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Compelling   /kəmpˈɛlɪŋ/   Listen
Compelling

adjective
1.
Driving or forcing.
2.
Tending to persuade by forcefulness of argument.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Compelling" Quotes from Famous Books



... confidently the effect of the Bank's drastic pressure upon public opinion, Clay began in January, 1834, the work of compelling the President to restore the deposits. For weeks and even months the Senate was the scene of the most extraordinary denunciations, and the press of the country was burdened with the attacks and counter-attacks of the parties to this fierce and unrelenting ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd

... hundred fugitives were hung in effigy. Montmorency attempted to secure the Protestants against further aggression by disarming the entire population, with the exception of four hundred chosen men, and by compelling the parliament, on the fifteenth of May, to swear to observe the Edict of Pacification—precautions whose efficacy we shall be able to estimate more accurately by the events of ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... pause. A low moan escaped the Queen, and her lovely eyes were filled with tears; slowly these coursed down her cheeks. Something compelling in her grief hushed every voice, and the craven husband at her side shivered as her glance ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini

... said; so the stenographer and myself were presently located in the village, and drove out each morning, to sit facing one of the rarest views in all New England, while he talked of everything and anything that memory or fancy suggested. We had begun in his bedroom, but the glorious outside was too compelling. ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine

... were sent to the French camp to intercede for the clemency of the conqueror. They were received with raillery and insult. After contemptuously compelling the deputation several times to come and go without any result, the king at last condescended to present the ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott

... work was completed, and then came the question, 'What should she do with it?' The idea of compelling him to accept a service, to be under some sort of obligation to her, took complete possession of her mind. She determined to steal his gratitude, if I may so express myself; to compel him by force to feel obliged to her; and this was the plan she resolved upon. It was devoid of all sense or ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan

... her after the catastrophe of her brother Wieland's "transformation." This was the crowning horror of all: the morbid fanatic, prepared by gloomy anticipations of some terrible sacrifice to be demanded in the name of religion, had found himself goaded to blind fury, by a mysterious compelling voice, to yield up to God the lives of his beloved wife and family; and had done ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne

... proceedings and passed an ordinance which practically deprived the Court of Aldermen of all control over the Common Council. Since that time the matter had remained dormant, until jealousy between the two bodies was again excited by the Common Council passing an Act (17 Sept., 1674) for compelling the aldermen to reside within the city under the penalty of a fine of L500.(1400) Against the passing of any such Act the Recorder, on behalf of the Court of Aldermen, formally reported their protest to the Common ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe

... Arrowhead nights, inwardly debating the possible discourtesy of an early bedding after ten wet miles of trout stream, I came again and again to this compelling face of the sad smile and the glad tears. It recalled an ideal feminine head much looked at in my nonage. It was lithographed mostly in pink and was labeled "Tempest and Sunshine." So I loitered by the big table, dreaming upon the poignant perfections ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson

... President was vastly entertained; he would laugh loudly at Page's wit, express his delight at his graphic and pungent style and feel deeply the horrors of war as his Ambassador unfolded them. "I always found Page compelling on paper," Mr. Wilson remarked to Mr. Laughlin, during one of the latter's visits to Washington. "I could never resist him—I get more information from his letters than from any other single source. Tell him to keep it up." It was during this period that the ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick

... influence of weather on the operations of war. We could show that it was owing to changes of wind that the Spaniards failed to take Leyden, the fall of which into their hands would probably have proved fatal to the Dutch cause; that a sudden thaw prevented the French from seizing the Hague in 1672, and compelling the Dutch to acknowledge themselves subjects of Louis XIV.; that a change of wind enabled William of Orange to land in England, in 1688, without fighting a battle, when even victory might have been fatal to his purpose; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various

... of breathing was advocated by the physiologist Mandl, and it is said that soon afterward in the schools of singing which followed his theory most unusual devices were practised for the purpose of keeping the ribs in a fixed position and compelling the pupil to breathe by the action of the diaphragm and abdominal muscles only. Thus, the pupil was compelled to sing while lying down on a mattress, sometimes with weights placed on his chest. In fact, ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller

... facing each other, arms outstretched, hands in hands. Now and then the bewilderment of things made it very compelling, this desire to look and look into each other's eyes, to try to discover new characteristics ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer

... fiction that the Spaniards were angels—save the mark!—for it smoothed his progress in stripping the Porto Ricans of their poor little possessions, taking their lands for settlement, foraging over the island, forcing his religion upon them, and compelling them to serve him as miners, carriers, farmers, fishermen, and laborers. Many died because it was thought to be cheaper to work them to death and get fresh ones than to feed them. After a time the Indians began to have doubts, and ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner

... conditions that Speaker Reed, in 1890, crowned himself "Czar" by compelling a quorum. This he did by counting as actually present all members whom the clerk reported as "present but not voting." The minority fought desperately for its last privilege and even took a case to the Supreme Court to test the constitutionality ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth

... her own sayings or personal authority; but simply by compelling me to read the book thoroughly, for myself. As soon as I was able to read with fluency, she began a course of Bible work with me, which never ceased till I went to Oxford. She read alternate verses with me, watching, at first, every intonation of my voice, and correcting the false ones, till ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)

... expect to find angels anywhere here below, captain," answered the priest. "Wherever there is poverty, there is suffering too; and suffering and poverty are strong compelling forces which have their abuses, just as power has. When the peasants have a couple of leagues to walk to their work, and have to tramp back wearily in the evening, they perhaps see sportsmen taking short cuts ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac

... watched her curiously, but Mrs. Wilder, even if she was conscious of his look, appeared quite indifferent to it. He could form no idea along what road her silent concentration led her; but he knew that she pursued an idea that was compelling and strong. He knew enough of her to know that even her silence was not the silence that arises out of lack of subject for talk, but that it meant something as definite and clear as though she ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie

... elevating the family by taking a man by the name of Toodlebug into it! Think of our going to live in New York with such a name. Everybody would say Toodlebug! Toodlebug! and nobody would come to our daughter's parties." The good woman ran on in this way for several minutes, compelling her dear Chapman to keep the peace. At length she settled back into her rocking chair, and ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams

... to sustain one's choice. Yet I cannot think that any large section of the critical public could maintain that Smollett was on the same level as the other two. Ethically he is gross, though his grossness is accompanied by a full-blooded humour which is more mirth-compelling than the more polished wit of his rivals. I can remember in callow boyhood—puris omnia pura—reading "Peregrine Pickle," and laughing until I cried over the Banquet in the Fashion of the Ancients. I read it again in my manhood with the ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle

... the same time six or eight natives with their matchlocks should be placed at intervals along the line to fire at the tiger should it attempt to break through the rear. This may sometimes, but rarely, succeed in turning it, and compelling it to move in the required direction. It is a curious fact that "breaking back" is a movement general to all animals, which have an instinctive presentiment of danger in the front, if alarmed by ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... lowed; then, sweet and clear as a mountain stream, broke forth the whistle of a wild bird in the marsh. This matin of the feathered songster rose higher and higher till he reached the very top note of his scale and then fell again, by cadences, until it mingled with the less compelling calls ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper

... humanity it is to be wished that men would endeavor to alleviate the unavoidable miseries attending a state of war. It has been said that among the civilized nations of Europe the ancient horrors of that state are much diminished; but the compelling men by chains, stripes, and famine to fight against their friends and relatives, is a new mode of barbarity, which your nation alone has the honor of inventing, and the sending American prisoners of war to Africa and Asia, remote from all probability of exchange, and where ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge

... have in common the faculty of quickening speculation and compelling the minds of men to combat and discussion. About the English poet a literature of contention has been in process of accretion ever since he was discovered to be Shakespeare; and about the Dutch painter and etcher there has gradually accumulated ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley

... scorned, hated, shuddered at; she must follow the rest; her turn to be sacrificed was come; she must henceforth be a living lie. She could recompense herself as the daughters who have sinned by yielding generally do when they are mothers, with the sin of compelling, and thus make the trespass round and full. There is in no language yet the word invented to fit the vileness of such mothers; but, as time flows and speech grows, it may be found, and, when it is found, it will have action retrospective. It is ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald

... world that it often leaves no time for mourning—that in the midst of our sorrow it causes us to hear the prosaic voices of reality and necessity, compelling us to dry our eyes and turning our thoughts from painfully-sweet remembrances of a lost happiness to the realities of ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach

... sanity, reasonableness, and moral force were conspicuously strong. Charlotte Bronte was not one of those impulsive and imaginative women who are the prey of every fancy. Throughout the whole of her career, she was for ever compelling her frail and sensitive temperament, with indomitable purpose, to perform whatever she had undertaken to do. There never was anyone who lived so sternly by principle and reason, or who so maintained her self-control in the face of sorrow, disaster, unhappiness, and ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson

... plotting for a year up to this day, and this is what comes of it! If my father loves me, he will love her. And if he loves me, he'll forgive my acting against his wishes, and see it was the only thing to be done. Come! step out! what a time we've been!" and away he went, compelling Ripton to the sort of strides a drummer-boy has to take beside a column ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... time I had twice gone over every part of these magnificent establishments. I had seen at the Bank the spirit of order operating like predestination, compelling the will of man to act necessarily and continually with all the precision of mechanism. I had beheld human creatures, called clerks, turned nearly into ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth

... stirred as her glorious voice died away. Goddard's eyes fell, and he prodded the ground viciously with nervous fingers. His mouth was set in stubborn lines. No one spoke. Goddard roused himself. One quick compelling look at Nancy and his fine baritone voice took up the ...
— The Lost Despatch • Natalie Sumner Lincoln

... Cornwallis into costly battles, but never expose his whole army to capture. Flee if necessary, but be able to fight another day. He was inventive and unorthodox. With an army much smaller than Cornwallis' he divided it into thirds, plus compelling Cornwallis to divide his own army. Greene knew that Cornwallis, victorious as he might have been, was detached from Charleston and had to live off the land. He would fight a war of attrition and wear Cornwallis down. His strategy worked, although not without fateful ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education

... but as it was absolutely necessary for our own safety to dislodge them from their position, I caused a gun to be fired in the air, hoping that they would retire, but they commenced to ship their spears, and I therefore ordered a charge of shot to be fired at them, which had the desired effect of compelling them to retreat. What their object was in thus approaching the camp at night, unless for hostile purposes, we had no means of ascertaining; but the aboriginal Australian considers it an act of positive hostility to approach a camp in silence ...
— Journals of Australian Explorations • A C and F T Gregory

... appointed quaestor in a great scarcity of corn, and had Sicily for his province, where, at first, he displeased many, by compelling them to send in their provisions to Rome, yet after they had had experience of his care, justice, and clemency, they honored him more than ever they did any of their governors before. It happened, also, ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch

... the negroes, with the two Maxims, should secrete themselves in the scrub and remain in hiding until the entire Spanish force had passed into the defile, when they would emerge and block the entrance with the two Maxims, thus bottling up the Spaniards and compelling them to surrender—or ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood

... regularly dedicated to Jupiter, in his character of the Stranger's Friend. Having so far succeeded, the royal envoy turned his steps to Jerusalem, where, at the point of the sword, he prohibited every observance connected with the Jewish faith; compelling the people to profane the Sabbath, to eat swine's flesh, and to abstain, under a severe penalty, from the national rite of circumcision. The Temple was consigned by consecration to the ceremonies of Jupiter Olympius; while the statue ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell

... dark man of the East. "The same colouring that I have," Victoria Ray had said. If he, an Englishman, accustomed to the fair loveliness of his countrywomen, were a little dazzled by the radiance of this girl, what compelling influence must not the more beautiful sister have exercised upon ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... motionless. I knew him well; he was the very man I had seen in my third and last dream; the same noble, calm features; the same commanding presence; the same keen, clear eyes; the same compelling smile. There was nothing extraordinary about his appearance except his stately bearing and handsome countenance; his dress was that of any well-to-do gentleman of the present day, and there was no affectation of mystery in his manner. He advanced and bowed courteously; then, ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli

... favourably to affect the box-office receipts, and thus win an opening for the young debutante. As for beauty, it must be something very remarkable that will on its strength alone secure a girl an engagement. Mere prettiness will not do. Nearly all American girls are pretty. It must be a radiant and compelling beauty, and every one knows that there are not many such beauties, ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris

... Sabbathai," when his last hour is at hand has to confess that all his wisdom of life lies in his theoric; in practice he is still an infant; striving presumptuously in boyhood to live an angel, now that he comes to die he is hardly a man. And Solomon himself is no more than man; the truth-compelling ring extorts the confession that an itch of vanity still tickles and teazes him; the Queen of Sheba, seeker for wisdom and patroness of culture, after all likes wisdom best when its exponents are young men tall and proper, ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden

... shortsightedness, lays on them its violent and inept hands; they are trodden down, trampled upon and mauled for the purpose of curing them. Farmers are forbidden to sell their produce except in the markets, and obliged to bring to these a quota of so many sacks per week, military raids compelling them to furnish their quotas.[4238] Shopkeepers are ordered "to expose for sale, daily and publicly, all goods and provisions of prime necessity" that they have on hand, while a maximum price is established, above which ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... numerous and less capable class than those of painting. The general public, and I say it with sorrow, because I know it from observation, have little to do with the encouragement of the school of painting, beyond the power which they unquestionably possess, and unmercifully use, of compelling our artists to substitute glare for beauty. Observe the direction of public taste at any of our exhibitions. We see visitors at that of the Society of Painters in Water Colors, passing Tayler with anathemas ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin

... brown humility seemed well affected toward the world, alert and content. The air was full of the comfortable flavour of food-stuffs and spiced luxuries, and the incense of wayside trees; it was as if the sun laid a bland compelling hand upon the city, bidding strange flowers bloom and strange fruits increase. Brokers' gharries rattled past, each holding a pale young man preoccupied with a notebook; where the bullock-carts gathered themselves together and blocked the road the ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)

... leisure class standard our ideals must be changed to the standard of work, and the man who has vision is he who shall see the economic, the industrial unities, and who with compelling voice, will call men together to worship in a ...
— The Evolution of the Country Community - A Study in Religious Sociology • Warren H. Wilson

... instrument. And the feeling was not one of ordinary friendship. I felt I was drawn to him by some mysterious power, that gave him the place of a brother in my affections—a power that seemed to have brought us together, and now united us with a great common and compelling interest. And yet as I pictured his handsome, almost beautiful face, there was still another face I had seen—but where? The Martian had been alone, yet I was conscious of a face that was wonderfully beautiful, that seemed the goal for which I was striving. It led me to greater ...
— Zarlah the Martian • R. Norman Grisewood

... chosen from among the leavings of a vast devouring fire; then the loading of these trucks with the various belongings of the battalion began, and long before that task was finished darkness set in, so compelling the postponement of all journeying till morning light appeared. It was on the King of Portugal's birthday that morning light dawned, and it was to the sound of a royal salute in honour of that anniversary we attempted to start on ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry

... riveted, mesmerized, hypnotized; glued to (the TV); breathless; preoccupied &c. (inattentive) 458; watchful &c. (careful) 459;. breathless, undistracted, upon the stretch; on the watch &c. (expectant) 507. steadfast. [compelling attention] interesting, engrossing, mesmerizing, riveting. Int. see! look, look here, look you, look to it! mark! lo! behold! soho[obs3]! hark, hark ye! mind! halloo! observe! lo and behold! attention! nota bene [Latin], "N.B.", note well; I'd have you ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... late, gentlemen. You may thank your own commanders for compelling me to run no more risks—for having made trust in a French officer's honour a crime to my own people. You may have heard and seen so much that I am compelled to hold you prisoners. As I have no proof, however, that you are ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau

... Now Pan and Faun advance Beneath green-hollowed roofs of forest glades, Their feet gone mad with music: now, perchance, Sylvanus sleeping, on whose leafy trance The Nymphs stand gazing in dim ambuscades Of sun-embodied perfume.—Myth, Romance, Where'er I turn, reach out bewildering arms, Compelling me to follow. Day and night I hear their voices and behold the light Of their divinity that still evades, And still allures me in ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein

... of his acts, his picturesque journeys, his union of church and state, what would the Dark Ages have been? In its mountains of fact and luring mists of fable he had stood mighty and solitary, inspiring its imagination, its legends, its superstitions, its songs. He was its compelling figure. He it was who unified medievaldom and laid the bases of what had since governed in western Europe and prevented it from remaining a vast region of large and small tribes fighting among themselves. And he alone, among the powerful ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry

... eastern half of the State, about 100 orchards ranging from 12 trees up to 400 acres in extent. These orchards are in varying stages of blight infection, some of them being almost entirely free, due to the attention which has been given them. In order to protect such orchards the Commission is compelling the removal of infected trees within a ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Third Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... see possessing sense Must yet confessedly be stablished all From elements insensate. And those signs, So clear to all and witnessed out of hand, Do not refute this dictum nor oppose; But rather themselves do lead us by the hand, Compelling belief that living things are born Of elements insensate, as I say. Sooth, we may see from out the stinking dung Live worms spring up, when, after soaking rains, The drenched earth rots; and all things change the same: Lo, change the rivers, the fronds, the ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius

... since her arrival in the pictorial land, Hilda seemed to have entirely lost the impulse of original design, which brought her thither. No doubt the girl's early dreams had been of sending forms and hues of beauty into the visible world out of her own mind; of compelling scenes of poetry and history to live before men's eyes, through conceptions and by methods individual to herself. But more and more, as she grew familiar with the miracles of art that enrich so many galleries in Rome, Hilda had ceased ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... women in the basis of representation, while denying them the right of suffrage, is compelling them to swell the number of their tyrants and is an unwarrantable usurpation of power over one-half the citizens of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... of the Poor Law for his own benefit. He had reported, during the crisis of 1842, such operatives as refused to accept reduced wages, as persons who could find work but would not take it, and were, therefore, not deserving of relief, so compelling the acceptance of a reduction. Considerable damage was inflicted by the explosion, and all the working-men who came to view it regretted only "that the whole concern was not blown into the air." On Friday, October 6th, 1844, an attempt ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels

... annoyance, when you matt over them for the second painting: and, just when you cannot afford to spare a single moment—in some critical process—they will come out like round o's in the middle of your shading, compelling you to break off your work and do now what should have been done before you began ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall

... altogether voluntary, and burn the thinker, as though his view were a fruit, not a root, of him. But truth is that which does not wait for our making, but makes us,—does not lie like water at the bottom of our wells, but comes like sunshine flooding the air, and compelling recognition. "To believe your own thought," says a master, "that is genius"; but is not genius primarily the arrival of a thought able to authenticate itself, to compel trust, and make its own value known against the sneers or anger of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various

... him speak, the while we clearly sight him Moved like a figure on a lantern-slide. Which, much amazing uninitiate eyes, The all-compelling crystal pane but drags ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... Let us now consider those emotional experiences which seem far too compelling to be forgotten, but which may live within us for years without giving any evidence of their existence. Memories like these are apt to be ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury

... of the rich have a great effect on the multitude in most of the idolatrous festivals. When the lands and riches of the country were in few hands, this influence carried all before it. It is still very widely felt, in compelling dependants to assist at public shows, and to contribute towards the ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith

... He persisted in compelling admiration of Sidonie's purchase even to its smallest details, exhibited the gas and water fixtures on every floor, the improved system of bells, the garden seats, the English billiard-table, the hydropathic arrangements, and accompanied his exposition ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... discerned a compelling personality to whom he rendered willing allegiance and respect, as well as a dawning affection. And it was with much gratification that he had heard occasionally after inspection comments in a tone that contained no trace of regret at his ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling

... very strong book, very vividly coloured, very fascinating in its style, very compelling in its claim on the attention, and not at all likely ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen

... her gaze fastened upon Constance. The quaint little boy stared at Marjorie with an equally intent interest. Thus, as Constance began the last line the earnest, compelling regard of the brown eyes caused her own to ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester

... and its practical nullification as a duty. In such a situation, the granting of the ballot to the black man was a necessity, the very least a guilty nation could grant a wronged race, and the only method of compelling the South to accept the results of the war. Thus Negro suffrage ended a civil war by beginning a race feud. And some felt gratitude toward the race thus sacrificed in its swaddling clothes on the altar of national integrity; and some felt and ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois

... Other masters, old and new, have surpassed him in special instances; but he is the only one who rarely nods, and who always finishes his verse to the extreme. Here is the absolute sway of metre, compelling every rhyme and measure needful to the thought; here are sinuous alliterations, unique and varying breaks and pauses, winged flights and falls, the glory of sound and color everywhere present, or, if missing, absent of the poet's ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson

... determined to retreat, and wait for the Emperor Leo to join him with fresh troops. But Arthur, anticipating this event, took possession of a certain valley, and closed up the way of retreat to Lucius, compelling him to fight a decisive battle, in which Arthur lost some of the bravest of his knights and most faithful followers. But on the other hand Lucius Tiberius was slain, and his army totally defeated. ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... presence of freedmen in the midst of slave conditions. The American Colonization Society was founded in 1816 with the object of promoting emancipation by sending the freedmen to Africa. Some of the slave States, moreover, had laws compelling the freedmen to leave the State in which they had formerly resided as slaves. With an increasingly large number securing legal manumission, the problem caused by their presence became to the slaveholding group a most serious one. The Colonization Society, therefore, sought ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various

... a force as strong and compelling as a natural law—could have brought into existence such a vast solidarity as now exists in the world of labor. Like food and drink, the organization of labor satisfies an inherent necessity. The workers crave its protection, seek its guidance, and possess a sense of security only when ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter

... We used to kidnap Oriental artists in the good old days when art was a religion. This cup was made by one whom God befriended; by a brain steeped in the love of the beautiful; by a hand so cunning that when it died art languished; by a power so compelling that the treasuries of the world were opened to it. Its bowl is a turquoise, the size and shape of an ostrich's egg, sawn through its longer diameter, and resting on its side. Four gold arms clasp the bowl and meet under it. These arms are set with rubies en cabochon, except ...
— The Turquoise Cup, and, The Desert • Arthur Cosslett Smith

... wished that he would release her! She had no power to leave him of her own free-will. A certain compelling something in Mr. Gryce always forced her to do just as he wished—to answer his questions, stay when he stopped, follow when he beckoned. She resented in feeling, but she obeyed in fact; and he valued her obedience more than he regretted ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various

... Aline Proctor. That Aline was the queen of musical comedy she attributed to the fact that Aline knew the right people and got herself written about in the right way. But that she could sing, dance, act; that she possessed compelling charm; that she "got across" not only to the tired business man, the wine agent, the college boy, but also to the children and the old ladies, was to her ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis

... terror and entreaty; the other, pale, too,—though upon it there still lingered the brown of the summer sun—but firm of outline, its crown a heavy coil of braids, its centre, eyes that were brave, steadfast, compelling. ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates

... days is not America of this generation nor the Semitic people of the East like the Germanic races of the West, still those human qualities that make for valor, for greatness of spirit, that reflect genius devoted to literature and social service are compelling forces in all climes and in all races. An opportunity for a free expression of them and a recognition of their potent effect in the sum total of human culture should be the mission of scholarship in all lands. Those ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various

... to the ear or to the received rules of composition, as well as those which have received a sanction from the authority of our best poets, and are become familiar through their use of them; such as "the cloud-compelling Jove," &c. As for the rest, whenever any can be as fully and significantly expressed in a single word as in a compounded one, the course to be ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer

... were parents or teachers, in instructing a child which required proof for every statement that father, mother, or teacher gives? How cruel to force the confiding young heart into premature scepticism, by compelling him to hunt up reasons for everything, when he has reasons, to him all-sufficient, in the fact that father, mother, or teacher ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart

... answered by a musket-shot, which struck his right arm lifeless to his side, compelling him to drop the match. Another moment and the foremost boat would be inside the range of the gun, but with a cool courage which belongs only to the truly brave, Lieutenant Morris picked up the match with his left ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various

... that preceded him, and in every instance the answer would be the same—schools are forbidden to the slave. The coloured population was fast increasing, and the planters believed that the public safety could only be guaranteed by compelling them to remain illiterate. ...
— From Slave to College President - Being the Life Story of Booker T. Washington • Godfrey Holden Pike

... ancestors of their peg-tankards, of which a few may yet occasionally be found in Derbyshire;[161] the invention of an age less refined than the present, when we have heard of globular glasses and bottles, which by their shape cannot stand, but roll about the table; thus compelling the unfortunate Bacchanalian to drain the last drop, or ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... reptile. The rumbling preceding an earthquake is, to the Shoka mind, nothing else than the heavy breathing of the monster previous to waking, whereas the actual shock is caused by the brute stretching its limbs. When fully awake the serpent-like demon darts and forces its way in one direction, compelling the earth to quake all along its subterranean passage, often causing by so violent a procedure great damage to property and loss of life, not to speak of the fear and terror which it strikes in man and beast, should the capricious spirit by chance make a ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... herself, for, at the first sound of his footsteps, the beating of her heart had deafened her. She wanted him as much as he wanted her, and she trembled, feeling powerless to deny her love its human expression. It was compelling. What could be ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi

... returned to Paris during the first half of June, lamenting: "My head refuses to do any intellectual work; I feel that it is full of ideas, yet it is impossible to get them out; I am incapable of concentrating my thoughts, of compelling them to consider a subject from all its sides and then determine its development. I do not know when this imbecile condition will pass off, perhaps it is only that I am out of practice. When a workman ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet

... eyes. It seemed he must let loose the burden tugging in his arms and himself slip away into the depths and into that long sweet sleep that seemed just now so alluring, so compelling. ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll

... human needs and to the natural agencies that may satisfy them, the closer we are to beauty. Industry, sport, and science, with the perennial intercourse and passions of men, swarm with incentives to expression, because they are everywhere creating new moulds of being and compelling the eye to observe those forms and to recast them ideally. Art is simply an adequate industry; it arises when industry is carried out to the satisfaction of all human demands, even of those incidental sensuous demands which we call ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... not exactly apply to the two opposing hosts. The Taft men resorted very little to shouting, because they knew that if they were to win at all it must be by other means. The Rooseveltians, on the other hand, really felt a compelling surge of enthusiasm which they ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer

... paid by the reserve bank, but it must add an amount equal to the tax to the rates of interest and discount charged to member banks. The effect of these rules is to give a power of note issue in time of emergency without compelling the reserve banks to lock up their reserves held against notes. Suppose for example that the circulating notes were in normal times $1,000,000,000 and the reserves, therefore, were $400,000,000 and the rate of discount 5 per cent. Then ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter

... the Swedes, have or had the strange habit of bottling up their hilarity and letting it out on stated occasions in uproarious frolics. I saw carmagnoles in which men and women, seized by a wild impulse, whirled along the street in a frantic dance to any chance music, compelling every bystander to join. I heard of a Prince from Capua, who, having been thus carmagnoled, returned home ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland

... her steps, feeling puzzled. There was something curiously attractive about the young man's personality, something that appealed to her, yet that she felt disposed to resist. That air of the ancient Roman was wonderfully compelling, too compelling for her taste, but then his boyishness counteracted it to a very great degree. There was a hint of sweetness running through his arrogance against which she was not proof. Audacious he might be, but it was a winning species ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell

... so little denied by the Opposition, that their objections to the bill were directed entirely against the clause for limited enlistment, and not against that which abridged the subject's liberty, by compelling him to learn to ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge

... growth near the gorge. Then the guns shelled them as they ran. One gun was ordered to advance a position a quarter of a mile farther on. It had just reached the new position when Spanish infantry reinforcements filed into the trenches and began a deadly fire upon the Americans, compelling the battery to retire at a gallop. Then both the enemy's howitzers reopened, the shrapnel screamed, and Mausers sang. Another gun galloped from the rear, but the American ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis

... laughed at for his pains. It cost L'Isle no small effort to do this. It was, in fact, a heroic, self-sacrificing act; for he was not used to being laughed at, and there is something highly amusing in compelling a man to tell a story which makes him more and more ridiculous at every turn. But while showing so much consideration for Lady Mabel, so far was he from beginning to forgive her ill-usage of him, that the constraint he had put upon himself only ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen

... trembling anxiety for what was next to follow, eight more were convicted on the second day, and as promptly executed. The whole county was struck with terror; and the judge, having thus effected the great object of punishment, by compelling them to respect and fear the law, could now venture to show mercy. It is the hardest effort of human resolution for a judge to consign to certain and ignominious death the helpless being who stands trembling ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler

... it was: for the example of Israel, his suasive charm, proved compelling as sunshine to shoots, so that that heart of Spinoza lived to see the spectacle of a whole world deserting the gory path of Rome to go up into those uplands of mildness and gleefulness whither invites the smile of that ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel

... bishops in seeking out the suppression of papistical practices and their readiness to place the property of the churches at Northumberland's disposal soon showed that those who selected them had made no mistake. On Ridley's arrival in London he held a conference for the purpose of compelling the clergy to adopt the new liturgy in place of the Mass. He issued an order for the removal of altars, and for the erection in their places of "honest tables decently covered," whereon Communion might be celebrated. The high altar in the Cathedral ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey

... one of the old fishing companies, and he instantly recognized a ruse practiced in the North during the days of the first trading concerns. It had been the custom of these companies to pay their Indians in coins bearing their own impress and to refuse all other specie at their posts, thus compelling the natives to trade at company stores. By carefully building up this system they had obtained a monopoly of Indian labor, and it was evident that Marsh and his associates had robbed the Aleuts in the same manner during the days before the consolidation. Boyd saw at once ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach

... college organized Thursday afternoon visits to factories. He chose his companions in advance, sometimes compelling them to give up a game of tennis. Krebs was one of them. For Georges the visits to the Puteaux and Dion-Bouton factories were a feast of which he was often to speak later. He went, not as a sightseer, ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux

... and to worship God at all: of these it is written (Malach. 3:14): "You have said: He laboreth in vain that serveth God." Another opinion held that all things, even in human affairs, happen of necessity, whether by reason of the unchangeableness of Divine providence, or through the compelling influence of the stars, or on account of the connection of causes: and this opinion also excluded the utility of prayer. There was a third opinion of those who held that human affairs are indeed ruled by ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... vigour as they possessed. Their courts were unceasingly occupied with vexatious suits, commenced without reason, and conducted without justice. They summoned arbitrarily as suspected offenders whoever had the misfortune to have provoked their dislike; either compelling them to criminate themselves by questions on the intricacies of theology,[85] or allowing sentence to be passed against them on the evidence of abandoned persons, who would not have been admissible as witnesses ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude

... a pale man in blue spectacles, some stranger stories than ever were written in a romance; told, too, with a simple, unimaginative steadfastness, which was terribly efficacious in compelling the auditor to receive them into the category of established facts. He cited instances of the miraculous power of one human being over the will and passions of another; insomuch that settled grief was but a shadow beneath the influence of a man possessing this ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... light was out and darkness made the most fantastic project appear practical, Mark had an inspiration to take the habit of a preaching friar. Why should he not persuade Dorward to join him? Together they would tramp the English country, compelling even the dullest yokels to hear the word of God . . . discalced . . . over hill, down dale . . . telling stories of the saints and martyrs in remote inns . . . deep lanes . . . the butterflies and the birds . . . Dorward should ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie

... shoulders. At length the noise died away, the sound of some one remonstrating, "let me at him oncet, let me at the spalpeen, he got me foul," coming back from some remote region of the atmosphere, as under the compelling force of the will of the great Smitz, the bodily envelope of the Irish hero was dissipated and his soul went ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis

... conditions, it would not be natural for young people to be unduly impressed by them. Such standards are so unstable and they differ so much to-day from what they were yesterday, and they differ so much in different circles and even in different families, that their force and importance are not very compelling. The authority of past customs has undergone a process of confusion and weakening, much the same as parental authority. There is less respect for it on the part ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)

... at some strange time found a home in these slums. Beauty of a vulgar, striking sort is common enough there—vivid coloring, even a sparkle and light poverty has had no power to kill—but this face had no share in such dower, and the dark, soft eyes had a compelling power which made mine search them for their secret,—not theirs, after all, it might prove, but only a gift from some remote ancestor, who could transmit outline, and even expression, but not the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various

... jonquiere. She had not the faintest idea how it was she had risen to go to him, but his welcome was of the most delightful, his voice was tender and deep, his eye spoke eloquently of her beauty. Blaisette had never known him in such a compelling mood. Her foolish, weak little head was turned; his gross flattery was nectar to her greedy vanity. He was generally so taciturn, so cold, so aloof. And Blaisette plumed herself on being the cause of this wonderful unbending of his. ...
— Where Deep Seas Moan • E. Gallienne-Robin

... compel it to come back to you and your ideas. If some one should enter his office while you are talking to him, or if his telephone should ring, stop short in your presentation. (Your sudden silence, in itself, will be attention compelling.) Do not go on with your sales presentation until the interruption is over. Then use some sense-hitting method of making sure that his attention is again concentrated on you ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins

... his increased regard for the guest by continually proffering bread, vegetables, meat, poultry, pepper, salt, in short, everything in succession over and over again, thereby effectually preventing Ishmael from eating his dinner, by compelling his constant attention to these offerings; until at length Mr. Brudenell interfered and brought him ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

... says Joyce in a cold, clear tone. Her eyes are on the ground. She is compelling herself to be strictly just to Beauclerk, but the effort is too much for her. She fails to do it naturally, and so gives a false impression to her listener. Lady Baltimore casts a quick glance ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford

... might, with advantage to the proprietor, to the taxpayer and to the State, be attracted into the Treasury. Why meet the extraordinary charge of a year of war by seizing the chairs, the tables, the beds of hardworking families, by compelling one country gentleman to cut down his trees before they were ready for the axe, another to let the cottages on his land fall to ruin, a third to take away his hopeful son from the University, when Change Alley ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... many, and most of them she must solve alone. If she follows the crowd and goes in the way of least resistance, there is a big chance that she will fall by the way. If she does not follow the crowd, it is because somewhere, some time, she has found a compelling ideal and is following it. Sometimes that ideal comes to her in the form of a friend. Sometimes she is fortunate enough to have found that ideal in her mother. But often and often it comes to her through a little story that lives with her, and works for her, and helps her ...
— Fireside Stories for Girls in Their Teens • Margaret White Eggleston

... does he go about making fierce love to married women, compelling them to listen to his nonsense whether they like it or not, and getting them into scrapes? I don't break my heart over Sir Penthony, but I certainly do not wish him to ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton

... There has been no compelling propaganda to that end. The suggestion of mere "cutting down" may be a valuable goal to set for the well-to-do, but it is not a mark to be hit by those already down to bed rock. The only saving possible to those living on narrow margins is by ...
— Mobilizing Woman-Power • Harriot Stanton Blatch

... deer are cautioned that during the fall and early winter months, all adult white-tailed bucks are dangerous to man, and should be treated accordingly. A measure of safety can be secured in a large park by compelling the deer always to keep at a respectful distance, and making no "pets," whatever. Whenever a buck finds his horns and loses his fear of man, climb the fence quickly. Bucks in the rutting season sometimes seem to go crazy, and often they attack men, ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday

... white, and a tall youth looking down upon her, treading the grass just slightly in advance of her, with a happy deference, as though he led in the fairy queen. So delicate were her proportions, so bright her hair, and so compelling the charm that floated round her, that Delorme, dropping his cigarette, hastily put up his eyeglasses, and fell ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... figure, who, in short, see much less naively now than Giotto's contemporaries, no longer find his paintings more than life-like; but we still feel them to be intensely real in the sense that they still powerfully appeal to our tactile imagination, thereby compelling us, as do all things that stimulate our sense of touch while they present themselves to our eyes, to take their existence for granted. And it is only when we can take for granted the existence of the object painted that it can begin to give us pleasure that ...
— The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance - With An Index To Their Works • Bernhard Berenson

... assent to Luther's articles by subscribing their names. Luther had his statement printed the following year. The Emperor, on account of the war with the Turks and the renewal of hostilities with France, had no time to think of compelling the allies to take part in a Council, and was quite content that no Council should be held at all. Whether the Pope himself, as Luther supposed, counted secretly on this result, and was glad to see it happen, may remain a ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin

... Indeed, an unfriendly critic once paid him an unintended compliment, when trying to make out that he was no great speaker; that all he did was to set some interesting theory unadorned before his audience, when such success as he attained was due to the compelling ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley

... savages to let their ships alone, because it was cheaper to do so than to maintain a fleet to fight them. Jefferson strove to bring about a union of several nations with his own, for the purpose of pounding some sense into the heads of the barbarians and compelling ...
— Thomas Jefferson • Edward S. Ellis et. al.

... the functions of such a body in this connection should be limited to the adoption of a general plan of operations. By this I do not mean a plan which should trace out the campaign in detail, restricting the generals and compelling them to give battle without regard to circumstances, but a plan which should determine the object of the campaign, the nature of the operations, whether offensive or defensive, the material means to be applied to these first enterprises, ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini

... not run to school work and because my disposition was restless, my mother allowed me to work at odd jobs for pay instead of compelling me to attend school. This cut down my actual school days to less than six months. It was, to say the least, a dangerous experiment, and one to be undertaken only by a mother who knew her child better than any other person could. I do not by any means advise other mothers ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker

... sudden solicitude. Captain Davenport was letting go the spokes alternately with his hands in order to rub their blistering backs against his trousers. Every sail on the mizzenmast vanished in a rush of flame, compelling the two men to ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London

... work of Mrs. Close's bed. One of these persons must have placed an order through a confidential agent in London to purchase the radium from the English Radium Corporation. One of these persons had a compelling motive, something to gain by using this ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds

... of Valrosa spoke of the ugly Englishman with bated breath and shining eyes long after Saltash had gone his unheeding way, for the blood was hot in his veins before the game was over. If the magic had been slow to work, its spell was all the more compelling when it gripped him. Characteristically, he tossed aside all considerations beyond the gratification of the moment's desire. The sinking fire of youth blazed up afresh. He would get the utmost out of this last night of revelry. Wherever he went, a spirit of wild daring, of fevered gaiety, ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell

... Colonel Garfield took his raw troops into action in the battle of Middle Creek, and drove the Confederate General Marshall, with far larger numbers, out of his intrenchments, compelling him to retreat into Virginia. This timely victory did much to secure the northern advance along the line of the Mississippi. During the whole of the succeeding campaign Garfield handled his regiment with such native ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen

... night as if he had been drawn to rest under the compelling shelter of the wings of all that flock which in happier days he had dubbed contemptuously "them air old hens." Never afterward could the dazed old gentleman remember how he had been persuaded to come into the house and up the stairs with Angeline. He only knew that in the ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund

... sing the old songs, Though well I know the tune, Familiar as a cradle-song With sleep-compelling croon; Yet though I'm filled with music As choirs of summer birds "I cannot sing the old songs"— I do not know ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... of Jove. There was not a river absent except Oceanus, nor a single one of the nymphs that haunt fair groves, or springs of rivers and meadows of green grass. When they reached the house of cloud-compelling Jove, they took their seats in the arcades of polished marble which Vulcan with his consummate skill had made ...
— The Iliad • Homer

... sorrow he had expected to find from her note,—and let the sense of her beauty reach him. There she stood with the look on her face he had pictured to himself many a time when he had thought of her as his wife. It was a look of love unutterable, bewildering, alluring, compelling. It was so he had thought she would meet him when he came home to her from his daily business cares. And now she was there, looking that way, and he stood here, so near her, and yet a great gulf fixed! It was heaven and hell met together, and he had no ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz

... they wish by peaceable means. There is little doubt that, if they pursue a moderate course, neither resorting to violence nor threatening to do so, themselves avoiding all violations of the constitution, while compelling the Government, in case it will not yield, to commit such violations openly, their cause will gradually grow so strong that the king will ultimately see the hopelessness of longer resisting it. Or, once more, even if the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... one basis upon which there can be solidly built benevolence to men is devotion to God, because of God's great love to us in Jesus Christ. But I want to stir, if I might not say sting, you and myself into a recognition of our obligations to mankind, more stringent and compelling than we have ever felt it, by this phenomenon of modern life, that a divorce has been proclaimed between philanthropy and religion. The end of the commandment is love, out of a pure heart, and of a ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... him Hetty was still incredulous; intangible things were a little out of Hetty's range. Even her great and passionate love had not fully opened her eyes to all love's needs and expressions. All that it meant to her was a perpetual doing, ministration, a compelling of the happiness of the loved object. And here, as everywhere else in her life, she was fully content only when there was something evident and ready to be done. If her husband had taken the same view of love,—had insisted on perpetual ministerings to her ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous

... a little way toward the bed, trying to hold himself back, as if he were wrestling, with all his remnant of strength and will, against some immaterial, compelling force. Striking out with one fist, as at some foe beside him, he shouted thickly, "Go! Go back, I say!" And with a supreme effort he wheeled about and with uncertain, heavy steps ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly

... secretaries of legation to appear in the breeches above described. Americans who are presented at court, and who get invitations to the festivities, are all required to wear a court dress. Of what good compelling the poor diplomatists to make scarecrows of themselves may be I do not know. Mr. Sumner's proposition was just one of those absurdities to which men are liable who have considerable conscience and no sense of humor. Senators and Congressmen fell in with it because they feared to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various

... King began to rule, compelling some of the captains to leave the fortress, but keeping others by his side; and all came to him to offer their allegiance except three. These were Jaga Raya, who has six hundred thousand cruzados of revenue and puts twenty thousand men into the field; Tima Naique, who has four ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell

... man in the pool felt his circulation stopping. The two women were calmly sitting down on the bank to talk confidences, and from what he knew of the sex they were as likely as not to sit there until doomsday, compelling him to appear before the angel Gabriel without even a shroud. He was conscious of the beginning of a cramp in his left leg and his shoulders were becoming icy. He had to be motionless, too, and that ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various

... are not only destructive to grapes, peaches, and the more delicate kinds of fruit, but also to bees; the hives of which they attack and plunder, frequently compelling those industrious inmates to forsake their habitation. About the time when the wasps begin to appear, several phials should be filled three parts full of a mixture consisting of the lees of beer or wine, and the ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton

... Officers and guards turned their savagery and spite from us to visit it upon these unhappy victims by night and by day and at every trick and turn. Clubbing with the rifle was the most popular means of compelling them to obey this, or to do that. More than once I have seen one of the aged religionists fall to the ground beneath a rifle blow which struck him across the back. No indignity conceivable, besides a great many indescribable, was spared those ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney

... people are prone to say; savage customs belong to the past. But it was in the twentieth century that primitive men, their bodies streaked with black paint, fasted and danced, overcoming an enemy as they danced, compelling the Thunderbird to release the rain. And on the Strip men and women prayed as fervently to their own God, ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl

... were each guarding a Hun prisoner, making him walk along ahead with upraised hands, while the guns, taken away from the Germans themselves, served as compelling weapons. ...
— Ned, Bob and Jerry on the Firing Line - The Motor Boys Fighting for Uncle Sam • Clarence Young

... that Christ came to set up the Kingdom of God, clearly neither the Conservative nor Liberal Party can appeal with any compelling force of divinity. How far the Labour Party may appeal must depend, I should think on the man's knowledge of economic law. As Dean Inge says, Christ's sole contribution to economics is "Beware of covetousness"—an injunction which the Labour Party has not yet quite ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie

... grown to love, began to adopt some extraordinary measures in order to maintain their position. Any portable national assets were sold without the least compunction for this purpose, and they even went to the length of compelling State prisoners to purchase their liberty—an idea which undoubtedly ranks as one of the most extraordinary schemes for raising money ever employed. Measures such as this constituted a sufficiently ominous beginning; they provided, indeed, an only too true augury of what ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel

... substance and artistic form. Substance is something achieved by the artist in every act of creation, rather than something already present, and accordingly a fact or group of facts in a story only attain substantial embodiment when the artist's power of compelling imaginative persuasion transforms them into a living truth. The first test of a short story, therefore, in any qualitative analysis is to report upon how vitally compelling the writer makes his selected facts or incidents. This test may be conveniently ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... of the women and children who are robbed of their bread-winners, and to whose fear for their loved ones is added the dread of hunger. Tens of thousands of wounded and mutilated warriors will soon be added to these. We consider it our most compelling duty to help them, to lighten their burdens and ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith

... word of remonstrance two pairs of hands went up. Astonishment had for the moment paralyzed speech on the part of the rudely awakened sleepers. They were only dimly conscious of their assailants. The compelling rings of metal that confronted them weighed the balance of their judgment, and their response was the instinctive response of the prairie. Whoever their assailants, they had got the drop on them. The result was the ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum

... natural inspiration from the camp, the cattle trail, and the bush; and their most characteristic and compelling rhythms from the clatter ...
— Five Months at Anzac • Joseph Lievesley Beeston

... succeeded in setting Arnaud aside and compelling him to leave Berlin, he turned his rage and sarcasm against the other friends of the king. One of them was removed by death. This was La Mettrie; he partook immoderately of a truffle-pie at the ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach

... different climates, with bread-trees, plantains, jatropha, maize, potatoes, rice, and corn. The tardiness of the harvest of jatropha has, I believe, a beneficial influence on the manners of the natives, by fixing them to the soil, and compelling them to sojourn long on the same spot.) Around the conucos of Pimichin grows, in its wild state, the igua, a tree resembling the Caryocar nuciferum which is cultivated in Dutch and French Guiana, and which, with the almendron of Mariquita (Caryocar amygdaliferum), ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt

... of a great city, "is a system which ultimately results in compelling a large portion of the population to apologize constantly for not having money, and the remainder to explain how ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers

... for a school proving futile, I pushed on to the town of Farmington, where the Dakota branch of the Milwaukee railroad crossed my line of march. Here I felt to its full the compelling power of the swift stream of immigration surging to the west. The little village had doubled in size almost in a day. It was a junction point, a place of transfer, and its thin-walled unpainted pine hotels were packed with men, women ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... beneath the spectator in a solid stratum, refracting the light now breaking from the east. Here and there, in this lake of vapor, the tops of hills peer up like green islands in a golden sea. But, ere you have time to let fancy run riot, the "cloud compelling" orb lifts its disc over the mountains, and the fogs of the valley, like ghosts at cock-crow, flit from the dells they have haunted since nightfall. Presently, the sun is out in his terrible splendor. Africa unveils to her master, and the blue sky and green forest blaze ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer

... sternly, laying my hand upon his shoulder, and compelling him to front me fairly, "I for one am going into danger where I shall require every resource in order to preserve my life and be of service to others. I have already told you that I care not whether you accompany me or no. But this I say: we part here, or else you journey with me willingly, ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish

... coarse-grained labour; of vision-drunken youth berated by undreaming age! But she was not a young lady, and could derive no felicity from forgetfulness of such a kind, for with the poor the urgencies of the immediate task are raised to such compelling interest that only a genius could neglect them with satisfaction. Therefore Loveday never thought of forgetting the milk for her aunt, but her exultation was of such a powerful sort that it upheld her through the commonplaces ...
— The White Riband - A Young Female's Folly • Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse

... they had thrust themselves, for in that case the laws could be made to operate so as to thwart them in every important undertaking. Hence to the right of residing in a country contrary to the will of its government is joined the correlative, that of compelling the feeble state to abdicate its sovereignty to the extent of exempting the intrusive foreigner from local jurisdiction—of according the advantage of extra-territoriality. The pliant Chinese readily yielded to this new order of things on ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... religious writings were largely translated into Greek, at a time when they were studied and collected as embodying the ideas of a world which was already fading away. This venerated past kept its hold on the imagination as containing mystic powers of compelling the unseen, and strange travesties of ancient formulae, the efficacy of which could not be rivalled by any later writings which were baldly intelligible. There were four main classes of writings, on theology, ritual, science, and ...
— The Religion of Ancient Egypt • W. M. Flinders Petrie

... now, for these big children, their fears gone, became so ravished with wonder over my awe-compelling fireworks that I had to stay there and smoke a couple of pipes out before they would let me go. Still the delay was not wholly unproductive, for it took all that time to get Sandy thoroughly wonted to the new thing, she being so close to it, you know. It plugged up her conversation mill, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... railroad gravel did not count with her, but she was reasonably sure that the fact that she was a young woman with extensive possessions would have a deterrent effect on him. She once or twice had felt a curious compelling tenderness for him when in his presence, but reflection had come later, and she could not be sure that she loved him well enough to marry him, should he offer her the opportunity. During the last few months she had become more uncertain on this point, for her English visit was having ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss

... Bulhar, and by their old connection with the Indian and other foreign traders, succeeded in drawing off a considerable amount of traffic. But the roadstead was insecure: many vessels were lost, and in 1847 the Eesa Somal slaughtered the women and children of the new-comers, compelling them to sue the Ayyal Ahmed for peace. Though the feud thus ended, the fact of its having had existence ensures bad blood: amongst these savages treaties are of no avail, and the slightest provocation on either side becomes a ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton

... 64) emphasizes this point. "If," he says, "any government should be tempted to neglect, even for a moment, its function of compelling obedience to law—if a Democracy, for example, were to allow a portion of the multitude of which it consists to set some law at defiance which it happens to dislike—it would be guilty of a crime which hardly any other virtue could redeem, and which century ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw

... places and new generals confused me; but by daily familiarity with the topic, I began to perceive that the Austrians had interposed a portion of their force between Massena's division and that of Suchet, cutting off the latter from Genoa, and compelling him to fall back toward Chivari and Borghetto, along the coast of the gulf. This was the first success of any importance obtained; and it was soon followed by others of equal significance. Soult being driven from ridge to ridge ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various

... enduring character; and therefore our own possibility of attaining to it, and the way that we must tread so to do. History does not exhort us or explain to us, but exhibits living specimens to us; and these specimens witness again and again to the fact that a compelling power does exist in the world—little understood, even by those who are inspired by it—which presses men to transcend their material limitations and mental conflicts, and live a new creative life of harmony, freedom and joy. Directly human character emerges as one of man's prime interests, ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill

... On this intoxicating air, The witching influence of the moon, The poet's rhymes that went in tune To the night's voices low and rare; To all, that goes to make such hours Like hasheesh-dreams. These did defy, With contrary fate-compelling power, The intended bliss;—'twas June, ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor

... Curiosity, which is the guide to all knowledge, the beauty of the apple, which appeals to the aesthetic sense, and physical appetite, not in itself bad,—all these powerfully attracted the Oriental woman of the ancient story. On the other side she felt the compelling power of love and gratitude and ...
— The Origin & Permanent Value of the Old Testament • Charles Foster Kent

... by disgracing him would overcome anger at the collapse of his fatuous dreams of wealth. She did not despise him the more deeply for sitting there, for not flying from the room or trying to kill her or somehow compelling her to check that flow of insult. She already despised him utterly; also, she attached small importance to self-respect, having no knowledge of ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips

... are men's heavens all. Women have never been so fond of hunting, beer or blood; and their houris would be of the other kind. It may be said that the early Christian idea of heaven is by no means planned for men. That is trite, and is perhaps the reason why it has never had so compelling an attraction for them. ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman



Words linked to "Compelling" :   persuasive, powerful



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