"Overstep" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... transiliency^, transgression; trespass; encroachment, infringement; extravagation^, transcendence; redundancy &c 641. V. transgress, surpass, pass; go beyond, go by; show in front, come to the front; shoot ahead of; steal a march upon, steal a gain upon. overstep, overpass, overreach, overgo^, override, overleap, overjump^, overskip^, overlap, overshoot the mark; outstrip, outleap, outjump, outgo, outstep^, outrun, outride, outrival, outdo; beat, beat hollow; distance; leave in the lurch, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... telling what this queer, bright, unconventional little thing might do if left to herself. A good marriage would prove her salvation. She had many womanly possibilities: yet, with all due deference to Miss Barry and her old blue blood, Sylvie might overstep the bounds, and take up some of the reforming projects so dear to elderly spinsters. As Mrs. Fred Lawrence she would be held regally above them, and could depute her charitable work ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... no prude. I like to overstep conventions, too. But this wholesale wrecking of the social structure would be ruinous ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... happened which have been a great grief and vexation to me; and I know the Rector wishes very much to have a little conversation with you, and has something to speak of in which you would be interested. Perhaps my husband might feel a little strange in asking you to overstep the barrier which somehow has been raised between you two; but I am sure if you knew each other better you would understand each other, and this is one of the things we women ought to be good for. I will take it as a ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... inquiry is the more important for questions of fatigue, as we know that the subjective feeling of displeasure in fatigue is no reliable measure for the objective fatigue, that is, for the real reduction of the ability for work. Daily experience teaches us how easily some people overstep the limits of normal fatigue, and in extreme cases even come to a nervous breakdown because nature did not protect them by the timely appearance of strong fatigue feelings. On the other hand, we find many men and still more women who ...
— Psychology and Industrial Efficiency • Hugo Muensterberg
... and fencing with rulers. And they actually had the cheek to tell me they weren't making any more noise than we were with our singing and playing! I sent them home at once, and I think we'd all better go too. Those intermediates always overstep the line if they've an atom of a chance. I told them what I thought about them. It's been quite a ripping concert, and I'm sorry to break it up, ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... a mere formality on her part. She talked incessantly, while Cousin Percy and her husband listened. Mr. Hungerford's congratulations were hearty. His praise was as close to fulsome flattery as it could be and not overstep the mark. ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... harm in providing, let us say, a volume of travels or the description of a town with an appropriate engraved frontispiece, or adorning your biography of So-and-so with a portrait. But the temptation to overstep the bounds of seemliness is so great that it is seldom the collector stops at a mere frontispiece. In most cases the Grangerite soon loses his self-control, and develops an acute mania for embellishing his volume with all and every print upon which he can ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... or tumbled in the dirt with a heartier glee than did Gideon, but no warrior, not even his illustrious prototype himself, ever kept sterner discipline in his ranks when his followers seemed prone to overstep the bounds of right. At a very early age his shrill voice could be heard calling in admonitory tones, caught from his mother's very lips, "You 'Nelius, don' you let me ketch you th'owin' at ol' mis' guinea-hens no mo'; you hyeah me?" or "Hi'am, you come offen ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... conception from the effects of art, so far as they appear; but as these effects are infinite the conception may be something very different from a barrier erected for the purpose of a mere provisional designation, which ceases to exist the moment that it pleases genius to overstep it. We find this possibility confirmed when we examine how the conception in question has changed in German literature alone, during the various epochs of its relatively ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... the problem is a sorely intricate one. We have to provide for higher, finer, more delicate relations; especially for such as arise out of society. We are, therefore, obliged to give our pupils an outward cultivation. It is indispensable, it is necessary, and it may be really valuable, if we do not overstep the proper measure in it. Only it is so easy, while one is proposing to cultivate the children for a wider circle, to drive them out into the indefinite, without keeping before our eyes the real requisites ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... younger man, on his side, never attempted to overstep his own rights, the interests of the rival firms rarely clashed. As to the few disputes that did arise, Thorpe found Mr. Daly singularly anxious to please. In the desire was no friendliness, however. Thorpe ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... suitor in such glowing terms, and said that you had sacrificed a splendid opportunity because of some squeamish notions on the subject of temperance, and so of course, my dear cousin, it was just like me to let my curiosity overstep the bounds of prudence, and inquire why you ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... speeches would turn the scene into burlesque. Besides, Mr. Gascoigne prohibited the acting of scenes from plays: he usually protested against the notion that an amusement which was fitting for every one else was unfitting for a clergyman; but he would not in this matter overstep the line of decorum as drawn in that part of Wessex, which did not exclude his sanction of the young people's acting charades in his sister-in-law's house—a very different affair from private theatricals in the ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... need not obey it; that is, if he finds the god agreeing with him in opinion, then the god's judgment is infallible; if not, then, in plain terms, he is no god. And they who have closely observed the workings of jealousy, know right well that in all this Shakespeare does not one whit "overstep the modesty of Nature." ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... ranged the Syrian border. As we have seen, the country of his adoption was such as to encourage the Semitic nomad's particularism, which was inherent in his tribal organization. Thus the predominance of a single racial element in the population of Palestine and Syria did little to break down or overstep the natural barriers ...
— Legends Of Babylon And Egypt - In Relation To Hebrew Tradition • Leonard W. King
... said, her face deeply suffused, "in a way to provoke a smile hereafter; if in placing it around thy neck with my own hands"—with the words, she bent over him, and dropped the net outside the hood so the ends hung loosely down his breast—"I overstep any rule of modesty, I pray you will not misunderstand me. I am thinking of my country, my kinsman, of religion and God, and the service even unto noble deeds thou mayst do them. Rise, Count Corti. In the ride before thee ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... I came to be there, or gave the least indication of being sorry that I was there. That I suffered in secret, and that I suffered exquisitely, no one ever knew but I. How much I suffered, it is, as I have said already, utterly beyond my power to tell. No man's imagination can overstep the reality. But I kept my own counsel, and I did my work. I knew from the first that, if I could not do my work as well as any of the rest, I could not hold myself above slight and contempt. I soon became at least as ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... in describing a prize trout some city fisherman had stuffed and framed. But when I asked him, with some surprise, if he knew the Bowery, he looked at me quickly, with the slightest trace of offended dignity in his eyes, as if I had meant to overstep the line between us, and ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... nothing but inexplicable dumb shows and noise. I could have such a fellow whipped for overdoing termagant: it out-Herods Herod. Be not too tame neither; but let your own discretion be your tutor: suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance, that you overstep not the modesty of nature; for anything so overdone, is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was, and is, to hold as it were the mirror up to Nature; to show Virtue her own feature; scorn her own image; and the very age and body of the ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... accused by the press of most countries of enwrapping personal ambition in the attractive covering of disinterestedness and altruism, just as many of his foreign colleagues were said to go in fear of the "malady of lost power." But charges of this nature overstep the bounds of legitimate criticism. Motive is hardly ever visible, nor is it often deducible from deliberate action. If, for example, one were to infer from the vast territorial readjustments and ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... English pauperism it found in the poor law itself. Benevolence, which is the legal remedy for social crime, favours social crime. As regards pauperism in general, it is an eternal natural law, according to the theory of Malthus: "As the population unceasingly tends to overstep the means of subsistence, benevolence is folly, a public encouragement to poverty. The State can therefore do nothing more than leave poverty to its fate and at the most soften death for the poor." With this amiable theory the English Parliament combines the opinion that pauperism is ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... that my devotion to her youngest boy is leading me to overstep the bounds of even Mrs. Dunn's vast ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... expenditure[2] made his constitutional conscience, always tender, very sensitive on this question of a cruise against Tripoli. Fearful lest our young sailors should go too far, he instructed the Commodore not to overstep the strict line of defence. Hence, when Sterret, in the Enterprise, captured a Tripolitan schooner, after a brisk engagement, he disarmed and dismantled her, and left her, with the survivors of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... movement as if to obtain a supply for the woman, but the eyes of brother soldiers and a superior officer were upon him and he again assumed his position. It is said to be not unusual for the soldiers, under cover of dusk, to overstep their duty in order to serve some applicant who, through age or lack of physical strength, is poorly equipped to bear the strain. All sorts of provisions are asked for. One woman asks boldly for ham, canned chicken, vegetables and flour. Another approaches timidly and ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... so far true that we were slow to renounce our constitutional obligations even toward those who had absolved us by their own act from the letter of our duty. We are speaking of the government which, legally installed for the whole country, was bound, so long as it was possible, not to overstep the limits of orderly prescription, and could not, without abnegating its own very nature, take the lead in making rebellion an excuse for revolution. There were, no doubt, many ardent and sincere persons who seemed ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... by the higher grade upon the lower, but no check on such extortion as might be practised upon the tax-payer. The tax-payer sees to that himself. Speaking generally, it may be said that this system, in spite of its unsatisfactory character, works fairly well. Few officials overstep the limits which custom has assigned to their posts, and those who do generally come to grief. So that when the dishonesty of the Chinese officials is held up to reprobation, it should always be remembered that the financial side ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... predict; but its fatal power will not be stayed in the mid-sweep of its career. The Ordinance of 1787 torn to shreds and scattered to the winds,—the line drawn in 1820, which the slaveholders plighted their faith Slavery should never overstep, insolently as well as infamously obliterated,—Slavery presiding in the Cabinet, seated on the Supreme Bench, absolute in the halls of Congress,—no man can say what shape its next aggression may not take to itself. A direct attack on the freedom ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... been cheated so often at Rouen, that we are inclined to ask the question whether we, English people, really possess a higher working morality than the French. Are we really more straightforward and honourable than they? Are there bounds which they overstep and which we cannot pass? It has been our pride for centuries to be considered more noble and manly than many of our neighbours; is there any reason to fear that our moral influence is on the wane, in these days of universal interchange of ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... without being regarded as violating the code. It was all very well as long as members of their own class plundered some other class, or fought one another, no matter how rapaciously, in accordance with understood procedure. But when any business man ventured to overstep these limitations, as Vanderbilt did, and levy a species of commercial blackmail to the extent of millions of dollars, then he was sternly denounced as an arch thief. If Vanderbilt had confined himself to the routine formulas of business, he might have gone down in failure. Many ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... organized as it was and quite lately established for a permanence in Paris, to put down such disorders and such men. In the course of its long career the French magistracy has committed many faults; it has more than once either aspired to overstep its proper limits or failed to fulfil all its duties; but history would be ungrateful and untruthful not to bring into the light the virtues this body has displayed from its humble cradle, and the services it has rendered to France, to her security at home, to her moral dignity, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... construed into breaking a fast; yet, he hoped, that such a concession, would not be made a pretext by sensuality and wickedness, for using them to excess, by which some of our greatest blessings are converted into curses; as whatever tempts or occasions us to overstep the bounds of nature and of temperance, can never be defended by the ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... would pass with the property by sale: with respect to the former, the honour seems to have called forth the valour of every successive lord, and princes have seldom imagined that their subjects can in such a cause overstep their duty. ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip
... search, Pitt has disarmed criticism by acknowledging that the course he followed during Wapole's administration was indefensible. All due weight being given to these various considerations, it must be admitted, nevertheless, that Pitt did overstep the limits within which inconsistency is usually regarded as venial. His one great object was first to gain office, and then to make his tenure of office secure by conciliating the favour of the king. The entire ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... conflicts nothing is more dangerous than to overstep the law by any act of violence. It was the violence attempted by the leaders of the Presbyterians against the King, their attack on the rights of his crown, that procured him the means of resistance. He betook himself with his court to Linlithgow and there ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... in 1843, as Lord Mayor of Dublin, he carried a resolution in its favour in the City Council; but now under the pressure of less experienced agitators, his monster meetings and other proceedings began to overstep legal limits, and in 1844 he, with six of his supporters, was indicted for raising sedition; he was sentenced to a year's imprisonment and a fine of L2000, but the sentence was set aside in 14 weeks; by this time the Young ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... but according to nature, accepted the present without ceaselessly thinking of death and another world, and acted in that present and in the circumstances allotted to each by fate, without wanting to overstep the boundaries of nature, would revive again in our modern world and free us forever from the torment of unaccomplished ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... if I seem to overstep the bounds of courtesy; but I cannot let you go in this way, Alice,—for so I must call you. Stay and hear me. Now that I see you, I must speak. God only knows with what anxiety I have sought you ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... instinctive feeling that had he known her name a thousand times he would not have communicated with her. She knew by that exalted look of renunciation upon his face that no longing whatsoever could make him overstep the bounds which he had laid down between her soul ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... that constitutional government is a useful instrument for building up a country. It is a government with a set of fixed laws which guard the actions of both the people and the president none of whom can overstep the boundary as specified in the laws. No ruler, whether be he a good man or a bad man, can change one iota of the laws. The people reap the benefit of this in consequence. It is easy to make a country strong and rich but it is difficult to establish a constitutional government. ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... way or means to bring those ecclesiastical matters that are in difference in the severall Plantations to an issue." The Court felt obliged to change the name of the appointed meeting from "synod" to "assembly" to avoid the jealousy of the churches. They were afraid that the civil power would overstep its authority, and by calling a synod, composed of elders only, establish a precedent for the exclusion of lay delegates from such bodies. Before this "assembly" could meet, it was shorn of influence through the politics of the conservative Hartford faction, who succeeded in passing a bill at ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... not, then, been an obstacle to his confidences. Now that he was master at Westmore it was plain that another tone became him—that his situation necessitated a greater reserve; but her enquiry did not imply the least wish to overstep this restriction: it merely showed her remembrance of his frankly-avowed interest in the operatives. Justine was struck by the fact that so natural an allusion should put him on the defensive. She did not for a moment believe that he had lost his interest in the mills; ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... the government repress this feeling of hostility, while they have yet the power: a few years further inattention will render it hereditary and rivet it for ever. It is in the tendency of colonies to overstep even legitimate restraint; they will never long wear the fetters of injustice and oppression. I am aware that it is not one of the least difficult proofs of legislative wisdom to frame regulations adapted to each progressive stage ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... has agreed to defy the laws and to stand at issue with society. Without disturbing the deep pool of penalogy, or entering at all into the question, as to whether Actisanes was right, or whether the police of New York do not overstep their authority in putting on the walls this terrible bill of attainder against certain citizens of the United States, whom their country's constitution has endeavored to protect from "infamous punishments,"—the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... richly and graciously blessed us; how we are in possession of actual paradise—yes, the entire kingdom of heaven—if we only recognized the fact: and yet we shamefully, ungratefully and unreasonably reject the kingdom; as if it were not enough for us to overstep the Ten Commandments in our disobedience, but must even trample under foot the mercy God offers in the Gospel. Then why should we be surprised if he send down wrath upon us? What else is he to do but fulfill our Gospel ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... the captain, "and don't run things too fine. You're always late in getting back from leave. Last time you only got in by the skin of your teeth, when we were off shooting, too. If you overstep the mark again you'll find yourself brought up with a round turn, you may take my word ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... them to curtail their allowance. If those in the second category, who can enjoy the mildest tobacco in the smallest quantities, and those in the third, who can smoke in moderation, were never to exceed their proper amount, no very great harm would follow. But it most frequently happens that both overstep their respective bounds, and the result is ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... others, betake ourselves to the country, and there live as honourable women on one of the estates, of which none of us has any lack, with all cheer of festal gathering and other delights, so long as in no particular we overstep the bounds of reason. There we shall hear the chant of birds, have sight of verdant hills and plains, of cornfields undulating like the sea, of trees of a thousand sorts; there also we shall have a larger view of the heavens, which, however harsh ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... activities and rigidly segregated in the rest, to that period a quarter of a century later when the Department of Defense extended its protection of his rights and privileges even to the civilian community. To round out the story of open housing for members of the military, I briefly overstep the closing date given in ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... study the women they love. They labor hard and plow straight on, in spite of any timid opposition from the other quarter; they are heedless of the future; they are eager to gain the prize, and often stride far beyond—overstep the mark, which sometimes is but a ...
— The Inner Sisterhood - A Social Study in High Colors • Douglass Sherley et al.
... different moments. When one gu@na is preponderant in any particular collocation, the others are co-operant. This evolutionary series beginning from the first disturbance of the prak@rti to the final transformation as the world-order, is subject to "a definite law which it cannot overstep." In the words of Dr B.N.Seal [Footnote ref 1], "the process of evolution consists in the development of the differentiated (vai@samya) within the undifferentiated (samyavastha) of the determinate (vies'a) within the indeterminate (avis'esa) of ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... is no preparation for such a task. It demands a very advanced condition of knowledge on the particular subject, as well as a logical habit of mind, however acquired; and to include it in a practical essay on the Conduct of the Understanding is to overstep the limits of ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... is old," said Mahtoree, looking at his aged companion, with an expression of irony, that sufficiently denoted he was one of those who overstep the trammels of education, and who are perhaps a little given to abuse the mental liberty they thus obtain. "He is very old: has he made a journey to the far country; and has he been at the trouble to come back, to tell the young men ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Manor, who made friends with so few and for all her queenly graciousness kept those she had at so discreet a distance. Of course everyone knew why. The reason was plain to all who had eyes to see. But that fact did not help any to overstep the barrier, nor did it keep the majority from being affronted. Dot was not of the latter, but she was ever shy in Anne's presence, though it was more the fear of hurting than of being ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... mind loses its way hopelessly in the injustice itself has created, and can form no conception of what results shall ensue. The man of genius who forsakes the equity that the humble peasant has at heart will find all paths strange to him; and these will be stranger still should he overstep the limit his own sense of justice imposes: for the justice that soars aloft, keeping pace with the intellect, creates new boundaries around all it throws open, while at the same time strengthening and rendering more insurmountable still the ancient barriers of instinct. The moment we ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... refuge from an alluring influence which the best part of herself must resist; which must bring horrible tumult within, wretchedness without. This new sense of her relation to Philip nullified the anxious scruples she would otherwise have felt, lest she should overstep the limit of intercourse with him that Tom would sanction; and she put out her hand to him, and felt the tears in her eyes without any consciousness of an inward check. The scene was just what Lucy expected, and her kind heart delighted in bringing Philip and Maggie together again; though, ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... acceptance with which this theory is meeting must be attributed to the fact that men of science no longer believe in the origin of species by the accumulation of slight fluctuating modifications. To quote the words of De Vries, "Fluctuating variation cannot overstep the limits of the species, even after the most prolonged selection—still less can it lead to the production of new, permanent characters." It has been the wont of Darwinians to base their speculations ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert
... And as in the mean while they must live, consequently they wish to get some consolation in this life. Masters of Zola's kind gave them only corruption, chaos, disgust for life, and despair. Their rationalism cannot prove anything else, and if it did, it would be with too much zeal, it would overstep the limits. To-day the suffocated need some pure air, the doubting ones some hope, tormented by uneasiness, some quietude, therefore they are doing well when they turn therefrom where the hope and peace flow, there where they ...
