"Stumbling-block" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... how heartbreaking all this is to the preacher and how wearing on his human nerves. There have been times when I should have been almost willing to see William lose patience and expend about two pages of fierce Plutonian vocabulary on some old stumbling-block in the church. But he never did. And it will serve them right if the ten thousand prayers he made, asking God to soften their obdurate hearts, are registered against them somewhere in the debit column ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... was liable to be roused to what he called "just indignation," on that which to others appeared small provocation. The flash was always momentary, but it was severe while it lasted; and it had ever been a cross and a stumbling-block to him, spite of the polite name by which he called its manifestations. It was probably the recollection of the trouble it had brought to him, and of the struggles which even now it cost him, an elderly man, which made him so intolerant of its existence in ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... was given a chief's name among the Oneidas for his services to that tribe. His skill and patience made him all important in making treaties and negotiations with "The Six Nations" and other Indians. The Patriots very early realized that the Indians were to become a stumbling-block to any attempt at treating with Canada or maintaining what is called civilized warfare (can any warfare be civilized?). Schuyler, Hawley, Oliver Wolcott, and other distinguished men of high character attempted in vain to hold the Indians to neutrality. Congress at one time voted ...
— Colonel John Brown, of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, the Brave Accuser of Benedict Arnold • Archibald Murray Howe
... apparently very serene. I shall be told, perhaps, that red cheeks are not incompatible with fanaticism and mysticism; but I fancy that Alyosha was more of a realist than any one. Oh! no doubt, in the monastery he fully believed in miracles, but, to my thinking, miracles are never a stumbling-block to the realist. It is not miracles that dispose realists to belief. The genuine realist, if he is an unbeliever, will always find strength and ability to disbelieve in the miraculous, and if he is confronted with a miracle as an irrefutable ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... first stumbling-block. Fred Sanders refused pointedly, but firmly, to accept a single one of them. He declared he had no claim upon any one of that little party, and he would not suffer himself to ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... spare any labor to do my duty; that single thought would solace me more than any pleasures the senses could enjoy. I find I could not translate the manuscript well. If it were not a manuscript I should not be so easily intimidated; but the hand, and errors in orthography or abbreviations, are a stumbling-block at the first setting out. I cannot bear to do anything I cannot do well; and I should lose ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... demi-monde always has been a stumbling-block to certain particularly good people. These women never register, never vote and never attend primaries except when compelled to do so. Their identity is often a secret even to their closest associates. It is almost impossible to learn their ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... they were all in panic—Walter, Adele, and Mr. Lyttleton. They put their empty heads together to think what was best to be done to avert suspicion from themselves. Miss Manwaring was the real stumbling-block. She knew far too much, and had proved rather difficult to manage. Among them they evolved another brilliant scheme: Miss Manwaring must be kidnapped and hidden away in a safe place until the trouble had blown over. Miss ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... prosper so long as that's the chapel we've got. We did think as perhaps a younger man might do something to counteract church-influences; but there don't seem any sign of betterment yet. In fact, thinks looks worse. No, sir! it's the chapel as is the stumbling-block. What has religion got to do with what's ugly and dirty! A place that any lady or gentleman, let he or she be so much of a Christian, might turn up the nose and refrain the foot from! No! I say; what we want ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... we fail to help them. If we can do them a kindness, and do it not, we do them ill. Non-activity for good is activity for evil. Surely, nothing can be plainer than the bearing of this teaching on the Christian duty as to intoxicants. If by using these a Christian puts a stumbling-block in the way of a weak will, then he is working ill to his neighbour, and that argues absence of love, and that is dishonest, shirking payment of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... Napoleon III, who had set up his throne, was now in accord with the United States government and with the Liberal leaders to tear it from under him, stung Maximilian to the quick. He not unnaturally felt a strong desire to remain a stumbling-block in the way of negotiations which to him seemed treacherous and infamous. When General Castelnau arrived he was hesitating. The presence of Napoleon's aide-de-camp was not calculated to soothe his feelings. The return of General Miramon and General ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... of practice and unconsciousness extend? Can any line be drawn beyond which it shall cease to operate? If not, may it not have operated and be operating to a vast and hitherto unsuspected extent? This is all, and certainly it is sufficiently simple. I sometimes think it has found its greatest stumbling-block in its total want of mystery, as though we must be like those conjurers whose stock in trade is a small deal table and a kitchen-chair with bare legs, and who, with their parade of "no deception" and "examine ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... suffering humanity. For this is the quickest road to eternal salvation." The brutality of the tenet which maintains that all those are eternally lost who, without their own fault, have no knowledge of the salvation of the world (especially therefore, those who died before the event), was a stumbling-block to many thoughtful minds. The patriarchs of the Old Testament were looked upon as saved—to some extent—by the fact of their being the ancestors or prophets of Christ; but pagans and Greeks, including Aristotle, were ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... and remains to this day as independent of the great powers in its neighborhood as it was when the Assyrian armies first penetrated its recesses. Nature seems to have constructed it to be a nursery of hardy and vigorous men, a stumbling-block to conquerors, a thorn in the side of every powerful empire which arises in this part of the ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson
... of enlightenment and progress, while humane feelings are taking the place of spite and hatred among the civilized nations, and religious prejudice is giving way to good will and tolerance, Rome is, from the Vatican point of view, the stumbling-block of every honest effort in the purification of the individual heart and the uplifting of the millions of souls that are downtrodden under the sandals of hyenical monks. When the Pope, a few months ago, rejected Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Fairbanks, two models ...
— Conversion of a High Priest into a Christian Worker • Meletios Golden
... Sister Bourgeois. It was next proposed by M. de St. Vallier, that the Sisters should make only simple vows. But as they had not made any vows in joining the community, the term, simple vows, of which some did not understand either the nature or the force, was another stumbling-block, and intimidated a few. It appears there were many unsatisfactory and protracted disputes on the subject, although the Sisters more than once made very humble remonstrances to the Bishop, and finding that the matter did not meet the prompt attention they thought ...
— The Life of Venerable Sister Margaret Bourgeois • Anon.
... in this system, which is, that they all learn a trade, if they had not one before; and, when they leave the prison, have the means of obtaining an honest livelihood, if they wish so to do themselves, and are permitted so to do by others. Here is the stumbling-block which neutralises almost all the good effects which might be produced by the penitentiary system. The severity and harshness of the world; the unchristianlike feeling pervading society, which denies to the penitent what individually they will have to plead for themselves at the great ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... hands with him. "Would that you were right, Gneisenau, and that I really lived for the welfare of Germany! But the gentlemen at headquarters need me no longer. I am once more a nuisance and a stumbling-block—I am, according to them, the old madcap again—the rash hussar, just because I shout, 'We must advance upon Paris!' while the trubsalsspritzen [Footnote: A favorite expression of Blucher when he alluded to the timid diplomatists who advised the allies to make peace with ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... Northward. The provision in the Federal Constitution that no new State shall be formed within the jurisdiction of any other State without the consent of the Legislature of the State as well as of Congress, had always been the stumbling-block in the way of West Virginia's independence. Despite the hostilities and antagonisms of the two populations, Virginia would insist on retaining this valuable section of country within her own jurisdiction. But now, by the chances of war, the same men who desired to create the ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... was fiercely aroused. "Ah, true! I had forgotten that delectable passage in my story. Why, man, Bermudez went to her, told her that my aspirations and my prospects were so and so,—faring, brilliant,—that she, only she, stood in the way, an impassable stumbling-block to my glorious advancement,—told her, (devil!) that, with all my fine passion for her, he was aware that I was not without embarrassment on this score,—appealed to her disinterested love, to her pride,—don't ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... it is, and so it must. And I will add, it is a shame, it is a reproach, it is a stumbling-block to the blind; {131f} for though men be as blind as Mr. Badman himself, yet they can see the foolish lightness that must needs be the bottom of all these apish and wanton extravagancies. But many have their excuses ready; to wit, their Parents, ...
— The Life and Death of Mr. Badman • John Bunyan
... relieved for the moment, however ultimately strengthened, by strong liquors; the relief is immediate, and cannot fail to be perceived; but the aggravation, being removed to a distance, is not always referred to its proper cause. This is the capital rock and stumbling-block in the path of him who is hurrying back to the camps of temperance; and many a reader is likely to misapprehend the case through the habit he has acquired of supposing indigestion to lurk chiefly amongst ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... of the week, three of the most prominent men in the community openly identified themselves with the Protestants. One of these, named Sarkis Agha, became a very active and useful Christian. Feeling that he had been a stumbling-block to others, he lost no time in going to the market, and inviting twelve or fifteen of his most intimate friends, all men of influence, to his place of business, and telling them of his change of feeling. He expected only ridicule, but the majority were affected to tears, and requested him to ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson
... are as great a stumbling-block to modern thought as they were a help to the contemporaries of Jesus. The study of Jesus' life cannot ignore this fact, nor make little of it. It is fair to insist, however, that the question is one of evidence, not of metaphysical possibility. Men are wisely slow to-day to claim that they ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... dyed and ingrained with personality—becomes in his later books, a stumbling-block to many readers; to the readers who want their "story" and have no wish to be teased and distracted "en route." Certainly his style thickens and gathers in fuller intensity as well as diffuses itself in wider atmospheric attenuation as his ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... partly for other reasons. But La Salle was a fur-trader, and far worse than a fur-trader,— he aimed at occupation, fortification, settlement. The scope and vigor of his enterprises, and the powerful influence that aided them made him a stumbling-block in their path. As they would have put the case, it was the spirit of this world opposed to the spirit of religion; but I may perhaps be pardoned if I am constrained to think that the spirit which inspired these fathers was not uniformly celestial, notwithstanding ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... confused though it is in form, leaves no serious doubt that Aristarchus of Samos not only propounded the view that the earth revolves both on its own axis and around the sun, but that he correctly removed the great stumbling-block in the way of this theory by adding that the distance of the fixed stars was infinitely greater than the dimensions of the earth's orbit. Even the world of philosophy was not yet ready for this conception, and, so far from seeing the reasonableness of the ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... heart is perfectly set at peace in one object, he cannot be disquieted by any other, since he accounts all others as nothing; hence it is written (Ps. 118:165): "Much peace have they that love Thy Law, and to them there is no stumbling-block," because, to wit, external things do not disturb them in their enjoyment of God. Secondly, as regards the calm of the restless desire: for he does not perfectly rejoice, who is not satisfied with the object of his joy. Now peace implies these two things, namely, that we be not disturbed ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... that the ultimate truth is commensurate with reason, finds no stumbling-block in the doctrine that there may be laws through whose action inspiration is the enlightenment of mind as it exists in man, by mind as it underlies the motions which make up matter. The truth thus reached is not the formulae of the Calculus, nor the verbiage of the Dialectic, still less the ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... where God has not passed a pardon. A pardon, then, is the first thing to be looked after by the sinner. This the Pharisee did not; therefore he went down to his house unjustified; he set the stumbling-block of his iniquity before his face when he went to inquire of the Lord; and as he neglected, slighted, scorned, because he thought that he had no need of pardon, therefore it was given to the poor, needy, and miserable Publican, and he went away ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan
... other in all the doorways and round all the corners, and everybody tumbled over Tilly Slowboy and the Baby, everywhere. Tilly never came out in such force before. Her ubiquity was the theme of general admiration. She was a stumbling-block in the passage at five-and-twenty minutes past two; a man-trap in the kitchen at half-past two precisely; and a pitfall in the garret at five-and-twenty minutes to three. The Baby's head was, as it were, a test and touchstone for every description of matter,—animal, vegetable, ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... with the law. The word rendered bread, is metaphorically taken for the law, Prov. ix. 5, so that give him water to drink means also the law, Isa. lv. 1—Rashi. And the Lord reward thee, read not reward, but cause him to make peace with thee, not to war against thee.) (5.) Isaiah calls him stumbling-block; as it is said (Isa. lvii. 14), "Cast ye up, cast ye up, prepare the way, take up the stumbling-block out of the way of my people." (6.) Ezekiel calls him stone; as it is said (Ezek. xxxvi. 26), "I will take away the heart ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... from the old world had been employed. This was disproved, and it was shown that they who laid out the work, however skilful they may have since become by practice, were at first little more than common American surveyors. Then the trifling cost was a stumbling-block, for labour was known to be far better paid in America than in Europe; and lastly, the results created astonishment. Several deputies affirmed that the cause of the great success was owing to the fact, that in America we trusted such things to private competition, whereas, in France, the government ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... entirely as he or even his friends desired, since it was usual with some members of the Society to seek from him elucidations of obscure passages which, without these, it was declared, would be a stumbling-block to future readers. But he disliked being even to this extent drawn into its operation; and his help was, I believe, less and less frequently invoked. Nothing could be more false than the rumour which once arose that he superintended those performances of his plays which took place under the direction ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... first-born of Egypt are in general hated by those whom they exclude from entailed estates, and so forth—not one lauded man in twenty of us that is not hated by his younger brothers, to the extent of wishing him quiet in his grave, as an abominable stumbling-block in their path of life; and so far only do I hate Monsieur Martigny. But for the rest, I rather like him as otherwise; and would he but die, would give my frank consent to his being canonized: and while he lives, I am not ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... flame as the great thoughts leaped in her. 'Ah, my Christian King, it is so little a thing I ask of thee, to set me apart! What am I to thee, whose bride is the virgin city, the holy place? What is Jehane, a poor thing handed about, to vex heaven, or be a stumbling-block in the way of the Cross? Put me away, Richard, let me go; have done with me, sweet lord.' And then swiftly she ran and clasped his knees: 'But ask me not to leave thee—no, but I dare not indeed!' Her tears streamed freely now. When Richard with a cry snatched her up, she lay ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... few words, to give the ground on which I find it possible to accept these miracles. I cannot lay it down as for any other man. I do not wonder at most of those to whom the miracles are a stumbling-block. I do a little wonder at those who can believe in Christ and yet ...
— Miracles of Our Lord • George MacDonald
... and the wife of a vassal), I thought rather badly when I first read it thirty or forty years ago, and till the present occasion I have never read it since. Now I think better of it, especially as a story suggestive in story-telling art. The original stumbling-block, which I still see, though I can get over or round it better now, was, I think, the character of the heroine, who inherits not merely the tendency to play fast and loose with successive husbands, which is observable in both chanson and ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... to settle what they are. Great projects are at work, and hatching now. The Imperial house seeks to extend its power. Those vast designs of conquest which the sire Has gloriously begun, the son will end. This petty nation is a stumbling-block— One way or other, it ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... stumbling-block. A nobleman of high scientific attainment, in company with another nobleman, and a captain in the army, all vouched for this performance of Home. Now could the savage tradition, which attributes flight to convulsive and entranced persons, ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... to obey it? How is it to be made responsible? The third question, he says, is the only one seriously considered by Bentham; and Bentham's answer, we have seen, leads to that 'tyranny of the majority' which was Mill's great stumbling-block. Why, then, does Bentham omit the other questions? or rather, how would he answer them? for he certainly assumes an answer. People, in the first place, are 'induced to obey' by the sanctions. They don't rob that they may not go to prison. ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... been right in preaching evolution, but they have preached it in such a way as to make it almost as much of a stumbling-block as of an assistance. For though the fact that animals and plants are descended from a common stock is accepted by the greater and more reasonable part of mankind, these same people feel that the evidence in favour of design ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... other plan." The history of the Fabian motto was made use of to enforce the view that victory can only be gained by straight fighters like Scipio, whilst Fabius, however successful at first, ended his career as a stumbling-block to progress. To effect the desired expansion the writer proposed to raise an income of L1000 a year, to increase the staff, to prepare literature for the conversion of unbelievers, and to get a number of young men and women, some paid and some unpaid, to carry on the propaganda and ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... liberal school since represented by Theodore Parker in this country and by M. Reville in France; that his real object was to defend and strengthen the Christian religion by relieving it of those peculiar doctrines which to the freethinkers of his time were a stumbling-block and an offence. And, in spite of Lessing's own declarations, he endeavours to show that he was an ordinary theist,—a follower of Leibnitz rather than of Spinoza. But I do not think he has made out his case. Lessing's own confession to Jacobi is unequivocal enough, and cannot well be argued away. ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... is a spring-board at one time and a stumbling-block at another. It was with me more often the stumbling-block than the spring-board. "Monseigneur le Duc," said I, haughtily enough, and rather in too loud a tone considering the chamber was pretty full, "in no court ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... following from the Wichita Eagle is noteworthy because in the Kansas campaign the year before, and in all previous years, it had been abusive beyond description and had at all times put every possible stumbling-block in the way of woman suffrage and berated all who ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... trocha[obs3]; barricade &c. (defense) 717; wall, dead wall, sea wall, levee breakwater, groyne[obs3]; bulkhead, block, buffer; stopper &c. 263; boom, dam, weir, burrock[obs3]. drawback, objection; stumbling-block, stumbling-stone; lion in the path, snag; snags and sawyers. encumbrance, incumbrance[obs3]; clog, skid, shoe, spoke; drag, drag chain, drag weight; stay, stop; preventive, prophylactic; load, burden, fardel[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... gallows-tree, And sickness daily takes our best away; For God is prodigal with human life; Should we be timid, then, where his command, His holy law, which he himself has giv'n, Demands, as here, that he who sins shall die? Together then, we will request the King To move from out his path this stumbling-block Which keeps him from his own, his own from him. If he refuse, blood's law be on the land, Until the law and prince be one again, And we may serve them ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... to space have been a great stumbling-block to realists. When two men look at the same table, it is supposed that what the one sees and what the other sees are in the same place. Since the shape and colour are not quite the same for the two men, this ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... crowd by exhibiting the rude coarse beast, whilst I that had ladies of celestial fairness to show them, I have attracted no one. Brother Leo, I charge you, on your holy obedience, to say thus to me: "Brother Francis, you are a poor man, without any merit whatsoever, a stumbling-block and a very rock of offence!" And all the while Brother Leo was hesitating to obey, the holy man suffered grievously within himself. As he went on his murky way, his thoughts turned to pleasant Assisi, where he ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... first book on "Nature." They all preach the gospel of intuition, instinctive trust in the Universe, faith in the ecstatic moment of vision into the things that are unseen by the physical eye. Self-reliance, as Emerson's son has pointed out, means really God-reliance; the Over-Soul—always a stumbling-block to Philistines—means that high spiritual life into which all men may enter and in which they share the life of Deity. Emerson is stern enough in expounding the laws of compensation that run through the universe, ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... he proceeds to remove their chief stumbling-block, the thing of greatest offense to them. He warns them against the course adopted by them of Jerusalem, who had the Word of salvation from Christ himself, who read it in the prophets every day, who ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... not doubting but the Lord Chancellor would stop us from leaving England, as he would certainly see no joke in three young heiresses, his wards, quitting the kingdom to frisk away with their mother into Italy: besides that I believe Mr. Crutchley proposed it merely for a stumbling-block to my journey, as he cannot bear to have Hester out of ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... I append a table of some common vowel sounds which no one need consult; and just to prove that I belong to my age and have in me the stuff of a reformer, I have used modification marks throughout. Thus I can tell myself, not without pride, that I have added a fresh stumbling-block for English readers, and to a page of print in my native tongue have lent a new uncouthness. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... stumbling-block in my son's way: a sturdy, self-reliant sort of gentleman, likely to be able to take care of himself. I should like to get him into my power: but ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... a dockyard of the first order being established at this point appears to have been long and warmly pressed upon the administration by all naval men who have considered the subject: want of money, the great stumbling-block of a cheap government, has hitherto prevented the plan being carried into execution; but it is imagined that this will not be delayed much longer, after the defences are completed. Since the decease of the gallant Perry, this has ceased to be a naval station; ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... penances, previous to his appearing in the world as a teacher. At the end of this period, however, he arrived at the conviction that asceticism, far from giving peace of mind and preparing the way to salvation, was a snare and a stumbling-block in the way of truth. He gave up his exercises, and was at once deserted as an apostate by his five disciples. Left to himself he now began to elaborate his own system. He had learnt that neither the doctrines nor the austerities ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... his process. He must not only test and guide his achievement by human experience, but he must succeed or fail in proportion as he has incorporated that experience with his own. Otherwise his own achievements become his stumbling-block, and he comes to believe in his own goodness as something outside of himself. He makes an exception of himself, and thinks that he is different from the rank and file of his fellows. He forgets that it is necessary to know of the lives of our contemporaries, ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... well known to scholars, and may explain, though perhaps not excuse, the defects of my work. One who undertakes to express the thoughts of antiquity in modern idiom goes to his task with his eyes open, and has no right at every stumbling-block or pitfall to bemoan his unhappy fate. So also with the particular difficulties presented by the great founder of Latin style—his constant use of superlatives, his doubling and trebling of nearly synonymous terms, the endless shades of meaning ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... from all trashy pretence, and is a ground on which to fix the levers that may move the world, backwards or forwards. He has not left opinion where he found it; he has advanced or given it a wrong bias, or thrown a stumbling-block in its way. In a word, his name is not stuck, like so many others, in the firmament of reputation, nobody knows why, inscribed in great letters, and with a transparency of TALENTS, GENIUS, LEARNING blazing round it—it is tantamount to ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... down by those they were trying to aid, too many hospitals bombarded, too many wounded prisoners killed. The German atrocity is documented in France over and over, within the knowledge of millions. It will prove to be Germany's great stumbling-block after the war, when she looks about a shocked world for ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... of war,' exclaimed the Captain, fired with admiration at her beauty and the fervor of her passion for him, and straining her to his breast in a perfect phrenzy of transport—'thy husband shall be no longer a stumbling-block between us, angel of my soul; I will insult him—he will challenge me—we will fight—I am the best shot in Europe, and he will be shot through the heart, if the cold dotard have one. Yet stay—damn it, why not have him disposed of after ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... falsity of this was thrown away. Ice and iron cannot be welded; and the points of view of the Justice-Clerk and Mrs. Weir were not less unassimilable. The character and position of his father had long been a stumbling-block to Archie, and with every year of his age the difficulty grew more instant. The man was mostly silent; when he spoke at all, it was to speak of the things of the world, always in a worldly spirit, often in language that the child had been schooled to think coarse, and sometimes with words ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... slight lisp in his "s" I accepted as part of the "real Yankee" utterance. Nor, indeed, was this unnatural, in view of the "th" sound, that stumbling-block of every foreigner, whom it must needs strike as a full-grown lisp. Bender spoke with a nasal twang which I am now inclined to think he paraded as an accessory to the over-dignified drawl he affected in the class-room. But then I had noticed this kind of ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... as shown in the case of the Lauati scheme, no dweller in Samoa will give weight, for they know him to be as putty in the hands of his advisers. It may be right, it may be wrong, but we are many of us driven to the conclusion that the stumbling-block is Fangalii, and that the memorial of that affair shadows appropriately the house of a king who reigns in right of it. If this be all, it should not trouble us long. Germany has shown she can be generous; it now remains for her only to forget a natural but certainly ill-grounded ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... keep within the precincts of a decent respectability, or run into disreputable courses,—depends mostly on chance and fortune. This intimate association of the saint and the sinner in the same individual, common as it is, is a stumbling-block to moralists and legislators. The abnormal element is entirely overlooked, or rather is confounded with that kind of moral depravity which comes from vicious training And, certainly, the distinction is not always very easily made; for, though sufficient light on this point may often ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... stress was then laid on modern languages. Byron learnt to read French with fluency, as he certainly made himself familiar with the great works of the eighteenth century; but he spoke it with so little ease or accuracy that the fact was always a stumbling-block to his meeting Frenchmen abroad. Of German he had a mere smattering. Italian was the only language, besides his own, of which he was ever a master. But the extent and variety of his general reading was remarkable. His list of books, drawn ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... associated were simply conspiring to get control of the Canadian road, in order to delay its construction and prevent it becoming a rival to their own northerly route. Sir George Cartier, too, powerful in the Cabinet and salaried solicitor of the Grand Trunk, was a stumbling-block; he declared himself emphatically opposed to control by any 'sacree compagnie americaine.' But Sir Hugh, believing much in money and little in men, resolved to buy his way through. He soon started a backfire in Quebec which brought Cartier to terms. Ontario ...
— The Railway Builders - A Chronicle of Overland Highways • Oscar D. Skelton
... conception is a stumbling-block to our modern idealistic metaphysicians and their theological colleagues. Fenced about with their transcendental and dualistic prejudices, they attack not only the monistic system we establish on our scientific knowledge, but even the plainest facts which go to ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.1. • Ernst Haeckel
... from the carnal people. Christ also speaks of the outward appearance of the Church when He says, Matt. 13, 47: The kingdom of heaven is like unto a net, likewise, to ten virgins; and He teaches that the Church has been covered by a multitude of evils, in order that this stumbling-block may not offend the pious; likewise, in order that we may know that the Word and Sacraments are efficacious even when administered by the wicked. And meanwhile He teaches that these godless men, although ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... gave it such a kick, as made it tumble down quiite to the stair-foot, and with difficulty saved himself. A light, a light! cried he to the maid, quick, quick! at last the maid came with a light, and he went down stairs with her; but when he gav that the stumbling-block he had kicked down was a dead man, he was so frightened, that he invoked Moses, Aaron, Joshua, and Esdras, and all the other prophets of his law. Unhappy man that I am! said he, what induced me to come down without ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... a more serious stumbling-block to the Froebelian that Dr. Montessori, while advocating freedom in words, has really set strict limits to the natural activities of children by laying so much stress on her "didactic apparatus," the intention of which is formal training in sense-discrimination. ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... enough to decide which of us has run his head against "a stumbling-block of his own making," when MR. SINGER shall have found a probable solution of his difficulty "by a parallelism ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 72, March 15, 1851 • Various
... ask! You know very well what would have been thought of reading, to say nothing of writing, a novel in our young days. And it cuts me to the heart to think that a son of mine should place another stumbling-block in the ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... dearth of high ability the publishers are really more sinned against than sinning. They spend large sums, and incur large risks, in launching new ventures on the fickle sea of popular favor, and often their trouble is taken all in vain. It is really the stupid egotism of authors that is the stumbling-block in the way of true literature,—each little scribbler that produces a shilling sensational thinks his or her own work a marvel of genius, and nothing can shake them from their obstinate conviction. If every man or woman, before putting pen to paper, would be sure they had something new, ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... more of your self-delusion. You, or rather that pride of yours, which has been the great stumbling-block of your life, leads you on in that self-delusion. Too late! It would not be too late if you were before the altar! Better stop now and endure the humiliation than render your own and this man's future life miserable. You will never be happy as Sir ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... his mind so much as a suggestion of trinitarian doctrine. He might be a rigidly monotheistic Judaeo-Christian, and consider himself bound by the law: he might be a Gentile Pauline convert, neither knowing of nor caring for such restrictions. In neither case would he find in "Mark" any serious stumbling-block. In fact, persons of all the categories admitted to salvation by Justin, in the middle of the second century,[7] could accept "Mark" from beginning to end. It may well be, that, in this wide adaptability, backed by the authority of the metropolitan church, there lies the reason ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... the profoundest needs of the Church, therefore, in this new and growing world, is the achievement of such worthy ways of thinking about God and presenting him as will make the very idea of him a help to faith and not a stumbling-block to the faithful. In the attainment of that purpose we need for one thing to approach the thought of God from an angle which to popular Christianity is largely unfamiliar, although it is not unfamiliar in the historic tradition of the Church. Too exclusively have we clung to the mental categories ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... virtue in an if, there is certainly a modicum of the same in a yet, and the Coroner, in full recognition of this stumbling-block, ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... realize this, for on arriving at her home on Wednesday he was shown to a drawing-room large in size but crowded with furniture. Little tables, chairs, footstools, anything which would serve as a stumbling-block, seemed to be placed in the direct path of the guest advancing toward ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... consider one matter of special importance in the book- -its turpiloquium. This stumbling-block is of two kinds, completely distinct. One is the simple, naive and child like indecency which, from Tangiers to Japan, occurs throughout general conversation of high and low in the present day. It uses, like the holy books of the Hebrews, expressions "plainly descriptive of natural ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... in exile, without one of the crowns he wore that day upon his head, and the many revolutions once more to raise his family after overthrowing it! What a blessing that the future is hidden from man! But what a stumbling-block for his prudence, charged to conjecture the morrow and to guard against ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... principle, without providing for each dot a much longer period of time than is required for the transmission of messages on land lines. In fact the need for going slowly in the sending of the message is the principal stumbling-block which disconcerts ordinary telegraphic operators when they come to try wireless telegraphy. For remedying this defect the most hopeful outlook is in the direction of a multiplication of the pieces of apparatus for spark-making and the combining of pairs ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... was not right with Him; neither were they stedfast in His covenant." And this stood between them and their acceptance: God tells the prophet Ezekiel as much; "Son of man, these men have set up their idols in their hearts, and put the stumbling-block of their iniquity before their face; should I be inquired of at all by them?" They come with their hearts full of their lusts; so many lusts, so many idols; and for this God refuseth to be inquired of by ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... monochrome. She never uses high tints and strontian lights to astonish lookers-on. Such scenes as Flaubert and Zola describe would be reproduced in their essential characters, but not dressed up in picturesque phrases. That is the first stumbling-block in the way of the reader of such realistic stories as those to which I have referred. There are subjects which must be investigated by scientific men which most educated persons would be glad to know nothing about. When a realistic writer like Zola surprises his reader into ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Here was a stumbling-block. Since Helen Mowbray and her mother had apparently not traveled by the Orient Express, where had they gone on leaving the hotel at Kronburg? Had they after all misled Baroness von Lyndal as to their intentions, for the purpose of blinding the ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... habits when they are proved to be fallacious by example? Why is the ardour of youth thus to be damped, and the luxuriancy of fancy cut to the quick? This dry caution may, it is true, guard a character from worldly mischances; but will infallibly preclude excellence in either virtue or knowledge. The stumbling-block thrown across every path by suspicion, will prevent any vigorous exertions of genius or benevolence, and life will be stripped of its most alluring charm long before its calm evening, when man should retire to contemplation for comfort ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... fact that the Scriptures present a faithful transcript of {6} the world as it has been and is, in respect to the calamities, wars, and revolutions that have befallen nations, and those weaknesses and wickednesses of individuals and peoples, the accounts of which are so great a stumbling-block to the "unstable and the unlearned." These very accounts, it is possible, may be intended to tell us, if rightly inquired into, why these things are so, why there is evil in the world, and what shall be the end of it. The world has existed, it is believed, nearly six thousand years, and at ...
— An Essay on the Scriptural Doctrine of Immortality • James Challis
... regard it as a great stumbling-block that the play of modern times best known to an audience proceeds upon the main idea of this, namely, that there was a hunchback who, because of his deformity, mistrusted himself. But it is certainly a grain in the balance when the balance is going the wrong way, and therefore it ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... the stumbling-block to her happiness. She had sent away the man she loved in order to stay and be true to him, to minister to his wants, and do her utmost to render him happy. Oh, what could he do for her in return? What ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... when he went on, the reflective excursion had become a journey with a purpose. Chance had been good to him now and then in his hard-working career: perhaps it would be good to him again. Having let one woman put a stumbling-block in his way, perhaps it was going to even things up by making another ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... true balance between singers and orchestra, and at once took his proper place among the great musicians of the world. Special attention must be directed to Verdi's use of local colour in 'Aida.' This is often a dangerous stumbling-block to musicians, but Verdi triumphed most where all the world had failed. In the scene of the consecration of Radames, he employs two genuine Oriental tunes with such consummate art that this scene is not only one of the few instances in the history ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... sad stumbling-block, and it must be got rid of at all costs. Dr. Lightfoot is full of resources. We have seen that he has suggested that the account of Papias of the origin may not have been correct. Regarding the translation or ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels
... origin; if it is simply the natural feeling of resentment, moralized by being made coextensive with the demands of social good; and if this feeling not only does but ought to exist in all the classes of cases to which the idea of justice corresponds; that idea no longer presents itself as a stumbling-block to the utilitarian ethics. Justice remains the appropriate name for certain social utilities which are vastly more important, and therefore more absolute and imperative, than any others are as a class (though not more so than others ...
— Utilitarianism • John Stuart Mill
... were dramatically, to the significance of what you said. All that matter in religion which has been nicknamed other-worldliness was strictly in his gamut; but a rule of life that should make a man rudely virtuous, following right in good report and ill report, was foolishness and a stumbling-block to Pepys. He was much thrown across the Friends; and nothing can be more instructive than his attitude towards these most interesting people of that age. I have mentioned how he conversed with one as he rode; when he saw some brought from ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... avoid this stumbling-block. They know nothing of the delights of contemplation, from which arise ripe resolutions ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke
... progressive mind the wide sands are a stumbling-block. Silting up with the years, they have closed the river to navigation, and converted our once famous Roman city of Chester into a sleepy, second-rate market-town. The great flood of commerce from the New World sweeps contemptuously past our estuary, and finds its clearing-house ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... Alexander Clark and his books now but serve the end of pointing a moral. With more real humility and less presumption, there was much that was good about him; but letting his heated fancies get the better of the little judgment he possessed, our amiable enthusiast became rather a stumbling-block than light to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 213, November 26, 1853 • Various
... learning grammatical rules is least required. Its grammar is very straightforward; its construction, in the best writers, is seldom involved; its words will in most cases be intelligible to people who know any Latin or French. The prepositions and their uses offer almost the only stumbling-block which cannot be surmounted by the aid of a pocket-dictionary; and even here the difficulty is more likely to be apparent in writing Italian. In reading, the context will usually be a guide to the meaning when the ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... the criticism of the Republicans, but the view taken by Southern Democratic leaders, of his "Freeport doctrine," or doctrine of "unfriendly legislation." His opposition to the Lecompton Constitution in the Senate, grievous stumbling-block to their schemes as it had proved, might yet be passed over as a reckless breach of party discipline; but this new announcement at Freeport was unpardonable doctrinal heresy, as rank as the abolitionism ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... of the Bull was a great stumbling-block to many churchmen. Louis XIV. forced it upon the French bishops, who were entertained at a sumptuous banquet given by the Archbishop of Strasbourg and by a large majority decided against the Quesnelites. It is unnecessary to ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... been a greater stumbling-block to the Hindus than the crucifixion of Christ, and we have to dwell continually on the fact that it was not by the failure of His power, but by the ardour of His love, He endured this death. Some of the ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... mind that; but I am afraid that there is some hidden mystery which will place a fresh stumbling-block in our ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... spite of his early mistake, through anxious tea-party excitement and forlorn war-threatened days, till 1775, with but scant popularity and slight happiness, with bitter differences of opinion with his people over atonement and imputation, and that ever-present stumbling-block to New England divines,—baptism under the Half Covenant,—till he was ...
— Diary of Anna Green Winslow - A Boston School Girl of 1771 • Anna Green Winslow
... qualities which will secure him a place in our history not perhaps inferior even to Marlborough, the Duke of Wellington has one deficiency which has been the stumbling-block of his civil career. Bishop Burnet, in speculating on the extraordinary influence of Lord Shaftesbury, and accounting how a statesman, so inconsistent in his conduct and so false to his confederates, should have so ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... buried in the past. The present is the product of the past. It is the past plus an element of choice which keeps us from settling down in the despair of fatalism and enables us to do something toward making the present that is, a help and not a stumbling-block to the present ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... to hear it. In the first place, she is, as some of your old divines say, hugely religious; 'but then she keeps her piety in its proper place, and where it ought to be—in her very soul. It is never a stumbling-block in other people's way, or interfering with other people's affairs. Her object is to be, not to seem, religious; and there is neither hypocrisy nor austerity necessary for that. She is forbearing, without meanness—gentle, without ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... work I ever did seemed to meet with severe opposition from church members. This is a great stumbling-block to some. The church crucified our blessed Christ, that is, it was the hypocrites; for the church is the light and salt, the body of Christ. "If I yet please men, I should not be the servant of Christ." There is no other organization but the church of Christ that persecutes its own ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... their lasting shame, his friends and relations presumably meant, that he did not share our own smug and timid philosophy of life, then indeed was Kolniyatsch not sane. Granting for sake of argument that he was mad in a wider sense than that, we do but oppose an insuperable stumbling-block to the Eugenists. Imagine what Europe would be to-day, had Kolniyatsch not been! As one of the critics avers, 'It is hardly too much to say that a time may be not far distant, and may indeed be nearer than many of us suppose, when Luntic ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... about it," said he, as he dilated upon the success which he felt sure would be his, could this first stumbling-block but be removed. "Think how much I could do for you all. Father would be relieved from the burden of supporting me, for he does not need my assistance now, the farm is so small, and Ed is growing ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... even among the numerous similar feats of mediaeval bards. He has helped himself freely with matter from Dictys towards the end of his work; but, as we have seen, even this reinforcement could not be great in bulk. Expansion, however, so difficult to some writers, was never in the least a stumbling-block to the trouvere. It was rather a bottomless pit into which he fell, traversing in his fall lines and pages ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... Nazareth Whom ye preach? What does He mean?" was to be the question that they would have to answer in the coming years; and they would have to answer it to all sorts of men; to Jews who would find this conception of a suffering and rejected Messiah "a stumbling-block"; to the Greeks who would find "Jesus and the resurrection" "foolishness"; to all races of men who would have to be persuaded to leave their ancestral religions and revolutionise their lives, and before they would do so would wish to know what was the true meaning of Christ ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... is written out of a mind so full of wit and wisdom that it overflows at the gentlest touch. It has more sense and learning and power than go to the making up of a dozen ordinary novels. The very prodigality of its resources is a stumbling-block. Its great fault is its muchness, if we may borrow a term from Hawthorne's mint. It is like a young minister's first sermon, into which he frantically attempts to cram the whole body of divinity. Especially in the early part of the book, we are constantly drawn away front the story by delightful ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... a very bad creed. It has been the stumbling-block, not only of the head, but of the heart for many generations. I do not know that it is, in fact, worse than any other orthodox creed; but the bad features are stated with an explicitness and emphasized with a candor that render ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... occasional fasting, whether voluntary and systematic as in the cloisters, or involuntary and altogether the reverse of systematic in Grub street, helps to clear the wits, with or without the aid of phosphorus, is a fixed fact. The stomach is apt to be a stumbling-block to the brain. We are not prone to associate prolonged and productive mental effort with a fair round belly with fat capon lined. It was not the jolly clerics we read of in song, but the lean ascetic brethren who were numerous enough ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... with remarkable talents, make up necessarily a combination which cannot be found any day in any Court; and I have no doubt that he is destined to be Prime Minister, unless his obstinate truthfulness, which is apt to be a stumbling-block for politicians, stands in ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... worth attempting. The more I reflect upon it, the more feasible it appears. Only how to get at that wretch, Saint-Colombe? Well, there is Jacques Dumoulin, and the other—where to find her? That is the stumbling-block. I must not shout before I am out ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... this crisis was a passion, while his hostility to the President's policy was as sincere as it was intense; but the passage of the somewhat incongruous bill vetoed by the President, would probably have proved a stumbling-block in the way of the more radical measures which afterward prevailed. This could not then be foreseen, and as the measure was an advanced one, the feeling against Mr. Lincoln waxed stronger and stronger among his opposers. ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... of the mother of evil!" cried the Muggletonian, a baleful light burning in his eyes. "Scarlet woman, whose vain apparel, whose uncovered hair and bared bosom, whose light songs and laughter have long been an offense and a stumbling-block to the righteous—thy cup of iniquity is full, thy life is forfeit, thy hour is come!" He drew a knife from his bosom and with an unearthly cry flourished it above his head, then rushed upon her, to be met ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... the root of the dissension cannot be doubted by any who are conversant with the political history of the United States. The tariff rulings had their weight, as did the unfair division of new territory: but the main issue was negro slavery, which, always a stumbling-block to the North, had most violently agitated the whole country for eleven years before the appeal ...
— Historic Papers on the Causes of the Civil War • Mrs. Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... of the present German speech, Luther, was a furious offender. The Jews have been materialists through all ages, claim the Germans: "The Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling-block, and unto the Greeks foolishness." It is to be in our day the battle of battles, they claim, whether we are to be socially, morally, and politically orientalized by this advance guard of the Orient, the Jews, or whether we are to preserve our occidental ideals and traditions. ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... to war. His chancellor was boasting that the imperialists could, if they would, drive Henry from his kingdom within three months,[705] and he based his hopes on revolt among Henry's own subjects. The divorce had been from the beginning, and remained to the end, a stumbling-block to the people. Catherine received ovations wherever she went, while the utmost efforts of the King could scarcely protect Anne Boleyn from popular insult. The people were moved, not only by a creditable feeling that Henry's first wife was an injured woman, but by the fear lest a breach with Charles ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... can't blame it all to the steward, or to any other individual. Lay it rather to human nature, that stumbling-block of so many varnished ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... stoned, incarcerated, beaten, and crucified? Because they dared to speak the truth; to tell the Jews, boldly and fearlessly, that they were the murderers of the Lord of Glory, and that, however great a stumbling-block the Cross might be to them, there was no other name given under heaven by which men could be saved, but the name of Jesus. Because they declared, even at Athens, the seat of learning and refinement, the self-evident truth, that "they be no gods that are ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... senses to hear it so brazenly urged that because he happens to think that our fighting and victories may go hand in hand with a measure which is to prevent future war, he is 'opposed to the Administration,' is 'a selfish traitor thinking of nothing but the Nigger,' and altogether a stumbling-block and an untimely meddler. If he protest that he cares no more for the welfare of the Negro than for that of the man in the moon, he is still reviled as an 'abolitionist.' If he insist that emancipation will end the war, his 'conservative' foe becomes pathetic over ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the Charter in Parliament at London William Brewer, one of the King's councillors, protested that it had been extorted by force and was without legal validity. "If you loved the King, William," the Primate burst out in anger, "you would not throw a stumbling-block in the way of the peace of the realm." The young king was cowed by the Archbishop's wrath, and promised observance of the Charter. But it may have been their consciousness of such a temper among the royal councillors that made Langton ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... are by no means adorning by their lives the faith and doctrine of that Master whose name they bear. Hence arises the deplorable condition of the natives, who are brought into contact chiefly with the lowest and worst of the Europeans, and who, beside many other hindrances, have the great stumbling-block of bad examples, and evil lives, constantly before them in their intercourse with the Christians. And, as though that were not enough, as though fresh obstacles to the conversion of these nations to God's ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... John in his office. That very day the tickets should be bought. If Wallace cared enough for his family to come home in the meantime, she would tell him what she was doing. But Martie hoped that he would not. The one possible stumbling-block in her path would be Wallace's objection; the one thing of which she would not allow herself to think was that he MIGHT, by some hideous whim, decide to accompany them. Thinking of these things, she went about the process of house-cleaning and packing. ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... Let us rather look forward to our future measures; and believe me, brethren," he continued, his face kindling with eagerness, "you shall not find the pride, or the wrath, or the ambition of Richard a stumbling-block of offence in the path to which religion and glory summon you as with the trumpet of an archangel. Oh, no, no! never would I survive the thought that my frailties and infirmities had been the means to sever ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... still a lad when he conducted experiments in competition, with his own hand, for a new Government gun, introducing a bullet of his own conception, firing every shot, and triumphing over every competitor. So the "Enfield" or "Pritchett rifle" brought him fame; but it proved the stumbling-block of his artistic career, for he found out for himself the truth that a man known for one thing has little chance in any other field—particularly in the artistic field. He was glad, however, when the Government ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... Perhaps the greatest stumbling-block of the young is a disposition not to yield to their belief unless it conforms to their own crude notions of propriety and reason. If the powers of man were equal to analyzing the nature of the Deity, to comprehending His being, and power, and motives, there would be some little show of ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... while to behave like an ordinary man, the poet found an unexpected stumbling-block on ground where La Briere had already won the suffrage of the worthy people who at first had thought him sulky. They felt the need of compensating themselves for Canalis's reputation by preferring his friend. ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... a kind old man," she met her husband's admission of this stumbling-block. "And it isn't his fault that he wasn't properly educated. He has had to work for his living ever since he was twelve ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... Prefaces are another stumbling-block. "The 'I,'" said Pascal, "is hateful." Speak as little of yourself as possible; for you must know that the reader's self-esteem is as great as yours. He will never forgive you for wanting to condemn him to have a good opinion of you. It is for your book to speak for you, if it comes ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... princes and towns, which henceforth was to give the name to all anti-Catholics together (19 April 1529). And not only between Catholics and Protestants in the Empire did the rupture become complete. Even before the end of that year the question of the Lord's supper proved an insuperable stumbling-block in the way of a real union of Zwinglians and Lutherans. Luther parted from Zwingli at the colloquy of Marburg with the words, 'Your spirit differs ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... same time promising any assistance they can render me in getting to India, consistent, of course, with Abbas Khan's duties as British Agent. It seems to be a pretty general opinion that Afghanistan will prove a stumbling-block in my path; friends at Teheran telegraph again, advising me to go anywhere rather than risk the dangers to be apprehended in that most lawless and fanatical territory. Nothing can be decided on, however, until the arrival of an answer from ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... regarded it with slow wonder as if he had never seen it before. Why had he never thought until now of this method of communication? Not only was it simple and direct, but it also obviated the difficulty that had always been the stumbling-block in his path,—the necessity of confronting Sarah Libbie in the flesh. He grasped the inspiration with zeal. Fate was with him. His watch was up, and he was free to make his way back to the station, if he so willed, and put his ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... old Huguenot, coming forward and throwing open one of the doors which led from the landing, "you have indeed been a saviour of Israel and a stumbling-block to the froward this day. Will you not deign to rest under my roof, and even to take a cup of wine ere ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... been sorrows and scandals, without the promises of Christ having failed, and even that it had to be so, fulfilling His word, "it must needs be that scandals come" (St. Matthew XVIII. 7), that they are therefore rather a confirmation than a stumbling-block to our faith, this is a necessary safeguard. To have some unpretentious knowledge of what is said and thought concerning Holy Scripture, to know at least something about Modernism and other phases of current opinion is necessary, ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... was once to have been the often-told story of a King's daughter given to whatever man can "knock three laughs out of her." As well as I remember the first was to have been when the eggs were broken, and another when she laughed with the joy of happy love. But the third was the stumbling-block. It was necessary the ears of the Abbey audience should be tickled at the same time as those of the Princess, and old-time jests like those of Sir Dinadin of the Round Table seem but dull to ears of to-day. So I called to my help the Dragon that has given his opportunity to ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory
... than a bit of potter's clay, and the master potter—God help me!—is my own father! It's all plain enough now. He saw that I wasn't going to fall in with the attorney-general scheme; or perhaps he saw that I might be a stumbling-block if I should; so he planned this thing with McVickar—planned it deliberately! There is no fight, after all; it's merely one of the moves in the game that the 'boss' and the railroad should seem to be fighting each other. Good God! ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... in us and the ideas absolute. The first of these two difficulties mankind, as we may say, a little parodying the language of the Philebus, have long agreed to treat as obsolete; the second remains a difficulty for us as well as for the Greeks of the fourth century before Christ, and is the stumbling-block of Kant's Kritik, and of the Hamiltonian adaptation of Kant, as well as of the Platonic ideas. It has been said that 'you cannot criticize Revelation.' 'Then how do you know what is Revelation, or ...
— Parmenides • Plato
... has, I think, himself helped us to remove this stumbling-block, by admitting that a nation speaking a language allied to the Sanscrit (the oldest of the eight tongues alluded to), once probably inhabited that region situated to the north-west of India, which within the period of authentic ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... was no more than a confession that the Association, originally designed as a finely chiseled stepping-stone to reconciliation, was likely to prove a stumbling-block unless the King graciously extended his royal hand to give a hearty lift. It presently appeared that the King refused to extend his hand. October 31, 1775, information reached America that Richard Penn ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker |
