"Constraint" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... His constraint gradually diminishes. After shaking some liquid soap from a bottle into the bowl, she places the bowl ...
— The Gay Lord Quex - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur W. Pinero
... because he is pleased to do so may likewise eat when he has a mind; and he who suffers thirst because he is willing may also drink when he pleases. But it is not in the power of him who suffers either of them through constraint and necessity to relieve himself by eating and drinking the moment he desires it? Besides, he that voluntarily embraceth any laborious exercise finds much comfort and content in the hope that animates him. Thus the fatigues ...
— The Memorable Thoughts of Socrates • Xenophon
... those immense rooms, and at length negotiate their loan. For this it was that they had been awaiting for two hours; this was the object of their visit and the fixed idea which gave them during the meal that absent, falsely attentive manner. But here no more constraint, no more pretence. In that peculiar social world of theirs it is of common knowledge that in the Nabob's busy life the hour of coffee remains the only time free for private audiences, and each desiring to profit ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... Emperor's answer is: "I should say that the King Meliadus was the better man, and I will tell you why I say so. As far as I can see, everything that Tristan did was done for Love, and his great feats would never have been done but under the constraint of Love, which was his spur and goad. Now that never can be said of King Meliadus! For what deeds he did, he did them not by dint of Love, but by dint of his strong right arm. Purely out of his own goodness he did good, and not by constraint of Love." "It will be seen," ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... clothed with light and night and change, The lakes alive with wind and cloud and sun, Made answer, by constraint sublime and strange, To the ardent hand that bade ...
— Poems and Ballads (Third Series) - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... her seldom that winter. When he had seen her their relations appeared to be as happy, as friendly as before; there was no apparent constraint, nothing from her to indicate that she noticed an absence for which his continual business with ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... in the country, on business connected with the local management of the estates. Ralph still retained all his old dislike of the steward's accounts and the lawyer's consultations; but he felt bound, out of gratitude for my father's special kindness to him since his return to England, to put a constraint on his own inclinations, and go to the country as he was desired. He did not expect to be absent more than two or three days; but earnestly charged me to write to him, if I had any news from the hospital while he ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... were present, such as knew the prince listened to his outburst in a state of alarm, some with a feeling of mortification. It was so unlike his usual timid self-constraint; so inconsistent with his usual taste and tact, and with his instinctive feeling for the higher proprieties. They could not understand the origin of the outburst; it could not be simply the news of Pavlicheff's ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... you, that with your own eyes you may see him[30] defeated and subjected to your hand; not, indeed, of his own will, but he has bound him by force in constraint, for he was not willing to come alive into your sight and to be punished. But, O old woman, farewell, and remember for me what you first said when I began my tale. Make me free; and in such noble people as you the mouth ought to be ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... with Dr. Hillhouse a little while before, and felt an instant regret. He had noted the manner of Whitford as he drank, and the manner of Blanche as she put the wine to her lips. In the one case was an enjoyable eagerness, and in the other constraint. Something in the expression of the girl's face haunted and troubled him a long ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... that in speaking he would have to suffuse musical art with the qualities and characteristics engraved in the stock by the history and vicissitudes of his race, by its age-long sojourn in the deserts of Arabia and on the barren hills of Syria, by the constraint of its religion and folkways, by its titanic and terrible struggle for survival against the fierce peoples of Asia, by the marvelous vitality and self-consciousness and exclusiveness that carried it whole across lands and times, out of the eternal Egypt through the eternal Red Sea. But ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... could meet. It had that inevitable disadvantage which belongs to all ministerial and secondary works: the order and choice of topics being all determined by the "Eikon," Milton, for the first time, wore an air of constraint and servility, following a leader and obeying his motions, as an engraver is controlled by the designer, or a translator by the original. It is plain, from the pains he took to exonerate himself from such a reproach, that he felt his task to be an invidious ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... thy race; thy sister's son shall carry down the line of kings to this people; and the Lord's work shall still prosper. Now, daughter of many prayers—for I have yearned over thee with more than a father's love—choose thee without constraint this day. Thou hearest the words of this prophecy: wilt thou be the mother of kings, or the lowly and despised follower of ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... were silent, though it was not long before Winsome drew away her hand, which, however, continued to burn consciously for an hour afterwards. Silence settled around them. The constraint of speech fell first upon Ralph, being town-bred and accustomed to the convenances ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... comes observation; after that, one reasons. I began to observe. Aunt Mercy was not the Aunt Merce I had known at home. She wore a mask before her father. There was constraint between them; each repressed the other. The result of this relation was a formal, petrifying, unyielding system,—a system which, from the fact of its satisfying neither, was kept up the more rigidly; on the ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... conception, her tragic dignity, her glowing warmth and abandon rendered her worthy of the finest days of lyric tragedy. She was thoroughly dramatic; her movements and gestures were singularly noble, and her attitudes on the stage had classical breadth and largeness, without the least constraint. ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... sweet enough from the owner of such an affectionate pair of bright hazel eyes and brown tresses of hair. But it was so sudden, so unexpected by a man fresh from towns, that he winced for a moment quite involuntarily; and there was some constraint in the manner in which he returned her kiss, and said, 'My pretty little Avice, how do you do ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... it remains but an attempt, an effort, an aspiration after something which he seems to have lost but wishes to recover. Either, that is, he remains grave when others laugh, or he laughs, as Horace says, "with alien jaws," by constraint rather than because he cannot help it. He has a confused idea that it is expected of him. Such laughter is apparently the outcome of an uneasy sense of duty, a dismal ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... little ceremony and less legibility than you would think it necessary to employ towards your printer—why, then, I am ready to sign and seal the contract, and to rejoice in being 'articled' as your correspondent. Only don't let us have any constraint, any ceremony! Don't be civil to me when you feel rude,—nor loquacious when you incline to silence,—nor yielding in the manners when you are perverse in the mind. See how out of the world I am! Suffer me to profit by it in ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... repine, I find a reluctation of spirit against believing that this is the place. What, is this kailyard that inexhaustible paradise of a garden in which M—— and I found "elbow-room," and expatiated together without sensible constraint? Is that little turfed slope the huge and perilous green bank down which I counted it a feat, and the gardener a sin, to run? Are these two squares of stone, some two feet high, the pedestals on which I walked with such a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Her constraint was over. The great contrast between the reality she beheld before her, and the dark, taciturn, sharp, elderly man of business who had lurked in her imagination—a man with clothes smelling of city smoke, skin sallow from want of ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... completely broken. Her offspring, a boy, survived, but he was a cripple, and grew up deformed. As he neared manhood he developed a satyr-like lustfulness, which was almost uncontrollable, and made it difficult to keep him at home without constraint. He seemed to have no natural affection for his father, nor for anybody else, but was cunning with the base, beastly cunning of the ape. The father's horror was infinite. This thing was his only child, and the child of the woman whom he worshipped. He was excluded from ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... having quitted the palace, and the crowd of nobles, by whom its spacious halls and galleries had been filled, having retired, Marie was at length left at liberty to indulge her grief, rendered only the more poignant from the constraint to which she had been so long subjected. Her first impulse was to command that the bed of the young sovereign should be removed to her own chamber, and this done, she abandoned herself to all the bitterness ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... borne over the thousand impediments of the narrow way, only by the tide of a joyful and bounding emotion. It is impossible to rise from reading Epictetus[185]or Marcus Aurelius without a sense of constraint and melancholy, without feeling that the burden laid upon man is well-nigh greater than he can bear. Honor to the sages who have felt this, and yet have borne it! Yet, even for the sage, this sense of labor and sorrow ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... motley variety of subjects a couple of people will casually rake over in the course of a day's tramp! There being no constraint, a change of subject is always in order, and so a body is not likely to keep pegging at a single topic until it grows tiresome. We discussed everything we knew, during the first fifteen or twenty minutes, that morning, and then ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the stanza of Spenser—a stanza of which we think it difficult to say whether the excellencies or defects are the greatest. The paramount advantage is the variety of tone and pause of which it admits. The great disadvantages are, the constraint of such complicated rhymes, and the long suspension of the sense, especially in the latter half of the stanza. The noblest conception and most brilliant diction must be sacrificed, if four words in ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... glanced at the paper and put it on one side. There was a little constraint. One or two who had not known of his identity were glancing curiously in his direction. Mr. Foley smiled at ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... whom Elsie had been looking from time to time in this fixed way, was conscious meanwhile of some unusual influence. First it was a feeling of constraint,—then, as it were, a diminished power over the muscles, as if an invisible elastic cobweb were spinning round her,—then a tendency to turn away from Mr. Bernard, who was making himself very agreeable, and look straight into those eyes which would not leave her, and which ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... these. For we shall dispute, if perchance they will allow us, on God, on Christ, on Man, on Sin, on Justice, on Sacraments, on Morals. I shall see whether they will dare to speak out what they think, and what under the constraint of their situation they publish in their miserable writings. I will take care that they know these maxims of their teachers:—"God is the author and cause of evil, willing it, suggesting it, effecting it, commanding it, working it out, and guiding the guilty counsels of the wicked to this ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion
... gift, already," she said, "it is much to ask. Yet, if he holdeth it, by no constraint—but because it is for him alone and may not be withheld—however one may struggle,—need one ask further assurance of happiness? Choose thou from these, my Margherita. They are ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... dear, perhaps not. I don't say that it is. I do not wish to put the slightest constraint upon your feelings. If I did not have the most thorough dependence on your good sense and high principles, I should not speak to you in this way. But as I have, I thought it best to tell you that both Lady Lufton and I should be well pleased if we thought that you ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... a sad tone of voice, and remaining silent and absent when among his natural friends and relatives, as if saying to himself, "I have much higher thoughts than to engage in all these perishing miserable things;" acting with constraint and difficulty in the things about him; making efforts to turn things which occur to the purpose of what he considers spiritual reflection; using certain Scripture phrases and expressions; delighting ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... Would she permit him to meet her and Miss Ringrose at Hampstead? Without shadow of constraint or affectation, Eve replied that such a meeting would give her pleasure: she mentioned place and time at which ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... I. also warned Michael, king of the Bulgarians, against employing force or constraint in ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... the Votaress's "family," one seated, three standing at ease, were allowing their mild, slow conversation its haphazard way under barely enough constraint to hold it in the channel of discretion. It drifted as unpretentiously as a raft or flatboat, now and then merely floating without progress, like a floating alligator; that is, with one small eye imperceptibly open to every point ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... obey the laws of prudence and necessity." [29] The dissimulation of Julian lasted about ten years, from his secret initiation at Ephesus to the beginning of the civil war; when he declared himself at once the implacable enemy of Christ and of Constantius. This state of constraint might contribute to strengthen his devotion; and as soon as he had satisfied the obligation of assisting, on solemn festivals, at the assemblies of the Christians, Julian returned, with the impatience of a lover, to burn his free and voluntary incense on the domestic ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... charge, then the poor victim would be less able to retreat. In such case as that, should the victim's courage fail him at the last moment, a policeman could be made to fetch him and force him into the witness-box. But in the conduct of a civil action no such constraint could be put upon him. Knowing all this, Mr Apjohn had eagerly explained the superior attractions of a criminal prosecution, and Cousin Henry had fallen into the trap. He understood it all now, but had not ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope
... the low voice. Vendale led her memory back to their past meetings when they were travelling together in Switzerland. They revived the impressions, they recalled the events, of the happy bygone time. Little by little, Marguerite's constraint vanished. She smiled, she was interested, she looked at Vendale, she grew idle with her needle, she made false stitches in her work. Their voices sank lower and lower; their faces bent nearer and nearer to each other as they spoke. And Madame Dor? Madame Dor behaved like an angel. ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... and 1765 the British Empire had physically outgrown its legal envelope, and the consequence was a revolution. The thirteen American colonies, which formed the western section of the imperial mass, split from the core and drifted into chaos, beyond the constraint of existing law. Washington was, in his way, a large capitalist, but he was much more. He was not only a wealthy planter, but he was an engineer, a traveller, to an extent a manufacturer, a politician, and ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams
... She dreaded to be alone with Bob; her constraint in his presence was painful, and he also, before going out, had appeared very ill at ease. He had not even made plans for the evening meal. In view of ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... The constraint between his mother and himself had reached a greater pitch than ever before. He thought seriously of leaving her and the country. He still had some money left, the proceeds of the patent, and he could easily make more. How ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... sometimes approaching almost to the force of poetry in its simple elegance of expression, the legendary and historical associations which belong to the scenery of the Severn blend naturally with the most glowing pictures of descriptive beauty, and there is never any appearance of labour or constraint."—Shrewsbury Chronicle. ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall
... tears she pour'd a sad complaint, That softly echoed from the neighbouring wood; While sad to see her sorrowful constraint, The kingly beast upon her gazing stood: With pity calm'd he lost all angry mood. At length, in close breast shutting up her pain, Arose the virgin born of heavenly brood, And on her snowy palfrey rode again To seek and find her knight, if ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... Alfred's golden reign, Could half the nation's criminals contain; Fair Justice then, without constraint adored, 250 Held high the steady scale, but sheathed the sword; No spies were paid, no special juries known, Blest age! but, ah! ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... the rest of the party theirs as listeners—a 'Circa herd'—without any previous arrangement having been gone through. I will just add that there can be no good society without perfect freedom from affectation and constraint. If the unreserved communication of feeling or opinion leads to offensive familiarity, it is not well; but it is no better where the absence of offensive remarks arises only from formality and an assumed ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... loneliness. I don't think there was ever a more lonely child. My father and mother were so unhappy in each other's companionship that one or other of them was almost always away. But I saw little of either even when they were at home. The constraint in their attitude toward each other affected their conduct toward me. I have asked myself more than once if either of them had any real affection for me. To my father I spoke of her; to her of him; and never pleasurably. This I am forced to say, ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... but again checked himself just in time to prevent the words "and wives," that rose to his lips. "And friends," he substituted, with evident constraint and as awkwardly as before. It was not often that a woman had been able to disconcert Edgar Harrowby so strangely as did this ignorant ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... beginning of dinner, Helen fancied that there was unusual silence and constraint; perhaps this might be so, or perhaps people were really hungry, or perhaps Mr. Beauclerc had not yet satisfied the general and Lady Davenant: however, towards the end of dinner, and at the dessert, he was certainly entertaining; and Lady Cecilia ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... with me," replied Hillhouse with some constraint; "indeed, I think he was to be sent on some ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln
... with her freely upon all affairs of moment; there was no constraint on either side. He was even merry in her company, and astonishingly frank. Singular man! the Navarrese marriage was a common subject of their talk; she spoke of it with serious mockery and he with mock seriousness. ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... fair Julia to possess, Is not to enjoy, but ravish happiness: Yet women pardon force, because they find The violence of love is still most kind: Just like the plots of well built comedies, Which then please most, when most they do surprise: But yet constraint love's noblest end destroys, Whose highest joy is in another's joys: Where passion rules, how weak does reason prove! I yield my cause, but cannot ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... called in; and it is this. The nude model, no matter how practised he or she may be, never moves or stands or sits, in these degenerate days, with exactly the same freedom as when draped; action or pose is always different—not so much from a sense of mental constraint as from the unusual liberty experienced by the limbs, to which the muscular action invariably responds when the body is released from the discipline and ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... its members. This means that the larger it is, the more insipid will be its tone. A man can be himself only so long as he is alone; and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom; for it is only when he is alone that he is really free. Constraint is always present in society, like a companion of whom there is no riddance; and in proportion to the greatness of a man's individuality, it will be hard for him to bear the sacrifices which all ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... don't like at all this new-made burgomaster! His insolence grows daily ever faster. No good from him the town will get! Will things grow better with him? Never! We're under more constraint than ever, And pay ...
— Faust • Goethe
... something more than happiness; there is a sense of ease, of comfort, of general joy, that is quite unmistakable. There is nothing of stiffness or constraint. And with it all there is full reverence. It is no wonder that he is accustomed to fill every seat of ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell
... the twins' charm of manner and easy and polished bearing made speedy conquest of the family's good graces. All constraint and formality quickly disappeared, and the friendliest feeling succeeded. Aunt Patsy called them by their Christian names almost from the beginning. She was full of the keenest curiosity about them, and showed it; they responded by talking about themselves, which pleased her greatly. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... home to-morrow night, and I'd rather wait now until Saturday; that will be only one day longer, and it will be more fun with her along." Betty spoke brightly and tried to make herself feel that no momentous thing had happened. She hated the constraint of it. "By that time Peter Junior will think that he can go, too. He's so funny!" She laughed self-consciously, and carried the gingham aprons back to ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... prominent, it was noticeable that she had dropped some of the grave reserve in which she had wrapped herself during the preceding day. It was impossible for her, at least but for a very short time, to act in a manner unsuited to her nature; and reserve and constraint had never been suited to her nature. She, therefore, began to speak on general subjects in her ordinary free manner to the various persons in her house; but it must not be supposed that she exhibited any contrition for the outrageous way in which she had spoken to Annie and Lawrence, or gave ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... an iron figure of repression. So severe was the constraint that he put upon himself that he had given no sign of his emotion, even at the near approach of Donna Mercedes, and the hand which signed his name beneath her father's as the principal witness was as steady as if it held merely the sword in some deadly combat. He endured passively ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... stretched ahead of them like cire satin with a piping of lights. She had changed her position a little, restless under the constraint of his eyes. A lamp lit her up for him, her face white and drawn, her eyelids pulled over her eyes ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... Forgetting time and the life of the world, they pass days in these inviolate stillnesses, watching a bird build its nest or brood over its young, or some little groundling at its gracious play. So to seek the good within himself—one must go where he no longer finds constraint, or pose, or "gallery" of any sort, but the simple fact of a life made up of wishing to be what it is good for it to be, without ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... lifetime, they assumed attitudes of indolent repose. They leaned over the green turf in ponderous grace, throwing abroad their great branches without danger of interfering with other trees, though other majestic trees grew near enough for dignified society, but too distant for constraint. Never was there a more venerable quietude than that which slept among their sheltering boughs; never a sweeter sunshine than that now gladdening the gentle gloom which these leafy patriarchs strove to diffuse over the swelling and ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... pr'ythee, do not strive against my vows: I was compell'd to her; but I love thee By love's own sweet constraint, and will for ever Do thee all rights ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 71, March 8, 1851 • Various
... first visit to Shenac Dhu which, partly from shyness and partly from some other feeling, she did dread a little; but she need not have feared it so much. She did not have to put a constraint on herself to seem glad; for the very first glimpse she caught of Shenac's sweet, kind face put all her vexed thoughts to flight, and she was really and truly glad for Allister ...
— Shenac's Work at Home • Margaret Murray Robertson
... burden from the heart. The time to prepare that assurance, so that it shall come with most effectual power, is now, in days of health, when the evidences of our piety shall not be attainted by a suspicion of constraint and insincerity, arising from late repentance and an apparently forced submission to God. Our recollections of a departed Christian friend, of whose salvation his pious life makes us perfectly assured, come over us like the soft pulsations ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... Charmian and not Cornelia waiting for him, he managed to get through the formalities of greeting decently, but he had an intensity which he had the effect of not allowing to relax. He sat down with visible self-constraint when Charmian invited him to ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... interested he would ask naturally, as one friend had always asked the other, to know more. Howard thought that if Carr cared to speak of his own personal affairs he would do so. Hence, while both waited, neither spoke. Perhaps both were hurt. Certainly the constraint between them thickened and deepened in step with the engulfing night; they could not see each other's faces, they could not glimpse each other's souls. Both were baffled and into the temper of each came a growing irritation. One thing alone they appeared to ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... earthly elevation and power—what cared she that she henceforth would no more have the pleasure of commanding others? She was free, free from the task of ruling slaves and humanizing barbarians; free from the constraint of greatness, and, finally free to live in conformity with her own inclinations, and perhaps, ah, perhaps, to found a happiness, the bare dreaming of which already caused her heart to ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... doctrine of the servitude of the will into downright fatalism. But these great logicians apparently shrink from the conclusions to which their logic leads them. Both Augustine and Calvin protest against fatalism, and both assert that the will is so far free that the sinner acts without constraint; and consequently the blame of his sins rests upon himself, and not upon another. The doctrines of Calvin and Augustine logically pursued would lead to the damnation of infants; yet, as a matter of fact, neither ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... Penman;' but the stage was vast in comparison with any on which I had until then appeared, and my customary business brought me only within half a dozen paces of the door-way by which I should have vanished. A sudden sense of strangeness and constraint came down upon me like a cloud. The happy feeling of confidence vanished in a whiff of chill spiritual wind. The last line was spoken before that unhappy half-dozen of paces was achieved; and I left the stage in a dead silence, which was as eloquent of failure as it had been one brief ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... that no constraint be put upon its poor maids. Wherefore, do you marry this man of your own free will ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... Thomaso, who now began to agitate and fulminate into the ears of the Donna Rebiera all the pains and penalties attending heretical connection, such as excommunication and utter damnation. The effects of his remonstrances were soon visible, and Jack found that there was constraint on the part of the old lady, tears on the part of Agnes, and all father confessors heartily wished at the devil ten times a day on the part of Don Philip and his brother. At last he wormed the truth out of Agnes, who told her tale, and ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... among strangers in this unknown Spenersberg? Nothing was farther from their thought: they only gave to their kindly feeling hearty utterance, and perhaps spoke with a little extra emphasis because the constraint they secretly felt in consequence of their household trouble made them unanimous in the effort to put it out of sight—not out of this stranger's sight, but ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... lover, dissembles when Villa Rocca is present. There is a strange constraint in the girl's dark eyes, as her idle hands cross themselves, in unconscious ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... march and "Green grow the Rushes, O" were mixed up harmoniously, in splendid confusion. Knowing little bullfinch that he was! He succeeded, as peradventure he intended, in at once turning the conversation into a fresh channel, where Min's constraint and my embarrassment ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... javelin-lings can touch. To have made free with these cattle, where was the harm? 'twould have been but giving a polish to lampblack, not nigrifying a negro primarily. After all, I cannot but regret my involuntary virtue. Damn virtue that's thrust upon us; it behaves itself with such constraint, till conscience opens the window and lets out ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... diffame* *defame, disparage Them that me list, and do them shame." This messenger gan faste go'n, And found where, in a cave of stone, In a country that highte Thrace, This Aeolus, *with harde grace,* *Evil favour attend him!* Helde the windes in distress,* *constraint And gan them under him to press, That they began as bears to roar, He bound and pressed them so sore. This messenger gan fast to cry, "Rise up," quoth he, "and fast thee hie, Until thou at my Lady be, And take thy clarions ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... from constraint, she became her own natural self, as women rarely, indeed never, are in the presence of those they love, or of those by whom they believe themselves loved. Neither unpleasant consciousness rested heavily ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... down in silence. Her mouth was shut close, her face averted. She was regretting bitterly that she had ever come back. Ursula looked at her, and thought how amazingly beautiful she was, flushed with discomfiture. But she caused a constraint over Ursula's nature, a certain weariness. Ursula wished to be alone, freed from the tightness, the enclosure ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... morning, she brought him his breakfast, he had been smitten dumb as soon as she entered the room, glueing his eyes upon his plate, his elbows close to his side, awkward, clumsy, overwhelmed with constraint. ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... hypothesis of Lamarck that man is the co-descendant with other species of some lower extinct form was admitted to have been raised to the rank of an established fact by most thinkers whose brains were not working under the constraint ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... was incapable of resisting the glory of the sky, the beauty of the earth, the music of the birds, and the invigorating breath of the ocean, intensified as they all were by a joyful sense of security and freedom, growing out of the constraint that had lately been put upon her movements. She tripped along faster, carolling as she went an old-fashioned song that her father ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... first turning round and merely saying, "Octavius and Petronius, and you Roman officers who are here, you see that I go under compulsion, and you are witnesses that I am treated in a shameful way and am under constraint; but, if you get safe home, tell all the world, that Crassus lost his life through the treachery of the enemy, and was ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... which I could not then interpret. I understood but too well the change in her manner, to greater kindness and quicker readiness in interpreting all my wishes, before others—to constraint and sadness, and nervous anxiety to absorb herself in the first occupation she could seize on, whenever we happened to be left together alone. I understood why the sweet sensitive lips smiled so rarely and so restrainedly now, and ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... young people have too little liberty. My principle has been to make little free men and women of them from the first. In morals, altogether—in intellect, more than we allow—self-education is that which abides; and it only begins where constraint ends. Such is my theory. My practice is consistent. Let them remain for a week longer, as you say. The horses shall be at Elverston on Tuesday, the 7th. I shall be more than usually sad and solitary till their return; so pray, I selfishly entreat, do not extend their absence. ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... Buccaneer Cove discovered that a legion of relieved and rejuvenated rheumatics had without remuneration or constraint sung the virtues of the Kurepain and the praises of Hook. Poor ignorant Jim Grimm did not for a moment doubt the existence of the Well-Known Traveller, the Family Doctor, the Minister of the Gospel, the Champion of the World. He was ready to ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan
... shadow of constraint upon Bessie's manner; and in one whose nature was so frank, the faintest touch of reserve was painfully obvious. For a little while all her talk was of ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... sick-room he found his tongue again, and explained matters volubly enough. Besides, she made it easy. She was so marvellously natural, so free from a certain constraint which in some French circles is mistaken for good manners. She asked every detail, and made particular inquiry as to who had ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... and made ready to return to his duties. So therefore, too, did Allan, and found he now felt more at ease and without constraint ...
— In the Court of King Arthur • Samuel Lowe
... leaped to the conclusion that she was about to say something regarding the subject then agitating Deerham—the ghost of Frederick Massingbird. Unconsciously to himself, the pleasant manner changed to one of constraint. ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... telling the story of poor Marner's disappointments in friendship and in love, his unmerited disgrace, and his long, lonely twilight-life at Raveloe, with the sole companionship of his loom, in which his muscles moved "with such even repetition, that their pause seemed almost as much a constraint as the holding of his breath." Here, as in all George Eliot's books, there is a middle life and a low life; and here, as usual, I prefer the low life. In "Silas Marner," in my opinion, she has come nearest the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... of a father's bleeding heart, of the crushing of proud hopes, of the impiety of youth, and the lonesomeness of old age. And then, rather disconnectedly, beating a tattoo with the fingers of his big hand on the top of the table, he spoke of the constraint in which he found himself with reference to the opulent owner of the mill. He told Daniel he had gone on a man's note, had been suddenly obliged to redeem the note, and not having so much ready money at his disposal, had accepted a loan from the ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... delicious illusion of loving Bertha, of longing and doubting and hoping that she might love me. She behaved with a certain new consciousness and distance towards me after my brother's death; and I too was under a double constraint—that of delicacy towards my brother's memory and of anxiety as to the impression my abrupt words had left on her mind. But the additional screen this mutual reserve erected between us only brought me more completely under her power: no ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot
... altogether false, if by Prince you mean that great Prince who was call'd Caesar; and then, if by being above the Law, you mean, that whereas others do in some Measure keep the Laws by Constraint, he of his own Inclination more exactly observes them. For a good Prince is that to the Body Politick, which the Mind is to the Body Natural. What Need was there to have said a good Prince, when a bad Prince is no Prince? As an unclean Spirit ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... answered Vivien's questions, after plying her with innumerable enquiries, she admitted with a blush that Heinrich, the German sergeant, with whom she had first cohabited by constraint, had recently married her at the Mairie, though the Cure had refused to perform the religious service. Heinrich was now invariably kind and worked hard on the farm. He hoped by diligently supplying the officers' messes in Brussels with poultry and ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... his whole life. He recalled with delicious satisfaction how charming the journey had seemed to him, and thought how far more charming it would be in the society of a comrade of his own age and taste, without duty, or constraint, or obligation to go or stay other than as it might please them. "It would be madness to sacrifice such a piece of good fortune to projects of ambition, which were slow, difficult, doubtful of execution, ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... underground with his men, opening up the air-cocks in the pumps, and bringing out the powder and steel; and then the next morning, just before the stage went out, he gave them all their time. They had a certain constraint, a sullen silence in his presence, that argued them against him at heart and, since the mine was closed down for some time to come, he made a clean sweep of them all. Yet it pained him somehow, being new at the ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... polite entertainments of ordinary Edinburgh society. Of these he early wearied. At home he made himself pleasant to all comers, but for his own resort chose out a very few houses, mostly those of intimate college companions, into which he could go without constraint, and where his inexhaustible flow of poetic, imaginative, and laughing talk seems generally to have rather puzzled his hearers than impressed them. On the other hand, during his endless private rambles and excursions, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his peace. There be that write, that this Aulafe is not that Aulafe which was sonne to king Sithrike, but rather that the other was he with whom king Edmund made partition of the realme: but they agree, that this second Aulafe was a Dane also, & being conuerted to the faith as well through constraint of the kings puissance, as through the preaching of the gospell, was baptised, king Edmund being godfather both vnto him, and vnto the foresaid Reinold, to Aulafe at the verie fontstone, and to Reinold at his confirmation at the bishops hands. ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (6 of 8) - The Sixt Booke of the Historie of England • Raphael Holinshed
... but certainly, whether it was the idea that the sick man was one of the crew, or from something conciliatory in my address, the officer in question was immediately relieved and mollified; and speaking in a voice much freer from constraint, advised me to find a steward and despatch him in quest of the doctor, who would now be in the smoking-room over ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... commenced. The children ate greedily, but were obediently silent. All the little confidences and remarks which it would have been so healthy for them to make, and so good for their mother to hear, had to be suppressed, and the silence and constraint made everyone dyspeptic. The dinner consisted of only one dish, a hash, which Mrs. Caldwell had made because her husband had liked it so much the last time they had had it. He turned it over on his plate now, however, ominously, ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... hand in the American fashion, and Gheta smiled from—Lavinia saw—her best facial angle. The Spaniard regarded Gheta Sanviano so fixedly that after a moment she turned, in a species of constraint, to Anna. The latter spoke with her customary facility and the man ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... the previous evening was forgotten. They welcomed anything that broke the suspense. Let the regimental wag make a little fun any way that he could. As the officers had withdrawn somewhat to the rear for breakfast, there was no constraint. ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... this clog everlastingly attached to you, be frugal, if you would: you can save nothing against the days of expense, which are, however, pretty sure to come. And why should you bring into your house a trouble like this; an absolute annoyance; a something for your wife to watch, to be a constraint upon her, to thwart her in her best intentions, to make her uneasy, and to sour her temper? Why should you do this foolish thing? Merely to comply with corrupt fashion; merely from false shame, and false and contemptible pride? ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... to thy seat there lowly, Yet come slowly, For the viands thou seest were baken By God most high. 75 Lo ye my pillars, doctor, saint, Ambrose, Thomas and Jerome And Augustine, In my service wax not faint, Nor show constraint, And to thee, soul, shall be welcome This fare of mine. 76 To the holy kitchen go: Let us this frail soul restore, That she find grace To reach her journey's end and know Her path, that so By God brought hither she no more Fail in ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... yielding, stubborn but for fame; Made slaves by honour, and made fools by shame. Marriage may all those petty tyrants chase, But sets up one, a greater, in their place; Well might you wish for change, by those accursed, But the last tyrant ever proves the worst. 40 Still in constraint your suffering sex remains, Or bound in formal, or in real chains: Whole years neglected, for some months adored, The fawning servant turns a haughty lord. Ah, quit not the free innocence of life, For the dull glory ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... was imperturbable. He sat crouched, ready for the death-spring, as he had sat for hours. It was night—but that made no difference—all times were as one to the Cat when he was in wait for prey. Then, too, he was under no constraint of human will, for he was living alone that winter. Nowhere in the world was any voice calling him; on no hearth was there a waiting dish. He was quite free except for his own desires, which tyrannized over him when unsatisfied as now. The Cat was very ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... that these sorts of policed societies are a violation offered to nature, and a constraint upon the human mind, it needs only to look upon the sanguinary measures, and instruments of violence, which are everywhere used to support them. Let us take a review of the dungeons, whips, chains, racks, gibbets, with which every society is abundantly stored; by which ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... of constraint were removed. The sound of St. Giles's heavy toll announced the hour previous to the commencement of the trial; Jeanie arose, and with a degree of composure for which she herself could not account, assumed her plaid, and made her other preparations ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... intellect and accountability.... The Chinamen for centuries have taken peculiar means for restricting women's activities by binding the feet of girl babies and yet there remains the significant fact that, after centuries of constraint, God continues to send the female child into the world with feet well formed, with a foundation as substantial to stand upon as that of the male child. As in this instance, so in all cases of restriction put upon women—they do not come ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... never struck me before. Now there's another question that might be worth comparing notes upon. Your remark just brought it into my mind. Here it is"—he hesitated a moment, then went on, with a certain constraint in his voice; the constraint we are apt to feel when forced to plump out the word 'love,' in its narrower sense—"When women love, they don't know why they love; they just love because they do—so they say, and we're bound to believe them. But when we love women, why do we love them? ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... I am a constraint to them and they are a constraint to me. I have never in my earlier days had a close knowledge of class antagonism, but now I am tormented by something of that sort. I am on the lookout for nothing but bad qualities in Gnekker; ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... rights again. Lastly, he has so contrived his 'carriers,' that they shall act without confining the wheels, by which means there is none of that sliding and consequent cutting up of the road, which, in sharp turnings, would result from inflexible constraint. ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 391 - Vol. 14, No. 391, Saturday, September 26, 1829 • Various
... her own room the photographs of Mimi, of her grandfather, and of Adam Salton, whom by now she had grown to look on with reliance, as a brother whom she could trust. She kept the pictures near her heart, to which her hand naturally strayed when her feelings of constraint, distrust, or fear became so poignant as to interfere with the calm which she felt was necessary to ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... days passed, a certain constraint appeared to have arisen between Evie and myself. I told myself that the idea was foolish, and yet I knew that it was not so. Mind, I had not the slightest doubt as to the strength of Evie's love for me. She expressed it clearly, yet there was something drawing us ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... the disability which his temperament laid upon him. Yet he never made an effort to combat it, partly I think from pride, for he hated everything that savoured of earwigging; he was not going to put constraint upon himself that his following might be more enthusiastic. There was no make-believe about him, and he was never one who liked ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... they might still have come to a good old age with more than average happiness, and more than the common run of love. Patience in dutiful enduring brings a sure reward: and marriage, however irksome a constraint to the foolish and the gay, is still so wise an ordinance, that the most ill-assorted couple imaginable will unconsciously grow happy, if they only remain true to one another, and will learn the wisdom always to hope ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... did not wish to be placed under them again. "Our duty is merely agitation." After a stormy quarrel, she left to form a new association in New England. Elizabeth Blackwell's name is conspicuous for its absence from Suffrage annals. In the letter referred to she wrote: "The exclusion and constraint woman suffers is not the result of purposed injury or premeditated insult. It has arisen naturally, without violence, because woman has desired nothing more, has not felt the soul too large for the body. But when woman, with matured strength, with steady purpose, presents her lofty ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... knew what he knew, and she held him in a new respect for his silence, understanding the reason therefor, and presently when her leaping heart had steadied a little she began to talk, on indifferent topics, desiring to break a silence that was full of constraint. ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... of the breakfast table. But this was a mystery revealed to none but Lampe. At length Kant took this task upon himself; and apparently all was now settled to his satisfaction. Yet still it struck me that he was under some embarrassment or constraint. Upon this I said—that, with his permission, I would take a cup of tea, and afterwards smoke a pipe with him. He accepted my offer with his usual courteous demeanor; but seemed unable to familiarize himself with the novelty of his situation. I was at ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... reasonable, my mind is ever impressed with admiration for persons of high birth, and I could, with the most perfect honesty, expatiate on Lord Errol's good qualities; but he stands in no need of my praise. His agreeable manners and softness of address prevented that constraint which the idea of his being Lord High Constable of Scotland might otherwise have occasioned. He talked very easily and sensibly with his learned guest. I observed that Dr Johnson, though he shewed that respect to his lordship, which, from principle, ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... eyes as Alessandro has," she said. "I wonder any girl should make free with him. Even I myself, when he fixes his eyes on me, feel a constraint. There is something in them like the eyes of a saint, so solemn, yet so mild. I am ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... that there was constraint in the smile with which Maria answered the children. Little as she knew, it struck her that in his fun with the children, Mr Enderby was relying quite sufficiently on the philosophy he had professed to admire ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... the choice of change and variety and of experience far and wide, with all the world for stage—a stage set and appointed by this very art of choice—all future generations for witnesses and audience. When you talk with a man who has in his nature and acquirements that freedom from constraint which goes with the full franchise of humanity, he turns easily with topic to topic; does not fall silent or dull when you leave some single field of thought such as unwise men make a prison of. The ...
— On Being Human • Woodrow Wilson
... come not without constraint; But uncompell'd comes Chester to this place, Telling thee, John, that thou art much to blame, To chase hence Ely, chancellor to the king; To set thy footsteps on the cloth of state, And seat thy ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... and Armitage laughed at these explanations, though there was a little constraint upon them all. The Baron's question ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... meaning than they had ever been before; and it was patent that he intended to put his fate to the touch during this visit of hers. He did so without success, it seemed; for before she left there was an evident sense of constraint between them and they tried to avoid sitting beside each other or being left alone together, even for a moment. Shortly after the departure of the visitors Burke contrived to effect an exchange to another station, to the regret of all in the little outpost, ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... everything; and what we learn thus, we acquire not only more effectually, but more pleasantly. This forms our manners, our opinions, our lives. It is one of the strongest links of society; it is a species of mutual compliance, which all men yield to each other, without constraint to themselves, and which is ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... Moreover, she puts a constraint on her feelings only so long as by giving vent to them, she might make her firmness of purpose appear equivocal. When, however, she is being led forth to inevitable death, she pours forth her soul ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black |