— So Runs the World • Henryk Sienkiewicz,
... have only just begun. The really essential things you will be able to buy when the Aunt is with you. I am instructing all the shops with which you may have occasion to do business to send accounts to Nevin. He will let you know quickly enough if you overstep the margin." ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... jealousy. And yet, I would I had not wagered; it implies Doubt. If I doubted? Pshaw! I'll walk awhile And let the cool air fan me. 'Twas not wise. 'Tis only Folly with its cap and bells Can jest with sad things. She seemed earnest, too. What if, to pique me, she should overstep The pale of modesty, and give bold eyes (I could not bear that, nay, not even that!) To Marc or Claudian? Why, such things have been And no sin dreamed of. I will watch her close. There, ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... good." Therefore it is impossible that religion and piety mutually hinder one another, so that the act of one be excluded by the act of the other. Now, as stated above (I-II, Q. 7, A. 2; Q. 18, A. 3), the act of every virtue is limited by the circumstances due thereto, and if it overstep them it will be an act no longer of virtue but of vice. Hence it belongs to piety to pay duty and homage to one's parents according to the due mode. But it is not the due mode that man should tend to worship his father rather than God, but, as Ambrose says on Luke 12:52, "the piety ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... in the world afterwards, yet the very qualities that help them to future success are not those to bring present popularity. They are not for the many, but for the few, and only show their best to an occasional friend whose sympathy can overstep the wall of ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... and takes his place upon it. All of the other players stand in one of the home goals. The defender calls "Start!" when all of the players must cross the wall to the goal beyond, the defender trying to tag as many as he can as they cross; but he may not overstep the boundaries of the wall himself. All so tagged join the defender in trying to secure the rest of the players during future sorties. The game ends when all have been caught, the last player taken being defender for ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... relations with Stanbury and Schenk suffered by comparison, and if she secretly hoped for the death or removal of Mme. Poussette it was with soft womanly compunction and pity, and with stern resolves not to overstep the ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... honored for doing his whole duty; to be honored more signally if he does more than his duty. Prince Albert's sphere as the Sovereign's consort is very limited, and he shows rare sense and prudence in never evincing a desire to overstep it. I think few men live who could hold his neutral and hampered position and retain so entirely the sincere respect and esteem of the British Nation. His labors in promoting this Exhibition began early and have been arduous, persistent ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... depositary of such power. Both these, from the nature of their powers, are aggressive. They act of their own volition. They initiate proceedings and measures to carry out policies. In their activities they are apt, consciously or unconsciously, to overstep the boundary lines between the departments and also the limits set for the protection of the citizen against such activities. Again, questions may and often do arise between the government and the individual citizen ...
— Concerning Justice • Lucilius A. Emery
... practice, except within this limit; and not a single stride beyond it has ever been ventured without bringing obloquy on the transgressor. The few men of genius among the learned class, who actually did overstep this boundary, anxiously avoided the appearance of having so done. Therefore the true depth of science, and the penetration to the inmost centre, from which all the lines of knowledge diverge to their ever distant circumference, was abandoned to the illiterate and the simple, whom unstilled ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... when the Governors may, either from want of knowledge or from other reasons, overstep the limits of their duty. The Press will then in leading articles gently point out the error of their ways, and offer sensible advice on the subject; if the offender be wise he will withdraw, unconditionally, ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... Shakespeare's advice is all-embracing. "Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance that you overstep not the modesty of nature." And here comes the consideration of a very material part of the actor's business—by-play. This is of the very essence of true art. It is more than anything else significant of the extent to which the actor has identified ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... deliberate determination, should have been two days late. The twenty-ninth of November was the last day of the five months, and he died on the afternoon of December the first. Why did he wait two days after he left Westhope? I should have thought he would have been the last man in the world to overstep the allotted time by so much as an hour. Yet, nevertheless, he waited two whole days. I don't ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... that the relation between the Minister and the Diplomacy on the one hand, and the separate Consular Services on the other, should be regulated by laws of the same wording which cannot be altered by one of the parties alone and which both shall guarantee that the Consuls do not overstep the limits of their authority and at the same time shall add security to the necessary co-operation between the management of foreign affairs and the Consular ...
— The Swedish-Norwegian Union Crisis - A History with Documents • Karl Nordlund
... however, we are dealing with a people ruled by custom and not by law, the case is far different. The force of custom may and usually does in such cases far exceed the force of law in civilised communities. In the lower stages of culture there is far more reluctance to overstep the traditional lines of behaviour than is felt by the ordinary member of a European state, and this though there are penalties in the latter which do not necessarily exist in the former case. But law, in the sense of a rule of conduct, promulgated by a legislator and ...
— Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia • Northcote W. Thomas
... legislation bore with fearful severity upon the people of the South. Comprehensive as was the Enrolment Act, which rendered liable to military duty the entire male population between the ages of seventeen and fifty, the South was compelled to overstep its self-imposed limit. The forces which Lee and Johnston surrendered contained so many boys unfitted by youth and so many men unfitted by age for military service, that a Northern General epigrammatically ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... accomplished in the past and up to the present time. . . ; and I confess that I have made no attempt to realize such hopes, which I believe exaggerated. . . . There are well-defined limits which association should not overstep. No! association is not called upon in France to govern everything. The spontaneous impulse of the individual mind is also a living force in our nation and a cause of ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... grow old and feeble, he may reveal it to one person, but not to more, and that one man must be virtuous.... If any wicked man should learn to practise the Art, the event would be fraught with great danger to Christendom. For such a man would overstep all bounds of moderation, and would remove from their hereditary thrones those legitimate princes who rule over ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir
... O'Grady, on the occasion of his first call upon the newcomer. This took place the third day of Prochnow's tenancy—he had scarcely got his poor belongings into shape and had barely affixed his name to the door. But Little O'Grady cared nothing for conventions; he was ready to overstep any boundary, to break through any barrier. "How did it occur to you to come among us?" he asked, sitting down on the bed. "What made you want ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... relationship and intimacy existing between the writers and those addressed. Between relatives and intimate friends the beginning and end may be in the most familiar form of conversation, either affectionate or playful. They should, however, never overstep the boundaries of decency and propriety, for it is well to remember that, unlike conversation, which only is heard by the ears for which it is intended, written words may come under eyes other than those for whom they were ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... do. And his own proper estimate of things and thoughts, his relative sense of fitness, gets application, by a direct law of his own mental processes, to himself and to his own creations. The limitations which, in the judgment of society, his variations must not overstep, are set by his own judgment also. If the man in question have thoughts which are socially true, he must himself know that they are true. So we reach a conclusion regarding the selection of the particular thoughts which the genius may have: he and society must ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... never understands how anthropomorphic he is.' No study, however comprehensive, enables him to overstep human limits, or conceive a concrete being, even the highest, from a wholly impersonal point of view. His own self always remains an encumbering factor. In a real sense he only understands himself, and his measure for all things is man. To understand the world outside him, he must needs ascribe ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... instinctive point of view, when she went so far as to hold one, was somewhat cut and dried; in a word, priggish. She kept a young man strictly on his good behavior, that much could be said in her favor; the only criticism that could be made on this estimable trait was that no bold youth was ever tempted to overstep the bounds of discretion when in her presence. No unruly words of love ever rose to his lips; his hand never stole out involuntarily and imprudently to meet her small chilly one; the sight of her waist never even suggested an encircling ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... vain to explain that the people were a nuisance if too near: when driven to a moderate distance, they would advance shyly, by degrees; two or three children would come forward and sit down a few paces in front of the main body; after a few minutes several others would overstep this frontier and sit down five or six yards in advance of the last comers, and by this silent system of skirmishing we were always surrounded in twenty minutes after the original crowd had been dispersed. I did not mind them so long as they were not in personal contact, ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... set aside a certain sum for each room so that they would not overstep their guardian's limit, and with Julia Cloud to put on the brakes, and suggest simplicity, and decide what was in good taste for such a small village house, they easily came within the generous limit ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... old rascal? And at that hour of the morning you make the good little thing get you a cup of coffee; and you take it like a thankless fool. Pooh, captain, I don't expect any man to be a pattern of morality and temperance. But even for a man there are some limits—and those limits you overstep, my ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... species of animals are separated from one another by a space which Nature cannot overstep—yet some of them approach so nearly to one another in so many respects that there is only room enough left for the getting in of a line of separation between them,"[57] and on the following page he distinctly encourages the idea ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... and, consequently, to make his inexorable logic draw too much, or to little, for legitimate practical effect. If, occasionally tempted by the excitement of our present types of speculative and conjectural science, he seemed to overstep the limits which God has prescribed to us in our present probationary state, and to make the human a measure of the Divine, it was done not presumptuously, from a spirit of conceited and ambitious intermeddling with things forbidden, but unconsciously, from an honest desire ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... and subordinate to the truth and consistency of his picture of life. Even when he dallied with the supernatural, as in The Master Builder and Little Eyolf, he was always careful, as I have tried to show, not to overstep decisively the boundaries of the natural. Here, on the other hand, without any suggestion of the supernatural, we are confronted with the wholly impossible, the inconceivable. How remote is this alike from his principles of art and from ...
— When We Dead Awaken • Henrik Ibsen
... Will leave me cold; M.O.'s who have a tender Passion for my own type of sock-suspender Won't utter it. Though on my heaving breast They lean their heads, they'll lean them uncaressed; We'll part, nor overstep the ...
— Punch, July 18, 1917 • Various
... boldest work, "Un homme peut braver l'opinion; une femme doit s'y soumettre."[1] The greater part of what women write about women is mere sycophancy to men. In the case of unmarried women, much of it seems only intended to increase their chance of a husband. Many, both married and unmarried, overstep the mark, and inculcate a servility beyond what is desired or relished by any man, except the very vulgarest. But this is not so often the case as, even at a quite late period, it still was. Literary women are becoming more freespoken, and ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill
... to another. No inequality is justified other than that which Nature itself establishes in the differences between one individual and another, and for the fulfillment of the purpose of Nature. The natural boundaries no sex can overstep: it would thereby destroy its own ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... Schleinitz, as he had done to Manteuffel, urging him to bold action; he recounted his experiences at the Diet, he reiterated his conviction that no good would come to Prussia from the federal tie—the sooner it was broken the better; nothing was so much to be desired as that the Diet should overstep its powers, and pass some resolution which Prussia could not accept, so that Prussia could take up the glove and force a breach. The opportunity was favourable for a revision of the Constitution. "I see," he wrote "in our Federal connection only a weakness ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... circle round my uncle Antiochus, and threatened him with the enmity of Rome if he dared to overstep it. You might excel the example set you by your bold countryman—whose family indeed was far less illustrious ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... authorities. The Chancellor then hurried to Donaueschingen, arriving a few hours before the departure of the Emperor; and a subsequent order of the Emperor to General von Deimling to see to it that the military officers did not overstep their authority and directing him to investigate the occurrences and take measures to punish all guilty parties, somewhat quieted the nation and caused the two highest civil officials of ...
— My Four Years in Germany • James W. Gerard
... know what you mean," said Lawrence, reddening slowly to his forehead. But it was a lie: he was not one of those who can overstep limits with impunity. The streak of vulgarity again! and worse than vulgarity: Andrew Hyde's sardonic old voice was ringing in his ears, "Lawrence, you'll never ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... our boat—silence so deep that the rough whisper of the pilot to the knot around him is heard the whole length of her deck: "Damnation! but I'll overstep ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... hope that if they thought she showed any intellectual promise they might consider it worth while to have her trained. They had never made much of her attainments, but if she could come out third or fourth in the school she felt they would be pleased. It would be impossible to overstep Geraldine or Hilary, but her work was tolerably on a level with Ida's and Stuart's, and ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... and looking him full in the eye, 'with all due deference to your superior rank, permit me to say, that if you say I am guilty of mutiny you overstep the bounds of truth.' ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... fish and clans of mollusks, the race of man appears at last as the degenerate copy of a splendid model, which the Creator has perchance destroyed. Emboldened by his gaze into the past, this petty race, children of yesterday, can overstep chaos, can raise a psalm without end, and outline for themselves the story of the Universe in an Apocalypse that reveals the past. After the tremendous resurrection that took place at the voice of this man, the little drop in the nameless Infinite, common to all spheres, that is ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... subject, they never fail to express themselves well. This is the case equally with those of both sexes. It is true, certainly, that in their subjects for conversation, they indulge in a wider range of selection; and in consequence, far more frequently without evincing the slightest scruple, overstep the bounds of decorum and delicacy. This is the inevitable effect of the peculiarity above noticed, that they must constantly converse; as their appetite for conversation is inordinate, their taste is necessarily ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... no longer came as far as the Rue Saint-Louis. He got as far as the Rue Pavee, shook his head and turned back; then he went no further than the Rue des Trois-Pavillons; then he did not overstep the Blancs-Manteaux. One would have said that he was a pendulum which was no longer wound up, and whose oscillations were growing shorter ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... 1.000:1.118, and 1.000:0.895). But when this is not the case, the changes of relative duration, if not too great for the limits of adaptation, are absorbed by the rhythmical formula and pass unobserved, while variations which overstep these limits appear in consciousness only as the emergence of a new rhythmic figure. Such inversions are not wholly restricted by the necessity of maintaining the coincidence of accentuation with objective stress. With the relatively great ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... myths, which attribute good fortune to the horn of the snake, that horn which pierces trees and rocks, which rises from the waters, which glitters as a gem, which descends from the ravines of the mountains, we shall not overstep the bounds of prudent reasoning if we see the thunderbolt, sign of the fructifying rain, symbol of the strength of the lightning, horn of the heavenly serpent. They are strictly meteorological in their meaning. And when in later Algonkin tradition ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... the politicians themselves prudently remained for the most part in Calcutta, making high-sounding speeches and writing inflammatory articles, or were careful in their own overt demonstrations not to overstep the extreme bounds of legality, they showered telegrams and letters of congratulation on the young "martyrs" who had been ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... problems happen to have been put. It is in this meaning, and to this degree, that science must be regarded as conventional. But it is a conventionality of fact so to speak, and not of right. In principle, positive science bears on reality itself, provided it does not overstep the limits of its own domain, which ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... there is nothing disinterested or meritorious in that, for I can never too affectionately remember the confidence and friendship that they have long reposed in me. My sphere of action—which I shall never change—I shall never overstep, further than this, or for a longer period than I do to- night. By literature I have lived, and through literature I have been content to serve my country; and I am perfectly well aware that I cannot serve two masters. In ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... hand gently upon hers; "Madeline,—will you let me call you Madeline?—will you let me be your brother? I have no sister, almost no kin; I won't be an exacting brother," smilingly. "I won't overstep the limits you set me, but we must have done with this nonsense about benefactors, ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... has been bubbling under the hedge all along the hillside, begins, now that we have mounted the eminence and are imperceptibly descending, to deviate into a capricious variety of clear deep pools and channels, so narrow and so choked with weeds, that a child might overstep them. The hedge has also changed its character. It is no longer the close compact vegetable wall of hawthorn, and maple, and brier-roses, intertwined with bramble and woodbine, and crowned with large elms or thickly-set saplings. ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... spaces, and lettered R, YR, Y, GY, G, BG, B, PB, P, and RP (see Fig. 18). This balanced red and blue-green are applied with the brush to spaces marked R and BG, care being taken to fill, but not to overstep the bounds, and the color laid absolutely flat, that no unevenness of value or chroma may ...
— A Color Notation - A measured color system, based on the three qualities Hue, - Value and Chroma • Albert H. Munsell
... When the liquor was finished he rose, took down his overcoat from the peg on which it hung, pushed his soft hat over his eyes, and with a sort of triumphant wave of the hand, saluted his friends and left the room. He was a perfectly sober man, and no power would have induced him to overstep the narrow limit he allowed to his taste. Indeed, he did not care for wine itself, and still less for any excitement it produced in his brain. He ordered his half-litre as a matter of respect for the house, as he called it, and it served to wet his throat while he was ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... social groups about which and for which she is writing. The latter requisite in particular is difficult. For in attempting to give appreciative accounts of weddings, dances, receptions, she is liable to overstep the narrow limits of conventional usage and make herself ridiculous by extravagance of statement; or else, in trying to avoid unnecessary display of enthusiasm, she is led into use of trite, colorless words and stock phrases. She must by all means take care not to say that ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... will forgive me if I overstep the bounds of friendship in yielding to the inner voice which compels me to say that if before or on your marriage day you need advice or protection, you may ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... have been frozen to stone, so immobile, so lifeless were his features. Belated visitors passed near the entrance of the shrine, peered within as at some outlandish and sinister freak of nature, and moved on with jocular words. Nobody ventured to overstep the threshold, whether from religious fear or because of something repellent, something almost putrescent, which radiated from his person. A contingent of Little White Cows, a kind of bodyguard, stood at ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... efforts into an ideal, and having achieved it, has not striven to reap the fruits thereof for selfish gain, but year by year, has perfected that work until the tests have finally permitted him to cry: "Eureka"—it is accomplished beyond dispute,—that man has the right to overstep the conventional rule which forbids self-praise. While in other work accomplished I see but the links of an uncompleted chain, the synthesis of Eubiogen, I feel to be one of those so rare occasions in human life, when a tested accomplishment ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... limits and the clearer the separation. The more painful too; for the mind, if it remain as we know it—and we are not able to imagine it different—will no sooner have seen its limits than it will wish to overstep them: and, the more separated it feels, the greater will be its longing to unite with that which lies outside. There will therefore be an eternal struggle between its being and its aspirations. And really there were no object ...
— Death • Maurice Maeterlinck
... plough commonly used by the peasantry—by means of a long rope. In this order the procession made the circuit of the entire village, and it was confidently believed that the cholera would not be able to overstep the magical circle thus described. Many of the males probably knew, or at least suspected, what was going on; but they prudently remained within doors, knowing well that if they should be caught peeping indiscreetly at the mystic ceremony, they would be unmercifully beaten by those who were taking ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... holds by divine right, and not by permission of the pope. He assigns supremacy to the pope in spirituals, and to the emperor in temporals. This was a delicate subject, and though the king of Saxony (a Catholic) says that Dante did not overstep the limits of orthodoxy, it was on account of this part of the book that it ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... as love claims and hallows. He had never touched one of the gleaming ringlets of her hair; her garment—so marked was the physical barrier between them—had never been waved against him by a breeze. On the few occasions when Giovanni had seemed tempted to overstep the limit, Beatrice grew so sad, so stern, and withal wore such a look of desolate separation, shuddering at itself, that not a spoken word was requisite to repel him. At such times he was startled at the horrible suspicions that rose, monster-like, out of the caverns of his heart and stared him ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... interest of free soil, no Emancipation Proclamation, no Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Federal Constitution. There might have been and probably would have been considerable discussion, ending in a protest, more or less "ringing," when slavery was permitted to overstep the line marked out by the Missouri Compromise. There might even have been another "settlement." But no such adjustment would have seriously impeded the northward march of the triumphant Slave Power. Indeed, in that event ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... black palls on their backs and black plumes upon their foreheads; coachmen decorated with scarves and jack-boots, black hammercloths, cloaks, and gloves, with many hired mourners, who, however, would have been instantly discharged had they presumed to betray emotion, or in any way overstep their function of walking beside the hearse with brass-tipped batons ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... I can't hear such words in connection with—with a lady for whom I have the deepest respect. You are heated now, Sir, and I can make every allowance for your natural vexation. But I must ask you not to overstep the ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... in the daily increase of Jacqueline's beauty. It was evident she cared for him. After all, it was doing the little thing no harm to let her live on in the intoxication of vanity and hope, and to give her something to dwell upon in her innocent dreams. Never did Gerard allow himself to overstep the line he had marked out for himself; a glance, a slight pressure of the hand, which might have been intentional, or have meant nothing, a few ambiguous words in which an active imagination might find something to dream about, a certain way of passing his arm round her slight waist which would ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... We might just as well improve the painting of a rose garden by bathing it in rose perfume in order that the spectators might get the odor of the roses together with the sight of them. The limitations of an art are in reality its strength and to overstep its boundaries means ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... at Alexandria on the 27th with all his old cordiality, and had put me at once upon our accustomed footing of personal friendship. On my part, there was naturally a little watchfulness not to overstep the proper line of subordination or to be inquisitive about things he did not choose to confide to me; but, this being assumed, I found myself in a circle where he seemed to unbosom himself with freedom. I saw no interruption ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... manner, Achaeans, being enclosed on all sides by the sea, can easily unite among yourselves, and maintain by that union all that is comprehended within the limits of Peloponnesus; but whenever, through ambition of enlarging your possessions, you overstep these limits, then all that you hold beyond them is naked, and exposed to every attack." The whole assembly declaring their assent, and Diophanes not daring to give further opposition, Zacynthus was ceded ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... the land of Jordan, is hotly pursued by his Aramean father-in-law, who overtakes him at Gilead. There they treat with each other and pile up a heap of stones, which is to be the boundary between them, and which they mutually pledge themselves not to overstep with hostile intentions. This answers to the actual state of the facts. The Hebrew migration into Canaan was followed by the Aramaean, which threatened to overwhelm it. Gilead was the boundary between the two peoples, and the arena, during a long period, of fierce conflicts which ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... the knowledge of anatomy, and particularly the bony structures, is of the utmost importance. During the rage for realism and naturalism many hard things were said about the study of anatomy. And certainly, were it to be used to overstep the modesty of nature in these respects and to be paraded to the exclusion of the charm and character of life, it would be as well left alone. But if we are to make a drawing that shall express something concrete, we must know something of its structure, whatever ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... doing he will overstep the limit of his rights. I beg you, Herr Major, to consider the matter quietly before giving so decided a no. A mother has rights of which no judicial decree can ever divest her, and one of those rights is the privilege of seeing ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... Daitya), hearing the Sama hymns sung in a sweet voice, retired to the woods, leaving his wife and friends and kingdom. In this region, O Brahmana, Manu and Yavakrita's son together set a limit which Surya can never overstep. It was here that the illustrious descendant of Pulastya, Ravana, the king of the Rakshasas, undergoing ascetic austerities, solicited (the boon of) immortality from the gods. It was here that (the Asura) Vritra, in consequence of his wicked conduct, incurred the enmity of Sakra. It is in this ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... equal advances in the mind of each. It would have been impossible for the most minute observer to have said who was before, and who was after. One sex did not take the priority which long-established custom has awarded it, nor the other overstep that delicacy which is so severely imposed. I am not conscious that either party can assume to have been the agent or the patient, the toil-spreader or the prey, in the affair. When, in the course of things, the disclosure came, there was nothing, in a manner, ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin
... enjoying under the Burlingame treaty. It leaves us by our own act to determine when and how we will enforce those limitations. China may therefore fairly have a right to expect that in enforcing them we will take good care not to overstep the grant and take more than ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 8: Chester A. Arthur • James D. Richardson
... does the blame rest? Not surely upon the people—who, as long as they continued to have confidence in their rulers, could not be expected (after the early fervours of their revolution had subsided) much to overstep the measure of exertion prescribed to them—but solely upon the government. Up to the time when Sir J.M. died, the Supreme Junta had adopted no one grand and comprehensive measure for calling out the strength of the nation;—scarcely any of such ordinary vigour ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... Government of the Union, acting within the sphere of its delegated authority, is also a complete sovereignty. While the General Government should abstain from the exercise of authority not clearly delegated to it, the States should be equally careful that in the maintenance of their rights they do not overstep the limits of powers reserved to them. One of the most distinguished of my predecessors attached deserved importance to "the support of the State governments in all their rights, as the most competent administration ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... Emperor of Persia," he continues, "conformable to the Eastern way of thinking, amidst a great many pompous titles, denominates himself the 'Son of Glory,' and 'Nutmeg of Delight.'" Eastern nations indulge in this kind of hyperbole, which seems to us rather to overstep the sublime, but we cannot be astonished when we read in the Zgand-Savai (Golden Tulip) of China, that "no one can be a great poet, unless he have the majestic carriage of the elephant, the bright eyes of the partridge, the agility of the antelope, and a face ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... glitter of gold darted like lightning through the souls of all, and each secretly determined to make the man his friend, in order to get possession of it. The alderman shouted, "We must make him a citizen, and give him a seat and voice in the council. Policy demands that we should overstep law and custom, if the advantage of the State depends ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... which occurred in that Arcadian parish, would be to overstep the bounds of permissible tediousness. In such places all events move slowly and take long to develop to their results. The passions which in our own quickly moving world spring up, flourish, wither and are cut down in a month ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... halter. But disagreeable is too mild a word. Such people are all that, and a great deal more. And accordingly they stand beyond the range of this dissertation. We are to treat of folk who are disagreeable, and not worse than disagreeable. We may sometimes, indeed, overstep the boundary-line. But it is to be remembered that there are people who in the main are good people, who yet are extremely disagreeable. And a further complication is introduced into the subject by the fact, that some people who are far from good are ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... least, utterly eschew all slang. There are some young ladies who apparently think that a little slang, to spice their remarks, is piquant and saucy, but, in the majority of cases they so soon overstep the mark and fall into the deplorable habit of constantly and copiously interlarding their speech with all manner of slang phrases, that one is forced to advocate total ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... gambling, and unclean living. I can hold myself in. I can go just as far as I please. I can indulge to a certain extent, and pull myself up just at the moment I please; and as for prayer and seeking God's help, thank my stars I can clear a safe course without all that. I shall not overstep the line you may depend upon it." "Is thy servant a dog, ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... more clearly that the Renaissance did not overstep the limits of aesthetic theory reached in antiquity, than the fact that the pedagogic theory of art continued to prevail, in the face of translations of the Poetics of Aristotle and of the diffuse labours ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... State. But the power of the majority is not of itself unlimited. In the moral world humanity, justice, and reason enjoy an undisputed supremacy; in the political world vested rights are treated with no less deference. The majority recognizes these two barriers; and if it now and then overstep them, it is because, like individuals, it has passions, and, like them, it is prone to do what is wrong, whilst ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... justified in taking these liberties with the Muse of History by his anxiety to construct a narrative that should not overstep the bounds of probability. As if all history were not a chain of improbabilities, and what is most improbable were not often that which is most certain! But if, at Mr. Wilson's summons, we reject as improbable a series of events supported ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... I would burst sooner than let a d—d Frenchman know it. We have made peace with the French despotism, and we will, I hope, adhere to it whilst the French continue in due bounds; but whenever they overstep that, and usurp a power which would degrade Europe, then I trust we shall join Europe in crushing her ambition; then I would with pleasure go forth and risk my life for to pull down the overgrown detestable power of France." When the mob in London dragged the carriage of the French ambassador, ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... old human nature is human nature, after all—elsewise it would be a darned funny state of affairs—but anyhow, that little gal's holler did something to my friends, the Oggsouashers. I don't think I overstep the mark when I say some of 'em ...
— Mr. Scraggs • Henry Wallace Phillips
... high art. Some have this merit only. The scholar is not apt to make his most familiar experience come gracefully to the aid of his expression. Very few men can speak of Nature, for instance, with any truth. They overstep her modesty, somehow or other, and confer no favor. They do not speak a good word for her. Most cry better than they speak, and you can get more nature out of them by pinching than by addressing them. The surliness with which the woodchopper ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... most condescending Princess," cried the count, while he sank from the ottoman down upon his knees, and pressed his glowing lips upon the hem of the Princess's robe. "I thank you, and swear that I will not overstep the limit prescribed, and depart at two with the first stroke ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... a moral force of action which always makes him overstep the line on which he is standing. I had obtained everything, I wanted more. "Shew me," I said, "how you were when I mistook you for a man." She got out of bed, opened her trunk, took out the instrument and fixed it with the gum: I was compelled to admire ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... "Besides, she's truly no child, ignorant of the distinction between high and low. When we are at home, with no strangers present, we ladies should be on terms like these, and as long, in fact, as we don't overstep propriety, it's all right. If not, what would he the earthly use of making them behave like ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... accomplishment was so rare. Players are the worst readers of all:—reads vilely; and Mrs. —-, who is so celebrated, can read nothing well but dramatic compositions: Milton she cannot read sufferably. People in general either read poetry without any passion at all, or else overstep the modesty of nature, and read not like scholars. Of late, if I have felt moved by anything it has been by the grand lamentations of Samson Agonistes, or the great harmonies of the Satanic speeches in Paradise Regained, when read aloud by myself. A young lady sometimes comes and drinks ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... his official career he had unbent so far as to manifest a personal interest in the welfare of his master. He was on the verge of assuming a responsibility which makes any servant intolerable. But after his interview he resolved that he would never again overstep his position. He made sure that it should be the last offense. The day following the dinner Rawles appeared before young Mr. Brewster and indicated by his manner that the call was an important one. Brewster was seated at his writing-table, deep in thought. The exclamation that followed Rawles's ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... careful not to overstep the truth. It is marvelous—exquisite—her voice," says the Italian, with such unrepressed enthusiasm as makes Luttrell smile. "These antediluvian attachments," ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... requires that rare mean betwixt likeness and unlikeness, that piques each with the presence of power and of consent in the other party. Let me be alone to the end of the world, rather than that my friend should overstep by a word or a look his real sympathy. I am equally balked by antagonism and by compliance. Let him not cease an instant to be himself. The only joy I have in his being mine, is that the not mine is mine. I hate, where I looked for a manly furtherance, or at least a manly resistance, ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... their courage was only skin-deep. As for Mackenzie, he was admitted to be an exception, so far as the mere disposition to rebel was concerned, but he had lost any influence he had ever possessed, and counted for nothing. It was tolerably certain that he would sooner or later overstep the limits at which it would be possible to leave him alone. Then, when he should have placed himself in such a position that no loyal subject could defend him, would be the time to make an effectual disposition of him. By all means, then, give him an abundance ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... could steal enough to live upon, and were sure not to be found out, he would not enjoy his ill-gotten gain, as an honest man enjoys the money he works hard for. But when we add the risk of detection and the severe penalty of imprisonment, it seems a fatal mistake for any man to overstep the bounds of honesty and ...
— Do and Dare - A Brave Boy's Fight for Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... fundamentally the same thing. The love of God also—and in this connection I might mention Jacob Boehme, Alphonso da Liguori, Novalis—is metaphysical eroticism; but I have restricted my subject to the metaphysical love of woman, and shall not overstep my limits. I will merely elucidate a little more ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... bidden the company a rapid business-like farewell, tempered in Suzette's case by the exact degree of tender intimacy that it would have been considered improper to omit or overstep, Elaine turned to her expectant cousin with an air of ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... Receiving, should they overstep a point, A buffet from a hand absurdly small, At which upon a gallant knee they fall To kiss ...
— Poems of Paul Verlaine • Paul Verlaine
... truths which are only incomprehensible to blundering sages! And you, as you stand before me, dare not say, 'Let the child pray for me no more!' But will the Creator accept the child's prayer for the man who refuses prayer for himself? Take my advice, pray! And in this counsel I do not overstep my province. I speak not as a preacher, but as a physician. For health is a word that comprehends our whole organization, and a just equilibrium of all faculties and functions is the condition of health. As in your Lilian the equilibrium ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... No one can overstep the order and modesty of general existence without bringing himself into perilous proximity to subjects more profound and sacred than the occasion warrants. Life need not be barren of mystery and miracle to ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... or go, and in a correspondent sense. My meaning is, Move yourself out of my way; or take your stand somewhere else. This, however, does not prove that stand is properly used. If we choose to overstep the bounds of custom, we can employ any word in the language as an active-transitive verb. Be, sit, and lie, may be explained in the ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... hear me, O my Kenkenes," he said after some silence. "If I overstep the liberty of a friend, remind me, but remember thou—whatsoever I shall say will be said through love for thee, not to chide thee. No man shapeth his career for himself alone, nor does death end his deeds. He continues ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller |
