all it meant of aspiration and blindness, of simple ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... hardships, was that he might secure for Elizabeth a vast auriferous colony, the proceeds of which might rival the revenues of Mexico and Peru. But we must not make the mistake of supposing him to have been so wise before his time as to perceive that the real wealth which might paralyse a selfish power like that of Spain would consist in the cereals and other products which such a colony might ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... faculty, the godlike power of knowing and imagining, all actually less to me than my own tiny and fragile sensations. Such moods as these are strange things, because they bring with them so intense a desire to know, to perceive, and yet paralyse one with the horror of the darkness in which one moves. One cannot conceive why it is that one is given the power of realising the multiplicity of creation, and yet at the same time left so wholly ignorant of its significance. One longs to leap into the arms of God, to catch some whisper ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... disappoint the Emperor's designs. Gustavus Adolphus hoped, by his presence, to unite the discontented princes, or by the terror of his arms to detach them from the Emperor's party. Here, in the centre of Germany, he could paralyse the nerves of the imperial power, which, without the aid of the League, must soon fall—here, in the neighbourhood of France, he could watch the movements of a suspicious ally; and however important to ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... with hail; the air becomes thick with shadows, and resonant with the muttering of thunder. Those who have come through curiosity to behold the prodigy wish that they had never done so, so filled are their hearts with terror, and so does fear paralyse their limbs. Incredible as the marvel may seem, yet the proofs of its reality are too abundant to ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... last he spoke in a soft full voice: "Oh, pardon me, most lovely Egypt, if I have thus been stricken dumb before thee: but too great beauty, like Death himself, doth paralyse the tongue and steal our sense away. The eyes of him who looks upon the fires of the mid-day sun are blind to all beside, and thus this sudden vision of thy glory, royal Egypt, overwhelmed my mind, and left me helpless and unwitting ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... go black for a moment before Jimmie Dale's eyes, seemed to paralyse all action of mind and body. There was a low cry that was more a moan, the clang of the iron bar clattering on the floor, and Mike Hagan had pitched forward on his face, an inert and huddled heap. A half laugh, half ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... ourselves. It is not dependent in our thought, nor on our consciousness, nor on our will; and very possibly it is not dependent either on our life. While we are still breathing on this earth it is already surmounting most of the great obstacles that limit and paralyse our existence. It acts at a distance and so to speak without organs. It passes through matter, disaggregates it and reconstitutes it. It seems to possess, the gift of ubiquity. It is not subject to the laws ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... storm centre of their movement, and it began in the shape of a strike by the metal-workers, led by radicals of a pronounced type, who used the strike idea to further their revolutionary aims, and who devoted themselves to bringing about a general sympathetic strike in order to paralyse the business of the city and thus help their enterprise. The radicals succeeded in securing a general strike even to the post office staff and mail clerks, and this led to similar sympathetic movements in Brandon, Saskatoon, Edmonton, Calgary ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... that pregnant word the great truth that if once a man gets it into his head that God's principal relation to him is to demand, and to command, you will get no work out of that man; that such a notion will paralyse all activity and cut the nerve of all service. And the converse is as true, namely, that the one thought about God, which is fruitful of all blessing, joy, spontaneous, glad activity, is the thought of Him as giving, and not of demanding, of bestowing, and not of commanding. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... long and flexible line, for if once they forced a passage in large numbers they would sweep like a torrent southwards, envelop his rear, cut the railway and telegraph to pieces, stop all convoys, paralyse the movements of all troops up beyond Kroonstad, and once more raise the whole of the Free State, and very possibly a great portion of the Cape Colony ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... head and his outstanding ears, his backfisch waist and his mudscow feet—that military gargoyle, half lout and half fop, offends the roving eye. No doubt a handsome man, by German standards—even, perhaps a celebrated seducer, a soldier with a future—but the mere sight of him suffices to paralyse an American esophagus. Besides, there is the smell of chocolate, sweet, sickly, effeminate, and at two in the afternoon! Again, there is the music of Grieg, clammy, clinging, creepy. Away to the Mathaeserbraeu, two long blocks by taxi! From ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... incompetent hands, and that some man was not at its head who could have managed to have thrown upon Canadian soil, at Fort Erie and one or two other points, a force to act separately or in conjunction with sufficient effect to completely paralyse all opposition in Western Canada, among an already excited and incongruous host, who could have been easily swept before a compact handful of troops fired by a spirit so lofty and a resolve so unconquerable as that which actuated the brave little band ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... Rosmore started back, so close was the pistol to his head. He looked along it, and along the man's extended arm, and into his face, and a half-smothered cry broke from his lips. He had been caught unawares. Physically he was no coward, but the sight of the brown mask seemed to paralyse him. ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... Wolves, and Foxes, exercise this kind of chase; it is, exactly, the coursing which Man has merely had to direct for his own benefit. Wild dogs pursue their prey united in immense packs. They excite each other by barking while they frighten the game and half paralyse his efforts. No animal is agile and strong enough to be sure of escaping. They surround him and cut off his retreat in a most skilful manner; Gazelles and Antelopes, in spite of their extreme nimbleness and speed, are caught at last; Boars are rapidly driven into a corner; ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... will not in the end be missed, although it may require a considerable time to be fully understood. Officialism is a foe to inventive progress; and whether it exists under a regime of collectivism or under one of autocracy, it must paralyse industrial enterprise to that extent, thus rendering the country which has adopted it liable to ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... are able to paralyse all but strong-minded women with their deadly Tea-Tray. Also they burn a Red Weed, the smoke of which has smothered our troops in Westbourne Grove. No sooner have they despoiled Whiteley's than they will advance upon Jay's and Marshall and Snelgrove's. ...
— The War of the Wenuses • C. L. Graves and E. V. Lucas
... separate bodies of men, by a judicious arrangement of our partisan, were prepared to enter their country at the same moment. These were so placed, that, though operating separately, they might yet be made to cooperate if desired. The effect was such as to paralyse the incipient resolution of the loyalists. They showed no disposition for fight; and feeling their temper, conscious of his difficulties, and now no longer hopeful of help from the British, Gainey dispatched a flag to ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... weight on the mules and donkeys, and sent them back the next day to fetch the balance of the baggage. In this way, and by strengthening the poor beasts with a judicious use of corn, I managed to pull through and overcome this most serious of all difficulties, which, at one time, threatened to paralyse the entire expedition. ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... the progress of human civilisation has been very largely due to the successful efforts of man to resist and to remove pain. The most successful and progressive races of mankind are those which inhabit regions of the world where the conditions of life are neither so severe as to paralyse all exertion, or even to preclude its possibility, nor so favourable that men can avoid the pain of hunger or of cold without strenuous and unremitting effort. The stimulus of pain has been the means of perfecting the animal nature of man, and the secret of those victories ...
— Gloria Crucis - addresses delivered in Lichfield Cathedral Holy Week and Good Friday, 1907 • J. H. Beibitz
... Stormberg. French had to deal with an opponent whose confidence must now be presumed to be at its height. Moreover, reinforcements might reach the Boer leader at any moment. It had become more than ever necessary to paralyse him before he could initiate even the semblance of an organised incursion into territory where disloyalty might largely increase his numbers in a night. Only by incessant activity could French hope to attain this object, and fortunately the force under his command, if ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... pain with foolish, unfounded hopes and he never permits mad despair to paralyse him. He takes life as it is, and, as we all have to do, makes the best of its confusions. If we are here "as on a darkling plain, swept by confused alarms of struggle and flight, where ignorant armies clash by night," we can at least ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... not paralyse his pen. In 1839 he published a vehement attack upon the Ballot, from which he foresaw no better results than the enfranchisement of every one, including women, universal corruption, systematic lying, and a victory for the "lower order of voters" over their "betters." ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... prey is, and the larger the reputation he may have for living a blameless life, the more persistent their whisperings, significant nods, and winkings become. They know, and they could tell, a thing or two which would paralyse belief. They could show how correct they have been in consistently proclaiming that so and so was a very much overestimated man, and never ought to have been put into such a high position; "and besides, I don't want to say all I know, but his depravity! Well, ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... the word is not too strong—never could be known in our happy country. Yes, gentlemen; but since that time it has been known in our happy country. Since that time false telegrams about the entry of the Russian army into Constantinople have been sent home to disturb, and paralyse, and reverse the deliberations of Parliament, and have actually stopped these deliberations, and led experienced statesmen to withhold their action because of this intelligence, which was afterwards, and shortly afterwards, ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... known. With massive, bony skull held low, and saliva dripping from his short, powerful jaws, the old wolf sent forth his most terrible snarl of challenge and defiance; the cry which had been used in bygone years to paralyse his victims into a condition which made them easy prey for his tearing claws and lance-like tusks. But the horrible sound was powerless so far as Finn was concerned, and the Wolfhound gathered himself together now for the administration of punishment which should ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... for support, and the other pressed hard to her side as though to repress a hard pain." Meanwhile she wrote a bosom friend: "There is in our nature a disposition to indulgence, a secret desire to escape from labor, which unless hourly combated will overcome the best faculties of our minds and paralyse our most useful powers.... I have often entertained a dread lest I should fall a victim to my besieger, and that fear has ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... fight on two sides, and the still more dangerous position of having no line of retreat left open, paralyse the movements and the power of resistance; further, in case of defeat, they increase the loss, often raising it to its extreme point, that is, to destruction. Therefore, the rear being endangered makes defeat more probable, and, at the same ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... contract and warp the natural progress of life. They paralyse all of it that is not devoted to their tyranny and caprice. This makes the difference between the laughing innocence of childhood, the pleasantness of youth, and the crabbedness of age. A load of cares lies like a ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... be a worthy object of love, one that will not anywhere disappoint or need forbearance.... I have no child, and the woman in me has so craved this experience that it has seemed the want of it must paralyse me...." ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... representation of the Irish nation in parliament—still, the oath was that of a society declared to be illegal, and the administration of it had been made a capital offence. The boldness of the advocate in thus administering it to himself in open court appeared to paralyse the minds of the judges. They took no notice of the act, and what was even more remarkable, the prisoners, who were convicted, ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... man in the boat is keeping his distance. He'll never see you. Don't splash when you take the water. Swim like an otter, under, until you're well out. ... You're young and sturdy, slim as you are. You'll get through if the chill of Isla doesn't paralyse you. But you've got to do it, Yellow-hair; you've ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... stupor the critical necessity of lying quite still; so that, when I at last awoke and felt that as I lay with my face toward the roof, there was a thick, heavy, cold, creeping thing upon my chest, I stirred not, nor uttered a word of panic. Danger and fear may occasionally dull the sense and paralyse the faculties, but they more frequently sharpen both, and ere I could wink my eye, I was broad awake and aware that, coiling and coiling itself up into a circle of twists, an enormous serpent was on my breast. When I tell you that the whole ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... was Gotwar, who used to paralyse the most eloquent and fluent men by her glib and extraordinary insolence; for she was potent in wrangling, and full of resource in all kinds of disputation. Words were her weapons; and she not only trusted in questions, but was armed with stubborn answers. ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... tactics passed down from above, inadequate co-operation by the divisions fighting side by side with us, and the failure of our artillery to hit the pill-boxes which we had hoped could be put out of action by our heavy shells, further combined to paralyse efforts which, had they been directed to more easy tasks, would now, as often, have earned for the Division the highest ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... whether we win by stratagem or force. But I need not say to your highness, that we should carefully beware lest we be amused by inventions of the enemy, and trust to conspiracies which may be but lying tales to blunt our sabres, and paralyse our action." ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book II. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... at work, and soon turned Tippoo's wonderful garden into a scene of desolation. The sultan saw that his situation was becoming desperate, and made an attempt to negotiate, but at the same time thought to paralyse the efforts of the English and end the war, by procuring the assassination of their chief. A number of horsemen, drugged and maddened by bhang, vowed to bring to the sultan the head of his foe, and lay it at his feet as an offering. They made ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... dissuade him. You, My reverend doctors, help in this, and you, My faithful ministers and counsellors, If, haply, grief should paralyse my tongue. ...
— Turandot, Princess of China - A Chinoiserie in Three Acts • Karl Gustav Vollmoeller
... the ship, he had been hurled athwart the deck and against the lee rail of the poop, the impact of his body upon the hard wood was so severe that the breath was completely knocked out of him, while the pain must have been so great as practically to paralyse him for the moment and render him quite unable to do anything to help himself. Hence the probability was that, once in the water, he would have sunk for good and all, and that but for my promptitude in diving after him he would never again have been seen. And when at ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... an ugly rush from Sydney on the news of the coming annexation, and most of whom as promptly retreated on finding the proclamation to be a reality. But at the same time his treaty and his proclamation were bound to paralyse settlement, to exasperate the entire white population, and to plunge the infant colony into a sea of troubles. Outside the missionaries and the officials every one was uneasy and alarmed. All the settlers were either landowners, land claimants, or would-be land purchasers. Yet they ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... pair of eyes—a pair of eyes. For a moment Paul's heart felt as if it had stopped beating, so wonderful was their effect upon him. They seemed to draw him—draw something out of him—intoxicate him—paralyse him. And as he gazed up motionless the woman moved noiselessly back on to the terrace, and he saw nothing but the night ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... manumission, for introducing education and Christianity, which will not be met with the remonstrance, undeniably just by your own concessions, that you are encroaching on the sacred rights of property,—the slaveholders see all this, and they can employ it to paralyse and defeat all your efforts to get at emancipation, and to prepare for it. It is on this account, that I wish it settled in your minds, as a fixed and immutable principle, that there is and can be no property of man in man. Adopt this principle, and give it that ascendency ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... is to paralyse the Allied offensive by striking with all our naval weight at his cross-channel communications. The U-boat war is too slow, and time is not on our side, whilst a hammer blow down the Channel might do great things. ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... lay silent thus, I was able in some degree to call my wits around me. And the difficulty of knowing in what course I ought to direct conversation presented itself, and seemed to numb my faculties and paralyse me. ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... consoled, satisfied, by God only; He communicates Himself to this part of the soul. Sins of heart and mind do not injure it, but retard it: it cannot be corrupted by material living, because it does not connect itself directly with earth-living, it "responds" to God alone; but earthly sins delay it, paralyse its powers, postpone indefinitely its return to God. Is it this part of the soul which we ordinarily speak of as the Will? It cannot be, since it is with our Will that we consent to earth-sins. Have we, then, two ...
— The Prodigal Returns • Lilian Staveley
... smaller than a crochet needle. Look at me! I am growing a beard so that people can't see my Adam's apple. That's how poor and thin I'm getting to be. Now just listen a minute; I'll give you a few figures that will paralyse you." ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... half-a-score village ruffians whose threatened moonlighting exploits, when considered in conjunction with the bloody deeds which have characterised the district up to recent times, are sufficient to paralyse the whole force of the British Empire, when that force is directed by the feeble fumblers now ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... troops on duty round Pylos, except the garrison on the fort. The tactics of Demosthenes had divided them into companies of two hundred, more or less, and made them occupy the highest points in order to paralyse the enemy by surrounding him on every side and thus leaving him without any tangible adversary, exposed to the cross-fire of their host; plied by those in his rear if he attacked in front, and by those on one flank if he moved against ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... leader. No man is indispensable. God's work goes on uninterrupted. The instruments are changed, but the Master-hand is the same, and lays one tool aside and takes another out of the tool-chest as He will. Moses is dead,—what then? Does his death paralyse the march of the tribes? No; it is but the ground for the ringing command, 'Therefore arise, go over this Jordan.' The immediate installation of his successor, and the uninterrupted continuance of the advance, do not mean that Moses is not honoured or is forgotten, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... manner the origin of the custom "of subjecting criminals in India to the ordeal of the morsel of rice. The accused is made to take a mouthful of rice, and after a little time to throw it out. If the morsel is quite dry, the party is believed to be guilty,— his own evil conscience operating to paralyse ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... present day should be trained. All these sons of the present, who have raised the banner of the 'self-understood,' are therefore straining every nerve to crush down these feelings of youth, to cripple them, to mislead them, or to stop their growth altogether; and the favourite means employed is to paralyse that natural philosophic impulse by the so-called "historical culture." A still recent system,[10] which has won for itself a world-wide scandalous reputation, has discovered the formula for this self-destruction of ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... and Mrs. Pouncer, who had engaged to muster, at the signal of tea, on the 14th—prepared, as it were, for the worst. There was of course always the chance that Lady Wantridge might take the field, in such force as to paralyse them, though that danger, at the same time, seemed inconsistent with her being squared. It didn't perhaps all quite ideally hang together; but what it sufficiently came to was that if she was the one who could do most FOR a person in Mrs. ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... by some vague shadow of the dead, but by a definite though incalculable influence that was actively alive, and dangerous. At the least smell of smoke the entire household quivered. An odour of burning, I was convinced, would paralyse all the inmates. For the servants, though professedly ignorant by the master's unspoken orders, yet shared the common dread; and the hideous uncertainty, joined with this display of so spiteful and calculated a spirit of malignity, provided a kind of black doom that draped not ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... mood, which seemed to paralyse her, lasted in reality but a few minutes; she was roused by her mother's voice and touch. She looked up for a moment, but with hard tearless eyes and set lips, and only to put away from her the hand that had been ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... words, did this strong-minded female paralyse the Pecksniffian energies; and so she swept out of the room, and out of the house, attended by her daughters, who, as with one accord, elevated their three noses in the air, and joined in a contemptuous titter. As they passed the parlour window on the outside, they were ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... the unseen lady. The servitor made a motion to obey, but the swoop of the sword seemed to paralyse him where he stood. He cast a beseeching look at his mistress, which said as plainly as words: "You are ordering me to my death." The Count, his weapon high in mid-air, suddenly swerved it from its course, for there appeared across the opening a woman's hand and arm, white and shapely, fleecy ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... the meeting of the Councils to St. Cloud. Bonaparte had secured the support of almost all the generals and troops in Paris. His brother Lucien, now President of the Council of Five Hundred, hoped to paralyse the action of his own Assembly, in which the conspirators were ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... in other countries, werwolves are credited with demoniacal power, and old women who possess the property of metamorphosing into wolves are said to be able to paralyse cattle and children with their eyes, and to have poison in their nails, one wound from ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... National Female Franchise Federation; the financial distress of the florists, caterers, milliners and modistes incident to the almost total suspension of social functions throughout the great cities of the land, threatened eventually to paralyse ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... stronger will and the stern order, Dick, who had been striking out with all his might, calmed down and began to swim steadily, but with a great dread seeming to paralyse his limbs, while Josh, who ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... of delight was followed by the chorus, and Okiok was about to resume, when a terrific rending sound seemed to paralyse every one. Well did they know that sound. It was the rending of the solid ice on which they stood. The advancing spring had so far weakened it that a huge cake had broken off from the land-ice, and was now detached. A shriek from some of the women drew attention to the fact ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne |
