"Obstacle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cried. "Leonard could have no motive for acting thus. He had our consent to the union, and the sole obstacle to it was Amabel herself. Is it likely he would ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... self-love, his opinions and his passions will have a reciprocal influence on each other; and the former will be objects to which the latter will attach themselves. The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government. From the protection of different and unequal faculties of acquiring property, the possession of different degrees and kinds of property immediately results; and from the ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... dare not dwell; and, leaping up, he took matches and a candle with the intention of going to his friend's room to try and pick up the clue there; but by the time he reached his door he was face to face with the first obstacle. Brettison's door was locked again, and, without re-summoning the help they had had that evening, ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... I see no insuperable obstacle to a Treaty of Peace in the largest sense. This war has smoothed the way to it, if I may use the word smoothing to describe a process conduced with so little courtesy and so much shrapnel. Germany has now learned—and ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... of an obstacle to action which determines all our movements, and in which we discover those forms of the limitations of activity which we call ...
— Essays Towards a Theory of Knowledge • Alexander Philip
... Caldwell, eluding Axtell's outstretched arms and bearing down upon the Blue goal. As he neared Bert, who was running in a diagonal line to head him off, he swerved sharply to the right in an attempt to pass this last obstacle between him and a touchdown. But in a twinkling Bert had launched himself against him, gauging the distance unerringly, and they both came heavily to the ground on the ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield
... sun Applehead and Lite, sitting out their second guard on the pinnacle, discussed seriously the desperate idea of going in the night to the nearest Navajo ranch and helping themselves to what horses they could find about the place. The biggest obstacle was their absolute ignorance of where the nearest ranch lay. Not, surely, that half-day's ride back towards Albuquerque, where they had seen but one pony and that a poor specimen of horseflesh. Another obstacle would be the dogs, which could be ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... When that plan failed, no doubt the vast power and resources of Russia, under an absolute imperial Government, were regarded by the equally autocratic Government of Germany with jealousy and distrust, not to say fear. No doubt Russia was an actual and formidable obstacle to the Pan-German purpose of getting Servia out of the ...
— Fighting For Peace • Henry Van Dyke
... by the word 'honour,' all hope of that love and happiness which would alone restore you to yourself. I, who have so disinterested an affection for you, may increase your miseries tenfold by being an obstacle to your wishes. Ah! Victor, be assured that your cousin and playmate has too sincere a love for you not to be made miserable by this supposition. Be happy, my friend; and if you obey me in this one request, remain satisfied that nothing on ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... upon ignorance of the cause and progress of the child's trouble. There is not the slightest scientific foundation for them, they are not beliefs based on facts or upon experience—yet in many homes, they constitute the chief obstacle between the stammering child and ...
— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue
... mountain chain, which, prolonged through the Pyrenees, the Cevennes, the Alps, and the Balkan, divides Northern from Southern Europe, we shall find nothing at that period but mere savage Finns, Celts, Slavs, and Teutons. Had Persia beaten Athens at Marathon, she could have found no obstacle to prevent Darius, the chosen servant of Ormuzd, from advancing his sway over all the known Western races of mankind. The infant energies of Europe would have been trodden out beneath universal conquest, and the history of the world, like the history of Asia, have become ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... continues the message, "that this trade is still, in part, carried on by means of vessels built in the United States, and owned or navigated by some of our citizens."[48] Governor Buchanan of Liberia reported in 1839: "The chief obstacle to the success of the very active measures pursued by the British government for the suppression of the slave-trade on the coast, is the American flag. Never was the proud banner of freedom so extensively used by those pirates upon liberty ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois
... Not all his needs can be met by the schoolboys whom he may bring into his room, nor can they all be met by his mother's affection. He needs a father. The most serious obstacle to the religious education of boys is that most of them are half-orphans; intellectually and spiritually they have no fathers. The American ideal seems to be that the man shall be the money-maker, the woman the social organizer, and the children shall be committed to hired shepherds or left ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... alarmed now in spite of her boasted courage. "Let's run. But I won't drop this wash. I don't care if he follows me into the post-office for it," and at that, she gave the rope one more terrific jerk, the force of which brought the trailing obstacle out into the path where it had a clear track to follow the girl, who held madly to the ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... man or an army returns to England, unless in the extreme and exceptional case of complete victory over obstacle invincible, there is always dissatisfaction. This is the English way. And so there was dissatisfaction when Captain Austin returned with his ships and men. There was also still a lingering hope that some trace of Franklin might yet be found, perhaps some of his party. ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... the tribune to such an extent that the latter had him put in a cell. Then Metellus wished to assemble the senate there. When the other—his name was Lucius Flavius—set the tribune's bench at the very entrance of the cell and sitting there became an obstacle to any one's entrance, Metellus ordered the wall of the prison to be cut through so that the senate might have an entrance through it, and made preparations to pass the night where he was. Pompey, on learning of this, in shame and some fear that the populace might ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... attitude of resistance to the general government over the question of the Indians within the state. From the beginning of the nation, the Indians on the borders of the settled area of Georgia were a menace and an obstacle to her development. Indeed, they constituted a danger to the United States as well: their pretensions to independence and complete sovereignty over their territory were at various times utilized by adventurers from France, England, and Spain as a ...
— Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 - Volume 14 in the series American Nation: A History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... Kinlay had carried on his illicit traffic whilst my father was alive, but I guessed that this was so; and believing that my father was the only man who knew his secret, I saw reason sufficient for enmity. My father's death had removed the one great obstacle in the way of Carver's carrying on the smuggling unsuspected. It had also enabled him to become a pilot—a position which gave unusual opportunity to a man so unscrupulous. As pilot he was able to ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... and making it appear to the King, that his Allies, and even the Prince Don John Emanuel, his Father-in-law, had concerns in the World which demanded his Presence on the Frontiers, he easily obtain'd Liberty to make this Journey, to which the Princess would put no Obstacle. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... Corneille, has sufficiently lamented the awkwardness of movement imposed upon the French dramatists by the gyves of rhyme. But he considers the necessity of overcoming this obstacle, on the whole, an advantage. Difficulty is his tenth and superior muse. How did Dryden, who says nearly the same thing, succeed in his attempt at the French manner? He fell into every one of its vices, without attaining ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... endeavoured to illustrate by the annexed engraving; and the explanation will be rendered still clearer by reference to No. 352, wherein we have given an outline of the difficulties with which the principal artist, Mr. Parris, had to contend in painting the panorama. We, however, omitted to state an obstacle equally formidable with the reconciliation of the styles of the several artists engaged to assist Mr. Parris. This additional source of perplexity was the great change, almost amounting to the vitrification of enamel colours, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 356, Saturday, February 14, 1829 • Various
... some measure familiarized to the scene, led the way with a steadiness that no slight obstacle was likely to disconcert, into this very building. It was the principal edifice of the village, though roughly constructed of the bark and branches of trees; being the lodge in which the tribe held its councils and public meetings during their temporary residence on the borders of ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... in Cho[u]bei, once more himself. "Honoured chief, matters do not call for such earnestness. All this is mere froth and fury. It is true that Cho[u]bei has deceived the chief; but it was at the orders of those much higher. The lady of Tamiya was an obstacle. The sale was ordered by Iemon Dono himself; backed by Ito[u] Kwaiba the head of the Yotsuya ward."—"Cho[u]bei, you lie," said Toemon. The words and advice of Kakusuke still rang in his ears. "Iemon Dono? Ito[u] Dono? Who else will Cho[u]bei bring in as his bails? ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... childhood. When Modeste went too far, she turned round and openly took herself to task, ascribing her impertinence and levity to a spirit of independence. She acknowledged to the duke and Canalis her distaste for obedience, and professed to regard it as an obstacle to her marriage; thus investigating the nature of her suitors, after the manner of those who dig into the earth in search of ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... ought to regard it as a sufficient justification that thus the ice has been broken, that thus a beginning has been made, and thus a sanction established under which no man, if otherwise free to enter upon such a path, needs ever again to find an obstacle in rank the highest or in blood the most ancient. He is authorized by a Howard; and though doubts must still linger about the propriety of such a course, when estimated as a means to a specific end, yet for ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... reluctantly. Whatever the mystery might be, he was plainly embarrassed by being called upon to reveal it at a moment's notice. Lady Janet settled herself in her chair, prepared to question and cross-question her nephew, when an obstacle appeared at the other end of the library, in the shape of a man-servant with a message. One of Lady Janet's neighbors had called by appointment to take her to the meeting of a certain committee which assembled ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... spot happened to be unusually long—reaching as high as the horses' shoulders—tough, and tangled, rendering it exceedingly difficult for them to force a passage through it, while to the huge bulk and momentum of the elephant it seemed to offer no obstacle at all. The great beast was rapidly gaining upon Grosvenor, and as rapidly forging ahead of Dick, upon whom it began to dawn that, unless something were speedily done to prevent it, a tragedy ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... unlooked for obstacle was encountered. Vanderbilt had somehow got wind of the affair, and with instant energy bought up secretly all of the New York and Harlem Railroad stock he could. He had masses of ready money to do it with; the millions from the mail subsidy frauds and from his other lootings ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... refinement. She fears no forced contributions, no siege or sacking from military leaders of rival factions. The hundred temples in which her citizens worship God are in no danger of sacrilege. The regular administration of the laws encounters no obstacle. The long processions of children and youth, which you see this day, issuing by thousands from her free schools, prove the care and anxiety with which a popular government provides for the education and morals ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... velocity of the aerial locomotive. Let us rather attempt to calculate the probable velocity of a locomotive gliding through the air, without the possibility of running off the rails, without any oscillation, without the least obstacle. Let us fancy such locomotive encountering on its way, in the midst, one of those atmospheric currents which travel at the rate of forty leagues an hour, and following that current; add together these formidable data, and your imagination will recoil in adding still further to these giddy ...
— Up in the Clouds - Balloon Voyages • R.M. Ballantyne
... aware of a faint creeping of his flesh. He knew, of course, that the actual opening of the door was not necessary to the invasion of the room that was about to take place, since neither doors nor windows, nor any other solid barriers could interpose an obstacle to what was seeking entrance. Yet the opening of the door would be significant and symbolic, and ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... Sword of Fire," the ancient fairy told him. "As potent it will be in your hands and for your use, as was the Sword of Flames in the hands of Prince Radiance. In every danger that you must meet, over every obstacle that you must encounter, save one, it will ...
— The Shadow Witch • Gertrude Crownfield
... made herself famous. As it was, her irregular talents had a limited field; however, she did all she could. It always seemed to her that, as far as the right and wrong of things went, her own happiness was eminently right, and that it was distinctly wrong for her, or any one else, to oppose any obstacle to it. She allowed the pleasant influences of the passing moment to have their full effect upon her husband, and she continued her leading up to the subject by those easy and apparently unrelated sequences which none but a diplomat could ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... impossible, not so much by reason of natural obstacles, but because of the radical, essential difference in the public order of the two countries. This, considered in the abstract, makes a gulf profound, impassible—an obstacle no human ingenuity can ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... his mind as much as mathematical and philosophical speculations. Linnaeus became a botanist while helping his father—a practical gardener—in his daily work. In short, with our great geniuses handicraft was no obstacle to abstract researches—it rather favored them. On the other hand, if the workers of old found but few opportunities for mastering science, many of them had, at least, their intelligences stimulated by the very variety of work which was performed in the ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... speaking to me in their native tongue, so as to satisfy my longing for complete familiarity with them. In these circumstances it will be readily understood that the grammar of the language seemed to me merely a tiresome obstacle, and by no means in itself an interesting branch ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... as she had talked to her sister was, before the interview ended, made curiously clear. The first obstacle in her pathway would be the shrinking of a creature who had been so long under dominion that the mere thought of seeing any steps taken towards her rescue filled her with alarm. One might be prepared for her almost praying to ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... swiftly of any further need to remain here. I am, of course, prepared to argue for my purpose, but would rather not do so. Briefly, I hold it a vital obligation to spend this night in the Grey Room, and I ask that no obstacle of any kind be raised to prevent my doing so. The wisdom of man is foolishness before the wit of God, and what I desire to do is God's will and wish, impressed upon me while I knelt for long hours and prayed to know it. I am convinced, and that should be enough. In this matter I am far ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... paper two counties away. He is nothing but a name to people who do not know him or know of him, and therefore they are not interested in him. Every correspondent must watch for the stories that have something more than a local interest, some element of news in them that will carry them over the obstacle of distance and make them interesting to ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... offices is in your possession. This, my lord, was the subject of your generous and disinterested professions. You told your countrymen, that with this office you were ready to part. If a reformation so extensive were thought necessary, you were determined, not merely to be no obstacle to the design, but to be a volunteer in the service. You came forward in the eye of the world, with your patent in your hand. You were ready to sacrifice that parchment, the precious instrument of personal wealth and private benevolence, at ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... notwithstanding the difference of the idioms in which they have written. The same will occur in respect to Lord Byron, whose name alone opposes every barrier, and against whom the difference of nationality can not form any obstacle. The language of genius is not of one country only, but appertains to humanity in general: and God Himself has implanted its rules ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... I'd have halted for a sober second thought if it hadn't been for that other girl under the stones down there," agreed Rhodes. "But shucks!—with all the refugees we're feeding across the line where's the obstacle to this one?" ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... had enabled him to escape dangers where some men might have been caught. No wonder that as Laura stood there with her hand through his strong arm, she thrilled to the certainty that he would break with ease through every obstacle in life, both ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... as the King was kind to me, that I should undeceive him and counsel him not to suffer himself to be blindly led by so worthless a person. The second reason was that, knowing how much I must disapprove of her marriage with the King, she imagined I should always be an obstacle to her being proclaimed Queen; and the third was, that I had always taken the Dauphine's part whenever Maintenon had mortified her. The poor Dauphine did not know what to do with Maintenon, who possessed the King's heart, and was acquainted with all his intentions. ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... post, I lost all sense of proportion, forgot my awkward human size, and with a new perspective became an equal of the ants, looking on, watching every passer-by with interest, straining with the bearers of the heavy loads, and breathing more easily when the last obstacle was overcome and home attained. For a period I plucked out every bit of good-sized booty and found that almost all were portions of scorpions from far-distant dead logs in the jungle, creatures whose strength and poisonous stings availed nothing against ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... a strange destiny, indeed, for one born with an almost cowardly desire for peace! But I am of the stamp of those who, when they have once begun a task, will rather die than leave their duty unfulfilled. I have met with every obstacle: insolence and ingratitude from my own lawyers; in my adversaries, that fault of obstinacy which is to me perhaps the most distasteful in the calendar; from the bench, civility indeed—always, I must allow, civility—but never a spark of independence, never that knowledge of the law and ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... long he would be obliged to marry one who would strengthen his position, and would from her high birth be fitted to share the crown with him. William of Normandy was perfectly well aware of the relation in which Edith stood to Harold, and had not regarded her as any obstacle to the earl's marriage with his daughter; and even Harold himself had not attempted to give it as a reason for declining the offer of the hand ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... Sallust describes Catiline as being. "He had a directness of action never before combined with such comprehension. Here was a man who in each moment and emergency knew what to do next. He saw only the object; the obstacle must give way." ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... monasteries, and in relieving the poor. Whatever was rich or magnificent she thought better suited churches than her palace. She had therefore little now left to give. {502} But still thirsting to embrace perfect evangelical poverty, and to renounce all to serve God without obstacle, on the anniversary day of her busband's death, 1025, she assembled a great number of prelates to the dedication of her church of Kaffungen; and after the gospel was sung at mass, offered on the altar a piece of the true cross, and then put off ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... who died in 1610, and who is the only foreigner mentioned by name in the dynastic histories of China, was inclined to regard worship of ancestors more as a civil than a religious rite. He probably foresaw, as indeed time has shown, that ancestral worship would prove to be an insuperable obstacle to many inquirers, if they were called upon to discard it once and for all; at the same time, he must have known that an invocation to spirits, coupled with the hope of obtaining some benefit therefrom, is worship pure ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles
... is served somewhere in the woods or on the moors. You are expected to be at the house about four, where, after changing your clothes, you appear in the drawing room for tea. You are cautioned in these parties, in order to avoid accident, before crossing a hedge, gate, or any other obstacle, to remove your cartridges. You are to be unusually careful in the manner of holding your gun, and should certainly not flourish it around or point it at any living thing, save that which it is intended to kill. Guns used as walking sticks or props to take flying leaps or other extraordinary ...
— The Complete Bachelor - Manners for Men • Walter Germain
... anxiety and the awful retribution he'd exact when he learned of her abduction. He had no idea as yet what Tess intended to do and her attitude revealed no hint. Personally, he was powerless because, to his physical weakness, the storm presented an unsurmountable obstacle. Except for Mother Moll, he was alone in the house with Tess and the Waldstricker child. Here was a terrible predicament. He'd already lost many years of his life, because he was present when Waldstricker's father was killed. He'd done what he could to avert that crime ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... no use in revealing her humiliation to this girl: "There was an obstacle in the way. Doctor McCall is peculiarly hedged in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... V. (1447-55) was not unworthy of his exalted position, but the necessity of repairing the damage that had been done by the unruly assembly at Basle, which arrogated to itself the authority of an independent General Council, the removal of the last obstacle to the Turkish invasion of Europe in the fall of Constantinople, and the importance of securing for Rome a pre-eminent position in the great classical revival, engaged all his energies to the exclusion of necessary reforms. Calixtus III. (1455-58) was too old to do much, yet, notwithstanding ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... states of France and Sardinia without the slightest hindrance, we had taken the additional precaution of proposing to have them visé by the French and Sardinian Legations in London, that there might be no sort of obstacle to our crossing from one of the two islands in our route to the other. The visé was refused as perfectly unnecessary; and even at Ajaccio, where we passed some hours at the Préfeture, our passports were returned to us on mere inspection. Greatly, however, ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... home again, we began at once to talk over our plans for joining Mr. Washington; I made sure that now there was no greater obstacle in my way than my father's opinions. Alas! in November my aunt took what Dr. Rush called a pernicious ague, and, although bled many times and fed on Jesuits' bark, she came near to dying. In January ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... his wife's ability to overcome any obstacle, the young man bided his time. His wounds, however, and his breach with his father affected his health so much that he went with his wife to the far South, where Major Drayton, now a colonel, had a remnant of what had once been a fine property. Here, for a time, ...
— The Christmas Peace - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page
... the plan adopted throughout the English Garner, the extracts in this volume are given in modern spelling. I should have preferred myself to re-write them in the educated spelling of their own period, which would offer no obstacle of any kind to a modern reader. Not only, however, for the sake of uniformity, but because I am so convinced that this is the right method of dealing with badly spelt texts that I wish the experiment to be made for the first time by a better philologist than myself, I have fallen ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... lies in the preacher himself. At the beginning of his ministry he may be encumbered with doubts and far from clear in his faith. This is a real obstacle, and the first years of ministerial life may be a time of great perplexity and pain. I suspect our congregations have often a good deal to suffer while we are endeavouring to preach ourselves clear. It is vicarious suffering; for they do not know what is perplexing ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... into the hands of the prior, who was invited to make any kind of investigation and examination that he thought necessary. The knight repeated what he had said the previous day as to his entire ignorance where the monk was hiding, and whether he was hiding at all. But no obstacle of any kind would be placed by him against the most stringent search, and he would either accompany the searchers or remain passive where he was, exactly as the ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... contradict one another, melt into one another as the colours of the spectrum so insensibly that none can say where one begins and the other ends, contradictions in terms become first fruits of thought and speech. They are the basis of intellectual consciousness, in the same way that a physical obstacle is the basis of physical sensation. No opposition, no sensation, applies as much to the psychical as to the physical kingdom, as soon as these two have got well above the horizon of our thoughts ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... write to "her"—Dona Magdalena's—son in future. She had taught him to think of the woman who bore him with fitting respect, but it would be impossible for him to maintain the relation with her. She must spare her the explanation of the reasons which made this appear to be an obstacle to his career. Don John would prove in the future, by his care for her prosperity and comfort, that he did not forget her. She had no right, it is true, to counsel her; but when she transported herself into the soul of the woman who had enjoyed the love of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... on the railway are several. A velocity of fifteen miles an hour is in itself a great source of danger, as the smallest obstacle might produce the most serious consequences. If, at that rate, the engine or any forward part of the train should suddenly stop, the whole would be cracked by the collision like nutshells. At all turnings there is a danger that the latter part of the ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... defended the capital, and was guarded by twelve thousand insurgents, and twelve pieces of cannon placed so advantageously that they could do as much injury as thirty or forty elsewhere, and were, in fact, a sufficient obstacle to delay even the most formidable army; but who could then oppose any hindrance to the march of ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... any object of laudable pursuit, may be compared to the progress of a body driven by a blow. It moves, for a time, with great velocity and vigour, but the force of the first impulse is perpetually decreasing, and though it should encounter no obstacle capable of quelling it by a sudden stop, the resistance of the medium through which it passes, and the latent inequalities of the smoothest surface, will, in a short time, by continued retardation, wholly overpower it. Some hindrances will be found in every ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... the garrison of Roche-Mauprat was large enough to be divided into two bodies; and besides, during the night it would have been folly to venture beyond the walls. We arrived, therefore, at the exit of the passage without meeting with any obstacle. But at the last moment I was seized with a fit of madness. I threw down my torch, and leaned against ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... disturbance of its gentle contour. I knew that Mlle. Swann used often to go and spend a few days at Laon, and, for all that it was many miles away, the distance was obviated by the absence of any intervening obstacle; when, on hot afternoons, I would see a breath of wind emerge from the farthest horizon, bowing the heads of the corn in distant fields, pouring like a flood over all that vast expanse, and finally settling down, warm and ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... service up to now that the stout Mr. Frazer cast an eye toward him more than once, as though tempted to ask him to take the place of the missing man, who must have had an accident on the way, perhaps spraining an ankle over some unseen obstacle that came in his way ...
— Darry the Life Saver - The Heroes of the Coast • Frank V. Webster
... obstacle to the proper use of the Will, in the case of the majority of people, is the lack of ability to focus the attention. The Yogis clearly understand this point, and many of the Raja Yoga exercises which are given to the students by the teachers, ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... a foot in thickness, they were observed rapidly to approach each other, and, before our ship could pass the strait, they met with a velocity of three or four miles per hour. The one overlaid the other, and presently covered many acres of surface. The ship proving an obstacle to the course of the ice, it squeezed up on both sides, shaking her in a dreadful manner, and producing a loud grinding or lengthened acute trembling noise, according as the degree of pressure was diminished or increased, until it had risen as high as the ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park
... remained. No longer an example of perfect female independence, and unable therefore to use the same language as before, she might illustrate woman's claim of equality in marriage.—If her experience proved no obstacle. ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... in the liberation of most of the Balkans in 1878; and she could not stand idle while the fruits of her age-long efforts were gathered by the Central Empires and she herself was cut off from the Mediterranean by an obstacle more fatal than Turkish dominion in the form of a Teutonic corridor from Berlin to Baghdad. Serbia, too, Orthodox in religion and Slav in race, was more closely bound to Russia than was any other Balkan State; and an attack on Serbia was ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... aunts, your uncle the General, have projects for you. That is natural. I might have become an obstacle. It is better that I should disappear from your life. We shall keep a fond remembrance of ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... spoke naturally, for the first time. Neb was evidently startled; and I had sufficient amusement, and sufficient curiosity, to remain stationary in order to hear what this new obstacle might be. The voice of the negress was music itself; almost as sweet as Lucy's; and I was struck with a slight tremor that pervaded it, as she so suddenly put an end to all her own affectation of sentiment, and nipped her airs and ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... holy, the house in which He dwells is holy too. This is the only attribute of God which He can communicate to His house; but this one He can and does communicate. Among men there is a very close link between the character of a house and its occupants. When there is no obstacle to prevent it, the house unintentionally reflects the master's likeness. Holiness expresses not so much an attribute as the very being of God in His infinite perfection, and His house testifies to this one truth, that He is holy, that where He dwells He must have holiness, that His ...
— Holy in Christ - Thoughts on the Calling of God's Children to be Holy as He is Holy • Andrew Murray
... open beak; but after fleeing a moment, he turned and flung himself upon her so savagely that both flew violently against the window, which they had not touched for months, being perfectly aware of the obstacle there. However, he changed his manners, and I heard much low, sweet talk in the cage, such as he had used to coax me for currants. She listened, but said nothing. I neglected to say that meanwhile she had replaced her scraggy feathers and grown a ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... smile, and John felt that he could drive over any obstacle. He sent the machine forward faster than ever, and the road stretched ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... to join her lover. The story generally told is that, while her elder sister, the affianced bride of Sir Thomas Stanley, second son of the Earl of Derby, was made much of in her recognised attachment, Dorothy, on the other hand, was not only kept in the background, but every obstacle was thrown in her way against a connection she had formed with John Manners, son of the Earl of Rutland. But "something of the wild bird," it is said, "was noticed in Dorothy, and she was closely watched, kept almost a prisoner, and could only beat her wings against the bars that ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... Any obstacle which these repellent Teutons may have had to overcome in the ultimate execution of their nefarious designs must have been the merest child's-play compared with the initial difficulty of inducing the right kind of victim to penetrate so fifth-rate an interior. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, March 19, 1919 • Various
... between Napoleon and England. This young Corsican lieutenant had raised himself by sheer force of genius and unscrupulous ambition to absolute power. His scheme for the subjugation of Europe beat down every obstacle except the steady and unbending opposition of England. Pitt, who had withdrawn from the government because of the stupid King's refusal to honor his Minister's pledges of equal rights to the Irish Catholics, was recalled by the universal voice ot the nation to organize the resistance. ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... building it was taken away bodily, to crumble up as it was borne along, and augment the power of the water, which became a wave charged with stones, masses of rock, and beams of wood, ready to batter into nothingness every obstacle that stood in ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... way. He had a keen eye, with an upward glance from under the brim of his big wool hat, and he looked alert to descry any encroachment on his vested rights to prescribe opinion. The jury of view were destined to find it a doubtful boon that the road law interposed no insurmountable obstacle to prevent their hearing thus informally the views ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... medium height, black browed, determined, daring and impulsive; a woman who will have her way where her appetites are concerned; easy-going when steering her own way with her own crew down life's current, while with a coldly cruel smile her oar crushes the life-blood from any obstacle in her course. She touches a bell, ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... vertuous touch Th' Arch-chimic Sun so farr from us remote Produces with Terrestrial Humor mixt 610 Here in the dark so many precious things Of colour glorious and effect so rare? Here matter new to gaze the Devil met Undazl'd, farr and wide his eye commands, For sight no obstacle found here, nor shade, But all Sun-shine, as when his Beams at Noon Culminate from th' Aequator, as they now Shot upward still direct, whence no way round Shadow from body opaque can fall, and the Aire, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... but that by following the usual Oriental custom of backsheesh, and dividing L10 or L20 among the officials, every obstacle would have been removed to my obtaining the title-deeds of a property for which I paid ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... for me just to tell you once for all that there is an insuperable obstacle in the way of our ever meeting. Maybe I've got a husband who is cruel to me. Maybe, biggest obstacle of all, I've got a husband whom I am utterly devoted to. Maybe, instead of any of these things, I'm a poor, old wizened-up, Shut-In, tossing day and night on a very small bed of very big pain. ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... have meant the exhibition of the late Mr. Dunn, of Philadelphia, so long open in London, and erroneously supposed that it was a government institution.) He also described the Chinese language itself, on account of its extreme difficulty, as the chief obstacle in the way of the civilization of the people. He did not believe the most learned Chinese perfectly knew his alphabet, as after twenty years' study he could not say he was master of it, a fact highly discouraging to the ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... and gloves, my dear. Try to feel at home with me. I love my son too dearly to go against him in the most earnest desire of his life. He has told me nothing, except that you love each other, and that there is something which you consider an obstacle to your marriage, but which he utterly refuses to accept as such. Tell me about it, dear, and let me ...
— A Beautiful Alien • Julia Magruder
... life it was the object dearest to his heart. He was not afraid to walk alone. When his old fellow worker, Cobden, refused his aid, on the ground that he was not convinced of the need for extending the franchise, Bright himself assumed the lead and bore the brunt of the battle. Till 1865 his main obstacle was Palmerston, who since he took the helm in the worst days of the Crimean War and conducted the ship of State into harbour, occupied an impregnable position. Palmerston was dear to 'the man in the street', shared his prejudices and understood his humours; and nothing could make him ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... The obstacle created by difference of language disappeared with a rapidity that might have seemed miraculous, were it not a well-known fact that one's native tongue forgotten is always easily restored. It seems to remain latent in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... people, the high buildings and stacks of chimneys which only permit the narrowest patches of sky to be visible, the incessant noise and movement, the self-absorbed crowding and crushing,—all these things are so many offences to Nature, and are as dead walls of obstacle set against the revivifying and strengthening forces with which she endows her freer children of the forest, field and mountain. Out on the wild heathery moorland, in the heart of the woods, in the deep bosky dells, where the pungent scent of moss ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... absolutely compel us to cease struggling. Since, then, we do cease struggling before we are absolutely out of commission, our giving up is not a purely passive affair, but our own act, a kind of reaction; and no doubt a native reaction. Further, when struggling against a stubborn obstacle, we sometimes feel an impulse to give up, and ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... and grew despite every obstacle of mob violence, persecution, contempt, and, not the least, the indignant hostility of respectable statesmanship. Yet evidences began to appear, here and there, that the sympathy even of official responsibility was gradually leaning ...
— The Nation in a Nutshell • George Makepeace Towle
... proved impotent in fact. But from the beginning it was not so; Ezekiel was a dramatist; he acted his prophecies and his preachings on a stage. The warnings were in this form clearly articulated, and forcefully driven home; if they failed to produce the ultimate result of repentance, the obstacle lay not in the feebleness of the instrument, but in the wilful hardness of the subject whereon the instrument was plied. Dramatic representation in the simplicity of its infancy was a golden vessel of the sanctuary, employed in the service of God; long ago it was carried ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... a different construction of the scene, and a more skilful theatric perspective, should enable the dramatic poet, duly and without confusion, although in a more compressed space, to develope a fable not inferior in extent to the epic poem? Where would be the objection, if the only obstacle were the supposed impossibility? ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... are thwarted in the exercise of some innocent, laudable, and almost sacred affection, as in the case, though its scale be small, out of which all of this has grown, Satan has us at an advantage, because when the obstacle occurs, we have a sentiment that the feeling baffled is a right one, and in indulging a rebellious temper we flatter ourselves that we are merely as it were indulgent on behalf, not of ourselves, but of a duty which we have been interrupted in performing. But our duties can ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... stopping the enemy: but in a disorderly flight, where every thing that might be of service became injurious, where in our precipitation and disorder, every thing was turned against ourselves, this hill and its defile became an insurmountable obstacle, a wall of ice, against which all our efforts were powerless. It detained every thing, baggage, treasure, and wounded. The evil was sufficiently great in this long series of ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... brought up bows on to a large lump. This may mean a wait of anything from ten minutes to half an hour, whilst the ship swings round, falls away, and drifts to leeward. When clear she forges ahead again and the operation is repeated. Occasionally when she can get a little way on she cracks the obstacle and slowly passes through it. There is a distinct swell—very long, very low. I counted the period as about nine seconds. Everyone says the ice is breaking up. I have not seen any distinct evidence ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... for the time being, the other four primal senses again became more acute. He heard a wind blowing but it was not the free wind of the plains that meets no obstacle. Instead, it brought back to him a song that was made by the moving air playing softly upon leaf and bough. Hence, he inferred that they were still ascending, and had come into better watered regions where the bushes had grown to the height of ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... to look for the former, however; and I had to depend on the cure. But here I carne to an obstacle I might easily have foreseen. I found him, though an honest man, obdurate in upholding his priest's privileges; to all my inquiries he replied that the matter touched the confessional, and was within his vows; and that he neither could, nor dared—to please anyone, ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... were reluctant to grant his request. Masters in the art of making excuses, they saw many insuperable obstacles. In reality, they did not desire to part with him, but wished to avail themselves of his knowledge, counsel, and personal aid against their enemies. When one obstacle after another gave way, and when volunteers were found ready to accompany him, no canoes could be spared for the journey. This closed the debate. Champlain was not prepared for the exposure and hardship of a winter among the savages, ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... name: "Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen! On, Comet! on, Cupid! on, Donder and Blitzen! To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall! Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!" As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly, When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky; So up to the house-top the coursers they flew, With the sleigh full of toys, and St. Nicholas, too. And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof The prancing and pawing of each little hoof. As I drew in my head, and was turning around, ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... very easy, to understand the Past that really is a past: and the age of Forests, like that of chivalry, is gone. But in the case of ancient India, the chief obstacle to understanding arises from our bad habit of always looking at the map with the North side up. Why this inveterate apotheosis of the North? Would you understand the old Hindoos, you must turn the map of India very nearly upside down, so as to get Peshawar at the bottom, ...
— Bubbles of the Foam • Unknown
... has ye there. Swerve me? The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run. Over unsounded gorges, through the rifled hearts of mountains, under torrents' beds, unerringly I rush! Naught's an obstacle, naught's an angle to ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... it would follow that the number of males would tend to surpass incessantly that of the females, amongst whom no want of energy or power would turn aside from generation, and the species would find in it a fatal obstacle to its reproduction. But, on the other hand, if it was true that the strongest females and the best nurses amongst them produce females rather than males, nature would thus oppose a contrary law, which would establish the equilibrium, and by an admirable ...
— The Principles of Breeding • S. L. Goodale
... to be. When a boy goes wrong he strews every step of his downward career with obstacles against his own return; and he little dreams how difficult of removal some of these obstacles will be. The obstacle in this case was another little fag of Kenrick's, named Wilton. I am sorry to write of that boy. Young in years, he was singularly old in vice. A more brazen, a more impudent, a more hardened little ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... shot up in front of me like Jack-in-a-box, and was gone before I knew what it meant. From the impressions in the moss, I concluded that he slept with all four feet under him, ready to shoot up at an instant's notice, with power enough in his spring to clear any obstacle near him. And then I thought of the way a cow gets up, first one end, then the other, rising from the fore knees at last with puff and grunt and clacking of joints; and I took my first lesson in wholesome ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... the proper sense of the word; as a rule he was conscious all through the night of 'a kind of fighting' between physical weariness and wakeful toil of the mind. It often happened that some wholly imaginary obstacle in the story he was writing kept him under a sense of effort throughout the dark hours; now and again he woke, reasoned with himself, and remembered clearly that the torment was without cause, but the short relief thus afforded soon passed in the recollection of real ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... that they find it very inconvenient, especially when placed in circumstances, as in travelling, where one cannot always obtain the accustomed diet; it therefore is unwise to cultivate such habits, which are often a serious obstacle ...
— Public School Domestic Science • Mrs. J. Hoodless
... It depends upon Enghien, though no doubt the marshal will throw every obstacle in the way. In the first place, there can be no denying that the Spanish infantry are superb, and that Fuentes, who commands them, is a fine old soldier, while our infantry are largely composed of new levies. Thus, though ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty
... flinch from him. "Ay, an' you'll do that?" he said. "I like to hear you talk. Lad, do you know what fashion o' men it is that serve the dead-carts? Do ye know?" he demanded, seeming to clear his voice with an effort of the obstacle that hampered ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... make your best of the present case—show the necessity of the remedy clearly, and urge it respectfully without pretending to find fault with the Judges; merely say that their interpretation of the laws of evidence laid down for their guidance, however conscientious, forms an insurmountable obstacle to the conviction of offenders by hereditary profession, whose system has been founded upon the experience of their ancestors in the most successful modes of defeating these laws, and the technicalities of ordinary Judicial Courts. This is, I think, all that I can say on the subject at ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... said, with a short laugh, curiously resembling in its malice the bleating of the little goats, "I perceive that which constitutes the obstacle to our ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... all the attempts made to stir up an interest in manufactories, slow progress was made until a comparatively late period. One great obstacle in the way was the opposition or indifference of the land-holders, who directly rebuffed the proposals of intending manufacturers, or placed a value on their land so high as to require an amount of capital sunk in the soil that ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin |
