"Oppressive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... narration had their weight. He suffered much from a morbid acuteness of the senses. The most insipid food was alone endurable; he could wear only garments of certain texture; the odors of all flowers were oppressive; his eyes were tortured by even a faint light; and there were but peculiar sounds, and these from stringed instruments, which did not inspire ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... way on, with the growth completely hiding him from his companion, while the heat seemed to be more and more oppressive. It was a dank stewing heat, very different to the scorching of the sun out in the more open parts, and both were longing to get to a spot where they could breathe more freely, when Mark, who was about six yards ahead, ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... in the Church militant, I have sometimes apprehended it might be within the compass of our present Particular and Monthly Meetings; but should this be ordered otherwise in best wisdom, I trust I shall be relieved from the oppressive feeling, and in a short time see my way clear. On the other hand, if this change takes place, we have a probability of a comfortable living, and of being relieved from the extreme anxiety attendant on trade, when the whole responsibility ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley
... sadness in the sound. It made my tears flow. How I longed to speak to them! I was eager to look on their faces; but there was no hole, no crack, through which I could peep. This continued darkness was oppressive. It seemed horrible to sit or lie in a cramped position day after day, without one gleam of light. Yet I would have chosen this, rather than my lot as a slave, though white people considered it an easy one; and ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... to carry with them an air of repose while awake. To rouse them from mid-day slumbers we would call loudly as we passed a cabin in the woods, and after considerable delay a man would appear at the door, rubbing his eyes as though the genial sunlight was oppressive to his vision. It was indeed a quiet, restful region, this ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... her voice she became aware finally of the accomplishment of its mission by death in this house. And she fled into the main hall. She jerked at the bell rope. The contact steadied her, stimulated her to reason. One slender hope remained. The oppressive bedroom might have driven Silas Blackburn through the private hall and down the enclosed staircase. Perhaps he slept on the ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... now you listen to how the rats run about on Mrs. Picture when she was on board of the ship." Thus Aunt M'riar, always with that haunting vice of perverting Art, Literature, Morals, and Philosophy to the oppressive improvement of the young. She seldom scored a success, and this time she was hoisted with her own petard. For Dolly jumped with delight at the prospect of a romance of fascinating character, combining Zoology and Travel. She applied for a place to ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... In a word, of her virtue I never entertained a doubt; but, pushed by the artful suggestions of Archer, I thought she cared little for my peace of mind, and that the young fellow Brown paid his attentions in my despite, and in defiance of me. He perhaps considered me, on his part, as an oppressive aristocratic man, who made my rank in society and in the army the means of galling those whom circumstances placed beneath me. And if he discovered my silly jealousy, he probably considered the fretting me in that sore point of my character ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... being heavy-eyed, but could not sleep. The air was oppressive, and a dull pain was in his head as though a steel band were clasped tightly round his forehead. The dream was still surging unpleasantly through his brain, and at last his restlessness prompted him to go out ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... in the sun the heat was oppressive, but a grateful coolness lay beneath the shades of the forest, as our two brethren, Martin and Ginepro, pursued their way under the spreading canopy of leaves in search of the outlaws, whom most men ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... the strain oppressive. But now a drawling voice came from the back of the hall. "Are you watching the rise of Orion?" it said. It was ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... had been unusually warm. Of all oppressive summers a hot summer in London is the hardest to endure. The little exercise that Sydney could take was, as Randal knew, deferred until the evening. On asking for her, he was surprised to hear that she ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... came, and seeded down a land with their ideas, language, laws, literature, political inclinations, and homestead names. Those early emigrants, though refugees from oppressive misrule, loved England notwithstanding. Of her they dreamed, to her they clung, from her they imported sedate and musical names for their new homes this side the sea. New England was the special bailiwick for such sowing, though Virginia partakes of this seed and harvest. The rich ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... healing. I could not help but think that the ancient miracle play of the resurrection of Osiris could have been acted out with similar simple means, with a mummy case and great sarcophagus. The wings of Isis and Nephthys could have been spread over the sky instead of the oppressive walls of the crooked city. Lights instead of shadows could have been made actors and real hieroglyphic inscriptions instead ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... thicker, the light pierced down in golden arrows only, the silence was almost oppressive. Caroline stepped suddenly out of the tiny path, pushed aside a clump of fern, buried her arm up to the elbow in a hollow stump and produced a large crumbling ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... tree's summer shade, A stranger, travel-stained and gray, Beside them halted on his way. As if a spell, upon them thrown, Had changed their agile limbs to stone, Each in the spot where it first view'd Th' approaching wand'rer mutely stood. Ere silence had oppressive grown The old man's voice thus found a tone; "I too was once as blithe and gay— My days as lightly flew away As if I counted all their hours Upon a dial-plate of flowers; And gentle slumber oft renew'd The joyance of my waking mood, As if my soul in slumber caught The radiance of expiring ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... those wonder-doing demigods—those Magi of the Civil Service office—was most oppressive to him. When he got to the board, he was always treated with a deference which he knew was but a prelude to barbaric tortures. They would ask him to sit down in a beautiful new leathern arm-chair, as though he were really some great man, and then ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... 12th of June following the citizens of Colleton District, South Carolina, met at the courthouse in Walterborough and adopted an address to the people. Among other things this address stated: "For it is not enough that imposts laid for protection of domestic manufactures are oppressive, and transfer in their operation millions of our property to Northern capitalists. If we have given our bond, let them take our blood. Those who resist these imposts must deem them unconstitutional, and the principle is abandoned by the payment of one cent—as much as ten millions." ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright
... tendency to apoplexy, for at the height of 15,000 feet above the level of the sea, the extremely rarified state of the air, as well as the almost unbearable oppression of the sun's rays, though surrounded with snow, would increase that tendency to an alarming extent. So oppressive is the sun, that on sitting down in the shade he was asleep instantly. The passage, just above the Grande Plateau (a surface of ice and snow, many acres in extent, 10,000 feet above the level of the sea) is a point of great difficulty. This chink is about seven feet ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 383, August 1, 1829 • Various
... emancipatory proclamation had recently issued, and seemed to adapt itself, with wonderful elasticity, to the discontents of all parties; not comprehensive enough for the ultra-Abolitionists, it was stigmatized by the Democrats as unconstitutional and oppressive; while moderate politicians agreed that, beyond irritating feelings already bitter enough, it would be practically invalid as an offensive measure. We shall see, hereafter, how ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... between the two figures, one of which suddenly collapsed and lay inert. The other sprang at his neck, sinking long claws into his throat. Slit eyes glinted close. Before his wind was shut off he caught the oppressive fragrance of a heavy perfume. ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... have been more nobly carried out? The square and stalwart form of the women, the mass of hair which strengthens their necks, the easy pose, all make us feel that the task is not beyond their strength or oppressive. ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... There is an oppressive silence, HORSHAM is sulky. The matter is beyond FARRANT. CANTELUPE whose agonies have expressed themselves in slight writhings, at last, with an effort, writhes himself to ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker
... the morrow, and that men still buy, sell, cheat, and strive for gold, and that we are in the Rocky Mountains, and that it is near midnight. But morning comes hot and tiresome, and the never-ending work is oppressive, and Dr. H. comes in from the field two or three times in the day, dizzy and faint, and they condole with each other, and I feel that the Colorado settler needs to be made of sterner stuff and ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... conclude the why, Infer the motive from the deed, and show, That what we chanced was what we meant to do. Behold! if fortune or a mistress frowns, Some plunge in business, others shave their crowns: To ease the soul of one oppressive weight, This quits an empire, that embroils a state: The same adust complexion has impelled Charles to the convent, Philip to the field. Not always actions show the man: we find Who does a kindness, is not therefore kind; Perhaps prosperity becalmed his breast, Perhaps the wind just shifted from ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... governments openly, declaring that if forced to take up arms they would turn them against their tyrannous oppressors rather than against their helpless brothers of another nation. Thus the burden of militarism did by its own oppressive weight rouse the opposing force ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... King Fisher! Jean marveled at the fact. And he shivered all over for Jorth. In ten minutes—fifteen, more or less, Jorth would lie gasping bloody froth and sinking down. Something in the dark, lonely, silent, oppressive summer night told Jean this. He strode on swiftly. Crossing the road at a run, he kept on over the ground he had traversed during the afternoon, and in a few moments he stood breathing hard at the edge of the ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... rulers of the land, driven to the mountains, gradually reconquered their country step by step. The result of this reconquest of the country would also be in Egypt, as it was in Spain, that the Semitic remnants left in the land would be subject to a severe and oppressive rule. The Jews in Egypt, like the Moors in Spain, were victims of a cruel bondage. Then began the most splendid period of Egyptian history, during the seventeenth, sixteenth, fifteenth, and fourteenth centuries before Christ. The Egyptian armies overran ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... we who have sinned more than they: we have all gone astray in our ignorance, being without the knowledge of God, or of his law. Yet the Lord hath permitted us to make them the subjects of our oppressive iniquity. ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... which you come hither to oppose, appears very cruel, unreasonable, and oppressive. I should think there could not be much doubt ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... long time finding the milk, and the Intelligence officer began to feel the situation oppressive. He would have liked to have turned his head to see if there were any sign of his troopers being in position on the hill above him. But he had that indescribable feeling which often inspires a man ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... of his life, as all the world knows, was the repeal of those oppressive Corn Laws by which the duty on grain rose as the price declined, so that the poor man's loaf was kept dear, however abundant and cheap wheat might be in Europe and America. It was in a time of deep ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... creature was a companion,—a something to talk to, to caress and to protect. He ascended the bank, and regaining the highroad resumed his vagrant way. Noon was now at the full, and the sun's heat seemed to create a silence that was both oppressive and stifling. He walked slowly, and began to feel that perhaps after all he had miscalculated his staying powers, and that the burden of old age would, in the end, take vengeance upon him for running risks of fatigue and exhaustion which, ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... general warrants, whereby an officer or messenger may be commanded to search suspected places without evidence of a fact committed, or to seize any person or persons not named, or whose offence is not particularly described and supported by evidence, are grievous and oppressive, and ought not to ...
— The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens • Georg Jellinek
... sweeping wings of a hawk paint their moth-like image on the blue surface, or a little flaw of wind shudders across the water in a black ripple; but except for these casual stirs of Nature, all is still, oppressive, and beautiful, as earth seems to the trance-sleeper on the brink of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... his instant necessity of straightening out the reformatory situation. This latter necessity had dominated his thought ever since the chance meeting in the post-office. And as his mind explored the subject, it ramified, and grew more complicated and oppressive with every step ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... irritated her, and fixed her in her determination. "I want to get away, I tell you; I want to get away," she answered all persuasion, and there seemed something in her like the wish to escape from more than the oppressive environment, though she spoke of nothing but the heat and the smell of the canal. "I believe it's that, moa than any one thing, that's kept me sick he'e," she said. "I tell you it's the malariar, and you'll be down, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... past week, the heat was very oppressive during the day, whilst, at night, it was often exceedingly cold; for two or three hours before dawn, and for an hour after sunset, it was generally delightful, particularly within the influence of a cheerful cypress-pine fire, ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... property, who love their sovereign, would have done on such an occasion. They looked upon him as their sovereign, although degraded. They were unacquainted with any authority superior to his, and the phantom of tyranny which performed these oppressive acts was unaccompanied by that force which justifies submission by affording the plea of necessity. An unseen tyrant and four miserable companies of sepoys executed all the horrible things that we have mentioned. The spirit of the Rajah's ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... though all of opposite interests. By his admirable eloquence and charity he often disarmed the most savage barbarians, obtained the lives and liberty of whole armies of captives, the abolition of several oppressive laws, and the mitigation of heavy public imposts and taxes. By his profuse charities he preserved an incredible number of distressed persons from perishing, and by his zeal he stemmed the torrent of iniquity in times of universal disorder and calamity. He performed an embassy to the emperor Anthemius, ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... invented institutions of civil liberty which secure to all safety of person and property. They have not, therefore, made a state for themselves alone or chiefly, and their state is the only one in which no class has had to fear oppressive use of political power. The history of the nineteenth century, however, plainly showed the power of capital in the modern state. Special legislation, charters, and franchises proved to be easy legislative means of using the powers of the state for the pecuniary ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... devoutly lowered at the prayer which opened the service. It was a Methodist who preached, but somehow to-night he had not the fervor of his sect; his sermon was cold, and addressed itself to the faith rather than the hope of his hearers. He spoke as from the hold of an oppressive spell; at times he was perplexed, and lost his place in his exhortation. In the close heat some drowsed, and the preacher was distracted by snoring from a corner near the door. He lifted his voice as if to rouse the sleeper, or to drown the ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... New Testament made no law prohibiting the relation of master and slave. But he made law regulating the relation under Greek and Roman slavery, which was the most oppressive in ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.
... with my prudence and oversight. I left all the rest of the table furniture, sir; though I suppose these muscle-men will not have much use for any but the oyster-knives, as I am informed they eat with their fingers. I declare it is quite oppressive and unhuman to have ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... past the twilight hour, which has been already mentioned as so oppressive in suburban places, and it was even too late for visitors, when a resident, whom I shall briefly describe as a contributor to the magazines, was startled by a ring at his door. As any thoughtful person would have done upon ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... panic; but the other did not ask him whence he had walked nor whither he was walking. Instead, he ventured, in his serious tones, as the silence grew oppressive: "You're mighty handy 'bout this sort o' thing. I reckon I'll have a tough time here alone till ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... same gloomy darkness. He was hungry and thirsty, and he looked round for those fruits he had heard of; but he could see none of them at the time, and the more he sought his way out, the deeper he seemed to get into the forest. The air was very sultry and oppressive, too; he grew weary and faint, quite sick at heart, and even the limbs of his good horse seemed to be failing him, and hardly able ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... was remarked that the "quality of mental balance is visible in all that Lord Cromer wrote, whether, in his official despatches, his published books, or his private correspondence." It was audible, too, in his delightful conversation, which was vivid, active, and yet never oppressive. He spoke with the firm accent of one accustomed to govern, but never dictatorially. His voice was a very agreeable one, supple and various in its tones, neither loud nor low. Although he had formed ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... as if she had been a little dog during the minutes in which she chose to walk; but as these were rare, he was for the most part carrying this fine child round and round the garden, within sight of Mrs. Stelling's window, according to orders. If any one considers this unfair and even oppressive toward Tom, I beg him to consider that there are feminine virtues which are with difficulty combined, even if they are not incompatible. When the wife of a poor curate contrives, under all her disadvantages, to dress extremely ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... material cares of life. She, who had never known any extreme distress, any real want, could not understand how happiness and honor could depend on money. When Bertram had finished, she drew a long breath, as if relieved from some oppressive anxiety. "How you have frightened me!" said she, smiling. "Is that all the trouble—we are to be poor? Well, my father does not ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... famous of which were the budgets of 1853 and 1860. In the former Mr. Gladstone continued the work begun by Peel by reducing and simplifying the customs duties. The deficiency in revenue thus caused was supplied by the enactment of less oppressive imposts, and particularly by resettling the income tax, and by the introduction of a succession duty on real estate. The preparation and passing of this very technical and intricate Succession Duty Act was a most laborious ...
— William Ewart Gladstone • James Bryce
... intimated, Blake's journey southward from Panama was anything but comfortable traveling. The vessel was verminous, the food was bad, and the heat was oppressive. It was a heat that took the life out of the saturated body, a thick and burdening heat that hung like a heavy gray blanket on a gray sea which no ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... long that Eli Cronk drew his sleeve across his face to break the oppressive stillness. Here, in the dead of night, his somber brother had been transformed into another creature,—a passionate creature, responding to the call of a dead woman, a man whose hatred would carry ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... surrounded the building was large, and laid out with all the taste of a perfect connoisseur. In its center was a fountain, whose limpid waters fell into a large marble basin, while the spray which constantly arose from the falling stream seemed to render the heat of that sultry climate less oppressive. Scattered throughout the yard were the numerous trees and flowering shrubs which grow in profusion at the "sunny South." Here the beautiful magnolia shook its white blossoms in the evening breeze, and there the dark green ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... existence intended a part of the human race to hold an absolute property in, and unbounded power over others, marked out by infinite goodness and wisdom as objects of a legal domination, never rightfully resistible, however severe and oppressive, the inhabitants of these colonies might at least require from the Parliament of Great Britain some evidence that this dreadful authority over them has ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... to slavery took a new form, more bold and uncompromising than the old Abolition Societies. It demanded the immediate and unconditional emancipation of every slave, in a voice which has not yet been silenced, and never will be, while the oppressive system continues to disgrace our country. Of course, Friend Hopper could not otherwise than sympathize with any movement for the abolition of slavery, based on pacific principles. Pictures and pamphlets, ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... education at all, it was usually in schools charitably called "ragged schools" or "poor schools," or "pauper schools." There was no adequate redress for the mechanic if his wages were in default, for lien laws had not yet found their way into the statute books. Militia service was oppressive, permitting only the rich to buy exemption. It was still considered an unlawful conspiracy to act in unison for an increase in pay or a lessening of working hours. By 1840 the pay of unskilled labor had dropped ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... barbarous wise, should at his conquest lay upon them; and exact and force them to be paid with an over, and above of what is appointed." He goes on to argue, that if this would be a severe trial at the hand of a foreigner, how much more oppressive would it appear if exercised by a fellow countryman. "If these things are intolerable, what shall we think of such men as shall join to all this compliance with a foreign prince, to rob the church of God? yea, that shall become a man in power ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... men, not even, nature herself, can be inherently sovereign, defended the opinion that governments are founded, constituted, and clothed with their authority by the direct and express appointment of God himself. They denied that rulers hold their power from the nation; that, however oppressive may be their rule, that they are justiciable by any human tribunal, or that power, except by the direct judgment of God, is amissible. Their doctrine is known in history as the doctrine of "the divine right of kings, and passive obedience." All power, says St. Paul, ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... founded in nature, or is it the effect of base and sordid interest? Let the mixed race which we see here, from black to almost perfect white, springing from white fathers, answer the question. Slavery has no just foundation in color: it rests exclusively upon usurpation, tyranny, oppressive fraud, and force. These were its parents in every age and ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... the AEsir all in council, and the Asyniur all in conference, and they consulted, the mighty gods, why Baldr had oppressive dreams. ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... an oppressive nightmare with which we have been loaded? Is it then all a frightful dream, and are there no regicides in the world? Have we not heard of that prodigy of a ruffian, who would not suffer his benignant sovereign, with his hands tied behind him, and stripped for execution, ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... me they are always the saddest and dreariest days of the year. I shudder at the name of holiday. I dread the approach of one, and thank heaven when it is over. I pass through, on a holiday, the most horrible sensations, the bitterest feelings, the most oppressive melancholy; in fact, I ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... productions generally, and only three per cent, upon manufactures. Now wine certainly falls properly under the head of agricultural productions. Upon this ground it might justly claim exemption from taxation. The wine-growers of California allege that the tax is oppressive and impolitic: oppressive, because it is equal to one-fourth of the original value of the wine, and because no other article of production or manufacture is taxed in anything like this proportion; impolitic, because the business is now ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... the ground at every stroke, or is entangled among the thick weed that fringes the banks with the weight of its sullen waves, leaning to and fro upon the uncertain sway of the exhausted tide. The scene is often profoundly oppressive, even at this day, when every plot of higher ground bears some fragment of fair building: but, in order to know what it was once, let the traveller follow in his boat at evening the windings of some unfrequented ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... mind What succour can I find? On whom for consolation shall I call? Support me, every friend; Your kind assistance lend, To bear the weight of this oppressive woe. Alas! each friend of mine, My dear departed love, so much was thine, That none has any comfort to bestow. My books, the best relief In every other grief, Are now with your idea saddened all: Each favourite author we together read My tortured memory ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... having secured what they thought a large force, had arranged, that as soon as Catiline should reach the neighborhood of Faesulae, Lucius Bestia, a tribune of the people, having called an assembly, should complain of the proceedings of Cicero, and lay the odium of this most oppressive war on the excellent consul;[208] and that the rest of the conspirators, taking this as a signal, should, on the following night, proceed ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... this event happened, the continent seemed to view the dispute as a kind of law-suit for a matter of right, litigating between the old country and the new; and she felt the same kind and degree of horror, as if she had seen an oppressive plaintiff, at the head of a band of ruffians, enter the court, while the cause was before it, and put the judge, the jury, the defendant and his counsel, to the sword. Perhaps a more heart-felt convulsion never reached a country with the same degree of power and rapidity before, and never may ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... far deeper reason for my saying what I said in this matter, on which I have not hitherto touched; and it was this:—The most oppressive thought, in the whole process of my change of opinion, was the clear anticipation, verified by the event, that it would issue in the triumph of Liberalism. Against the Anti-dogmatic principle I had thrown my whole mind; yet now I was doing more than any ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... atmosphere of the mill. The dust from the meal settled on his perspiring face and distressed him; the dull grinding of the huge stones and the whirr of the shaftings and drums somehow did not sound in his ears so agreeably as he had once fancied they would. There was something oppressive about the place—or something in the air that caused him an unexplainable uneasiness—and he stood in the doorway, looking unhappy and ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... the great grey and melancholy Gare du Nord, at half-past six in the morning; and the miserable carriages, and the tall, haggard city. Pale, sloppy, yellow houses; an oppressive absence of colour; a peculiar bleakness in the streets. The menagere hurries down the asphalte to market; a dreadful garcon de cafe, with a napkin tied round his throat, moves about some chairs, so decrepit and so solitary that it seems impossible to imagine a human being ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... with his skill—this, this is the Ideal Man, enshrined in the Atheist's heart. The ideal humanity of the Christian is the humanity of the slave, poor, meek, broken-spirited, humble, submissive to authority, however oppressive and unjust; the ideal humanity of the Atheist is the humanity of the free man who knows no lord, who brooks no tyranny, who relies on his own strength, who makes his brother's quarrel his, ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... if he were going to a definite spot of which he knew. He walked fast, but in spite of the oppressive atmosphere and the thickness of the growth he grew neither hot nor out of breath; on the contrary, he took pleasure in the motion, and the stifling, sweet air seemed to invigorate him. He walked steadily on for over three ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... garrisons seldom awaited his approach, and never attempted resistance. In the meanwhile one of his colonels had been fortunate enough to take by surprise the town and citadel of Hanau, for whose preservation Tilly had shown such anxiety. Eager to be free of the oppressive burden of the Imperialists, the Count of Hanau gladly placed himself under the milder yoke of ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... 3.—No diary yesterday; listless to-day also; hot; oppressive days; one just longs for day to end. Towards evening (sunset) usually nice and cool, and wind ...
— Woman's Endurance • A.D.L.
... marriage In both cases the point is, that if a man is bored in the first five minutes he must go on and force himself to be happy. Coercion is a kind of encouragement; and anarchy (or what some call liberty) is essentially oppressive, because it is essentially discouraging. If we all floated in the air like bubbles, free to drift anywhere at any instant, the practical result would be that no one would have the courage to begin a conversation. ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... the day, and been pleased with the novelty of their situation. It was not pleasant for them to think of the frowns of Captain Gordon, and of being compelled to sail at once for home. A majority of them would have been in favor of continuing the cruise, if that oppressive sense of having done wrong had not operated against the scheme. But the most the adventurous leader—brave and skilful now that it was fine weather and plain sailing—could accomplish, was to induce the others to consent if Paul would agree to ...
— Little By Little - or, The Cruise of the Flyaway • William Taylor Adams
... and nearly senseless state, one of the mates, who informed us that he had just stumbled over the dead bodies of some individuals who must have died from suffocation, to which it was evident that he himself had almost fallen a victim. So dense and oppressive was the smoke, that it was with the utmost difficulty we could remain long enough below to fulfil Captain Cobb's wishes; which were no sooner accomplished, than the sea rushed in with extraordinary force, carrying away, in its resistless progress to the hold, ...
— The Loss of the Kent, East Indiaman, in the Bay of Biscay - Narrated in a Letter to a Friend • Duncan McGregor
... fog. Half of his last blanket had gone into foot-wrappings. He failed to pick up Bill's trail. It did not matter. His hunger was driving him too compellingly—only—only he wondered if Bill, too, were lost. By midday the irk of his pack became too oppressive. Again he divided the gold, this time merely spilling half of it on the ground. In the afternoon he threw the rest of it away, there remaining to him only the half-blanket, the tin bucket, and ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... with the sick girl, mentioning even the hymns she had sung to her. She described as well as she could the impression made upon her by the beautiful and patient sufferer; the sense of her own guilt and wickedness, which had then and there dawned upon her; and the oppressive burden she had borne in her soul when she went down into the city, which did not permit her to enjoy the pleasures of the great metropolis for which she had stolen the money, and run away from her home. Fanny was eloquent, but the simple truth was ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic
... and its findings produced a state of feeling which for a moment promised co-operation between divided interests in Ireland. Unionist magnates joined with Nationalists in denouncing the system of taxation, which the Commission—by a majority of eleven to two—had described as oppressive and unjust to ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... Oppressive laws slackened for want of those who could enforce them, and once slackened could never be enforced again. The laborer would be a slave no longer. The bondsman snapped his shackles. There was much to do and few left to do it. Therefore ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... travelled still further East, probably as far as India, PYTHAGORAS returned to his birthplace to teach the men of his native land the knowledge he had gained. But CROESUS was tyrant over Samos, and so oppressive was his rule that none had leisure in which to learn. Not a student came to PYTHAGORAS, until, in despair, so the story runs, he offered to pay an artisan if he would but learn geometry. The man accepted, and later, when PYTHAGORAS ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... a young creature like Iris have let such words escape her, or such thoughts pass through her mind. Whether at the bottom of her soul lies any uneasy consciousness of an oppressive presence, it is hard to say, until we know more about her. Iris sits between the little man and the "Model of all the Virtues," as the black-coated gentleman called her.—I will ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... was exceedingly sultry. The air was sickly; and if the wind was not a sirocco, it was a withering levanter—oppressive to the functions of life, and to an invalid denying all exercise. Instead of rambling over the fortifications, I was, in consequence, constrained to spend the hottest part of the day in the library; and, while ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... all the comforts which wealth could procure, she was ill fitted, with a child at the breast, to sustain the rigours of confinement—more especially as she was thrown into a crowded dungeon during the oppressive heat of an African summer. But, with her infant in her arms, she cheerfully submitted to her privations; and the thought that she was persecuted for Christ's sake, converted her prison into a palace. Her aged father, who was a pagan, was overwhelmed with distress because, as ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... Tearsheet would have flung at the tapster's head with an accompaniment of such language as those eloquent and high-spirited ladies, under less offensive provocation, were wont to lavish on the officials of an oppressive law. I have read a good deal of bad verse, but anything like the metre of this play I have never come across in all the range of that excruciating experience. The rare and faint indications that the writer was or had been an humorist and a poet serve ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... presence, he abandons himself to a life of forbidden pleasure, humiliates and scandalizes the people of France instead of enlightening and elevating them. He inherits and maintains the tyrannous and oppressive feudal system, that prevents the common people from acquiring ownership of land. His career has been described, "as an hideous abortion and mistake of nature, the use and meaning of which is not yet known." The persecution ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... summer, when the sun was low and the heat less oppressive than it had been earlier in the day, I ordered Julius, our old colored coachman, to harness the mare to the rockaway and drive me to look at the clay-banks. When we were ready, my wife, who wished to go with me for the sake of the drive, ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt
... mean to stand it," Lopez had replied, and then on the spot had written the letter which he had dated from Manchester Square. He had certainly contrived to make that letter as oppressive as possible. He had been clever enough to put into it words which were sure to wound the poor Duke and to confound the Duchess. And having written it he was very careful to keep the first draft, so that if occasion came he might use it again and push his ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... the wager was a spur to urge me forward at greater speed. The place was strangely, painfully still; even the savage yelling of the distant Indians seemed to die away as I advanced, and nothing broke the oppressive silence but an occasional flutter of leaves, or my own deep breathing. I had gone, I take it, half or three-quarters of a mile, not directly north, but circling ever to the eastward, seeking thus to reach the house from the rear, when I came to a sharp break in the surface of the land, ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... you choose, in one of your most costly, and most ugly buildings, the great church with the dome, at the end of George Street. I think I never saw a building with a principal entrance so utterly ghastly and oppressive; and it is as weak as it is ghastly. The huge horizontal lintel above the door is already split right through. But you are not aware of a thousandth part of the evil: the pieces of building that you see are all carefully done; it is in the parts that are to be concealed by paint and plaster ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... omission in Condorcet's scheme, his angry and vehement aversion for the various religions of the world (with perhaps one exception) is a sin of commission still more damaging to its completeness. That he should detest the corrupt and oppressive forms of religion of his own century was neither surprising nor blamable. An unfavourable view of the influences upon human development of the Christian belief, even in its least corrupt forms, was not by any means untenable. Nay, he was at liberty to go ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley
... apparatus of the air-pump, which several other workmen were busily engaged working. The whole scene was calculated to produce an extraordinary impression on a beholder. The sky was hazy; the air thick and oppressive, from the heat of the sun acting upon the dense medium of a mist that hung on the water; there was not a breath of wind to ruffle the surface of the calm deep; the only sound heard was the whizzing of the air-pump, and the clang of the apparatus ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... ever fought with them—were in such feather all round the country, that nothing was too good for them. Offerings poured in at the Doone gate, faster than Doones could away with them, and the sympathy both of Devon and Somerset became almost oppressive. And perhaps this wealth of congratulation, and mutual good feeling between plundered and victim, saved us from any piece of spite; kindliness having won the day, and every ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... to the following effect. About the year 420 A.D., Behram Gur, a wise and beneficent ruler of the Sassanian dynasty, finding that his poorer subjects languished for lack of recreation, bethought himself of some means by which to divert their spirits amid the oppressive cares of a laborious life. For this purpose he sent an embassy to Shankal, King of Canaj and Maharajah of India, with whom he had entered into a strict bond of amity, requesting him to select from among his subjects and transmit to the dominions of his Persian ally such persons as could ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... A painful and oppressive sense of loneliness and desolation came over the minds of the cousins as they sat together at the foot of the pine, which cast its lengthened shadow upon the ground before them. The shades of evening were shrouding them, wrapping the lonely forest in gloom. The full moon ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... also issued, one notifying the assumption of the office of Administrator of the Government by Sir T. Shepstone, and the other repealing the war-tax, which was doubtless an unequal and oppressive impost. ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... of this desert scene was increased for her till it became oppressive and lay upon her like a heavy weight. She was not a woman inclined to any morbid imaginings. Indeed, all that was morbid roused in her an instinctive disgust. But the sudden greyness of the weather, coming after weeks of ardent sunshine, and combined with the fantastic ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... a black oppressive night after a dull hot day. We had been duly counted into our long sleeping-room, and were lying panting in our hammocks, when the storm broke right above us. There came a blinding blue glare which lit up every corner of the room, and then a crash ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... of the torrent to come, fell through an opening above and pattered upon the dusty carpet at Paul's feet. He glanced upward at the darkening pall which seemed to rest upon the hill top. Its oppressive blackness suggested weight, so that one trembled for the stability of the chalky scarp which must uphold that ebon canopy. Paul moved further along the aisle to a spot where the foliage was unbroken, as rain began a rapid tattoo upon the leafy roof. In the following instant the hillside ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer |
