"Besetting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that, if there was personal satire, it was not necessarily obvious—a palliation which (not to mention another for a moment) extends to Sapho. But L'Immortel revived—unfortunately, as a sort of last word—the ugliness of this besetting sin of Daudet's. Even the saner members of Academies would probably scout the idea of their being sacrosanct and immune from criticism. But L'Immortel, despite its author's cleverness, is once more an essentially vulgar book, and a vulturine or ghoulish one—fixing ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... could be more aware of his one besetting weakness, nor of his inability to conquer it, than was Captain Ducie. When he could no longer muster five pounds to gamble with, he would gamble with five shillings. There was a public-house in Southwark to which, poorly dressed, he sometimes went when his funds were ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... The besetting sin of both Montaigne's translators seems to have been a propensity for reducing his language and phraseology to the language and phraseology of the age and country to which they belonged, and, moreover, inserting paragraphs and ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... more terrified, especially after this second murder, entirely unpremeditated by him. He was in a hurry to be gone; had he then been in a state to see things more clearly, had he only been able to form an idea of the difficulties besetting his position, to see how desperate, how hideous, how absurd it was, to understand how many obstacles there still remained for him to surmount, perhaps even crimes to commit, to escape from this house and return home, he would most likely have withdrawn from the struggle, and have gone at once ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... malice were producing their effect; he was beginning to recover himself. The old helpless habit of addressing all his complaints to his housekeeper was returning already with the re-appearance of Mrs. Lecount—returning insidiously, in company with that besetting anxiety to talk about his grievances, which had got the better of him at the breakfast-table, and which had shown the wound inflicted on his vanity ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... what capabilities I possess? Of course I have capabilities. No doubt, dormant within me lies every besetting sin, every human failing. Perhaps also the cardinal, corresponding, and antidotic virtues to ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... of all that had happened in that short space of time, the more bitterly she reproached herself. Her one besetting weakness had openly degraded her, without so much as an attempt at resistance on her part. The fear of betraying herself if she took leave of the man she secretly loved, in the presence of his family, had forced her to ask a favour of Carmina, and to ask it under circumstances which might have led ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... been killed or taken captive. Naphtali ran after the retreating enemy, to make search for Joseph, and he found him still fighting against the Ninevite army. He joined Joseph, and killed countless soldiers, and of the fugitives many drowned, and the men that were besetting Joseph ran off and left him ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... she with what the two old ladies were saying as she came in. They did not hear her enter: and the first word she heard made her so desirous of more, that she crept as softly as she could to a seat. Curiosity was her besetting sin. ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... the head of a particular family. It is remarkable, also, as an indication of the general nobility and elevation which had accompanied the revolution in his life, that concurrently with the constitutional torpor previously besetting him, had melted away the intellectual torpor under which he had found books until recently of little practical value. Lady Carbery had herself told me that the two revolutions went on simultaneously. He began to take an interest in literature when life itself unfolded ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... an antagonist like Burke, and to come off with credit, might stimulate moderate vanity into public self-exposure; but in Paine vanity was the besetting weakness. It was now swollen by success and flattery into magnificent proportions. Franklin says, that, "when we forbear to praise ourselves, we make a sacrifice to the pride or to the envy of others." Paine did not hesitate to mortify both these failings in his fellow-men. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... no reason, they will think, that because I have wasted my time they should waste theirs in reading the record of follies which are nothing more than the great mass of the world are every day committing; idleness, vanity, and selfishness are our besetting sins, and we are perpetually whirled about by one or other of them. It is certainly more amusing, both to other people and to myself (when I look back at what I have written), to read the anecdotes ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... for a man like Spike, which would be doing a great wrong to both her taste and her judgment, as Rose well knew, even while most annoyed by the conversation she could not but overhear. All that influenced the good relict was that besetting weakness of her sex, which renders admiration so universally acceptable; and predisposes a female, as it might be, to listen to a suitor with indulgence, and some little show of kindness, even when resolute to reject him. As for Rose, to own the truth, her aunt did not give ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... student. There, of course, I learned nothing, and, from a merely Art point of view, I had much better have continued my sketches in the streets; but the museum was a beautiful and beneficent influence, and one that applied marvellously well to the besetting danger of the moment; for in the galleries I met young men who spoke of other things than betting and steeplechase riding, who, I remember, it was clear to me then, looked to a higher ideal than mine, breathed a purer atmosphere of thought than ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... look much of a swell today," she said with a glance at his clothes. "And Finnegan's, though exclusive for the Bowery, is hardly what might be called smart. I am curious, Jerry. Curiosity is one of my besetting sins—otherwise I'd never have gotten inside your wall. I've been wondering what on earth you could have been doing ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... mind recurred to the one absorbing matter: how to regain his freedom. He had already canvassed the possibilities of escape by land, only to dismiss the idea as utterly impracticable; for even could he elude the vigilance of the sentries he could not pass as a native, and the perils besetting an Englishman were not confined ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... mysterious alarms that repeatedly swept Nancy from her course; wafting her, like a leaf, sideways from a stream, impelling her to swing, from the summit of a bank, back to the field from which she had wildly sprung; suggesting to her that safety from the besetting dangers could alone be secured by following the bay horse (whom, after the manner of young horses, she had adopted as a father) so closely, and at such a rate of speed, that a live torpedo attached to his tail could hardly have ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... these plans failed, the executioner was to be drugged with liquor, his besetting weakness, on ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... but Hugh and the Gilmores knowing that only two doors from the bishop lay Basile, also stricken, and that Ramsey and the old nurse were with the boy. The young people fell into pairs confessing their contempt for the besetting peril. Vigil is wearisome and they were almost as weary of blind precautions as, secretly, were Hugh and others. The two Napoleonites "didn't believe doctors knew a bit more than other folks—if as much!" The two cousins so unimpeachably Southern were ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... 'Wallenstein' in October, after the summer claims of the 'Almanac' had been satisfied, he noticed that what he had written was characterized by a certain dryness. It was evident that, in his strenuous effort to avoid his besetting sin of rhetoric, he was in danger of becoming trivial. He had still a sustaining faith in the goodness of his subject, but the great problem would be to make it poetical. It was necessary to find the middle ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... impulse of the feelings, with no real power of self-restraint, is indeed not without its charm, and in a well-organised society, with good surroundings and few temptations, it may attain a high degree of beauty; but its besetting failings will steadily grow; without fortitude, perseverance and principle, it has no recuperative energy, and it will often end in a moral catastrophe which natures in other respects much less happily compounded would easily ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... Geoffrey Langford looked after her daughter anxiously, but she well knew that Beatrice knew her besetting fault, and she trusted to the many fervent resolutions ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... earlier years W.H. Smith made a list of subjects for daily prayer, embracing repentance, faith, love, grace to help, gratitude, power to pray, constant direction in all things, a right understanding of the Bible, deliverance from besetting sin, constancy in God's service, relatives and friends, missionaries, pardon for all ignorance and sin in prayer, etc., etc.; and it was one of the characteristics of his nature that he felt prayer both in youth and age to ...
— Beneath the Banner • F. J. Cross
... capture Detroit, but so great were the difficulties besetting him that he was compelled to winter at Kaskaskia with insufficient forces, struggling to keep peace and to hold the country he had so successfully seized. In January, a month after the event happened, Clark heard that Hamilton had recaptured Vincennes for the British ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... to rouse out of its hiding-place his old vague fear of evil—of one's "enemies"—a distress, so much a matter of constitution with him, that at times it would seem that the best pleasures of life could but be snatched, as it were hastily, in one moment's forgetfulness of its dark, besetting influence. A sudden suspicion of hatred against him, of the nearness of "enemies," seemed all at once to alter the visible form of things, as with the child's hero, when he found the footprint on the sand of his peaceful, dreamy island. His elaborate philosophy had not put beneath his feet ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... is subject to "ugly fits," when people think it best to avoid him. It is here regarded as an evil that he has located himself at the mouth of the only entrance to the park, for he is dangerous with his pistols, and it would be safer if he were not here. His besetting sin is indicated in the verdict pronounced on him by my host: "When he's sober Jim's a perfect gentleman; but when he's had liquor he's the most awful ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... night I lay in agony, From weary chime to chime, With one besetting horrid hint, That rack'd me all the time— A mighty yearning, like the ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... very strong. Even when we are in perfect safety we may feel what is known as the "fascination" of a precipice. The sight of the gulf below, becoming a fixed idea, produces a resultant inhibition on all other ideas. Temptation, which is always besetting a child because everything is new to it, is nothing but the power of an idea and its ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... of solid reassurance, in that the best spirit of the South is facing the besetting ills, is combating them, and being thus aroused must eventually master and expel the evil spirit. The South has a burden to carry which the North does not easily realize. There the negro is not a remote problem of philanthropy; he is ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... published in 1837. This ardent and laborious scholar was, like Irving, constitutionally inclined to the optimistic view of his leading characters. To magnify the virtues and to minimize the faults of their heroes has always been the besetting sin of biographers. The pomp and picturesque circumstance of the Spanish court, the splendid administrative abilities of Ferdinand, the beauty, amiability, and devoted piety of Isabella, are depicted ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... for instance, whom Judith had at first regarded with mild contempt because she was greedy, but Rosamond, she found out, was aware of her besetting sin and this Lenten season was disciplining herself strictly, and no one could be more sympathetic if one were in trouble than the same Rosamond; and there was Joyce Hewson whom Judith had thought proud, but who seemed unapproachable ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... destroyed the same throne for the sake of the plating which still adhered to it, which he threw into the melting-pot; and passed the next three days in digging up the floors, and taking every other conceivable measure in pursuit of his besetting chimera the hidden treasure. During this interval, however, he appears to have been at times undecided; for, on the 7th he visited the Emperor in his confinement, and offered to put on the throne Mirza ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... honesty, as well as the besetting infirmity of Weucha, have already been exhibited. The reader, therefore, will not be surprised to learn that he was the first to forget the regulations he had himself imposed. It was at the precise moment when we left Mahtoree yielding to his nearly ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... first, a disposition to compromise the essential principles of Christianity by politic concessions to heathenism, so that the successes of the Jesuit missions are magnified by reports of alleged conversions that are conversions only in name and outward form; second, a constantly besetting propensity to political intrigue.[27:1] It is hardly to be doubted that both had their part in the prodigious failure of the French Catholic missions and settlements within the present boundaries of ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... its character and capabilities, no wonder, then, that our gaucho and his companions should feel fear, as they take in the perils besetting them. For there is no knowing how long the jaguar will keep its patience, or its place; and when it shifts they may "look out for squalls." They can still see it on the ledge; for although the light is feeble, with some dust floating about, through this its glaring eyeballs, ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... had such a besetting and disagreeable effect that Jack would have found it difficult to rid his mind of it if he had not had a more centering and pressing object in prospect in the citadel of the push-buttons ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... as a gentleman. He was a man of this ambition, and prouder behind it. But having started himself precipitately, he took rank among independent incomes, as they are called, only to take fright at the perils of starvation besetting one who has been tempted to abandon the source of fifty per cent. So, if noble imagery were allowable in our time in prose, might alarms and partial regrets be assumed to animate the splendid pumpkin cut loose from the suckers. Deprived of that prodigious nourishment of the shop in the fashionable ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... The miseries want a good hurricane to sweep them off the land, and the dwellings the "foul fiend" hath contaminated. Man's doing, and woman's suffering, and thence even arises the beauty of loveliness—woman's patience. In the very palpable darkness besetting the ways of domestic life, woman's virtue ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... besetting him to go and see after him myself, but I let Dora knock at his door, and heard he had gone to bed. To me it was a long night of tossing and half-sleep, hearing the wild stormy wind, and dreaming of strange things, praying all the time that the noble soul might be won for God at last, and almost ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... while, besetting sins would crop out and Lucile would cry, despairingly, "Oh, why did I do it; I knew I shouldn't," and Jessie would stop, when plunging nobly through a box of candies, to cry penitently, "Oh, I've eaten too many," and Evelyn would often ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... of the coronation, foremost and favourite of which was the misadventure of poor Lord Rolle, and the pretty gentle way in which the young Queen did her best to help the sufferer; an incident was reported which might have had its foundation in the difficulties described by Miss Martineau as besetting the fair Peeress in the Abbey. It was said that the Queen's crown was too cumbrous, and disturbed the arrangement of those soft braids of hair, the simple, modest fashion of which called forth Sir David ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... them. The holiday seems to have been thoroughly enjoyed by the whole party, and Coleridge, at any rate, had certainly earned it. For once, and it is almost to be feared for the last time in his life, he had resisted his besetting tendency to dispersiveness, and constrained his intelligence to apply itself to one thing at a time. He had come to Germany to acquire the language, and to learn what of German theology and metaphysics he might ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... with their hair untrimmed, and supplicating with him to the people. And then the senate met, to pass a decree that the people should change their dress as in time of public sorrow. But the consuls opposing it, and Clodius with armed men besetting the senate-house, many of the senators ran out, crying aloud and tearing their clothes. But this sight moved neither shame nor pity; Cicero must either fly or determine it by the sword with Clodius. He entreated ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... his master's going so often astray. True it is, in all points of spirit befitting an honorable dog, he was as courageous an animal as ever scoured the woods; but what courage can withstand the ever-enduring and all-besetting terrors of a woman's tongue? The moment Wolf entered the house his crest fell, his tail drooped to the ground or curled between his legs, he sneaked about with a gallows air, casting many a sidelong glance at Dame Van Winkle, and at the least flourish of ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... at once,' he said, looking at the water. 'She found out my pet besetting sin on the spot, and paid it off. My God, how she understood! And she said I was better than she was! Better than she was!' He laughed at the absurdity of the notion. 'I wonder if girls guess at one-half a ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... himself. "My besetting sin, Lucy. But I must observe—" He applied his glazed eye to her feet—"the colour of your stockings, my friend. Ha! a tinge of blue, upon my oath!" So it passed off, and that night when, after his half-hour with the evening paper in ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... of her being well fed was simply that her mind was freed from what is, after all, the besetting occupation of creatures like her, and was therefore at liberty to bestow its undivided attention upon the restraints and irksomeness of this new order of things. Her gypsy blood began to stir in her: the charm of her old vagabond habits asserted itself under the wincey frock ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... poor wretches whom the Jews threw in their way. In the midst of this butchery, there suddenly appeared a piquet of thirty French, coming from the bridge of the Vilia, where they had been left and forgotten. At sight of this fresh prey, thousands of Russian horsemen came hurrying up, besetting them with loud cries, and ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... anti-slavery supporters, who were utterly opposed to annexation on any terms, because the power of slavery would thus inevitably be extended and strengthened in the United States. The letter was an irreparable mistake. It was a fresh example of his besetting tendency to mediate between opposing policies, and undoubtedly drove from his support many who would otherwise have followed the ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... capriciously even, Laura, an inexplicable spirit of inconsistency besetting her, was a very different woman from the one who an instant before had spoken so gravely of the seriousness of marriage. She hesitated a moment before answering Jadwin, her head on one side, looking at the rose leaf between ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... rain were fretting, And sudden gleams the mountain-tops besetting. I cannot let thee fade ...
— Poems • Alice Meynell
... women that passed. In such low form of vice he sought escape. He turned to gambling, risking large sums, sometimes imperilling his fortune for the sake of the assuagement such danger brought of the besetting sin. But luck poured thousands into his hands; and he applied himself to the ruin of one seeking ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... living, they then become empty. Sometimes a man's life is so poor that he is involuntarily compelled to prize his defect and live by it. It may frankly be said that people are often depraved out of mere weariness. The soldier felt insulted, and besetting our baker, roared: ...
— Twenty-six and One and Other Stories • Maksim Gorky
... had written them, but might on similar provocations recur to the same vengeance." On another occasion he said, "Lady B.'s first idea is what is due to herself. I wish she thought a little more of what is due to others. My besetting sin is a want of that self-respect which she has in excess. When I have broken out, on slight provocation, into one of my ungovernable fits of rage, her calmness piqued and seemed to reproach me; it gave her an air of superiority that vexed and increased my mauvaise humeur." To ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... of the people John made it perfectly plain that by repentance he meant no mere form or ceremony, nor was the word merely an abstract theological term; the thing he demanded was plain and practical, that each man should turn from his besetting sin and should show love to his fellow man. Clothing and food were to be given to those in need, for repentance meant to turn from the sin of selfishness. Publicans or taxgatherers, who were everywhere detested because of their dishonesty and greed, ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... by the thousand mortifications to which a man of cultivated tastes and keenly alive to beauty is exposed in a luxurious city, where the prizes he values most are carried off, yet scarcely valued, by the wealthy vulgar, he was especially open to the besetting temptation of clever young men to write satire, and to write it in a merciless spirit. As he says ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... embellished these pages. In all of the portraits she wept. In some the tears were visible; in others they had to be guessed, the face being drawn by anguish. Her feminine correspondents wished particularly to be told of the snares and temptations besetting the path of the young girl who enters this perilous career. Many of them seemed rather vague except upon this point. They all seemed to be sure that snares and temptations would await them, and would Vida Sommers ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... of history, contained in verses 14-18, should not be permitted to conceal from us the intimate relation that subsists between this and the preceding parable. The application of the first for the reproof of covetousness, touched a besetting sin of the Pharisees, and stung them to the quick. Unable to bear in silence a rebuke which their own consciences recognised as just, they interrupted the preacher with rude derision. They attempted to shield their own open sores from painful ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... things Jesus has done for their father. Ah, my friends, we have got a mighty deliverer, I don't care what affliction you have, He will deliver you from it. The Son of God who cast out those devils can deliver you from your besetting sin. ...
— Moody's Anecdotes And Illustrations - Related in his Revival Work by the Great Evangilist • Dwight L. Moody
... secret. There's nothing in this shop that I can't do, and don't do, every now and then, just to keep my hand in. I can put more pull into an ad. to-day than the next best man in the business. Modesty isn't my besetting sin, ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... America should give the same account of us, would it not be quite as true? One of the latest writers—the author of "The Middle Kingdom"—accuses the Chinese of gross sensuality, mendacity, and dishonesty. No doubt these are besetting sins with them, as with all nations who are educated under a system which makes submission to authority the chief virtue. But then this writer lived only at Canton and Macao, and saw personally only the refuse of the people. He admits that "they have attained, ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... it ought, and that artistic memory which brings home compositions and not catalogues. There is hardly a hill, rock, stream, or sea-fronting headland in the neighborhood of his home that he has not fondly remembered. Sometimes, we think, there is too much description, the besetting sin of modern verse, which has substituted what should be called wordy-painting for the old art of painting in a single word. The essential character of Mr. Whittier's poetry is lyrical, and the rush of the lyric, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... history of countries professing the Romish religion, and you will uniformly find the leaven of this besetting and accursed principle of action—that the end ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... Kate, Colden gave his arm to me, and we proceeded downstairs to a carriage at the door, which took us to the stage-door of the theatre, greatly to the disappointment of an enormous crowd who were besetting the main door and making a most tremendous hullaballoo. The scene on our entrance was very striking. There were three thousand people present in full dress; from the roof to the floor, the theatre was decorated magnificently; and the light, glitter, glare, ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... "patriotic" will surprise many readers of the late Bishop STUBBS. "Patriotic" is a wide term and may be applied to almost anything from after-dinner flag-wagging to successful juggling with Colonial stocks and shares; yet there are few who would have described it as the besetting virtue of HENRY I. But it was; ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 22, 1920 • Various
... swung into his saddle. They pounded home in silence. The lines of "The Last Ride" were besetting her still. ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... numerous and indispensable; and that the display of a particular excellence, however good in itself, was by no means conclusive as to character; in short, that we perhaps as often meet with a favorite principle as with a besetting sin. ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... the wanderer! O mercy, choicest mercy! Who is a God like unto Thee, that pardonest iniquity?" And so saying, he entered on the heavenly light, and left for ever behind him the darkness and the danger of the pitfalls, and the face of shame, and the besetting weakness; for he too was clothed in raiment of light, and borne with joy before ...
— The Rocky Island - and Other Similitudes • Samuel Wilberforce
... time of night to arouse the girl, thought Burrell, as he left the barracks, but he must allay these fears that were besetting him, he must see Necia at once. The low, drifting clouds obscured what star-glow there was in the heavens, and he stepped back to light a lantern. By its light he looked at his watch and exclaimed, then held it to his ear. Five hours had passed ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... Newport that I went to Kittery, and passed in a few hours from the modern to the ancient world. Not even New York gives a more vivid impression of the inappropriateness which is America's besetting sin, than Newport, whose gay inhabitants are determined, at all costs, to put themselves at variance with time and place. The mansions, called "cottages" in proud humility, are entirely out of proportion to their site and purpose. On the one hand you see a house as large as Chatsworth, bleak ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... unsuspecting Bumpus and driven a knife to his heart, after which poor Corrie and the girl could have been easily dealt with; but fortunately (at least for his enemies, if not for himself) indecision in the moment of action was one of Keona's besetting sins. He suspected that other enemies might be near at hand, and that the noise of the scuffle might draw them to the spot. He observed, moreover, that the boy had a pistol, which, besides being a weapon that acts quickly and surely, even in weak hands, would give a loud report ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... up the most real things in your life—the duty that is a disgust: the sacrifice for others from which you shrink. Summon up your besetting sin—the temptation which, for all your present peace, you know will be upon you before twenty-four hours are past. Summon up these grim realities of your life,—and in face of them give yourself to God's will, put your weakness into the keeping of His grace. He is as real as ...
— Four Psalms • George Adam Smith
... in arms. But he let the time for effective action slip, and was only goaded into doing anything when the fugitives from the march impressed him with the critical state of affairs. The quarrel of king and barons was not the only trouble besetting England. The two years' truce with Scotland had expired, and Robert Bruce was once more devastating the northern counties. But neither Edward nor Lancaster cared anything for this. Andrew Harclay, the ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... smoke small clay pipes. Dearer than the cigarritos are the cigars, which are not inferior to the best Havanna. Everywhere are met the cigarrito-twisters. Cleverly though they manipulate, cleanliness is not their besetting weakness. But in Peru, and in other parts of South America, cleanliness is not held in more esteem than in ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... arose, arising, arisen. Be, was, being, been. Bear, bore or bare, bearing, borne or born.[274] Beat, beat, beating, beaten or beat. Begin, began or begun,[275] beginning, begun. Behold, beheld, beholding, beheld. Beset, beset, besetting, beset. Bestead, bestead, besteading, bestead.[276] Bid, bid or bade, bidding, bidden or bid. Bind, bound, bing, bound. Bite, bit, biting, bitten or bit. Bleed, bled, bleeding, bled. Break, broke,[277] breaking, broken. Breed, bred, breeding, bred. Bring, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... quickly over at her daughter. Jessie was poring over her book. The sight of such absorption raised a certain feeling of irritation in the mother. It seemed to her that Jessie could too easily throw off the trouble besetting them all. She did not know that the girl was fighting her own battle in her own way. She did not know that her interest in her book was partly feigned. Nor was she aware that the girl's effort was not only for herself, but to help the mother ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... single character so famous as this part of Dundreary was made by Sothern. When he came to Newcastle on his first provincial tour I met him, and spent some pleasant evenings with him after the play. He was a man of refined speech and good social gifts. His besetting weakness, as I learned even then, was that addiction to practical jokes which, on more than one occasion in his subsequent career, involved him in unpleasant situations. One of his favourite tricks was to select some portly and self-important gentleman whom he saw passing along ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... bound, they fell to coursing in the sky. Then remaining invisible, the Nivata-Kavachas covered the entire welkin with masses of crags. And, O Bharata, other dreadful Danavas, entering into the entrails of the earth, took up horses' legs and chariot-wheels. And as I was fighting, they, hard besetting my horses with rocks, attacked me together with (my) car. And with the crags that had fallen and with others that were falling, the place where I was, seemed to be a mountain cavern. And on myself being covered with crags and on the horses being hard pressed, I became sore ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... meeting, leaving him alone in the house. "Confidence must be rooted out of his tabernacle," said his father sternly. "The spirit of God is surely working in his heart in which I see many of my own besetting sins." ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... forget. He was soft of heart, but proud of spirit, and haughty beyond his age; you may not remember, even I could not always look down his anger, or silence his loudness of speech. Why should he kill Mr. Barbary? I will tell you, child: the preacher, too, had discerned well your brother's besetting sin, and, being fearless in duty, from the Sabbath pulpit he spake of it plainly and with such point that it could not fail to come home directly to the bosom of the young man. This was on the very Lord's day before Mr. Barbary disappeared from amongst us. It rankled in your ...
— Chanticleer - A Thanksgiving Story of the Peabody Family • Cornelius Mathews
... perceive, among a certain class of writers, a disposition to haunt us with similar apparitions, and to describe them with a corresponding tumor of words, we conceive it high time to step forward and abate a nuisance which threatens to become a besetting evil, unless checked in ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... This alone, did we but know it, should make death most desirable. But if it does not, it is a sign that we neither feel nor hate our sin as we should. For this our life is so full of perils—sin, like a serpent, besetting us on every side—and it is impossible for us to live without sinning; but fairest death delivers us from these perils, and cuts our sin clean away from us. Therefore, the praise of the just man, in ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... she watched, she grappled with the problem of life, at first bitterly and rebelliously, then with a dawning comprehension of its meaning. After all was the bishop, with his conspicuous virtues and his well-known dislike of children, any better than old Mr. Demry, with his besetting sin and his beautiful influence on every child with whom he came in contact? Was Mr. Clarke, working children under age in the factory to build up a great fortune for his son, very different from Mr. Lavinski, with his sweat-shop, hoarding pennies for the ambitious Ikey? Was Mrs. Clarke, ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... to regard Hugo. Hugo's mask was entirely for Westerling. He did not seem to see Marta now, and through his mask radiated the considerate understanding of one who can put himself in another's place—which was Hugo's besetting fault or virtue, as you choose. In short, the chief of staff had a feeling that this private knew exactly what he, the chief of ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... those who engage in reform for the sake of notoriety generally hurt the reform so much that they render it their chief service when they leave it; and this happy desertion usually comes pretty early in their career. The besetting sin of reformers is not, so far as I can judge, the love of notoriety, but the fate of power and of flattery within their own small circle,—a temptation quite different from the other, both in ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... work to the 17th-century "reforms" of verse and prose; the Classicism of Milton, and of the Augustans; Classic and Romantic schools contrasted in their descriptions; Milton's Chaos, Shakespeare's Dover Cliff; Johnson's comments; the besetting sins of the two schools; Milton's physical machinery justified; his use of abstract terms; the splendid use of mean associations by Shakespeare; Milton's wise avoidance of mean associations, and of realism; ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... and join their cause. These underhand dealings gave Washington much uneasiness of mind; and he complained to the French general, yet in a firm and dignified manner, of the unfair advantage thus taken of the besetting weakness of these ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... apologies and explanations. It would only be besetting them. Come home with me, and don't be a fool! But write a few lines to your poor mother, after the intolerable fright you have given her; meddling and presuming where you had no business. A Providence it is that you are not half across the Atlantic, if ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... the truth is, that no professional character whatsoever, when pushed into exclusive esteem, can continue to sustain itself on the difficult eminence of pure natural high breeding. All professions alike have their besetting vices, pedantries, and infirmities. In some degree they correct each other when thrown together on terms of equality. But on the Continent, the lawyer and the clergyman is every where degraded; the senator has usually no existence; and the authentic landed proprietor, liberated ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... in my power," Mary replied, "and sacrifice everything that it was right to sacrifice, if, by so doing, I could help Alfred to conquer his besetting evils. I cannot tell you how I feel about it. It seems as if it would break my heart to have him return again into his old habits of life: and yet, what have we to found a hope upon, that he ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... is valour. His defiance of the 'Devils' in Worms was not a mere boast, as the like might be if now spoken. It was a faith of Luther's that there were Devils, spiritual denizens of the Pit, continually besetting men. Many times, in his writings, this turns-up; and a most small sneer has been grounded on it by some. In the room of the Wartburg where he sat translating the Bible, they still show you a black spot on the wall; the strange memorial of one of ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... would have been a charming little maiden but for her besetting fault—talebearing. She was always running in to tell her mother or governess the faults of the others. All day long it was, "Mamma, Rex took some currants," "Mamma, Minnie blotted her copy this morning," "Mamma, the boys have been ...
— Golden Moments - Bright Stories for Young Folks • Anonymous
... was half spent, I arose [and went forth the tent] to do an occasion of mine, and none knew of my case save this woman. The dogs misdoubted of me and followed me and gave not over besetting me, till I fell on my back into a deep pit, wherein was water, and one of the dogs fell in with me. The woman, who was then a girl in the first bloom of youth, full of strength and spirit, was moved to pity on me, for that wherein ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... looking at them, how saints are bored by being worshipped—it adds fearfully to martyrdom, but happily I am used to it. "Oh, the vanity of that girl!" Yes, sir, say it out: tell her frankly that if she has no friend to caution her against this besetting wile, that you will be that friend. Tell her that whatever she has of attraction is spoiled and marred by this self-consciousness, and that just as you are a rebel without knowing it, so should she be charming and never suspect it. Is ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... controversies. But the general verdict of historians seems now to be, that Charles I., whose many good qualities as a man and a ruler are cheerfully admitted on all hands, was yet utterly deficient in downright good faith; that duplicity was his besetting sin; and that Glamorgan's embassy is one, but only one, of the strongest evidences of that ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... profession made demand of all his energies. When he was not at work in Douglas he was expected to be at home with his aunt at Ballure. But neither absence nor the lapse of years served to lift him out of the reach of temptation. He had one besetting provocation to remembrance—one duty which forbade him to forget Kate—his pledge to Pete, his office as Dooiney Molla. Had he not vowed to keep guard over the girl? He must do it. The trust was a ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... than to enter the church with an express purpose of dozing there. Arm-chairs, sofas, and beds are the legitimate places for dozers. But there is no accounting for that conquering spirit of all-besetting drowsiness that attacks us at sundry times and places. It is in vain that we lengthen our limbs into an awakening stretch—that we yawn with the expressive suavity of yawning no more—that we dislocate our knuckle bones, and ruffle the symmetry of our visage, with a manual ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... condition we emphasize the many negatives rather than the single positive. One little weakness, we are apt to fancy, all men must be allowed, and we even claim a certain indulgence for that apparent necessity of nature which we call our besetting sin. Yet to break with the lower environment at all, to many, is to break at this single point. It is the only important point at which they touch it, circumstances or natural disposition making habitual contact at other places impossible. The sinful environment, ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... forbearance and consideration,—there were two people who still believed in Frank Lavender. They were Sheila Mackenzie and Edward Ingram; and a man's wife and his oldest friend generally know something about his real nature, its besetting temptations, its weakness, its strength and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... his master's going so often astray. True it is, in all points of spirit befitting in honorable dog, he was as courageous an animal as ever scoured the woods—but what courage can withstand the evil-doing and all-besetting terrors of a woman's tongue? The moment Wolf entered the house, his crest fell, his tail drooped to the ground, or curled between his legs, he sneaked about with a gallows air, casting many a sidelong glance at Dame Van Winkle, and at the least flourish of a broomstick or ladle, ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... first-class females the descendants will not shine generally in the show-yard. Breeding for the show-yard must not be left to haphazard; nor is the breeder likely to be successful if pride and conceit be his besetting sins. Take the following by way of illustration: At perhaps a distant sale a fine cow is bought, or it may be at market. Attention to pedigree is ignored; the age is perhaps considered of no consequence. ...
— Cattle and Cattle-breeders • William M'Combie
... at one of those crises of his life when his drink-devil was besetting him with sore temptation, and for the last twenty-four hours he had been fighting it with the ruses and pretences which he had learned to employ against it, but he felt that he was losing the game, though ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... be excused for devoting their time and wits to such riddles, perhaps. But when the mind has positive, practical work to perform, and time keeps bringing all the time specific duties, or when, as in your case, a predisposition to vague speculation is the intellectual besetting sin, I think addition to such subjects to be avoided. I suppose all human beings have, in some shape or degree, the desire for that knowledge which is still the growth of the forbidden tree of Paradise, and the lust for which inevitably thrusts us against the bars of the material ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... besetting sin in Lord Byron. So amiable a fault was not only committed in favor of his rivals, but also by way of encouragement to young authors. What did he not do to promote the success of M.N. N——, the author of Bertram's dramas, whom Walter ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... union for any benevolent purpose. He had taken an active interest in the religious associations of young men which sprang up in London and other towns and villages about 1678, a time when the zeal of many attached members of the Church of England was quickened by the dangers which were besetting it. A few years later, when 'Societies for the Reformation of Manners' were formed, to check the immorality and profaneness which was gaining alarming ground, he gave his hearty co-operation both to Churchmen and Dissenters in a movement which he held essential to the welfare of ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... Tass was the plenipotentiary of a super-civilization which had been viewing developments on this planet with misgivings. It was thought this other civilization had advanced greatly beyond Earth's and that the problems besetting us—social, economic, scientific—had been solved by the super-civilization. Obviously, then, Dameri Tass had come, an advisor from a benevolent and friendly people, ...
— Off Course • Mack Reynolds (AKA Dallas McCord Reynolds)
... Malahault (see note in text) had previously been aware that Lancelot was deeply in love, though he would not tell her with whom. Her cough therefore meant: "Ah! I have found you out." Now Beatrice, well as she knew Dante's propensity to love, knew as well that pride was even more of a besetting weakness of his. This was quite a harmless instance of it: but still it was an instance—and the "smile" which is not recorded of the Arthurian lady meant: "Ah! I have caught you out." Even if this be ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... Nor deep-toned organ blown, nor censer swung, Nor dim light falling through the pictured pane! There, syllabled by silence, let me hear The still small voice which reached the prophet's ear; Read in my heart a still diviner law Than Israel's leader on his tables saw! There let me strive with each besetting sin, Recall my wandering fancies, and restrain The sore disquiet of a restless brain; And, as the path of duty is made plain, May grace be given that I may walk therein, Not like the hireling, for his selfish gain, With backward glances and reluctant tread, Making a merit of his coward dread, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... it went, and in truth it was a pleasant chance to hear the merry, inconsequent chatter; for, like every other class of the community, girl students have their besetting sins, and one of the most obvious of these is an air of assurance, of dogmatism, of final knowledge of life, against which there can be no appeal. Girls of nineteen and twenty will settle a dispute ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... the moment in his mind. He was standing with folded arms, looking upon the scene in the manner of a man debating with himself. Young, handsome, rich, but recently from the patrician circles of Roman society, it is easy to think of the world besetting him with appeals not to give more to onerous duty or ambition attended with outlawry and danger. We can even imagine the arguments with which he was pressed; the hopelessness of contention with Caesar; the uncertainty veiling everything connected with the King and his coming; ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... got such a name that no owners would entrust him with the command of another. He was a good seaman and a fair navigator, and when he was sober there wasn't a better man in the ship. He had been to sea as first mate, but lost the berth through his besetting sin. I believe Captain Tooke engaged him from having known him when he himself was a young man, and from believing that he could keep him sober. He succeeded pretty well, but not always; and more than once, in consequence of old Cole's neglect of ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... difficulty besetting Noah is hinted at in the words: "God remembered." Moses thus intimates that Noah had been tossed on the water so long that God seemed to have forgotten him altogether. They who pass through such a mental strain, when the rays of divine grace are gone and they sit in darkness ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... worth a thousand times more to Britain than the gilded corruption of Rome. But in the course of time the Saxons or English themselves lost spirit (S36). Their besetting sin was a stolidity which degenerated into animalism and ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... unaccountably and inconsistently. It vexed Leslie; she tried not to see it; it made her curious, anxious; and what had she to do with Hector Garret's flushed cheek and shining eye? Some anniversary, some combination of present associations and past recollections—a tendency to fly from himself, besetting at times the most self-controlled—might have caused this change in his appearance. Ah! better twist and untwist the rings of little Leslie's fair hair, and dress and undress her as she had done her doll; better examine the shell ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... to Blessed Francis of the thorns besetting his path in life, of the difficulties of his holy calling, of the anxieties inseparable from it, but chiefly of the intractableness of stiff-necked Christians, who refuse to submit to the easy yoke of Jesus Christ, and to do what their duty requires. The Bishop replied that their obstinacy ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... both too quickly and too harshly. That is one of our besetting sins. And I have paid too much heed to the opinion of others, and too little to the charity that should give us courage to do good. She, whom I despised, has taught ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... mother often told her, was her besetting sin, and Marjorie truly tried to correct it when she thought of it; but often she was too busy with the occupation in hand to remember the good ...
— Marjorie's Vacation • Carolyn Wells
... claw," Stane quoted lightly, "only up here her teeth are white, and her claws also. And when she bares them a man has little chance. But I understand your feeling, one has the sense of a besetting menace. I felt it often last winter when I was new to the country, and it is a very nasty feeling—as if malign gods were at work to destroy one, or as if fate were about to ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... the same kind, made "light come, light go," a maxim almost more applicable than in the days of confiscations, in those of pensions on this or that list, or in those of stock-jobbing. Moreover, inquirers into this matter have certainly not escaped the besetting sin of all but strictly political historians—a sin which even the political historian has not always avoided—the sin of ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... follow me if I were to summon them to Paris on such a mission. I received messages of ready acceptance, in the event of my succeeding in founding a German opera season in Paris on a solid basis, from Tichatschek, Mitterwurzer, Niemann the tenor, and also Luise Meyer in Vienna. My immediate and besetting care was then to discover in Paris a suitable man for the task, who would undertake the execution of my plan at his own risk. My object was to secure the Salle Ventadour for a spring season of two months after the close of the Italian opera. There would then be performances of my operas, ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... composition; harshness of modulation, melodies more singular than pleasing, and a constant struggle to be original, are among the principal faults of which he was accused. As to the latter charge it may be remarked, that it is the besetting sin which has adhered to Beethoven through life; and who can help wishing that with it, he had also possessed the power of spreading the vice among his contemporaries, and of bequeathing it to his successors. But if this indefatigable ...
— Sketch of Handel and Beethoven • Thomas Hanly Ball
... legally unmarried," replied this person, quite distressed within himself at not being able to understand the difficulty besetting her. "All perfectly legal and ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... anxieties had ever assailed him before. He had been like a man walking in a dream, his gaze fixed on but one exit, regardless of the dangers besetting his steps. Now the truth confronted him. He had reached the limit of his resources. To hope for much from Kling was idle. Such a situation could not last, nor could he count for long either on the friendship or the sympathy of the big-hearted expressman's wife. She had ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... view—and told him what and how strict was the practice of the ancient Jews, the people of God, upon this particular point. Dr. Walsingham had made a love-match, was the most imprudent and open-handed of men, and always preaching to others against his own besetting sin. To hear him talk, indeed, you would have supposed he was a usurer. Then Mr. Mervyn, who looked a little pale and excited, turned the doctor about, and they made another little circuit, while he entered ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... writing remained to the end one of hostility. Whenever he caught himself working for art he was wont to reproach himself, and his diaries contain many recriminations against his own weakness in yielding to this besetting temptation. Yet to these very lapses we are indebted for this ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... and fun of life drifts farther from you, and you find the merry jest, which of old turned care into laughter, less ready on your lip, you must cultivate a wholesome optimistic view of life, to sustain your husband through the trials and disasters besetting most ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... slices of toast, and ALL the cream for my tea, as you do. It isn't a VERY bad pain, is it?" asked Rosy, in such perfect good faith that Miss Henny's sudden flush and Roxy's hasty dive into the closet never suggested to her that this innocent speech was bringing the old lady's besetting sin to light ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... certain harmless vanity was ever my besetting weakness. I might, indeed, have hoped that, after my accident—but see, my good lad, how pride may lurk, even in our very infirmities! These artificial limbs have become a yet subtler snare to me than even those they replaced. I had them constructed, as you see, of the best mahogany—to ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., February 7, 1891 • Various
... the poor or to those of the same limited resources as himself his attitude was one of watchful anxiety; he seemed to be haunted by a besetting fear lest some fraction of a shilling or franc, or whatever the prevailing coinage might be, should be diverted from his pocket or service into that of a hard-up companion. A two-franc cigar would be cheerfully offered to a wealthy patron, on the principle of doing evil that good may come, ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... I thought he did—and maybe that was as good—and faith may be a great deal better, for if ever a man had the look of a schemer about him the same customer had. At any rate we had some drink together, and went on very well till we got befuddled, which, it seems, is his besetting sin. It was clearly his intention, I could see, to make me tipsy, and I dare say he might a done so, only for a slight mistake he made ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... are speaking,—there are tears in her eyes,) but they only linger there; she is not weeping now; her chin trembles, and one of her hands is convulsively clenched,—but it is with the anguish of her sore besetting, not the spasm of mortal fear. Though Heaven and Earth, indeed, might join to help her, we yet know that the soul of the maiden will help itself,—that her hope clings fast, and her courage is undaunted, and her ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... the respect paid to those who nobly resolved to overcome their besetting sin of drink, and its consequent poverty or profligacy, that the knowledge alone that they had taken the pledge, gained them immediate good-will, as it was entitled to do. This, to be sure, was in Art's favor; but ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... Erastian, nor was he an Erastian pure and simple. He has left it on record that Macaulay's unfairness to Cranmer in the celebrated review of Hallam's Constitutional History first suggested to him the project of his own book. His besetting sin was not so much Erastianism, or secularism, as a love of paradox. Henry VIII seemed to him not merely a great statesman and a true patriot, but a victim of persistent misrepresentation, whose lofty motives had been concealed, ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... Schorlin, it seemed as if Fate had thrown him into the way of the Swiss that he might feel with twofold anguish the thorns besetting his own life path. The young knight was proffered the rose without the thorn. What cares had he? The present threw into his lap its fairest blessings, and when he looked into the future he beheld only ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Confessions of a Well-Meaning Woman, is a series of monologues addressed by one Lady Ann Spenworth to "a friend of proved discretion." I quote from the London Times of April 6, 1922: "In the course of them Lady Ann Spenworth reveals to us the difficulties besetting a lady of rank. She is compelled to live in a house in Mount street—for how could she ask 'The Princess' to visit her in Bayswater?—and her income of a few thousands, hardly supplemented by her husband's directorships, is depleted by the disbursements needed ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... and enviously, exhibiting in his whole tone as well as in his words his besetting weakness. For a while AEnone did not answer. It was as far from her duty as from her taste and pleasure to remind him, even if she could have done so to his comprehension, that her husband had already advanced him as far as was possible or fitting, and had otherwise provided for him in various ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... beautiful letter, received a short time ago from a young lady, who wrote me soon after my former services in the West End. She told me that she had been the bondslave, I think, for four or five years, of a certain besetting sin, and her first letter was the very utterance of despair. She had struggled and wrestled and prayed, and tried to overcome the sin that had been reigning over her. Now and then she would get the victory, ...
— Godliness • Catherine Booth |
