"Oppressively" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... It is oppressively warm, and Captain Ball begs us all to come into a restaurant and get some cooling drink. Mrs. Steele and I have limes and Apollinaris, while Senor Noma, true to his red-hot appetite, tosses off a glass of mezcal, the fire-water ...
— Under the Southern Cross • Elizabeth Robins
... through the leaded windows. They were open to their widest extent, but the place was oppressively close. There was a brooding sense of storm in the atmosphere. Suddenly, as if in some invisible fashion a set limit had been reached and passed, Richard Green lifted his head from his work. His keen eyes sent a flashing glance ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... slighted, elbowed, jostled—treated like a passenger with a third-class ticket, in spite of private objections on her own part. She did not move about; the prospects begotten by disappointment were too oppressively preoccupying; she threw herself into the shadiest corner of a settee, and pressed her fingers over her burning eyelids. Every word that Klesmer had said seemed to have been branded into her memory, as most words are which bring with ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... are from three to five days' duration, and are followed by the like number of days of moderate weather, with winds mostly off the land; sometimes strong gusts from the east, for a few hours, with oppressively ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... left Quebec I went to the romantic falls of Lorette, about thirteen miles from the city. It was a beauteous day. I should have called it oppressively warm, but that the air was fanned by a cool west wind. The Indian summer had come at last; "the Sagamores of the tribes had lighted their council-fires" on the western prairies. What would we not give for such a season! It is the rekindling of summer, ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... sultry, and the air, usually so fresh at those altitudes, was oppressively heavy. Rowland lounged on the grass a while, near Singleton, who was at work under his white umbrella, within view of the house; and then in quest of coolness he wandered away to the rocky ridge whence you looked across at the Jungfrau. To-day, ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... his hand rested upon the fastening of the trap door, and to his horror he found it locked. If the room had seemed dark before to the young detective, it was now most oppressively black. What to do, which way to turn, he did not know. The doors leading to the street were locked, he had no keys about him, and no means of producing ...
— The Boy Broker - Among the Kings of Wall Street • Frank A. Munsey
... indication of the approach of Nicholas until that individual passed directly before him. Nicholas stopped at the inner fringe of the beach and, from a point where he could not be seen from the ketch, stood gazing out at the Gar pounding on her long anchor chains. The man remained for an oppressively extended period; Woolfolk could see his heavy, drooping shoulders and sunken head; and then the other moved to the left, crossing the rough open behind the oleanders. Woolfolk had a momentary glimpse of a huge nose and rapidly moving ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... than a week went by, and one afternoon Virgie, her father being asleep and the house oppressively still, took her book and went out to a little nook back of her cottage, where she was in the habit of going to study, and where Chi Lu had built a rustic seat for her beneath a great pine tree that grew out of a cleft in ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... rear, could hear Bleyer explain the workings to those at his heel. He talked of stopes, drifts, tunnels, wage scales, shifts, high-grade ore, and other subjects that were as Greek to Joyce and India. The atmosphere was oppressively close and warm, and the oilskins that Moya wore seemed to weigh heavily upon her. She became aware with some annoyance at herself that a faintness was stealing over her brain and a mistiness over her eyes. To steady herself she stopped, ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... inhabitants of his country, of which the Turk has frequently been guilty, yet never has he been so oppressive as the Greek patriarch. Given power over the Slav population, the patriarch used it to its limit. Not only did he tax them oppressively to support a church with which they had no sympathy, but he used all efforts to stamp out every little spark of national feeling that had survived the centuries of Turkish rule. He forced Greek teachers on their children, and finally he made it a crime for any Slav ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... which contained a postmaster and two Indians, on their way to York Factory with a few packs of otters. After five minutes' conversation we parted, and were soon out of sight of each other. The day, which had hitherto been agreeable, now became oppressively sultry: not a breath of wind ruffled the water; and as the sun shone down with intense heat from a perfectly cloudless sky, it became almost insufferable. I tried all methods to cool myself, by lying in every position I could ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... clustered above it seemed to have been burning for ages. There was a distilling apparatus in full operation. Around the room were retorts, tubes, cylinders, crucibles, and other apparatus of chemical research. An electrical machine stood ready for immediate use. The atmosphere felt oppressively close, and was tainted with gaseous odors which had been tormented forth by the processes of science. The severe and homely simplicity of the apartment, with its naked walls and brick pavement, looked strange, ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... are women, heaps of them, no doubt, to whom the management of a big house, the season in London, the ordinary round of visits, are sufficient. I, worse luck, was not one of them. Dull! You, with your hundred thousand things to do, cannot conceive how oppressively dull my life was. And that was not all!" She hesitated, but she could not stop midway, and it was far too late for her to recover her ground. She went on ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... it is Saxon kinship or the fine qualities of the collection, we have found this volume the most entertaining of the three. Its riotous absurdities well overbalance its examples of the oppressively heavy.... The national impulse to make fun of the war correspondent has a capital example in the skit from Julius ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... from Chippawa by the River Road for Black Creek on his way to Stevensville, a rather round-about route, which added some miles to his journey and caused considerable loss of time. The day was an oppressively close one, with not a breath of air stirring, and as the sun rose higher in the heavens it cast forth a brassy heat that was almost unbearable, and had a telling effect on the men, who were soon drenched with ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald
... and revised in congress on the 2nd, 3rd and 4th of July, 1776. The weather was oppressively hot, and on the last day an exasperating but providential invasion of the hall by a swarm of flies hurried the signing of the document. Some days afterward, the committee of which Jefferson was a member ...
— Thomas Jefferson • Edward S. Ellis et. al.
... somewhat, and now she asked to have the window opened. The train had stopped again and the car was oppressively hot. People around were looking at their watches and grumbling over the delay. The doctor bustled in with a remark about its being his busy day. The amateur detective and the porter together mounted guard over lower ten. Outside the ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... end of the month, after an oppressively warm day, the moon rose on one of those clear, mild nights which seem to move, stir and affect one, apparently awakening all the secret poetry of one's soul. The gentle breath of the fields was wafted into the quiet drawing-room. ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... the club room for a minute or so, and the ticking of the clock was oppressively loud. Then ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... hanging creepers with great blue flowers hung downwards. There was a profound stillness in this wood; there were no birds singing and he heard not the slightest rustle in the rich undergrowth. It was oppressively hot and the air was full of a pungent, aromatic sweetness. He felt as though he were in a hot-house full of gardenias and stephanotis. At the same time the atmosphere of the place was pleasant to him. It was neither strange nor disagreeable. He felt at home in this green shimmering ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... silent meal that morning, quite oppressively silent; Erica felt like a child in disgrace. Every now and then the grimness of it appealed to her sense of the ludicrous, and she felt inclined to scream or do something desperate just to see what would happen. At length ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... strong as I hear you, sir. But I have one request to make, sir. I have a favor to ask, sir, which will make me almost happy if you grant it—which will at least reconcile me to receive your favors, and to feel them less oppressively." ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... aspect of mesmeric fixity which the suspensive quietude of daybreak lends to such scenes. Outside her window helpless immobility seemed to be combined with intense consciousness; a meditative inertness possessed all things, oppressively contrasting with her own active emotions. Beyond the road were some cottage roofs and orchards; over these roofs and over the apple-trees behind, high up the slope, and backed by the plantation on the crest, was the house yet occupied by her ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... Mrs. Sylvester began to call him Richard, and Charles became oppressively genial: a development which led the embarrassed recipient of these honours to console himself by reflecting that, after all, he was not going to ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... her, who had long since grown unused to every-day actuality; harsh, and plentiful with all sorts of unpleasantnesses. And besides that, the fact that Lichonin did not want to conceal her past acted oppressively upon her. But she, who had long ago lost her will in the establishment of Anna Markovna, deprived of her personality, ready to follow after the call of every stranger, did not tell him a word ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... influenced by his accelerated circulation, was convinced that the apartment was oppressively warm, and divested himself ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... evils which a ruined commerce always leaves behind it. Old Highland families disappeared from amid the aristocracy and landowners of Scotland; and the population of extensive islands and sea-boards of the country, from being no more than adequate, suddenly became oppressively redundant. It required, however, another drop to make the full cup run over. The potatoes had become, as I have shown, the staple food of the Highlander; and when, in 1846, the potato-blight came on, the ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... to her, almost oppressively kind. He could never be otherwise to any living creature—in personal contact, but without that he was careless, indifferent, forgetful, although when she saw him again it was as though he had never been away. They were considered a charming ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... in an oppressively popular style with emphasis on Baxter and Le Blond. Jackson is mentioned often but sketchily as the distant ...
— John Baptist Jackson - 18th-Century Master of the Color Woodcut • Jacob Kainen
... to their kind: for among them were numbered Spaniard and Briton, creole and mulatto, Carib and octoroon, with coal-black negroes enough to outnumber all the rest—and it was upon these last that profound awe sat oppressively. ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... three days the weather has been warm, but not oppressively so: last evening a light shower of rain was followed by a lovely night. I am leading a dissipated life here, and engaged for every day I can yet count upon—must prepare for flight from this Capua, but how? that's the question! since up the Mississippi ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... was accordingly published a few months ago, abolishing this most injurious tax, the preamble of which declares, with innocent naivete, that the duty thus levied is not based on principles of equal taxation, but bears oppressively on particular classes.[D] Alas! poor King Otho! he begins to abolish unjust taxation when his exchequer is empty, and when his creditors are threatening him with the Gazette; and yet he delays calling together a national assembly. It is possible that, little by little, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... of light and shadow; of darkness from the moonless and now cloud-covered sky, of reddened warmth from the tall, burning pine-boughs thrust into the soil in lieu of other illumination. The atmosphere was hot from the flames, and chilly with the breath of the night winds; it was oppressively still, though from afar off the sounds of laughter in the camp still echoed, and near at hand the dull and steady tramp of the sentinels fell on the hard, parched soil. Into that blended heat and cold, dead blackness ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... process by which the original weave is cleverly counterfeited. And, wishing to dance, in Paris, I have been guilty of visits to the great dance halls and to the small smart places where champagne is oppressively the only listed beverage. But that was before I discovered the ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... noticed that if ever she crossed herself on entering the water, as she had always done when a little girl, the Drac would not appear. These three or four pages mark the genuine poet and the master of language. The mysterious night, oppressively warm, the moonlight shining on the little white figure, the deep silence, broken only by the faint murmur of the river and the distant singing of a nightingale, the gleam of the glowworms, compose a scene of fantastic beauty. ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... the hills towards the north-west, the stars shone dull, and it was very lonely and oppressively silent, nowhere was there a trace of life, human or animal. Lying on deck, I listened to the sound of the surf breaking in the different little bays near and far, in a monotonous measure, soft and yet irresistible. It is the voice of the ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... The weather was oppressively hot, and, for the first thirty-six hours, scarcely a breath of wind lifted us on our way, so that the engine, wholly incompetent to the work of both sails and machinery, bore us very slowly on our northward ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... to draw it up. These holes are a serious danger to any one given to walking about without looking where he is placing his feet. It is mainly due to these artificial water-tunnels that the plain of Kasvin, otherwise arid and oppressively hot, has been ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... intruders, they will spurn with contempt the precepts of the gospel. Their confidence will be abused—their lands craftily trafficked for nought—their ignorance cheated—their inferiority treated oppressively; and then what must naturally follow? Why—WAR—a war of retaliation. All the vices, and few of the virtues, of the instructers, will be faithfully copied; and thus barriers will be erected against the progress of the Christian religion, not absolutely insurmountable, it is true, but sufficiently ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... the author chooses formally to deny, I shall formally prove it, that her subjects pay more than England, on a computation of the wealth of both countries; that her taxes are more injudiciously and more oppressively imposed; more vexatiously collected; come in a smaller proportion to the royal coffers, and are less applied by far to the public service. I am not one of those who choose to take the author's word for this ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... of Childe Roland lies in the wonderful suggestion of impending catastrophe. The gloom is alive with mysterious and impalpable menace; the encompassing presences which everything suggests and nothing betrays, grow more and more oppressively real, until the decisive moment when Roland's blast ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... right of the hall. The gas was still burning behind the colored glass and red, silk shades, and when the daylight streamed in after us it gave the hall a hideously dissipated look, like the foyer of a theatre at a matinee, or the entrance to an all-day gambling-hall. The house was oppressively silent, and, because we knew why it was so silent, we spoke in whispers. When Lyle turned the handle of the drawing-room door, I felt as though someone had put his hand upon my throat. But I followed, close at his shoulder, ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... distinguished company, too," said Mrs. Chapman, advancing and bowing her head oppressively, "and how very annoying not to be dressed as one wants to be." After viewing herself in the glass for several minutes, turning first one side and then the other, viewing and reviewing her skirts, and training her puffs into more exact ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... population. In June, 1841, I had the opportunity of observing one of these dreadful whirlwinds, which swept away huts, and tore up trees by the roots. The atmospheric currents from the north, which pass over the hot sand-flats, are not of constant occurrence, but they are oppressively sultry. There must be other causes for the low temperature of Lima, for in the villages, only a few miles from the city, and exposed to the same atmospheric influences, ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... probability, did their author himself. But she was very anxious to see some one else do so, and the young Count seemed to have been formed by Nature for Nietzsche's typical "Blond Beast," if he only chose to divulge his possibilities. Unfortunately, he did not seem even to suspect them; he remained quite oppressively mild and amiable. She very nearly gave him up in despair once when he timidly presented her with a pair of mittens which he had knitted for her himself. However, a day came when she saw him ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... certain sense, he was to be pitied. Love of this kind begins as a gift; but a woman of this temperament does not leave it so. She promptly turned it into a debt, and the more she loved the debtor, the more oppressively and inexorably did she extort the uttermost penny from him. About this time she was introduced to an eminent medical specialist in mental diseases, who, by some inexplicable means, was induced to give a certificate of her insanity. Then her cousins took her before a justice, and swore that ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... under him fell into the hands of the British. Ten guns were taken, the whole army was totally routed; and the enemy were fleeing past Washington, to the heights of Georgetown, horse and foot, as fast as fear could carry them. The day was oppressively hot, and the British army uninfluenced by fear were not able to continue their advance until the cool of the evening. They had not "suffered" at all. The entire loss was only 61 killed and 185 wounded. By eight at night they were within a mile of Washington, and the ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... oppressively still—not a bee hummed, not a bird sung. The atmosphere was hot and dry, but there was no sunshine; the trees were motionless, there was a feeling of coming ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... practically unrestrained authority with moderation and justice, but soon yielding to the promptings of a naturally cruel, suspicious, and jealous nature, he entered upon a course of the most high- handed tyranny. He enforced oppressively an old law, known as the law of majestas, which made it a capital offence for any one to speak a careless word, or even to entertain an unfriendly thought, respecting the emperor. "It was dangerous to speak, and equally ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... when he was extremely happy he roared so that his voice broke out of tune. When he was silent it was almost always because he was asleep, or because some other member of the Family was talking. When, by some accident, the whole Family was simultaneously silent, you could not help noticing what an oppressively still place London was. The sound of Russell's Hound sneezing in the hall ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... till daybreak], when the Muezzins came and finding him sitting in that case, said to him, "O youth, what is this plight?" Quoth he, "I cast myself on your hospitality, imploring your protection from a company of folk who seek to kill me unjustly and oppressively, without cause." And [one of] the Muezzin[s] said, "Be of good heart and cheerful eye." Then he brought him old clothes and covered him withal; moreover, he set before him somewhat of meat and seeing upon him signs of gentle breeding, said to him, "O my son, I grow old and desire thee of help, [in ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... The artisans of the towns were hampered by the system of taxation, but the peasant had the greatest cause for complaint; he was oppressed by the feudal dues and many taxes, which often amounted to sixty per cent of his earnings. The government was absolute, but rotten and tottering; the people, oppressively and unjustly governed, were just beginning to be conscious of their condition and to seek the cause of it, while the educated classes were saturated with revolutionary doctrines which not only destroyed their loyalty to the old ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... turns out good, dear," she said, wiping her forehead with her apron. She looked out the open back door. The landscape was beginning to gray as heavier clouds moved down from the mountains and pressed the afternoon heat closer, more oppressively to the ground. "My, it's getting hot. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if we didn't get a little rain this afternoon, Marilou." She turned back to the little girl. "Tell me some more about your daddy, dear. We Martians certainly owe a lot ...
— One Martian Afternoon • Tom Leahy
... ancestry—they lingered there till Hesperus appeared in the rosy heavens; and then returning homeward in the twilight, they were more silent than they had been; for in the shadow and beneath the stars they felt more oppressively ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... emanating therefrom. However, on peeping in at one of the windows, we discovered a clergyman most gorgeously apparelled in green and gold, preparing to discourse to a congregation of two persons! Evidently the residents found the climate too oppressively hot for church that ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... before had concealed his unknown assailant. The blinds were still closed, so that the room was in semi-darkness. The fire had gone out. There was no sign of a human being. Wilson shouted her name once again. The silence closed in upon him oppressively. He saw the dead hearth, saw the chair in which she had curled herself up and gone to sleep, saw the rug upon which Sorez had reclined, saw the very spot where she had sat with the image in her lap, saw where she had stood as she had thrust the revolver into his hand and sent him on his ill-omened ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... to say: 'Please, Nurse, may I get down?' What a cheeky little thing you are becoming! And you used to be quite oppressively polite. I suppose you would answer: 'If you say your grace nicely, Master Garth, you may.' Do you know the story of 'Tommy, ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... oppressively warm; the heat is unlike anything I have felt in America. There is a scorching character about it which is indescribable, and the glare of the light is exceedingly painful to the eyes. The evenings are delightful, cool and clear, showing the ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... they hitched their animals and going to the house sat on the porch to talk. Some humorous reference to the somber reputation of the place was made and forgotten as soon as uttered, and they talked of their business affairs until it grew almost dark. The evening was oppressively warm, ...
— Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories • Ambrose Bierce
... called Indian summer had now arrived. The air was soft and mild, almost oppressively warm; the sun looked red as though seen through the smoke-clouds of a populous city. A soft blue haze hung on the bosom of the glassy lake, which reflected on its waveless surface every passing shadow, and the gorgeous tints of its changing woods on shore and island. Sometimes ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... Everything was oppressively new. The brilliantly-varnished door cracked with a report like a pistol when it was opened; the paper on the walls, with its gaudy pattern of birds, trellis-work, and flowers, in gold, red, and green ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... at the defects which no one else was permitted to see; and if he made no converts (wanting none), he woke no weary wrath. But we all have a sneaking sympathy for Holcroft, who, when Coleridge was expatiating rapturously and oppressively upon the glories of German transcendental philosophy, and upon his own supreme command of the field, cried out suddenly and with exceeding bitterness: "Mr. Coleridge, you are the most eloquent man I ever met, and the ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... open sea within a few degrees of the Equator is apt to be oppressively warm; and our two travellers were now airily clad in suits of dazzling white linen, having laid aside the chain-armour which they had found not only endurable in the cold mountain air they had lately been breathing, but a necessary precaution against the daggers ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll
... road, met with sufficient frequency to keep touch, yet not often enough to crush the ultimate fragrance from the flower of gossip. Their most recent meeting had taken place at the concert, which had been Larry's last achievement before his return to Oxford, and although they had not been oppressively hampered by the convention of silence at such entertainments, conversation had been ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... stepped up on the stage to read my composition I was seized with stage fright. The floor under my feet and the air around me were oppressively present to my senses, while my own hand I could not have located. I did not know where my body began or ended, I was so conscious of my gloves, my shoes, my flowing sash. My wonderful dress, in which I had taken so much satisfaction, gave me the most trouble. I was ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... with much wind and threat of rain. Robert thought that he and his fellow captives would have to ask the shelter of tents, but the rain passed farther to the west, though the heavy darkness remained. He was glad, as the weather was now oppressively warm, and he greatly preferred to sleep on a ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... bantered by Rose one day at dinner on what Rose called "problems of life and being," or "springs of action," or even "higher ground." Lestrange was oppressively earnest, but ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... in fact, some of the most celebrated members of the University present. They were all in morning dress, and their womenfolk wore what we should call Sunday frocks. The dinner was beautifully cooked and served, and was not oppressively long. Soup began it of course, roast veal with various vegetables followed, fish came next, lovely little grey-blue fish better to look at than to eat, then chicken, ice pudding, and dessert. There were flowers on the table, but not as many as we should have with the same ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... was—for him—rather oppressively dignified and imperial. He may have blinked his weary eyes a time or two, but in the main he was very attentive, very circumspect and very much puzzled. Custom required that the ruling prince or princess should preside over the meetings of the cabinet. It is needless to observe that the present ruler's ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... sandstone with redoubled heat, so that it was really painful to touch or to stand upon a bare rock: we therefore kept moving onwards in the hope of meeting with some spot favourable for a halting place; but the difficult nature of the ground which we had to cross rendered our progress slow and oppressively laborious. ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... told us that when he stopped this second time he first became consciously aware of the odor and the heat. Both became much more noticeable as he stepped into the clearing. In fact, the heat became almost unbearable or, as he put it, "oppressively moist, making it ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... head to show that she understood, but she made no reply. The cloud had blown back again into her mind. She felt the shadow of it, the chill of it, even in the warm sunshine. It took no definite shape, it brought no definite warning; but she was oppressively conscious of its presence and its weight upon all ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... inconsistent with his general character. Sometimes when he came he was silent and moody, and after a few sarcastic remarks went away again, to tramp the streets of Lincoln, which were almost as quiet and oppressively domestic as those of Black Hawk. Again, he would sit until nearly midnight, talking about Latin and English poetry, or telling me about his long ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... about the peculiarities of Kumaon scenery, its mountains, valleys, and ravines, my readers are prepared to hear it has a great variety of climate and produce. Of hills, of which there are many from 5000 to 9000 feet above the level of the sea, the climate is delightful—warm, but not oppressively warm, a little warmer than it is in our country in summer; and cold, though not so severely cold as it is with us in winter. The rains are very heavy, but to compensate for this there is, during the greater part of the year, a steadiness of climate which forms a striking contrast to the fickle climate ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... you. A common book will often give you much amusement, but it is only a noble book which will give you dear friends. Remember, also, that it is of less importance to you in your earlier years, that the books you read should be clever than that they should be right. I do not mean oppressively or repulsively instructive; but that the thoughts they express should be just, and the feelings they excite generous. It is not necessary for you to read the wittiest or the most suggestive books: it is better, in general, to hear what is already ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... river; it is about sixty yards wide at its mouth. A few of the party who ascended informed us, that the lands on both sides are good, and that there are several falls well calculated for mills; the wind was from the south west, and the weather oppressively warm, the thermometer standing at 96 degrees above at three o'clock P.M. One mile beyond this is a small creek on the south, at five miles from which we encamped on the same side, opposite the lower point of an island called Diamond island. The land ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... said Madame de Tocqueville, 'that our working classes are in a much worse frame of mind than they were in 1848. Socialist opinions—the doctrine that the profits of capitalists are so much taken fraudulently or oppressively from the wages of labourers, and that it is unjust that one man should have more of the means of happiness than another—are extending every day. The workpeople believe that the rich are their ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... beautiful but almost oppressively hot afternoons that so ripen the fruits, and so try the patience of the inhabitants of the tropics, that we would have the patient reader follow us on the main road between Alquezar and Guiness. It is as level as a parlor floor, and the tall foliage, mostly composed of the lofty palm, renders the ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray
... above. On entering his room, I found Holmes in animated conversation with two men, one of whom I recognized as Peter Jones, the official police agent; while the other was a long, thin, sad-faced man, with a very shiny hat and oppressively ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... was soon spread before them, the sun was oppressively hot, and not a sign of water was to be observed in any direction. At last they arrived at a muddy pool, in which elephants had evidently been enjoying themselves, and the oxen and horses were but ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... up apprehensively. From necessity, life in the ward-room is an oppressively close one at best. A feud between two officers of the mess is enough to make all hands uncomfortable much ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock
... Isaac and I spent a delightful afternoon with his bees among the heather. The "evening star" had come out when we had some tea in the village inn, and we walked home by moonlight. There was neither wind nor sun, but the air was almost oppressively pure. The moonshine had taken the colour out of the sandy road and the heather, and had painted black shadows by every boulder, and most things looked asleep except the rill that went on running. Only we and the rabbits, and the night moths and the beetles, seemed to ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... before midnight, we lay on the ground and wriggled along until we were within fifty yards of Holland. There we lay for what seemed to be an interminable time. We saw patrols passing. An officer came along and inspected the sentries. Everything was oppressively quiet. ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... pincers he picked up a bit of hot iron and dropped it hissing into the pail, which he pushed beneath the tent. The room was oppressively quiet, walled in by the thick sod from the storm. The blanket muffled the sound of the child's breathing and the girl no longer stumbled against ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... Italian peasantry of the Renaissance can be compared more significantly than at first seemed with the adoption of a once fashionable garb by country folk. The peasant pulled about this Courtly lyrism, oppressively tight in its conventional fit and starched with elaborate rhetorical embroideries; turned it inside out, twisted a bit here, a bit there, ripped open seam after seam, patched and repatched with stuffs and stitches of its own; and then wore the whole thing as it ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... Grallina australis, Crows, Kites, Bronze-winged and Harlequin pigeons, (Peristera histrionica, GOULD), the Rose cockatoo (Cocatua Eos), the Betshiregah (Melopsittacus undulatus), and Trichoglossus versicolor, GOULD, were also visitors to the water-hole, or were seen on the plains. The day was oppressively hot; and neither the drooping tea-trees, nor our blankets, of which we had made a shade, afforded us much relief Clouds gathered, however, in the afternoon, and we had a few drops of rain in the course of the night and ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... It was oppressively still. Caroline listened with mouth and ears for some sound of approaching footsteps until her heart beat like the swift stroke of a hammer, as it sent the blood throbbing through her temples with a ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... stood midway between the two woodlands, and between the two parts of the road, seemed to cut it into two separate parts. The two colors, white and black, of which this landscape was composed, struck the eye powerfully, almost oppressively. All day long no other tone was to be seen but these two, but they filled so wide a space and were so very strongly marked, that they seemed to weigh down the picture and changed the loveliness, which it perhaps might have in summer, to mournful gloom. There stood the two black pine woods, like the ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... in the stillness of the big library, with its ordered rows of books and solemn-looking, carved cupboards, Peter and Jane Erskine sat together feeling oppressively this great lapse of time that had passed. Their understanding of one another had always been a strong bond between them; and now they felt not like the lovers of yesterday, but like those whose lives have been linked for years, and for ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... The air was oppressively still and hot. The black cloud bank that had hung over the Costejo Mountains earlier in the evening now covered the whole western half of the sky. Night sounds seemed almost stifled by the suffocating heat. From the pasture below ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... a hill over one hundred feet high are we destined to see till we reach Obidos, fifteen hundred miles eastward. Were it not for the wealth of vegetation—all new to trans-tropical eyes—and the concerts of monkeys and macaws, oppressively lonely would be the sail down the Napo between its uninhabited shores. But we believe the day, though distant, will come when its banks will be busy with life. Toward evening three or four canoes pulled out from the shore ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... bells had begun to ring. The long shadows came stealing out from the sheaves; woodpigeons rose one by one, and flapped off to roost; the western sky was streaked with red, and all the downs and combe bathed in the last sunlight. Perfect harvest weather; but oppressively still, the stillness ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... has grown oppressively hot, I find myself set down at a sort of rural town, once flourishing, and of some importance—Bethune. A mile's walk on a parched road led up the hill to this languishing, decayed little place. It had its forlorn omnibus, and altogether suggested the general desolation of, say, Peterborough. ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... go to bed, and sleep off the unpleasant recollections of the day, but he said it was so oppressively hot, he wanted to sit at the window, which was wide open. Witness having secured the deed, which was on the table in the room, bade his client good-night, and ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... harm—redeeming their holdings at the rate of ten years' purchase. The main result was that landowners were empowered to buy the tithes on their own lands from the multitude of "titulars of tithes" (1629) who had rapaciously and oppressively extorted these tenths of the harvest every year. The ministers had a safe provision at last, secured on the tithes, in Scotland styled "teinds," but this did not reconcile most of them to bishops and to the Articles ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... about. The mutineers had made a great fire of driftwood, more for its cheerful effect than for any other reason, for the night was oppressively warm. At some distance from it the men were sitting or lying in sprawling attitudes. Some were sleeping, some singing, while one tall man, whom Drew recognized as Ditty, was engaged in earnest conversation with two others, ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... Harness and carts repaired and more pemmican bought, the travellers crossed the Qu'Appelle river in a Hudson's Bay scow, paying toll of fifty cents a cart. From the Qu'Appelle westward the journey grew more arduous. The weather became oppressively hot and mosquitoes swarmed from the sloughs. At Carlton and at Fort Pitt the fur-traders' 'string band'—husky-dogs in wolfish packs—surrounded the camp of the Overlanders and stole pemmican from under the tent-flaps. From Fort Pitt westward the trail crossed a rough, wooded country, ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut
... not remembered my uncle's advice, and prevented my own glass from being filled, I should not have been in a fit state to present myself at Mr Ringer's hospitable mansion. I remember thinking the night oppressively hot, and was thankful that Mr Ringer was good enough to drive me from the barracks into ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... our great astonishment, all was silent again, oppressively silent; and, but for the swell upon the seas, all still. The tornado had rushed by: that troop of Tartar horse, having sacked the village, are departed, now in full retreat: the blackness and the fury are beheld on our lee, hastening across the ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... severity was given one of the strongest apologies that the stern justice of war can plead for its harshest sentences—the Histiaeans had captured an Athenian vessel and murdered the crew. The rest of the island was admitted to conditions, by which the amount of tribute was somewhat oppressively increased. [258] ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... unattractive to the utmost limit, and Avery rose at length from her knees with a feeling of having been deliberately cheated of a thing she valued. She left the church in an unwonted spirit of exasperation, which lasted throughout the midday meal, which was as oppressively silent as breakfast ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... both moon and stars, and the air was oppressively hot. The soldiers marched along the dusty road, guided by Baby and St Martin, who had volunteered for the work. Not a sound save their own dull tramp broke the silence. On their right gleamed the calm river, and keeping pace with them were two large bateaux ...
— The War Chief of the Ottawas - A Chronicle of the Pontiac War: Volume 15 (of 32) in the - series Chronicles of Canada • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... one battle is understood, all may be imagined. Above the tumult the figure of the Khalifa rises stern and solitary, the only object which may attract the interest of a happier world. Yet even the Khalifa's methods were oppressively monotonous. For although the nature or courage of the revolts might differ with the occasion, the results were invariable; and the heads of all his chief enemies, of many of his generals, of most of his councillors, met in the capacious pit which ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... clouds, the wind had swung completely around to the west during the night, there were occasional squalls of light snow, and the thermometer had risen to only 9 deg. below zero. This temperature, after that of the minus fifties, in which we had been traveling, seemed almost oppressively warm. The leads were even more numerous than the day before, and their presence was clearly outlined by the heavy black clouds. A mile or two east of us there was a lead stretching far to the north and directly parallel with our course, which did not cause us any apprehension. But a broad ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... Ken Torrance, oppressively alone in the hovering torpoon, gazed through its vision-plate of fused quartz around him. Gray sea, filtering to black beneath; distant eerie shadows, probably meaning nothing, but possibly all important; ceiling of thick ice above, rough and in places broken ...
— Under Arctic Ice • H.G. Winter
... resolution of the house of commons. The articles which he produced related to the trial and execution of Nuncomar; to the conduct of Impey in a cause called the Patna cause; to an extension of jurisdiction, illegally and oppressively, beyond the intention of the act and charter; to the Cossijurah cause, in which this extension of jurisdiction had been carried out with great violence; to the acceptance of the office of judge of the Sudder Dewannee Adaulut, which was affirmed to be contrary to law, repugnant to the spirit ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... younger daughters of Pandareos. They have literally the four greatest goddesses for their governesses. Athena teaches them domestic accomplishments, how to weave, and sew, and the like; Artemis teaches them to hold themselves up straight; Hera, how to behave proudly and oppressively to company; and Aphrodite, delightful governess, feeds them with cakes and honey all day long. All goes well, until just the time when they are going to be brought out; then there is a great dispute whom they are to marry, and in the ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... and inflexible. He remained by her side until she had finished the song, and then fiercely pressed her head back until he was able by stooping to kiss her lips from above. His hand was under her chin. He kissed her many times, oppressively—little ravenous pecks that were febrile rather than loving; and assertive of his new proprietorship. His kisses left Sally unmoved and slightly frowning. She was surprised at Gaga's simplicity in imagining that any girl valued or could possibly value such ceaseless ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... took place in the palace at Potsdam. The militarism which Colonel House had felt so oppressively in Berlin society was especially manifest on this occasion. There were two luncheon parties—that of the Kaiser and his officers and guests in the state dining room, and that of the selected private soldiers outside. The Kaiser and the Kaiserin spent ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... the touch, and the direct rays of the sun possess almost tropical power; but the night brings reinvigorating coolness, and the breezes of the morning are fresh and tempered as in our own favored land. September is usually a delightful month, although at times oppressively sultry. The autumn or fall rivals the spring in healthy and moderate warmth, and is the most agreeable of the seasons. The night-frosts destroy the innumerable venomous flies that have infested the air through the hot season, and, by their action on the various foliage of the forest, ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... Queries.' This island is entirely surrounded by the ocean, which here contains a large amount of saline substance, crystallizing in cubes remarkable for their symmetry, and frequently displays on its surface, during calm weather, the rainbow tints of the celebrated South-Sea bubbles. The summers are oppressively hot, and the winters very probably cold; but this fact cannot be ascertained precisely, as, for some peculiar reason, the mercury in these latitudes never shrinks, as in more northern regions, and thus the thermometer ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... on the life of our Lord must many a time pause in secret and exclaim to himself, "It is high as heaven, what canst thou do? deeper than hell, what canst thou know?" But we have now arrived at the point where this sense of inadequacy falls most oppressively on the heart. To-day we are to see Christ crucified. But who is worthy to look at this sight? Who is able to speak of it? "Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain unto it." In the presence of such a subject one feels one's mind to be like some ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... red haze. "A nasty animal," I heard the bo's'n tell the captain, and yet I was foolishly delighted when they decided to risk a blow and put out to sea. The sky on all sides grew darker from hour to hour. A smell of sulphur came to our nostrils. It was oppressively hot; not a breath of wind was stirring. The sail flapped uselessly against the mast, and the men labored at the oars, while streams of sweat ran ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... taking the cool of the evening after an oppressively hot day. By the stone seat, now occupied by Lady Horton and Diana, Richard lay on the sward at their feet in talk with them, and their talk was of Sir Rowland. Diana—gall in her soul to see the baronet by way of gaining ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... ails thee, O man, that thou wilt not eat?" "I have a vow upon me," replied the prince. "What is the cause of thy vow?" asked the youth, and Kanmakan answered, "Know that King Sasan seized upon my kingdom wrongfully and oppressively, albeit it was my father's and my grandfather's before me; yet he laid hands upon the throne by force, after my father's death, and took no count of me, for that I was of tender years. So I have bound myself by a vow to eat no man's victual, till I have eased my heart of my enemy." "Rejoice," ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... like to get some flowers so much,' said Vea, after I had arrived. 'Patrick is so fond of flowers; but he likes the wild ones best. He says the hot-house ones smell oppressively, but the wild ...
— Bluff Crag - or, A Good Word Costs Nothing • Mrs. George Cupples
... supper, finishing it at 4.30 in the afternoon. They must be heroes in a sense. I had thus my supper, but the sun being still high, could not go to bed yet. I felt like going to the hot-springs. I did not know the wrong or right of night watch going out, but it was oppressively trying to stand a life akin to heavy imprisonment. When I called at the school the first time and inquired about night watch, I was told by the janitor that he had just gone out and I thought it strange. But now by taking the turn of night watch myself, I could fathom ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri
... went through with it, the squire watching him for a while with an expression which had a spark of malice in it. It is not unlikely that some gossip of the Lady Aubrey sort had reached him. Elsmere had always seemed to him oppressively good. The idea that Madame de Netteville had tried her arts upon him ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... further impelled, the secretary obediently led the way to a closet at the far end of the upper hall. It was fairly commodious, and full of garments hanging on pegs and smelling oppressively of camphor. It afforded an electric-light fixture, and Laurie, switching on the light, emphasized this advantage to the reluctant new occupant, who unwisely put up a brief and losing fight ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... gloaming. To this, Siegfried, greatly astonished, replies that on such occasions his heart is altogether healthy and his sensations perfectly normal. Here Mimmy's question is accompanied by the tremulous sounding of the fire theme with its harmonies most oppressively disturbed and troubled; whereas with Siegfried's reply they become quite clear and straightforward, making the theme sound bold, brilliant, and serene. This is a typical instance of the way in which ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... made him picture his Cousin Eleanor as a prim young person, with sharp elbows and a pinched nose and stringy hair. She would be lifeless and oppressively good-mannered, he felt certain. All the ill success of the last three days seemed to be behind his sudden determination to have none of her. But Cousin Jasper, having once conceived the idea, ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... was oppressively hot when Gordon, floundering among the whitened driftwood piled along the river-bank, came upon Nasmyth, who lay upon a slope of rock, with his hands, which were badly bruised, clenched upon a drill. Another man, who stood upon a plank ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... before I durst venture abroad except at night. And very soothing to my spirit those night rambles were, though melancholy; for the look of all things was so changed and solemn under the black sky, or in the silent radiance of the moon, the houses were so oppressively still, and the masts of the ships so spectral upon the water, that it seemed to me by the end of those few days, that I had been exploring another world, and had got at last to be familiar ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... awaited the two men in a large, bare-walled room on the second floor of the station house. The night was oppressively warm, and the tall, narrow windows were thrown open. Like Braceway, Bristow took off his coat, the absence of it showing plainly the outline of his ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... now the weather had been clear but oppressively hot for this time of year. The heat had come suddenly and maintained itself well. It had searched out with fierce directness all the patches of snow lying under the thick firs and balsams of the swamp edge, it had shaken loose the anchor ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... is the spot where, upon a cleft on the steep precipice, still remain the foundations of the 'hold', or tower, believed to have been the David's retreat, and near at hand is the low-browed entrance of the galleried cave alternating between narrow passages and spacious halls, but all oppressively hot and close. Waste and wild, without a bush or a tree, in the feverish atmosphere of Palestine, it was a desolate region, and at length the wanderer's heart fainted in him, as he thought of his own home, with its rich ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge |
