"Obstacle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... specified,) of having married another man's wife, he openly declares himself guilty of Leucippe's murder, which he affirms to have been concerted between Melissa and himself, in order to remove the obstacle to their amours, and now revealed by him from remorse. He is, of course, condemned to death forthwith, and Thersander is triumphing in the unexpected success of his schemes, when the judicial proceedings are interrupted by the appearance of a religious ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... hoard. Tressilian accepted it without affecting a moment's hesitation, and a mutual grasp of the hand was all that passed betwixt them, to express the pleasure which the one felt in dedicating his all to such a purpose, and that which the other received from finding so material an obstacle to the success of his journey so suddenly removed, and in a manner ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... the worst species—a fool whose folly had the irrepressibility of genius. He said at another time that she had no heart; and he added in a moment that she had given it all away—in small pieces, like a frosted wedding-cake. The fact of not having been asked was of course another obstacle to the Countess's going again to Rome; but at the period with which this history has now to deal she was in receipt of an invitation to spend several weeks at Palazzo Roccanera. The proposal had come from Osmond himself, who wrote to his sister ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... persecute every living thing with a bloodthirsty eagerness which knows no rest and feels no pity. Escape is impossible and defence useless; they follow their unhappy victims everywhere, and their untiring perseverance overcomes every obstacle which human ingenuity can throw in their way. Smoke of any ordinary density they treat with contemptuous indifference; mosquito-bars they either evade or carry by assault, and only by burying himself ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... Castleton advises that the dose be immediately given, whilst Doctor Bainbridge appears to think four or five hours hence the better time. I suggest a compromise: let them be given an hour or two hence. There seems to be also some obstacle in the way of one of you giving the other's medicine—so let me administer both the remedies. Now what possible objection can be ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... he has been deceived about the state of the Spanish army in Cuba, and the dislike of the Spanish party in the island to Home Rule has also been a sad stumbling-block in his way. These people throw every possible obstacle ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 56, December 2, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... foundations of that nature. The courtiers had been practising on the presidents and governors to make a surrender of their revenues to the king, and they had been successful with eight of them. But there was an obstacle to their further progress: it had been provided by the local statutes of most of these foundations, that no president, or any number of fellows, could consent to such a deed without the unanimous vote of all the fellows; and this vote was not easily obtained. All such statutes ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... Frederic appointed a committee to discuss that, whose members, Burgundian and German in equal numbers, were instructed to study the Eastern question while emperor and duke were absorbed in other matters.[7] In their very first session, this committee decided that the chief obstacle to a Turkish expedition was the Franco-Burgundian quarrel. This point was also raised by Charles in his first conference with Frederic. No campaign was feasible until the European powers were ready to act in concert. Louis XI. was aiding and abetting the heathen by being ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... her feet! I sprang upright on my couch when this discordant thought passed across my mind. But the next moment I was consoled with the belief that I already possessed her heart. And with a determination to have her, in spite of every obstacle, should this be the case, I sank back through weariness, and was soon steeped in deep, ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... at some obstacle, swerved and sent the sled bumping along on its side, the small head of the passenger narrowly escaping the ice. Mac caught hold of the single-tree and brought the racing dogs to an abrupt halt. The priest and he righted the sled, and Mac straddling it, tucked in a loosened end ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... has developed more slowly. Farmers have been too isolated from one another to make organization easy, they have not fully realized its advantages, and they have lacked leadership. This has been an obstacle to the fullest development of community life. The most backward communities are those where there is the least cooperation. In such communities "the farmer works single-handed, getting no strength from joint action or ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn
... limitations, they have a mental equipment and reserve force possessed by very few of their more fortunate fellow beings. Thus trained and fortified, our young blind people will work like Trojans to prove their ability to those who doubt it, and succeed in removing one obstacle after another, until they stand ready to take equal chances with any who may be pitted against them. The hand of the sightless worker is steadier, and his courage greater, because of the years of struggle and constant effort of which his sighted ...
— Five Lectures on Blindness • Kate M. Foley
... gets on swimmingly for a time, till he is faced with the actual fact of sex necessity. He gleefully inherits his adolescence and the world at large, without an obstacle in his way, mother-supported, mother-loved. Everything comes to him in glamour, he feels he sees wondrous much, understands a whole heaven, mother-stimulated. Think of the power which a mature woman thus infuses into her ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... Earl of Breadalbane, whose lands the Glencoe men had plundered, and whose treachery to government in negotiating with the Highland clans Macdonald himself had exposed. The King was accordingly persuaded that Glencoe was the main obstacle to the pacification of the Highlands; and the fact of the unfortunate chief's submission having been concealed, the sanguinary orders for proceeding to military execution against his clan were in consequence obtained. The warrant was both signed and countersigned by the ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... the surrounding crown-lands. The policy of the Government has entirely changed with regard to the disposal of waste lands in the Australian colonies; instead of giving them away with a lavish hand, it has for some years been the practice to throw every obstacle in the way ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... alert by their ambition, which sounds a charge in front and urges them to the assault of the future; incessantly at war with necessity, their invention always marching with lighted match blows up the obstacle almost before it incommodes them. Their daily existence is a work of genius, a daily problem which they always succeed in solving by the aid of audacious mathematics. They would have forced Harpagon to lend ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... close to the side, so as to throw the gun to the outside of the arm; then, lowering the hand, the gun is caught up. It is a bungling way to take out the gun while its barrel lies between the arm and the body. Any sized gun can be carried in this fashion. It offers no obstacle to mounting or dismounting." ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... answered the Conductor. "I don't consider that there is any more danger at a high rate of speed than there is at forty or fifty miles an hour! If we were to strike a man, a cow, a wagon, or even a pile of ties while going at this rate we'd fling the obstacle to one side like a straw and pay no more attention to it. If we were only doing fifteen or twenty miles though, instead of between eighty and ninety, any one of these things would be apt to throw us off the track. I tell ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe
... house in which He dwells is holy too. This is the only attribute of God which He can communicate to His house; but this one He can and does communicate. Among men there is a very close link between the character of a house and its occupants. When there is no obstacle to prevent it, the house unintentionally reflects the master's likeness. Holiness expresses not so much an attribute as the very being of God in His infinite perfection, and His house testifies to this one truth, that He is holy, that where He dwells He must have holiness, that His indwelling ...
— Holy in Christ - Thoughts on the Calling of God's Children to be Holy as He is Holy • Andrew Murray
... the other hand, was very open to Loughborough, and expressed a wish to form a strong and united Ministry which could face the difficulties of the time. The chief obstacle to a coalition, he said, was Fox's support of French principles, which must preclude his taking the Foreign Office immediately. The remark is noteworthy as implying Pitt's expectation that either Fox might tone down his ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... not know where to look for the former, however; and I had to depend on the cure. But here I carne to an obstacle I might easily have foreseen. I found him, though an honest man, obdurate in upholding his priest's privileges; to all my inquiries he replied that the matter touched the confessional, and was within his vows; and that he neither could, nor dared—to please anyone, or for any cause, however plausible—divulge ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... silence—put him on his guard. He had not come unprepared for opposition; to meet it he had wound himself to a pitch, telling himself that after this all would be easy; that he had this one peril to face, this one obstacle to surmount, and having succeeded might rest. Nevertheless, as he passed up the Great Council Chamber amid that silence, and met strange looks on faces which were wont to smile, his courage for one moment, even in that familiar scene—conscience makes cowards of ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... French on my right, my exposed left flank, the tendency of the enemy's western corps (II) to envelop me, and, more than all, the exhausted condition of the troops, I determined to make a great effort to continue the retreat until I could put some substantial obstacle, such as the Somme or the Oise, between my troops and the enemy, and afford the former some opportunity of rest and reorganization. Orders were, therefore, sent to the corps commanders to continue their ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... obstacle to which Mary administered her favorite remedy, the Gordian knot treatment. Brandon said: "It cannot be; you are not my wife, and we dare not trust a ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... itself into a struggle between Napoleon and England. This young Corsican lieutenant had raised himself by sheer force of genius and unscrupulous ambition to absolute power. His scheme for the subjugation of Europe beat down every obstacle except the steady and unbending opposition of England. Pitt, who had withdrawn from the government because of the stupid King's refusal to honor his Minister's pledges of equal rights to the Irish Catholics, was recalled by the universal voice ot the nation to organize the resistance. ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... grassy nook in the garden, her shoulders up to her ears, her chin in her hands. 'I wish to goodness Catherine wouldn't think so much about mine, at any rate. I hate,' added this incorrigible young person—'I hate being the third part of a "moral obstacle" against my will. I declare I don't believe we should any of us go to perdition even if Catherine did marry. And what a wretch I am to think so after last night! Oh dear, I wish she'd let me do something for her; I wish she'd ask me to black her boots for her, or put in her tuckers, ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... sorry to hear you speak in that spirit of blind persistence, my Romola," he said, quietly, "because it obliges me to give you pain. But I partly foresaw your opposition, and as a prompt decision was necessary, I avoided that obstacle, and decided without consulting you. The very care of a husband for his wife's interest compels him to that separate action sometimes—even when he has such a ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... name is a disgrace." His eyes filled with tears, but he wiped them away secretly so that his father should not see him cry. Stephen laughed harshly. He did not answer. He stooped forward, and his rugged brow looked as if he meant to butt into some obstacle; moreover he ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... caught a gaunt savage slipping from the boat. At the hunter's stern call, the Indian leaped ashore, and started to run. He had stolen a parcel, and would have succeeded in eluding its owner but for an unforeseen obstacle, as striking as it ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... yet, strange to say, the very same country, which sometimes affords so few springs, and of which the streams become dried up into chains of dirty pools, and at last into dry ravines and valleys, is, occasionally, subject to extreme floods from the overflowing of its rivers, and then offers a new obstacle to the traveller's progress in the shape of extensive and impassable marshes! To these difficulties must be added the usual trials of adventurous explorers, the dangers and perplexities of a journey through pathless forests, the want of game of any kind in the barren sandstone districts, ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... that had enveloped her was fast disappearing, leaving them without an obstacle to the happiness he proposed. Woolfolk ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... readily traversed by troops and the bluffs at the eastern extremity of each, or where they "head," can be easily climbed. It is true, that the conformation of the ground presents at one side, a serious obstacle to an attacking force. The base of these ridges, which have been described, or the parent hill, of which they seem to be offshoots, is separated from the level ground to the eastward by a singular and deep gulf, ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... listen to them. When the enemy came up to the commanders and the army, they all fell down at their feet, and besought them "to wait till Caesar's arrival; they saw that their city was taken, our works completed, and their tower undermined, therefore they desisted from a defence; that no obstacle could arise, to prevent their being instantly plundered at a beck, as soon as he arrived, if they refused to submit to his orders." They inform them that, "if the turret had entirely fallen down, the soldiers could not be withheld from forcing into the town and sacking ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... formation of discharge which must find an exit. A sinus is lined by granulation tissue, and when it is of long standing the opening may be dragged below the level of the surrounding skin by contraction of the scar tissue around it. As a sinus will persist until the obstacle to closure of the original abscess is removed, it is necessary that this should be sought for. It may be a foreign body, such as a piece of dead bone, an infected ligature, or a bullet, acting mechanically or by keeping up discharge, and ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... Lord-Chamberlain Dorset, there would probably have been little difficulty in his remaining poet-laureate, if he had recanted the errors of Popery. But the Catholic religion, and the consequent disqualifications, was an insurmountable obstacle to his holding that or any other office under government; and Dryden's adherence to it, with all the poverty, reproach, and even persecution which followed the profession, argued a deep and substantial conviction of the truth of the doctrines it inculcated. So late as 1699, when an union, in opposition ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... and fought with all his power against conviction—in the moment, however, he realized that all was lost, he exerted his boundless rage against himself who had been unable to oppose any obstacle to conviction and who had not been cautious and sly enough in the commission of the crime. Hence the development of the fearful self-punishment, which could have no meaning if ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... country. It was apparently a good site for a great city. Fresh water was the great want and rain-falls were rare, but it was claimed that an ample supply of water could be had from the hills. The real obstacle to that site, as a terminus for the railroad, was the mountains east of San Diego, which, upon a survey, were found to be extremely difficult, and this turned the route to Los Angeles, over natural passes and through the beautiful ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... was set on fire by her manifest beauty; for nothing exciteth passion like comeliness. Therefore he resolved to slay with the sword Hother, who, he feared, was likeliest to baulk his wishes; so that his love, which brooked no postponement, might not be delayed in the enjoyment of its desire by any obstacle. ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... was adopted as the most effective protection for the negroes against laws, as to vagrancy and the like, by which it was feared they might practically be enslaved again. Whatever the excuse for it, it would seem to have proved in fact a great obstacle to healthy relations between the two races. The true policy in such a matter is doubtless that which Rhodes and other statesmen adopted in the Cape Colony and which Lincoln had advocated in the case of Louisiana. ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... protruding limbs of the short, gnarled trees of timber line,—and through these the man fought in short, spasmodic lunges, breaking the way for the woman who came behind, never stopping except to gather strength for a fresh attack, never ceasing for obstacle or for danger. Once, at the edge of an overhanging ledge, he scrambled furiously, failed and fell,—to drop in a drift far below, to crawl painfully back to the waiting dot above, and to guide her, by safer paths, on downward. Hours! The dots grew larger. The glasses no longer ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... not she could succeed in getting the supplies to and from the table without losing off her cap or dropping too many of the forks. Just outside the door, Allyn was toiling handily in her behalf; and, strange to say, she was free from the obstacle she had most feared, that Melchisedek would get under her feet at some critical moment, and project her headlong, roast and all, upon the smooth bald pate of Mr. Gilwyn. To her relief, the dog had mysteriously vanished. She was too ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... habit when in deep thought, turning over in her mind the deed to be done and the surest and best way of doing it. It never occurred to her that Beatrice could be allowed to live beyond that night. If the woman had been but an unconscious obstacle in her path Unorna would have spared her life, but as matters stood, she had no ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... of the Liberal Government these instructions were withdrawn, but a further serious obstacle was to be found in the refusal of some landlords—and those, too, the worst—to allow their estates to be inspected with a view to find holdings for evicted tenants. This was the condition of affairs to which Mr. Bryce—at that time Chief Secretary—referred, ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... Tillhurst, standing there greedily taking in every word, his face beaming as one's face may who finds an obstacle suddenly lifted ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... this fellow Granger, sleeping peacefully with his head in an angle of the carriage, and made a contemptuous comparison between himself and the millionaire. Mr. Granger had been all very well in the abstract, before he became an obstacle in the path of George Fairfax. But things were altered now, and Mr. Fairfax scrutinized him with the ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... and he saw evidently how much he was beloved by that amiable girl: he was likewise strongly prepossessed with an idea of Charlotte's perfidy. What wonder then if he gave himself up to the delightful sensation which pervaded his bosom; and finding no obstacle arise to oppose his happiness, he solicited and obtained the hand of Julia. A few days before his marriage he ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... Beaulieu will not be back for three weeks; in spite of this send me your scenario of the Russian opera as soon as ever you have finished it, for I will see that he has it, and, if there is no political obstacle (which is a very exceptional circumstance in these matters), your work shall be given next November. [The opera "The Siberian Hunters" was, in point of fact, given at Weimar through Liszt's instrumentality.] When you have sufficiently ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... credit of abusing the little girl. There seemed no way out of it. She stalked on grimly, and when she came to Reid's lot she promptly and dexterously climbed its fence and continued her way in silence. But the fence proved an insurmountable obstacle to Ruth. She stood outside and wailed dismally. The sound smote Nan, and made her ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... to put on, and she is always the well-dressed Parisienne in detail as well as in effect. Her carriage is haughty and dashing, her volubility racial, her enthusiasm, while it lasts, bears down every obstacle, and her nature is imperious. She must hold the center of the stage and the reins of power. I should say that she was the ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... possess the least penetration. How to make them go deeper was the problem. By an experiment that is, in its simplicity, wholly characteristic of the man, he demonstrated that the red blood in the deeper layers of the skin was the obstacle. He placed a piece of photographic paper behind the lobe of his wife's ears and concentrated powerful blue rays on the other side. Five minutes of exposure made no impression on the paper; it remained white. ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... looked as though Mr. Cutts's permission was not at all necessary when he desired anything; but Mr. Cutts did not venture to interpose any obstacle to the wish of a person so influential as the banker. Mr. Checkynshaw turned to leave, went as far as the ...
