"Oppression" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of jealous rivals at home gave him such a shock that he died of a broken heart just as he was leaving. The Indians long remembered his benign rule, and used to visit his tomb to pray him to deliver them from the oppression of his ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... friend Young, but he would tell you of my departure with our trusty and well-beloved Erskine, on a sort of a voyage to Nova Zembla. Since my return, I have fallen under the tyrannical dominion of a certain Lord of the Isles. Those Lords were famous for oppression in the days of yore, and if I can judge by the posthumous despotism exercised over me, they have not improved by their demise. The peine forte et dure is, you know, nothing in comparison to being obliged to grind verses; and so devilish ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... one or other of the gods might have been quoted in vindication of every species of transgression; and had the Gentiles but followed the example of their own heavenly hierarchy, they might have felt themselves warranted in pursuing a course either of the most diabolical oppression, or of the ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... as if fearful of his own rushing thought. Then: "Is not the past fraught with lessons of deepest import to us? Is not the Church being rejected by the nations of Europe because of our intolerance, our oppression, our stubborn clinging to broken idols and effete forms of faith? We are now turning from the wreckage which the Church has wrought in the Old World, and our eyes are upon America. But can we deceive ourselves that free, liberty-loving America will bow her neck to the mediaeval ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... lived and thrived? Its formal existence had been swept away from one State after another, partly on conscientious, partly on economical grounds, but its spirit was here, in every sympathy that Northern winds carried to the listening ear of the Southern slave-holder, and in every oppression of the weak by the strong, every proud assumption of idleness over labor which echoed the music of Southern life back to us. Here in our midst lived that worse and falser nature, side by side with the true and better nature which God meant should be the nature ...
— Addresses • Phillips Brooks
... all the glory that heroism, munificence, and humanity, can bestow, descends to the ungrateful task of forging chains for her friends and children, and, instead of giving support to freedom, turns advocate for slavery and oppression, there is reason to suspect that she has either ceased to be virtuous, or is extremely negligent in the appointment ...
— Slavery: What it was, what it has done, what it intends to do - Speech of Hon. Cydnor B. Tompkins, of Ohio • Cydnor Bailey Tompkins
... was silent. The young Count Fioravanti however was not the person either to divine oppression in another or to feel it for himself. He sat with his hat on the back of his head, smoking and twisting his cane, displaying to the fullest advantage those china-blue eyes, under the blackest of curls, which ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... ecstatic reverence with which the names and memories of the Gracchi were treated, was partly due to a vague sense in the mind of the common man that they were the authors of the happier aspects of the system under which he lived, of the brighter gleams which occasionally pierced the clouds of oppression and discomfort; it was also due to the conviction in the mind of the statesman, often resisted but always recurring, that their work was unalterable. To undo it was to plunge into the dark ages, to attempt to modify it ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... to stem illegal migration of tens of thousands of North Koreans escaping famine, economic privation, and political oppression; North Korea and China dispute the sovereignty of certain islands in Yalu and Tumen rivers and a section of boundary around Paektu-san (mountain) is indefinite; Military Demarcation Line within the 4-km wide Demilitarized Zone has separated North from South Korea since ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... which she nourished in her heart. She suddenly left the dangerous shades, and went to her mother, to seek protection against herself. She wished to reveal her distress to her; she pressed her hands, and the name of Paul was on her lips; but the oppression of her heart took away all utterance, and, laying her head upon her ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones. Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinctive feature: it has simplified the class antagonisms. Society as a whole is ...
— The Communist Manifesto • Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
... lightly, is to tamper with a sacred right; to yield it for anything else whatever is simply suicidal. Dropping the element of race, disfranchisement is no more than to say to the poor and poorly taught, that they must relinquish the right to defend themselves against oppression until they shall have become rich and learned, in competition with those already thus favored and possessing the ballot in addition. This is not the philosophy of history. The growth of liberty has been the constant struggle of the poor against ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... of papers and books. An English stenographer sat at the window, J. K. strode up and down and talked. It was real enough, this narrative. Facts and figures, he had them down cold, to back up with a crushing force the points he was making against the Czar. Poverty, tyranny, bloody oppression, wholesale slaughter of a people in a half-mad monarch's war—Joe pounded them in with sledgehammer blows. He not only made you sure they were true, he made you sure that these things must be stopped and that you as a decent American certainly wanted to help ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... Berlin with that Three-legged Immensity of Atropos, NOT yet mown down at Hennersdorf by a lucky cut), ever to expose myself to it again! If luck had been against me there, I saw myself a Monarch without throne; and my subjects in the cruelest oppression. A bad game that: always, mere CHECK TO YOUR KING; no other move;—I refer it to you, friend D'Arget:—in fine, I ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... from the treatment they were used to receive from their Mogul rulers, who answered the claims of their creditors by a vigorous application of the whip! In some of the Hebrew proverbs we are struck by the frequent allusions of that fugitive people to their own history. The cruel oppression exercised by the ruling power, and the confidence in their hope of change in the day of retribution, was delivered in this Hebrew proverb—"When the tale of bricks is doubled, Moses comes!" The fond idolatry of their devotion to their ceremonial law, and ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... poor reptile which preserves its sting Is more secure than walls of adamant, when The hearts of those within are quivering. 130 Are ye not brave? Yes, yet the Ausonian soil Hath hearts, and hands, and arms, and hosts to bring Against Oppression; but how vain the toil, While still Division sows the seeds of woe And weakness, till the Stranger reaps the spoil.[300] Oh! my own beauteous land! so long laid low, So long the grave of thy own children's hopes, When there is but required ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... as well as at home, by continued hostility to the rule of the many by the few—or the oppression ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... be safe, no honour be secure; while wanton desires, diffused into the hearts of men, corrupt the strictest watches and the closest retreats, which, though as intricate, and unknown as the labyrinth of Crete, are no security for chastity. Thus, that primitive innocence being vanished, the oppression daily prevailing, there was a necessity to oppose the torrent of violence; for which reason the order of knighthood errant was instituted, to defend the honour of virgins, protect widows, relieve orphans, and assist all that are distressed. ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... fighting in the streets, which immediately produced a political change in the shape of the proclamation of the regency of the future King Frederick, and the granting of a constitution. This event filled me with such enthusiasm that I composed a political overture, the prelude of which depicted dark oppression in the midst of which a strain was at last heard under which, to make my meaning clearer, I wrote the words Friedrich und Freiheil; this strain was intended to develop gradually and majestically into the fullest triumph, which I hoped shortly to see successfully ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... money was by statute 13 and 14 Car. II., c. 10, which gave the king an hereditary revenue of two shillings annually upon every hearth in all houses paying church or poor rate. This act was repealed by statute I William and Mary, c. 10, it being declared in the preamble as "not only a great oppression to the poorer sort, but a badge of slavery upon the whole people, exposing every man's house to be entered into and searched at pleasure by persons unknown ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... when he led the Liberal party through its wonderful program of reform in England; nor should any prejudice against the friend of Ireland dull our perception to the clear voice which so often pleaded the cause of ignorance and oppression at home and abroad, and touched the best that was in the conscience of his countrymen. A good, great, learned, eloquent statesman, William Ewart Gladstone towers in moral grandeur above his fellows like a mountain peak above the foothills, and the ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... me, O auspicious King, that when the Lady Jamilah returned to her women, she said to them, "Come, let us go back to our palace." They replied, "Why should we return now, seeing that we use to abide here three days?" Quoth she, "I feel an exceeding oppression in myself, as though I were sick, and I fear lest this increase upon me."[FN330] So they answered, "We hear and obey," and donning their walking dresses went down to the river-bank and embarked ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... After exhausting his lungs in the usual way, he made two inspirations of this gas. The first inspiration produced numbness and loss of feeling in the chest. After the second, he lost all power of perceiving external things, except a terrible oppression on his chest, and he seemed sinking fast to death! He had just consciousness enough to remove the mouth-piece from his unclosed lips, when he became wholly insensible. After breathing the common air for some time, consciousness was restored, and ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... creatures. But, as soon as we look around, we find that God provides for nothing. Providence neglects the greatest part of the inhabitants of this world. Against a very small number of men, who are supposed to be happy, what a multitude of miserable ones are groaning beneath oppression, and languishing in misery! Whole nations are compelled to starve in order to indulge the extravagances of a few morose tyrants, who are no happier than the slaves whom they oppress! At the same time that our philosophers energetically ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... feeling of pressure under the sternum. Little excitements or overexertions are likely to make the heart attempt to contract more rapidly than it is able to drive the blood through the narrowed orifice, and this alone causes cardiac discomfort and the feeling of cardiac oppression. ...
— DISTURBANCES OF THE HEART • OLIVER T. OSBORNE, A.M., M.D.
... those nameless persons, such as the soldiers, Pharisees, and shepherds, who never attained to the distinction of individual statues, and who could never be invoked in prayer. Out of sight of these effigies and paintings, however, the oppression was at once lightened. True, these model folk could not be permitted to decline from their prescribed standards, but they might be allowed companions of more homely tastes, and the duly authorized wicked ones, such as the Devil, ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... similar circumstances in the case of Maurice Kirkwood. The subjects of that antipathy could not tell what it was which disturbed their nervous system. All they knew was that a sense of uneasiness, restlessness, oppression, came over them in the presence of one of these animals. He remembered the fact already mentioned, that persons sensitive to this impression can tell by their feelings if a cat is concealed in the apartment in which they may happen to be. It may be through ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... I bring in the oppression and iniustice, which is committed against realmes and nations, whiche some times liued free, and now are broght in bondage of forein nations, by the reason of this monstriferous authoritie and empire of women. But that I delay till better oportunitie. ...
— The First Blast of the Trumpet against the monstrous regiment - of Women • John Knox
... 18 For the oppression of the poor, for the sighing of the needy, now will I arise saith the Lord; I will set him in safety, I will ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... gallant and adventurous knight; he cared not how far he wandered, nor what danger lay in his path. He had travelled to all lands, and in all climates, defending ladies from insult, and the defenceless from oppression. His love of adventure led him through wood and wild, over mountains and across seas; but it was in the night that he loved best to ride forth, when the soft moon shone on the silvery lake and quiet forest; when the stars gazed calmly on the earth, ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... had recourse, O folk of manliness and generosity and masterful deeds: so work ye with me and confirm mine affair and aid me in this matter. See ye not how Such an one, daughter of Such an one, oppression and wrong to me hath done, nor is she with me in affection as she was anon?' They shall answer thee, 'Let it be, as is said, in the tail;'[FN248] then do thou set the objects upon a fire exceeding fierce and recite then over them, 'This be the business; and were ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... to strike a blow for liberty," said the old man; "but often, as I gaze over yonder wide valley, and remember that once it belonged to my ancestors, that by the cruelty and oppression of the Godos my people are now reduced to a handful, and that the sufferings and death of thousands of my people rest on the heads of our oppressors, my heart swells with indignation. Si, Senor Ricardo, ...
— In New Granada - Heroes and Patriots • W.H.G. Kingston
... quite how things are with me. I labour under a great oppression of spirit. I have a strange thirsty longing to see her face and hear her speech. If I could only hear from herself that she had done what her best self—of which we have often spoken—ratifies, I should feel more content. But she trusts ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the land, until it was wiped out with the blood of tens of thousands of its sons. The next picture that stands out in open contradiction to the declaration of equality of birth and liberty of action appears at the end of every war. The very men who had clamoured against oppression, and had fought for and won their freedom, in turn became the most intolerant oppressors. The men who had differed from them, and had adhered to the cause of the mother land, had their property confiscated, and were ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... line of the United States, where for several centuries under dominant catholic influence the Bible has been a forbidden book in the few public educational institutions of the country. The result may now be seen in the general prevalence of ignorance, poverty and oppression; the ownership of land limited to a comparatively few persons, corruption and rapacity on the part of public officials, general improvement checked and the country impoverished by frequent insurrections and revolutions, ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... so great a jewel into my family; but though I may wish for many good things, I would not, therefore, steal them, or be guilty of any violence or injustice to possess myself of them. Now to force a woman into a marriage contrary to her consent or approbation, is an act of such injustice and oppression, that I wish the laws of our country could restrain it; but a good conscience is never lawless in the worst regulated state, and will provide those laws for itself, which the neglect of legislators hath forgotten to supply. This is surely a case of that ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... in an ugly way in his mind. But he had now dug out the whole pit, and found nothing else, except a few large blurred copper coins which lay among the bodies. He stood awhile looking at the treasure; but together with the exultation at his discovery there mingled a dark and gloomy oppression of spirit, which he could not explain, which clouded his mind. But presently he came to himself again, and gathering the bones together, he threw them down to the bottom of the pit, as he was minded to conceal his digging from the men. While he did ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... with the "1" folded in, another a fifty-dollar bill with the "50" well to the fore. Some grew ugly and implied favoritism; they were the born strikers and anarchists. Even though they looked rich, they had that habit of finding oppression and conspiracy everywhere. A few women appealed to his philanthropy, and a few others tried to play the siren. But his head oscillated from side to side, and nobody could swing it up ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... of their journeys have to sleep or take rest in forest and inaccessible regions,[264] be not afflicted by the imposition of heavy taxes. Let not the agriculturists in thy kingdom leave it through oppression; they, who bear the burthens of the king, support the other residents also of the kingdom.[265] The gifts made by thee in this world support the gods, Pitris, men, Nagas, Rakshasas, birds, and animals. These, O Bharata, are the means of governing a kingdom and protecting its rulers. I shall ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... these animals at his own expense to Peru. Father Acosta saw them at the foot of the Andes, about the end of the sixteenth century; but little care being taken of them, they scarcely ever bred, and the race soon became extinct. In those times of oppression and cruelty, which have been described as the era of Spanish glory, the commendatories (encomenderos) let out the Indians to travellers like beasts of burden. They were assembled by hundreds, either ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... his master. He had more brains than books; more courage than politeness; more strength than polish. He had no veneration for old mistakes, no admiration for ancient lies. He loved the truth for truth's sake and for man's sake. He saw oppression on every hand, injustice everywhere, hypocrisy at the altar, venality on the bench, tyranny on the throne, and with a splendid courage he espoused the cause of the weak against the strong, of the enslaved many against ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... they should suffer no other injury. Their stores were immediately produced, consisting of a kind of meal, or paste made of fish, in great plenty, with a small quantity of wheat and barley. This, however insufficient for his wants, Nearchus received: and abstaining from farther oppression, returned on ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... increase rapidly, more rapidly than in former times, and ere long the most valuable of all arts will be the art of deriving a comfortable subsistence from the smallest area of soil. No community whose every member possesses this art, can ever be the victim of oppression in any of its forms. Such community will be alike independent of crowned kings, money kings, and ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins
... and work in life, and received some curious answers. Kim was content to be where he was, to look out upon the flat North-Western landscape, and to talk to the changing mob of fellow-passengers. Even today, tickets and ticket-clipping are dark oppression to Indian rustics. They do not understand why, when they have paid for a magic piece of paper, strangers should punch great pieces out of the charm. So, long and furious are the debates between ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... Indian race in the year that has just passed by. Cruelty as fierce may indeed have been wreaked, and brutality as abominable been practised before, but never under like circumstances; rage of prolonged war, and resentment of prolonged oppression, have made men as cruel before now; and gradual decline into barbarism, where no examples of decency or civilization existed around them, has sunk, before now, isolated populations to the lowest level of possible humanity. But cruelty stretched to its fiercest against the ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... greediness of yonder realms detain'd, The garden of the empire to run waste. Come see the Capulets and Montagues, The Philippeschi and Monaldi! man Who car'st for nought! those sunk in grief, and these With dire suspicion rack'd. Come, cruel one! Come and behold the' oppression of the nobles, And mark their injuries: and thou mayst see. What safety Santafiore can supply. Come and behold thy Rome, who calls on thee, Desolate widow! day and night with moans: "My Caesar, why dost thou desert my side?" Come and behold what ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... a larger number of Americans than Horseshoe Robinson, and this because it is the only story which depicts with fidelity to the facts the heroic efforts of the colonists in South Carolina to defend their homes against the brutal oppression of the British under such leaders ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... whole modern world. The keystone of all sound constitutional government was laid at that place on that date, and by that great bridge not England only, but after England the whole civilised world has passed over from ages of bondage and oppression and injustice into a new world of personal liberty and security, public equity and good faith, loyalty and peace. All that has since been obtained, whether on the battle-field or on the floor of Parliament, has been little more ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... the employment of foreign seamen."[280] Quincy therefore condemned the retaliatory temper of the Administration, as shown in the "Chesapeake" incident by the proclamation excluding British ships of war, and in the embargo as a reply to the Orders in Council. The oppression of American trade, culminating in the Orders, was a just cause of war; but war was not expedient before a further attempt at negotiation, favored by a withdrawal of all retaliatory acts. He was willing to concede the exercise of British authority ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... except the sovereignty over ourselves. We deem the independence and equal rights of the smallest and weakest member of the family of nations entitled to as much respect as those of the greatest empire, and we deem the observance of that respect the chief guaranty of the weak against the oppression of the strong. We neither claim nor desire any rights or privileges or powers that we do not freely concede to ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... its limitations, her charity was partly genuine. Her mind was like a country in the grip of civil war. One-half of her sincerely pitied the poor, burned at any story of oppression, and cried "Give!" but the other cried "Halt!" and held her back, and between the two ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... worldly possessions through the pathless wilderness is a slow, grinding misery. The lightest pack soon becomes a burden. At the beginning of a march it may seem a mere nothing, in an hour it is an oppression; in three a millstone is a feather compared with it; and before night the inexperienced packer feels that, like Atlas, he bears the world upon his shoulders. It was therefore little wonder that Helen Yardely ceased to sing after they had marched but a very little way; and indeed the ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... to preserve the national unity of France which its own great ones had imperilled. It was something to found two magnificent universities, cherished abodes of science and of antique lore, in the midst of civil commotions and of resistance to foreign oppression. It was something, at the same period, to lay the foundation of a systew of common schools—so cheap as to be nearly free—for rich and poor alike, which, in the words of one of the greatest benefactors to the young republic, "would be ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... between me and the deepest pool of these waters. I am no saint. I hate my enemies. Restore to me my sword, pit me against them one by one, and I will fight my way to freedom or die.... A fair fight, too, a rising of the people against oppression; a challenge to the oppressor to do his worst; a gallant leading of a forlorn hope.... But a slave insurrection! a midnight butchery! There was one who used to tell me tales of such risings in the Indies. Murder and rapine, fire rising through the night, planters ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... Years before—to be exact, in the spring of 1844—he had declared in the House of Commons that, whilst the Government of England was, as it ought to be, a Government of opinion, the Government of Ireland was notoriously a Government of force. Gradually he was forced to the view that centuries of oppression and misunderstanding, of class hatred and opposite aims, had brought about a social condition which made it necessary that judicial authority should have a voice between landlord and tenant in every case of ejectment. Lord John's difficulties in dealing with Ireland were complicated by the ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... emerge without some common aid, which to restrain, by putting some into a better condition than others, would rather more inflame the discord than extinguish it; Appius Claudius (still upon the old haunt) would have it that the people were rather wanton than fierce; it was not oppression that necessitated, but their power that invited them to these freaks; the empire of the Consuls since the appeal to the people (whereby a plebeian might ask his fellows if he were a thief) being but a mere scarecrow. 'Go to,' says he, 'let us create the dictator, ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... undertake. But no sting of conscience, no ill treatment at home, and no self-reproaches for failing in his duty of confession as a good Catholic, were powerful enough in their influence over Gabriel to make him disclose the secret, under the oppression of which his very life was wasting away. He knew that if he once revealed it, whether his father was ultimately proved to be guilty or innocent, there would remain a slur and a suspicion on the family, and on Perrine besides, from her approaching connection with it, which in their time and ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... aggregation of blackbirds—these are but illustrations of the common impulse of all the animal world to play. Wherever freedom and happiness reside, there play is found; wherever play is lacking, there the curse has fallen and sadness and oppression reign. Play is the natural role in the paradise of youth; it is childhood's chief occupation. To toil without play, places man on a level with the beasts ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... get over this fence with my assistance, a carriage will await us at the gate, in which you will accompany me to my sister's; there living, retired or mingling in society, as you wish, we shall be enabled to use our power to resist oppression, and not suffer ourselves to be put to death like sheep, which ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of Spanish rule, extortion, rapacity, fraud, and bitter oppression followed,—a period of struggle for supremacy on the part of the Roman Catholic Church, during which it relentlessly crushed every vestige of opposition by means of that hideous monster, the Inquisition. ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... Mary's character in the treatment of her sister; they prove that the Princess, during her residence at Hatfield, lived in splendour and affluence; that she was often admitted to the diversions of the Court; and that her present situation was by no means a state of oppression and imprisonment, as it has been represented by most of ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... times of chivalry, female influence was at the zenith of its glory and perfection. It was the source of valor, it gave birth to politeness, it awakened pity, it called forth benevolence, it restricted the hand of oppression, and meliorated the human heart. "I cannot approach my mistress," said one, "till I have done some glorious deed to deserve her notice. Actions should be the messengers of the heart; they are the homage due to beauty, and they only should ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... period, though made the victims indeed of British oppression, yet the colonies were not totally without friends in Britain. It was but natural that when Parliament itself held patriotic and gifted men, who not only recommended conciliatory measures, but ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... decadence would assuredly be found scarce five good men. His vision is curiously limited to the darker side of history; he hears humanity uttering in all ages a cry of suffering, and but rarely a shout of laughter. He sees the oppression of the tyrant more vividly than the heroism of the oppressed. Has he to write of the power of Spain? It is in the portrayal of the tyrant of Spain rather than the men who overcame Spain that his genius finds scope. Does he wish to paint the era of religious persecution? It is the horror of the ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... amorous designs upon her; and any shortcomings of manners or speech were excused by the broad mantle of charity which Rena in her new-found zeal for the welfare of her people was willing to throw over all their faults. They were the victims of oppression; they were not ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... remorseless public gaze, if the bill, which had been so often renewed, had to be dishonoured at last. Mr. May had a conscience, though he was not careful of his money, and the fear of ruin to Cotsdean was a very terrible and real oppression to him. The recollection was upon him like a vulture in classic story, tearing and gnawing, as he sat there and smiled over the cup of tea Ursula gave him, feeling amused all the same at Phoebe's talk. He could scarcely have told ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... has produced all this tempest of outrage, the oppression in which all other oppressions are included, the invasion which has left us no property, the alarm that suffers no patriot to sleep in quiet, is comprised in a vote of the House of Commons, by which the freeholders of Middlesex are deprived of a Briton's birthright—representation ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... uncomfortable. His soul would reach out in its blind way to her and find her gone. He felt a sort of emptiness, almost like a vacuum in his soul. He was unsettled and restless. Soon he could not live in that atmosphere, and he affected his wife. Both felt an oppression on their breathing when they were left together for some time. Then he went to bed and she settled down to enjoy herself alone, ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... belongs to the Middle Ages; he edited the Roman de la Rose and the works of Villon; his immediate masters were the grands rhetoriqueurs; but the spirit of the Renaissance and his own genius delivered him from the oppression of their authority, and his intellect was attracted by the revolt and the promise of freedom found in the Reforming party. A light and pleasure-loving nature, a temper which made the prudent conduct of life impossible, exposed him to risks, ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... various laws.—It is frequently stated by Bisyas and others that Manbo justice consists in the oppression of the weak by the strong, but I have not found this to be true. The Manbo is too independent and too much a lover of revenge to brook coercion. He recognizes a set of customary rules, and any departure from them is resented by himself and ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... Saxons, Danes, Swedes, Swiss, French, and Italians, who also live among us." In Poland, Tadeusz Czacki, the historian, wrote his Discourse on the Jews (Rosprava o Zhydakh, Vilna, 1807), in which he deplores that Jews "experienced indulgence rarely, oppression often, and contempt nearly always" under the most Christian governments, and suggests a plan for reforming their condition. But the main appeal for freedom came, as might have been expected, from the Jews themselves. Contemporaneous with, if not before, Michel Beer's ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... boards in the passage creaked, the lizard vanished, and Almayer stirred uneasily with a sigh: slowly, out of the senseless annihilation of drunken sleep, he was returning, through the land of dreams, to waking consciousness. Almayer's head rolled from shoulder to shoulder in the oppression of his dream; the heavens had descended upon him like a heavy mantle, and trailed in starred folds far under him. Stars above, stars all round him; and from the stars under his feet rose a whisper full of entreaties ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... a pressure or oppression (priemere, hod. premere, to press or oppress, indicative used as a noun). The monk of course refers to the posture in which he had seen the abbot have to do with the girl, pretending to believe that he placed her on his own breast (instead of mounting on hers) out of a sentiment ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... other, "'Tis then the purpose of the King to carry his oppression even beyond our altars. It seemeth to me a most fitting thing, Sir Thomas, that the kingdom be ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley
... acts of oppression; with idolizing the lawyers, the constant advocates of tyranny; with neglecting the men who had bled for them in the field, that they might gain the Presbyterians who had apostatized from the cause; and with doing all this in order to perpetuate their own power, and to replenish their own purses. ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... granted the lives of three, but Major Boulton, he said, would have to die that night. It now began to look very serious. Archdeacon McLean was called upon to attend the condemned man during his last moments, and a feeling of oppression was felt by all at the thought of a human being to be thus sent to his last account on such short notice, at midnight, too (the hour appointed for the execution)—midnight—the very thought of a man being brought ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... in defiance of her duenna's fierce opposition, goes out into the wide world with gallant Alessandro. The struggles and disappointments of the wedded pair, and their oppression by Indian agents are told in Helen ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... inspired the officers of the Woman's Trade-Union League to protest to Police Commissioner Baker against the arbitrary oppression of the strikers by the policemen. He was asked to investigate the action of the police. He replied that the pickets would in future receive as much consideration as other people. The attitude of the ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt
... be invented and practised for easing our Nations of these Burdens, for promoting our Trade and Plantations by their Industry; and not for the Oppression (whatever some may imagine) of the Poor and Needy, but for their Maintenance and Felicity. And I believe this may be done without putting any Stop to the Importation of Negroes, rather than fail, since they might be kept on in their present Course of Life and Business; only they must ...
— The Present State of Virginia • Hugh Jones
... for me to state in as few words as possible the various modes in which it may be necessary for me to obtain my object; on which depends not only the honour and glory of our country, but possibly its safety, and with it that of all Europe, from French tyranny and oppression. ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... force no longer played a part in Irish politics, except from the fact that, inasmuch as it undoubtedly still existed, it might some day act without him, or in spite of him, or act when he should be dead and gone. It is hard to think that a people who had been resisting English oppression for twenty generations, with nothing else but physical force, ever believed him in earnest, when he told them they should win their rights by legal and constitutional means alone. The more educated may have given some credence ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... all that these saintly missionaries accomplished, if they mean their leaving refinement, christianity, fond home and kindred in distant Spain to brave untold hardships, nay, martyrdom, to rescue souls from paganism, and if such conduct as "harshness, oppression, endeavoring to keep the Indians in ignorance" could be compatible with the practice of heroic virtue and acts of mortification of mind and body which to the spiritual man or woman appear beyond words of admiration, to the scoffer and frivolous (but ...
— Chimes of Mission Bells • Maria Antonia Field
... 'tis said, have created a partial scarcity. That a scarcity prevails of every article, not only of luxury but even the necessaries of life, is a certain fact. Everything bears an exorbitant price. The Act, which was in some measure regarded and stemmed the torrent of oppression, is now no more heeded than if it had never been made. Indian corn at five shillings; rye, eleven and twelve shillings, but scarcely any to be had even at that price; beef, eightpence; veal, sixpence and eightpence; ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... carousing and robbing by wholesale, And the inferiors down to the lowest caroused and robb'd also. Nobody thought of aught else than having enough for tomorrow. Terrible was the distress, and daily increased the oppression. None the cry understood, that they of the day were the masters. Then even temperate minds were attack'd by sorrow and fury; Each one reflected, and swore to avenge all the injuries suffer'd, And to atone for the hitter loss of hopes ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... and more severe, as if occasioned by a fresh cold, in which way the patient vainly tries to account for it. Expectoration increases, becomes more opaque, and, perhaps, yellow, with occasionally slight dots or streaks of blood. The fever increases, and there is more pain and oppression of the chest, particularly during deep respiration after exercise. Palpitation is more severe. There may now be night-sweats, tire patient waking in the morning to find himself drenched in perspiration, exhausted, ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... education, habits, fortune, or tastes, had placed in positions more conspicuous than his own, was, in his eyes, reasonable and just—as any thing that would serve him, in person, the same ill turn, would have been tyranny and oppression. The institutions of America, like every thing human, have their bad as well as their good side; and while we firmly believe in the relative superiority of the latter, as compared with other systems, we should fail of accomplishing the end set before us in this ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... and emulous ostentation of their own art, did themselves also change into blood the water which the plague had spared. Such sad comfort do those who stir up war minister to the oppressed. But here where was the oppression? What was the favour which had not been granted? What was the evil which had not been removed? What further could ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the East China Sea, the site of intensive hydrocarbon exploration and exploitation; certain islands in the Yalu and Tumen rivers are in dispute with North Korea; North Korea and China seek to stem illegal migration to China by North Koreans, fleeing privations and oppression, by building a fence along portions of the border and imprisoning North Koreans deported by China; China and Russia have demarcated the once disputed islands at the Amur and Ussuri confluence and in the Argun River in accordance with their 2004 Agreement; China and Tajikistan have begun demarcating ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... of civic popular love, self-love, Which means that men are kept in awe and law, Yet not oppressed—at least they must not think so, Or, if they think so, deem it necessary, 540 To ward off worse oppression, their own passions. A King of feasts, and flowers, and wine, and revel, And love, and mirth, was never ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... chests of tea had been dumped into Boston Harbor, and the example had been followed by the "Mohawks" in New York. British oppression had made many Tories lukewarm, and then English rapacity had transformed these Tories into Whigs. Jay was one of these; and in newspapers and pamphlets, and from the platform, he had pleaded the cause of the Colonies. Opposition ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... revolution when actually carried out, was really the conclusive answer to the nullifying doctrine. But Mr. Calhoun and his school eagerly denied that nullification rested on the right to revolt against oppression. They argued that it was a constitutional right; that they could live within the Constitution and beyond it,—inside the house and outside it at one and the same time. They contended that, the Constitution being a compact between the States, the Federal government ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... bureau; and will be sent to Amiens at my expence, to be examined by the chambre syndicale; lest they should contain something prejudicial to the state, or to the religion of the country. This is a species of oppression which one would not expect to meet with in France, which piques itself on its politeness and hospitality: but the truth is, I know no country in which strangers are worse treated with respect to their essential concerns. ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... in ringing tones. "Yes, it is rank rebellion, sedition and revolt against slavery, for life and love and freedom! You wonder where I have learned to turn and face this oppression of the world, instead of yielding to it, one more unhappy woman among the thousands that are bought and sold into wifehood every year! I have learned nothing, my heart needed no teaching for that! It is enough that I love an honest man truly—I know that it is wrong to promise ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... mechanically two or three times. The date was a month old, but the postmark showed that it had just been mailed. She must have postponed her departure somewhat after writing it, or the person with whom it had been left had neglected to post it till now. He felt a sudden oppression and need of air, and taking his hat left the house. It was evening, and the first snow of the season lay deep on the ground. Anger and grief divided his heart. "It's too bad! too bad!" he murmured, with tears in his eyes: "she might have given me one chance to speak. She hasn't been fair to me. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... trading business; or, it may be, when rarely an itinerant priest pays them a visit?—still they are living representatives of the Gentile Church of the country in primitive days, down through continuous ages,—their families enduring martyrdom, and to this day persecution and oppression, for the name of Christ, in spite of every worldly inducement to renounce it. While we Europeans are reciting the Nicene Creed in our churches, they are suffering for it. They are living witnesses for the "Light of light, and very God of very God;" and although with this they ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... solemnity and earnestness on his part in this discussion. He was at times highly impassioned and pathetic. His whole soul was enlisted in the cause, and in contending for the rights of the Jury and a free Press, he considered that he was establishing the surest refuge against oppression.... He never before in my hearing made any effort in which he commanded higher reverence for his principles, nor equal admiration of the power and pathos of his eloquence.... I have very little doubt that if General Hamilton had ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... lives of his fellow soldiers? Continue, General, in peace, to till those acres which you once wrested from the hands of an enemy. Continue to enjoy dignity accompanied with ease, and to lengthen out your days blessed with the consciousness of conduct unaccused of rapine or oppression, and of actions ever ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... deeper. Flint—an arrow-head of flint with notched edges—tears; the muscles do not close about the intruder. The blood flows into the chest; it fills the lungs; he suffocates. Yet all consciousness has not vanished, although pain and oppression overwhelm the physical instruments of consciousness, and deprive the will of its connection with its tools. The will longs to see him who has destroyed its abode, but it no longer controls the shattered tissues; the nerves shiver like the broken springs of clockwork ere they come to a stand-still ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... for a lodge in some vast wilderness, Some boundless contiguity of shade, Where rumour of oppression and deceit, Of unsuccessful or successful war, Might never reach me more! My ear is pained, My soul is sick with every day's report Of wrong and outrage with which earth is filled. There is no flesh ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... tyrant; but use thyself in the middle way between justice and mercy in those things that belong to thee. And between parties do justice truly, to the consolation of thy poor subjects that suffer injuries, and to the punishment of (p. 308) them that be extortioners and doers of oppression, that others thereby may take example; and in thus doing thou shalt obtain the favour of God, and the love and fear of thy subjects; and therefore also thou shalt have thy realm more in tranquillity and rest, which shall be occasion of great prosperity within thy realm, which Englishmen ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... down to her ancestors "unwept, unhonoured, and unsung," if Isabel had not volunteered and enforced her attendance. Hour after hour her fairy form flitted around the sick-chamber; or sat mute and breathless by the feverish bed; she had neither fear for contagion nor bitterness for past oppression; everything vanished beneath the one hope of serving, the one gratification of feeling herself, in the wide waste of creation, not utterly without use, as she had been ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... couple, or the old, are easily lodged. But in middle life,—since we are not content, like our forefathers, with bestowing our children out of sight,—it takes a great deal of room to provide for them on both floors, without either neglect or oppression, and to keep up the due oversight without sacrificing ourselves or them. For children are rather exclusive, and spoil for other use more room than they occupy. Here I counsel every man who must have a corner to himself to fix his study in the attic, for the only way to avoid noise without ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... the story of the fabrication of Eve to be regarded as one of those pre-Abrahamic narratives, the historical truth of which is an open question, in face of the reference to it in a speech unhappily famous for the legal oppression to which it has been wrongfully forced to ...
— The Lights of the Church and the Light of Science - Essay #6 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... appearance at his second voyage. The joy for the restoration of the royal family still appeared in all parts. The nation, fond of change and novelty, tasted the pleasure of a natural government, and seemed to breathe again after a long oppression. In short, the same people who, by a solemn abjuration, had excluded even the posterity of their lawful sovereign, exhausted themselves in festivals and ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... appear to be giving too despotic power to the Master. But a slight reflection will convince any one that there can be but little danger of oppression from one so guarded and controlled as a Master is, by the sacred obligations of his office, and the supervision of the Grand Lodge, while the placing in the hands of the craft so powerful, and at times, and with bad spirits, so annoying a privilege as that of immediate appeal, would necessarily ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... the silence of the night, a solitary, discouraged candle in a shade protesting feebly against the one, and every chance sound that day would have ignored emphasizing the other, the stillness of the figure on the bed became a mystery and an oppression. How Gwen would have welcomed a recurrence of the faintest breath, to keep alive her confidence that this was only sleep—sleep to be welcomed as the surest herald of life and strength! How she longed to touch the blue-veined wrist upon the ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... the modern precept of a British monarch. Rather let the English subject "enquire diligently concerning this," for he cannot fail to enquire wisely. Let him enquire, and he will find that "the former days" of England were days of discord, tyranny, and oppression; days when an Empson and a Dudley could harass the honest and well-disposed, through the medium of the process of the odious star-chamber; when the crown was possessed of almost arbitrary power, and when the liberty and personal independence of individuals were in no ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... read themselves, but had to listen to others' reading; that it has taught them to be good sons, to be good brothers; that it has taught them to keep pure in temptation, and patient and honest under oppression and wrong; that it has stirred in them a noble ambition to raise themselves in life; and taught them, at the same time, that the only safe and sure way of rising is to fear God and keep his commandments; and so has really done more to civilize and refine them—to make them truly ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley
... least in letting her secret thoughts and feelings be known, as far as tears could tell them. She wept, at first in spite of herself, and afterwards in the very luxury of indulged feeling; till she was as quiet as a child, and the weight of oppression was all gone. Mr. Carleton did not move, ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... inspired by Politicians, but the Natural Outcome of the Barbarous Treatment bestowed upon the Negroes by the Whites.—The Unprecedented Sufferings of 60,000 Negroes fleeing from Southern Democratic Oppression.—Their Patient Christian Endurance.—Their Industry, Morals, and Frugality.—The Correspondent of the "Chicago Inter-Ocean" sends Information to Senator Voorhees respecting the Refugees in Kansas.—The Position of Gov. St. John ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... have stood by them," murmured the king, as he folded and addressed his letter. "I would have borne still longer this life of oppression and privation; but now, honor demands that I ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... and which was, perhaps, only rendered tolerable to those it governed by the extraneous contributions of captured and subsidiary provinces, of which in truth, as in all cases of metropolitan rule, the oppression weighed most grievously. The reader will at once see that the very reason why the despotism of the self-styled Republic was tolerable to its own citizens was but another cause ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... genius, but presenting Koutousoff as a military ideal; loathing science—that organized knowledge which has done more than all else to bring us out of mediaeval cruelty into a better world—and extolling a "faith" which has always been the most effective pretext for bloodshed and oppression. ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... To ease your subjects from that dire oppression They groan beneath, which longer to support Unable, they ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... while rising to its culminating point, and he is obliged to turn right round to worship it while setting. He did not himself know, until tested by this great trial, how entirely his opinions as to war and peace, and slavery and freedom, and lust of conquest and hatred of oppression, were all the mere accidents which hung loosely upon him, and were capable of being detached at once in the interest of the ruling passion of his soul for that great dominant Democracy. Nor need we wonder; for ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... bishops in the colonies, for the exercise of offices purely episcopal—offices to which the members of the Church of England have an undoubted claim, and from which they cannot be precluded without manifest injustice and oppression." [Footnote: Bishop Lowth, Sermon before the Venerable Society.] The colonial churchmen found, indeed, some zealous friends in the English Episcopate; and one's heart warms as one reads the names of Sharpe ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut
... love to ride, With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side, When the wild turmoil of this wearisome life, With its scenes of oppression, corruption, and strife— The proud man's frown, and the base man's fear— The scorner's laugh, and the sufferer's tear— And malice, and meanness, and falsehood, and folly, Dispose me to musing and dark melancholy; When my bosom ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... close by the wall—always in the shadow—traded with all and trusted none. Who could tell what thoughts were hidden beneath the ragged fur cap—what revenge awaited its consummation in the heart crushed by oppression and contempt? ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman |
