"Obstructive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a violation of decorum. Is that clear? It is just possible for things to be arranged so that all parties may be happy in their way without much hubbub. Mind, it is not I who have willed it so. I am, and I am forced to be, passive. But I will not be obstructive." ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... wistfully mothered the obstructive Scrap at tea, felt too that she had had a curious day. Like Mrs. Fisher's, it had been active, but, unlike Mrs. Fisher's, only active in mind. Her body had been quite still; her mind had not been still at all, it had been excessively ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... Christmas Number of Scribner's Magazine, 1887, an article, "In Dickens-Land," by Edward Percy Whipple, in which this veteran and appreciative critic of the eminent English writer's works points out that, "In addition to the practical life that men and women lead, constantly vexed as it is by obstructive facts, there is an interior life which they imagine, in which facts smoothly give way to sentiments, ideas, and aspirations. Dickens has, in short, discovered and colonized one of the waste districts ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... an incongruous and obstructive term to describe the substance of the world (which, if it subtends the changes in the world and causes them, must evidently change with them), but even mathematical space and time, in their ideal infinity, may be very far from describing truly the medium and groundwork ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... must the mechanism of the body be cleansed and freed from obstructive and destructive materials, but the injured parts must be repaired, morbid growths and abnormal formations dissolved and eliminated and lesions in the bony structures corrected ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... Vale of Evesham is exceedingly hard, and in the town and some villages was formerly much contaminated. After great opposition from obstructive ratepayers, a splendid supply was obtained from the Cotswolds above Broadway, about six miles away, of much softer and really pure spring water. It comes in pipes by gravitation, so there is no expense ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... apt to excuse the slower rate of liberal progress in our Old World by contrasting the obstructive barriers of prejudice, survival, solecism, anachronism, convention, institution, all so obstinately rooted, even when the branches seem bare and broken, in an old world, with the open and disengaged ground of the new. Yet in fact your difficulties were at least as ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... Law, or else is broken to pieces upon it, according as it moves with evolution or against it.[35] Only in one sense, then, is it fatal; it cannot be destroyed save by an opposing force of the same momentum. For instance, in order to annihilate an obstructive force, created in the past, the soul must expend an amount of energy that is equal and opposite to that force; it meanwhile cannot devote itself to any other work, thus causing, in one sense, a useless production of energy; in other words, evolution ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... are by fanciful analogies, facts misunderstood or misstated, and illustrations selected without discrimination or applicability. Theories do sometimes conduce to the discovery of truth, but are often obstructive; occupy the mind, like theological controversy, without advancing science; and are viewed with the same aversion by the philosopher that the political abstractions tendered to the multitude by the demagogue are ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous
... to their chagrin, Mr. Tippett's premises completely gutted. For three days all our traffic entered and left the town perforce by the north side; but two years after, on the completion of the railway line to Troy, these obstructive gatehouses were removed, to give ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... passing cloud before the sun; Space hath no record where the mist hath been. Boots it to us if Shakspeare erred like man? Why idly question that most mystic life? Eno' the giver in his gifts to scan; To bless the sheaves with which thy fields are rife, Nor, blundering, guess through what obstructive clay The glorious corn-seed struggled up ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the payment of interest and even the principal when it was due. So they elected a Populist legislature and passed a law providing that a mortgagee could not foreclose his mortgage under two years. They did this by stay laws and by requiring an obstructive procedure in collection of debts. As a result, capital fled the state as men would flee yellow fever. When there was no money at all left in the state and they found that they couldn't get any, they began to recognize the benefit in money loaned on mortgages. Their next ...
— Ethics in Service • William Howard Taft
... would never occur to anybody now in Soissons or Laon to make the journey to Paris, as people did a hundred and fifty years ago, to drink the water of the Seine, as being 'the best in the world, and a specific against burning fevers and obstructive ailments.' ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... immaterial, became more and more like the universal shimmer that dissolves the world to failing eyes, Mr. Royall's presence began to detach itself with rocky firmness from this elusive background. She had always thought of him—when she thought of him at all—as of someone hateful and obstructive, but whom she could outwit and dominate when she chose to make the effort. Only once, on the day of the Old Home Week celebration, while the stray fragments of his address drifted across her troubled mind, had she caught a glimpse of another being, a being so different from the dull-witted ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... day wore along I improved on my obstructive tactics. When the Elsinore was up in the eye of the wind, and making sternway, I found that by putting the wheel sharply over, one way or the other, I could swing her bow off. Then, when she had paid off ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... and there was no moving you! There was some obscurity about this saying; but no doubt its esoteric meaning was, that once you accounted for anything by direct Divine interposition, you stood committed to a controversial attitude which would render you an obstructive to liberal thought. ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... about quarter size, was completed when my attention was called to an American invention, in which the same result was stated to be attained more effectively by blowing the mercury spray through the triturated material by means of a steam jet. I had already encountered a difficulty, since found so obstructive by experimentalists in the same direction, that is, the getting of the mercury back into its liquid metallic form. This difficulty I am now convinced can be largely obviated by my own device of using a very weak solution of sulphuric acid (it can hardly ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... darkness, due to the storm, has now been succeeded by the more natural darkness of night, the trackers, for this day, cannot proceed further, were they ever so eager. Besides, there is another bar to their continuing; one still more directly obstructive, even forbidding their exit from the cave. This, the arroyo, which now in full flood fills the ravine up to the cliff's base, there leaving no path for either man or horse. That by which they approached is covered beyond fording depth, with a current so swift as to sweep the strongest animal ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... proceeded, "that the sincere friendship with which you still regard him would prevent any encouragement to continue an attachment, unhappily now hopeless and obstructive to his prospects." ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the Irish party were beginning to apply and develop that use of Parliamentary forms for obstructive purposes which had been first systematically attempted by the "Colonels" in opposition to Mr. Cardwell's Bill for abolishing purchase in the Army, and Liberals were a little scandalized by their allies. In the close of ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... Chicago. Besides H and K, four members of the Huggins-series of hydrogen-lines imprinted themselves on the plate.[611] Meanwhile M. Deslandres was enabled, by fitting quartz lenses to his spectroscope, and substituting a reflecting for a refracting telescope, to get rid of the obstructive action of glass upon the shorter light-waves, and thus to widen the scope of his inquiry into the peculiarities of those derived from prominences.[612] As the result, not only all the nine white-star lines were photographed from a brilliant sun-flame, but five additional ones ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... at that moment? In other words, how was a young lady in Magdalen's critical position likely to while away the hours until Mr. Huxtable 's return? If there was an obstructive gentleman in the background, it would be mere waste of time to pursue the question. But if the inference which the handbill suggested was correct—if she was really alone at that moment in the city of York—where was she ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... powerfully; but when the new departure in scientific doctrine which is associated with the name of the great naturalist Charles Darwin began, it was not only a reaction against a barbarous pseudo-evangelical teleology intolerably obstructive to all scientific progress, but was accompanied, as it happened, by discoveries of extraordinary interest in physics, chemistry, and that lifeless method of evolution which its investigators called Natural ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... rich by insisting upon high security or high freights. The control of British coal-mining and shipping is in the national interests—for international interests—rather than for the creation of that particularly passive, obstructive, and wasteful type of wealth, the wealth of the mere profiteer, is as urgent a necessity for the commercial welfare of France and Italy and the endurance of the Great Alliance as it is for the well-being of the ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... this fear. It will not be improper to say a word on the subject of expense. The gentlemen who composed General Washington's first administration took up, too universally, a practice of general entertainment, which was unnecessary, obstructive of business, and so oppressive to themselves, that it was among the motives for their retirement. Their successors profited from the experiment, and lived altogether as private individuals, and so have ever continued to ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... taken place in the Councils of His Imperial Majesty, introductive of persons more favourable to the interests of Portugal than to furtherance of the judicious measures contemplated by His Majesty for the consolidation of the newly-constituted empire. To the obstructive aspirations of these persons—in ill-concealed concert with the designs of the parent state—my annexation of the Northern provinces necessarily proved fatal; and they ever afterwards regarded me with an animosity which appeared to increase ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 2 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... discussion were as clean and direct as this, we should have made greater progress in this subject by now. Greek intellectual integrity, and clarity of thought and expression, were not hampered by a festering and obstructive legacy of what it is a libel on a great ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... Caves the Men of the Tribe worked furiously, dragging the trunks of trees together at the water's edge, lashing them with ropes of vine and cords of hide, and laboriously lopping some of the more obstructive branches by the combined use of fire and split stones. The women, and the lame slave Ook-ootsk—with the old men, who, though their hearts were still high, were too frail of their hands for such a heavy ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... happens that a treaty which the State has entered into later proves to be obstructive to some expansion which is thought to be a necessity of the State's destiny, that treaty may be disregarded with the full approval of Germany's national morality, although similar conduct on the part of an individual in Germany would be ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... this period was most conspicuous politically was that which resulted in Roman Catholic emancipation, and here, too, the Utilitarians might be anticipating a complete triumph of their principles. The existing disqualifications, indeed, were upheld by little but the purely obstructive sentiment. When the duke of York swore that 'so help him God!' he would oppose the change to the last, he summed up the whole 'argument' against it. Canning and Huskisson here represented the policy not only ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... compliance therewith, enacted by law, and all the mischiefs established by a throne of iniquity since the unhappy restoration of Charles II. to this day. Yet few have ever zealously contended and fewer have constantly continued in contending, against these obstructions, so obstructive to the cause, many have kept secret the first motions and appearances of these things, while they might have been suppressed and overcome, and the generality have passed them over in silence, and not made known, ...
— The Auchensaugh Renovation of the National Covenant and • The Reformed Presbytery
... very soon, papa?" asked Miss Granger, with another gulp, as if there were still some obstructive substance ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... Invasion was met by diplomacy, and slaughter and bloodshed were relegated to the executioner. Incredible as it seems, it is said that from his windows this king could look out upon an avenue of gibbets upon which hung the bodies of his enemies. The humorous spirit in which he disposed of obstructive nobles is illustrated by a note to an unsuspecting victim. "Fair cousin, come and give us your advice. We have need of so wise a head as yours." And in the morning the fair cousin's wise head was in a ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele
... set them going, and left them— then I say, If his machine interfered with his answering the prayer of a single child, he would sweep it from him—not to bring back chaos, but to make room for his child. But order is divine, and cannot be obstructive to its own higher ends; it must subserve them. Order, free order, neither chaos, nor law unpossessed and senseless, is the home of Thought. If you say There can be but one perfect way, I answer, Yet the perfect way to bring a thing so far, to a certain crisis, can ill be the perfect ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... woman's age. Its sulkiness and eccentricity and occasional indecency are just what one would expect from a Sub-Consciousness, whose thoughts have no central I to keep them in order. (Compare Goethe's explanation of the obscenities of Ophelia.) Sometimes, too, there are Obstructive Associations, which account for its inability to make up its want of mind; and as there are usually several persons at table, the result is complicated by their separate Sub-Consciousnesses. In brief, table-turning is a method of interrogating ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... a generation began to take form in the House of Commons. The Conservatives, led by Mr. Balfour, put up an obstructive fight to every line and almost every word of the finance bill which was founded on the Budget. Departmental duties all day, the onward fight with his finance measure throughout the night and often the early hours of the morning, became the routine ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... history, on the side of Philip and his son." The tendency of writers upon this period is thus to exalt the man with a great national policy in his head though with a sword in his hand, at the expense of him who, never so honestly, dinned the populace with his high-sounding pleas for an obstructive course. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... for Ireland, which movement was started in the "seventies," was gaining ground, and every election returned to the House more members pledged to its support. Those who were bent upon obtaining Home Rule at any cost used obstructive means against other legislation to gain their object, but as yet the movement was confined to the members who had been elected ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... English History. He remembered that if Parliaments grow obstructive, the way is not to fight them but to pack them with the right kind of material. Tampering with the boroughs, had so filled the House of Commons with Tories that it had almost ceased to be a representative body, and if Pitt would not bow to his wishes, ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... object to be known with the sense-organs; as e.g. any action which, in the case of the apprehension of a species or of one's own face, causes connexion between the organ of sight and an individual of the species, or a looking-glass. Or it would be such as to remove some obstructive impurity in the mind of the knowing person; of this kind is the action of calmness and self- restraint with reference to scripture which is the means of apprehending the highest reality. Moreover, even if it were admitted that consciousness may be an object of consciousness, ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... as youth keeps its head it will be the better for the successive hurdles which obstructive age, or even middle-age, puts in its path. A few stumbles will teach it care ...
— Success (Second Edition) • Max Aitken Beaverbrook
... pronounced absolutely deadly by one set of partisans, and absolutely harmless by another. Somewhere between lies the truth. If any human being has actually been bitten by a heloderma, the event has either escaped notice or has been so hedged about with obstructive legend as to have forfeited scientific credence. But the saurian itself has been studied and dissected, and its venom has been analyzed. The venom is related to snake poison, but is neither crotaline nor elapine. From animal experiments it is thought that it might be fatal ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... strikes and wages and hard times. Being from the Tyne, and a man who had gained and lost in his own pocket by these fluctuations, he had much to say, and held strong opinions on the subject. He spoke sharply of the masters, and, when I led him on, of the men also. The masters had been selfish and obstructive; the men selfish, silly, and light-headed. He rehearsed to me the course of a meeting at which he had been present, and the somewhat long discourse which he had there pronounced, calling into question ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... niece. Mr. Gibson had been at the house that very morning, and Dorothy had given herself airs. At least, so Miss Stanbury thought. And during the last three or four days, whenever Mr. Gibson's name had been mentioned, Dorothy had become silent, glum, and almost obstructive. Miss Stanbury had been at the trouble of explaining that she was specially anxious to have that little matter of the engagement settled at once. She knew that she was going to behave with great generosity;—that she was going to sacrifice, ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... straitest Tory will admit, there were in that world a great many abuses as they are called, that is to say, a great many things which, once useful and excellent, had either decayed into positive nuisances, or dried up into neutral and harmless but obstructive rubbish. There were also many silly and some mischievous people, as well as some wise and useful ones, who defended the abuses. Sydney Smith was an ideal soldier of reform for his time, and in his way. He was not extraordinarily long-sighted—indeed ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... by that infirmity of human nature, which makes us very ready to believe what it is on other grounds convenient to us to believe. Nobody attributes to pure malevolence the heartiness with which the great corporation of lawyers, for example, resist the removal of superfluous and obstructive forms in their practice; they have come to look on such forms as indispensable safeguards. Hence powerful teachers and preachers of all kinds have been spontaneously inclined to suppose a necessity, which had no real existence, of ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... mound-fang; "to hinder" was [Ch] woman-fang. This last example may seem a little strange until we remember that man must have played the principal part in the development of writing, and that from the masculine point of view there is something essentially obstructive and unmanageable in woman's nature. It may be remarked, by the way, that the element "woman" is often the determinative in characters that stand for unamiable qualities, e.g. [Ch][Ch] "jealous," [Ch][Ch] "treacherous," [Ch] "false" and [Ch] "uncanny." This class of characters, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... force ten years before, although a decided improvement on the old state of affairs, did not produce universal satisfaction.[3] The constitution of the legislative council was complained of, and it was described as an obstructive body which disregarded the wishes of the people. Bills of the utmost importance, which had been passed by large majorities in the House of Assembly, and which were demanded by the people, were frequently rejected by the council without being even discussed. ...
— Wilmot and Tilley • James Hannay
... labor supply, and the city has not received a sufficient supply of negroes, and certainly not so many as smaller industrial towns, although the railroads and a few of the industrial concerns of the locality have had labor agents in the South. Yet, in spite of the difficulties because of the obstructive tactics adopted in certain southern communities to prevent the negro exodus, they have nevertheless succeeded in bringing several thousand negroes into this district. "One company, for instance," says Epstein, "which imported ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott
... had not abandoned the arbitrary principles of his family, even in his worst adversity. His interference with the discussions on Poyning's Law, and the Inns of Court bill, had shocked some of his most devoted adherents. But he proceeded from obstructive to active despotism. He doubled, by his mere proclamation, the enormous subsidy of 20,000 pounds monthly voted him by the Houses. He established, by the same authority, a bank, and decreed in his own name a bank restriction act. He debased ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... anti-trust act is seen to be effective for the accomplishment of the purpose of its enactment, we are met by a cry from many different quarters for its repeal. It is said to be obstructive of business progress to be an attempt to restore old-fashioned methods of destructive competition between small units, and to make impossible those useful combinations of capital and the reduction of the cost of production that are ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... considerable space to its description, dividing the disease into two forms: the inflammatory, such as may follow venereal primary sores or operations on the penis, not excepting circumcision; and the obstructive variety, such as may follow embolism or any mechanical obstruction, either purposely or accidentally applied. Of the latter he gives a number of quoted instances; he only admits seeing one case, that of an aged man in the Pennsylvania Hospital, in whom the disease ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... very Conservative in tendency, the ancient cleavage is likely to disappear. Indeed, an ideal Second Chamber ought perhaps to give special weight to urban and industrial interests, while aiming, not at an obstructive, but at a revising body of steady, moderate, ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... conceive of it. The power of moral prejudices has penetrated deeply into the most intellectual world, the world apparently most indifferent and unprejudiced, and has obviously operated in an injurious, obstructive, blinding, and distorting manner. A proper physio-psychology has to contend with unconscious antagonism in the heart of the investigator, it has "the heart" against it even a doctrine of the reciprocal ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... thought I had lost you," said Suzanne, making her way through an obstructive knot of ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... electoral count my immediate predecessor (Mr. Randall) decided, in principle, the point involved here. On February 24, 1877, after an obstructive motion had been made, the following language was used, as found in the Record of ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... art that is enough for him. Life, whether or no it be the slow process of evolution it is generally supposed to be, can and does look after itself. Society is certainly a nuisance and a heavy drag upon human energy, but so long as that energy can express itself in art, society cannot be altogether obstructive. That, says the intellectual, is well enough for the artist, but what of the individuals to whom art can only be at best a keen stimulus, at worst a drugging pleasure? Is the dead weight of society altogether to crush their delight in life? What is society? ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... transfer of freight from Greenville to Bay Ridge will relieve the inner waters of the harbor of a large volume of obstructive car-float traffic. There appears to be no reason why this traffic should not be eventually conducted through tunnels under the outer harbor, should future transportation conditions justify the enormous ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 • Charles W. Raymond
... remaining offices from being filled. This also accounts for Rufus having been confined in a cell. He later on brought Favonius the aedile to the same place on some small charge, in order that he might have a companion in his disgrace. But all the tribunes introduced various obstructive pleas, proposing, among other things, to appoint military tribunes, so that more persons, as formerly, might come to office. When no one would heed them, they declared that Pompey, at all events, must be chosen dictator. By ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... to combat the theological; but now it has served its destructive purpose, and tends to become obstructive, for, having destroyed the old, it will not permit the new. Its chief dogma has always been liberty of conscience with the liberty of press and speech which that implies; but liberty of conscience really means little more than absence of intellectual regulation; and even as ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... I dare say, by any of the old romantic methods of a convent or disinheritance; but she is an invalid; she wants to keep her daughter with her, and she avails with the girl's conscience by being simply dependent and obstructive. The young people have carried their engagement through, and now such hope as they have is fixed upon her finally yielding in the matter of their marriage, though Glendenning was obliged to confess that there ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... typhoon has spent, And willing, if her pilot thinks it best, To head a little nearer south by west. And this they feel: the ship came too near wreck, In the long quarrel for the quarter-deck, Now when she glides serenely on her way,— The shallows past where dread explosives lay,— The stiff obstructive's churlish game to try Let sleeping dogs and still torpedoes lie! And so I give you all the Ship of State; Freedom's last venture is her priceless freight; God speed her, keep her, bless her, while she steers Amid the breakers of unsounded years; Lead her through danger's paths with even ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... a fine opportunity for others of the gaol-birds to make a bolt; but for the obstructive coupling-chains no doubt some would avail themselves of it. These, however, hindered the attempt. There were no more restive horses, nor blundering coachmen to bring another carriage near enough for ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... faculties, for I opened the port-side locker, reached down, and grasped a sticky body, which turned out to be a pot of varnish. Recoiling wretchedly, I tried the opposite one, combating the embarrassing heel of the boat and the obstructive edges of the centre-board case. A medley of damp tins of varied sizes showed in the gloom, exuding a mouldy odour. Faded legends on dissolving paper, like the remnants of old posters on a disused hoarding, spoke of soups, curries, beefs, potted ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... much waste of labour and consequently of money in their establishments; that the Treasury had not risen to the occasion during the War, and the Committee had regretfully come to the conclusion that the War Office had been adopting a deliberately obstructive attitude." Mr. Runciman on the same occasion stated that "lax expenditure and loose control over distribution of public money went far beyond the immediate departments concerned. It went down into every factory, and the general effect was a scale of national extravagance ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson
... good flanking position for next day's battle. So the two sides met; and it was past midnight when Longstreet settled down. Lee wanted a sword thrust. Longstreet gave a pin prick. We shall meet Longstreet again, in the same character of obstructive subordinate, at Gettysburg. But he was, for the most part, a very good officer indeed; and the South, with its scanty supply of trained leaders, could not afford to make changes like the North. The fault, ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... weak monarchy. Lack of natural boundaries made national defense difficult. Civil war between the two peoples who composed the state and foreign war with the neighboring Germans worked havoc and distress. An obstructive parliament of great lords rendered effective administration impossible. The nobles possessed the property and controlled politics; in their hands the king gradually became a puppet. Poland seemed ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... trials, losses, and enforced dispersion during and at the end of the war, there was obviously no course left to the Americans, then in the midst of a deadly struggle, but to treat them as a dangerous and obstructive set. The New York Provincial Congress, in the fall of the year and later, dealt with them unsparingly; and no man wished to see the element rooted out more than John Jay—a fact to be borne in mind by those who condemn Lee and other American officers ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... Moreover, while the French in general made the Indian feel he was at all events a fellow human being, the average British colonist simply looked on him as so much vermin, to be destroyed together with the obstructive ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood
... the gloomy close of Eighteen Thirty Nine, MELBOURNE and PEEL began to melt, the P.O. "sticks" to pine, For vainly the Official ranks and the Obstructive host Had formed and squared 'gainst ROWLAND HILL'S plan, of the Penny Post. Still poor men paid their Ninepences for sending one thin sheet From Bethnal Green to Birmingham by service far from fleet; Still she who'd post a billet doux to Dublin from Thames ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, January 18, 1890 • Various
... larger demands upon the understanding, the same man may be simply mischievous. We see this in the case of Andrew Jackson, who at New Orleans was glorious; at Washington almost wholly pernicious; and in the case of Andrew Johnson, who was eminently useful to his country in 1861, but obstructive and perilous to it in 1866. For these Scotch-Irishmen, though they are usually very honest men, and often right in their opinions, are an uninstructable race, who stick to a prejudice as tenaciously as to a principle, and ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... a hand on the old man's shoulder, but Sagan shook it off—'then, Captain Colendorp, he must go—to make room for another who can better fill his place! Just as Wallenloup must go to give room to another and less obstructive chief.' ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... obstructive person in the train who required to be logically convinced first of the necessity for disturbing himself; he put his head angrily out of a window near Mark's: 'Here, guard!' he shouted importantly; 'what's all this? Why ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... Miriam now; he had never seen her before; he had never seen her till he saw her in her conditions. Oh her conditions—there were many things to be said about them; they were paltry enough as yet, inferior, inadequate, obstructive, as compared with the right, full, finished setting of such a talent; but the essence of them was now, irremovably, in our young man's eyes, the vision of how the uplifted stage and the listening house transformed ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... spiritual. As he reflects upon this the meaning of it becomes ever more clear and distinct, ordered and organized, and at the same time more substantial, more real, more lively and potent. In becoming known what was before dead and dark and threatening or obstructive or hostile is made transparent, alive, utilisable, contributing to the constantly growing self that knows and is known. Here is the growing point of reality, the fons emanationis of truth and worth and being, evidencing its power not as it were in increase ...
— Progress and History • Various
... movement towards collectivist organisation on the part of the Liberals rather strengthened than weakened my resolve to cross the floor of the house. It made it more necessary, I thought, to leaven the purely obstructive and reactionary elements that were at once manifest in the opposition. I assailed the land taxation proposals in one main speech, and a series of minor speeches in committee. The line of attack I chose was that the land was a ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... be no occasion for that. Where two things are both of God, it is not likely they will be found mutually obstructive." ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... his work, executed by him in the Castle of Wartburg; it was begun by him with his back to the wall, as it were, and under the protestation, as it seemed to him, of the prince of darkness himself, and finished in this obstructive element pretty much throughout, the New Testament in 1522, the Pentateuch in 1523, and the whole, the Apocrypha included, in 1534; he was fond of music, and uttered many an otherwise unutterable thing in the tones of his flute; "the devils fled from his flute," he says; "death-defiance on ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Travels sensed the possibility of Swift's use of certain portions of his narrative to vent disappointment at his failure to receive the church preferment he thought he deserved and to carry on his personal vendetta against obstructive bishops like the "crazy Prelate" Sharpe, Archbishop of York, one of the detestable and "dull Divines" pilloried in the autobiographical poem "The Author Upon ...
— A Letter From a Clergyman to his Friend, - with an Account of the Travels of Captain Lemuel Gulliver • Anonymous
... governing or senatorial aristocracy we find men of a great variety of character, from the old-fashioned nobilis, exclusive in society and obstructive in politics, to the man of individual genius and literary ability, whether of blue blood like Caesar, or like Cicero the scion of a municipal family which has never gained or sought political distinction. But for the purposes of this chapter we may discern ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... though enough so to show us that the bottom is very much weedgrown; and I was told that the weed is an American production, brought to England with importations of timber, and now threatening to choke up the Thames and other English rivers. I wonder it does not try its obstructive powers upon the Merrimack, the Connecticut, or the Hudson,—not to speak of the ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to judge of original works but of the criticisms of others upon them, states the matter very fairly. He says, "So far as routine and authority tend to embarrass energy and inventive genius, academies may be said to be obstructive to energy and inventive genius; and, to this extent, to the human spirit's general advance. But then this evil is so much compensated by the propagation on a large scale of the mental aptitudes and demands, which an open mind and a flexible intelligence ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... Council, two-thirds of the members of which are elected by L10 householders, which is yearly gaining power. The advent of Constitutional Government will depend entirely upon the progress of the colony; but at present it is far from being desirable, the elected members of the Council being distinctly the obstructive party, while the Governor and the Imperially appointed officials are the only persons who look beyond the squatting interest to that of ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... substitution of the appearance for the actual image, needless entanglement in the material is avoided. Weight and bulk are not indeed annihilated, but they are no longer of primary importance, and thus less obstructive. The work gains precisely in what it gives up. By the flat omission of depth infinite depth is acquired,—by the ignoring of size the expression of size becomes possible; a mountain, for instance, which would be an absurdity ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... describing and proposing a name for what they call 'a new species,' use that term to signify what was meant by it twenty or thirty years ago; that is, an originally distinct creation, maintaining its primitive distinction by obstructive generative peculiarities. The proposer of the new species now intends to state no more than he actually knows; as, for example, that the differences on which he founds the specific character are constant in individuals of both sexes, so far as observation ...
— The Origin of Species - From 'The Westminster Review', April 1860 • Thomas H. Huxley
... this assumption is the basis of most of the so-called educational campaigns. To give impetus to a new movement takes immense experience, shrewdness, tact, and many other qualities. The people are obstructive—that is conservative—in most things, and need ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... smaller. Regarding the merits of the Cape scheme, I heard different views expressed. Nobody seemed opposed in principle to the division of the Legislature into two houses, but many condemned the existing Council as being usually composed of second-rate men, and apt to be obstructive in its tendencies. Some thought the Council was a useful part of the scheme of government, because it interposed delay in legislation and gave time for reflection and further debate. One point came out pretty clearly. No difficulty is deemed to arise from the fact that ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... majority was ignored. There is much truth in the charge, for Andros was self-willed, imperious, and impatient of discussion. On the other hand the Puritan leaders inordinately loved controversy and debate. If Andros was peremptory, the Puritan councillors were obstructive. ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... difficulty in getting away from these souls. He succeeds by making promises to execute their desires—comparing his difficulty of advancing to the trouble a winner at dice experiences when bystanders crowd about him in obstructive congratulations and make his way impracticable until he gives some of his winnings to this one, and some ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... see you; as I tell but the truth, you will not suspect me of evasion. I am furnishing the house more for you than myself, and I shall establish you in it before I sail for India, which I expect to do in March, if nothing particularly obstructive occurs. I am now fitting up the green drawing-room; the red for a bed-room, and the rooms over as sleeping-rooms. They will be soon completed;—at ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... owing to the manner in which snow stuffs itself into neck, ears, nose, eyes, mouth—if open—and any convenient crevice of person or garments. The snow-shoes, too, which are so serviceable when you are above them, become exasperatingly obstructive when you are below them. After a struggle of two minutes I got my head clear, winked the snow out of my eyes, blew it from my mouth and nostrils, and looked up. Lumley was standing there with a bland smile on his ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... seriously bent on doing as much as possible for the recovery of the Palatinate. Just at that time Richelieu had stepped into power, and he expressly directed the policy of France to the destruction of the position which the Spaniards had occupied on the Middle Rhine. In spite of the obstructive efforts of a party which had both ecclesiastical and political objects in view, he concluded the arrangements for the marriage of the Princess to the Prince of Wales without any delay, even without waiting for the last ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... The good men must enlist on the side of the good forces. This religion especially approved all the economic virtues, and productive efforts, like the clearing of waste land, or other labor to increase favorable conditions and to overcome harmful or obstructive influences, were religious, and were counted as help to the ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... eminent orator lays hold of them and crushes them, and they can not even squeak. Or even as a still more eminent 'bus driver, when the street is blocked, and there seems to be no room for his own thumb, yet (with a gentle whistle and a wink) solves the jostling stir and balk, makes obstructive traffic slide, like an eddy obsequious, beside him and behind, and comes forth as the first of an orderly procession toward the public-house of ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... dinner at Brentham was almost his introduction into refined society. He had been a guest at the occasional banquets of his uncle; but these were festivals of the Picts and Scots; rude plenty and coarse splendor, with noise instead of conversation, and a tumult of obstructive defendants, who impeded, by their want of skill, the very convenience which they were purposed to facilitate. How different the surrounding scene! A table covered with flowers, bright with fanciful crystal, and porcelain that had belonged to sovereigns, who had given ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... excess: it is obstructive to little plans. It is difficult to warm yourself at a conflagration; the tempest may blow you away; the sun dazzles; lightning seldom strikes gently; the Nile overflows. Genius has its times of straying off into the infinite—and then what is the good wife to do ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... seemed in those days to thoughtful men the harsh law of being—that either we must submit to our elders and be stifled, or disregard them, disobey them, thrust them aside, and make our little step of progress before we too ossified and became obstructive in our turn. ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... a start as though intending to sweep past the log on which the three scouts were perched, Felix, waiting for some such move, paddled vigorously to head them off. This series of obstructive tactics, coupled with the demonstration made by the other boys, served to keep the hounds in check for ...
— The Boy Scouts of Lenox - Or The Hike Over Big Bear Mountain • Frank V. Webster
... referred to a direct popular vote. This proposal is only logical when coupled with the Initiative, by which a direct popular vote could compel parliament to pass any measure desired by the majority of voters; otherwise its object is merely obstructive. The third method is the supersession of parliament by the action of the executive. The difficulties which Liberal measures have experienced in the House of Lords, and the impossibility of the House of Commons dealing ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... perfected state, offer to the organism an immense advantage over lower organisms; but if they had been originated through gradual development, they would have been in their first {105} beginnings and earlier stages of development at least quite indifferent, often directly obstructive to the individual in its struggle for existence, and therefore would have been called into existence and developed by agencies which had an effect directly counteracting natural selection. How high, for instance, stand the vertebrates above the invertebrates! Yet how could the first ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... in the mass. Though the emphysematous lung is distended to a size equal to the healthy lung in deep inspiration, yet we know that emphysematous distention, being produced by extrabronchial air accumulation, is, in fact, obstructive to the respiratory act. The emphysematous lung will, in the same manner as the distended pleural sac, depress the diaphragm and render the thoracic muscles inoperative. The foregoing observations have been made in reference to the effect of wounds of ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise
... majority in Congress were against them, especially after the return of Madison from Philadelphia. Madison, aided by Edward Carrington and young Henry Lee, the famous leader of light horse, succeeded in every division in carrying the vote of Virginia in favour of the Constitution and against the obstructive measures of the elder Lee. The objection was first raised that the new Constitution would put an end to the Continental Congress, and that in recommending it to the states for consideration Congress would be virtually asking them to terminate its own existence. Was it right or proper for Congress ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... parliament, Lord Brougham only urging an objection against the omission of any portion of the royal family in the lists of lords-justices named in the bill. His lordship even made this omission the subject of a protest entered in the journals of the house. His lordship began at this time to display an obstructive disposition towards the government with which he had so long acted. He had proved that his exaltation to the office of lord-chancellor had inflated his vanity, and made him so self-willed and crotchetty ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... travel, of jurisprudence, of torture and punishment, of social ranks, of the relation of the individual to the state, of the state to the family, and of religion to the family, were more or less defective and unsuited to the new civilization. Before this new movement all obstructive ideas, however, sanctioned by antiquity, have had to give way. The Japanese of to-day look, as it were, upon a new earth and a new heaven. Those of forty years ago would be amazed, not only at the enormous changes in the externals, life and government, but also at the transformation which ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... and a little less zeal would save the Socialist from being considered by the advanced thinker—who, studying the present by the light of the past, sees that all civilization is provisional—as the most serious obstructive whom ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... to lead the way. The schoolmaster declined to go alone with me, on the ground that neither of us knew the mountain, and threatening clouds were gathering all around. When, at last, I proposed to go by myself, they became menacingly obstructive, and declared that I should certainly not be allowed to face the intricacy of the mountain in a fog. Besides, as the maire put it, he was sure of the way to the third glaciere; and if I were to go up ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... the granting of the Magna Charta, thus firmly of the liberties of England has been accomplished by bitter and fierce struggles; the obstructive forces were strong, but yielded in the end to the onward sweep of liberty directed by the aggressive spirit of intelligence, manhood, and humanity. At the end of the sixteenth century this much had been gained for freedom. The principles of liberty, which had been constantly ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... hand, and with like hand REBUILD, is no darling of your political Repairer. Call the party and the men by their right names: and give me for utility in legislation or administrative action an Old Tory and Obstructive party rather than this middling, meddling, ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... and created much interest. But the discovery of a mining-country, some three hundred miles long, once immensely wealthy, and ready to become wealthy once more, is not likely to be accepted by every one. Jealous and obstructive officials "did not think much of it." Rivals opposed it with even less ceremony. A mild "ring" in Egypt attempted in vain to run the Hamamat and Dar-For mines (Chap. III.) against Midian. Consequently the local Press was dosed with rumours, which, ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... pressure over the liver, and with a deficiency of bile in hard knotty stools, the colouring matter of the faeces being found by chemical tests present in the urine: so that a preparation of this Thistle modified in strength, and considerably diluted in its doses proves truly homoeopathic to simple obstructive jaundice through inaction of the liver, and readily cures the disorder. A tincture is prepared (H.) for medicinal use from equal parts of the root, and the seeds (with the hull on) together ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... nothing remains but for her to take humble service with her master. If she can hear herself think amid that din of blasting and hammering she must be reckoning up the years to elapse before the cleverest of Ober- Ingenieurs decides that mountains are mere obstructive matter and has the Jungfrau melted down and the residuum carried away in balloons and dumped upon ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... Glennard pushed aside an obstructive chair, had a moment to measure each other; then Flamel advanced, and drawing out his note-case, laid a slip of ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... infinitely tedious. Walter Scott's archaeology is not always correct, nor his learning always lightly borne; but, upon the whole, he had the art to make his cumbrous materials contributory to his story rather than obstructive of it. ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... medical aid at the commencement of the malady. Whatever tends to improve the general condition of the Roman peasantry will put these remedies more and more within their reach, and will therefore tend to check the ravages of the malaria. Thus, the inefficient and obstructive Government of the Vatican, which checks all material as well as all moral progress, increases indirectly the virulence of the fever-plague; but this, I think, is the most ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... against peritoneal inflammation were not as great as they are, few people with intestinal putrefactive diseases, from cholera infantum in babyhood to proctitis in old age, would get well, for most of the treatment for one and all of these diseases is obstructive rather than ...
— Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment • John H. Tilden, M.D.
... characteristic aversion to the provocation of a constitutional crisis, which might easily arise if the people chose to declare war on the motion of a magistrate without waiting for the advice of the fathers; while the obstructive minority may have been alarmed by the distant vision of a trial before the Assembly or before a commission of inquiry composed of judges taken from the angry Equites. The senate took the lead in a formal declaration of war; Numidia was named ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... he said to the old nurses, "arises from external sources, and internal obstructive influences, caused by the unhealthiness of the season of late. Yet it's only a slight chill, after all. Fortunately, the young lady has ever been moderate in her drinking and eating. The cold she has is nothing much. It's mainly because she has a weak constitution that ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... suffer, feel, act, defend, and avenge, as a man of actual life would do—was obvious enough, through its harmonious fulfilment; yet the realism was shorn of all triteness, all animal excess, all of those ordinary attributes which are right in nature, and wrong because obstructive in the art that is ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... enthusiasm and intelligence of individuals have set on foot. The mere checking of the obstruction of the individual will not suffice; other aldermen will arise—equally ignorant, equally talkative, equally obstructive. And until the race is relegated to its proper function, bimetallism and sewage, the incidents I have described will ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... by the criticisms levelled against its exceptions and safeguards, will be about as effective as its predecessor, was read a third time. So was the Health Insurance Bill, but not until a few Independent Liberals, led by Captain WEDGWOOD BENN, had been rebuked for their obstructive tactics by Mr. MYERS and Mr. NEIL MACLEAN of the Labour Party. As the small hours grew larger this split in the Progressive ranks developed into a yawning chasm, and the Government got a third Bill passed before the weary ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 19, 1920 • Various
... quite desolate under the hot blue sky, with the smoke and little threads of flame going straight up into the heat of the afternoon. Never before had I seen houses burning without the accompaniment of an obstructive crowd. A little farther on the dry reeds up the bank were smoking and glowing, and a line of fire inland was marching steadily across a late ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... in the Broadway until within recent years a charming old building called The Cottage—one of those picturesque but obstructive details in which our ancestors delighted. Behind the Congregational Chapel there is an old hall, used as a lecture-hall, which was originally a chapel, and which is said by Faulkner to be the oldest place of worship in Hammersmith. It was built ...
— Hammersmith, Fulham and Putney - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... the wildcat kind was bad. But it was the seamy side of a praiseworthy spirit of enterprise. Monopoly seems worse than speculation. And so, in many ways, it was. But we must judge it by the custom of its age. It was often unjust and generally obstructive. But it did what neither the national government nor joint-stock companies had yet learnt to do. Monopoly went by court favor, and its rights were often scandalously let and sometimes sublet as well. But, on the whole, the Queen, the court, and the country really meant business, ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... hand, a circle of men had formed about Mr. Chown, who was haranguing on the Woman question. What he wanted was to emancipate the female mind from the yoke of superstition and of priestcraft. Time enough to talk about giving women votes when they were no longer the slaves of an obstructive religion. There were good things in the lecture, but, on the whole, it was flabby—flabby. A man who would discourse on this topic must be courageous; he must dare to shock and give offence. Now, if ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... come. He locked the avenue gate against the approach of those who came to the assignee's sale, and made them enter and take away their purchases by the farm road; and in all lawful ways he rendered himself obstructive ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... share of their energies to the great struggle which is in ceaseless progress in all societies in an endless variety of forms, between new truth and old prejudice, between love of self or class and solicitous passion for justice, between the obstructive indolence and inertia of the many and the generous mental activity of the few. This is the sphere and definition of the social conscience. The good causes of enlightenment and justice in all lands,—here is the church militant in which we should early seek to enrol ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... statutes? Is it not possible that graft is the cracking and bursting of the receptacles in which we have tried to constrain the business of this country? It seems possible that business has had to control politics because its laws were so stupidly obstructive. In the trust agitation this is especially plausible. For there is every reason to believe that concentration is a world-wide tendency, made possible at first by mechanical inventions, fostered by the disastrous ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... social considerations do not appeal to him. Or if they do present themselves, he satisfies himself with the belief that, from activities so strenuous and remarkable as his, Good must result to the community. If he break the law, that is the fault of the law, for being stupid and obstructive; if he break individuals, that is their fault for being weak. Vae victis! Never has that principle, or rather instinct, ruled more paramount ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... bristle up. She is very civil; but when I hint that Armine has study and health to consider, I see that in her eyes I am the worldly obstructive mother who serves as a ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought" to such an extent that it becomes impossible. The evidence is all considered and each motive fully weighed. But this once done, decision follows. No dilatory and obstructive tactics are allowed. The fleeting impulse is not enough to persuade to action, neither is action unduly delayed ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... appointment based thereon, and who were still importunate for impeachment, the business element of the country at large was tiring of it and its depressing effect upon the commercial activities. Even Senators and Congressmen were being moved to a sense of the obstructive and somewhat ridiculous phases the impeachment movement was beginning to take on—and not a few of those who in its earlier stages had honestly favored the movement, inside as well as outside the membership of both Houses of Congress, had begun to realize the actual nature ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross
... became so obstructive to the men spied upon that the Biscayan and Don Telmo served notice on the landlady of their removal. Dona Casiana's desolation, when she learned of their decision, was exceedingly great; several times she had to resort to the closet and surrender herself ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... opacity mark. A flash of lightning out of a storm-cloud seems instantly to transform the whole passive universe into a terrible living power. This slow, opaque, indifferent matter about us and above us, going its silent or noisy round of mechanical and chemical change, ponderable, insensate, obstructive, slumbering in the rocks, quietly active in the soil, gently rustling in the trees, sweetly purling in the brooks, slowly, invisibly building and shaping our bodies—how could we ever dream that it held in leash such a terrible, ubiquitous, spectacular thing as this of the forked lightning? ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... discountenance, throw cold water on, spoil sport; lay a wet blanket, throw a wet blanket on; cut the ground from under one, take the wind out of one's sails, undermine; be in the way of, stand in the way of; act as a drag; hang like a millstone round one's neck. Adj. hindering &c v.; obstructive, obstruent^; impeditive^, impedient^; intercipient^; prophylactic &c (remedial) 662; impedimentary. in the way of, unfavorable; onerous, burdensome; cumbrous, cumbersome; obtrusive. hindered &c v.; windbound^, waterlogged, heavy laden; hard pressed. unassisted ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... as are inclined to this malady, as pepper, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, mace, dates, &c. honey and sugar. [1376] Some except honey; to those that are cold, it may be tolerable, but [1377] Dulcia se in bilem vertunt, (sweets turn into bile,) they are obstructive. Crato therefore forbids all spice, in a consultation of his, for a melancholy schoolmaster, Omnia aromatica et quicquid sanguinem adurit: so doth Fernelius, consil. 45. Guianerius, tract 15. cap. 2. Mercurialis, cons. 189. To these I may add all sharp and ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... In July, 1847, the Diet, in session at Bern, decreed the dissolution of the Sonderbund; but the recalcitrant cantons refused to abandon the course upon which they had entered, and it was only after an eighteen-day armed conflict that the obstructive ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... on a damp day. When the ball got too heavy for him to handle deftly, Jim dropped the game, only starting the ball down hill—if one may find symbolism for sedate investments—gathering weight as it went and, it was thought, at obstructive points persuading other little boys to push. The colonel had often wondered if Jeffrey had been one of those little boys. Now, at forty-five, Reardon lived a quiet, pottering life, a bachelor with a housekeeper and servants enough ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... take it," ventured Tubby, watching Anthony, who showed evidences of having been considerably excited by the explosion, though Tubby could not tell whether it was fear that influenced the man, or an overmastering desire to join the army, and engage in some of this obstructive work himself. ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... Kaulbach's pictures, for instance, are complete treatises upon the theme, both as to the conception and the drawing, grouping, etc.; but it is mostly as treatises that they have interest. So the allegories in Albert Duerer's "Melancholia" are obstructive to it as a work of Art, and just in proportion ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... to come and make me a nice short visit, however, after I'd got the castle primped up a bit: the mould off the walls of the bedrooms and the great fireplaces thoroughly cleared of obstructive swallows' nests, the beds aired and the larder stocked. Just as they were leaving, my secretary and my valet put in an appearance, having been summoned from Vienna the day before. I confess I was glad to see them. ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... the inconsistency in things is a humorist—and a Catholic. However this may be, Bernard Shaw exhibits all that is purest in the Puritan; the desire to see truth face to face even if it slay us, the high impatience with irrelevant sentiment or obstructive symbol; the constant effort to keep the soul at its highest pressure and speed. His instincts upon all social customs and questions are Puritan. ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... watchful of Dorset's moods, brightly companionable to Silverton and Dacey, the latter of whom met her on an evident footing of old admiration, while young Silverton, portentously self-absorbed, seemed conscious of her only as of something vaguely obstructive. And suddenly, as Selden noted the fine shades of manner by which she harmonized herself with her surroundings, it flashed on him that, to need such adroit handling, the situation must indeed be desperate. She was on the edge of something—that was the impression ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... were on that the red lines were exclusively traced, and Barry noticed with a seaman's eye that the marked soundings showed the river survey to have been very complete, while less frequent soundings on the ocean side gave a condition of bottom utterly obstructive to navigation. He caught instantly the significance of the map from a naval viewpoint but was puzzled at its significance for him or his ship. He glanced up to find ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... or south, when the true course was nearly due west. I think there were days on which ten hours of pretty faithful tramping did not result in more than three or four miles of direct headway. The headwaters of the Salt and Chippewa rivers were especially obstructive; and, when more than half the distance was covered, I ran into a tangle of small lakes, marshes and swamps, not marked on the map, which cost a hard day's ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... unpopular. It goes to work at the wrong end—works away from instead of towards republicanism. In England, in Germany, where families reign, and where governmental servants might consistently hold office for life, such a system has a warrant—though even there it is found to be obstructive and reactionary. But in a republic, where universal suffrage is the law, nothing more intolerable could be conceived. The idea of creating a class distinct from all other classes, independent of the administration and unaccountable to the voters, fixed and immovable save for causes ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... fasting, that the poor are always there to be helped, but that he is not there to be anointed always, implying that you should never lose a chance of being happy when there is so much misery in the world. He breaks the Sabbath; is impatient of conventionality when it is uncomfortable or obstructive; and outrages the feelings of the Jews by breaches of it. He is apt to accuse people who feel that way of hypocrisy. Like the late Samuel Butler, he regards disease as a department of sin, and on curing a lame man, says "Thy sins are forgiven" instead of "Arise ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... exceptions, is fairly correct in practice, especially as distances increase. Now, Canada is a country of great distances; and by land she once was in nearly every part, and she still is in a few parts, a country of obstructive wilds. What, then, must have been the advantage of water carriage over land carriage when there was neither road nor rail? As even pack-horses were not available in the early days, and good roads were few and only established ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood
... the coroner, standing a trifle back of her chair, shook his head at the obstructive juryman, and asked her in a commonplace voice what the hogs had ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... that when pure acetylene is burnt at the normal rate in 1-foot Bray jets, growths of carbon soon appear, but do not obstruct the orifices during 100 hours' use; if, however, the gas-supply is checked till the flame becomes thick, the growths appear more quickly, and become obstructive after some 60 hours' burning. On the assumption that acetylene begins to polymerise at a temperature of 100 deg. C., Gaud calculates that polymerisation cannot cause blocking of the burners unless the speed of the ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... come by the certainty of any news from thence, both by reason of the huge remoteness of the places from one to another, as also because of the impeditive interposition of many great rivers, the interjacent obstacle of divers wild deserts, and obstructive interjection of sundry almost inaccessible mountains,—whilst he was in this sad quandary and solicitous pensiveness, which, you may suppose, could not be of a small vexation to him, considering that it was a matter of no great ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... that even at the present time the idea of the League of Free Nations has secure possession of the British mind. There is quite naturally a sustained opposition to it in all the fastnesses of aggressive imperialism. Such papers as the Times and the Morning Post remain hostile and obstructive to the expression of international ideas. Most of our elder statesmen seem to have learnt nothing and forgotten nothing during the years of wildest change the world has ever known. But in the general mind of the British peoples the movement of opinion from a narrow ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells
... iron hand was still pressing his forehead, the new law quietly flowed into his consciousness, like a smooth-running stream of clean water which had hitherto been dammed by his obstructive ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... devoted constant work and steady application to the study of art, in order to make himself a worthy painter. It may be affirmed that if he did not perhaps attain his purpose, it was not on account of any defect or negligence on his part, but solely because of an obstructive malady which prevented him from ever realising his desire. Taddeo died at the age of fifty-nine, after having taught the art to a nephew of his called Domenico. His paintings were done about the year of grace 1410. Thus, as I have said, he left Domenico Bartoli, ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari
... always ready to criticise, and it was so much the easier for him that he had not the least bent towards self-criticism. For the latter supposes some degree of truth in the inward parts, and that is obstructive to the indulgence of the former tendency. As to himself, he would be hand and glove at a moment's notice with any man who looked a gentleman, and made himself agreeable; nor whatever he might find him to be, was he, so long ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... this Lincoln most properly agreed to facilitate, if he could, an appeal to the Supreme Court, but declined, on the ground of urgent military necessity, to delay the drafts in the meantime. Seymour's obstructive conduct, however, was not confined to the intelligible ground of objection to the Act itself; it showed itself in the perpetual assertion that the quotas were unfair. No complaint as to this had been raised before the riots. It seems that a quite ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... time he wished to go outside it took him half an hour to dig his way out. On account of this periodic influx, the vestibule doorway to the workroom was moved to the other end of the wall, where the invading snow had farther to travel and was consequently less obstructive. ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... steep, a slippery, and a winding street connecting Tower Street with the Middlesex shore of the Thames; stood the place of business of Wilding & Co., Wine Merchants. Probably as a jocose acknowledgment of the obstructive character of this main approach, the point nearest to its base at which one could take the river (if so inodorously minded) bore the appellation Break-Neck-Stairs. The court-yard itself had likewise been descriptively entitled in old ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... Republican party, but, as both Houses of the 46th Congress were Democratic, President Hayes had to conduct executive business with a Congress not in political harmony with him until the 4th of March, 1881, when the term of Congress and of the President expired. I feel bound to say that no merely obstructive financial measures were ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... the finance committee he had commanding influence, and with his skill in legislation and intimate knowledge of the rules he was the leader whenever he chose to lead. This he always did when the policy he desired or the measure he was promoting had a majority, and the opposition resorted to obstructive tactics. As there is no restriction on debate in the Senate, or was none at my time, the only way the minority could defeat the majority was by talking the bill to death. I never knew this method to be used successfully but once, because ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... rose in the Imperial cup. Barbarians from beyond the sea came forward to claim the right of personal interview with the sovereign of all under Heaven. The story of the first audience is still fresh in our memories; the trivial difficulties introduced by obstructive statesmen at every stage of the proceedings, questions of etiquette and precedence raised at every turn, until finally the kotow was triumphantly rejected and five bows substituted in its stead. Every one saw the curt paragraph in the Peking Gazette, which notified ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles |
