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Literary notes about feeble (AI summary)

Writers employ "feeble" to evoke a variety of nuances of weakness and insufficiency, both literal and metaphorical. In some texts, the term underscores physical decline or frailty, as when a character’s failing body or diminished strength becomes a metaphor for the human condition [1], [2], [3]. At the same time, "feeble" is used to describe inadequacies in voice, intellect, or authority, suggesting a vulnerability that contrasts with more robust figures or ideas [4], [5], [6]. In philosophical and reflective works, the term may extend to highlight the transient nature of human power and the inherent limitations of reason and will [7], [8]. Through such diverse applications, authors infuse their narratives with a delicate balance of compassion and critique, making "feeble" a flexible descriptor that deepens the reader’s understanding of character and circumstance.
  1. Galileo at seventy-seven, blind and feeble, was working every day, adapting the principle of the pendulum to clocks.
    — from Pushing to the Front by Orison Swett Marden
  2. By very slow and feeble degrees his consciousness came back; but the mind was weakened and its functions were impaired.
    — from The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens
  3. When I had been nursing the Captain nine days he was somewhat better, but very feeble.
    — from Roughing It by Mark Twain
  4. Each hath its pang, but feeble sufferers groan With brain-born dreams of evil all their own.
    — from Childe Harold's Pilgrimage by Baron George Gordon Byron Byron
  5. Neither shall he that is near, say: I am feeble.
    — from The Bible, Douay-Rheims, Complete
  6. You know how I placed this wasted feeble hand on the abandoned helm of human government.
    — from The Last Man by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
  7. [Pg 568] (7) Goddard, Henry H. Feeble-mindedness, Its Causes and Consequences.
    — from Introduction to the Science of Sociology by E. W. Burgess and Robert Ezra Park
  8. 347 Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed.
    — from Pascal's Pensées by Blaise Pascal

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