"Impotent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... themselves, suffered from the then convulsed state of the world. They asked him, "Where is thy God?" But he declined founding the believer's privileges on individual exemptions, or personal providences. "My God," said he, "in all his attributes, different from the false impotent Gods of the Heathen, is to be found wherever his worshippers are;—if I am carried into captivity, his consolations shall yet reach me;—if I lose the possessions of this life, my precious faith shall still supply their want;—and ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... and that of a distinction between the pauper and the vagabond, were more clearly defined in a statute of 1572. By this Act the justices in the country districts, and mayors and other officers in towns, were directed to register the impotent poor, to settle them in fitting habitations and to assess all inhabitants for their support. Overseers were appointed to enforce and superintend their labour, for which wool, hemp, flax, or other stuff was to be provided at the expense of the inhabitants; ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... old man was not carried to the house without a scene. He raved, and screamed, and swore, and finally fell to the ground in a fit of impotent rage, protesting to the last that Jack was a liar. When those who were present had been worked up to the highest pitch of excitement, Bradley ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... with most formidable effect. The Tories acted after their kind. Instead of removing the grievance they tried to put down the agitation, and brought in a law, apparently sharp and stringent, but in truth utterly impotent, for restraining the right of petition. Lord Holland's Protest on that occasion ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... a forward movement we should have sprung upon them with the ferocity of bull-dogs. Those four soldiers never knew how near they were to meeting their deserts upon that day. As it was we merely scraped our feet in impotent rage. It was this fidgeting which aroused their attention. They turned and must have read our innermost intentions written in our faces, for they instantly grabbed their rifles and rounded upon us. With a motion which could not be misunderstood, ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... by the Secretary of the American Iron-Association, and by authority of the same. This Association—now four years old—is not a common trades-union, nor any impotent combination to resist the law of supply and demand. Its general objects, as stated in the constitution, are "to procure regularly the statistics of the trade, both at home and abroad; to provide for the mutual interchange of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... for complaint, for marriage without enjoyment is a thorn without roses. She was passionate, but her principles were stronger than her passions, or else she would have sought for what she wanted elsewhere. My impotent brother excused himself by saying that he loved her so well that he thought cohabitation with her would restore the missing faculty; he deceived himself and her at the same time. In time she died, and he married ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... means. The chilling of brain and heart, the unnerving of the hands, the slow gathering about one of fear and shame and impotent wrath, the dread feeling of helplessness, of the ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... it possible for men to know things so great and divine."[44] Frequently the patristic writers have occasion to emphasize the inability of man to attain by any of his natural powers to religious truth, and to point to the impotent longings and aspirations of Greek philosophy as an example of this. St. Clement of Alexandria, for example, asserts that "the chiefs of philosophy only guessed at" religious truth,[45] and lays down the general principle that ...
— The Basis of Early Christian Theism • Lawrence Thomas Cole
... is not wholly irresponsive to the behests of the soul. While in the course of physical evolution many important functions have undergone remarkable changes, and organs, once active and useful, have become stunted, impotent, and in some cases extinct, yet on the other hand we see that seeds which have lain dormant in arid soil for hundreds of years can spring into leaf and flower under the influence ...
— Second Sight - A study of Natural and Induced Clairvoyance • Sepharial
... Clarice realised this. But it was sufficient to soften the rocky hardness which had been the worst element of her pain—to take away the blind chance against which her impotent wings had been beaten in vain efforts to escape from the dark cage. It was that contact with "the living will of a living person," which gives the human element to what would otherwise ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... went on, "hitherto the police have remained impotent, and justice has been disarmed, in presence of a number of serious cases of crime, committed recently and still unsolved. Let me recall these cases to your memory: they were the murder of the Marquise de Langrune at her chateau of Beaulieu; the robberies from Mme. Van den Rosen and the ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... smile which set her heart to aching. Adelais knew that no natural power could dissuade him; he would go back with her; but she knew how constantly he had hoped for liberty, with what fortitude he had awaited his chance of liberty; and that he should return to captivity, smiling, thrilled her to impotent, heart-shaking rage. It maddened her that he dared ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... to your fledglings again, Mother, oh lift up your head! Evil that plagued us is slain, Death in the garden lies dead. Terror that hid in the roses is impotent—flung on the dung-hill ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... of Church Government. He was not much over thirty when he wrote those words: and they remained true of him to the end. For twenty years the strife was active and public; ever, in appearance at least, more and more successful: then for the final fourteen it became the impotent wrath of a caged and wounded lion. Never for a moment did his soul bow to the triumph of the idolaters: but neither could it forget them, nor make any permanent escape into purer air. Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained and Samson, ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... feature of him here; you would never dream that this Book treated of him at all. A pale sickly shadow in torn surplice is presented to us here; weltering bewildered amid heaps of what you call 'Hebrew Old-clothes;' wrestling, with impotent impetuosity, to free itself from the baleful imbroglio, as if that had been its one function in life: who in this miserable figure would recognize the brilliant, beautiful and cheerful John Sterling, with his ever-flowing wealth of ideas, fancies, imaginations; ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... cares, my hero, for your impotent rage?" My uncle seized me by my thick curling hair, and turned round my face, hot with passion and streaming with tears of rage, to the gaze of my sneering enemies. "I will make you know, that you are in my house and in my power—and you shall submit to ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... hushing sod, Wrapt in the peace of God, While summer burns above thee; while the land Disrobes; till pitying snow Cover her bareness; till fresh Spring-winds blow, And the sun-circle rounds itself again:— Whilst England cries in vain For thy wise temperance, Lucius!—But thine ear The violent-impotent fever-restless cry, The faction-yells of triumph, will not hear: —Only the thrush on high And wood-dove's ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... gratification,—of Bacchanalian revelry;—or, perhaps, two or three dunces, whose intellects and moral feelings are of such a stamp, as to render them rather impracticable subjects for academical discipline, have contrived some plan of impotent resistance to the college authorities, or some plot of petty and vexatious annoyance, in order to give vent to their mortification, when such silly resistance has been proved to be ineffectual. Wishing for the screen or protection of numbers, they will try to persuade their companions, ...
— Advice to a Young Man upon First Going to Oxford - In Ten Letters, From an Uncle to His Nephew • Edward Berens
... Moslems, champions of The Faith, warring in Allah's way, who boarded the vessel and making prize of all therein, knights and maidens, gifts and monies, sold their booty in the city of Kayrawan.[FN499] Miriam herself fell into the hands of a Persian merchant, who was born impotent[FN500] and for whom no woman had ever discovered her nakedness; so he set her to serve him. Presently, he fell ill and sickened well nigh unto death, and the sickness abode with him two months, during which she tended him after the goodliest ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... effort was fruitless. Cudgel her wearied brain as she would, it could not make pace to the goal she sought. When, after a sleepless night, she rose, it was with the maze of disaster still unthreaded. Her usual ingenuity of resource was become impotent. Raging against her own supineness, she was yet forced ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... He took up a sort of hollow cylinder, called a barrel, in which the spring is enclosed, and removed the steel spiral, but instead of relaxing itself, according to the laws of its elasticity, it remained coiled on itself like a sleeping viper. It seemed knotted, like impotent old men whose blood has long been congealed. Master Zacharius vainly essayed to uncoil it with his thin fingers, the outlines of which were exaggerated on the wall; but he tried in vain, and soon, with a terrible cry of anguish and rage, ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... he was so fond of the night-school that he accepted this aid as a proof of the estimation in which his work was held, and as an additional fund, but not in ease of his own payments." Such a close to such a life will seem either a lame and impotent conclusion or a most fitting and harmonious cadence, according to the point ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... the dancing couples through the windows with the impotent yearning of the cripple; the voluptuous rhythm of the waltz thrilled him through ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... to their internal economy; under the rapid progress of civilization, the population increased and the fields were cultivated. The nobility, reduced to moderation by the enfeebling consequences of extensive foreign wars, became comparatively impotent in their attempted efforts against domestic freedom. Those of Flanders and Brabant, also, were almost decimated in the terrible battle of Bouvines, fought between the Emperor Othon and Philip Augustus, king of France. On no occasion, however, had ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... you hurt me so," the poor little fellow suddenly screamed out; and the father's heart swelled almost to bursting with impotent fury as he saw the cruel clutch with which the wretch was digging his long thin sinewy fingers into the tender flesh of the boy's shoulder as he forced him toward an adjoining tree, to which he forthwith proceeded to ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... house of his meditated crime, he was still in great peril. Doubtless Julius had given full information to the police of his name and residence, and even now they might be in pursuit of him. He ground his teeth when he thought of this, and clinched his fist in the impotent desire for vengeance. ...
— Slow and Sure - The Story of Paul Hoffman the Young Street-Merchant • Horatio Alger
... was no fighting, for General Lovell who was in command of the city marched away with his army as soon as the Union ships appeared. The citizens who were left were filled with impotent wrath and despair. They felt themselves betrayed. They had been assured that the city would fight to the last. Now their defenders had marched away leaving them to ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... impotent, loose in the knees, Open your scarf'd chops till I blow grit within you, Spread your palms and lift the flaps of your pockets, I am not to be denied, I compel, I have stores plenty and to spare, And any thing I have ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... humanity, to stay The pressure and the jostle that alway Are ready to disturb, what'er we do, And mar the work our hands would carry through, None more than this environs us each day With kindly wardenship—'Therefore, I say, Take no thought for the morrow.' Yet we pay The wisdom scanty heed, and impotent To bear the burden of the imperious Now, Assume, the future's exigence unsent. God grants no overplus of power: 'tis shed Like morning manna. Yet we dare to bow And ask, 'Give ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller
... remind me that he claims for him no material potency; and I must own that no happier moment could have been chosen for the annunciation of an impotent God. But the plea does not quite tally with the facts. In the first place (as we have seen) the Invisible King is going to do things—he is going to do very remarkable things as soon as he knows how. And in the second place it is impossible ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... with Richmond troubles me more neere, Then Buckingham and his rash leuied Strength. Come, I haue learn'd, that fearfull commenting Is leaden seruitor to dull delay. Delay leds impotent and Snaile-pac'd Beggery: Then fierie expedition be my wing, Ioues Mercury, and Herald for a King: Go muster men: My counsaile is my Sheeld, We must be breefe, when Traitors braue ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... dampness broke out on the palms of his hands. If she did this bold thing, what could he say to those she told her lie to? How could he bring proof or explain who he was—and what story dare he tell? His protestations and struggles would merely amuse the lookers-on, who would see in them only the impotent ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... they cannot be regarded as forming part of anything that could be truly called a labor movement. "There are,'' says Mr. Cole, "now in America two working classes, with different standards of life, and both are at present almost impotent in the face of the employers. Nor is it possible for these two classes to unite or to put forward any demands. . . . The American Federation of Labor and the Industrial Workers of the World represent two different principles of combination; but they also represent two different classes of labor.''[30] ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... cold, unsmiling word, and a businesslike quotation from the menu. He felt as though he had been struck. His face burned. In the West, a fellow couldn't do that and get away with it! He tightened an impotent, thin fist. He filled the order and kept his distance, and, absurdly enough, gave Lorrimer's tip to another waiter and went without his own dinner. For the first time in his life a sense of social inferiority, of humiliation concerning the nature of his work, came to him. ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... broke out upon the body politic—they were not accidental or sporadic things, and they were not to be remedied by putting any number of men in jail; they were to be understood as the system whereby an industrial oligarchy had rendered impotent a political democracy, and had fenced it out from ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... and was standing in front of Bill, trembling with rage as impotent as though he were little and lame, leaning, like Bill, on the crutch a less valiant cripple would have used instead ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... over his mouth, and with veins swelling up and eyes starting from his head in impotent fury, Mr. Oppner was hustled forward through ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... leaning from their windows, gazed on the huge watery masses breaking beneath their eyes, they could not but admire the magnificent spectacle of the ocean in its impotent fury. The waves rebounded in dazzling foam, the beach entirely disapppearing under the raging flood, and the cliff appearing to emerge from the sea itself, the spray rising to a height of more than ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... And that in man which is most of kin with God languishes most when so cut off. And when we have blocked Him out from our field of vision, all that remains for us to look at suffers degradation, and becomes phantasmal, poor, unworthy to detain, and impotent to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... altogether desirable. The trouble is that we have been confusing knowledge and wisdom in the face of the poet's declaration that "Knowledge and wisdom, far from being one, have ofttimes no connection." Our experience should have taught us that many people who have much knowledge are relatively impotent for the reason that they have not learned how to use their knowledge in the way of generating power. Gasoline is an inert substance, but, under well-understood conditions, it affords power. Water is not power, but man has learned how to use it in generating power. Knowledge is ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... childhood; saw behind them the anxious eyes of his parents, Sir Harry's debonair smile, the sinister face of old Squire Moyle, malevolent yet terribly afraid; saw that the moving figures could not control their steps, that the watching faces were impotent to warn; saw finally beside the road other ways branching to left and right, and down these undestined and neglected avenues the ghosts of ambitions unattempted, lives not lived, all ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... therefore, far from bright. It will be generally agreed that the bankruptcy or serious impoverishment of the unions of this country would be nothing less than a national disaster; but unless action of some kind is taken, they will become greatly weakened and almost impotent, and one great bulwark against unjust encroachments upon the rights of ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... stertorous breathing of the emperor. The crowned demon of the island was being borne away to his palace upon the shoulders of his attendants. Although maddened by an insatiable thirst, and by a gloom that was becoming habitual, the monster lay upon his cushions as impotent as a child, in the midst ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... graces of life, are difficult of attainment by those that are wanting in Exertion. The Brahmana attains to prosperity by holy living, the Kshatriya by prowess, the Vaisya by manly exertion, and the Sudra by service. Riches and other objects of enjoyment do not follow the stingy, nor the impotent, nor the idler. Nor are these ever attained by the man that is not active or manly or devoted to the exercise of religious austerities. Even he, the adorable Vishnu, who created the three worlds with the Daityas and all the gods, even He is engaged in austere penances in the bosom of the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... but her biting kiss had not hurt me. My heart was full of hope and joy. This girl's impotent jealousy had convinced me of the reality of my happiness. I was beloved, and I loved again; and could the venomous tongue of a jealous woman incense me against an angel like Flamma? True love is like pure gold, and the acid ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... people who offer vague commonplaces, or what they call "hopes;" she was spared also that savage disappointment to which many are doomed who in their trouble find that all philosophy fails them, and the books on their shelves look so impotent, so beside the mark, that they narrowly escape being ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... nothing but the 'Ernest Maltravers' books, you would think perhaps more highly of him. Do you not think it possible now? It is his most impotent struggling into poetry, which sets about proving a negative of genius on him—that, which the Athenaeum praises as 'respectable attainment in various walks of literature'—! like the Athenaeum, isn't it? and worthy praise, to be administered by professed ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... Their wishes became thoughts and their fears were dispelled as fancies. They beheld only what they yearned for, and when at last they dropped from the dizzy height of their castles in cloudland their whole world, era, and ideal was shattered. Unavailing remorse, impotent rage, spiritual and intense physical exhaustion completed their demoralization. The more harried and reckless among them became frenzied. Turning first against their rulers, then against one another, they ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... are admitted to overhear their chat, and to watch their familiar gestures. It is interesting and curious to recognise, in circumstances which elude the notice of historians, the feeble violence and shallow cunning of Louis the Twelfth; the bustling insignificance of Maximilian, cursed with an impotent pruriency for renown, rash yet timid, obstinate yet fickle, always in a hurry, yet always too late; the fierce and haughty energy which gave dignity to the eccentricities of Julius; the soft and graceful manners which masked the insatiable ambition ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Canaan and laid waste the land of Israel. A few years later, Rameses III. led his fleet and his army to the Syrian coast and defeated the Asiatics in a great sea-battle. He failed to hold the country, however, and after his death Egypt remained impotent for two centuries. Then, under Sheshonk I., of Dynasty XXII., a new attempt was made, and Jerusalem was captured. Takeloth II., of the same dynasty, sent thither an Egyptian army to help in the overthrow ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... savagely, and would have liked to strike her, to beat out his passion on her white breast and shoulders. But she had spoken only the truth when she said he dare not touch her. With impotent oaths he sought to let off the anger that boiled in him. He feared to think, and every word she had uttered made him think in spite of himself. The events of sixty hours had destroyed what little of good there was in the man. Save only the idolatrous love for ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... museful, and inattentive to my situation, yet made no motion to depart. I was silent in my turn. What could I say? I was confident that reason in this contest would be impotent. I must owe my safety to his own suggestions. Whatever purpose brought him hither, he had changed it. Why then did he remain? His resolutions might fluctuate, and the pause of a few minutes restore to him ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... required to adore him, although it must be clear to the commonest capacity to-day that the worship of such a deity is devil-worship. I do not say there is no God; I only say this is not God—this blood-lover, this son-slayer, this blind omniscience, this impotent omnipotence, this merciful cruelty, this meek arrogance, this peaceful combatant; this is not God, but man. The mind of man wars with the works of God to mar them. Man tries to make us believe that he is made in the image of God; but what happened was just the reverse. ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... one which is told of Ned Thurlow's discomfiture in 1788, when he was playing a trickster's game with his friends and foes. Windsor Castle just then contained three distinct centres of public interest—the mad king in the hands of his keepers; on the one side of the impotent monarch the Prince of Wales waiting impatiently for the Regency; on the other side, the queen with equal impatience longing for her husband's recovery. The prince and his mother both had apartments in the castle, her majesty's quarters being ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... the infamous thief-catcher. And so anxious, on the other hand, was the law to be quit of their too zealous servant, that an Act of Parliament was passed with the sole object of placing Jonathan's head within the noose. His method, meagre though masterly, lulled him too soon to an impotent security. She, with her larger view of life, her plumper sense of style, was content with nothing less than an ultimate sovereignty, and manifestly ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... of insanity is called illusional or delusional. In it the intellect is not impotent; on the contrary, it is often unusually active; but its action is abnormal, its conclusions are false. Not that it reasons illogically or draws conclusions which are not contained in the premises. Very ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... rous'd by that dark Vizir Riot rude Have driven our PRIESTLEY o'er the Ocean swell; Though Superstition and her wolfish brood Bay his mild radiance, impotent and fell; Calm in his halls of brightness he shall dwell! 5 For lo! RELIGION at his strong behest Starts with mild anger from the Papal spell, And flings to Earth her tinsel-glittering vest, Her mitred ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... resolved to espouse Pauline; but frightened by the shrinkage of the "magic skin" he fled precipitately and returned to Paris. Pauline hastened after him, only to behold him die upon her breast in a transport of furious, impotent love. [The Magic Skin.] ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... would he not see with augmented power within the natural limits of vision? At any rate, some persons seem to have opened more eyes than others, they see with such force and distinctness; their vision penetrates the tangle and obscurity where that of others fails like a spent or impotent bullet. How many eyes did Gilbert White open? how many did Henry Thoreau? how many did Audubon? how many does the hunter, matching his sight against the keen and alert sense of a deer or a moose, or fox or a wolf? ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... and the shrill cries of Winapie as she urged them to the attack; himself in the midst of the crush, breathless, panting, striving to hold off red death; broken-backed, entrail-ripped dogs howling in impotent anguish and desecrating the snow; the virgin white running scarlet with the blood of man and beast; the bear, ferocious, irresistible, crunching, crunching down to the core of his life; and Winapie, at the last, in the thick of the frightful muddle, hair flying, eyes flashing, fury incarnate, passing ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... seventeen delegates,—its main function being to suppress all liberal movements in the various German States; like the Congress of Vienna itself. The Diet of Frankfort was pretentious, but practically impotent, and was the laughingstock of Europe. It was full of jealousies and intrigues. It was a mere diplomatic conference. As Austria and Prussia controlled it, things went well enough when these two Powers were agreed; but they did ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... nature, the Jew with the law of Moses, alike fail to achieve righteousness. 'All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.' All do what they would not, and do not what they would; all feel themselves enslaved, impotent, guilty, miserable. 'O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?' Hitherto we have followed Paul in the sphere of morals; we have now come with him to the point where he enters the sphere of religion." ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... world have time to bloom, are generally attractive rather than repulsive places, and I was on that account the more surprised to find myself repelled by these field-hospitals. To see men lying about distorted, impotent, disfigured by all kinds of fantastic deformities, their wounds still new, themselves lying near the spot where they fell; and to remember the cause of it all, and how vague that cause really was to the men ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... his powerful and elastic mind, impatient of impotent sorrow, and burning for some kind of action, seized upon vengeance as the only thing left ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... the other end of Switzerland a poor little League of (Allied) Nations (excluding the United States, Russia, and most of the 'subject peoples' of the world), meeting obscurely amidst a world-wide disregard to make impotent gestures at the leading problems of the debacle. Either the disaster has not been vast enough yet or it has not been swift enough to inflict the necessary moral shock and achieve the necessary moral revulsion. ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... finish it at last. A simple sum of compound addition puzzled the man who, an hour before, could have gone through the whole of the arithmetic in his sleep. Oh, boasted intellect of man! How little is it thou canst do when the delicate and feeling heart is out of tune! How impotent thou art! How like a rudderless ship upon a stormy sea! Poor Burrage was helpless and adrift! And Michael sat for hours together alone, in his little room. He was literally afraid to creep out of it. He struggled to keep his mind steadily and composedly fixed upon the fate that awaited him—a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... with impotent rage. This range-rider always had interfered with his affairs from the first moment he had met him. If ever he got the chance again to stamp him out—! The strong fingers of the man worked with the nervous longing to tighten ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... circumvallation, do incessantly travail and turmoil, and are in a perpetual stir and agitation. To this purpose Hippocrates also writeth in his book, De Aere, Aqua et Locis, that in his time there were people in Scythia as impotent as eunuchs in the discharge of a venerean exploit, because that without any cessation, pause, or respite they were never from off horseback, or otherwise assiduously employed in some troublesome and ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... change from the monotony of sea life, and, at the same time, provide themselves with the means of unlimited indulgence in more or less vicious enjoyment for the remainder of their lives?—and I noticed, with impotent anger, that, having at length arrived, as they supposed, at the goal of their villainous schemes, with the wealth which was to be the reward of their treachery all but within their grasp, as they believed, the restraint which they ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... the house of Maurice Oakley there were sad times. From the moment that the master of the house had fallen to the floor in impotent fear and madness there had been no peace within his doors. At first his wife had tried to control him alone, and had humoured the wild babblings with which he woke from his swoon. But these changed to shrieks and cries and curses, and she was forced to throw open the doors ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... both. In such cases, the inherent desire for parenthood will "cry aloud and spare not." A "barren" woman greatly mourns her inability, and will shed bitter tears over the fact, if she be truly human; and an "impotent" man will be practically despised by all who are ...
— Sane Sex Life and Sane Sex Living • H.W. Long
... was a Priest of Kysh Bent with a hundred winters, hairless, blind, And taloned as the great Snow-Eagle is. His seat was nearest to the altar-fires, And he was counted dumb among the Priests. But, whether Kysh decreed, or from Taman The impotent tongue found utterance we know As little as the bats beneath the eaves. He cried so that they heard who stood without: — "To the Unlighted Shrine!" and crept aside Into the shadow of his fallen God And whimpered, and Bisesa went ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... declines; as years and dumps increase; as reflection lends her solemn pauses; in short, as a general lassitude overtakes the sated Turk; then a love of ease and virtue supplants the love for maidens; our Ottoman enters upon the impotent, repentant, admonitory stage of life, forswears, disbands the harem, and grown to an exemplary, sulky old soul, goes about all alone among the meridians and parallels saying his prayers, and warning each young Leviathan from ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... the day, these find a way directly to the heart, they rouse, they influence. It is superfluous to go about to prove this innate power over us of things of time and sense, to make us think and act. The name of religion, on the other hand, is weak and impotent; it contains no spell to kindle the feelings of man, to make the heart beat with anxiety, and to produce activity and perseverance. The reason is not merely that men are in want of leisure, and are sustained ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... bleeding. She had at last succeeded in opening her door. When she discovered that she was too late, and that Florent was being taken off, she darted after the cab, but checked herself almost immediately with a gesture of impotent rage, and shook her fists at the receding wheels. Then, with her face quite crimson beneath the fine plaster dust with which she was covered, she ran back again ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... When o'er your patron's treasure you preside: The world shall own, his choice was wise and just, For sons of Phoebus never break their trust. Not love of beauty less the heart inflames Of guardian eunuchs to the sultan's dames, Their passions not more impotent and cold, Than those of poets to the lust of gold. With Paean's purest fire his favourites glow, The dregs will serve to ripen ore below: His meanest work: for, had he thought it fit That wealth should be the appanage of wit, The god of light ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... has been borne in silence: the sufferer knew himself to be powerless as against such an oppressor; and that to show symptoms of impotent hatred was but to call down thunderbolts upon his own head. Generally, therefore, prudence had guided him. Patience had been the word; silence, and below all the deep, deep word—wait; and if by accident he were a Christian, not only that same word wait would have been heard, but ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... then to regard Unions of low-skilled workers as quite impotent so long as they are beset by the competition of innumerable outsiders? Can combination contribute nothing to a solution of the sweating problem? There are two ways in which close combination might seem to avail ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... you a grain of Honesty, or intended ever to be thought so, wou'd you have the impudence to marry an old Coxcomb, a Fellow that will not so much as serve you for a Cloke, he is so visibly and undeniably impotent? ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... the wishes of men keep a stated proportion to their powers of attainment. Many envy and desire wealth, who can never procure it by honest industry or useful knowledge. They therefore turn their eyes about to examine what other methods can be found of gaining that which none, however impotent or worthless, will ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... fluid, which becomes more or less deteriorated and incapable of producing healthy offspring, even while it retains the power of fecundating the ovum, which it also ultimately loses if the disease is not checked by proper treatment, when the individual becomes hopelessly impotent, a happy result for the race, for it prevents the possibility of his imparting to ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... Florestan, loses his presence of mind. Leonore profits by it and presents a pistol at him, with which she threatens his life, should he attempt another attack. At this critical moment the trumpets sound, announcing the arrival of the Minister, and Pizarro, in impotent wrath is compelled to retreat. They are all summoned before the Minister, who is shocked at seeing his old friend Florestan in this sad state, but not the less delighted with and full of reverence for ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... suspense and all the terror of it. From every side now the rain of shot was poured in upon us, the unceasing torrent came; above, below, ringing upon the iron shield, scattering deadly fragments, ploughing the waters, it fell like a wave impotent, a broken sea whose spindrift even could not harm us. For a good ring of steel fenced us about; we held the turret, and we laughed ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... crowded. Even upon the Bench there was little room to spare; and when the High Sheriff disappeared to return a moment later with two ladies, the Judge's clerk eyed the new-comers with something of that impotent indignation with which a first-class passenger regards the violation of his state by belated individuals whose possession of first-class ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... is a very brilliant circle. The whole court of Charles Dix can afford none more amusing. For the rest, what matters? One learns to take things as they seem, without peering below the surface. One wearies of impotent Quixotism ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... him there was a young officer in a blue uniform, whose face was reddened with shame and anger, and who looked wildly about the room as though in search of some weapon to replace that of which he had been deprived. He might have served Cibber or Gibbons as a model for a statue of impotent rage. Two other officers dressed in the same blue uniform stood by their comrade, and as I observed that they had laid their hands upon the hilts of their swords, I took my place by Saxon's side, and stood ready to strike in should ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... only of Evelyn's property, but his own claims upon it (for the whole capital had been placed in Douce's hands), the total wreck of his grand scheme, the triumph he had afforded to Maltravers! He ground his teeth in impotent rage, and groaned aloud, as he traversed his room with hasty and uneven strides. At last he paused and muttered: "Well, the spider toils on even when its very power of weaving fresh webs is exhausted; it lies in wait,—it forces itself into the webs of others. Brave ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book XI • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... about us who are continually living in the slavery of fear. The spirits within that should be strong and powerful, are rendered weak and impotent. Their energies are crippled, their efforts are paralyzed. "Fear is everywhere,—fear of want, fear of starvation, fear of public opinion, fear of private opinion, fear that what we own today may not ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine
... practised in some distant part of the empire, they came forward with a measure full of generous oblivion for the part, providing with circumspect and collected humanity for the future. I will suppose, that they were desirous of taking an impotent government out of the hands of Jews and pedlars, old women and minors, and to render it a part of the great system. I will suppose, that they were desirous of transferring political power from a company of rapacious and interested merchants, ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... noisy years Rise to her silence thin and impotent— There are no echoes in that vast content, No doubts, no dreams, no laughter ...
— Fires of Driftwood • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... the house, they eat of it. And if the young wife has a kinsman who is absent from the village, some of the relish is put on a splinter of bamboo and kept against his return, that when he comes he, too, may rub his feet with it. But if the woman finds that her husband is impotent, she does not rise betimes and go out in the dark to lay the relish at the doors of her mother and the old woman. And in the morning, when the sun is up and all the village is light, the old women open their doors, and see no relish there, ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... the progress of this astonishing revolution with impotent surprise. Stefano Colonna, who was absent on the eventful day, expressed his scorn of the mob and their leader. But a popular attack on his palace convinced him of his error and forced him to fly from the city. Within fifteen days the triumph of Rienzi seemed to be complete, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... Congress what is usually denominated a war message; yet it contained no positive recommendation of war. "Congress must decide," said the President, "whether the United States shall continue passive" or oppose force to force. Prefaced to this impotent conclusion was a long recital of "progressive usurpations" and "accumulating wrongs"—a recital which had become so familiar in state papers as almost to lose its power to provoke popular resentment. It was significant, however, that the President put in the ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... didn't she? Well, then, come with me to her, dearest—and tonight! You shall see your father tomorrow. Your father—why, think how that old man loves you, how he has longed for you, his only daughter, all these years. And I?" I spread out my hands, in the tiniest, impotent gesture. "I love you," I said, simply. "I cannot do without you, ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... doubt, the breakers!—how aptly named!—had begun their attack against the poor crippled thing's hull by degrees, little billows leading the assault that could only leap half-way up the side of the stranded steamer, falling back with impotent mutterings in a passion of spray; then, as the tide rose, these were succeeded by bigger waves rolling in from the eastwards, which, swollen with pride and brimming with destruction, beat and blustered all about the vessel from cutwater to sternpost, seeking ingress through the timbers ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... pony leaped to a canter in two strides. A bullet zipped between them. Another struck the dust at their heels. Faintly there came to the fugitives the sound of the foreman's impotent curses. They had ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... Schedel, God rest his soul, one wonders whether he has yet learned that Columbus discovered America. He had not yet heard of it when he finished his book, though Columbus had returned to Spain three months before. O most lame and impotent conclusion! But the fifteenth century, though it had an infinite childlike curiosity, had no nose for news. Nuremberg nodded peacefully on while a new world loomed up beyond the seas, and studied Michael Wolgemut's picture of Noah building the ark while Columbus was fitting out ...
— Printing and the Renaissance - A paper read before the Fortnightly Club of Rochester, New York • John Rothwell Slater
... also gnawing at the heart of Napoleon. Who has yet fathomed the mystery of human love! Intensest love and intensest hate can, at the same moment, intertwine their fibres in inextricable blending. In nothing is the will so impotent as in guiding or checking the impulses of this omnipotent passion. Napoleon loved Josephine with that almost superhuman energy which characterized all the movements of his impetuous spirit. The stream did not fret and ripple over a shallow bed, but it was serene in its unfathomable ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... his puissance stern, his sov'reign might, Hath made me learn love's character aright; And, bringing with him, in his gloomy train, The speechless eloquence of bitter pain, Hath caused the unbelieving one to know What words of love were impotent to show. Time made my heart, aforetime, meekly bow Unto the mastery of love; but now Time hath, at last, revealed love to be Far other than it once appeared to me; And Time the frail foundation hath made clear ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. III. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... her room, Nelli departed for Naples and Cesare joined her. It was evident that he was greatly disturbed; but he spoke to her evenly. He was possessed by an impotent rage at his unwieldy body and clumsy hand. This alternated with an evident wonderment at the position in which he found himself and ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... provisions, bound for the ports of France, thus declaring that country in a state of blockade. The National Convention of France had, indeed, set the example of this by an act of the same tendency, doubly rash, because impotent. But this, however strong a plea for retaliating upon France, was none for making America suffer. Corn, indeed, formed the chief export of the United States, and to prohibit them from shipping it at all—for the new regulation amounted in fact to this—was a grievance which the ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... eyes a certain element of Antichrist in the Reform Act, and that act was cordially hated, though the leaders soon perceived that there would be no step backward. It was only under the second government of Sir Robert Peel that I learned how impotent and barren was the conservative office for the church, though that government was formed of men able, upright, and extremely well-disposed. It was well for me that the unfolding destiny carried me off in a considerable degree from political ecclesiasticism of which I should at that time have ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... might thwart their own views, zealously seconded the advice of M. de Conde; and although Marie de Medicis strenuously opposed the renewal of civil warfare, and the Duc de Lesdiguieres represented to the King the ardent desire of the Protestants to conclude a peace, all their efforts were impotent to counteract the pernicious counsels of the Prince, which were destined to darken and desecrate all the after-reign of Louis XIII. Marie then endeavoured to dissuade the King from heading his troops in person; or, should he persist in this design, at least to forego ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... he was only about three jumps ahead of a Cataleptic Convulsion, he had to get on the Cars and take a long ride to inspect some Copper Mines which helped to fatten his impotent Income. The train was bowling through a placid Dairy Region in the Commonwealth regulated by Mr. ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... enter the Promised Land, created in the power of His Divine Vow, is belief in his own strength impotent. ...
— Buddhist Psalms • Shinran Shonin
... no time to worry his opponent. The fundamental weakness of Gerald Patterson's backhand stroke is so apparent that any player within his class dwarfs Patterson's style by continually pounding at it. The Patterson overhead and service are first class, yet both are rendered impotent, once a man has solved the method of returning low to the backhand, for Patterson seldom succeeds in taking the offensive again in ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... If it were but all over! But I fear they may torment me further. I had almost sooner they took my head off at once rather than put me to more of that agony. But no; I hope they won't do that either. There is a remedy for every evil but death." With these reflections, fears, and impotent rages tormenting him, Daireh reached his house, and from a box, which contained what he had of most value, produced the required documents which had cost Harry Forsyth so much anxiety, toil, and suffering to come at. He was strongly ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... that we here were so rent with civil distraction, [laughter,] so paralyzed by luke-warmness or disaffection in our dominions and dependencies, that if it came to fighting we might be brushed aside as an impotent and even a negligible factor. [Cheers and cries of "Never!"] The German misconception went even deeper than that. They asked themselves what interest, direct or material, had the United Kingdom in this conflict? Could any nation, least of all the cold, calculating, ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... a temporary relief, the fetters with which, when his ailing body could scarcely support its own weight, his limbs had been loaded. He sent Perez compassionate and encouraging messages, writing to him, "I will not forsake you, and be assured that their animosity (of the Escovedos) will be impotent against you;" while he regularly transmitted to Vasquez and the Escovedos the information which nourished and hardened their hatred. And finally, having constantly enjoined Perez to take heed that no one should discover the murder to have been perpetrated by the king, Philip, on the ground ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... free: then he was careful only to turn as on a pivot, keeping the rope at a stretch. Finally the bull charged at him with great fury; stepping slightly aside, Pizarro caught him up sideways on his tusks, and held him up in the air, perfectly impotent and mad with rage. When he considered the puny creature had been sufficiently shown his inferiority, he gently put him down, and the astonished and humbled bull declined further contest. The fighting bulls of Spain are wonderfully small in comparison with English animals, ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... loss of both physical and mental power. Not only the voluntary muscles become impotent, but the involuntary ones lose in effectiveness. Digestion is partly or wholly suspended. "Scared stiff" is a popular and truthful expression. The bodily rhythm is lost, the breathing becomes jerky and the heart ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker |
