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More "Beset" Quotes from Famous Books



... that defile The Seats that sacred ought to be, the customes are so quaint, As if I would describe the whole, I feare my pen would faint. In summe, I say I neuer saw a prince that so did raigne, Nor people so beset with Saints, yet all but vile and vaine. Wilde Irish are as ciuill as the Russies in their kinde, Hard choice which is the best of both, ech bloody, rude and blinde. If thou bee wise, as wise thou art, and wilt be ruld by me, Liue still at home, and couet not those barbarous coasts to see. No good ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation v. 4 • Richard Hakluyt

... China stood as a leading civilization, outpacing the rest of the world in the arts and sciences, but in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the country was beset by civil unrest, major famines, military defeats, and foreign occupation. After World War II, the Communists under MAO Zedong established an autocratic socialist system that, while ensuring China's sovereignty, imposed strict ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... vague, adroit hints of the perils that beset a fascinating actor's life, of the women that had come and gone in his life. And Lena, all a-tremble with jealous anxiety, was in the parlor of a Lutheran parsonage, with the minister reading out of the black book, before she was quite aware that she and her cyclonic ...
— The Fortune Hunter • David Graham Phillips

... so often said: "Sorrow is essential in bringing out the best there is in man." As a severe storm in nature purifies the elements and the earth, reviving the plants, clarifying the air, causing the sun to shine more gloriously, so, too, do the storms which beset the soul and wring from it its groans and sighs, purify the spiritual man and place him nearer to the throne of his Maker. I cannot but thank the Lord, when I contrast our present position with what would have ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith

... strait. Bears and lions to rend them wait, Wiverns, snakes and fiends of fire, More than a thousand griffins dire; Enfuried at the host they fly. "Help us, Karl!" was the Franks' outcry, Ruth and sorrow the king beset; Fain would he aid, but was sternly let. A lion came from the forest path, Proud and daring, and fierce in wrath; Forward sprang he the king to grasp, And each seized other with deadly clasp; But who shall conquer or who shall fall, ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various

... am better this morning, but it snows so incessantly that I do not know how I shall be able to keep my appointment this evening. What say you? But you have no petticoats to dangle in the snow. Poor women,—how they are beset with plagues ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell

... been happening with regard to the inner life of the child. We are beset by such anxieties as these: it is necessary to form character, to develop the intelligence, to aid the unfolding and ordering of the emotions. And we ask ourselves how we are to do this. Here and there we touch the soul of the ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori

... guarded by a fortress which occupied the spot now called Pevensey, the future landing-place of the Norman Conqueror; and the fall of this fortress of Anderida in 491 established the kingdom of the South Saxons. "AElle and Cissa beset Anderida," so ran the pitiless record of the conquerors, "and slew all that were therein, nor was there afterward ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various

... another light. The following considerations may serve to remove certain untoward difficulties in metaphysics and optics, which beset the path, not only of the uninitiated, but even of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various

... the burgomaster was very great. Tumults were of daily occurrence. Crowds of rioters beset his door with cries of denunciations and demands for bread. A large and turbulent mob upon one occasion took possession of the horse-market, and treated him with personal indignity and violence, when he undertook to ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... anything with a latent idea of its indirect effect upon the little girls, her companions. She was simply herself; she even confessed (where the confession was called for) to short-comings, to faults, and never denied the force of temptations, either of those which beset little children, or of those which occasionally assailed herself. Pure, simple, and truthful to the heart's core, her life, in its uneventful hours and days, spoke many homilies. Maggie, who was grave, imaginative, and somewhat quaint, ...
— The Moorland Cottage • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... he catches you alone, he is a button-holder of great tenacity) encourages free speech in others; they have no more reticence in his presence than if he were the butler. He has belonged to no cliques, and thereby escaped the greatest peril which can beset the student of human nature. A man of genius, indeed, in these days is almost certain, sooner or later, to become the centre of a mutual admiration society; but the person I have in my mind is no genius, nor anything like one, and he thanks Heaven for it. ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn

... country has been found which has been both able and willing to make trial of the principle which has been so strongly contended for by the author of "Progress and Poverty," and by those who have seen in his proposals a way of escape from many of the most serious difficulties that beset civilized communities at the present day. There is probably no other country which is to-day in so good a position to enter upon experimental legislation in this and other directions as the British colony of New Zealand. ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various

... not who the man may be, Nor how his tasks may fret him, Nor where he fares, nor how his cares And troubles may beset him, If books have won the love of him, Whatever fortune hands him, He'll always own, when he's alone, A friend who ...
— When Day is Done • Edgar A. Guest

... found out how Mrs. Whately had tried to help his cause by appealing to my father, his anger was a fury. Poor Mrs. Whately, who had meant only for the best, beset with the terror of disgrace to Marjie through the dishonorable acts of her father, tried helplessly to pacify him. Between her daughter and herself a great gulf opened whenever Judson's name was mentioned; but in everything else the bond between ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter

... measure because they are plagued and beset so constantly by the devil. Their afflictions so sorely oppress them that they conclude that no one suffers so severely as do they. Especially does this seem the case in the great spiritual temptations which ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther

... this much, Tom; we are bound upon an errand of peril. We have some difficult journeyings to make, and there will be certain persons lying in wait for messengers from Marlborough; and we may be sore beset to avoid them. Tom, do you remember the tall dark man with whom my ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green

... stood the squirrels made more noise than did the House of Burgesses when dissolved by Governor Dunmore for expressing revolutionary sentiments. A most gracious country, and because of its fairness, most fearfully beset. That which is worthless needs no sentinels. I met with no humans, white or red; but when within a few miles of Patrick Davis' home on Howard Creek I came upon a spot where three Indians had eaten their breakfast ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter

... The eternal whisper behind you, when you pass by: 'there she is, that same famous one!' Anonymous letters, the brazenness of back-stage habitues ... why, you can't enumerate everything! But surely, you yourself are often beset by female psychopathics ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin

... think why he did it, he showed none in his calm, observant face. Buttoning up his coat as he went: the October sunset looked as if it ought to be warm, but he was deathly cold. On the street the young doctor beset him again with bows and news: Cox was his name, I believe; the one, you remember, who had such a Talleyrand nose for ferreting out successful men. He had to bear with him but for a few moments, however. They met a crowd of workmen at the corner, one of ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis

... La Descoucounado (The Opening of the Cocoons), and it must be confessed that there is a slight falling off in interest. All that describes the life of the country-folk is full of sustained charm, but Mistral has not escaped the dangers that beset the modern poet who aims at the epic style. Here begins the recounting of the numerous superstitions of the ignorant peasants, and the wonders of Provence are interpolated at every turn. The maidens, while engaged in stripping the cocoons, make known ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer

... then in a lower voice, "They wur a power o' help to Liz an' me. Liz wur hard beset then, an' she's only a young thing as canna bear sore trouble. Seemed loike that th' thowt as some un had helped her wur a comfort ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... more production was the byword during the war and still is during the transition from war to peace. However, when deferred demand slackens, we shall once again face the deflationary dangers which beset this and other countries during the 1930's. Prosperity can be assured only by a high level of demand supported by high current income; it cannot be sustained by deferred needs and ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Harry S. Truman • Harry S. Truman

... only instance in his military career where enmity came to overt action and open speech. The first and the last of its kind, this assault upon him has much interest, for a strong light is thrown upon his character by studying him, thus beset, and by seeing just how he passed through this most ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge

... to do for breakfast?" was Billy's manner of voicing the general question that beset them all after they had washed off some of the mud of ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... Nell's strength, and during all this time they would be forced to remain in the company of knaves and murderers. At the recollection of that young Arab, whom the Bedouins had butchered like a lamb, fear and sorrow beset Stas. He decided not to speak of it to Nell in order not to frighten her and augment the sorrow she felt after the disappearance of the illusory picture of the oasis of Fayum and the city of Medinet. He saw before their arrival at the ravine that tears were ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... wondered how this bird was kept in check; in the struggle for existence it would appear to have greatly the advantage of other birds. It cannot, for instance, be beset with one tenth of the dangers that threaten the robin, and yet apparently there are a thousand robins to every shrike. It builds a warm, compact nest in the mountains and dense woods, and lays six eggs, ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs

... thing for this youth was to think more about my misfortunes than his own. I therefore told him how it was that I came before him in this plight, barefoot, bareheaded, bleeding and in rags. I told him of my concern for Virginia, of the deadly perils that beset her, and concluded by assuring him that the one service of any moment which he could do me was to devise me some means of communicating with Gioiachino, the vendor of cat's-meat in Lucca. Belviso had put his head between his knees, and so remained for some time after I ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett

... she whispered back, very, very close in my ear, "I was not thinking of money—that is all in checks, safely deposited in—in—in te-he! inside the lining of my waist. I was only referring to the dangers which ever beset the unmarried lady, especially the unsophisticated maiden, far, far from her native village. Why, would you believe it, already, sir, since I left home, a man, a gentleman, sitting in the very seat where you sit now, made ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor

... every artist should be treated as a solitary craftsman, indifferent to the commonwealth and unconcerned about moral things. To write on that principle in the present case, however, would involve all those delicate difficulties, known to politicians, which beset the public defence of a doctrine which one heartily disbelieves. It is quite needless here to go into the old "art for art's sake"—business, or explain at length why individual artists cannot be reviewed without reference to their traditions and creeds. ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton

... is not very apt to love the English people, as a whole, on whatever length of acquaintance. I fancy that they would value our regard, and even reciprocate it in their ungracious way, if we could give it to them in spite of all rebuffs; but they are beset by a curious and inevitable infelicity, which compels them, as it were, to keep up what they seem to consider a wholesome bitterness of feeling between themselves and all other nationalities, especially that of America. They will never confess it; nevertheless, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various

... The custom of the country compelled this man, whom it had long since selected as its ruler, to make a journey of extreme danger without any species of protection whatsoever. So far as peril went, no other individual in the United States had ever, presumably, been in a peril like that which beset him; so far as safeguards went, he had no more than any other traveler. A few friends volunteered to make the journey with him, but they were useless as guardians; and he and they were so hustled and jammed in the railway stations that one of them actually had ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse

... heavily laden with the heads and horns of a multitude of different beasts, from the gaping jaws of hippopotami to the vicious-looking heads of rhinoceroses and buffaloes, while the skins of lions and various antelopes were piled above masses of the much-prized hide of the rhinoceros, we were beset by crowds of people, who were curious to know whence so strange a party had come. We formed a regular procession through the market, our Tokrooris feeling quite at home among ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker

... this brief letter with a sinking heart. How was she to keep up without Uncle John? How was she to cope with all the difficulties that beset her path like sharp-thorned briers? If she had but Aunt Faith—if she had but some one to turn to! She had tried to take counsel with Mrs. Peyton, but the beautiful woman was still, at fifty, a spoiled ...
— Margaret Montfort • Laura E. Richards

... The literary reformers of a later day denounce the men of this period as 'artificial'! a phrase the antithesis of which is 'natural.' Without asking at present what is meant by the implied distinction—an inquiry which is beset by whole systems of equivocations—I may just observe that in this generation the appeal to Nature was as common and emphatic as in any later time. The leaders of thought believe in reason, and reason sets ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen

... altar of love, the whole assembly again joined together in acts of prayer, and again lifted up their voices in song of praise. This duty being performed, we separated and sought the streets. The storm which had begun in violence, had increased, and it was with difficulty that beset by darkness, wind, and rain, I succeeded without injury in finding my ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware

... happier, freer regions of man. As they rushed, they bore her with them to those shadowy lands far away in the sweet stillness of summer-scented noons, in the solemn quiet of autumn nights. Her days were beset with visions like these—visions of a cool, quiet, tranquil world; of conditions of peace; of yearnings satisfied; of toil that did not lacerate. Yes! that world was, somewhere. Her heart was convinced of ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... Bacon, were inclined toward Puritanism; and so were the naval heroes who won the most fruitful victories of that century, by shattering the maritime power of Spain and thus opening the way for Englishmen to colonize North America. If we would realize the dangers that would have beset the Mayflower and her successors but for the preparatory work of these immortal sailors, we must remember the dreadful fate of Ribault and his Huguenot followers in Florida, twenty-three years before that ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske

... a very irregular manner, and without any object in view. Early in the forenoon of our third day we observed these footprints to be much more numerous than ever, and in one particular spot they diverged off into the woods in a regular beaten track, which was, however, so closely beset with bushes that we pushed through it with difficulty. We had now become so anxious to find out what animal this was and where it went to, that we determined to follow the track, and, if possible, clear up the mystery. Peterkin said, in a bantering ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne

... ladders were descended before her home was reached. The old woman was Spider Woman, the little grandmother who belonged to the Holy Ones. Her home was well kept, clean and comfortable, and the boys were glad to rest. Said she, "My grandchildren, your journey is long and many trials will beset you before you reach the end. Take these life feathers; they will help you; if difficulties befall you, use them," and she gave to each two feathers ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis

... seeing we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising shame, and hath sat down at the right hand of the throne ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch

... rights of weakness, I, the babe, Call on my sire to shield me from the ills That still beset my path, not trying me With snares beyond my wisdom or my strength, He knowing I shall use them to my harm, And find a tenfold misery in the sense That in my childlike folly I have sprung The trap upon myself as vermin ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... candelabra, and attains a height of three to five feet. As it grows old, the top joints of the branches become thick and heavy and are easily broken off by the wind. The joints, like all other parts of the plant, are beset with numerous inch-long spines, and many of them fasten in the loose, moist soil and strike root. In this way many new plants are formed, standing in a circle around the mother plant. On sloping ground the young plants form rows, some forty feet long. There was ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz

... a really serious man, and developed that extraordinary power of self-control which stood him in good stead in his later years. Naturally a man of violent passions, he could never have steered clear of the dangers that beset him without unusual capacity for curbing his temper, concealing his intentions, and keeping his own counsel. Ministers might flatter themselves that they could read his mind and calculate his actions, but it is ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard

... that beset even the courageous and the competent were enormous. The general paralysis of industry, the breaking up of society, and poverty on all sides bore especially hard on those who had not previously been manual laborers. Physicians could get practice enough but no fees; lawyers who had supported the ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming

... fugues),—ever since it was first sung, I say, men and women and children have loved this song. We hear of its being sung by camp-fires, on ships at sea, at gay parties of pleasure. Was it not at the siege of Lucknow that it floated like a breath from home through the city hell-beset, and brought cheer and hope and comfort to all who heard it? The cotter's wife croons it over her sleeping baby; the lover sings it to his sweetheart; the child runs, carolling it, through the summer fields; finally, some world-honored ...
— Melody - The Story of a Child • Laura E. Richards

... his return from the land-office. In that time, his fear had slowly vanished, his confidence returned. And he had begun to show streaks of the bravado that, in his stronger days, made him an efficient section-boss. Rosy dreams, even, beset his brain—dreams upon which Marylyn, despising her father's meaner structures (and kept in ignorance of what might, at any moment, raze them), piled many a rainbow palace. For, to the younger girl, certain calico-covered books on the mantel had invested the events of the fortnight just ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates

... and finally went downstairs in alarm to tell La Cibot that Schmucke would not open the door; Fraisier made a note of this. Schmucke had never seen any one die in his life; before long he would be perplexed by the many difficulties which beset those who are left with a dead body in Paris, this more especially if they are lonely and helpless and have no one to act for them. Fraisier knew, moreover, that in real affliction people lose their heads, and therefore immediately after breakfast he took up his position in the porter's ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... not be satisfied until the whole work shall have been completed. Its author, Pierre M. Irving, sets forth with the announcement that his plan is to make the patriarch of American literature his own biographer. It is nothing new that this branch of letters is beset with peculiar difficulties. Some men suffer sadly at the hand of their chronicler. Scott misrepresents Napoleon, and Southey fails equally in his Memoirs of Cowper and of the Wesleys. Friendship's colors are too bright for correct portraiture, and prejudice equally ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various

... could have ordained it, he would have dismissed himself from life and ceased to be a living partaker in the scenes about him. Even then—for happy as he was, he dreaded in prophetic fear, the chances which beset our mortal path. The weight of mortality was heavy upon the ...
— Chanticleer - A Thanksgiving Story of the Peabody Family • Cornelius Mathews

... was at another time very ill and weak, all that time also the tempter did beset me strongly (for I find he is much for assaulting the soul; when it begins to approach towards the grave, then is his opportunity), labouring to hide from me my former experience of God's goodness: also setting before me the terrors of death, and the ...
— Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners • John Bunyan

... stand or fall by this measure. No serious resistance was offered by the opposition to its first or second reading, but Peel took occasion to protest against a transparent inconsistency which seems to beset the advocacy of Irish claims. It is generally assumed, and with too much justice, that Ireland is so backward and helpless a country as to require exceptional treatment; in short, that it must be governed by Irish ideas, with little regard to English principles of ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick

... out from the narrow track upon the open slope of the heath, and this order was maintained, let him diverge as he would to either side, there was no longer room to doubt that he was beset by these fellows. He stopped, as a last ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens

... of a snowy Sunday afternoon to scribble all this down for you because you are in the same difficulty that beset me formerly: namely, the absolute blank in the history of the immediate past that confronts every man when he first takes to public life. Written history stops several decades back; and the bridge of personal recollection on which older men stand does not exist for the recruit. ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... man, and it was incredible that I had been chosen the hero of such an extraordinary romance—intensified, if anything, by the fact that it was set in roaring New York, where you have to talk at the top of your voice to hear yourself think. . . . But that passed—in a measure. I was beset by the fear—at times, I mean: I was not always in a state to look inward—that you were slipping away. Not that I doubted for a moment you would marry me, but that your innermost inscrutable self had withdrawn, ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... him. Whether she had unwittingly deceived him in the first place, and in the second ought to sacrifice herself for him, unloving, was each a question on which she pondered full of those doubts and self-reproaches that so grievously beset her. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various

... remnant of strength to aid her to lay her cold hand in his and he had seen shrinking terror in her eyes when she lifted them to his as he put on her wedding ring. He had also known perfectly what memory had beset her at the moment and he had thrown all the force of his will into the look which had answered her—the look which had told her that he understood. Yes, the awakening must have been sudden and he asked himself how it had come about—what had ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... Valley, and Prideaux with large colonial forces to reduce Fort Niagara. Both had orders, being successful in these initial attacks, to move down the St. Lawrence and unite with Wolfe, who was to sail up that river and beset Quebec. Prideaux was splendidly successful, as indeed was Amherst in time, though longer than he anticipated in securing Ticonderoga and ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... she conceived that she was from the very beginning particularly regarded by her. She therefore offered sacrifice of thanks to Venus. And first caused a great image of gold to be erected to her, which she called the image of Venus, and by it placed the picture of a dove beset with jewels, and every day implored the favour of the goddess with sacrifice and prayer. She sent to Hermotimus her father many rich presents, and made him wealthy. She lived continently all her life, as both the Grecian and Persian women affirm. On a time a neck-lace was ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey

... an inclination to give up all attempts after the devout life, in consequence of the difficulties by which it is beset, and our already numerous failures in it. We lose heart; and partly in ill-temper, partly in real doubt of our own ability to persevere, we first grow querulous and peevish with God, and then relax in our efforts to ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston

... credit your ears. But you have heard correctly. And now—as you might put it—it is up to you. I have been in your country." He smiled pitifully. "I think I know you Americans. You are not the sort to refuse a man when he is sore beset—as ...
— The Agony Column • Earl Derr Biggers

... Beset by ethnic and civil strife since independence in 1991, Georgia began to stabilize in 1994. Separatist conflicts in Abkhazia and South Ossetia have been dormant since spring 1994, although political settlements remain elusive. Russian peacekeepers ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... of the scout, that altercation would be useless. Munro had again sunk into that sort of apathy which had beset him since his late overwhelming misfortunes, and from which he was apparently to be roused only by some new and powerful excitement. Making a merit of necessity, the young man took the veteran by the arm, and followed in the footsteps of the Indians and the scout, who had ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper

... the banks rose sharply on both sides of the stream, forming a tiny canon for the channel. The steep slope on the east side, where the girl now ascended, was closely overgrown with laurel and little thickets of ground pine, through which she was hard beset to force her way—the more since she must move with what noiselessness she might. But her strength and skill compassed the affair with surprising quickness. Presently, she came to the brim of the little cliff, and lying outstretched, cautiously looked down. Already, ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily

... difficulties that beset this passage of the L Ki, I am not disposed to reject it altogether. It derives a certain amount of confirmation from the passage quoted from the Official Book of Ku on p. 278, showing that in the Ku dynasty there was a collection of poems, under the divisions ...
— The Shih King • James Legge

... die. The same thing is less confidently to be said of Protestants. How frequently is the story told of the most exemplary Protestant Christians, nay, how common is it to read in the lives of the most exemplary Protestant ministers, that they were beset with doubts and terrors in their last days! The blessing of the viaticum is unknown to them. Man is essentially an idolater,—that is, in bondage to his imagination,—for there is no more harm in the Greek word ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... letters at this time we see him studying himself in the circles of fashion and learning. He could look on Robert Burns, as he were another person, brought from the plough and set down in a world of wealth and refinement, of learning and wit and beauty. He saw the dangers that beset him, and the temptations to which he was exposed; he recognised that something more than his poetic abilities was needed to explain his sudden popularity. He was the vogue, the favourite of a season; but public favour was capricious, and next year the doors of ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun

... well what had happened, .007 was flying up the track into the dumb, dark world. Then fears of the night beset him. He remembered all he had ever heard of landslides, rain-piled boulders, blown trees, and strayed cattle, all that the Boston Compound had ever said of responsibility, and a great deal more that came out of his own head. With a very quavering voice he whistled ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling

... our hunters were to pass in pursuit of their game was so beset with briars, that it greatly obstructed their walk, and caused besides such a rustling, that Jones had sufficient warning of their arrival before they could surprize him; nay, indeed, so incapable was ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... into conversation. An indistinct murmur reached me through the ceiling. Occasionally a clearer sound struck my ear, and I thought I knew that high, resonant voice. It was no doubt delusion, still it beset me there in the silence of the library, haunting my thoughts as they wandered restlessly in search of occupation. I tried to recollect all the men with fluty voices that I had ever met in Bourges: a corn-factor from the Place St. Jean; Rollet, the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... last, on a sad, sad day, the trusty Gouvernail came to Sir Tristram with word that a summons had been sent him from King Arthur, to go to the aid of Sir Triamour of Wales, for he was sore beset by a monster named Urgan, and ...
— Cornwall's Wonderland • Mabel Quiller-Couch

... that; it is the occasional glint of the sun on a native spear-head. I have been through the Kaffir war, and have seen the same thing before, though not so distinctly as now, our present towering height above the ground giving us an advantage in that respect which we sadly lacked before. We are beset by the natives. You cannot see one, I know, but they are all about us, all the same. Ah! look there, just behind that magnolia bush. Do you see a small dark object rising slowly into view? That is the head of a savage, ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... wrought more ruin to more people than the Messina catastrophe, also the floods that had destroyed crops in the fertile river bottoms a few weeks before, one could understand popular opposition to more dangers and more taxes. These were some of the perplexities that beset the Government. No wonder that the diplomats were weighing their words cautiously at the Consulta, also weighing with extreme fineness the quid pro quo they would accept as "compensation" from Austria for upsetting the Balkan situation. It was, indeed, ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick

... Alvinczy understood that it was not Joubert's division, but Bonaparte's army, which was before him. A fifth Austrian column then pressed forward from the bank of the Adige to scale the height of Rivoli, and Joubert, whose left at St. Mark was hard beset, could not check the movement. For an instant he left the road unprotected. The Austrians charged up the hill and seized the commanding position; but simultaneously there rushed from the opposite side three French battalions, clambering ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... white Jeypore marble, resting upon a lower platform of sandstone: "A thing of perfect beauty and of absolute finish in every detail, it might pass for the work of a genii, who knew naught of the weaknesses and ills with which mankind are beset. It is not a great national temple erected by a free and united people, it owes its creation to the whim of an absolute ruler who was free to squander the resources of the State in commemorating his ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... was easy. Arrived at the top of the cliff, I saw before me on the other side a vast and gradual declivity of stone, lying bare to the moon and the surrounding mountains. Nowhere was any vantage or concealment; and knowing how these deserts were beset with spies, I made haste to veil my movements under the blowing trail of smoke. Sometimes it swam high, rising on the night wind, and I had no more substantial curtain than its moon-thrown shadow; sometimes again it crawled upon the earth, and I would walk in it, no higher than to my shoulders, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... these gentlemen in office were seated at breakfast as usual, or were engaged in getting rid betimes of some of the numerous engagements which beset busy men on a busy day, when the cry arose that the Queen was there, in the midst of them, with nobody to meet her, no silver keys on a velvet cushion to be respectfully offered and graciously returned. The ancient institution of the Royal Archer Guard, one of the chief glories ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler

... to his home that night; and when he saw how weak he was, how little able to struggle by himself against his enemy, he kept him there; for he knew all the dangers which might beset him in most of the places where he might be able to find a temporary home. From that time, for the next few months, all things were ordered there with reference to Morely. It was a poor place enough, for ...
— Stephen Grattan's Faith - A Canadian Story • Margaret M. Robertson

... Without delay the fiend should die, For, see, the twilight hour is nigh. And at the joints of night and day Such giant foes are hard to slay." Then Rama, skilful to direct His arrow to the sound, With shafts the mighty demon checked Who rained her stones around. She sore impeded and beset By Rama and his arrowy net, Though skilled in guile and magic lore, Rushed on the brothers with a roar. Deformed, terrific, murderous, dread, Swift as the levin on she sped, Like cloudy pile in autumn's sky, Lifting her two vast arms on high, When Rama smote her with a dart, Shaped like a crescent, ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... Zeus, that oft would make a mist and smother Some swain beset, and screen him from the crowd, I prayed for vapours; but his mind was other: Yet was I answered, though the god was proud, For, anyhow, I trod on Miss Pritt's mother And left ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 17, 1914 • Various

... Ah, the House is beset, surrounded and confounded with profane tinkling, with Popish Horn-Pipes, and Jesuitical Cymbals, more Antichristian and Abominable than ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn

... (I could smell that) with condensed milk. Did I want my tea? I noticed there were two men between me and the exit, and no room to pass. The room was hot. The bench was rising and falling. My soul felt pale and faintly apprehensive, compelling me, now I was beset, to take hold of it firmly, and to tell it that this was not the time to be a miserable martyr, but a coarse brute; and that, whether it liked it or not, I was going to feed at once on fish, ham, and sickly ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson

... Preterit. Participle. Participle. Arise, arose, arising, arisen. Be, was, being, been. Bear, bore or bare, bearing, borne or born.[274] Beat, beat, beating, beaten or beat. Begin, began or begun,[275] beginning, begun. Behold, beheld, beholding, beheld. Beset, beset, besetting, beset. Bestead, bestead, besteading, bestead.[276] Bid, bid or bade, bidding, bidden or bid. Bind, bound, bing, bound. Bite, bit, biting, bitten or bit. Bleed, bled, bleeding, bled. Break, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... of the year 1817, his grief, slowly abating, left him a prey to solitude and defenceless under the monotony of the life he was leading, which heavily oppressed him. At first he struggled bravely against the allurements of Science as they gradually beset him; he forbade himself even to think of Chemistry. Then he did think of it. Still, he would not actively take it up, and only gave his mind to his researches theoretically. Such constant study, however, ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac

... fade visibly. When I "returned" in a week, she was so ill that a few steps tired her. Her appetite all but vanished. She seemed genuinely glad to see me. She was beset by nightmares, she said. Could I help her get some rest? I took her to a physician who sagely prescribed a change in climate, rest and a diet rich in blood and iron, gave her a prescription for sedatives, and called ...
— Each Man Kills • Victoria Glad

... weary with tossing and beset with horrid phantoms of remorse and jealousy, instantly fell dead in love with that sun-chequered, echoing corner. Holding his feet, he stared out of a drowsy trance, wondering, admiring, musing, losing his way among uncertain thoughts. There is nothing that so apes the external bearing ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... external aspects of it, to lose sight of the solemn truths which make it so grand, and to think of it as commonplace because it is common, as ordinary because it is familiar. And from these most real dangers, which beset us all, there is no refuge but the frequent, the habitual, gaze into the open heavens, which will show us again the realities of things, and bring to our spirits, dwarfed even by habits of goodness, the renewal of former motives by the vision of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren

... a very unhappy life. I was born in India thirty-nine years ago, and while my every act has been as open and as free of wrong as are those of an infant, I have constantly been beset by such untoward affairs as this in which you have rendered such inestimable service. At the age of five, in Calcutta, I was in peril of my liberty on the score of depravity, although I never committed any act that could ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs

... from the punishment of his crimes. Do not thank me, for time presses, and you must be moving, so as to be well away before it is known that you have left. May the God we both worship, though as yet in ignorance, guide and preserve you and carry you and your friends through the dangers that beset you." ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty

... character of the Darling. The Grenadier bird. The Doctor and the natives. A range discovered by refraction. Dance of natives. A lake. Tombs of a tribe. Plan of natives' hut. Method of making cordage. The tall native's first visit. Channel of a small stream. The carts beset on the journey by very covetous natives. Mischievous signals. Cattle worn out. The tall man again. Approach of the Fishing tribe. Covetous old man. Conduct on witnessing the effect of a shot. The party obliged to halt from the weak state of the cattle. ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell

... he portrays Logan as a messenger from Boon's Station, is in error as to the siege of the latter, etc.] Kentucky during her earliest and most trying years received comparatively little help from sorely beset Virginia; but the backwoodsmen of the upper Tennessee valley—on both sides of the boundary—did her real and ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt

... by way of variety last Saturday—Capt. Comstock having been duly indicted and arraigned for Humbug, in permitting us to be so long beset by all manner of easterly winds with never a puff from the westward. Hon. Ashbel Smith, from Texas, officiated as Chief Justice; a Jury of six ladies and six gentlemen were empaneled; James T. Brady conducted the prosecution with much wit and spirit; while AEolus, Neptune, Capt. ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley

... impossible. I meet her every day, but she is always beset with the Strangeways, and I think ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge

... sort of prescience; and what was more to the point he had apparently reduced to a fine art the business of keeping clear of the authorities. If he could escape from the Governor it would be to take up his old eventless life, with a recrudescence no doubt of the ills that had so long beset him; and he had utterly forgotten that he had ever been an invalid. He grinned as he reflected that he had been obliged to shoot a man to find a ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson

... person—enough to have tempted the cupidity of some lawless wretch. He shrank in horror from pursuing conjecture—it was worse than torture, worse than madness to him. Oh, blindness and frenzy; why had he not thought of these dangers so likely to beset her solitary path? Why had he so recklessly exposed her to them? Vain questions, alas! vain as was his self-reproach, ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... to fail them, as a last hope, they made a desperate sally during the night, but were driven back with considerable loss. The failure of this attempt damped their resolution, and some of the less courageous even murmured against an exploit beset with difficulties, which it appeared next ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio

... daybreak, the neighbourhood of the camp was beset by numberless birds, among which I distinguished storks and kites, and soon perceived that they were employed in gobbling up the locusts. The most numerous, however, were small birds about the size of swallows. Mr Fraser told me this was a species of thrush ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston

... and do not speak. Dost feel the green globe whirl? Seven times a week Climbeth she out of darkness to the sun, Which is her god; seven times she doth not shun Awful eclipse, laying her patient cheek Upon a pillow ghost-beset with shriek Of voices utterless which rave and run Through all the star-penumbra, craving light And tidings of the dawn from East and West. Calmly she sleepeth, and her sleep is blest With heavenly ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald

... Western Heaven. This promise, on the whole, he fulfilled in the service of Hsuean Chuang during the fourteen years of the long journey. Now faithful, now restive and undisciplined, he was always the one to triumph in the end over the eighty-one fantastical tribulations which beset them as ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner

... military ensigns, which unfortunately consisted of busts of the emperor mixed with eagles and globes. A multitude, in passion, marched to Caesarea, where Pilate was lingering, and implored him to remove the detested images. Five days and nights they beset his palace gates; at last he appointed a meeting with them in the Circus. When they were assembled, he encircled them with soldiers; instead of resisting, they offered him their lives, and conquered. He recalled ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... well-informed who knew how near the match had been to the powder-magazine for two years and more. Whether the explosion, at the last, was timed by Napoleon or by Bismarck is not of great importance; it could have been but little delayed. Napoleon was beset alike by the revolutionary spectre and by the gaunt King of Terrors; he knew the throw was desperate, but with the gambler's instinct, which had always been so strong in him, he was magnetised by it because it was desperate. Pitiful egotist ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco

... preparations for departure without further delay; by that means greatly contenting Mrs. Bellairs, who at present wished for nothing so much as to be rid of her handsome guest. She was very civil to him, however, in the prospect of his going away, and the temptation to speak to her about Lucia again beset him strongly. But then to tell her, or even hint to her ever so slightly, that he had been rejected by a little simple Canadian girl, was not so easy a matter to his masculine pride as it would have been yesterday, so the time passed, ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill

... she could to enlighten her own mind, and should be honored for so doing; but what is to be said of the women who in this day, in cool print, are willing to show that they have no comprehension of her grotesque errors or of the difficulties that beset a real scholar in his noble task? Protest at woman's educational deprivation comes with ill-grace from those who have thus revealed their own lack of knowledge of the oldest literature in the world, the model of poetry and prose, ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson

... period when doubts beset him—he was tempted by a very advantageous offer to settle in Mississippi. He determined to accept; but some kind spirit interposed to prevent the despatch of the final letter, and he remained in Alexandria. ...
— Oration on the Life and Character of Henry Winter Davis • John A. J. Creswell

... free to fall back, if we please. For my own part, though, whatever difficulties may beset the philosophy of objective right and wrong, and the indeterminism it seems to imply, determinism, with its alternative of pessimism or romanticism, contains difficulties that are greater still. But you will remember that I expressly repudiated awhile ago the pretension to offer any arguments ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James

... way with Childe Roland to the Dark Tower. But instead we come, about noon, through a savage glen beset with blood-red rocks and honeycombed with black caves on the other side of the ravine, to the so-called "Inn of the ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke

... well how I found my way home in the night. There were witnesses, cohorts about me, to left and to 315 right, Angels, powers, the unuttered, unseen, the alive, the aware; I repressed, I got through them as hardly, as strugglingly there, As a runner beset by the populace famished for news— Life or death. The whole earth was awakened, hell loosed with her crews; And the stars of night beat with emotion, and tingled and 320 shot Out in fire the strong pain of pent knowledge; but I fainted not, For the Hand still impelled ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... lived, and is looking forward to activity and honor and the pride of fame. I wish him all the joy that I have had, all the toil that I have had, and all the bitter disappointments even; for adversity leads a man to depend upon that which is above him, and the path of glory is a lonely path, beset by temptations and a bitter sense of the weakness and imperfection of man. I see my life spread out like a great picture, as I stand here in my boyhood's place. I regret my failures. I thank God for what in his kind providence has ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett

... in his dreams this night by the Evil Destinies, and all those powers that are hostile to human life, which constrain and oppress the minds of men, and make their path seem difficult and narrow, and beset with dangers, so that the most innocent and worthy enterprises appear insolent and a tempting of fate, and the gods go not with us. But the other happily passed a serene and even ambrosial or immortal night, and his sleep was dreamless, or only the atmosphere of pleasant dreams remained, a ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau

... ships pursued a very northerly course, entering within the Arctic Circle and sailing in the perpetual sunlight of the polar day. Near Iceland they saw huge pine trees drifting, roots and all, across the ocean. Wild storms {16} beset them as they passed the desolate capes of Greenland. At length, on July 16, the navigators found themselves off the headlands of ...
— Adventurers of the Far North - A Chronicle of the Frozen Seas • Stephen Leacock

... with which they were beset, they had spiritual troubles also. They fully believed in witchcraft as did all their contemporaries, in a personal devil who was busily plotting the ruin of their souls, in an everlasting hell of literal fire and brimstone, and in ...
— The Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Settlement of the Town of New Milford, Conn. June 17th, 1907 • Daniel Davenport

... welcome, even if he know but a little more than myself; while if my guide is infallible and disdainful, if he denies what he cannot see and derides what he has never felt, then I feel that I have but one enemy the more, in a place where I am beset with foes. ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson

... worst earthquake it is possible to imagine. Anyone who has ever seen two bugs ill-advisedly try to walk across the vibrating hood of an automobile while the motor is running, will have some idea of the troubles that now beset ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst

... house called Beautiful, and armed for the conflict, descended into the Valley of Humiliation, encountered Apollyon in deadly combat, and walked through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. 'For three quarters of a year, fierce and said temptations did beset me to blasphemy, that I could never have rest nor ease. But at last the Lord came in upon my soul with that same scripture, by which my soul was visited before; and after that, I have been usually very well and comfortable in the partaking of that blessed ordinance; and ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... the suffrage ought to be restricted.] In speaking of the difficulties which beset city government in the United States, mention is often (and perhaps too exclusively) made of the great mass of ignorant voters, chiefly foreigners without experience in self-government, with no comprehension of American principles and traditions, and with little or no property to suffer from excessive ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske

... to appreciation the layman is beset with difficulties. Most of the talk about art which he hears is either the translation of picture or sonata into terms of literary sentiment or it is a discussion of the way the thing is done. He knows at least that painting is not the same as literature and that music has its ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes

... conception of belief is a very sad fact. The idea that it must be based on a mathematical demonstration of certainty, or even that it must be free from doubt is surely not Christian. Our prayers and our hymns are full of the contrary. We are beset not only by "fightings" but by "fears"—"within; without;" by "many a conflict, many a doubt"; we pray to be delivered from this same doubt. The whole body of Christian doctrine is permeated with the idea that the true believer ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick

... sane doubts and difficulties beset the subjects of the roofing and lighting of the temples as those which have been discussed already in connection with the palaces. Though the span of the temple-chambers is less than that of the great palace halls, still it is considerable, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson

... too, lack of early and proper instruction is shown; for these immature boys do not realize the necessity for prompt and wise treatment, or are misled by unscrupulous persons. I shall talk to you again on this subject, for many of you will have sons and you must know the dangers that beset them, so they can ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry

... were heartless, intoxicated with admiration and trying your power wilfully on everyone who came within your reach. Half the men in your set were at your feet, and it drove me a little mad, I think! And all the time you were beset by enemies, making your brave fight alone, and even our friendship turned to something low and base! Oh, my dear, I have nothing to forgive, but there is much that I must ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant

... kindness seemed disposed to take up Faith bodily and carry her off. It was a novel scene for Faith, and she was amused. Amused too with the overpowering curiosity which took the guise, or the veil, of so much kindness, and beset her, because—Mr. Linden had married her. Yet Faith did not see the hundredth part of their curiosity. Mr. Linden, whose eyes were more open, was proportionably amused, both with that and with Faith's simplicity, ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner

... in a hoarse whisper. He had meant to shout it, but his voice failed him, his windpipe clutched by panic. "Afoot—we are beset by enemies!" ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini

... yon narrow road, So thick beset with thorns and briers? That is the path of righteousness, Tho after it ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang

... on which we each one sail is beset by as many dangers as the ship at sea, and how shall we surely steer our course to our heavenly harbour without Divine guidance? There is a wellnigh infinite number of influences to deflect us from the safe and certain course. We start ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle

... misfortune falls upon the Shadow Witch, there is but one who can release her from that enchanted chamber where the Wizard now holds her, but one who can bring her unharmed through the perils which will afterward beset her." ...
— The Shadow Witch • Gertrude Crownfield

... bishopric and livings upon the prettiest girls of Paris; thus I can hardly suppose you would have counselled my daughters' conduct. No, I blame those wicked and vindictive scandal-mongers, whose age is their only protection, and those intriguing men who beset my daughters' ears." "Sire," protested the trembling bishop, "I entreat you to believe I am innocent of the whole affair." "Sir," interrupted the king, "I know well that you are as good a courtier as a prelate, but still I ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon

... or Roman pontiff beset by more vindictive and envious foes than this helpless old savage who possesses nothing save a grimy shirt and the fragments ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... great sum, for Glazzard had never commanded more than his younger-brother's portion of a yearly five hundred pounds, and all his tastes were far from being represented in the retreat where he spent his hours of highest enjoyment and endeavour. Of late he had been beset by embarrassments which a man of his stamp could ill endure: depreciation of investments, need of sordid calculation, humiliating encounters. To-day he tasted the very dregs of ignoble anguish, and it seemed to him that he should never again look with delight upon a picture, or feast his soul with ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing

... stranger, "we have no doubt, has formed this plot—he has for some time past beset the house where she lived; and when his visits were refused, he threatened this. Besides, one of his servants attended the carriage; I ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald

... chancelleries of Continental Europe, and these things it is that have made questions simple in themselves seem complex and incapable of solution. But there is nothing to be settled involving larger territorial interests or more beset with delicacies than many questions with which the Supreme Court of the United States has had to deal—none so large as to seem formidable to his Majesty's Privy Council or to the House of Lords. And under the guidance ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson

... destroy them; and both bishops and officials had shown no reluctance to execute their duty. Hunted like wild beasts from hiding-place to hiding-place, decimated by the stake, with the certainty that however many years they might be reprieved, their own lives would close at last in the same fiery trial; beset by informers, imprisoned, racked, and scourged; worst of all, haunted by their own infirmities, the flesh shrinking before the dread of a death of agony,—thus it was that they struggled on; earning for themselves ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude

... the sea Were those ancient founders of Ville Marie! The treacherous Sioux and Iroquois bold Gathered round them as wolves that beset a fold, Yet they sought their rest free from coward fears; Though war-whoops often reached their ears, Or battle's red light their slumbers dispel,— They knew God could guard and protect ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon

... those railways that I have seen in London at a fair when the ground shakes and quivers beneath you. It really would not have surprised me had the earth suddenly yawned and swallowed me. Every plague now beset me. My hand refused to hold the stretcher, my body was wet with perspiration, my face was for some reason covered with mud.... There was a snap and my braces burst. My belt was loose and my trousers, as though they had waited for ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole

... JESSIE POPE in a prologue to The Tracy Tubbses (MILLS AND BOON), "is seldom variegated by so many curious happenings as fell to the lot of Mr. and Mrs. Tracy Tubbs;" and to this statement I can give my unqualified assent. No sooner were the T. T.'s married than they were beset by such wonderful and various misfortunes that I should like to try and "place" them. The Lion, I think, won in a canter, Aunt Julia was a bad second, and The Chafing-dish was third, while among the "also ran" were several Policemen, The Balloon, Cross-eyed Cranstone and The Motor-Bicycle. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 18, 1914 • Various

... help.' 'How far are you from your home?' I demanded. 'Upwards of thirty miles,' said the man; 'my master keeps an inn on the great north road, and from thence I started early this morning with a family, which I conveyed across the country to a hall at some distance from here. On my return I was beset by the thunderstorm, which frightened the horses, who dragged the chaise off the road to the field above, and overset it as you saw. I had proposed to pass the night at an inn about twelve miles from here on my way back, ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... awakening consciousness of his power, by means of intelligent co-operation, to make conditions that shall protect him and his loved ones from the many calamities which have hitherto beset and overwhelmed human lives, we note the extraordinary work accomplished by the different classes of insurance companies, during the past fifty years. These companies are in fact large bodies of people, incorporated and working co-operatively ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson

... choice had to be made, between State and Nation, Lee was sore beset. He had no interest in the perpetuation of slavery. His views all tended the other way. "In this enlightened age," he wrote, "there are few, I believe, but will acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil." He had already set free his own slaves, and was in favor of ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden

... at home are staying Are not refreshed by morning's ray; They grovel, earth-born calls obeying, And petty cares beset their day. ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various

... carry him by turns through the deep sand and long grass (he patiently walking at all other times); they share with him such putrid fish as they find to eat; they lie down and wait for him when the rough carpenter, who becomes his especial friend, lags behind. Beset by lions and tigers, by savages, by thirst, by hunger, by death in a crowd of ghastly shapes, they never - O Father of all mankind, thy name be blessed for it! - forget this child. The captain stops exhausted, and his faithful coxswain goes back and is seen to sit ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens

... active power, which we call intelligence. The knowledge of an object always produces in the mind some emotion with regard to it: this emotion is normally pleasure. Sometimes the difficulties which beset the acquisition of knowledge are so great and cause such dissatisfaction and pain that the mind is tempted to banish them, together with the object which excites them, from its consciousness. Knowledge and the emotions to which it gives rise induce those actions which are the ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell

... the race, encouraging them to patience and forbearance, procuring them food and clothing, and providing them with land whereon to labor, I assert that no army ever did more for that race than the one I commanded in Savannah. When we reached Savannah, we were beset by ravenous State agents from Hilton Head, who enticed and carried away our servants, and the corps of pioneers which we had organized, and which had done such excellent service. On one occasion, my own aide-de-camp, Colonel Audenried, found at least a hundred poor negroes ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... illusion. I looked back upon the time I had spent there, upon the despair that had beset me when the music ceased, upon the joy that had been mine when again I heard it, accepting it always as a sign of grace. And it was as he said. Not my unworthiness, but the rain, had ever silenced ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini

... intelligible to his audience. An earlier poet would simply annex Homer's gods and fix them with a mediaeval framework. A more modern poet tries to find some style which will correspond to the Homeric as closely as possible, and feels that he is making an experiment beset with all manner of difficulties. Pope needed no more to bother himself about such matters than about grammatical or philological refinements. He found a ready-made style which was assumed to be correct; he had to write in regular rhymed couplets, as neatly rhymed and tersely expressed as ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen

... is magnificent. It is tremendously weighted with power. Whatever your ambitions or hopes in life may be, seek for the truth. In some cases the road that leads to this goal may be devious and hard to follow. Dangers of all sorts may beset you, as you struggle along the rugged pathway that leads to truth, but the rewards will amply repay you ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden

... an idea that he did not enjoy his rides. He used to return from them with a resentful, sombre look, as if his reflections had not been pleasant company for him. In truth they were not pleasant company. He was beset by thoughts he did not exactly care to be beset by—thoughts which led him farther than he really cared to go, which did not incline him to the close companionship of Lady Walderhurst. It was these thoughts which led him on his long rides; it was one of them which impelled him, one morning, ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... cigar between his teeth, he sat down beside the operator and began to write his story, his flying fingers keeping time with the clicking instrument. He made no mention of the fears that had beset him in the hall and the manner of his exit from it. But there was enough and to spare of the dramatic in what he sent. After a sensational half-column of introduction, fitting the murder on Mrs. Athelstone, and enlarging on the certainty of one's sin finding ...
— The False Gods • George Horace Lorimer

... confusion, or 'a world not realised.' All this he might deduce for himself without further aid from Kant. However, the particular purposes to which Kant applies his philosophy, from the difficulties which beset them, are unfitted for anything below a regular treatise. Suffice it to say here, that, difficult as these speculations are from one or two embarrassing doctrines on the Transcendental Consciousness, and depressing as ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... to the wreck I recall with peculiar gusto, because it brought back that contest with catarrh and coughing among my own warriors which had so ludicrously beset me in Florida. It was always fascinating to be on those forbidden waters by night, stealing out with muffled oars through the creeks and reeds, our eyes always strained for other voyagers, our ears listening ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... creative effort believe passionately that the thing towards which we aim makes for all that is most chivalrous and most intelligent in life, that it is indeed the one true honesty in the world. And yet we know how easily that effort is beset by fears and jealousies and failure in generosity, how lightly we who should together give all our energy to the service of our art, waste it in little concerns of spite and self-interest. And it is in just such ways as this that great example may serve ...
— The Beggar's Opera - to which is prefixed the Musick to each Song • John Gay

... Faith, claimed at once by an eager aspirant, and beset with many a following introduction and petition, was drawn to and kept in the joyous whirlpool of the dance, till she had breathed in enough of delight and excitement to carry her quite beyond the thought even of ices and oysters and jellies and fruits, and the score of unnamable luxuries whereto ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... of Conciliation as well as an International Court of Justice comprising a number of Benches. I would ask the reader kindly to take these very lightly outlined schemes for what they are worth. Whatever may be their defects they indicate a way out of some of the great difficulties which beset the realisation of the universal demand for International Councils of Conciliation and ...
— The League of Nations and its Problems - Three Lectures • Lassa Oppenheim

... brave high-flown way with him. In short, he began to feel some of the inconveniences of greatness; and, like it, to be surrounded by cringing servility and meanness. When he went to the chapel he was beset, and followed from place to place, by a retinue of friends who were all anxious to secure to themselves the most conspicuous marks of his notice. It was the same thing in fair or market; they contended with each other who should do him most honor, or afford to him and his father's ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton

... O'Malley alliance. Brian had it in mind to beset the Dark Master by sea and land at once, for all the O'Malley clan had been seamen and rovers from time immemorial, while he himself preferred men and horses at his back. In calmer mood now, he reflected that Turlough might not return for a week, and there was food and fodder for ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones

... part of the hegelian vision or intuition, and a part that finds the strongest echo in empiricism and common sense. Great injustice is done to Hegel by treating him as primarily a reasoner. He is in reality a naively observant man, only beset with a perverse preference for the use of technical and logical jargon. He plants himself in the empirical flux of things and gets the impression of what happens. His mind is in very truth impressionistic; and his thought, when ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James

... ridge, And it's "Flankers back!" and "Skirmishers in!" And the summit is theirs to lose or win— To win with honour or lose with shame; And so to the place itself they came, And gazed with an awful thrill At the ridge of omen, Beset by foemen, At the arduous summit, the gorse-clad summit, the summit ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann

... believed that I should think much less of you; I really should!" she exclaimed. "It was something finer and higher than that; it was your own manhood asserting itself. That man over there," she went on more quietly, "is an object of pity. He's beset on many sides. It hurt him to lose you. ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson

... of a ruddy glow from the crackling wood fire, and where, of course, no spectre dared to show its face, it was dearly purchased by the terror of his subsequent walk homewards. What fearful shapes and shadows beset his path, amidst the dim and ghastly glare of a snowy night! With what wistful look did he eye every trembling ray of light streaming across the waste fields from some distant window! How often was he appalled by some shrub covered with snow, which like a sheeted ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker

... space of some two or three miles the road is a grass-grown track through a rough country. As one proceeds he can appreciate the difficulties that beset the retreating soldiers, laden with such stores from the village as they could carry with them on the retreat. Now and then an unkept farmhouse appears, but there is little life; it is possible to walk as far as Nelson's Mill, some ...
— The New York and Albany Post Road • Charles Gilbert Hine

... eating a luncheon. Dicksie, beset with anxiety, could not stay in the house. The man that had driven Marion over, saddled horses in the afternoon and the two women rode up above Mud Lake, now become through rainfall and seepage from ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman

... have died before my life begun, Whenas my father for his country's good The Persian's favor and the Sophy won And yet with danger of his dearest blood. Thy father, sweet, whom danger did beset, Escaped all, and for no other end But only this, that you he might beget, Whom heavens decreed into the world to send. Then father, thank thy daughter for thy life, And Neptune praise that yielded so to thee, To calm the tempest when ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher

... fifty or more head of stock, seven wagons, and seventeen people. We made the trip across the divide in twenty-two days without serious mishap or loss. This was good time, considering the difficulties that beset our way at every step. Every man literally "put his shoulder to the wheel." We were compelled often to take hold of the wheels to boost the wagons over the logs or to ease them down steep places. Our force was divided into three groups,—one man to each wagon to drive; four to act as wheelmen; ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker

... and thereafter appealled him to the singular combat, and cut straw to that effect, thou thereafter, with the said John Williamson, passed immediately furth and followed the said late Murdo to the field called Easter Dempster, where thou and the said John Williamson beset the said late Murdo, and thou took and held him while the said John Williamson struck him, like as thou also with a knife you struck him in the womb, of the which strikes (blows) the said late Murdo immediately deceased, which you cannot deny, ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 2, December 1875 • Various

... REPEALED, 1766.—Meantime the merchants had been signing agreements not to import, and the people not to buy, any British goods for some months to come. American trade with the mother country was thus cut off, thousands of workmen in Great Britain were thrown out of employment, and Parliament was beset with petitions from British merchants praying for a repeal of the stamp tax. To enforce the act without bloodshed was impossible. In March, 1766, therefore, Parliament repealed the Stamp Act. [9] But at the ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster

... the Federal Government have been presented, not in a spirit of hostility, but as a warning to the people against the dangers by which their liberties are beset. When the war ceased, the pretext on which it had been waged could no longer be alleged. The emancipation proclamation of Mr. Lincoln, which, when it was issued, he humorously admitted to be a nullity, had acquired validity by the action of the highest authority ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis

... the way to Newark," quoth merry Robin, "so that, as two honest men are better than one in roads beset by such a fellow as this Robin Hood, I will jog along with thee, if thou hast no ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle

... I have to say," broke in Rachel, with some impatience. "We have been going backwards and forwards here certainly for half an hour, talking about the many difficulties which must beset a clergyman, who is at the same time the servant of both God and the State, and continually, or at least several times, you have told me that I was right, or that you had not thought of such and such ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland

... produced against College were Dugdale, Turberville, Haynes, Smith; men who had before given evidence against the Catholics, and whom the jury, for that very reason, regarded as the most perjured villains. College, though beset with so many toils, and oppressed with so many iniquities, defended himself with spirit, courage, capacity, presence of mind; and he invalidated the evidence of the crown, by convincing arguments and undoubted testimony: yet did the jury, after half an hour's deliberation, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume

... down-stairs with her a vivid impression that somebody had left her master a fortune. Under such beatific circumstances closed the evening that had opened amid such clouds. Henceforth, so far as the doctor could read the future, no difficulties but those common to all wooers beset the course ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

... garden, seeking the nucleus of an emotion which beset me now—not they, but my senses, formed it—in a garden miles away, where nodded a row of elms, under which ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard

... managed to make their way at all through the dense jungle which hemmed us in on every side, or to disentangle themselves from the numerous obstacles which beset our path. If one of the bearers suddenly plunged up to his waist in a morass, someone else instantly came forward to pull him out and to raise the chair again. When huge fallen trees obstructed the way, one or two men rushed forward to assist in lifting the chair and me over the barricade. In less ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey

... he, "I am glad of the opportunity of giving you and your family an idea of the difficulties and miseries which beset a large class of your fellow-beings of whom you seldom have any chance of knowing anything at all, but of whom you hear all sorts of the most misleading accounts. Now, I am a poor man. I have suffered the greatest miseries that poverty can inflict. I am here, suspected of having committed ...
— The Stories of the Three Burglars • Frank Richard Stockton

... written upon him too, for that matter, that holding out wouldn't be, so very completely, his natural, or at any rate his acquired, form. His appearance would have testified that he might have to do so a long time—for a man so greatly beset. This appearance, that is, spoke but little, as yet, of short remainders and simplified senses—and all in spite of his being a small, spare, slightly stale person, deprived of the general prerogative of presence. It was not by mass or weight or vulgar immediate quantity that he would ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James

... 'did ever you hear of a poor girl beset by an importunate youth, but his family thought it was all ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Margaret's departure for Spa, the care of the royal escort, and the payment of all that decency required us to take upon ourselves of the cost of our hospitality, engrossed my time and thoughts. But the first time the Infant beset me, (as he has doubtless done yourself,) with his chapter of lamentations over the sufferings of Belgium,—the lawlessness of the camp—the former loyalty of the provinces—the tenderness of conscience of the heretics,—and the eligibility of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various

... the burning zone, another fanciful obstacle beset the mariner who proposed to undertake a long voyage upon the outer ocean. It had been observed that a ship which disappears in the offing seems to be going downhill; and many people feared that if they ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske

... each side of him. He was waiting for the word, and felt for a rifle. He had to rise to shake off this oppression. On his feet he laughed softly, being again in Newbern on a fool's mission. He lay down hands under his chin, but again the silent watching beset him with the old oppression. He must be still and strain his eyes ahead. Presently the word would come, or he would feel the touch of a groping foe. He half dozed at last from the memory of that other endless fatigue. He came to himself with a start and raised his head ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson

... the course of the farewell banquet, at which she was present reclining on her couch, he burst forth into complaints of the treatment he had received. After General San Martin's departure he had been beset by spies, slandered by civil officials, his services ignored, his liberty and even his life threatened by the Chilian Government. He got up from the table, thundered execrations pacing the room wildly, then sat down ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad

... feelest, and search for a deliverance from these sufferings of thine. Old-fashioned maxims these, it may be, I appear to thee to utter; yet such becomes the wages of the tongue that talks too proudly. But not even yet art thou humble, nor submittest to ills; and in addition to those that already beset thee, thou art willing to bring others upon thee. Yet not, if at least thou takest me for thy instructor, wilt thou stretch out thy leg against the pricks; as thou seest that a harsh monarch, and ...
— Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes • Aeschylus

... police and the magistrates sought him, he would flee from them and fortify himself in the mountains. Now it befell that a certain man journeyed along the road wherein was the robber in question, and this man was alone and knew not the perils that beset his way. So the highwayman came out upon him and said to him, "Bring out that which is with thee, for I mean to slay thee without fail." Quoth the traveller, "Slay me not, but take these saddle-bags and divide [that which is in] them and take the fourth part [thereof]." ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne

... he interrupted, eyeing me suspiciously, and obviously fearing from my verbiage that he was about to be beset by a bore. (To tell the truth, I was rather glad of his interruption, for the sentence was beginning to get out of hand.) 'As you say, there's nothing like travel to broaden the mind. Why,' he went on hurriedly, 'before I was eighteen ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan

... head; and Wodrow generally winds up these judgments with an appropriate admonitory text, as, for instance, "Touch not His anointed, and do His prophets no harm." As the persons for whom these special miracles are performed generally happen to be sorely beset by worldly privations and dangers, which are at their climax at the very time when they are able to call in supernatural intervention, a logician might be inclined to ask why, if the operations, and, as it were, the very motives, ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton

... she would fain have detained me longer. Her manner towards me had been altered ever since I had begun to treat her with hardness and indifference: she almost cringed to me on every occasion; she consulted my countenance incessantly, and beset me with innumerable little officious attentions. Servility creates despotism. This slavish homage, instead of softening my heart, only pampered whatever was stern and exacting in its mood. The very circumstance of her hovering round me like a fascinated bird, seemed to transform me into a rigid pillar ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell

... path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways. Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me. Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there; if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps

... has been happening with regard to the inner life of the child. We are beset by such anxieties as these: it is necessary to form character, to develop the intelligence, to aid the unfolding and ordering of the emotions. And we ask ourselves how we are to do this. Here and there we touch the soul of the child, or we constrain it by special restrictions, ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori

... forests. The Pennsylvania settlers were of a class particularly skilled in dealing with the soil. They apparently encountered none of the difficulties, due probably to incompetent farming, which beset the settlers of Delaware, whose land was as good as that of ...
— The Quaker Colonies - A Chronicle of the Proprietors of the Delaware, Volume 8 - in The Chronicles Of America Series • Sydney G. Fisher

... he was much disappointed to receive 'contrary letters.' His reply, indignantly acquiescing, indicates the plan which by this time he had formed in order to solve the combined difficulties in theory and practice which beset Scotland. He reminded his correspondents—Glencairn, Lorne, Erskine, and James Stewart—in very memorable words, that they were themselves magistrates, or at least representatives of the ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes

... Marie Antoinette seated in her new country before the virulence of Court intrigue against her became active. She was beset on all sides by enemies open and concealed, who never slackened their persecutions. All the family of Louis XV., consisting of those maiden aunts of the Dauphin just adverted to (among whom Madame Adelaide was specially ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... public record. Yet I not only do not question the integrity of Mr. Hayes, but I believe him and most of those immediately about him to have been high-minded men who thought they were doing for the best in a situation unparalleled and beset with perplexity. What they did tends to show that men will do for party and in concert what the same men never would be willing to do each on his own responsibility. In his "Life of Samuel J. Tilden," John ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson

... seduced, in the absence of his brother, by the influence of bad company, to indulge in drink, even to intoxication. This, during the greater part of a whole apprenticeship, considering his temperament, and the almost daily temptations by which he was beset, must be admitted on the whole to be a very moderate amount of error in that respect. On the morning after his last transgression, however, apprehending very naturally a strong remonstrance from his brother, ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton

... bed-sitting-room, and found himself confronting Hutchinson and Little Ann and the table set for the oyster stew. It is true that he had never been in such a place in his life, that for many reasons he was appalled, and that he was beset by a fear that he might be grotesquely compelled by existing circumstances to accept these people's invitation, if they insisted upon his sitting down with them and sharing their oyster stew. One could not calculate on what would happen among these unknown quantities. ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... represented stands Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis. (1839-1908). Born in Rio de Janeiro of poor parents he was early beset with difficulties. He soon found his way into surroundings where his literary tastes were awakened and where he came into contact with some of the leading spirits of the day. The noted literary historians of his country, Sylvio Romero and Joao Ribeiro (in their Compendio ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis

... the march in "Aida" was performed by six hundred of the State militia and he had the assistance of a military band and an extra chorus of three hundred and fifty voices. But Mapleson's enterprises were beset with difficulties and finally ended in disaster, although not for some years. To many people, who can remember the rivalry between Abbey and Mapleson in the eighties, when Patti, Gerster, Sembrich, Scalchi, Nilsson, Annie Louise Cary, Campanini, Ravelli and del ...
— Annals of Music in America - A Chronological Record of Significant Musical Events • Henry Charles Lahee

... Mafulu people, or at all events those passing through forests, are, like those of most other mountain natives, usually difficult for white men to traverse. The forest tracks in particular are often quite unrecognisable as such to an inexperienced white man, and are generally very narrow and beset with a tangle of stems and hanging roots and creepers of the trees and bush undergrowth, which catch the unwary traveller across the legs or body or hands or face at every turn, and are often so concealed by the grass and vegetation that, ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson

... records: "They continued undisturbed for three or four days, but at last, as they were presenting the tragedy of The Bloody Brother (in which Lowin acted Aubery; Taylor, Rollo; Pollard, the Cook; Burt, Latorch; and, I think, Hart, Otto), a party of foot-soldiers beset the house, surprised 'em about the middle of the play, and carried 'em away in their habits, not admitting them to shift, to Hatton House, then a prison, where, having detained them some time, they plundered them of their clothes, and let 'em ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams

... other departments of this theology, are beset by the difficulty that the authorities who treat of them are not always in accord and do not pretend to be in accord. The idea that variety is permissible in belief and conduct is deeply rooted in later Buddhism: there are many vehicles, some better than others no doubt and some very ramshackle, ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... Sandy gied to me a ring, Was a' beset wi' diamonds fine; But I gied him a far better thing, I gied my heart in pledge ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... know how to die. The same thing is less confidently to be said of Protestants. How frequently is the story told of the most exemplary Protestant Christians, nay, how common is it to read in the lives of the most exemplary Protestant ministers, that they were beset with doubts and terrors in their last days! The blessing of the viaticum is unknown to them. Man is essentially an idolater,—that is, in bondage to his imagination,—for there is no more harm in the Greek word eidolon than in the Latin word imago. He wants a visible image to fix his thought, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... bed his overstimulated state of mind became a torment. He rolled and tossed, beset by exciting images and ideas. Every time that a growing confusion of these indicated the approach of sleep, he was brought sharply back to full consciousness by the crowing of a rooster in the backyard. Finally he threw off the covers and sat up, ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson

... made them often sympathize, often combine, with the privileged. Her father, with all his virtues, all his abilities, singleness of purpose and simplicity of aim, encountered rivals in their own Convention, and was beset by open or, ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli

... stern presence of mind, going right into the kitchen, and taking up one of Tabby's red-hot Italian irons to sear the bitten place, and telling no one, till the danger was well-nigh over, for fear of the terrors that might beset their weaker minds. All this, looked upon as a well-invented fiction in "Shirley," was written down by Charlotte with streaming eyes; it was the literal true account of what Emily had done. The same tawny bull-dog (with his "strangled whistle"), ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell

... to Virginia beset on all sides with deadly perils. If he escaped the plague, the yellow fever and the scurvy during his voyage across the Atlantic, he was more than apt to fall a victim to malaria or dysentery after he reached his new home. Even if he survived all these dangers, he might perish miserably of ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker

... of the same condition. For, on the contrary, the comedians reflect on those who revel at their marriages, who make a great ado and are pompous in their feasts, as such who are taking wives with not much confidence and courage. Thus, in Menander, one replies to a bridegroom that bade him beset the ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... terror; and she appears almost equally eager to hear all, though it almost scares her out of her senses. As for Gertrude, the child is pining like a caged bird shut up in the house and not suffered to stir into the fresh air. I am fair beset to know what to do for them. Nothing will convince Madam but that there be dead carts at every street corner, and that the child will bring home death with her every time she stirs out. Yet Frederick comes to and fro, and she admits him to her presence (though ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green

... the orthodox think it a sufficient proof of the truth of this article, that it was seriously affirmed by him who never asserted a falsehood, meaning their prophet, who, to add to the difficulty of the passage, has likewise declared that this bridge is beset on each side with briers and hooked thorns, which will, however, be no impediment to the good; for they shall pass with wonderful ease and swiftness, like lightning, or the wind, Mahomet, and his Moslems ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward

... lighter bulk of the poet in good trim, while it won that measure of respect which mere poetical gifts and graces would not have secured. He was the dean of that group of "poets, poetaccios, poetasters, and poetillos," [11] who beset the court. If a display of erudition were demanded, Ben was ready with the heavy artillery of the unities, and all the laws of Aristotle and Horace, Quintilian and Priscian, exemplified in tragedies of canonical structure, and comedies whose prim regularity could not extinguish ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various

... were continually occurring during the five years of Captain Hunter's being governor, was a fearful and appalling one; nor can we wonder at the wish expressed by the historian of the early days of the colony, that future annalists may find a pleasanter field to travel in, without having their steps beset every moment with murderers, robbers, and incendiaries. Twice during Governor Hunter's administration was a public gaol purposely destroyed by fire; once the gaol at Sydney suffered, although there were twenty prisoners confined there, ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden

... came into possession of this fortune, Crazy did not know the difference between one thousand and one hundred thousand dollars. He could hardly write his name; and, unfortunately, he had nobody to warn him against the dangers that beset the youth of this world, and to make of him, instead of a spendthrift, a man ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin

... a law trial by way of variety last Saturday—Capt. Comstock having been duly indicted and arraigned for Humbug, in permitting us to be so long beset by all manner of easterly winds with never a puff from the westward. Hon. Ashbel Smith, from Texas, officiated as Chief Justice; a Jury of six ladies and six gentlemen were empaneled; James T. Brady conducted the prosecution with much wit and spirit; while AEolus, Neptune, Capt. Cuttle, Jack ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley

... troubles, another class of difficulties beset us, which were, at times, almost as vexatious. These were the continued attacks made by good men in various parts of the State and Nation, who thought they saw in Cornell a stronghold-first, of ideas in religion antagonistic to their own; and secondly, of ideas in education likely to injure their ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White

... social sense he had great confidence—so he acquiesced in her silence about them. Still, as he reflected, it is not a little lamentable that even friendship, the angelic relation between man and woman, should be thus beset by perils from within and pitfalls without. Where lay the fault—with over-civilisation and the improper proprieties resultant therefrom? Or was it of far more ancient origin, resident in the very foundations of human nature? Woman, eternally the vehicle of man's being, ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet

... quiet cabinet Where their dear governess and lady lies, Do tell her she is dreadfully beset, And fright her with confusion of their cries: She, much amaz'd, breaks ope her lock'd-up eyes, Who, peeping forth this tumult to behold, Are by his flaming ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... visiting us is so beset with rules and 'nagged' even by glances and nudges, that I wonder that he is not bewildered and rebellious. He seems good and pleasant and obedient (12 years old), but I keep ...
— Study of Child Life • Marion Foster Washburne

... gain over the Dutch troops quartered in the Lagune; not, however, as his emissary supposed, to be employed ultimately for the seizure of Venice, but in truth for that of Naples; that Pierre's courage was not proof against the dangers with which his apparently most hazardous commission beset him; and that accordingly he betrayed his employer, and revealed to the Inquisitors a plot which they well knew to be feigned: and, lastly, that when the ambitious plans of d'Ossuna, partially discovered before their time by the Spanish government, might have compromised Venice also if they had ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 559, July 28, 1832 • Various

... thought of doing or saying anything with a latent idea of its indirect effect upon the little girls, her companions. She was simply herself; she even confessed (where the confession was called for) to short-comings, to faults, and never denied the force of temptations, either of those which beset little children, or of those which occasionally assailed herself. Pure, simple, and truthful to the heart's core, her life, in its uneventful hours and days, spoke many homilies. Maggie, who was grave, imaginative, and somewhat quaint, took pains in finding words to express the thoughts to which ...
— The Moorland Cottage • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... foretold her. Hence she conceived that she was from the very beginning particularly regarded by her. She therefore offered sacrifice of thanks to Venus. And first caused a great image of gold to be erected to her, which she called the image of Venus, and by it placed the picture of a dove beset with jewels, and every day implored the favour of the goddess with sacrifice and prayer. She sent to Hermotimus her father many rich presents, and made him wealthy. She lived continently all her life, ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey

... host heeres to you, as if one saluted you by all the titles of your baronie. These considerations, I saie, which the world suffers to slippe by in the channell of carelesnes, haue moued me in ardent zeale of your welfare, to forewarne you of some dangers that haue beset you & your barrels. At the name of dangers hee start up, and bounst with his fist on the boord so hard, that his Tapster ouerhearing him, cried anone anone sir, by and by, and came and made a low leg and askt him what he lackt. Hee was readie to haue ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash

... ought to exist on political subjects as on all others; but this influence should always be domestic, not public—the customs of society have so ruled it. Of the thorns in the path of ambitious men all moralists talk, but there are little, scarcely visible, thorns of a peculiar sort that beset the path of an ambitious woman, the venomous prickles of the domestic bramble, a plant not perhaps mentioned in Withering's Botany, or the Hortus Kewensis, but it is too well known to many, and to me it has ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth

... able to put aside utterly the thought which had tormented him, but he lived in dread of being beset by it at night-time again. He began to fear going to bed, and would sit up talking to Toffy till the small hours of the morning, or playing picquet with Dunbar. Men began to say that he 'jawed' ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan

... to be wrestling with each other nowadays, the one a law of blood and of death, ever seeking new means of destruction and forcing nations to be constantly ready for the battlefield; the other a law of peace, work, and health, ever evolving new means of delivering man from the scourges which beset him. The first seeks violent conquests, the other the relief of humanity. The latter places one human life above any victory, while the former would sacrifice hundreds and thousands of lives to the ambition of one. Which of these two laws will ultimately prevail God only ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy

... Taking shame that I had proved such a sluggard, I rose up quickly, and brushed away the sand, which I was rejoiced to perceive had finely cleansed away the mud from the dyke at Broxall. This done I made the best of my way into the town to keep my rendezvous with Cousin Rupert, for I was sharply beset by hunger. ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward

... is no longer to be seen. These fly-aways, Captain Ludlow, give us seamen many sleepless nights and idle chases. I was once running down the coast of Italy, between the island of Corsica and the main, when one of these delusions beset the crew, in a manner that hath taught me to put little faith in eyes, unless backed by a clear horizon ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper

... "My dear brother, I am but a weak man and beset by infirmities. At the same time, miserable though I feel myself to be, God teaches me what I ought to do. I cannot tell you what I should actually do, because though the spirit is willing, the flesh is weak. At the same time we know, that while without grace we ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus

... because they see not the visor of my helmet gleaming near them. Had they seen this, there would not have been a creek nor grip that had not been filled with their dead as they fled back again. And so it would have been, if only King Agamemnon had dealt fairly by me. As it is the Trojans have beset our host. Diomed son of Tydeus no longer wields his spear to defend the Danaans, neither have I heard the voice of the son of Atreus coming from his hated head, whereas that of murderous Hector rings in my cars as he gives orders to the Trojans, who triumph ...
— The Iliad • Homer

... lord, he shall be welcome then, And I hope that you will entertain him so, That he may know how Osrick honours him. And I will be attired in cloth of biss[315], Beset with Orient pearl, fetch'd from rich India[316]. And all my chamber shall be richly [decked,] With arras hanging, fetch'd from Alexandria. Then will I have rich counterpoints and musk, Calambac[317] and cassia, sweet-smelling ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley

... thank yo'." And then in a lower voice, "They wur a power o' help to Liz an' me. Liz wur hard beset then, an' she's only a young thing as canna bear sore trouble. Seemed loike that th' thowt as some un had helped her wur ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... eighth; ever and anon it would make a stand and hold a price an hour. Other stocks lost twice and threefold the ground; the stubbornness of Northern Consolidated began to engage the notice of men. More than one poor "bull" when sore beset that day took fresh heart from the obstinacy of Northern Consolidated; his own foothold was steadied and made ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis

... "We'll go on more slowly and take longer rests, for I must have no more of you men down with sickness. Let us hope that we may win our way safely to the ship and the island yet. I would send out a little party to try and fetch help, but I fear they are beset at the residency already, and I do not think a detachment could succeed. I propose then that we all hold together and do ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn

... objects for which the battle of Belmont was fought were fully accomplished. The enemy gave up all idea of detaching troops from Columbus. His losses were very heavy for that period of the war. Columbus was beset by people looking for their wounded or dead kin, to take them home for medical treatment or burial. I learned later, when I had moved further south, that Belmont had caused more mourning than almost ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant

... manner of Mrs. Birkenfeld had an excellent effect on Mrs. Ehrenreich, and she acquiesced in this proposal without the slightest demur. Indeed the path of the future, that had looked so beset with difficulties, seemed now to lie smooth before her, and all her prospects were brightened. She spoke with great thankfulness on her husband's account; for he already found himself so improved by the ...
— Uncle Titus and His Visit to the Country • Johanna Spyri

... I was beset with doubts and uneasiness. Suppose she called up my office and found that the client I had named was not in town? It is undoubtedly true that a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive, for on my return to the office I was at once quite ...
— Sight Unseen • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... I had left the school financial difficulties beset my uncle's affairs. Aunt Ducie died in the midst of them, and Uncle Gervase did not long survive. Our household gods went under the auctioneer's hammer, our beautiful home became the home of strangers, and I went to live in ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various

... in this account of the trials by which he was beset, and it rises to dignity in connection with a sentence which immediately follows, in which he says, the thought of "the advantage of the world excited me, and the revival of knowledge, which now for many ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various

... strength, however, he is apt to make up in hectic ambition. Thus it often happens that when the city does not consume quite all of his available energy, the poet, with his probably inadequate physique, chafes against the hack-work and yields to the call of the luring creative ideas that constantly beset him. Then, after yielding, he chafes again, and more bitterly, at his faint, imperfect expression of these dreams, recognizing in despair that he has been creating a mere crude by-product of the strenuous life about him. ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler

... well equipped and so brave a warrior as you, King Olaf," he said. "But, for my own part, I do not believe this tale. I have known the Dane King in past times, and he is far too wary to attempt so bold an attack. Howbeit, if you misdoubt that war will beset your path, then will I be of your company with my ships. The time has been when the following of the vikings of Jomsburg has been deemed of good ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton









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