"Take arms" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he,—"though, to tell my mind on the matter, I could devise a simpler way of getting rid of them. We have other methods in Erin O, but as your lordship has taken the fancy, they may go, I daresay. Only they must not join their clan or take arms with them until this battle is over. They must be on the Loch Linnhe road before we call ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... when they were masters of Chalons, was never given. When volunteers were called out to resist them, men with black cockades went about interrupting the enrolment, and declaring that no man should take arms, except to deliver the king. Their mysterious leader, Cottereau, the first to bear the historic name of Jean Chouan, was La Rouerie's right hand. When the prospect of combination with the Powers was dissolved ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... many soldiers who risk life on the battle field. For the worst foe to fight and conquer is Ridicule; and he and others in high places have attackted Fashion so entrenched in the solid armour of Habit that most public men wouldn't have dasted to take arms agin it. ...
— Samantha on the Woman Question • Marietta Holley
... not to crop, that is the question:— Whether 'tis nobler in the mind, to suffer The plague of powder and loquacious barbers; Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And, ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... or not to be; that is the question; Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep; No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished. To die, to ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... out. He could not expect easy terms, yet Joan granted them nevertheless. His garrison could keep their horses and arms, and carry away property to the value of a silver mark per man. They could go whither they pleased, but must not take arms against ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... were running up and down, and busied about their voyage, they made signs from the tops of the houses: Caesar, being apprized of the design by them, ordered scaling ladders to be got ready, and his men to take arms, that he might not lose any opportunity of coming to an action. Pompey weighed anchor at nightfall. The soldiers who had been posted on the wall to guard it, were called off by the signal which had been agreed on, and knowing the roads, ran down to the ships. Caesar's ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... noble and courageous; one may hear them in every group encouraging the men to desperate resistance. Everywhere they form societies for the relief of the distressed and the wounded. Many have petitioned for this revolution, and have instigated men to the accomplishment of it. Many will take arms in defense and fight; yea, fight with all the strength which desperation lends, should the struggle reach our streets.... They have already proved this sort of courage. Men feel now how very necessary their co-operation is, and after the crisis I hope they will not forget it. But it is better ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... warrior-daughter of Finn, and his father was a near kinsman of hers. He was nurtured by a woman that bore the name of Fair Mane, who had brought up many of the Fianna to manhood. When his time to take arms was come he stood before Finn and made his covenant of fealty, and Finn gave him the captaincy of a band. But mac Luga proved slothful and selfish, for ever vaunting himself and his weapon-skill and never training his men to the chase of deer or boar, and he used to beat his hounds ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... Gladstone did not succeed in effecting the bodily capture of Jack the Ripper. This simple monarch knew that if a malefactor were the terror of the mountain hamlets, his subjects would expect him personally to take arms and pursue the ruffian; and if he refused to do so, would very probably experiment with another king. And the same primitive conception of a king being kept for some kind of purpose, led them also to expect him to lead in a foreign ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... mountaineers have joined them. At Annecy the women have cut down the liberty pole and burnt the archives of the club and commune. At Chambery, the people wanted to do the same, but they forced the sick in the hospitals to take arms and thus kept ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... these important interviews is that given by Francois de la Noue in his Memoires, chap. xi. It clearly shows how much Davila mistakes in asserting that "the prince, the admiral, and Andelot persuaded them, without further delay, to take arms." (Eng. trans., London, 1678, bk. iv., p. 110.) Davila's careless remark has led many others into the error of making Coligny the advocate, instead of the opposer, of a resort to arms. See also De Thou, iv. (liv. xlii.) ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... on her, and dared not speak to her; and she, who loved him in her heart, was careful not to speak more with him than with another; but their eyes delighted to reveal to the heart what was the thing on earth that they loved best. And now the time came that he thought he could take arms if he were knighted; and this he greatly desired, thinking that he would do such things that, if he lived, his mistress ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... blue-gray and laughing, his face beautiful and shapely, his nose high and well set, and so richly seen was he in all things good, that in him was none evil at all. But so suddenly was he overtaken of Love, who is a great master, that he would not, of his will, be a knight, nor take arms, nor follow tourneys, nor do whatsoever him beseemed. Therefore his father ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... in games and warlike exercises, and on the day on which he was seven he assumed the arms of a warrior, so much greater was he than the sons of mortal men. Cuchulain had overheard his tutor, Cathbad the Druid, say to the older youths, "If any young man take arms to-day, his name will be greater than any other name in Ireland, but his span of life will be short," and as he loved fame above long life, he persuaded his uncle, King Conor, to invest him with the weapons of manhood. His ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... for a popular audience. The social feeling that inspired this disinterested act showed itself in other ways. He suffered the penalty of imprisonment rather than serve in the national guard; his position was that though he would not take arms against the new monarchy of July, yet being a republican he would take no oath to defend it. The only amusement that Comte permitted himself was a visit to the opera. In his youth he had been a playgoer, but he shortly came to the conclusion ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 10: Auguste Comte • John Morley
... to him and to everyone else that civil war must shortly follow. Cruelty on one side was answered by cruelty on the other, and Palissy had thrown in his lot with the Huguenots, and by his writings as well as his words urged them to take arms against the Catholics. Perhaps the artist in him may have grieved to hear of the destruction in the beautiful churches of the carved images of the saints that were broken by axes and hammers; of the pictures that were burned, or the old illuminated manuscripts that were torn in pieces; ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... country; and I am so far from depending upon the people of England, that if they should ever rebel against my sovereign (which God forbid) I would be ready at the first command from His Majesty to take arms against them, as some of my countrymen did against theirs at Preston. And if such a rebellion should prove so successful as to fix the Pretender on the throne of England, I would venture to transgress that statute so far as to lose ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... privileged than themselves. Nothing could be more clear, than their readiness to sacrifice the human species at large to their meanest interest, or wildest caprice. Who that saw the situation in its true light would wait till their oppressors thought fit to decree their destruction, and not take arms in their defence while it was yet in their power? Which was most meritorious, the unresisting and dastardly submission of a slave, or the enterprise and gallantry of the man who dared to assert his claims? Since, by the partial administration ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... peace, Earl Roderic," said Sir Oscar Redmain gravely. "I have no enemies but the enemies of my king and country. And methinks, my lord, that a loyal subject of the King of Scots is but a traitorous hound if he stoop to take arms in favour of either Easterling or Norseman, and against our good friends of England. You, my lord, may perhaps pay fealty to King Hakon of Norway, as well as to his majesty Alexander of Scotland. It is not all men who can make it so easy to ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... shall bring the thing to pass, betray our Prince, take Arms against his Power, call in Foreign Force to do the Work, and even then keep our Hands seemingly out of the Broil, by being pretended Sticklers for our former Prince; so save our Reputation, and bring all to pass with Ease and Calmness; while the eager Party of the Abrogratzians ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... command being opened and found to be that which contained the earth:—"Now, Messer Ruggieri," quoth the King with a laugh, "your own eyes may warrant you of the truth of what I say touching Fortune; but verily your merit demands that I take arms against her in your cause. I know that you are not minded to become a Spaniard, and therefore I shall give you neither castle nor city; but that chest, which Fortune denied you, I bestow on you in her despite, that you may take it with you to your own country, and there with your neighbours justly ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... unless the savages were speedily quelled, they would ravage the whole region; and that his family as well as that of every other pioneer must inevitably perish. It was manifest to him that every man was bound immediately to take arms for the general defence. In a few days a summons was issued for every able-bodied man in all that region to repair to Winchester, which, as we have said, was a small cluster of houses about ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... into the main Keep, and let our gentlemen and friends stand on their guard, and go armed, as if they expected arm onset from the followers of Sussex. Possess the townspeople with some apprehension; let them take arms, and be ready, at a given signal, to overpower the Pensioners and Yeomen of ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... with others, was taken captive by the British Indians and brought to fort Niagara, where they were kept for some time, and urged to take up arms and fight against the revolutionists. Finally, this celebrated sachem, Longboard, held a secret council among the captives, and instructed them all to take arms and advance with the British Indians, and use their influence to lead them to a place where they might be captured, and they with the rest, which they successfully effected, and were re-captured by the Americans. Instead of gaining honor and laurels to his crown, ...
— Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, and History of the Tuscarora Indians • Elias Johnson
... English reader will be apt to enquire concerning that famous revolution, which has had such a happy influence on our constitution, and has been attended with such mighty consequences. We have already remarked, that in the case of enormous tyranny and oppression, it is lawful to take arms even against supreme power; and that as government is a mere human invention for mutual advantage and security, it no longer imposes any obligation, either natural or moral, when once it ceases to have that tendency. ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... not to be; that is the question:— Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune; Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them? To die: to ...
— Practice Book • Leland Powers
... been brought to fever heat the agitation failed because the orator proved to be a voice and nothing more. He yielded meekly to the proclamation of the government forbidding further meetings, and his followers forsook him when they saw that he would not cross the Rubicon and take arms after words had failed. The society called "Young Ireland," formed about 1840, took up the agitation for Irish nationality, and carried it to greater lengths than O'Connell had dared. Its fiery young leaders, Smith O'Brien, Meagher, and Mitchel, ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... barks were equipped, in order, as it was said, to deprive "Gustavus Ericson and his company of malefactors of all opportunity of quitting the country," but really to keep the approaches on the side of the sea open, which were obstructed by the fishers and peasants of the islets, who had begun to take arms for Gustavus. Special admonitory letters were despatched to Helsingland and Dalecarlia, signed by Gustavus Trolle, his father Eric Trolle, and Canute Bennetson (Sparre) of Engsoe, styling themselves the council ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... very kindly by his friend the captain, with whom he passed into Flanders, and arrived at Antwerp, a city no less worthy of admiration than those which he had seen in Italy. He visited Ghent and Brussels likewise, finding the whole country preparing to take arms, and well disposed to enter on the campaign ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... fly. Tell a pope to be reasonable. You must relieve him of his infallibility if you want him to act like a sensible man. Adrian could undertake no reforms, and still besought Erasmus to take arms for him. ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... throughout the city by heralds that the despots were slain and Thebes was free, and all Thebans who valued liberty were bidden to muster in arms in the market-place. All the trumpeters in the city were bidden to blow with might and main, from street to street, and thus excite the people to take arms to secure ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... had come to that quarter to seek the fugitive and was now at the house of the sergeant of Mora parish, he armed himself and his servants and fell on the steward unawares, the first to take arms for Gustavus being thus a man of Danish birth. Soon afterwards a troop of Danish horsemen, a full hundred in number, was seen marching over the frozen surface of Lake Silja. So numerous a body of soldiers was unusual in those parts, and suspecting that they were in search of Gustavus, and might ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... do beseech you that you stay with us and succour us. We are a small band, but zealous and well-caparisoned. Bethink you that you put this land in peril if by maintaining this Queen ye do endanger your precious neck. For I were loath to take arms against the King's Majesty, and we are loyal and faithful subjects all; yet sooner ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... writes to Louis de Beaumont, bishop of Durham, reproaching a noble like him for not defending his bishopric any better against the Scotch than if he were a mutterer of prayers like his predecessor. Command is laid upon bishop Louis to take arms and go and camp on the frontier. In the second half of the same century, Henry le Despencer, bishop of Norwich, hacks the peasants to pieces, during the great rising, and makes war in Flanders for the benefit of one of the ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... approached Deir el-Kamr, were required to send away their followers and lay aside their arms. They refused. A battle ensued, and the Maronites were defeated. The Patriarch then proclaimed a crusade against them, ordered his bishops to take arms, and marched his forces towards the Druze territory. But the Druzes seized the mountain passes, and defeated every attempt to enter. Though greatly inferior in numbers, they went desperately to work to exterminate or expel every Maronite ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... Amphipolis, a city of Macedonia near the sea, and to the northward and eastward of the place where he had embarked. When Pompey arrived at the port he sent proclamations to the shore, calling upon the inhabitants to take arms and join his standard. He did not, however, land, or take any other measures for carrying these arrangements into effect. He only waited in the river upon which Amphipolis stands long enough to receive a supply of money from some of his friends on the shore, and stores ...
— History of Julius Caesar • Jacob Abbott
... Gotz and his fair Gertrude. To us, indeed, it was as yet a mystery, but that it was sweet and full of joy we deemed a certainty. We would have been fain to cry out to the Emperor and the world to take arms against the ruthless parents who were minded to tread so holy a blossom in the dust; but since this was not in our power we had dreams of essaying to touch the heart of my forest aunt, for she had but that one son and no daughter to make ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... dissemble their designs, or make farther pretences to respect or tenderness. Her fall was necessary to their own exaltation; they, therefore, kindled a general conflagration of war, they excited all the princes to take arms against her, and found it, indeed, no difficult task to persuade them to attack a princess, whom they thought unable to form an army, whom they believed they should rather pursue than engage, and whose dominions might be overrun ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... whether, after our present state, we are to be or not to be. That is the question, which, as it shall be answered, will determine, whether 'tis nobler, and more suitable to the dignity of reason, to suffer the outrages of fortune patiently, or to take arms against them, and by opposing end them, though perhaps with the loss of life. If to die, were to sleep, no more, and by a sleep to end the miseries of our nature, such a sleep were devoutly to be wished; ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... mischiefs, was to dispossess the tyrant of the crown, which he so unjustly wore, and restore it to his brother, to whom it rightfully belonged; that, for these considerations, recourse ought to be had to the Portuguese to engage them, by a principle of religion, to take arms against the usurper of the kingdom, and the persecutor of ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... others had yielded, he persistently refused to submit to Edward and his armies. As he had been the first to take arms, he was the last to keep the field, and for some years he continued to maintain himself among the woods and hills of the Highlands, holding his own for more than a year after all the ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... Minaya fell upon the Moors. First he attacked the tents of that Moorish Queen, the Negress, who lay nearest to the city; and this onset was so sudden, that they killed full a hundred and fifty Moors before they had time to take arms or go to horse. But that Moorish Negress, so skilful in drawing the Turkish bow, that they called her the Star of the Archers, was the first that got on horseback, and with some fifty that were with her, did some hurt to the company of the Cid; but in fine they slew her, ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... years' war in which it has made efforts beyond its ability. Clinton, with an army of 10,000 regular troops (aided by a considerable body of militia, whom from motives of fear and attachment he has engaged to take arms), is in possession of one of the capital towns and a large part of the State to which it belongs. The savages are desolating the frontier. A fleet superior to that of our allies not only protects the enemy against any attempt of ours, but facilitates ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... calls the woman's work "freedom to live her own life." Gudge wants steady and obedient workmen, Hudge preaches teetotalism—to workmen, not to Gudge—Gudge wants a tame and timid population who will never take arms against tyranny; Hudge proves from Tolstoi that nobody must take arms against anything. Gudge is naturally a healthy and well-washed gentleman; Hudge earnestly preaches the perfection of Gudge's washing to people who can't practice it. Above all, Gudge rules by a coarse ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... van of our army and our son Sharrkan command the main battle." Then he sent for his son who came and kissed ground before him and sat down; and he expounded to him the matter, telling him what the Ambassadors and the Wazir Dandan had said, and he charged him to take arms and equip himself for the campaign, enjoining him not to gainsay Dandan in aught he should do. Moreover, he ordered him to pick out of his army ten thousand horsemen, armed cap-a-pie and inured to onset and stress of war. Accordingly, Sharrkan arose on the instant, and chose ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton |
