"Constraint" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... suspicion of some one else, and there was a general constraint, as though even the innocent feared to do or say something that ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... grace.'"[5] The Sheriff, as Chamberlain, no doubt favourably represented to the King Michael's excuse, as the subsequent conduct of both the Earl of Strathearn and himself showed a fellow-feeling, and that, like Michael, they had been acting under constraint. ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... modifying his last observation, "if women are not all eyes and ears! I neither heard nor saw all that. A little constraint—a natural blush to punctuate their talk—the meeting seemed conventional enough. 'Tis through your own romantic heart you ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... the manner of the Secretary was cordial; but with this cordiality was a strange constraint and diffidence, almost amounting to timidity, which struck both my companion and myself. Contrasting his manner with the quiet dignity of the Colonel, I almost fancied our positions reversed,—that, instead of our being ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... be deprived of earthly elevation and power—what cared she that she henceforth would no more have the pleasure of commanding others? She was free, free from the task of ruling slaves and humanizing barbarians; free from the constraint of greatness, and, finally free to live in conformity with her own inclinations, and perhaps, ah, perhaps, to found a happiness, the bare dreaming of which already caused her heart to ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... Miss Betsey's head, after each of these sentences, as if her own old wrongs were working within her, and she repressed any plainer reference to them by strong constraint. So my mother suspected, at least, as she observed her by the low glimmer of the fire: too much scared by Miss Betsey, too uneasy in herself, and too subdued and bewildered altogether, to observe anything very clearly, or ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... liberty alone that gives the flower Of fleeting life its lustre and perfume, And we are weeds without it. All constraint Except what wisdom lays on evil ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... men shook hands heartily, albeit a certain constraint was immediately to fall upon them. For Constans could not be unmindful of his purpose, and Ulick was a true Doomsman, and hatred of the House-dweller was the first article in his hereditary creed. The inheritance of a naked ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... were all herself, or if there really were a peculiar, indefinable constraint in everybody with everybody else. Certainly she felt it, and she thought she saw evidences that the others felt it, too. As for the cause of it all—unhesitatingly she attributed it to that last day at camp with its unfortunate trip ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... observation; after that, one reasons. I began to observe. Aunt Mercy was not the Aunt Merce I had known at home. She wore a mask before her father. There was constraint between them; each repressed the other. The result of this relation was a formal, petrifying, unyielding system,—a system which, from the fact of its satisfying neither, was kept up the more rigidly; on the one side from a morbid conscience, which reiterated its monitions ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... of broad-cloth was tightly wrapped around the loins, also carried a blanket loosely thrown around the person, but closely confined over the shoulders in front, and reaching below the knee. There was an air of constraint in their movements, which accorded ill with the occasion of festivity for which they were assembled; and it was remarkable, whether it arose from deference to those to whom they were slaves, as well ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... both Sir Adrian and Florence burst out laughing so merrily and so heartily that all constraint comes to an end, and finally Ethel and Ringwood, joining in the merriment that has been raised at their expense, ...
— The Haunted Chamber - A Novel • "The Duchess"
... abstruser subject, but on familiar matters of common everyday life, in which every word should be of Saxon extraction, not one of Latin; and these, pages in which, with the exercise of a little patience and ingenuity, all appearance of awkwardness and constraint should be avoided, so that it should never occur to the reader, unless otherwise informed, that the writer had submitted himself to this restraint and limitation in the words which he employed, and was only drawing them from one section of the English language. Sir Thomas Browne has given ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... Constraint in the mellowing halo of a Christmas eve supper where holly and a Yule-log blazed and the winter wind frostily rattled the checker-paned windows of the sitting-room in jealous spleen, fled to join ...
