"Obstructive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... peritoneal inflammation were not as great as they are, few people with intestinal putrefactive diseases, from cholera infantum in babyhood to proctitis in old age, would get well, for most of the treatment for one and all of these diseases is obstructive rather ...
— Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment • John H. Tilden, M.D.
... apt to excuse the slower rate of liberal progress in our Old World by contrasting the obstructive barriers of prejudice, survival, solecism, anachronism, convention, institution, all so obstinately rooted, even when the branches seem bare and broken, in an old world, with the open and disengaged ground of the new. Yet in fact your difficulties were at least as formidable ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... of pledges of appointment based thereon, and who were still importunate for impeachment, the business element of the country at large was tiring of it and its depressing effect upon the commercial activities. Even Senators and Congressmen were being moved to a sense of the obstructive and somewhat ridiculous phases the impeachment movement was beginning to take on—and not a few of those who in its earlier stages had honestly favored the movement, inside as well as outside the membership of both ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross
... insisting upon high security or high freights. The control of British coal-mining and shipping is in the national interests—for international interests—rather than for the creation of that particularly passive, obstructive, and wasteful type of wealth, the wealth of the mere profiteer, is as urgent a necessity for the commercial welfare of France and Italy and the endurance of the Great Alliance as it is for the well-being of ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... that the anti-trust act is seen to be effective for the accomplishment of the purpose of its enactment, we are met by a cry from many different quarters for its repeal. It is said to be obstructive of business progress to be an attempt to restore old-fashioned methods of destructive competition between small units, and to make impossible those useful combinations of capital and the reduction of the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... which are elected by L10 householders, which is yearly gaining power. The advent of Constitutional Government will depend entirely upon the progress of the colony; but at present it is far from being desirable, the elected members of the Council being distinctly the obstructive party, while the Governor and the Imperially appointed officials are the only persons who look beyond the squatting interest to that of the colony as ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... just possible for things to be arranged so that all parties may be happy in their way without much hubbub. Mind, it is not I who have willed it so. I am, and I am forced to be, passive. But I will not be obstructive." ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the coroner, standing a trifle back of her chair, shook his head at the obstructive juryman, and asked her in a commonplace voice what the hogs had to ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... responsible partner, the careful business man. Two words, two speeches, two interviews, were required before an understanding could be reached with this perfidious house. Often the gracious "yes" of the sumptuous upper floor became a dry "no" in Adolphe's region. This obstructive manoeuvre gave time for reflection, and often served to fool unskilful applicants. As Cesar entered, the banker's brother was conversing with the famous Palma, intimate adviser of the house of Keller, who retired ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... urging an objection against the omission of any portion of the royal family in the lists of lords-justices named in the bill. His lordship even made this omission the subject of a protest entered in the journals of the house. His lordship began at this time to display an obstructive disposition towards the government with which he had so long acted. He had proved that his exaltation to the office of lord-chancellor had inflated his vanity, and made him so self-willed and crotchetty as to render co-operation with him either in the government of the country, or in ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... the Southwest has been pronounced absolutely deadly by one set of partisans, and absolutely harmless by another. Somewhere between lies the truth. If any human being has actually been bitten by a heloderma, the event has either escaped notice or has been so hedged about with obstructive legend as to have forfeited scientific credence. But the saurian itself has been studied and dissected, and its venom has been analyzed. The venom is related to snake poison, but is neither crotaline nor elapine. ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... the proper time at which such a question could be raised. Every one in the House knew perfectly well the motive for raising the question just then, and after some time had been wasted in absolutely unnecessary discussion the obstructive amendment was defeated by a majority of 97. That, however, did not help matters very much, for the House had still to divide upon the question that the Speaker do now leave the chair. This was met by repeated motions for adjournment, and on every one of these motions a long discussion was kept ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... feel, act, defend, and avenge, as a man of actual life would do—was obvious enough, through its harmonious fulfilment; yet the realism was shorn of all triteness, all animal excess, all of those ordinary attributes which are right in nature, and wrong because obstructive in the ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... would have happened to her genius if, blind to her destiny, she had remained in Brussels. For, once there, its wing-feathers left off growing. Its way was blocked by every conceivable hostile and obstructive thing. Madame Heger was hostile, and Monsieur, I think, purely obstructive. Emily saw through him, and denounced his method as fatal to all originality. Charlotte, to be sure, called him "my dear master, the only master that I ever had", but if that was not her "absurd charity", it was only ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... face-powder. If I said of this paragon that she made the story bounce I should still do less than justice to her amazing personality. Really, she was a herald of revolution, whose remarkable method was to invite anyone important and obstructive to her house and make them discontented. It was the work of half-an-hour. Whether the process was hypnotic, or whether she actually put pepper in the ice-pudding, I could not clearly make out. But the dreadful fact remained ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 15, 1920 • Various
... faculties, for I opened the port-side locker, reached down, and grasped a sticky body, which turned out to be a pot of varnish. Recoiling wretchedly, I tried the opposite one, combating the embarrassing heel of the boat and the obstructive edges of the centre-board case. A medley of damp tins of varied sizes showed in the gloom, exuding a mouldy odour. Faded legends on dissolving paper, like the remnants of old posters on a disused hoarding, spoke of soups, curries, beefs, potted meats, and other hidden delicacies. I ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... Space hath no record where the mist hath been. Boots it to us if Shakspeare erred like man? Why idly question that most mystic life? Eno' the giver in his gifts to scan; To bless the sheaves with which thy fields are rife, Nor, blundering, guess through what obstructive clay The glorious ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... establishment of grammar schools, the impetus given to all useful occupations during the reign of Henry VIII, were gradually aiding the advance of that new era in the history of England which developed so brilliantly under Elizabeth. In her reign the old warlike spirit had decayed, theology had lost its obstructive power, and human reason began to bear its legitimate ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... opportunity for others of the gaol-birds to make a bolt; but for the obstructive coupling-chains no doubt some would avail themselves of it. These, however, hindered the attempt. There were no more restive horses, nor blundering coachmen to bring another carriage near enough for ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... say they are willing to improve them. REFORM, which means, Pull down with bold statesman's hand, and with like hand REBUILD, is no darling of your political Repairer. Call the party and the men by their right names: and give me for utility in legislation or administrative action an Old Tory and Obstructive party rather than this ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... take humble service with her master. If she can hear herself think amid that din of blasting and hammering she must be reckoning up the years to elapse before the cleverest of Ober- Ingenieurs decides that mountains are mere obstructive matter and has the Jungfrau melted down and the residuum carried away in balloons and dumped upon ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... It is the spirit of justified reason. You may say that those people were honestly mistaken;—such honesty is the brand of a brainless obstructive. They would have persecuted, but too gladly! There were, and are, men who would have committed Darwin to penal servitude, if they had had the power. Men like Lyell, who were able to develop a new convolution in their brains, ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... passage the writer names the "ghosts" which are chiefly responsible for preventing Southern progress. They are three: "The Ghost of the Confederate dead, the Ghost of religious orthodoxy, the Ghost of Negro domination." Everywhere the hero finds his progress blocked by these obstructive wraiths of the past. He seeks a livelihood in educational work—becomes a local superintendent of Public Instruction, and loses his place because his religious views are unorthodox, because he refuses to accept the popular estimate of Confederate ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... the storm, has now been succeeded by the more natural darkness of night, the trackers, for this day, cannot proceed further, were they ever so eager. Besides, there is another bar to their continuing; one still more directly obstructive, even forbidding their exit from the cave. This, the arroyo, which now in full flood fills the ravine up to the cliff's base, there leaving no path for either man or horse. That by which they approached is covered beyond fording depth, with a current so swift as to sweep the strongest animal ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... established by a throne of iniquity since the unhappy restoration of Charles II. to this day. Yet few have ever zealously contended and fewer have constantly continued in contending, against these obstructions, so obstructive to the cause, many have kept secret the first motions and appearances of these things, while they might have been suppressed and overcome, and the generality have passed them over in silence, and not made known, nor advertised unto evil of ...
— The Auchensaugh Renovation of the National Covenant and • The Reformed Presbytery
... comfortable boots. There could be plenty of leather; and there is certainly plenty of labour and quite enough intelligence in the world to manage that and a thousand other desirable things. But this institution of Private Property in land and naturally produced things, these obstructive claims that prevent you using ground, or moving material, and that have to be bought out at exorbitant prices, stand in the way. All these owners hang like parasites upon your enterprise at its every stage; and by the time you get your sound boots well made in England, you will find them ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... the Vale of Evesham is exceedingly hard, and in the town and some villages was formerly much contaminated. After great opposition from obstructive ratepayers, a splendid supply was obtained from the Cotswolds above Broadway, about six miles away, of much softer and really pure spring water. It comes in pipes by gravitation, so there is no expense of pumping; but it was ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... curious that his first dinner at Brentham was almost his introduction into refined society. He had been a guest at the occasional banquets of his uncle; but these were festivals of the Picts and Scots; rude plenty and coarse splendor, with noise instead of conversation, and a tumult of obstructive defendants, who impeded, by their want of skill, the very convenience which they were purposed to facilitate. How different the surrounding scene! A table covered with flowers, bright with fanciful crystal, and porcelain ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... her niece. Mr. Gibson had been at the house that very morning, and Dorothy had given herself airs. At least, so Miss Stanbury thought. And during the last three or four days, whenever Mr. Gibson's name had been mentioned, Dorothy had become silent, glum, and almost obstructive. Miss Stanbury had been at the trouble of explaining that she was specially anxious to have that little matter of the engagement settled at once. She knew that she was going to behave with great generosity;—that she was going to sacrifice, not her money only, of which she did not think much, ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... getting away from these souls. He succeeds by making promises to execute their desires—comparing his difficulty of advancing to the trouble a winner at dice experiences when bystanders crowd about him in obstructive congratulations and make his way impracticable until he gives some of his winnings to this one, ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... tendency of writers upon this period is thus to exalt the man with a great national policy in his head though with a sword in his hand, at the expense of him who, never so honestly, dinned the populace with his high-sounding pleas for an obstructive course. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... by west. And this they feel: the ship came too near wreck, In the long quarrel for the quarter-deck, Now when she glides serenely on her way,— The shallows past where dread explosives lay,— The stiff obstructive's churlish game to try Let sleeping dogs and still torpedoes lie! And so I give you all the Ship of State; Freedom's last venture is her priceless freight; God speed her, keep her, bless her, while she steers Amid the breakers of unsounded years; Lead her through danger's ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... has made things to go, set them going, and left them— then I say, If his machine interfered with his answering the prayer of a single child, he would sweep it from him—not to bring back chaos, but to make room for his child. But order is divine, and cannot be obstructive to its own higher ends; it must subserve them. Order, free order, neither chaos, nor law unpossessed and senseless, is the home of Thought. If you say There can be but one perfect way, I answer, Yet the perfect way to bring a thing so far, to a certain crisis, can ill be the perfect way to ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... we had been able to gather from the butler, who had immediately repaired to Daphne's room for instructions, and was labouring under great excitement, my sister's orders had been but grudgingly obeyed. Mrs. Chapel had been ill-tempered and obstructive, and had made no attempt to disguise her suspicion of the chef. The latter had consequently determined to be as nasty as the circumstances allowed, had eyed her preparations for dinner with a marked contempt, and had communed visibly and audibly with himself in a manner ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... Magazine, 1887, an article, "In Dickens-Land," by Edward Percy Whipple, in which this veteran and appreciative critic of the eminent English writer's works points out that, "In addition to the practical life that men and women lead, constantly vexed as it is by obstructive facts, there is an interior life which they imagine, in which facts smoothly give way to sentiments, ideas, and aspirations. Dickens has, in short, discovered and colonized one of the waste districts of 'Imagination,' which we may call 'Dickens-Land,' or 'Dickens-Ville,' ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... mechanism of the body be cleansed and freed from obstructive and destructive materials, but the injured parts must be repaired, morbid growths and abnormal formations dissolved and eliminated and lesions in the bony structures ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... and to some extent by France, to the proposed restoration of the old order of things in Eastern Roumelia, the Conference came to an end at the close of November, the three Imperial Powers blaming Sir William White for his obstructive tactics. The charges will not bear examination, but they show the irritation of those Governments at England's championship of the Bulgarian cause[203]. The Bulgarians always remember the names of Lord Salisbury and ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... what is written, we merely reply: There are unwritten revelations which are nevertheless true. Besides, we are not sure that at least an intimation of other races than those of the earth is not already on record. Not to prove any position, but to check obstructive criticism, we refer to the divine who is said to have witnessed in magnificent apocalypse some closing scenes of the human drama. If he also heard in sublime oratorio a prelude of this widely extended glory, our vision ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... spiritual. As he reflects upon this the meaning of it becomes ever more clear and distinct, ordered and organized, and at the same time more substantial, more real, more lively and potent. In becoming known what was before dead and dark and threatening or obstructive or hostile is made transparent, alive, utilisable, contributing to the constantly growing self that knows and is known. Here is the growing point of reality, the fons emanationis of truth and worth and being, evidencing its power not as it were in ...
— Progress and History • Various
... relative at that moment? In other words, how was a young lady in Magdalen's critical position likely to while away the hours until Mr. Huxtable 's return? If there was an obstructive gentleman in the background, it would be mere waste of time to pursue the question. But if the inference which the handbill suggested was correct—if she was really alone at that moment in the city of York—where ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... seems to be the probable fate of Japan, and its consummation is little more than a question of time. When all is accomplished, whether the civilising process will make them as a people wiser, better, or happier, is a problem of more doubtful solution. One thing is quite certain, that the obstructive principle which tends to the rejection of all Western innovations and proselytism as abominations, is much too active and vigorous in the Japanese mind to leave a hope that there will not be violent and obstinate resistance; ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... body of seventy-six, who wisely argue against the annihilation of one evil, because another will remain; had also powers to borrow a thousand pounds, to purchase and remove some obstructive buildings; and to defray the expence by a rate on the inhabitants, which, after deducting about one hundred and twenty pounds per ann. for ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... usual obstructive person in the train who required to be logically convinced first of the necessity for disturbing himself; he put his head angrily out of a window near Mark's: 'Here, guard!' he shouted importantly; 'what's all this? ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... more cheerful topics, and it was late before we retired to rest. I believe it was pride—perhaps only vanity—but, at all events, some obstructive and stubborn instinct of my nature, which I could not overcome—that prevented my telling my wife the odd occurrences which had disturbed my visit to our guest. I was unable or ashamed to confess that so slight a matter had disturbed me; and, above all, that any accident could possibly have ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... was still pressing his forehead, the new law quietly flowed into his consciousness, like a smooth-running stream of clean water which had hitherto been dammed by his obstructive will. ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... demands upon the understanding, the same man may be simply mischievous. We see this in the case of Andrew Jackson, who at New Orleans was glorious; at Washington almost wholly pernicious; and in the case of Andrew Johnson, who was eminently useful to his country in 1861, but obstructive and perilous to it in 1866. For these Scotch-Irishmen, though they are usually very honest men, and often right in their opinions, are an uninstructable race, who stick to a prejudice as tenaciously as to a principle, and ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... Surrey, quoted by Mr. Hallam, p. 25, or in the more pointed letter of Warham's, two pages on, which we do not see lying on our breakfast tables in half the newspapers every week? Poor, pedantic, obstructive old Warham, himself very angry at so much being asked of his brother clergymen, and at their being sworn as to the value of their goods (so like are old times to new ones); and being, on the whole, of opinion that the world (the Church included) is going to the devil, says that as ...
— Froude's History of England • Charles Kingsley
... good humour or out of the way. It was her certain belief that my brother William would have returned to his country, and my eldest brother would not have looked so high, if they had had a little less learning." Poor, purblind, well-meaning, obstructive old dame Herschel! what a boon to the world that children like yours are sometimes seized with this incomprehensible fancy ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... There is no obstructive limit to the achievements of the army of labor. Aside from agriculture and manufactures, there are roads to be built, buildings to be erected, improvements of many kinds, and there are about a thousand million acres of arid land, needing ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... themselves, he satisfies himself with the belief that, from activities so strenuous and remarkable as his, Good must result to the community. If he break the law, that is the fault of the law, for being stupid and obstructive; if he break individuals, that is their fault for being weak. Vae victis! Never has that principle, or rather instinct, ruled more paramount than ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... with our constructive work in face of all this overwhelming frustration. No doubt he means well, but we are not foolish enough to take his advice. We tell Dr. Coit that he does not understand the obstructive power of theology, and that he is thus unable to appreciate the work of the National ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... will, the bricks and mortar have by and by to give way before the slow and sure operation of the sap. But next to the hatred of the enemies of God which is the principle of persecution, there perhaps has been no perversion more obstructive of true moral development than this substitution of a reference to the glory of God for the direct promptings of the sympathetic feelings. Benevolence and justice are strong only in proportion as they ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... snow stuffs itself into neck, ears, nose, eyes, mouth—if open—and any convenient crevice of person or garments. The snow-shoes, too, which are so serviceable when you are above them, become exasperatingly obstructive when you are below them. After a struggle of two minutes I got my head clear, winked the snow out of my eyes, blew it from my mouth and nostrils, and looked up. Lumley was standing there with a bland smile on his amiable face; he seldom laughed, ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... and then begin scheming around to direct my interests, aspirations, and efforts into some other channel from where I want them, as though, out of his own great wisdom, he knew much better than I what a blind man could do. If you want to learn just how small the imagination of mankind is and how obstructive to progress is their fool good-heartedness, go among them as a capable mind with a physical handicap. You'll size them up, yourself included, as the most blindly wall-butting set of blundering organisms that ever felt their way through an endlessly ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... lady's illness," he said to the old nurses, "arises from external sources, and internal obstructive influences, caused by the unhealthiness of the season of late. Yet it's only a slight chill, after all. Fortunately, the young lady has ever been moderate in her drinking and eating. The cold she has is nothing much. It's mainly because she has a weak constitution that ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... had cared at all about the humane aspect of the matter, they could have taken a much less demoralizing method in getting rid of the obstructive surplus. They could have periodically made a bonfire of it as a burnt sacrifice to the god Profit, or, if they preferred, it might have been carried out in scows beyond ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... the goal of improvement. Principles, well founded and of real value, once understood, will eventually make their way. With all the errors of society, and the wrong-headed stubbornness and selfishness of humanity, with the immense obstructive power of established interests, the haughty despotism of old opinions, and the petrified rigidity of social customs, the solvent energy of truth nevertheless will penetrate every part of the imposing fabric, and gradually undermine its foundations. Underlying ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... enough. It is true that this motive operated very powerfully; but when the new departure in scientific doctrine which is associated with the name of the great naturalist Charles Darwin began, it was not only a reaction against a barbarous pseudo-evangelical teleology intolerably obstructive to all scientific progress, but was accompanied, as it happened, by discoveries of extraordinary interest in physics, chemistry, and that lifeless method of evolution which its investigators called Natural ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... nowadays, in describing and proposing a name for what they call 'a new species,' use that term to signify what was meant by it twenty or thirty years ago; that is, an originally distinct creation, maintaining its primitive distinction by obstructive generative peculiarities. The proposer of the new species now intends to state no more than he actually knows; as, for example, that the differences on which he founds the specific character are constant in individuals of both sexes, so far as observation ...
— The Origin of Species - From 'The Westminster Review', April 1860 • Thomas H. Huxley
... woman's age. Its sulkiness and eccentricity and occasional indecency are just what one would expect from a Sub-Consciousness, whose thoughts have no central I to keep them in order. (Compare Goethe's explanation of the obscenities of Ophelia.) Sometimes, too, there are Obstructive Associations, which account for its inability to make up its want of mind; and as there are usually several persons at table, the result is complicated by their separate Sub-Consciousnesses. In brief, table-turning is ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... the Irish party were beginning to apply and develop that use of Parliamentary forms for obstructive purposes which had been first systematically attempted by the "Colonels" in opposition to Mr. Cardwell's Bill for abolishing purchase in the Army, and Liberals were a little scandalized by their allies. In the ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... Obstructive, still playing the sentry, Where nobody wants you to watch or mount guard? Are you to rule everyone's exit and entry? Clear out, my young friend, or with you 'twill go hard. Yon Portuguese Tappertit, turn it up, do! D'ye think I'll be stopped ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 6, 1891 • Various
... not fasting, that the poor are always there to be helped, but that he is not there to be anointed always, implying that you should never lose a chance of being happy when there is so much misery in the world. He breaks the Sabbath; is impatient of conventionality when it is uncomfortable or obstructive; and outrages the feelings of the Jews by breaches of it. He is apt to accuse people who feel that way of hypocrisy. Like the late Samuel Butler, he regards disease as a department of sin, and on ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... as he came on deck was a study. It was alight with excitement; yet between the eyes two deep wrinkles of puzzlement quivered. Such a face the mathematician bends above his paper when some obstructive factor arises ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... turning our attention to other matters? The answer to that is that the belief in God is not of so detached a character as this advice assumes. In the course of ages the belief in God has acquired associations that give it the character of a highly obstructive force. It has become so entangled with inculcated notions of right and wrong that it is everywhere used as a buttress for institutions which have either outgrown their utility, or are in need of serious modification ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... and other forms of permissiveness have led to practices that circumscribe and hamper life. Their declared objective is the liberation and enlargement of human life and well being. Where they have been tested out they have proved themselves to be obstructive and destructive rather than ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... to proceed forth, in the hope of being able to make satisfactory arrangements for future intercourse; but the obstructive policy of the officials on his arrival at the Peiho compelled him to attack and capture the Taku forts, and finally, to take up his residence in Tientsin. The lips, as the Chinese say, being now gone, the teeth began to feel cold; the court was in a state ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles
... legislative councils were separated, which had come into force ten years before, although a decided improvement on the old state of affairs, did not produce universal satisfaction.[3] The constitution of the legislative council was complained of, and it was described as an obstructive body which disregarded the wishes of the people. Bills of the utmost importance, which had been passed by large majorities in the House of Assembly, and which were demanded by the people, were frequently rejected by ...
— Wilmot and Tilley • James Hannay
... up, tugging at the waistband of her habit, while Mrs. Spragg, relapsing from temerity to meekness, hovered about her with obstructive zeal. "If you'd only just let go of my skirt, mother—I can unhook it twice ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... rife," a taxgather, or robber, because it plucks the wool from the sheep as they pass through a hedge; also Grip-grass, Catchweed, and Scratchweed. Furthermore, this Bedstraw has been called Goose-grease, from a mistaken belief that obstructive ailments of geese can be cured therewith. It is really a fact that goslings are extremely ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... keeps its head it will be the better for the successive hurdles which obstructive age, or even middle-age, puts in its path. A few stumbles will teach it care ...
— Success (Second Edition) • Max Aitken Beaverbrook
... were against them, especially after the return of Madison from Philadelphia. Madison, aided by Edward Carrington and young Henry Lee, the famous leader of light horse, succeeded in every division in carrying the vote of Virginia in favour of the Constitution and against the obstructive measures of the elder Lee. The objection was first raised that the new Constitution would put an end to the Continental Congress, and that in recommending it to the states for consideration Congress would be virtually asking them to ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... young. It seemed in those days to thoughtful men the harsh law of being—that either we must submit to our elders and be stifled, or disregard them, disobey them, thrust them aside, and make our little step of progress before we too ossified and became obstructive in our turn. ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... that the Argument is very strong, and these reasons being considered by him of Marchena, have made him affirme, that Chocolate is Obstructive; it seeming to be contrary to Philosophy, that in it there should be found Heat and Moysture, in gradu intenso; and to be so likewise ...
— Chocolate: or, An Indian Drinke • Antonio Colmenero de Ledesma
... human nature. But most people are coming to recognize that life is too short for deliberate, elaborate, cold-drawn revenge. They will hit back when they conveniently can; they will cherish for half a lifetime a passive, an obstructive, ill-will; they will even await for years an opportunity of "getting their knife into" an enemy. But they have grown chary of "cutting off their nose to spite their face"; they will very rarely sacrifice their own comfort ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... of Dorset's moods, brightly companionable to Silverton and Dacey, the latter of whom met her on an evident footing of old admiration, while young Silverton, portentously self-absorbed, seemed conscious of her only as of something vaguely obstructive. And suddenly, as Selden noted the fine shades of manner by which she harmonized herself with her surroundings, it flashed on him that, to need such adroit handling, the situation must indeed be desperate. She was on the edge of something—that was the ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... devotes considerable space to its description, dividing the disease into two forms: the inflammatory, such as may follow venereal primary sores or operations on the penis, not excepting circumcision; and the obstructive variety, such as may follow embolism or any mechanical obstruction, either purposely or accidentally applied. Of the latter he gives a number of quoted instances; he only admits seeing one case, that of an aged man in the Pennsylvania Hospital, in whom the disease ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... Garnier, Rocher, and others, that the Songcoi, or Red River, furnished the best means of communicating with Yunnan, and tapping the wealth of the richest mineral province in China. The apathy of England in her relations with Burmah, which presented, under its arrogant and obstructive rulers, what may have seemed an insuperable obstacle to trade intercourse between India and China, afforded additional inducement to the French to act quickly; and, as they felt confident of their ability and power to coerce the court of Hue, the initial difficulties of their undertaking ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... day wore along I improved on my obstructive tactics. When the Elsinore was up in the eye of the wind, and making sternway, I found that by putting the wheel sharply over, one way or the other, I could swing her bow off. Then, when she had paid off till the wind was abeam, ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... road; and this rule, in spite of many local exceptions, is fairly correct in practice, especially as distances increase. Now, Canada is a country of great distances; and by land she once was in nearly every part, and she still is in a few parts, a country of obstructive wilds. What, then, must have been the advantage of water carriage over land carriage when there was neither road nor rail? As even pack-horses were not available in the early days, and good roads were few and only established by very slow degrees, ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood
... had not abandoned the arbitrary principles of his family, even in his worst adversity. His interference with the discussions on Poyning's Law, and the Inns of Court bill, had shocked some of his most devoted adherents. But he proceeded from obstructive to active despotism. He doubled, by his mere proclamation, the enormous subsidy of 20,000 pounds monthly voted him by the Houses. He established, by the same authority, a bank, and decreed in his own name a bank restriction act. He debased the coinage, and established a fixed scale of prices ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... immediate predecessor (Mr. Randall) decided, in principle, the point involved here. On February 24, 1877, after an obstructive motion had been made, the following language was used, as found in the Record of the ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... the majority was ignored. There is much truth in the charge, for Andros was self-willed, imperious, and impatient of discussion. On the other hand the Puritan leaders inordinately loved controversy and debate. If Andros was peremptory, the Puritan councillors were obstructive. ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... derived, and can have no hold on men of science, supported as they mostly are by fanciful analogies, facts misunderstood or misstated, and illustrations selected without discrimination or applicability. Theories do sometimes conduce to the discovery of truth, but are often obstructive; occupy the mind, like theological controversy, without advancing science; and are viewed with the same aversion by the philosopher that the political abstractions tendered to the multitude by the demagogue are viewed by ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous
... never occur to anybody now in Soissons or Laon to make the journey to Paris, as people did a hundred and fifty years ago, to drink the water of the Seine, as being 'the best in the world, and a specific against burning fevers and obstructive ailments.' ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... their trials, losses, and enforced dispersion during and at the end of the war, there was obviously no course left to the Americans, then in the midst of a deadly struggle, but to treat them as a dangerous and obstructive set. The New York Provincial Congress, in the fall of the year and later, dealt with them unsparingly; and no man wished to see the element rooted out more than John Jay—a fact to be borne in mind by those who condemn Lee and other American ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... charitably explained by that infirmity of human nature, which makes us very ready to believe what it is on other grounds convenient to us to believe. Nobody attributes to pure malevolence the heartiness with which the great corporation of lawyers, for example, resist the removal of superfluous and obstructive forms in their practice; they have come to look on such forms as indispensable safeguards. Hence powerful teachers and preachers of all kinds have been spontaneously inclined to suppose a necessity, which had no real existence, ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... energies to the great struggle which is in ceaseless progress in all societies in an endless variety of forms, between new truth and old prejudice, between love of self or class and solicitous passion for justice, between the obstructive indolence and inertia of the many and the generous mental activity of the few. This is the sphere and definition of the social conscience. The good causes of enlightenment and justice in all lands,—here is the church militant in which we should ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... time is fast approaching when a sharp and decisive end to this iniquity will be demanded by the will of an enlightened people; only then will the existing orthodox power be compelled to loosen its obstructive grip which the interests of humanity have, so far, been powerless to unclasp. But, to quote the stirring words of one who looked with prophetic, faithful eye into the tangled ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... and there was no moving you! There was some obscurity about this saying; but no doubt its esoteric meaning was, that once you accounted for anything by direct Divine interposition, you stood committed to a controversial attitude which would render you an obstructive ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... a start as though intending to sweep past the log on which the three scouts were perched, Felix, waiting for some such move, paddled vigorously to head them off. This series of obstructive tactics, coupled with the demonstration made by the other boys, served to keep the hounds in check for a certain length ...
— The Boy Scouts of Lenox - Or The Hike Over Big Bear Mountain • Frank V. Webster
... generally supposed to be, can and does look after itself. Society is certainly a nuisance and a heavy drag upon human energy, but so long as that energy can express itself in art, society cannot be altogether obstructive. That, says the intellectual, is well enough for the artist, but what of the individuals to whom art can only be at best a keen stimulus, at worst a drugging pleasure? Is the dead weight of society altogether to crush their delight in life? What is society? What is it but the accumulated emanations ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... might crack their sides With laughter, and exemption get, At sight of heroes clasping brides, And hearing—O the horn! the horn! The horn of their obstructive debt! ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... were forced to enter the town by a circuitous route and find, to their chagrin, Mr. Tippett's premises completely gutted. For three days all our traffic entered and left the town perforce by the north side; but two years after, on the completion of the railway line to Troy, these obstructive gatehouses were removed, to give ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... haranguing on the Woman question. What he wanted was to emancipate the female mind from the yoke of superstition and of priestcraft. Time enough to talk about giving women votes when they were no longer the slaves of an obstructive religion. There were good things in the lecture, but, on the whole, it was flabby—flabby. A man who would discourse on this topic must be courageous; he must dare to shock and give offence. Now, if he ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... as Glennard pushed aside an obstructive chair, had a moment to measure each other; then Flamel advanced, and drawing out his note-case, laid a slip ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... single generation. A little more knowledge, we say, and a little less zeal would save the Socialist from being considered by the advanced thinker—who, studying the present by the light of the past, sees that all civilization is provisional—as the most serious obstructive whom he ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... insisted on the payment of interest and even the principal when it was due. So they elected a Populist legislature and passed a law providing that a mortgagee could not foreclose his mortgage under two years. They did this by stay laws and by requiring an obstructive procedure in collection of debts. As a result, capital fled the state as men would flee yellow fever. When there was no money at all left in the state and they found that they couldn't get any, they began to recognize the benefit in money loaned on mortgages. Their next legislature ...
— Ethics in Service • William Howard Taft
... discreditable chapter of English history that ought to have been closed for ever; I ask you to give us a verdict of Not Guilty, to send us back to our homes and to stamp your brand of disapprobation on this prosecution, which is degrading religion by associating it with all that is penal, obstructive, and loathsome; I ask you to let us go away from here free men, and so make it impossible that there ever should again be a prosecution for blasphemy; I ask you to have your names inscribed in history as the last jury that decided for ever that great and grand principle of liberty ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... while she wistfully mothered the obstructive Scrap at tea, felt too that she had had a curious day. Like Mrs. Fisher's, it had been active, but, unlike Mrs. Fisher's, only active in mind. Her body had been quite still; her mind had not been still at all, it had ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... skipper nor Tips was very visible at the distance of three yards, owing to a dense fog which prevailed. It was one of those white, luminous, dry fogs which are not at all depressing to the spirits, though obstructive to the eyes, and which are generally, if not always, accompanied ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... which the enthusiasm and intelligence of individuals have set on foot. The mere checking of the obstruction of the individual will not suffice; other aldermen will arise—equally ignorant, equally talkative, equally obstructive. And until the race is relegated to its proper function, bimetallism and sewage, the incidents I have described will happen again ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... was ready to lead the way. The schoolmaster declined to go alone with me, on the ground that neither of us knew the mountain, and threatening clouds were gathering all around. When, at last, I proposed to go by myself, they became menacingly obstructive, and declared that I should certainly not be allowed to face the intricacy of the mountain in a fog. Besides, as the maire put it, he was sure of the way to the third glaciere; and if I were to go up alone to look for the second, ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... and Irishmen, Conservatives and Radicals, should be agreed as to the meaning of the new Fundamental Law. When, in short, a constitution for the country is being drawn up, no discussion which is rational can be obstructive. If a week or a fortnight of parliamentary time is expended in defining the meaning of the supreme authority of Parliament, or in deciding whether the Irish delegacy is or is not to be retained at Westminster, not a moment too much is devoted to points of such transcendent importance. 'But the debate,' ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... certainly a very unexpected display of vigour on the Liberal side. But, on the whole, this movement towards collectivist organisation on the part of the Liberals rather strengthened than weakened my resolve to cross the floor of the house. It made it more necessary, I thought, to leaven the purely obstructive and reactionary elements that were at once manifest in the opposition. I assailed the land taxation proposals in one main speech, and a series of minor speeches in committee. The line of attack I chose was that ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... will only embrace native Egyptians, nor in that of any endeavour to convert Egypt into a British possession on the model of India or Ceylon, but rather in that of an enlarged cosmopolitanism, which, whilst discarding all the obstructive fetters of the cumbersome old international system, will tend to amalgamate all the inhabitants of the Nile Valley and enable them all alike to share in the government of their ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... daringly enforced communication. Open spaces within the walls, different heights in the stories of contiguous buildings, breaks in the continuity of floors, and various other irregularities, he found confusingly obstructive. ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... very much weedgrown; and I was told that the weed is an American production, brought to England with importations of timber, and now threatening to choke up the Thames and other English rivers. I wonder it does not try its obstructive powers upon the Merrimack, the Connecticut, or the Hudson,—not to speak of the St. Lawrence ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... anything for herself. She has gone through life, accepting everybody's help, and adopting everybody's opinions. A more hopeless person, in a spiritual point of view, I have never met with—there is absolutely, in this perplexing case, no obstructive material to work upon. Aunt Ablewhite would listen to the Grand Lama of Thibet exactly as she listens to Me, and would reflect his views quite as readily as she reflects mine. She found the furnished house at Brighton by stopping ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... space by procrastination in the north, and he resorted to the same tactics at Canton. Days expanded into weeks, and at last orders were issued for an advance up the Canton River, as it had become evident that the Chinese were not only bent on an obstructive policy, but were making energetic efforts to assemble a large army. On January 7, 1841, orders were consequently issued for an immediate attack on the Bogue forts, which had been placed in a state of defense, and which were manned by large numbers of Chinese. Fortunately ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... a great idea to the actual birth is apt to be obstructive to national pride. It is even said that the Chinese of centuries ago understood the value of the screw-propeller—for inventing which our adoptive citizen Ericsson stands in bronze on New ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... Desmond sat forward, obstructive no longer. "If you're going so badly off the rails, you must have it straight. And ... confound ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... quick." We see the Molesworths and Cantilupes of the day parading the Park; we watch Brougham fretting at a hearing in the Lords, or Peel holding forth to the Commons (where the Irish members are already obstructive); we squeeze in at the Haymarket to listen to Jenny Lind, or we run down the river to Greenwich Fair, and visit "Mr. Richardson, his show." Many years after, in the "Bird's Eye Views of Society," which appeared in the early numbers of the "Cornhill Magazine," Mr. Doyle ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... dissolves the world to failing eyes, Mr. Royall's presence began to detach itself with rocky firmness from this elusive background. She had always thought of him—when she thought of him at all—as of someone hateful and obstructive, but whom she could outwit and dominate when she chose to make the effort. Only once, on the day of the Old Home Week celebration, while the stray fragments of his address drifted across her troubled mind, had she caught a glimpse of another being, a ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... IN THE OBSTRUCTIVE VARIETY of dysmenorrhea, some organic impediment hinders the exit of the menstrual blood from the uterus, which, consequently, becomes distended and painful. The pain may be constant, but is most acute when the uterus makes spasmodic efforts to discharge ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... for the transfer of freight from Greenville to Bay Ridge will relieve the inner waters of the harbor of a large volume of obstructive car-float traffic. There appears to be no reason why this traffic should not be eventually conducted through tunnels under the outer harbor, should future transportation conditions justify the ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 • Charles W. Raymond
... character; but it was greatly enlarged during the progress of the works. Floating docks were added, as well as graving docks for large vessels. The necessary powers were obtained in 1815; the works proceeded vigorously under the Harbour Commissioners, who superseded the old obstructive corporation; and in 1825 the splendid new floating dock—750 feet long by 450 broad, having an entrance-lock 170 feet long and 40 feet wide—was opened to ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... of travel, of jurisprudence, of torture and punishment, of social ranks, of the relation of the individual to the state, of the state to the family, and of religion to the family, were more or less defective and unsuited to the new civilization. Before this new movement all obstructive ideas, however, sanctioned by antiquity, have had to give way. The Japanese of to-day look, as it were, upon a new earth and a new heaven. Those of forty years ago would be amazed, not only at the enormous changes in the externals, life and government, ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... set quarrel with everybody and don't pay what they owe. One set are successful in everything, the other set are successful in nothing. One set have always been friendly and helpful to Bull, the other set have always been unfriendly and obstructive to him. He proposes to reject the advice of the successful, amicable, helpful men, who have always stuck up for him, and to follow the advice of the quarrelsome, unsuccessful, unfriendly men, who have always spoken ill of him and have spent their energies in trying to damage ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... Parliamentary fight of a generation began to take form in the House of Commons. The Conservatives, led by Mr. Balfour, put up an obstructive fight to every line and almost every word of the finance bill which was founded on the Budget. Departmental duties all day, the onward fight with his finance measure throughout the night and often the early hours of the morning, became the routine ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... from thence, both by reason of the huge remoteness of the places from one to another, as also because of the impeditive interposition of many great rivers, the interjacent obstacle of divers wild deserts, and obstructive interjection of sundry almost inaccessible mountains,—whilst he was in this sad quandary and solicitous pensiveness, which, you may suppose, could not be of a small vexation to him, considering that it was a matter of no great difficulty to run over his whole native soil, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... upon it, according as it moves with evolution or against it.[35] Only in one sense, then, is it fatal; it cannot be destroyed save by an opposing force of the same momentum. For instance, in order to annihilate an obstructive force, created in the past, the soul must expend an amount of energy that is equal and opposite to that force; it meanwhile cannot devote itself to any other work, thus causing, in one sense, a useless production ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... ascertained partly by testing the hearing, and partly by excluding affections of the outer and middle ear. When the sound-conducting apparatus is at fault, the resulting deafness is spoken of as "obstructive"; when the sound-perceiving apparatus is affected, the term "nerve deafness" is used. The semicircular canals, which are peripheral organs concerned in the maintenance of equilibration, form part of the ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... life, as well as by his obstructive buildings in the Palais-Royal, the Duke of Orleans had lost favor with the public; his protest and his banishment restored him at once to his popularity. The Parliament piled remonstrance upon remonstrance, every day more and more haughty in form as well as in substance. Dipping into ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... committee he had commanding influence, and with his skill in legislation and intimate knowledge of the rules he was the leader whenever he chose to lead. This he always did when the policy he desired or the measure he was promoting had a majority, and the opposition resorted to obstructive tactics. As there is no restriction on debate in the Senate, or was none at my time, the only way the minority could defeat the majority was by talking the bill to death. I never knew this method to be used successfully but once, because in the trial of endurance the greater number wins. ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... which has forgotten to be a fountain, so dreamily does the water ooze through obstructive mosses and emerald growths that dangle in drowsy pendants, like wet beards, from its venerable lips—that fountain un-trimmed, harmonious, overhung by ancient ilexes: where shall a more reposeful spot be found? Doubly delicious, after the turmoil and glistening sheen by the river-bank. For the foliage ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... was changed even more than he himself suspected; he had stepped, without faltering, into his birthright, and was spending money, intellectually, as lavishly as a young heir who has just won an obstructive lawsuit. Roderick's glance and voice were the same, doubtless, as when they enlivened the summer dusk on Cecilia's veranda, but in his person, generally, there was an indefinable expression of experience rapidly and ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... the time the Zimmerman note was published, President Wilson asked Congress to authorize the arming of American merchant ships for their own defense. A small minority in Congress by their obstructive tactics prevented the passage of the desired resolution before Congress expired on March 4. On March 12 the President announced that this country had determined to place an armed guard on all United States merchant vessels, which under international law might defend themselves ...
— A School History of the Great War • Albert E. McKinley, Charles A. Coulomb, and Armand J. Gerson
... necessary compromises of political life were intolerable to me; but wherever they touched on the life of the people they became to me of burning interest. The land question, the incidence of taxation, the cost of Royalty, the obstructive power of the House of Lords—these were the matters to which I put my hand; I was a Home Ruler, too, of course, and a passionate opponent of all injustice to nations weaker than ourselves, so that I found myself always in opposition to the Government of the day. Against our aggressive and oppressive ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... was required to combat the theological; but now it has served its destructive purpose, and tends to become obstructive, for, having destroyed the old, it will not permit the new. Its chief dogma has always been liberty of conscience with the liberty of press and speech which that implies; but liberty of conscience really means little more than absence of intellectual regulation; and even as liberty of conscience ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... guard against," was [Ch] mound-fang; "to hinder" was [Ch] woman-fang. This last example may seem a little strange until we remember that man must have played the principal part in the development of writing, and that from the masculine point of view there is something essentially obstructive and unmanageable in woman's nature. It may be remarked, by the way, that the element "woman" is often the determinative in characters that stand for unamiable qualities, e.g. [Ch][Ch] "jealous," [Ch][Ch] "treacherous," [Ch] "false" and [Ch] "uncanny." ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... Just at that time Richelieu had stepped into power, and he expressly directed the policy of France to the destruction of the position which the Spaniards had occupied on the Middle Rhine. In spite of the obstructive efforts of a party which had both ecclesiastical and political objects in view, he concluded the arrangements for the marriage of the Princess to the Prince of Wales without any delay, even without waiting for the ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... between good forces and evil forces. The good men must enlist on the side of the good forces. This religion especially approved all the economic virtues, and productive efforts, like the clearing of waste land, or other labor to increase favorable conditions and to overcome harmful or obstructive influences, were religious, and were counted as help ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... colonial policy up to their last day. Proposed reforms and solicitations for permission to introduce modern improvements were by no means welcomed. In the provinces clerical opposition was often cast against liberal innovations, and in the Government bureaux they were encompassed with obstructive formalities, objections, and ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... should have benefited by the funds so squandered in opposing the very parties who supplied the money, with which they were themselves harassed. If a tenant applies for a lease, and the society consents to grant one, it is so hampered with obstructive clauses that his solicitor objects to his signing it, and says that from its nature it could not be made a negotiable instrument on which to raise money. The tenant remonstrates, but the reply of the city is—"That is our form of lease; you must comply with it or want!" If you go to ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... country is effectually screened by water from external attack, it is screened in a way that permits its normal political development to go on internally without those manifold military hinderances that have ordinarily been so obstructive in the history of civilization. Hence we not only see why, after the Norman Conquest had operated to increase its unity and its strength, England enjoyed a far greater amount of security and was far more peaceful than any other country in Europe; but we also ...
— American Political Ideas Viewed From The Standpoint Of Universal History • John Fiske
... its enforcement till its validity had been determined by the Courts. As to this Lincoln most properly agreed to facilitate, if he could, an appeal to the Supreme Court, but declined, on the ground of urgent military necessity, to delay the drafts in the meantime. Seymour's obstructive conduct, however, was not confined to the intelligible ground of objection to the Act itself; it showed itself in the perpetual assertion that the quotas were unfair. No complaint as to this had been raised before the riots. It seems that a quite unintended error may in fact at first have ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... marriage—be very soon, papa?" asked Miss Granger, with another gulp, as if there were still some obstructive substance ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... Travels sensed the possibility of Swift's use of certain portions of his narrative to vent disappointment at his failure to receive the church preferment he thought he deserved and to carry on his personal vendetta against obstructive bishops like the "crazy Prelate" Sharpe, Archbishop of York, one of the detestable and "dull Divines" pilloried in the autobiographical poem "The Author Upon ...
— A Letter From a Clergyman to his Friend, - with an Account of the Travels of Captain Lemuel Gulliver • Anonymous
... early perceived that to obtain the desired end, every particular must be studied and provided for, so that all elements of enduring success should be united, and all obstructive elements removed. I felt that no effort, care, or thought would be too great if it would only produce the desired results, by securing health, beauty, intelligence, and long life in man, to the utmost extent that ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... have reached it ere this, if you had not required such a positive demonstration of your utter uselessness. You have delayed me by what Guizot used to call 'an obstructive ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... POWER, as I conceive of it. The power of moral prejudices has penetrated deeply into the most intellectual world, the world apparently most indifferent and unprejudiced, and has obviously operated in an injurious, obstructive, blinding, and distorting manner. A proper physio-psychology has to contend with unconscious antagonism in the heart of the investigator, it has "the heart" against it even a doctrine of the reciprocal ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... received a sufficient supply of negroes, and certainly not so many as smaller industrial towns, although the railroads and a few of the industrial concerns of the locality have had labor agents in the South. Yet, in spite of the difficulties because of the obstructive tactics adopted in certain southern communities to prevent the negro exodus, they have nevertheless succeeded in bringing several thousand negroes into this district. "One company, for instance," says Epstein, "which imported about a thousand men within the past year, ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott
... hour to dig his way out. On account of this periodic influx, the vestibule doorway to the workroom was moved to the other end of the wall, where the invading snow had farther to travel and was consequently less obstructive. ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... before a bitter drop rose in the Imperial cup. Barbarians from beyond the sea came forward to claim the right of personal interview with the sovereign of all under Heaven. The story of the first audience is still fresh in our memories; the trivial difficulties introduced by obstructive statesmen at every stage of the proceedings, questions of etiquette and precedence raised at every turn, until finally the kotow was triumphantly rejected and five bows substituted in its stead. ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... very discreditable bills which would have been made positively infamous if it had not been for the active opposition of a few friends of liberty. One of these bills was designed to add to the stringency of the present obstructive medical law; the other was designed to assist the labors of Anthony Comstock in interrupting the circulation of popular physiological literature, ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... partially drained by the river they were on that the red lines were exclusively traced, and Barry noticed with a seaman's eye that the marked soundings showed the river survey to have been very complete, while less frequent soundings on the ocean side gave a condition of bottom utterly obstructive to navigation. He caught instantly the significance of the map from a naval viewpoint but was puzzled at its significance for him or his ship. He glanced up to find ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... been living in retirement at lodgings, in Somer's Town, with a poor girl whom he had seduced. Here he renewed the mad scenes of his thoughtless youth with Terry, Matthews, and wonderful old Tom Hill; and here he resumed (but not at these revels) his former acquaintanceship with that mischievous obstructive, Wilson Croker. After he left Shire Lane and the Rules of the ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... track, just in front of our engine, which whistled piercingly and let off steam as though in frantic anger. Presently we slowed down almost to a walking pace, for we had no wish to spill the blood or crush the bones of even obstructive horses. But as we slowed our pace they provokingly slackened theirs, and when once more we put on steam they did the same. So in sheer desperation our guard dismounted and ran himself completely out of breath, ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... in which a pulmotor would be used, such as apnea from electric shocks, etc. For obstructive dyspnea and asphyxia, tracheotomy is the procedure of choice, and the skillful tracheotomist would be justified in preferring tracheotomy for the other class of cases, insufflating the oxygen and ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... Tubby, watching Anthony, who showed evidences of having been considerably excited by the explosion, though Tubby could not tell whether it was fear that influenced the man, or an overmastering desire to join the army, and engage in some of this obstructive work himself. ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... times. Being from the Tyne, and a man who had gained and lost in his own pocket by these fluctuations, he had much to say, and held strong opinions on the subject. He spoke sharply of the masters, and, when I led him on, of the men also. The masters had been selfish and obstructive; the men selfish, silly, and light-headed. He rehearsed to me the course of a meeting at which he had been present, and the somewhat long discourse which he had there pronounced, calling into question the wisdom and even the good faith of the Union delegates; and although he had escaped ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... is obstructive to little plans. It is difficult to warm yourself at a conflagration; the tempest may blow you away; the sun dazzles; lightning seldom strikes gently; the Nile overflows. Genius has its times of straying off into the infinite—and then what is the good wife to do for companionship? ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... all hands, by the abandonment of the obvious meaning of its writer. It is a poem, not a scientific treatise. In the former aspect it is for ever beautiful: in the latter aspect it has been, and it will continue to be, purely obstructive and hurtful. To knowledge its value has been negative, leading, in rougher ages than ours, to physical, and even in our own' free' age to ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... specialized work, there always is opposition. The outgoing generation remembers the opposition to specialized training for law, medicine, and engineering, to say nothing of farming, school teaching and business. But in spite of obstructive and retarding objections, specialized types of training for specialized types of work have grown in number and favor, and today we are being shown convincingly that nations which have declined to set up the fundamental types of special ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... weapons against obstructive administrations. In their eyes, crime belongs to the assizes or the police-courts; but the socially refined evils escape their ken; the adroitness that triumphs under shield of the Code is above them or beneath them; they have neither eye-glass nor telescope; they ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... granting of the Magna Charta, thus firmly of the liberties of England has been accomplished by bitter and fierce struggles; the obstructive forces were strong, but yielded in the end to the onward sweep of liberty directed by the aggressive spirit of intelligence, manhood, and humanity. At the end of the sixteenth century this much had been gained for freedom. The principles of liberty, which had been constantly acknowledged ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... the old man's shoulder, but Sagan shook it off—'then, Captain Colendorp, he must go—to make room for another who can better fill his place! Just as Wallenloup must go to give room to another and less obstructive chief.' ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... most conspicuous politically was that which resulted in Roman Catholic emancipation, and here, too, the Utilitarians might be anticipating a complete triumph of their principles. The existing disqualifications, indeed, were upheld by little but the purely obstructive sentiment. When the duke of York swore that 'so help him God!' he would oppose the change to the last, he summed up the whole 'argument' against it. Canning and Huskisson here represented the policy not only of Pitt, but of Castlereagh. The Whigs, indeed, might claim to be ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... Rufus having been confined in a cell. He later on brought Favonius the aedile to the same place on some small charge, in order that he might have a companion in his disgrace. But all the tribunes introduced various obstructive pleas, proposing, among other things, to appoint military tribunes, so that more persons, as formerly, might come to office. When no one would heed them, they declared that Pompey, at all events, must be chosen dictator. By this pretext they secured a ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... were assembled, and the conference lasted for two days. The Yellow Quill band were still obstructive, but the other two sections were disposed to accept the terms. The question of the reserve was the main difficulty. The Yellow Quill band still desired a reserve for the whole. The others wished ...
— The Treaties of Canada with The Indians of Manitoba - and the North-West Territories • Alexander Morris
... the study of art, in order to make himself a worthy painter. It may be affirmed that if he did not perhaps attain his purpose, it was not on account of any defect or negligence on his part, but solely because of an obstructive malady which prevented him from ever realising his desire. Taddeo died at the age of fifty-nine, after having taught the art to a nephew of his called Domenico. His paintings were done about the year of grace 1410. Thus, as I have said, he left Domenico Bartoli, ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari
... I imagine that when I occur to Camilla's mind, it is as the obstructive old hag, who once stood in her way; and so, without any formed designs, whatever she says of me is coloured by ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... straitest Tory will admit, there were in that world a great many abuses as they are called, that is to say, a great many things which, once useful and excellent, had either decayed into positive nuisances, or dried up into neutral and harmless but obstructive rubbish. There were also many silly and some mischievous people, as well as some wise and useful ones, who defended the abuses. Sydney Smith was an ideal soldier of reform for his time, and in his way. He was ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury |
