Weakling

“ Verily, I have often laughed at the weaklings, who think themselves good because they have crippled paws! ”

“ The name roughly signifies ‘the strength of weakness,’ and thus it arose. It was noted that the boughs of a willow were not broken by a heavy fall of snow when strong trees cracked beneath the weight. And why? Being pliant they bowed their weakness and the snow slipped off. My son, recall the Rule. ‘I have no strength. I make submission my strength.’ As with the soul so it is with the body. How shall I sum up this art of attack and self-defence? It is the perfect control of the mind resisting defeat. It is to use weakness in such a way that it masters brute strength. ”

“ I observed, that in proportion as our strength decayed, our minds exhibited symptoms of weakness, evinced by a kind of unreasonable pettishness with each other. Each of us thought the other weaker in intellect than himself, and more in need of advice and assistance. ”

“ With all my soul—and I have had no small experience of myself and of others—I implore that if you are conscious of your weakness, you shall do what the sea-anemone and the limpet do, which cling to the rock when the storms darken the sky. "Be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might." ”

“ Delicate boys, with more spirit than strength, flushed with fever or pale with exhaustion or haggard with suffering, dragged their weary limbs along as if each step would exhaust their slender store of strength. At the roadside sat or lay others, quite spent with their journey. ”

“ What would they think—those three hundred speech-tired boys—if some man who had been held before them as exemplary were to rise and lay bare his own life—its weaknesses, its faults, perhaps its crimes—and tell them there was weakness and there was strength in every human being, and that the world-old struggle of life was to overcome one's weakness with one's strength. ”

“ If thou art strong, and he is weak, descend from thy strength, and enter into his weakness; lay aside thy burden for the while, and buckle on his own; let thy sight see as through his eyes—thy heart beat as in his bosom. ”

“ Thus is stiffening and a sense of security imparted to the weaker spirit; timidity oozes and is burned by the steady flame of courage that from the stronger emanates. In the heat of that flame latent strength warms and kindles in the weaker. ”

“ The physical weakness which enables us to realize the uncertain tenure by which we are connected with this world is gradually changed into strength, and the power to act brings with it the desire;—and who shall easily set bounds to this desire? ”

“ He lay pressed hard against his adversary, his body adjusting itself to its one pure purpose of choking the other man, resisting exactly at the right moment, with exactly the right amount of strength, the struggles of the other, silent, intent, unchanging, gradually pressing its knuckles deeper, feeling the struggles of the other body become wilder and more frenzied. ”

“ What though my shrinking flesh complain,
And murmur to contend so long?
I rise superior to my pain,
When I am weak, then I am strong
And when my all of strength shall fail,
I shall with the God-man prevail. ”

“ Can we conceive a “law of battle” among unconscious beings? If success in the combat were a mere matter of brute strength, it would imply some consciousness in its dull exercise. But it is more. It is also a trial of skill. ”

“ There are six sources of strength and weakness.
"Beauty, a long beard, size, height, robustness, grace, courage, daring,—these eight, in which men surpass their fellows, are therefore passports to failure. ”

“ Given such a mind, or such a mental state—for I believe that under certain favoring conditions a weak mind may possess this power quite as much as a strong one—and we have a force which can summon to our presence not only apparitions of living people but of dead ones. ”

“ The strong shall be tricked out of their strength, I say, and knock at the doors of the weak for a dole of black bread;
The weak shall become strong, I say, and burrow their way into the thrones of the mighty. ”

“ Oh, God, God, God, God, I would I had never been born!—Nay, is it not strange that, in an hour of weakness like this, the only thing I cry out to for help is what I have always thought I despised as being itself incarnate weakness—woman! ”

“ They were big powerful men, with not much capacity to weigh the consequences, with courage, with strength, even yet, though their skins were no longer glossy and their muscles no longer hard. And I saw that something restraining, one of those human secrets that baffle probability, had come into play there. ”

“ Then follows a test of strength, a sort of tug-of-war reversed, for each strives to push the other to his knees, and succeeding, to deal a deadly sideways thrust at the kneeling adversary’s heart with the spike-shaped brow-tines. ”

“ I make allowances for weakness, because weakness is the rule and strength the exception. The world gets weaker-willed and more neurotic every day. That’s why one hears so much talk of ‘individuality,’ ‘independence,’ et cetera. ”

“ See the waves’ blue sheen and feel the breath of the breeze on my cheek:
Could wail with the wailing wind; strike sharply the hands in despair;{70}
Could shriek with the shrieking blast, grow frenzied and tear the hair;
Could fight fierce fights with the foe or clutch at a human hand;
And weary could lie at length on the soft, sweet, saffron sand....
I have neither a voice nor hands, nor any friend nor a foe ”

“ When a nation, which has long groaned under the intolerable yoke of a tyrant, rises at last and throws off its chains, do you call that weakness? The man who, to rescue his house from the flames, finds his physical strength redoubled, so that he lifts burdens with ease, which, in the absence of excitement, he could scarcely move; he who, under the rage of an insult, attacks and puts to flight half a score of his enemies, are such persons to be called weak? My good friend, if resistance be strength, how can the highest degree of resistance be a weakness?" ”

“ They place the weak upon a level with the strong, and make it evident to every one that the best course would be to submit all questions of right to the arbitration of the mind instead of the arm and sword. Suppose I, being a small, weak man, should quarrel with a man of great physical strength, and a hatred to the death should be declared between us. ”

“ But perhaps you will allege weakness of nature as the excuse, and inability to bear the yoke. And what kind of defence is this, that you have not strength to bear the easy yoke, that you are unable to carry the light burden? ”

“ I neither run nor fight, but do meanly stand, answering each heavy blow of a cruel master with doleful wails and piteous cries. I am galled with irons; but even these are more tolerable than the consciousness, the galling consciousness of cowardice and indecision. ”

“ Those who, when young, weep if the least trifle annoys them, will never, I fear, have sufficient strength of mind to encounter all the miseries that can afflict the body, rather than act meanly to avoid them. ”

“ Hardships such as these are often the daily routine of a digger's life; yet, strange to say, far from depressing the spirits or weakening the frame, they appear in most cases to give strength and energy to both. ”

“ Oh, I am sick of hearing that phrase. Sick of using it about others. Weak? Do you really think, Arthur, that it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations that it requires strength, strength and courage, to yield to. To stake all one’s life on a single moment, to risk everything on one throw, whether the stake be power or pleasure, I care not—there is no weakness in that. There is a horrible, a terrible courage. I had that courage. ”

“ Compared with thy endurance, that of the young man, the athlete, is as weakness; the secret of thy nerves, wonderful even in their weakness, is as great as that of the power of the winds. To display decision, thy opportunities are more frequent than those of the greatest statesman ”

“ It is very human, this pathetic assertion that weakness must turn into strength. And, if it had not been for such a confidence, primitive Man might very well have given up the game, surrendered the field to his contemporaries of the animal kingdom. ”

“ Place him on his feet in a hard place, where the suns of life strike hotly upon him, and the storms blow fiercely, where he must stand by his own strength or fall, and he will grow into strength by the very pressure of adverse circumstances. ”

“ The Giants who formed this world into its sensual existence, and now seem to live in it in chains, are, in truth, the causes of its life and the sources of all activity, but the chains are the cunning of weak and tame minds which have power to resist energy; according to the proverb, the weak in courage is strong in cunning. ”

“ Against them all, how slight seem the defenses of such a weak and timid creature. Yet impartial nature, having compassed him about with foes, has shod his feet with swiftness and silence, and clad his body with an almost invisible garment. ”

“ He grew into a giant of health and strength, and those who, in those old days, saw them tell that it was a strange picture to watch the little wizened man, walking with odd emotional gestures, with little hops and leaps and swinging of the arms beside the firm long stride of the young man towering above him. ”

“ So he fared on his way, sore shaken in his healthy young nerves, but gathering strength with every onward stride, his own aching arms and legs fair eased as he thought of the comfort his poultice must be bringing to the outcast’s hurt shoulder. ”

“ You have summoned me in my weakness; you must sustain me by your strength. ”

“ We may believe there are no Battling Burrows, striking the helpless with brutal whip—but do we not ourselves use the whip of unkind words and deeds? So, perhaps, Battling may even carry a message of warning. ”

“ A stronger blade was sent for, and an athlete—he was not a member of the Athenæum—essayed to penetrate the skin, and succeeded too, after a vigorous struggle. When he had wiped the drops from his brow he went at the flesh with confidence in his own powers. ”

“ What a thing to be taught by the very mouth of him who knows! He told his servant Paul that strength is made perfect in weakness; here he instructs his servant John that the thing to be afraid of is weakness, not strength. ”

“ And under their influence, you retain the little hand, that you had not dared retain so long before; and her struggle to recover it—if indeed it be a struggle—is infinitely less than it was—nay, it is a kind of struggle, not so much against you, as between gladness and modesty. It makes you as bold as a lion; and the feeble hand, like a poor lamb in the lion’s clutch, is powerless, and very meek—and failing of escape, it will sue for gentle treatment ”

“ I hear you say, reminding me of my own words, "there is no beauty in weakness, and this is weakness indeed!—a sensible man, past the heyday and folly of youth, growing maudlin and sentimental over a bunch of violets!" ”

“ Wouldst thou force the Spirits of the Evening Breeze to minister to thy folly and caprice? Know that with such desires thou canst but attract the Weak, not the Strong, and in that case the Weak will have power over thee. ”

“ When he calls his whelps about him,
When he sets the goal before him and he settles to the pace.
Tricked and wounded! Are we beaten
Though they hold our strength at play?
We have faced these things aforetimes, long ago, long ago. ”

“ The natural man within him raged, and he had to battle with a suffusing impulse to rush back, snatch her up in his arms, and make off with her to the uttermost ends of the earth, there to fight and keep her for his own to the end of time. ”

“ I espied a company of men surrounding a ring, made with stakes and ropes, in which two wretched creatures were stripping off their garments, with the intention to do battle upon one another with their fists. These were gentlemen of the fancy, as it is called; though imagination can paint nothing of a more grossly animal and brutish character, afar from all that is fanciful, than that very class that calls itself of the fancy. ”