— When the Yule Log Burns - A Christmas Story • Leona Dalrymple
... Kingdom of the Kofirans is called Bigotry, or misplaced Devotion. The Customs and religious Notions of this Nation, which were more free and rational than in the Country of this Princess, had been a Constraint upon her Inclination, without lessening her mistaken Austerity. It was on this Side, that Jeflur spread his Snares. He placed near the Queen a Dervise, one of those sly finished Villains, who, being Masters of the execrable ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon
... forward, whereas the Baron's stateroom was situated aft. The delay enabled von Kerber to collect his thoughts. When he resumed the promised disclosure, his voice was under control, and he spoke with less constraint. ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... not be trusted; they should send some reputable persons from Sparta to inspect, whose report might be trusted. They dispatched them accordingly. Concerning these Themistocles secretly sent word to the Athenians to detain them as far as possible without putting them under open constraint, and not to let them go until they had themselves returned. For his colleagues had now joined him, Abronichus, son of Lysicles, and Aristides, son of Lysimachus, with the news that the wall was sufficiently advanced; ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... happened to occupy with regard to these colonies. Ambition naturally incited him to annex them and make them into Lydian cities, but the bold disposition of their inhabitants and their impatience of constraint never allowed any foreign rule to be established over them: conquest, to be permanent, would have to be preceded by a long period of alliance on equal terms, and of discreet patronage which might insensibly accustom them to recognise in their former friend, first a protector, and then a suzerain ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... law. "It is necessary," he replied "to distinguish in favor of those who follow the Jewish law in secret and are not suspected of transgressing the religious precepts which the Christians oblige them to transgress outwardly. At bottom they fear God. They weep and groan over the constraint put upon them, and implore pardon of God. But if there is a suspicion that they committed transgressions without having been forced to do so, even if they have repented with all their heart, and all their soul, and all their ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... Man" (1871), the hypothesis of Lamarck that man is the co-descendant with other species of some lower extinct form was admitted to have been raised to the rank of an established fact by most thinkers whose brains were not working under the constraint ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... owing to the forbidding and unlovely Constraint with which Men of low Conceptions act when they think they conform themselves to Religion, as well as to the more odious Conduct of Hypocrites, that the Word Christian does not carry with it at first View all that is Great, Worthy, Friendly, Generous, and Heroick. ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... questioningly. 'As you please,' she went on, 'but still something tells me that we have not come together for nothing; that we shall be great friends. I am sure this—what should I say, constraint, reticence in you ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... him, I set him there. Who euer charges on his forward brest I am the Caitiffe that do hold him too't, And though I kill him not, I am the cause His death was so effected: Better 'twere I met the rauine Lyon when he roar'd With sharpe constraint of hunger: better 'twere, That all the miseries which nature owes Were mine at once. No come thou home Rossillion, Whence honor but of danger winnes a scarre, As oft it looses all. I will be gone: My being heere it is, that holds thee hence, Shall I stay heere to doo't? No, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... for it is opposed to the law forbidding divorce. But if we consider carefully the mind of Moses, according to which he thus legislated, we shall find that he did not do this of his own mere choice, but by constraint because of the weakness of those to whom he was giving the law. For since they were not able to observe that precept of God by which it was not permitted them to cast forth their wives, with whom some of them lived unhappily, and ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... then in season, peaches, plumbs, grapes, chesnuts, walnuts, and water-caltrops. We very soon found indeed that we were treated with more studied attention, with a more marked distinction, and with less constraint, than when we ascended the river. Our dignified conductor made no difficulty in allowing us to walk on shore as much as we pleased; but recommended us not to quit the banks of the river for fear of ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... is become of Marriott!—surely it is time for me to have my drops. Miss Portman, have the goodness to ring, for I must have something immediately." Belinda was terrified at the wildness of her manner. Lady Delacour became more composed, or put more constraint upon herself, at the sight of Marriott. Marriott brought from the closet in her lady's room the drops, which Lady Delacour swallowed with precipitation. Then she ordered coffee, and afterward chasse-cafe, and at ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... that he who suffers hunger because he is pleased to do so may likewise eat when he has a mind; and he who suffers thirst because he is willing may also drink when he pleases. But it is not in the power of him who suffers either of them through constraint and necessity to relieve himself by eating and drinking the moment he desires it? Besides, he that voluntarily embraceth any laborious exercise finds much comfort and content in the hope that animates him. Thus the fatigues of hunting ...
— The Memorable Thoughts of Socrates • Xenophon
... Tom after a moment. "That—that was funny. I didn't see you bring it in with you." There was a note of constraint in his voice ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour
... easiness; repose, quiescence, comfort, tranquillity, contentment, peace, serenity; unrestraint, informality, abandon. Antonyms: constraint, difficulty, discomfort, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... N. compulsion, coercion, coaction[obs3], constraint, duress, enforcement, press, conscription. force; brute force, main force, physical force; the sword, ultima ratio[Lat]; club law, lynch law, mob law, arguementum baculinum[obs3], le droit du plus fort[Fr], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... things that ought not to be done which normal men never think of doing! At this moment, I could swallow a pen, taste the ink in the ink-well, throw my papers from the window, hurl the porcelain jar on the chimney-piece at the cat next door, swing on the chandelier. I am conscious of no constraint in not doing these things. Why? I have become to some degree adjusted to the type which the social will ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... Just, ordered his luggage to be forwarded by coach or cart, and, with nothing but a stout oaken cudgel to encumber him, set out on his walk of about seven miles, with the determination of compensating himself for previous hours of forced inaction and constraint by ignoring roads and crossing the ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... 'twould have been but giving a polish to lampblack, not nigrifying a negro primarily. After all, I cannot but regret my involuntary virtue. Damn virtue that's thrust upon us; it behaves itself with such constraint, till conscience opens the window and lets ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... Solemnity and sour Humour of our Pedagogues: or rather they may thank themselves, if they in particular meet with the heaviest of this kind of Treatment. For it will naturally fall heaviest, where the Constraint has been the severest. The greater the Weight is, the bitterer will be the Satire. The higher the Slavery, the more exquisite ...
— A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing (1729) • Anthony Collins
... twilled trousers, cut like a man's!—such a jacket, with lapels to the pockets, which he said "the sailors wore on the sloops, and called 'em monkey-jackets"!—such a way as he had of putting a quid in his mouth! for Nat Boody chewed. It is not strange that Reuben, feeling a little of ugly constraint under the keen eye of the spinster Eliza, should admire greatly the free-and-easy manner of the tavern-boy, who had such familiarity with the world and such large range of action. The most of us never get over a wonderment at ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... his breath, but again checked himself just in time to prevent the words "and wives," that rose to his lips. "And friends," he substituted, with evident constraint and as awkwardly as before. It was not often that a woman had been able to disconcert Edgar Harrowby so strangely as did this ignorant and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... actuated, and belied the original inducements to the establishment of civil power. Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice, without constraint. Has it been found that bodies of men act with more rectitude or greater disinterestedness than individuals? The contrary of this has been inferred by all accurate observers of the conduct of mankind; and the ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... there smote upon him the thought that in thinking thus he was rather brute than man. And he fell at last into an agony of prayer that God would lead him to the light, and show him what he should do. When he reached the castle he put a strong constraint upon himself; he went down to the hall; he even sang; but it was like a dream; he seemed to be out of the body, and as it were to see himself standing, and to hear the words falling from his own lips. The Duke courteously praised him, and said that he was well content ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... magistrate, to enjoy more power than is consistent with the good of mankind; nor is it of any benefit to a man to be unjust: but these maxims are a feeble security against the passions and follies of men. Those who are intrusted with power in any degree, are disposed, from a mere dislike of constraint, to remove opposition. Not only the monarch who wears a hereditary crown, but the magistrate who holds his office for a limited time, grows fond of his dignity. The, very minister, who depends for his place on the momentary will of his prince, and whose personal ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... not far away; she had been standing in the next room, listening intently to every word of the conversation, and only kept from coming in by a certain constraint that made a brother whom she had not met for so many years seem almost as much a stranger as if he had not been connected with ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... once more, O ye Laurels, and once more Ye Myrtles brown, with Ivy never-sear, I com to pluck your Berries harsh and crude, And with forc'd fingers rude, Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year. Bitter constraint, and sad occasion dear, Compels me to disturb your season due: For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer: Who would not sing for Lycidas? he knew Himself to sing, and build ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... constraint gradually diminishes. After shaking some liquid soap from a bottle into the bowl, she places the bowl beside ...
— The Gay Lord Quex - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur W. Pinero
... Such intermixtures, therefore, destroy all tragic impression, but to the comic tone these intentional interruptions or intermezzos are welcome, even though they be in themselves more serious than the subject of the representation, because we are at such times unwilling to submit to the constraint of a mental occupation which must perforce be kept up, for then it would assume the appearance of a task or obligation. The Parabasis may partly have owed its invention to the circumstance of the comic poets not having such ample materials as the tragic, for filling up the intervals of ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... other hand, he who does not give to the child space, time, and opportunity for play prevents the originality of his pupil from free development through the exercise of his creative ingenuity. Play sends the child back to his work refreshed, because in it he loses himself without constraint and according to his own fancy, while in work he is required to yield himself up in a manner prescribed for ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... Discord with a thousand various mouths. T' whom Satan, turning boldly, thus:—"Ye Powers And Spirits of this nethermost Abyss, Chaos and ancient Night, I come no spy With purpose to explore or to disturb The secrets of your realm; but, by constraint Wandering this darksome desert, as my way Lies through your spacious empire up to light, Alone and without guide, half lost, I seek, What readiest path leads where your gloomy bounds Confine with Heaven; or, if some other place, From your dominion won, th' Ethereal King ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... met across the strip of sunny road as they smiled; again Emily felt the sudden confidence, the falling away of all constraint before the ...
— The Flying Mercury • Eleanor M. Ingram
... cue as speaker, and the rest of the party theirs as listeners—a 'Circa herd'—without any previous arrangement having been gone through. I will just add that there can be no good society without perfect freedom from affectation and constraint. If the unreserved communication of feeling or opinion leads to offensive familiarity, it is not well; but it is no better where the absence of offensive remarks arises only from formality and an ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... pressed her soft hand, and stroked down her ringlets. Not a word could he say; his distress at the old man's harshness toward Undine had sealed his lips; and so each couple remained sitting opposite the other, in moody silence and constraint. ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... suretyship; but all agree in this one circumstance, that they must either be burdensome to their relations, or betake themselves to little shifts for sustenance, which, it is ten to one do not answer their purposes, and to which a well-educated person descends with the utmost constraint. What various misfortunes may reduce the rich, the industrious, to danger of a prison,—to a moral certainty of starving!—These are the persons that may relieve themselves, and strengthen Georgia by resorting thither, and Great Britain ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris
... abate, e'er he has gone half thro'; whereas he can put forth twice the Strength, and complain of no Fatigue, in following his Pleasures. Of so much Advantage is it to make Business a Pleasure, if possible, and engage the Mind in it out of Choice. It naturally reluctates against Constraint, and is most unwilling to go on when it knows it must. But if it be left to its own Choice, to follow Inclination and pursue its Pleasure, it goes on without any Rubs, and rids twice the Ground, without being ...
— 'Of Genius', in The Occasional Paper, and Preface to The Creation • Aaron Hill
... home, ate and drank (the less scrupulous took wine), and conversed with ease and liveliness. No difference can be more marked than between the Hindoostani and the Malay. The former, though more self-possessed and polished, shows a constraint in manners and conversation, and you feel that his training has made him an artificial character. The Malay, on the contrary, concealing as well the feelings upper-most in his mind, is lively and ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... lights the way; for to my mind True honor bids us shun the devil's den, To fight God's battles in the world of men. Who takes this challenge up, I doubt will rue it." Quoth Elfinhart: "I'ld like to see you do it!" She laughed a gay laugh, but by hard constraint: Then turned and hid her face, all pale and faint, As one might be who stabs and turns the knife In the warm heart of one more dear than life. She turned and Gawayne saw not; but he heard, And felt his heart-strings tighten at her word. "Nay, lady, if you wish it I will try; Be your ...
— Gawayne And The Green Knight - A Fairy Tale • Charlton Miner Lewis
... because of the real importance that the weather should be cloudy, that darkness might aid them in their flight. While the two prisoners were watching the billowy, moving vapours, the hour of dinner arrived; but it was half an hour of constraint and dissimulation, the more painful that, no doubt in return for the sort of goodwill shown him by the queen in the morning, William Douglas thought himself obliged, in his turn, to accompany his duties with fitting compliments, which compelled the queen to take ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... structural reforms, such as lightening the high tax burden and overhauling Italy's rigid labor market and over-generous pension system, because of the current economic slowdown and opposition from labor unions. But the leadership faces a severe economic constraint: Italy's official debt remains above 100% of GDP, and the government has found it difficult to bring the budget deficit down to a level that would allow a rapid decrease in that debt. The economy continues to grow by less than the euro-zone average and growth is expected to decelerate ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... works of the learned Hercules of Saxony, omnis curatio est vel canonica vel coacta,—that is, fair sir, (for silk and velvet have seldom their Latin ad unguem,) every cure must be wrought either by art and induction of rule, or by constraint; and the wise physician chooseth the former. Which argument her ladyship being pleased to allow well of, I have made it my business so to blend instruction and caution with delight—fiat mixtio, as we say—that I can answer that the vulgar mind will be defecated and purged ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... permanent must be in harmony with the inspired statement that "God hath made of one blood all the nations that dwell upon the face of the earth." But such a result can not be brought about either in the state or in the churches merely by legislation. You can not compel either by physical or moral constraint the different races to meet on terms of social equality. No doubt you can, and you ought to see to it, that men of all races stand precisely on the same platform before the law and have the same protection from the law. But to get rid of a prejudice you must take a different ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various
... although the same subjects are to a great extent employed, there is necessarily greater constraint—there is less freedom as well as less vigor in the presentation of natural forms. There is apparently no attempt at the grotesque or amusing. The variants are practically infinite. The work is more purely decorative and is perhaps less ...
— Ancient art of the province of Chiriqui, Colombia • William Henry Holmes
... islands, with a coral-reef of reserve built up about them. Last night, when I was patching some of Gershom's undies for him, I wickedly worked an arrow-pierced heart, in red yarn, on one leg of his B.V.D.'s. This morning, I noticed, his eye evaded mine and there was marked constraint in his manner. I even begin to detect unmistakable signs of nervousness in him when we happen to be alone together. And during his last music lesson there was a vibrata of emotion in his voice which made me think of an April ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... to make without her presence near him. Billy was very sure, now, of Arkwright. She only wished she were as much so of Alice. But Alice troubled her. Not but that Alice was kindness itself to the man, either. It was only a peculiar something almost like fear, or constraint, that Billy thought she saw in Alice's eyes, sometimes, when Arkwright made a particularly intimate appeal. There was Calderwell, too. He, also, worried Billy. She feared he was going to complicate matters still more by falling in love with Alice, himself; and this, certainly, ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... mystery That I should be so closely bound With neither terror nor constraint, Without a murmur of complaint, And lose myself ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... implored pardon for the two Italians, Peter Anthony and John Maria, who had made artillery for the infidel princes, declaring that they were desirous to return to the Christians, and would do them good service, for that all they had hitherto done at Calicut was by constraint, and that all they asked was a safe conduct and money to defray their charges. The viceroy listened to my petition, and three days afterwards he sent me back to Cananore with letters to his son, commanding him to deliver me as much money ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... suited his somewhat sensitive dignity. He persuaded himself, too, that the "men" on his side were "men" in years and discretion as well as name, and that they must stand or fall unaided, since the years of boyish discipline and school constraint were gone by. It never occurred to him that a word spoken in due season might be of incalculable benefit to many of his charge. Being a man of slow sensibilities, he could not sympathise with the enthusiastic temperament of youths like Julian, ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... miracle. If I felt obliged to accept literally these stories, or to lose my faith in the voice of God which speaks through the men of the Bible I should care greatly. In the true view of the Bible I am delivered from solicitude about these traditions, and am under no constraint of credulity. Those who can believe the story of Elisha and the bears, or of Elijah's ascension into heaven, may; those who cannot, need not; and both alike should reverently read their Bibles, not for these tales of wonder, but for the still small ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... strong constraint upon himself and became calmer. When the sun began to approach the horizon he rose, and with an air of stern resolution, set about making various arrangements in ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... to be dealt with and dismissed. Susan naturally took her cue from them. When Tempest said something to her in the course of the careless conversation round the breakfast table, she answered—and had no sense of constraint. Thus, an incident that in other surroundings would have been in some way harmful through receiving the exaggeration of undue emphasis, caused less stir than the five huge and fiery mosquito bites Eshwell had ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... on ahead with Benito and Dolores; Dave and Alaire followed leisurely. Now that the moment of their parting was at hand, they lingered by the way, delaying it as long as possible, feeling a natural constraint at what ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... putting a strong constraint on her tongue, for she merely bowed and said nothing. She had her own good reasons for the diplomacy of silence. Henson and Frank Littimer were disappearing in the direction of ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... miss your—uncle." There was a constraint in Mrs. Toomey's voice and manner which Kate was too ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... journalists can be—they see too intimately the strings which work the affairs of the world for the edification of a trustful public. Consequently, Martin's attitude in the presence of the millionaire shipowner was as free from constraint or subservience as it would be in the dressing-room of La Belle Ariola, who danced the bolero at a cafe chantant, or in the ward of the Malesherbes Hopital, interviewing an apache with ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... gaunt countenance, Ethan had a momentary shock. It was almost as if the other face, the face of the superseded woman, had obliterated that of the intruder. After a moment Mattie seemed to be affected by the same sense of constraint. She changed her position, leaning forward to bend her head above her work, so that he saw only the foreshortened tip of her nose and the streak of red in her hair; then she slipped to her feet, saying "I can't see to sew," and went back to ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton
... i, Ch. VII), "men that are free, well-born, well-bred, and conversant in honest companies, have naturally an instinct and spur that prompts them unto virtuous actions and withdraws them from vice. These same men, when by base subjection and constraint they are brought under and kept down, turn aside from that noble disposition by which they freely were inclined to virtue, to shake off and break that bond of servitude." So that when a man and a woman who had lived under the rule of Thelema married each other, Rabelais tells ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the false shame which renders his northern neighbors awkward, nor the powerful passions which absorb his neighbors of the south. Talking is no effort to him, having none of the natural timidity which begets constraint, and with no constant preoccupation to overcome. He accordingly converses at his ease, ever on the alert, and conversation affords him extreme pleasure. For the happiness which he requires is of a peculiar kind: delicate, light, rapid, incessantly renewed and varied, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... care will rarely allow them to speak on any other subject than business, can be a remedy large enough for so large an evil. True it is, that a peculiarly frank or jovial temperament in a sovereign may do much for a season to thaw this punctilious reserve and ungenial constraint; but that is an accident, and personal to an individual. And, on the other hand, to balance even this, it may be remarked, that, in all noble and fashionable society, where there happens to be a pride in sustaining what is deemed a good tone in conversation, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... circumstances, this European had identified himself with the savages. He had adopted their manners, their customs, and their costume. When he thought of his own country, it was only to wonder why he ever submitted to the constraint of a coat, or put himself to the trouble of handling a fork and spoon. He had not, however, entirely forgotten his mother tongue, and, moreover, still retained in his memory a few English words. He was likewise very communicative, and told Jack that they were in the Island of Hawai; that the ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... honour enter our abodes, Ye sacred ministers of men and gods!(60) I know your message; by constraint you came; Not you, but your imperious lord I blame. Patroclus, haste, the fair Briseis bring; Conduct my captive to the haughty king. But witness, heralds, and proclaim my vow, Witness to gods above, and men below! But first, and loudest, to your prince declare (That lawless tyrant ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... captive, and knew not what he might do. 'Twixt constraint and ill-fortune the night seemed to him over long; though he feared him no whit yet he deemed his end was come. He knew well that the folk were evil-disposed and bare malice and rancour towards him for the sake of the dead man who lay there, in that ...
— The Romance of Morien • Jessie L. Weston
... Into this atmosphere of constraint came 'Poleon Doret, and, had it not been for his own anxieties, he would have derived much amusement from the situation. As it was, however, he was quite blind to it, showing nothing save his own deep ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... is to let me be your friend, because I have been your wife's! Frankness becomes my calling, and I think you need friendly, cordial surroundings to bring out your usefulness, and give you the freedom that will take constraint out of your family life, and, without diminishing your good sensibilities, dispel any morbid ones. This will open a way for Vesta to see her domestic career, which, otherwise, might become so rapidly contracted as to disappoint you both. You have seen her the idol of her wide circle, free as a bird, ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... old friend fairly enough, but a certain amount of constraint would show, and Deering evidently saw it, but he made no sign, and they went into the house, where Aunt Hannah met them in the drawing-room, looking a little flustered, consequent upon an encounter with Martha in the kitchen, that ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... unremitting attention to the affairs of the nation in every department of the government; and, perhaps not very unnaturally, conceived that his doing so justified him, as far as he might be able, in putting a constraint on his ministers to carry out his views. Thus, he had notoriously induced Lord North to persevere in the late civil war in America long after that minister had seen the hopelessness of the contest; and it was, probably, only the knowledge of the strength ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... say that word that I would do anything in an honest way to avoid saying, at one blow, and make off. I was so sorry to leave you all! You can scarcely imagine what a chill and blank I felt on that Monday evening at Rockingham. It was so sad to me, and engendered a constraint so melancholy and peculiar, that I doubt if I were ever much more out of sorts in my life. Next morning, when it was light and sparkling out of doors, I felt more at home again. But when I came in from seeing ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... to prevent his friends from mixing external force with what should ever have its seat only in the calm conviction of the soul. He thus practically anticipated Roger Williams and William Penn and the most lauded results of modern freedom—not from constraint of circumstances and personal interests, but from his own clear insight into Gospel principles. Bloody religious wars came after he was dead, the prospect of which filled his soul with horror, and to which he could hardly give ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss
... another innocent man." Perplexed, and vexed that he should have been heard by all in the praetorium, but unable honourably to avoid compliance with that which the laws enjoined, Varro had Gisippus brought back, and in presence of Titus said to him:—"How camest thou to be so mad as, though no constraint was put upon thee, to confess a deed thou never didst, thy life being at stake? Thou saidst that 'twas thou by whom the man was slain last night, and now comes this other, and says that 'twas not thou but he that slew him." Gisippus looked, and seeing Titus, wist well ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... was wont to come with her presence, and she hardly knew the aspect of tumultuous idleness or insubordination to unenforced authority; for her eye and voice in themselves brought cheerful discipline without constraint, and upheld by few punishments, for the strong influence took away ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in the stanza of Spenser—a stanza of which we think it difficult to say whether the excellencies or defects are the greatest. The paramount advantage is the variety of tone and pause of which it admits. The great disadvantages are, the constraint of such complicated rhymes, and the long suspension of the sense, especially in the latter half of the stanza. The noblest conception and most brilliant diction must be sacrificed, if four words in one place, and three in another cannot be found rhyming ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... we mean by tension? Clearly a stretching out, a stretching forward, of the mind. That is the characteristic mental attitude of the theatrical audience. If the mind is not stretching forward, the body will soon weary of its immobility and constraint. Attention may be called the momentary correlative of tension. When we are intent on what is to come, we are attentive to what is there and then happening. The term tension is sometimes applied, not to the mental ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... Aramis and Porthos, the latter returned to the principal fort to converse with the greater liberty. Porthos, still thoughtful, was a constraint upon Aramis, whose mind had never ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... persuaded advisedly; for, like all the other Feejee chiefs, Tararo was a despot and might have commanded obedience to his wishes; but he entered so readily into the spirit of the new faith that he perceived at once the impropriety of using constraint in the propagation of it. He set the example, therefore; and that example was followed by almost every man of ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... duty at the Tuilleries from Monday, November 27; on that day, the Tuesday and Wednesday following, it was easy for me to observe a great alteration in the features of the empress, and a silent constraint in Napoleon. If in the course of dinner he broke the silence, it was to ask me some brief questions, to which he did not hear the reply. On those days the dinner did not last for more than ten minutes. The storm burst ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 287, December 15, 1827 • Various
... was that of the man who is careful not to say too much, his constraint was of the quality that hints of a desire to become confidential—a smooth, bland courtesy; ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... in this exercise until he obtains a position in which he feels no constraint, which will not subject him to bruises from recoil, and from which the mark appears plainly through the sights. Having secured such a position, he must not change it when firing, as a variation in the points of support of the ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... if applied to any of Mr. Emerson's orations. But these discourses were both written and delivered in the freshness of his complete manhood. They were produced at a time when his mind had learned its powers and the work to which it was called, in the struggle which freed him from the constraint of stereotyped confessions of faith and all peremptory external authority. It is not strange, therefore, to find some of his paragraphs glowing with heat and sparkling ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... difficult things, or the fearful things, or the joyous things, in your life, absorb you, but turn away, and, as the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews says, in another connection, 'look off unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of faith.' David had to put constraint upon himself, to admit any other thoughts into his mind than those that were pressed into it by the facts before his eyes; but he put on the constraint, and so he was ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... these she awoke to see that the morning light was sifting through the darkness. Her bones and muscles ached from the constraint of the position in which the rope held them. She was shivering with the chill of an Arizona mountain night. Turning her body, the girl's eyes fell upon her captor. He was looking at her in the way that no decent man looks at a woman. Her ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... as Jimmie coiled up his rope. Pete began to remove his boots. Dan, very furtively, placed a finger upon his pulse. Then he said with constraint— ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... the day and evening were spent in a constrained silence. Sitting Bull felt the constraint. He lay on the ground, his great head between his paws, and moodily watched the boys. Several hours had passed; it was night, at the camp-fire; still no words had been spoken. Finally Whitey stopped looking into the fire and ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... had presumed to offer Honour some advice inconsistent with the delicate nature of the situation, perhaps urged her to terminate it in Gerrard's favour, since she had, unasked, taken his candidature under her wing. That would be quite sufficient to account for the girl's coolness and constraint. The battle was not, then, absolutely lost, and it might even yet be possible to turn it into a victory. Gerrard would be very cautious, very diplomatic, and would keep their intercourse on the safe ground of their common preferences in ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... scandalized. The governor, as obstinate as Pharaoh, said that he would not remove the blockade from the Society's house until Bolivar should make his appearance, if it lasted a year; and that he intended to destroy the auditor. The latter, seeing the constraint and uneasiness of the religious, and the obstinacy of the governor and the archbishop, gave himself up of his own accord; and they took him away from sanctuary in great haste, and carried him to the municipal building; and afterward, near midnight, he was sent by boat to Mariveles, with the same ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... powerful influence of which they were the vehicles—closely related to the other. The Greeks first articulately conceived and deliberately pursued the ideal of Freedom. It was, I say, closely related to the other, for they meant by it not merely freedom from physical or political constraint but also inward freedom from prejudice and passion, and they held that knowledge and freedom rendered one another possible. We may amend our formula and re-state their contribution as the idea and fact of civilization ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... she must have been eight-and-twenty. The ladies of the Carne race, as their pictures showed (until they were sold to be the grandmothers of dry-salters), had always been endowed with shapely necks, fit columns for their small round heads. And this young lady's hair, with no constraint but that of a narrow band across the forehead, clustered and gleamed like a bower of ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... inches straight to the rear, left knee slightly bent; clasp the hands, without constraint, in front of the center of the body, fingers joined, right hand uppermost, left thumb clasped by the thumb and forefinger of the right hand; preserve silence and steadiness ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... says—he's brave." There was an odd constraint in Susan's voice, but the girl was too intent on her own problem ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... Constraint hung like a curtain between the two; a silence which the young man forbore to moderate, finding more delight that he had cared (or dared) confess to, in contemplation of the pure girlish profile so ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... discouraged; she continued her solicitations unremittingly, day after day,[118] month after month, for a whole year, but always without the least success, for Joseph in his chastity did not permit himself even to look upon her, wherefore she resorted to constraint. She had an iron shackle placed upon his chin, and he was compelled to keep his head up and look her in ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... the sayings: "No messenger is better than yourself," and "Let him who would eat a fish take it by the tail." So he went and besought Zoza to pardon his impertinence, on account of the caprices of his wife; and Zoza, who was in ecstasies at beholding the cause of her sorrow, put a constraint on herself; and so let him entreat her the longer to keep in sight the object of her love, who was stolen from her by an ugly slave. At length she gave him the doll, as she had done the other things, but before placing it in his ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... of which these other are but indications, is the spiritual fact of the separate personality of each human being. This is seen most absolutely in the sphere of morals. The ultimate standard for a man is his own individual conscience, and neither the constraint of affection, nor the authority of numbers, can atone for falseness there. One of the most forceful illustrations of this final position of all religion is to be found, in the passage of terrific intensity ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... monotheism admitted few attributes to the Deity save those of tremendous power, vengeance, and gloom. So we find (Maccabees, book ii., c. 6., v. 7) that it was regarded by them as most horrible that, 'in the day of the king's birth, every month, they were brought, by bitter constraint, to eat of the sacrifices; and, when the feast of Bacchus was kept, the Jews were compelled to go in procession to Bacchus, carrying Ivy.' A dislike to this emblem of heathen joy seems, however, to have clung to them through all changes of faith—a fact apparently well ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... raised of aloofness; there was no particle of that, no self-esteem, no egoism—common builders of reserve—yet on the other hand it was not the retreat of shyness as many might have thought, though out of it a certain constraint was undoubtedly born. One might almost say it was a result rather than a reserve; the result of a something hard at work within; a preoccupying something; a gestating something, the offspring of which was—well—what ...
— Some Personal Recollections of Dr. Janeway • James Bayard Clark
... and radiant, chatting with Lieutenant Preston, inwardly chafed at all this constraint, and wondering how it was Cousin Joe could stay ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... English country inn, and the outcome of a piece of enterprise on the part of the landlord, who had picked up a small table cheap at a sale, and installed it in the clubroom, hoping to profit thereby. Again Caldew was conscious of the same distinct air of constraint immediately he entered. Two or three men who were talking and laughing loudly became as mute as though their vocal organs had been suddenly smitten with paralysis. The village butcher, who was at the billiard table in the act of attempting some complicated stroke, stopped abruptly with ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... reflected this constraint. Why did her father fear this big dominating fellow? What was the relation between them? Why did his very presence bring with it a message ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... Christian society, hospitality is the only one which the Mussulmans think themselves bound to practise. Where duties are few, it is natural they should be greatly respected. The Orientals, therefore, have recognized in its highest form this sole and unique virtue, this solitary constraint which they have ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... the greater part of his time away in other mining districts in which he had ventures. When thus absent, he would live as Jack Brien and his friends were living at Mrs. Henniker's, and was supposed to enjoy the ease of his inn more thoroughly than he did the constraint of his ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... unwilling victim to the sacrifice and bound upon the altar. He was both Priest and Victim; as the apostle puts it, "He gave Himself up." True, the element of necessity was there—"the Son of Man must be lifted up"; but it was the "must" of His own love, not of another's constraint. Not Roman nails or Roman thongs held Him to the Cross, but His own loving will. It is important to emphasize this fact of the voluntariness of our Lord's death, because at once it sets the Cross in a clearer light. It changes martyrdom into sacrifice; and Christ's death, instead of being ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... to ceiling with china brought years ago from the far East by a Clovelly sailor. As I sat over my egg and toast Sally came in, pale, but sweet and crisp in the white that Southern girls wear most. There was a constraint over us for the reckoning that we knew was coming. Each felt guilty toward the other and the result was a formal politeness. So it was a relief when, just at the last bit of toast, Anne burst in, all staccato notes ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... something more than happiness; there is a sense of ease, of comfort, of general joy, that is quite unmistakable. There is nothing of stiffness or constraint. And with it all there is full reverence. It is no wonder that he is accustomed to fill every ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell
... example, celebrated by Montesquieu and Voltaire; by the more cogent example of America; by the national classics, who declared, with a hundred tongues, that all authority must be controlled, that the masses must be rescued from degradation, and the individual from constraint. ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... that I want so desperately to see!" and all the way back to the hotel she continued to question him, with shrewd precision and an artless thirst for detail, about the theatrical life of Paris. He was struck afresh, as he listened, by the way in which her naturalness eased the situation of constraint, leaving to it only a pleasant savour of good fellowship. It was the kind of episode that one might, in advance, have characterized as "awkward", yet that was proving, in the event, as much outside ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... the cordial welcome he had previously received, he noticed a look of coldness and constraint on the faces of Mr. and Mrs. Tarbox, while Pliny looked as if some stupendous joke ...
— Making His Way - Frank Courtney's Struggle Upward • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... she answered Vivien's questions, after plying her with innumerable enquiries, she admitted with a blush that Heinrich, the German sergeant, with whom she had first cohabited by constraint, had recently married her at the Mairie, though the Cure had refused to perform the religious service. Heinrich was now invariably kind and worked hard on the farm. He hoped by diligently supplying the officers' messes in Brussels with ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... on waking, he had a very unpleasant feeling of constraint. After a few efforts, he perceived that, during his sleep, his legs, chest and arms had been fastened to the bedstead with thin wire strands that cut into his flesh at the ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... memories of that glorious age, when aught but pre-eminence was foreign to his soul; when, though a rude and savage, he was yet a lordly, being; when he owned the supremacy, brooked the dictation, of none; when his existence was a round of joysome light-heartedness, and he, a stranger to constraint—this habitation of the Indian, to my mind, emphasizes his melancholy, and, perhaps, inevitable decadence, rather than symbolizes his partnership with the white in the more palpable pursuits of a practical, enlightened, and energetic age, or co-activity with him on a theatre of enlarged ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... lipped and soft sided indeed is she." Now when Julnar heard what Salih said, she replied, "Thou sayest sooth, O my brother! By Allah, I have seen her many and many a time and she was my companion, when we were little ones but now we have no knowledge of each other, for constraint of distance; nor have I set eyes on her for eighteen years. By Allah none is worthy of my son but she!" Now Badr heard all they said and mastered what had passed, first and last, of these praises bestowed on Jauharah daughter of King Al- Samandal; so he fell in love with ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... faint and worn, On barren mountains cold; With love's constraint he drew me on, To shelter ...
— Poems • Frances E. W. Harper
... flashed over Columbine. It lay in what Wilson Moore might think of her prospective marriage to Jack Belllounds. Still she could not guess why that should make her feel strangely uncertain of the ground she stood on or how it could cause a constraint she had to fight herself to hide. Moreover, to her annoyance, she found that she was evading his direct request for the news ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... the surrender of all British goods in the hands of the inhabitants, and laid a general embargo upon the shipping, among which were many Americans. In Lower Italy, the Papal States and Naples underwent the same restrictions. Prussia yielded under obvious constraint, and Austria acceded from motives of policy, distinguishable in form only from direct compulsion. Russia, as already said, had joined immediately after decisive defeat in the field. The co-operation of the United States, the second maritime nation in the world, was vital ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... free from any constraint due to the presence of jossers. Lily joked with them as she used to do with the apprentices in the mornings, when they showed one another their bruises of the day before. She made them look at her pigeon's egg, on the side of her foot, the little ball-shaped muscle special to ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne |
