"Overt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... she came home, that I don't feel as if I was obeying him— only her; and I don't think I am bound to do that. Not in the great matter, I am clear. Nobody can meddle with my real sincere pledge of myself to Frank, nobody!" she spoke as if there was iron in her lips. "But as far as overt acts go, they have a right to forbid me, till I am of age at least, and we ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... mumbles in an indistinct tone that he will be happy to serve you in any way. You call again and again, keeping yourself before his favorable remembrance,—always the same seat, the same cigar, the same desire to serve you, carefully repressed, and prevented from breaking out into any overt demonstration of good-will. At last, emboldened by the brilliant accounts of former tourists and the successes of your friends, you suggest that you would like to see a plantation,—you only ask for one,—would he give ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... his most intimate friend, to be ignorant of his private sentiments. It was therefore quite impossible that he could entertain the same views as Georges, the Polignacs, Riviera, and others; and they had no intention of committing any overt acts. These latter persons had come to the Continent solely to investigate the actual state of affairs, in order to inform the Princes of the House of Bourbon with certainty how far they might depend on the foolish hopes constantly held out to them by paltry agents, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... would demean her to be so placed; and in the second, we could never be sure that the report of her residence there might not reach the ears of Sir Rudolph. As a last resource, of course, such a step would be justifiable, but not until at least overt outrages have been attempted. Now I will ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... torches, and some carrying their masters' cloaks and galoshes, loitered to and fro. Had M. de Tignonville been a little more observant, or a trifle less occupied with his own importance, he might have noted more than one face which looked darkly on him; he might have caught more than one overt sneer at his expense. But in the business of summoning Carlat—Mademoiselle de Vrillac's steward and major-domo—he lost the contemptuous "Christaudins!" that hissed from a footboy's lips, and the "Southern dogs!" that died in the moustachios of a bully in the livery of the King's ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... from understanding the essential, which is, like love, the fulfilling of the law. A certain Englishman gave great offence in an Arab tent by striding across the food placed for the company on the ground: would any Celt, Irish or Welsh, have been guilty of such a blunder? But there was not any overt offence on the present occasion. They called it indeed a cool proposal that THEY should put off their Christmas party for that of a ploughman in shabby kilt and hob-nailed shoes; but on their amused indignation supervened the thought that they ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... would not bear witness against each other as to the past, it was not easy from old affairs to make out cases of treason. Former private consultations of a treasonable character, it was said, lacked connection with overt acts, and the overt acts of a treasonable character lacked connection with the prior consultations: as, for instance, they said, the consultation to seize the Castle was treasonable, but it was not followed by an overt act,—and the overt act of the tar-barrel signal on the beacon-pole was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... witness by others, and every action of his own, proved the wisdom, the purity, and the excellence in counsel and example of his whole life at Ruscino. The unhappy youths who had been taken with arms in their hands were condemned for overt rebellion and conspiracy against authority, and were sentenced, some to four, some to seven, some to ten, and, a few who were considered the ringleaders, to twenty-five years of cellular confinement. But against Don Silverio it ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... neighbour's intentions otherwise than as they are evidently expressed by words, or signified by overt actions, is a slanderer; because he pretendeth to know, and dareth to aver, that which he nowise possibly can tell whether it be true; because the heart is exempt from all jurisdiction here, is only subject to the government and trial ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... the nation against whom war is desired. Make the nation suspicious; make the other nation suspicious. All you need for this is a few agents with some cleverness and no conscience and a press whose interest is locked up with the interests that will be benefited by war. Then the "overt act" will soon appear. It is no trick at all to get an "overt act" once you work the hatred of two nations up to the ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... overt act of weakness,—the first expression of conscious declension, as regarded the foreign enemies of Rome, occurred in the reign of Hadrian; for it is a very different thing to forbear making conquests, ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... whose transverse fire had so nearly finished me, the company out in the great kitchen had not been content to lie snoring on their backs. We could hear them creeping and whispering out there beyond the doors; but till after the shot from the soldier's pistolet they had not dared to show us any overt act ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... the impending danger, and enabled to make all such preparations against it as he deemed necessary. More than a year elapsed between the assignment to Crassus of Syria as his province, and his first overt act ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... non-action by the excuse that contumacious speeches and illegal resolves of parliamentary bodies might be tolerated under the American theory of free assemblage and free speech. Almost from the beginning of the secession movement, it was accompanied from time to time by overt acts both of treason and war; notably, by the occupation and seizure by military order and force of the seceding States, of twelve or fifteen harbor forts, one extensive navy-yard, half a dozen arsenals, three mints, four important custom-houses, three revenue cutters, and a variety of miscellaneous ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... mysterious. Floyd and his gang were treacherous enough. What was it? Were they imbecile? Were they timid? Was there, till too late, a doubt whether the traitors at home in Virginia would sustain them in an overt act of such big overture as an attempt here? But they lost the chance, and with it lost the key of Virginia, which General Butler now holds, this 30th day of May, and will presently begin ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... enough for the rightful purposes of Civil Government, for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order, and that truth is great and will prevail if left to herself, and that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless, by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... were barely more than five hundred left. This extreme depression at length forced even the staunchest of the trustees to relax. First the exclusion of rum was repealed, then the introduction of slaves on lease was winked at, then in 1749 and 1750 the overt importation of slaves was authorized and all restrictions on land tenure were canceled. Finally the stoppage of the parliamentary subvention in 1751 forced the trustees in the following year ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... undeniable overt act," he muttered, seeing what he considered an opportunity to neutralise the suppositious complaint which Birnier had sent to Washington; and taking up his pen began a formal accusation against Birnier, as an American subject, for having violated the international laws of the Geneva Convention ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... notion of the Adamites, and they should run naked into the streets, would not the magistrate have a right to flog 'em into their doublets?' MAYO. 'I think the magistrate has no right to interfere till there is some overt act.' BOSWELL. 'So, Sir, though he sees an enemy to the state charging a blunderbuss, he is not to interfere till it is fired off?' MAYO. 'He must be sure of its direction against the state.' JOHNSON. 'The magistrate is to judge of that.—He has no right to restrain ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... the United States shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... placing of the neck of Arezzo under the heel of Florence. But though, as I have said, the bickerings between the two powers had been going on for a long while, Florence did not as yet, in view of the complications that existed, and the new complications that might arise from overt act, feel herself strong enough to take the field in open war and to hazard all, it might be, upon the chances of a ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... extant,—notably in case of Scotland,—I have in general avoided. In the rendering, my desire has been always to rest the poetry of each Vision on its own intrinsic interest; to write with a straightforward eye to the object alone; not studious of ornament for ornament's sake; allowing the least possible overt intrusion of the writer's personality; and, in accordance with lyrical law, seeking, as a rule, to fix upon some ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... temporal; and both have their due office and place, in the maintenance of religion. But we may not take up the third sword, which is Mahomet's sword, or like unto it; that is, to propagate religion by wars, or by sanguinary persecutions to force consciences; except it be in cases of overt scandal, blasphemy, or intermixture of practice against the state; much less to nourish seditions; to authorize conspiracies and rebellions; to put the sword into the people's hands; and the like; tending to the subversion ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... dispute, Dr. Hugh Boulter, Bishop of Bristol, one of his own creatures. This prelate, a politician by taste and inclination, modelled his policy on his patron's, as far as his more contracted sphere and inferior talents permitted. To buy members in market overt, with peerages, or secret service money, was his chief means of securing a Parliamentary majority. An Englishman by birth and education; the head of the Protestant establishment in Ireland, it was inevitable that ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... as the first conflict on this question was begun, not by Luther, but by his opponents, Carlstadt, Zwingli, and Oecolampadius. For the adoption of the Consensus Tigurinus in 1549, referred to above, cannot but be viewed as an overt act by which the Wittenberg Concord, signed 1536 by representative Lutheran and Reformed theologians, was publicly repudiated and abandoned by Calvin and his adherents, and whereby an anti-Lutheran propaganda on an essentially Zwinglian basis was ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... observance; and when by chance a nest of heretics was brought to light, the learning and skill of the average Ordinary failed to elicit a confession from those who professed the most entire accord with the teachings of Rome. In the absence of overt acts, it was difficult to reach the secret thoughts of the sectary. Trained experts were needed whose sole business it should be to unearth the offenders, and extort ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard
... however rude, they must feel that you are their friend. No protection from government can take the place of this feeling of affectionate confidence from the people; and while sufficient help was at hand to repel any overt wickedness, the highest usefulness required that patient love should have its perfect work, and in this case, at least, its labor was ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... von Schlichten came to his subordinate's support, "to agree. This sudden absence of overt hostility is disquieting. Colonel Cheng-Li," he called on the local Intelligence officer and Constabulary chief. "This fellow Rakkeed was here, about a month ago. Was there any noticeable disorder at that time? Anti-Terran demonstrations, attacks on Company property ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... not refer to dollars and cents only, but to that poverty of intellect, that barrenness of the moral nature which makes a human being a reproach and a terror to his kind. These we shall always have to deal with, to educate if we can, to constrain from overt acts of evil, and to protect ourselves from in all the ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... kept her from the perception that not Glenfernie only was changing or had changed. Elspeth—! But Elspeth had been always a dreamer, rather silent, a listener rather than a speaker. Jenny did not look around corners; the overt sufficed for a bustling, good-natured life. Gilian's arrival, moreover, made for a diversion of attention. By the time novelty subsided again into every day an altered Elspeth had so fitted into the frame of life that Jenny was ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... end Paul Overt first sees Henry St. George, and the reader receives a definite picture of the great author, who has hitherto been ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... bring on the war, he was next to do as much as any man in the actual conduct of it, and was thus destined to add to a civil renown of almost unapproached brilliance, a similar renown for splendid talents in the field. At any rate, the "first overt act of war" in Virginia, as Jefferson testifies,[168] was committed by Patrick Henry. The first physical resistance to a royal governor, which in Massachusetts was made by the embattled farmers at Lexington ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... raising the people from the terrible gulf of pauperism. He refers to Colquhoun's account of the twenty thousand people who rose every morning in London without knowing how they were to be supported; and observes that 'when indigence does not produce overt acts of vice, it palsies every virtue.'[250] The temptations to which the poor man is exposed, and the sense of injustice due to an ignorance of the true cause of misery, tend to 'sour the disposition, to harden the heart, and deaden the moral sense.' Unfortunately, the means which ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... administered by Colonel Newcome, Mrs. Mackenzie abstained from overt hostilities against any guests of her daughter's father-in-law; and contented herself by assuming grand and princess-like airs in the company of the new ladies. They flattered her and poor little ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Russell, of course only added to his unpopularity in Germany. The Danish Government, however, refused to accept Bismarck's proposal; they brought in still another Constitution by which the complete incorporation of Schleswig with the Monarchy was decreed. This was an overt breach of their treaty engagements and a declaration of war with Germany. At the beginning of November, it was carried through the Rigsrad by the required majority of two-thirds, and was sent up to the King to receive his signature. Before he had ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... work, positively bad work, or other overt remissness on the part of men incapable of generous motives, the discipline of the industrial army is far too strict to allow anything whatever of the sort. A man able to do duty, and persistently refusing, ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... brought desolation to many American homes. She sank without a pang of conscience the great transatlantic steamship Lusitania, and, while pretending friendship for the United States and pleading no intent to disregard American rights, broke her own pledges and repeated her overt acts, ignoring international law and the rights ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... centuries of the Christian era men demanded overt signs of the favour of God, and the objects of veneration kept in the churches and monasteries were held to be capable of curing disease. The Latin Church had either a saint or a relic of a saint to cure nearly every ill that flesh is heir ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... sat beside his dying wife, with anger and envy gnawing his heart—anger against fate, envy of Roderick Vawdrey, who had won the prize. If evil wishes could have killed, neither Violet nor her lover would have outlived that summer. Happily the Captain was too cautious a man to be guilty of any overt act of rage or hatred. His rancorous feelings were decently hidden under a gentlemanly iciness of manner, to which no ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... was essential to have one or two men who were thoroughly versed in the processes of the manufacture, Mr. Chaloner induced some of the Pope's workmen by heavy bribes to come to England. The risks attending this overt act were terrible, for the alum-works brought in a large revenue to His Holiness, and the discovery of such a design would have meant capital punishment to the offender. The workmen were therefore induced to get into large casks, which were secretly conveyed on board a ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home
... produced a storm of American protests. Then the entrance of Rumania into the war so encouraged the Entente powers that there seemed little chance of winning French and British acceptance of mediation. The presidential election further delayed any overt step towards peace negotiations. Finally the wave of anti-German feeling that swept the United States in November, on account of Belgian deportations, induced Wilson to hold back the note which he had ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... not be likely to vanquish the monster, even in ourselves, unless we make the thoughts our point of attack. So long as they are sensual we are indulging in sexual abuse, and are almost sure, when temptation is presented, to commit the overt acts of sin. If we cannot succeed within, we may pray in vain for help to resist the tempter outwardly. A young man who will indulge in obscene language will be guilty of a worse deed ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... pride at present, was touched, and he told himself that since she chose thus to withdraw he would certainly not make a definite and overt attempt to follow. Then, by way of adhering strictly to this very good resolution, he proceeded to accept every social invitation which came his way, went religiously to luncheons, dinners, dances, anything that offered. He even invaded shops and strolled up and down Fifth Avenue; ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... meant the triumph of the French and the reversal of all that had been done to hold the colonies for the Empire against rebels whose avowed purpose was separation. Twelve years had gone by since they had failed in the overt act. Now Papineau was back in the House, about to receive his arrears of salary as Speaker. In Elgin's eyes he was a Guy Fawkes waving flaming brands among all sorts of combustibles. Mackenzie had been granted amnesty by the monarch {119} he had called 'the bloody ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan
... accordingly expect to find the world standing up stubbornly against it, essentially unconverted and hostile, whatever name it may have been christened with; and we may expect the spirit of the world to find expression, not only in overt opposition to the supernaturalistic system, but also in the surviving or supervening worldliness of the faithful. Such an insidious revulsion of the natural man against a religion he does not openly discard ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... time as though Prussia, with the exception of the aid of Italy, was to be left naked to all the winds of hostility. The event showed, however, that that great power was now in her element. She declared the action of the German Diet to be not only a menace, but an act of overt hostilities. This was followed by an immediate declaration of war against a foe that had nearly three ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... lighted on the hand. It was better to fall by desperate councils than to continue as he was; and with one tremulous swoop he pounced on the gloved fingers and drew them to himself. One overt step, it had appeared to him, would dissolve the spell of his embarrassment; in act, he found it otherwise: he found himself no less incapable of speech or further progress; and, with the lady's hand in his, sat helpless. But worse was in store. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and set a-going the intellectual machine by which God has ordained that the work shall be done. It has been felt, that, if the State can properly extend its influence anywhere beyond the restrictive limits of evil, or the punishment of overt wrong; if anywhere it may exercise a positive ministration for good; it is here, where it does not interfere on the one hand with those outward pursuits which should be left to individual choice and aptitude, nor on the other, with those inward sanctities which pertain to conscience and to ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... of the would-be mutineer, Badham. It must be remembered that he had committed no overt act of mutiny, and though Captain Hassall was perfectly right in putting him in irons, he could not have been brought to trial on shore. The day before we reached Sydney he pleaded so hard to be forgiven, and so vehemently promised amendment in all respects, that the captain resolved ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... we have another instance of the "hypnotic influence of circumstances." Firstly, the picture is deeply impressed on the mind; next the moral sensibilities are hardened, and lastly the overt act is committed. Tropmann who murdered a whole family of eight, confessed that his demoralisation was due to the reading of sensational novels. The publication of the details of crimes and the circulation ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... had given no overt sign of sympathy with the revolution. But she was now called upon to furnish her quota of regiments for the Federal army. To have acceded to the demand would have been to abjure the most cherished principles of her ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... was brief. When the Burgomaster handed over his scarf it was handed back to him and he was thus intrusted for the time being with the civil control of the citizens. The Germans gave him plainly to understand that he would be held responsible for any overt act on the part of the populace against ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... the proximate parts of a mellifluous mind are for ever conjoined and unconnected, I submit to you, my luds, that it will of necessity follow, that such clandestine conduct being a mere nothing, - or, in the noble language of our philosophers, bosh, - every individual act of overt misunderstanding will bring interminable limits to the empiricism of thought, and will rebound in the very lowest degree to the ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... disapproval of contemptuous references to the clergy, the attack on John Hill's Inspector to which he devotes his Postscript—these points are little to our purpose. As to literary opinions, he falls into the usual way of judging fiction by its supposed overt intellectual and moral effects. His admiration for Clarissa is based on his acceptance of the complete idealization of the heroine, and of Richardson's declared intention to show "the distresses that may attend the misconduct both of parents ...
— Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa, and Pamela (1754) • Anonymous
... without overt breach, we fall apart, Tacitly sunder—neither you nor I Conscious of one intelligible Why, And both, from severance, winning equal smart. So, with resigned and acquiescent heart, Whene'er your name on some chance lip may lie, I seem to see an alien shade ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... improper instructions have issued from the Admiralty, and their purport has got abroad by the indiscretion of somebody, but we only know, or rather suspect from public rumour, that such is the case; they have never been acted upon if they do exist; no overt act has been done, and the production of this document might be attended with very seriously inconvenient consequences. Brougham cares for nothing but the pleasure of worrying and embarrassing the Ministers, whom he detests with an intense ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... convents, it is said, obliges the colored nuns to serve the white! For more than two centuries every white generation has been religiously moulded in the seminaries and convents; and among the native whites one never hears an overt declaration of free-thought opinion. Except among the colored men educated in the Government schools, or their foreign professors, there are no avowed free-thinkers;—and this, not because the creole whites, ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... the well-affected citizens, as well as of the executive officers, to conciliate a compliance with those laws have failed of success, and certain persons in the county of Northampton aforesaid have been hardy enough to perpetrate certain acts which I am advised amount to treason, being overt acts of levying war against the United States, the said persons, exceeding one hundred in number and armed and arrayed in a warlike manner, having, on the 7th day of this present month of March, proceeded to the house of Abraham Lovering, in the town of Bethlehem, and there compelled ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 4) of Volume 1: John Adams • Edited by James D. Richardson
... roared on monotonously, while Bell began to wrestle with another and more serious problem. In three days—two, now—an American naval vessel would turn up, with scientists and chemists on board. It was to be doubted whether anything like an overt act would be risked by that vessel. If all the governments of South America were under The Master's thumb, then cabled orders from his deputies would race three navies to the spot. And the government of the United States does not like to start war, anywhere. Certainly it would not willingly ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... hurt anything. A program that limits a luser to a carefully restricted subset of the capabilities of the host system (for example, the 'rsh(1)' utility on USG Unix). Note that this is different from an {iron box} because it is overt and not aimed at enforcing security so much as protecting others (and the luser) from the consequences of the luser's boundless naivete (see {naive}). Also ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... freely permitted him to transcribe his exercises, until a small accident happened, which had well-nigh put a stop to these instances of his generosity.—The adventure, inconsiderable as it is, we shall record, as the first overt act of Ferdinand's true character, as well as an illustration of the opinion we have advanced touching the blind and injudicious decisions of ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... establishing the Solar Guard specifically states that it shall be the duty of the Solar Guard to investigate and secure evidence for the Solar Alliance Council of any acts by any person, or group of persons, suspected of overt action against the Solar Constitution or the Universal Bill of Rights. Now, based on the report I've just read to you, I would like an opinion ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell
... the vagueness and indefiniteness of the accusation, founded on what in the nature of things was absolutely impossible to be known, except by overt action; founded on suspicion or conjecture of men's thoughts. "That thou and the Jews think to rebel!" There was no pretence that they had rebelled. There is no need to begin the lie in so gross and bungling a manner; it was bad enough to set the conjecture of an intention in motion. Whoever ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... now genuinely alarmed. Those who would be the chief sufferers put on garments of mourning, and paced the silent Forum with gloom and despair written on their faces, as though they were the innocent victims of a great wrong. But, while they took this overt means of stirring the commiseration of the crowd, it was whispered that the last treacherous device for averting the danger was being tried. The cause would perish with the demagogue, and Tiberius might ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... or obscure, do not cause ambassadors to demand their passports. The declaration of war awaits the overt act. Behold, then, how great a matter is kindled by a little fire! The casus belli between France and England in the Seven Years' War—the war which humbled France in Europe and lost her India and Canada—had to do with a small log fort ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... that he must keep his own counsel until some act more overt and ominous forced him ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... narrative flows calmly and powerfully along, like a geometrical demonstration, omitting nothing which is significant, admitting nothing which is irrelevant, glowing with all the warmth of rich imagination and sympathetic genius, yet never allowing any overt manifestation of feeling, ever concealing the author's personality beneath the unswerving exposition of the subject-matter. That highest art, which conceals art, Mr. Hunter appears to have learned well. With him, the curtain ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... comparatively slight and venial. Not only so, the degree of detestation in which a community learns to look on specific crimes and offences is not in proportion to their actual heinousness, but to the stress of overt ignominy attached to them by legal penalties. Instances of this effect of law on opinion will be readily called to mind. Thus a common thief loses, and can hardly regain his position in society; while the man who by dishonest bankruptcy commits a hundred thefts in one, can hold his ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... made many friends now in London. Both the great political parties were civil to him, especially, perhaps, the Conservatives. Being in power, they could not make an overt declaration of their interest in him, but just then the Tory Party was experiencing one of those emotional waves which at times sweep over its consciousness, when it feels called upon to exalt the banner of progress; to play the old Roman ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... Provinces. The relations between the Prince-stadholder and the all-powerful Advocate had long been strained. In the long-drawn-out negotiations Maurice had never disguised his dislike to the project of a truce, and, though he finally acquiesced, it was a sullen acquiescence. At first there was no overt breach between the two men, but Maurice, though he did not refuse to meet Oldenbarneveldt, was cold and unfriendly. He did not attempt to interfere with the old statesman's control of the machinery ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... LOOKED rather savage at one point in our discussion, but I do assure you that you committed no overt act of ferocity; and if you had, I think I should have fully deserved it for joining in the ferocious onslaught ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... this emergency, Power did not mince matters. It laid violent hands upon the unwilling subject and forced him, nolens volens, to sail its ships, to man its guns, and to fight its battles by sea as he already, under less overt compulsion, did its ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... to do this. There was something in the girl, a quiet air of pride and self-reliance, in spite of her too evident sadness, which forbade any overt expression of sympathy; so Mrs. Tadman could only show her friendly feelings in a very small way, by being especially active and brisk in assisting all the household labours of the new mistress of Wyncomb, ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... ties of obligation and affection. The consciences of these simple people revolted at a requisition "so repugnant to the feelings of human nature." Three hundred of the younger and braver Acadians took up arms against their oppressors. This overt act was just what was desired by the wily Puritans. Acadia, with its twenty thousand inhabitants, was placed under the ban of having violated the oath of neutrality in the persons of the three hundred. In vain the great body of the people protested that this ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... to what you mention of overt acts, those things are all much exaggerated, where they are not wholly groundless. The report of what is called "Cooper's Ass-Feast" (Walker's I never heard of), and of the Scotch Greys being concerned ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... efforts to establish commercial and political relations with the Chinese were rapidly drifting the two nations into war. Still, it was peculiarly unfortunate and it put foreigners grievously in the wrong before the Chinese that the overt act which developed the long- gathering bitterness into open rupture was the righteous if irregular seizure by the Chinese of a poison that the English from motives of unscrupulous greed were determined to force upon an unwilling people. The probability that war would have broken out in time even ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... which we will speak hereafter), to be set aside by a competent tribunal, if brought to the test at all. Their paper treason, then (to commit a solecism), amounting only to so much waste of paper and ink, did the overt act of firing upon the flag of the United States operate more effectually to destroy the State identity? If they are incapable of separating themselves from the nation, and if, as is clearly the case, there is no power vested in the General Government to expel them from ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Carolina would secede with any other State, or would make the plunge alone if others would promise to follow. The governors of Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi replied that their States would certainly do this. Georgia proposed to wait for some overt act by the National Government. North Carolina and Louisiana, it was learned, would probably not go out ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... the case of so glaring an abuse, with which the whole country is now familiar, we must not exaggerate. It would still be impossible for the politicians, for instance, to get a verdict during war in favour of an overt act of treason. But after all, argument of this sort applies to any tyranny, and the power the politicians have and exercise of refusing to prosecute, however clear an act of treason or other grossly unpopular act might be, is equivalent ...
— The Free Press • Hilaire Belloc
... essential into the pupils' heads, the professor used to make a very short version of the lesson, the "summary" or "abstract," which he dictated openly, and caused to be learnt by heart. Thus of the two written exercises which occupied nearly the whole time of the class, one (the summary) was an overt dictation, the other (the ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... because you haven't. Have you never wanted to? Answer that, in your conscience and in solitude—not to me. Speak up to yourself and then say whether the difference between you and the recorded criminal is not merely the difference between the overt act and the faltering wish. It is a matter of courage or of custom. Speaking for one gentleman, who knows himself and is not afraid to confess, I can say that, while he could not kill a mouse with his ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... avenue was guarded by mounted policemen; and the gang which had long terrorised the neighbourhood—whose teachings and example had done so much to convert the sullen discontent of the peasantry into overt violence—was effectually broken up. From that night the boycott on the ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... invectives, and the Protestants strain every nerve to inflame the spirit of rancorous fury which distinguished the Brunswickers before the Catholic question was carried, and to provoke the Catholics to overt acts of violence. Both sides are to blame, but the Protestants the most. George Villiers wrote me word of a crime that has been perpetrated, the most atrocious I ever heard of.... The country in ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... for a reconnaissance sally," he said. "Why not let Xavier take the scouter down for overt diversion, and drop Arthur off in the helihopper ...
— Control Group • Roger Dee
... that since Christmas Ceccherelli had been wearing, instead of his silver turnip, a fine gold watch, her overt gift and his frank boast, which he conspicuously extracted from its chamois-skin case every time he needed to know ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... first moment of their capture Lloyd had watched Nancy like a lynx. Not a movement of her hands had escaped him. Had she planned their capture? If so, she would be sure to betray herself by some overt act or word. What treatment would Tucker accord her? Would he consider her a prisoner of war, or—a friend? They had met as strangers. Lloyd gave his parole so that he might keep Nancy under ...
— The Lost Despatch • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... till the nineteenth century; even now, when all the world reads and writes prose stories, their virtue is unexhausted and unimpaired. But this spiritual affinity with modern imaginations and conversations, across the interval of medieval romance and rhetoric, is not due to any direct or overt relation. The Sagas have had no influence; that is the plain ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... when there was nothing to hope for, and that her own affairs were suffering from the cessation of action. She was in the mood to entertain the basest suggestions her craft could put forward for making marriage between Hilda and Otto impossible. But she had not yet reached the stage at which overt acts are deliberately planned upon the surface of ...
— The Fortune Hunter • David Graham Phillips
... absorbing interests of the present: they must remember that it is the business of a University to make contributions to learning as well as to teach. Secondly, they must insist on equality of payment and status when there is any disposition, overt or acknowledged, to differentiate on the score of sex. It is not right to yield on these points, for an important principle is at stake. On the other hand the time and place for insistence must be wisely selected, and ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... glaring, overt, tangible, clear, indubitable, palpable, transparent, conspicuous, manifest, patent, unmistakable, discernible, obvious, perceptible, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... take delicate hints. He continued his visits three times a week, and the coast was kept clear for him. On this Miss Fountain proceeded to overt acts of war. She brought a champion on the scene—a terrible champion—a champion so irresistible that I set any woman down as a coward who lets him loose upon a sex already so unequal to the contest ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... housekeeper, of certain and gusty disposition, who had guided his first toddling steps and grieved with him for childhood's insupportable wrongs, and whose vinegarish disapprovals were still feared by Mitchell; it was for her praise or blame that his overt walk and conversation were austere and godly, his less laudable ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... Clay's language was no less explicit. When Senator Rhett in Charleston proposed to raise the flag of secession, and his colleague, Barnwell in the Senate, half indorsed his words, Clay said, with a lightning flash that thrilled the audience, that if Senator Rhett followed up that declaration by overt acts "he will be a traitor, and I hope he will meet the fate of a traitor!" Clay went on to say that if Kentucky should ever unfurl the banner of resistance unjustly against the Union, "never, never will I engage with ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... order, put up notices, and were allowed not only to cane but to set lines. No one ever thought of appealing to the master against them, and their powers were never abused. But there was very little overt discipline anywhere. The masters could not inflict corporal punishment. They could set punishments, and for misbehaviour, or continued idleness, they could send a boy to the headmaster to be flogged. ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Whigs in its service any longer than was absolutely necessary, it must be owned that neither did the latter, in general, take very courtier-like modes of continuing their connection with Royalty; but rather chose to meet the hostility of the Crown half-way, by some overt act of imprudence or courage, which at once brought the matter to an issue between them. Of this hardihood the India Bill of Mr. Fox was a remarkable example—and he was himself fully aware of the risk which he ran in proposing ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... overt dispraise to say of Miss Kate Greenaway that few artists made so great a reputation in so small a field. Inspired by the children's books of 1820 (as a reference to a design, "Paths of Learning," reproduced on p. 9 will show), and with a curious naivety that was even more unconcerned in its ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... warlike predecessors. It seemed as though the republic, swayed by him, might make herself the first city in Italy, and restore the glories of her Guelf ascendency upon the platform of Renaissance statecraft. There was now no overt opposition to the Medici in Florence. How to govern the city from Rome, and how to advance the fortunes of his brother Giuliano and his nephew Lorenzo (Piero's son, a young man of twenty-one), occupied the Pope's most serious attention. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... do naught, my cousin," answered he, his eyes softening as they rested upon her. "You, at least, are guiltless of overt act toward me." ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... treason, there was no alternative: fight they must. As the devil is said to betray his victims into situations where they are compelled to advance from bad to worse, so the conspirators adroitly hastened the people into overt acts from which they were told there was no retreat. We believe these facts to have had great influence with our Government; and in this way we can understand the generous but mistaken forbearance of the administration in the earlier ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... cultivates the soil, and it yields him means to purchase labor. He becomes attached to home and its associations, and remains forever a restrained Democrat, restrained by moral and civil laws from any and all overt acts. He needs and makes a centralized government, because his property is ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... marked by great honesty of purpose, and its exalted aim will never allow it to stoop to anything so beneath the dignity of its character, and so repugnant to every sense of rectitude and propriety. It is no presumption to assert that, under such overt influences, it remains unmoved and immovable; and to reiterate a remark made in the former part of this article, "its independency can never be bribed, or its patronage won by unlawful means." Looking at ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 206, October 8, 1853 • Various
... weakness is dangerous only so far that it exposes one to the risk of becoming a bore; for the world generally is not interested in the motives of any overt act but in its consequences. Man may smile and smile but he is not an investigating animal. He loves the obvious. He shrinks from explanations. Yet I will go on with mine. It's obvious that I need not have written that book. ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... to shut up shop. Others, older-established, or in possession of a monopoly, weathered the storm, but their opinions cost them something. These are the milder cases. Yet shooting or bludgeoning are likely enough to follow overt political action, such as refusing to join a procession or ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... of a thief, you come up with Pope in the very act of maltreating Gibber, upon no motive or pretence whatever, small or great, but that he (the said Gibber) was guilty of poverty. Pope had detected him—and this is Pope's own account of the assault—in an overt act of poverty. He deposes, as if it were an ample justification of his own violence, that Gibber had been caught in the very act—not of supping meanly, coarsely, vulgarly, as upon tripe, for instance, or other offal—but ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... kind. It is obvious that all such laws do condemn sin in the sense that they solemnly declare God's judgment about it, and His sentence on it; but in the sense of real condemnation, or casting out, and depriving sin of its power, they all are impotent. The law may deter from overt acts or lead to isolated acts of obedience; it may stir up antagonism to sin's tyranny, but after that it has no more that it can do. It cannot give the purity which it proclaims to be necessary, nor create the obedience which it enjoins. Its thunders ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... intenseness of Mr. Davis's interest and zeal in opposition to the law, that it was avowed by him under oath upon the stand; that showed his predisposition and excited state of mind upon the subject, and the greater liability of his being betrayed into an act of overt resistance to the law, if an opportunity occurred. This excited state of mind continued in the court room, as was proved by his addressing the officers in the abusive and sanguinary terms used by ...
— Report of the Proceedings at the Examination of Charles G. Davis, Esq., on the Charge of Aiding and Abetting in the Rescue of a Fugitive Slave • Various
... against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand
... autoptical[obs3]; intelligible &c. 518. plain, clear, clear as day, clear as daylight, clear as noonday; plain as a pike staff, plain as the sun at noon-day, plain as the nose on one's face, plain as the way to parish church. explicit, overt, patent, express; ostensible; open, open as day; naked, bare, literal, downright, undisguised, exoteric. unreserved, frank, plain-spoken &c. (artless) 703; candid (veracious) 543; barefaced. manifested &c. v.; disclosed &c. 529; capable of being shown, producible; inconcealable[obs3], unconcealable; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... believed, was the first woman in America who performed any work directly tending to the aid and comfort of the soldiers of the nation in the late war. In truth, her labors commenced before any overt acts of hostility had taken place, even so long before as December, 1860. Hostility enough there undoubtedly was in feeling, but the fires of secession as yet only smouldered, not bursting into the lurid flames of war ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... the public in the Alaskan husky dog that was half a bear, in the question whether or not Crispi Angelotti was guilty of having cut the carcass of Giuseppe Bartholdi into small portions and thrown it into the bay in a grain-sack off Fisherman's Wharf, and in the overt designs of Japan upon Hawaii, the Philippines, and the Pacific Coast of ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... almost without speaking, to the Hyrum Adams fire. Daniel lifted upper lip at me as we entered; his eyes never wandered from my face. I marked his right hand quivering stiffly; and I disregarded him. For if I had challenged him by so much as an overt glance he would ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... after a short cannonade, and carried her into Halifax, where she was condemned by the court. Several captures of small craft, accused of illegal acts, were also made by the English. These proceedings, being all of an overt nature, gave the officers of Louis XV. precisely what they wanted,—an occasion for uttering loud complaints, and denouncing the English as breakers ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... I.W.W. were tried for conspiracy under the Federal espionage act. In January, 1919, a trial jury in Sacramento found 46 defendants guilty. The offense in the majority of these cases consisted in opposing military service rather than in overt acts against the Government. But in May and June, 1919, the country was startled by a series of bomb outrages aimed at the United States Attorney-General, certain Federal district judges, and other leading public personages, which were evidently the result of centralized ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... should Lincoln be defeated. Should the question be submitted to the people of Georgia, whether they would go out of the Union on Lincoln's election without regard to the action of other States, my opinion is they would determine to wait for an overt act. The action of other States may greatly influence the action of the people of this State. This letter is not intended for publication in the newspapers, and has been ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... no symptom of overt opposition, though opponents were blandly invited to mount the waggon and state their views; but there was a good deal of quiet chaff on the outskirts of the crowd, which is the portion I always select on such occasions for my observation. On ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... magnet of attraction, and all the currents of the universe appeared to flow from the direction where her eyes were shining. When she was out of sight, he needed to make no allowance for her defects, to reproach himself with no overt acts of disloyalty to Hope, to recognize no criticisms of his own intellect or conscience. He could resign himself to his reveries, and pursue them into new subtleties ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... the natives did not wholly subside upon the rear-admiral's departure, no overt act of violence immediately followed. The queen had fled to Imeeo; and the dissensions among the chiefs, together with the ill-advised conduct of the missionaries, prevented a union upon some common plan of resistance. But the great body of the people, as well as their ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... who, softened by the emotion of this wonderful hour, had made a movement to grasp his brother's hand, but had checked himself with a passionate movement of anger, instantly restrained, as the overt impertinence of the first words fell on his ears, here looked with a shadowing ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... man are racially identical, and where there is no variety of "Dagoes" to break up the revolt. But in other directions the American disbelief in and impatience with "elected persons" is and has been far profounder than it is in Europe. The abstinence of men of property and position from overt politics, and the contempt that banishes political discussion from polite society, are among the first surprises of the visiting European to America, and now that, under an organised pressure of conscience, college-trained men and men of ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... attempted to beat it down, did for a time put the kingdom in a ferment. The men who have since that time scourged Ireland with a rod of iron, charge this as the commencement of the crimes of the country—the first overt act of her intemperance and violent propensity to discontent. Whether it deserves that epithet Englishmen will judge, when they learn that this doubt was first suggested by some of the best lawyers—the warmest friends and the most enlightened and able men whom Ireland ...
— The Causes of the Rebellion in Ireland Disclosed • Anonymous
... the tax base, and disrupted vital economic activity. The 12 January 1994 devaluation of the currency by 50% provided an important impetus to renewed structural adjustment; these efforts were facilitated by the end of strife in 1994 and a return to overt political calm. Progress depends on following through on privatization, increased transparency in government accounting to accommodate increased social service outlays, and possible downsizing of the military, on which the regime has ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... shortly afterwards from the bag of diplomatic secrecy, revealed to our Cabinet the necessity of those amendments to the Note on which the Porte had insisted. And lastly, the passage of the Dardanelles by our fleet, which more than any overt act made war inevitable, was ordered by the Government at home against Lord Stratford's counsel. Between panic-stricken statesmen and vacillating ambassadors, Lord Clarendon on one side, M. de la Cour on the other, the Eltchi stands like Tennyson's ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... instinct. But how if you recognize in the untimely visitor a member of your own household? Will you seize and overpower him without asking a single question, or waiting for a word of explanation? Will you not pause for some overt act of hostility, some convincing proof of a fell purpose? Suppose it transpire that he really means mischief, and you lose an important advantage by your delay to strike. You may regret the result; but does it in the least tend to show ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various |