— Make or Break - or, The Rich Man's Daughter • Oliver Optic
... But that obstacle in the way of improvement which was apparently the most immovable, was the geographical one. The habitable earth was used up. Outside of Europe there was nothing, save inaccessible wilderness, and barren, boundless seas. There was nothing for the mass of men to do, and yet their energy and desire ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... a man can be saved without the sacrament of Baptism, provided that some unavoidable obstacle, and not his contempt for religion, debar him from the sacrament, as we shall state further on (Q. 68, A. 2). But contempt of religion in any sacrament is a hindrance to salvation. Therefore, in like manner, all the sacraments are necessary ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... the state vice-presidents have spoken of native chestnuts of good kinds. One obstacle, however, in the distribution of good chestnuts, has been the state laws which prevent us from sending chestnuts from one state to the other. I would like to ask Mr. Reed if it would be possible to make some ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... pensioner of Queen Mary; at another had sailed under some of the great mariners of the western main. There he had acquired substance enough to make the offer of his hand to the dowerless Susan no great imprudence; and as neither could be a subject for ambitious plans, no obstacle was raised ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... not know whether to seize the chance and take Berry inside, or whether to put the obstacle between Pong and the terror behind, and I felt I must look at ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... morning, without having had any sleep, we were about mounting our carriage, drawn up at the door; when an insuperable obstacle disclosed itself: for there rolled on already, between the pavement-stones which were crushed up into a ridge on each side, an uninterrupted column of sick-wagons through the Town, and all was trodden as into a morass. While ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... these the Neversink was happily delivered. Besides that she was now approaching a most perilous part of the ocean—which would have made it madness to intoxicate the sailors—her complete destitution of grog, even for ordinary consumption, was an obstacle altogether insuperable, even had the Captain felt disposed to indulge his man-of-war's-men by ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... appointment by the Bishop of Hernos and of myself as vicar of this parish. We waited only for that to be able to marry. Now there is no obstacle to our happiness. We will live here with my father, near your own family. May God grant that our hearts may not be disunited. May God grant us new pleasures without robbing us of those of the past. Now, when ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... own option, Miriam, to do away the obstacle, at any moment," remarked the sculptor. "It is but to ascend Donatello's tower, and you will meet him there, ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... This last obstacle had just been removed and the bill was about to be presented to the Chamber of Deputies when the arrival of the message, by creating in the minds of all a degree of astonishment at least equal to the just irritation which ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... principle whatever, though it must be remembered that his own dispensation was an almost, if not quite, unprecedented stretch of papal power. To dispense with the "divine" law against marrying the brother's wife, and to dispense with the merely canonical obstacle to his marriage with Anne arising out of his relations with Mary Boleyn, were very different matters; and in this light the breach between England and Rome might be represented as caused by a novel extension of papal claims. Henry, however, was a casuist concerned exclusively with his own case. ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... grew. They had given him a delicate and dangerous task, but he was doing it. He had overcome every obstacle so far, and he would overcome them to the end. He was bound to enter that Washington which, in the distance, seemed to lie ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler
... though in such courses as this motherhood will doubtless be served directly and indirectly in many ways. There is, nevertheless, required something more—something indeed no less than conscious, purposeful education for parenthood. The chief obstacle in the way of this ideal is Anglo-Saxon prudery, and, perhaps, the reader will not be persuaded that education for parenthood is our greatest educational need to-day, more especially for girls, until he or she has been persuaded of the magnitude of the preventable evils which flow ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... architecture is extremely ornate made the feat much simpler than I had anticipated, since I found ornamental ledges and projections which fairly formed a perfect ladder for me all the way to the eaves of the building. Here I met my first real obstacle. The eaves projected nearly twenty feet from the wall to which I clung, and though I encircled the great building I could find no opening ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... insomuch, that Schaibar and prince Ahmed, as they went along, found all the streets and squares desolate, till they came to the palace, where the porters, instead of preventing Schaibar from entering, ran away too; so that the prince and he advanced without any obstacle to the council-hall, where the sultan was seated on his throne and giving audience. Here likewise the officers, at the approach of Schaibar, abandoned their posts, and gave ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... hour and caused the first outlook at Folkestone to swim in a softness of colour and sound. It became clear in this medium that her stepfather had really now only to take into account his entanglement with Mrs. Beale. Wasn't he at last disentangled from every one and every thing else? The obstacle to the rupture pressed upon him by Mrs. Wix in the interest of his virtue would be simply that he was in love, or rather, to put it more precisely, that Mrs. Beale had left him no doubt of the degree in which SHE was. She was so much so as to have succeeded in making ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... once Roger's course stopped. He became an obstacle to the flood, which pressed him against some other obstacle below, and rushed over horse and rider. Thrusting out his hand, Gilbert felt the rough bark of a tree. Leaning towards it, and clasping the log in his arms, he drew himself from the saddle, while Roger, freed from his ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... think that the present government in France contains many of the elements which, when properly arranged, are known to form the best practical governments,—and that the system, whatever may become its particular form, is no longer likely to be an obstacle to negotiation. If its form now be no obstacle to such negotiation, I do not know why it was ever so. Suppose that this government promised greater permanency than any of the former, (a point on which I can form no judgment,) still a link is wanting to couple the permanence of the government ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... on the part of the obstacle-breaker, as he loved to call himself. 'Twas also the bravest temper he could assume in face of the outside world. To Madame Hanska he revealed more the cankering disappointment, just as he had a twelvemonth previously, after the mishap of the School for Husbands and Wives. ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... mid-day. Two or three negroes then proceed in a little boat, furnished with a long cord at the end of which is a sharp iron crook, which they hold suspended like a log line. As soon as they find this line stopped by some obstacle, they draw it forcibly towards them so as to strike the hook into the sturgeon, which they either drag out of the water, or which, after some struggling and losing all his blood, floats at length upon the surface ...
— The Bounty of the Chesapeake - Fishing in Colonial Virginia • James Wharton
... the education of the home or of nature; but how will a man live with others if he is educated for himself alone? If the twofold aims could be resolved into one by removing the man's self-contradictions, one great obstacle to his happiness would be gone. To judge of this you must see the man full-grown; you must have noted his inclinations, watched his progress, followed his steps; in a word you must really know a natural man. When you have read this work, I ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... have to blush before her dearest friend. He saw with joy that the happiness of finding a father did not lead her to forget the past, but still he had his fears as to this mysterious paternity; even a king would own such a daughter, were there not some disgraceful obstacle. ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... yield obedience to the latter, whatever might be his commands. This declaration appeared very much to dissatisfy all who were present, and when they observed that I was not to be shaken, they declared that my right being independent of my will, my resistance would not be the slightest obstacle to the measures they might deem it necessary to adopt for the ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... services of the administration to the railway managers to see to it that justice was done the railroads in the outcome. I felt warranted in assuring them that no obstacle of law would be suffered to stand in the way of their increasing their revenues to meet the expenses resulting from the change so far as the development of their business and of their administrative efficiency did not prove adequate to meet them. The public and the ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... taken away bodily, to crumble up as it was borne along, and augment the power of the water, which became a wave charged with stones, masses of rock, and beams of wood, ready to batter into nothingness every obstacle ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... disarmed justice." Daily they grow bitter and excited around the doors of the bakeries, where, kept waiting a long time, they are not sure of obtaining bread. You can imagine the fury and the force with which they will storm any obstacle to which their attention ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... work went very slowly, and now and then was stopped short for a while by some obstacle that had to be overcome in any rough and ready way that I could think of, I did get on; and at last I had my boat together on the lines that her builders had planned. Yet while, in a way, she was finished, there ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... Landing get its name?" I ask the Primrose Captain. "Some ould fish o' the Hudson's Bay," from the tightly-bitten black pipe leaves one wondering if Lord Strathcona (Sir Donald Smith) was meant. At Smith's Landing we encounter the only obstacle to steamboat navigation in the magnificent stretch of sixteen hundred miles between Fort McMurray and the Arctic Ocean. Between Smith's Landing and Fort Smith the Slave River presents sixteen miles of churning rapids with a total drop of two hundred ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... had by this time come to regard as quite an extraneous part of their travelling, not so much a "conveyance" as something to be conveyed,—and the four took their way over the stones, amused at this new and most unexpected obstacle to their progress. Hastening across the fissure, they went and placed themselves (always under umbrellas) beside a troop of little vagabond boys,—who had come to see the fun, and had secured good front places on the opposite bank,—to view the diligence brought down the sharp declivity ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... of the mind with "white paper void of all characters," to free his famous "Inquiry" from that powerful obstacle to his system, the absurd belief of "innate ideas," of notions of objects before objects were presented to observation. Our philosopher considered that this simple analogy sufficiently described the manner in which he conceived ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... rumours; at last there bursts out an eruption of greater or less violence—the destructive flood overleaps its barriers, and flows forth, carrying devastation and ruin in one direction of another, until its energies are exhausted, or its progress stopped by some obstacle that it cannot overcome, and it subsides reluctantly and perforce. Such a time was that on which Ramesses III. was cast. Wars threatened him on every side. On his north-eastern frontier the Shasu or Bedouins of the desert ravaged and plundered, at once harrying the Egyptian ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... and he was wandering through a tedious maze of low-arched rooms—so low, sometimes, that he must creep upon his hands and knees to make his way along; it was close and dark, and every way he turned, some obstacle impeded his progress. There were insects, too, hideous crawling things, with eyes that stared upon him, and filled the very air around, glistening horribly amidst the thick darkness of the place. The walls and ceiling were alive with reptiles—the vault expanded to an enormous size—frightful figures ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... slope, had been laboriously displaced and moved to the rigorous parade line drawn by the street surveyor, no matter how irregular and independent their design and structure. Happily, the few scrub-oaks and low bushes which formed the scant vegetation of this vast sand dune offered no obstacle and suggested no incongruity. Beside the house before which Mr. Bly now stood, a prolific Madeira vine, quickened by the six months' sunshine, had alone survived the displacement of its foundations, and in its untrimmed luxuriance half hid the ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... that he painstakingly imagined every obstacle that might be put in his way. During the last half hour of his scrambling travel, for example, he was tormented by a measure his enemies might have used to make him advertise his presence. If they simply laid rifle cartridges on the ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... might at once see, as he turned the street corner, that wife and child were well and happy. Not another Ghetto in all Bohemia could show a handsomer and happier couple than Ascher and his wife. "Wild" Ascher was one of those intrepid, venturesome spirits, to whom no obstacle is so great that it cannot be surmounted. And the success which crowned his long, persistent wooing was often cited as striking testimony to his indomitable will. Gudule was famous throughout the ...
— A Ghetto Violet - From "Christian and Leah" • Leopold Kompert
... No obstacle stood in the way of her free choice of alternatives. After their early dinner at three o'clock, Miss Pink habitually retired to her own room "to meditate," as she expressed it. Her "meditations" inevitably ended in a sound sleep ...
— My Lady's Money • Wilkie Collins
... philosophy out of the scientific method itself must depend at last the only possibility, for reasonable men, of believing equally in the real principles of mechanical science and in the ideal principles of ethical science. To-day the greatest obstacle to such a reasonable belief is the "philosophical idealism" which directly contradicts it; and the greatest reform needed in modern thought, above all in the theory of ethics, is the substitution of the scientific method for the idealistic method ...
— A Public Appeal for Redress to the Corporation and Overseers of Harvard University - Professor Royce's Libel • Francis Ellingwood Abbot
... Sampaolo," she argued calmly, "is not free to marry whom he will. He has his inheritance to regain, his mission to fulfil. I will never allow myself to be made an obstacle to that. He must marry no one but his cousin. I will never stand between him and her—between him and what is equally his interest ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... Lincoln changed the situation of affairs at a blow. From holding a little oval of territory about the mouth of the Severn as the utmost she had gained, with small immediate prospect of enlarging it, Matilda found the way to the throne directly open before her with no obstacle in sight not easily overcome. She set out at once for Winchester. On his side, Bishop Henry was in no mood to stake his position and influence on the cause of his brother. Stephen's attitude towards him and towards the Church had smoothed the way for Matilda at the ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... seventeenth and last, as the occupation of the capital by the peninsula troops is an obstacle to the realization of the treaty, this difficulty must be vanquished; but as the chief of the imperial army desires to bring this about, not by force, but by gentler means, General O'Donoju offers to employ his authority with the troops, that they may leave the capital without any effusion ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... torrent, and they had often to search for hours for a place where it was possible to cross. To make things worse, they were drenched with bitter rain half the time, and trails of dingy mist obscured their path, but they toiled on stubbornly through every obstacle, though it was only by the tensest effort that Wyllard kept pace with his companion. The gaunt, long-haired Lewson seemed proof against physical weariness, and there was seldom any change in the expression of his ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... line there was a congestion Neale had not observed before in all the work. Freight-cars, loaded with stone and iron beams and girders for bridge-work, piles of ties and piles of rails, and gangs of idle men attested to the delay caused by an obstacle to progress. The sight aggressively stimulated Neale. He felt very curious to learn the cause of the setback, and his old scorn of difficulties ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... Possibly, it would hardly look so now; it is enough if it looked so then. The greatest obstacle to being heroic is the doubt whether one may not be going to prove one's self a fool; the truest heroism is to resist the doubt; and the profoundest wisdom to know when it ought to be resisted, and ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... rode to and fro, like men engaged in a local enquiry of much interest. Happily, for the hidden party, the grass in which they were concealed, not only served to skreen them from the eyes of the savages, but opposed an obstacle to prevent their horses, which were no less rude and untrained than their riders, from trampling on them, in their irregular ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... replied, "if I cannot preach the Gospel in America, then I will go to heathen lands and preach it." I thought I might be useful on heathen ground, if I could ever learn the language of the Chinese, about which I had many forebodings. The foreign tongue became to me more and more an obstacle and a horror, until I resolved if I could get an invitation to preach in the English language, I would accept it. So one day, finding Rev. Dr. Van Vranken, one of our theological professors (blessed be his memory), ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... being made for the colony, and a number of the houses being roofed, and sufficiently finished for occupation, the admiral prepared for his departure, when an unlooked-for obstacle presented itself. The heavy rains which had so long distressed him during this expedition had recently ceased. The torrents from the mountains were over; and the river which had once put him to such peril by its sudden swelling, had now become so shallow that there was not above half a ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... qu'au premier coup d'oeil, ces zig-zags ne ressemblent beaucoup aux effets des eaux courantes. Cependant ce caractere appartient bien plus aux eaux qui se frayent une route, qu'a celles qui font des depots. Un riviere qui creuse son lit, se detourne a la rencontre d'un obstacle, et ronge le cote oppose; c'est ce qui produit ses meandres. Mais on ne voit point les memes causes de zig-zags dans les courans au sein de la mer; a moins qu'il n'y ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... king exercised by suppressing a host of useless offices, household appointments, judicial and diplomatic charges, which were maintained for the purpose of corruption. But what was probably the most fatal obstacle to any pressure for reform was the triumph of public opinion to which Pitt owed his power. The utter overthrow of the Coalition, the complete victory of public opinion, had done much to diminish the sense of any real danger from the opposition which Parliament ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green
... just as when he was a child in a college town he had played with the idea of getting up in church and walking about on the backs of the pews. This would be pleasanter, and the subsequent getaway even easier. He glanced at the dark lawn behind him; there appeared to be no obstacle to escape. ...
— The Beauty and the Bolshevist • Alice Duer Miller
... was the keynote of Miss Joliffe's life; to religion her thought reverted as the needle to the pole, and to it she turned for an explanation now. It must be some religious consideration that had proved an obstacle to Anastasia. ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... woman, full of bright intelligence, eager for information, and with scarcely an outward trace remaining of her former fragile health. Still those mysterious swoons occasionally visited her, forming an insurmountable obstacle to her mingling in general society, which she was in all other respects so well fitted to adorn. They occurred without any warning or apparent cause; one moment she would be engaged in animated conversation, and the next, white and rigid as a statue, she would fall back in her chair insensible ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... conferring on his country a classical theatre, produced two erudite comedies, but he was born a pastoral poet, and made himself a dramatist only by imitation. Ferreira belonged to the same school, and the favor bestowed by the court on the dramas of these two poets, was one obstacle to the formation of a national drama. Another was, the pertinacious attachment of the Portuguese to pastoral poetry, and nothing could be more contrary to dramatic life than the languor, sentimentality, and monotony ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... clumsily planned, for though subtle as a fox, Roderic was yet an ignorant man, even for those uncultured times, and he had failed to take into account the two sons of Earl Hamish, both of whom stood between him and the coveted earldom, and who now appeared to him as an obstacle not easy ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... stood over the prostrate body of his master, showed his concern for him by many little signs of emotion, and at last brought William to an application of his energies, by causing him to notice his movements. William then raised his languid frame; and with drooping spirits, gazed on the fresh obstacle before him. He perceived it had a current, running opposite to that which he had lately crossed; and then the truth flashed across his mind, that it must be another bend of the same creek, forming a pocket of the land on which ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... thought, seems to be wonderfully adapted and exactly proportioned to the circumstances in which individuals may happen to be placed—a power which, in most cases, is sufficient to carry a man through and over every obstacle that may happen to be thrown in his path through life, no matter how high or how steep the mountain may be, but which often forsakes him the moment the summit is gained, the point of difficulty ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... Colonel. He had no desire to oust him unfairly; he was proud of being always fair; yet he did long to engross the whole estate under one title. Out of his luxurious idleness he had conceived this desire, and thought little of so slight an obstacle as being already somewhat in debt to old Charlie for money borrowed, and for which Belles Demoiselles was, of course, good, ten times over. Lots, buildings, rents, all, might as well be his, he thought, to give, keep, or destroy. "Had he but the old man's heritage. Ah! he might ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... The next obstacle in the way of normal development of industry is the lack of transportation facilities. This cause alone forced 223 factories with 128,000 workers to curtail their output, and fifty-six factories with ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... thousand a year were not to be trifled with by a girl who had made herself unpopular and who was twenty-six. And for her own luck the moment had come just before it was too late—a second marriage, wealth, the end of the hideous struggle. Joan was the obstacle in her path, and she must be forced out of it. She glanced quickly at Tembarom. He was trying to talk to Joan now. He was trying to please her. She evidently had a fascination for him. He looked at her in a curious way when she was not ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... obstacle to the dialogue soon becomes, however, a deficit of subjects rather than of words. Most of these ladies never go out except to mass and to parties, they never read, and if one of them has some knowledge of geography, it is quite an extended education; so that, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... was so violently irritated by any obstacle which opposed him, and who treated with so much hauteur everybody who ventured to resist his inflexible will, was no longer the same man when, as a conqueror, he received the vanquished generals at Ulm. He condoled with them on their misfortune; and this, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... no doubt but that by following the usual Oriental custom of backsheesh, and dividing L10 or L20 among the officials, every obstacle would have been removed to my obtaining the title-deeds of a property for which I paid the sum ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... welcomes men who do things. The world judges by outward appearances. If your heart is sick, if your courage is low, don't show it. Put up a stiff attitude and act with confidence and that attitude will carry you over many a pitfall and past many an obstacle. ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... their portholes to obtain a clearer view. Five yards along to the left, a group of Germans were holding up the advancing British. They had evidently prepared a barricade in case of a possible bombing attack on our part, and this obstacle, together with a fusillade of bombs which met them, prevented our troops from pushing on. McKnutt seized his gun and pushed it through the mounting, but found that he could not swing round far enough to get an aim on the enemy. ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh
... granted that this relative condition between the plate and atmosphere, disposing the former to receive the humidity of the latter, constitutes the great obstacle the operator has to contend with in producing, a clear proof upon the plate, the remedy naturally suggests itself, and is very simple. It consists in merely heating the plate above the temperature of the atmosphere, previous to polishing, and retaining that temperature during the operation. Various ...
— American Handbook of the Daguerrotype • Samuel D. Humphrey
... friends that you'll again become prospective husband and wife if the obstacle in your path ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... it many bitter doubts. So long as Greifenstein and Clara had been alive, Hilda's marriage with Greif had seemed right in her eyes. She regretted Rieseneck's disgrace, as a family disaster, but her conscience was not so sensitive as to look at it in the light of an obstacle ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... out for the conquest of the island all would be over and the insurrection at his mercy. I ventured to suggest that he would find the country more difficult than he supposed, and that the total want of roads would be a grave obstacle to such rapid success. He replied that it could not be more difficult than Montenegro, and he had conquered that, etc., and I left him greatly relieved as to the probability of ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... swerve yourselves! man has ye there. Swerve me? The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run. Over unsounded gorges, through the rifled hearts of mountains, under torrents' beds, unerringly I rush! Naught's an obstacle, naught's an ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... into the great circuit of the general winds, and be thus carried again into the equatorial current. Whenever these masses of air, impregnated with humidity during their passage over the ocean, meet with an obstacle, such as a chain of mountains, for example, they slide up the acclivity, and, when they reach the crest, find themselves relieved from a portion of the column of air which pressed upon them. Thus, dilating by reason of their elasticity, they cause a considerable ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... pollen from the same plant, but can be fertilised by pollen from any other individual of the same species. There are also very many species which are partially sterile with their own pollen. Lastly, there is a large class in which the flowers present no apparent obstacle of any kind to self-fertilisation, nevertheless these plants are frequently intercrossed, owing to the prepotency of pollen from another individual or variety ...
— The Effects of Cross & Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom • Charles Darwin
... America was quite unknown, or at least doubted. Finally, in 1729, Behring anew sailed through the Sound, and attached his name to it. He did not sail, however, very far (to 172 deg. W. Long.) along the north coast of Asia, although he does not appear to have met with any obstacle from ice. Nearly fifty years afterwards Cook concluded in these waters the series of splendid discoveries with which he enriched geographical science. After having, in 1778, sailed a good way eastwards along the north coast of America, he turned towards the west, and reached the 180th ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... told Malcolm so much as that he had spoken to his lady- love for him, and that she had avowed that it was not himself, but her own vows, that was the obstacle. ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... line that they afford great facilities for attack. The defences had been originally constructed on a magnificent scale and with great skill, according to the ancient art of war. Even though they were partly ruined by time and weakened by careless reparations, they still offered a formidable obstacle to the imperfect science of the engineers in Mahomet's army. Two lines of wall, each flanked with its own towers, rose one above the other, overlooking a broad and deep ditch. The interval between these walls enabled the defenders to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... unreasonable. Though they still upheld Marcellus, they frankly gave up and condemned Photinus. Meanwhile Constans pressed the execution of the decrees of Sardica, and Constantius, with a Persian war on his hands, could not refuse. The last obstacle was removed by the death of Gregory of Cappadocia in 345. It was not till the third invitation that Athanasius returned. He had to take leave of his Italian friends, and the Emperor's letters were only too plainly insincere. However, ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... glance backward and followed his companion's example, drawing rein so that their steeds settled down into a hand-gallop, still leaving their pursuers farther behind. The ground was now perfectly level, stretching for three or four miles without an obstacle, and then the horizon line was broken by one of the many kopjes of the country, one which lay right ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn
... seldom strikes where we would have it. If heaven were pleased to remove him we should have one obstacle the less in our way; but many would still remain. Death would have to be busy to ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... mother eagerly placing funds at the doctor's disposal. And then came the question of how we were to get to the great northern island, for as a rule facilities for touching there were not very great; but somehow this proved to be no difficulty, all that we undertook being easily mastered, every obstacle melting away at the first attack. In fact the journey to New Guinea was like a walk into a trap—wonderfully easy. The difficulty was how to ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... appalling fire that was poured into them. They did succeed in capturing Saba village, though the place was a death-trap after it was taken. Just before sunset Tel es Saba succumbed to the incessant hammering it had received all day, and one great obstacle ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett |
