"Oppressive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the band preceded the allocution by the governor. He also spoke sotto voce, as if to himself, and as no one heard his words, the fans of native straw and Chinese turkey feathers were plied incessantly. The heat was oppressive. A sigh of relief came with the entr'acte, when all the grown folk flocked to the attached saloon. I joined the queen's group for a few moments, and drank champagne with her and her daughters, and I was called over to have a glass of Perrier ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... turned pale. In the next room there was the sound of bitter, genuine weeping, as though of someone insulted. And he realized that there were real people living here who, like people everywhere else, felt insulted, suffered, wept, and cried for help. The feeling of oppressive hate and disgust gave way to an acute feeling of pity and anger against the aggressor. He rushed into the room where there was weeping. Across rows of bottles on a marble-top table he distinguished a suffering face, wet ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... same oppressive darkness and silence once more, a heavy breathing by the still warm fireplace, suggesting that Shanter, well refreshed with damper, had gone to sleep, and the boys instinctively shrank from disturbing ...
— The Dingo Boys - The Squatters of Wallaby Range • G. Manville Fenn
... was half a mile wide. When the rocks were not precipitous the sides were clothed with a luxuriant foliage, among which the birds maintained a concert of call and song. So sheltered were they that, high as it was above the sea, the heat was very oppressive; and when they reached the head of the valley, late in the afternoon, they were glad indeed of a bathe in ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... oppressive: even the nights are hot, until about 2 A.M., at which hour a cool breeze springs up. The wind now blows from the south until about 1 P.M., when it changes suddenly to the north, and then varies between these two points during the rest ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... up, speaking no word of remonstrance. Indeed she was like a child in their hands, having dropped all the dignity and authority of a woman's demeanour. It rained again during the whole of this day, and the heat was becoming oppressive as every hour they were descending nearer and nearer to the sea level. During this first stage hardly a word was spoken by any one; but when she was again taken from her mule she was in tears. The poor servant-girl, too, was almost prostrate with ...
— Returning Home • Anthony Trollope
... have to undergo severe exertion, especially in collars, they are not frequently prostrated by the extreme heat of the summer months. When at pasture they select the coolest places in the shade of trees, in water, etc., when the heat becomes oppressive, and thereby avoid, as much as possible, the ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... a way weird enough. The visitors exchanged uneasy glances, and Cato, who broke out in some silly remark to Favonius, in a bold attempt to interrupt the oppressive silence, suddenly found his words growing thick and broken, and he abruptly became silent. Each man present tried to tell himself that Pompeius was a victim of superstition, but every individual felt an inward monition that something portentous was ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... constitutes the respiration itself. Suspension expresses reticence, disquietude. Inspiration is an element of dissimulation, concentration, pain. Hence, we have normal, oppressive, spasmodic, superior, sibilant, rattling, intermittent, ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... considerate. He is master of himself, and that at all points,—in his carriage, his temper, his aims, and his desires. Calm, quiet, and temperate, he will not allow himself to be hasty in judgment, or exorbitant in ambition; nor will he suffer himself to be overbearing or grasping, arrogant or oppressive. ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... judgment; the more so as the man had a villainous reputation among high and low, and both with the godly and the worldly. At that very hour of his demise he had ten going pleas before the Session, eight of them oppressive. And the same doom extended even to his agents; his grieve, that had been his right hand in many a left-hand business, being cast from his horse one night and drowned in a peat-hag on the Kye-skairs; and his very doer (although lawyers have long spoons) surviving him not long, and dying on a sudden ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... short extracts from the letters of Colonel Burr to his daughter, while he was imprisoned in Richmond, will serve to show the state of his mind under circumstances thus oppressive and mortifying. ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... oppressive and tyrannical laws," Benson continued. "How does he enforce them, without violence, ...
— Hunter Patrol • Henry Beam Piper and John J. McGuire
... and chattered to her about the educational methods imposed by Mrs. Baker, airing many grievances. They nourished a hope that Miss. Morgan might again become their governess; lessons down at Teignmouth had been nothing like so oppressive as here ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... my door. In the fiercer blasts I could hear the lashing of the pine-trees over my head, and now and then an arm of one of the moaning trees would reach down and sweep across my cabin roof with a sound that made me shudder and fear. This wilderness fear is an oppressive and terrible thing when you are alone at night, and the world is twisting and tearing itself outside. I have heard the pine-trees shriek like dying women, I have heard them wailing like lost children, I have heard them sobbing and moaning like human ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... girls of school age than boys, and 14,819 more women than men teaching in the State. Sixth—Under pretence of regulating public morals, women of the femme de pave class, many of whom have been driven to this mode of life as a livelihood, are subjected to more oppressive laws than their partners in vice. Seventh—The laws treat married women as criminals by taking from them all legal control of their children, while those born outside of marriage belong absolutely to the mothers. Eighth—They forbid the mother's inheritance of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... journeyed slowly out of the September heats and oppressive shades into the cooler and more open glories of autumn. In that part of the country wild flowers run riot at the approach of winter, painting the land in broad leagues of colour, white and gold and blue, and the trees of ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... Tobe was not cool, as indeed he never was, he was undaunted, and only waited for the minister to prepare the way before he opened on Uncle Sheba. A few moments of oppressive silence occurred, daring which the culprit shook as if he had an ague, but Aun' Sheba did not even wink. Mr. Birdsall, regarding her portentous aspect with increased misgiving, began at last in a mournful voice, "Mis Buggone, dis is a very sorrowful 'casion. ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... end drew near, his early craving for the sea returned. The stately mansion of power had been to him the wearisome hospital of pain, and he begged to be taken from its prison walls, from its oppressive, stifling air, from its homelessness and its hopelessness. Gently, silently, the love of a great people bore the pale sufferer to the longer-for healing of the sea, to live or to die, as God should will, within sight of ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... on the Truck System, presented to Parliament in 1871, stated that the Commissioners, Messrs. Bowen and Sellar, had received information from four witnesses with regard to Shetland, 'tending to show that the existence of Truck in an oppressive form is general in the staple trades of the islands'. The Commissioners in their Report call attention to this evidence, and add: 'Time would not allow of a local inquiry at Shetland, nor can an inquiry be adequately conducted into the ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... gardens, and many kinds of native trees and shrubs, are all around us; the fine wooded hill of Mota shows well over the house. The breeze always plays round it; and though it is very hot, it is only when the wind comes from the north and north-west, as in the midsummer, that the heat is of an oppressive and sickly nature. ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... phial not being attended to, two doses of it were given after a nausea had been excited, which, with occasional vomitings, became exceedingly oppressive. A saline draught, given in Dr. Hulme's method, a draught sal. c. c. gr. xii. c. conf. card. gr. x. produced no immediate effect, but the nausea gradually abating, inf. bacc. junip. was ordered; but this appeared to augment it, ...
— An Account of the Foxglove and some of its Medical Uses - With Practical Remarks on Dropsy and Other Diseases • William Withering
... spirit in every sphere where it is applicable, regarded themselves, with the robust self-confidence natural to reformers as a chosen people, as children of the light. They regarded their adversaries as humdrum people, slaves to routine, enemies to light; stupid and oppressive, but at the same time very strong. This explains the love which Heine, that Paladin of the modern spirit, has for France; it explains the preference which he gives to France over Germany: "The French," he says, "are the chosen people ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... to lose, then. Come with me." And the captain himself hurriedly led the way down through the lower depths of the ship, where it became hotter and more oppressive ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... summer. Snowstorms swept over land and sea, and there was a difficulty in getting about. How variously things were distributed in the world! here biting cold and snowstorms, while in the Spanish land there was burning sunshine and oppressive heat. And yet, when here at home there came a clear frosty day, and Juergen saw the swans flying in numbers from the sea towards the land, and across to Vosborg, it appeared to him that people could ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... hot face with his hat. Perhaps he even used some of the cowboy words that he had heard Curly and Bob employ when Little Billy was not around After the noise of his frantic efforts, the silence was more oppressive than ever. The Cross-Triangle ranch house was, somewhere, ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... oppressive. The dull rumble of thunder came across the valley behind. It was as much of a vibration as a sound, something to be felt as well as heard. The song-birds were keeping close to the thickets and fluttering about nervously. By ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... soon know. He stood up and looked far along the valley. Suddenly it seemed a malevolent place, oppressive, threatening, grim in spite of its beauty. It seemed as if something had been lurking there ready to strike. The fire had swept away his timber. In that brilliant sunshine, amid all that beauty, Myra's life had been snuffed out like a blown candle flame—to no purpose. Or ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... very oppressive, and there was not a breath of wind, after dinner she wanted to go for a drive in the Bois de Boulogne and we drove in the victoria towards ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... when the heat was less oppressive, we had a lively game of 'Pussy Wants a Corner,' on the flat bluff-top, with the little trees for bases. Lena was Pussy so often that she finally said she wouldn't play any more. We threw ourselves down on the grass, ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... seen from a distance, clothed as it is with forests, vineyards, and villas, resembles a green island rising out of a sombre waste of waters. In the Pontine marshes, where the air is so poisonous in the warm months that it is dangerous, and felt as oppressive even by the passing traveller, the prolific powers of nature are still more remarkable. Vegetation there springs up with the rapidity, and flourishes with the luxuriance, of tropical climates. Tall reeds, in which the buffaloes are hid, in which a ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... intent upon business or pleasure. Of these some were seriously prostrated by seasickness, and especially the ladies; but this finally passed away, the greatest sufferers being exempt from it during the last half of the voyage. The inevitable monotony of our daily life was somewhat oppressive, there being few events to vary it. Occasionally a whale was sighted, throwing up a small column of water, as it rose at intervals to the surface, and thus marking its course, leading the passengers to some discussion as to the nature of this monster of the deep, whether it was properly ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... nothing else?" said Napoleon, as if relieved at once of an oppressive burden. "Write to my chancellor of the Legion of Honour, Lacepede, to send him a patent, and do you inform him of ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... mysterious melancholy, but frank, joyous, brilliant action, with just so much meditation as was necessary, and not a grain more. To this, apparently, he had succeeded in bringing her back. He felt, himself, that he was an antidote to oppressive secrets; what he offered her was, in fact, above all things a vast, sunny immunity from the ...
— The American • Henry James
... archipelago lie in the region of the typhoon, and have three seasons,—the cold, the hot, and the wet. The first extends from November to February or March, when the atmosphere is bracing rather than cold. The hot season lasts from March to June, and the heat becomes very oppressive before the beginning of the southerly monsoon. Thunder-storms of terrific violence occur during May and June. The wet season begins with heavy rains, known by the natives as "collas," and until the end of October the ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... vaguely knew, the patience, the unmurmuring bravery of the poor. Never would she become sated with power so long as it gave her the right to aid the people. Never a new tax was levied that she did not lighten it in some manner; never an oppressive law was promulgated that she did not soften its severity. And so the populace loved her, for it did not take the people long to find out what she was trying to do for them. And perhaps they loved her because she had lived the greater part of ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... did Mrs. Martin sit, listening in her chamber, everything around her so hushed into oppressive silence, that the troubled beating of her own heart, was distinctly audible. But she waited and listened in vain. The sound of passing footsteps that now came only at long, very long intervals, served but to arouse a momentary gleam in her ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... clergy; those only contributing to do so whose principles led them to it. My residence in the country has shewn me that a religious tyranny may be exerted very effectually without the aid of the government, in a way much more oppressive than the paying of tithe, and without obtaining any of the salutary decorum, which I presume no one will deny is the result of an established mode ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... sea sends a flying throb of white light across the mirror below, or the sweeping wings of a hawk paint their moth-like image on the blue surface, or a little flaw of wind shudders across the water in a black ripple; but except for these casual stirs of Nature, all is still, oppressive, and beautiful, as earth seems to the trance-sleeper on the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... Miss Ainslie had been talking of shipwreck, and she thought she would have a little lighthouse of her own," Miss Thorne suggested, when the silence became oppressive. ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
... entered his new offices, he found them rather oppressive for so modest a man as himself. Wentworth laughed at his doleful expression as he viewed the general ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... Henry's counsellors, but in the bosom of that crafty monarch himself. Clement hated Philip as much as he feared him, so that the prospect both of obtaining Henry as a counterpoise to his own most oppressive and most Catholic protector, and of breaking up the great convert's alliance with the heretic queen and the rebellious republic, was a most tempting one to his Holiness. Therefore he employed, indefatigably, the matchless powers of intrigue possessed by Rome to effect this great purpose. As for ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... of 'worthy deeds are done,' we read 'evils are corrected'; and that is the true rendering. The double function which is here attributed falsely to an oppressive tyrant is the ancient ideal of monarchy—first, that it shall repress disorders and secure tranquillity within the borders and across the frontiers; and second, that abuses and evils shall be corrected by ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... of Orleans, strengthened by the arrival of fresh troops, made a successful sally from Asti at nightfall and appeared before the walls of Novara. The citizens, who were already disaffected by reason of the oppressive exactions of the Duke of Milan, opened their gates, and after a short siege the citadel surrendered. Suddenly the Duke of Milan, who was resting after the fatigues of the recent festivities at Vigevano, heard that his ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... dinner. No one felt at ease. The air was charged with something that all felt too tangibly oppressive, yet none could define, save the two—who ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... devil take it, do you hang around here? I can see very well that a great deal here is revolting and oppressive and painful to your own self. For example, this fool quarrel with Boris or this flunky who beats a woman, and—, in general, the constant contemplation of every kind of filth, lust, bestiality, vulgarity, drunkenness. Well, now, since you say so—I believe that you don't give ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... of the coast called the Bights, consisting of the Gulfs of Biafra and Benin, between which lies the huge Niger Delta. The weather, which continued as scorching as ever, became excessively oppressive. The sky was always dark and the rain never ceased. Sometimes a rift was seen in the clouds in the distance, it would rapidly increase in size, taking a funnel shape, and then a tornado would burst, like ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... both so well muffled up and disguised, and the light of the lamp shining upwards so completely distorted the features, that I had no fear of recognition, unless the King's voice betrayed him. But when he spoke, breaking the oppressive silence of the room, his tone was as strange and hollow as I ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... emancipator of the Church from the secular oppression and imposts of the chiefs. But in the case of England, a settled and agricultural country, the conquest was complete and final; the conquerors formed everywhere a new upper class which, though at first alien and oppressive, became in time a national nobility, and ultimately blended with the subject race. In the case of Ireland, though the Septs were easily defeated by the Norman soldiery, and the formal submission of their chiefs was easily extorted, ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... having you as a guest. The vapours had me by the throat to-night. Your presence is a sufficing tonic for a most oppressive attack of the blue devils. This armchair has been recommended as an ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... which we were in hopes would not last more than six hours or so. So far not a breath of wind had come, but the brig was rolling so badly that we quite expected to see her go over on her beam ends and stay there. At sunset the air was so close and oppressive that one could scarcely breathe, and the natives in the hold became half suffocated, and could only be kept down by the white traders and some of our officers threatening to shoot the first man that tried to get on deck. Many of them, however, besought to be allowed to swim ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... 3.—No diary yesterday; listless to-day also; hot; oppressive days; one just longs for day to end. Towards evening (sunset) usually nice and ...
— Woman's Endurance • A.D.L.
... the Ptolemaic system so long held its sway. It was for reasons it went, too, when it did, hideous and oppressive nightmare! The celestial revelations of the sixteenth century came as the necessary complement of the new mental firmaments then dawning on the thought of man. The intellectual revolution caused by the discovery of the double motion ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... Cruz, they saw a republican battalion entering the edifice. At every moment they expected to hear firing. But no one seemed aware of what was going on. Nothing broke the oppressive stillness save the dull sound of the tread of the enemy's detachments as they quietly marched along, and the quick orders whispered by the officers in the silence ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... permanent value, "that a hereditary prince, a nobility without vassals, and a people voting by their representatives form the best monarchy, autocracy and democracy"; that "free governments ... are the most ruinous and oppressive to their provinces"; that republics are more favorable to science, monarchies to art; that the death of a political body is inevitable; would none of them, probably, be accepted by most thinkers at the present time. And when he constructs an ideal constitution, irrespective of ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... patents, in Bunyan's time, were lucrative but most oppressive, conferring upon favourites, or their nominees, an exclusive right to deal in any article of manufacture. But the patent to God's fearers, to trust in him when involved in darkness and distress, is a blessed ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... nineteenth century had, as we have shown, a very definite purpose. It aimed not only to represent life but to correct it, and to offer a solution to pressing moral and social problems. At the end of the century Hardy's gloom in the face of modern social conditions became oppressive, and Stevenson broke away from it into that land of delightful romance in which youth finds an answer to all its questions. Problems differ, but youth is ever the same, and therefore Stevenson will probably be ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... the law — I may surely protect myself? I will have a file of men on guard, and fire on any creature that infringes upon the vested rights which I possess in my property. I will defend myself," said I, growing warm under the oppressive weight of the law, "and maintain ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... should escape, and that the hundredth, perhaps the most innocent of the hundred, should pay for all. We remember to have seen a mob assembled in Lincoln's Inn to hoot a gentleman against whom the most oppressive proceeding known to the English law was then in progress. He was hooted because he had been an unfaithful husband, as if some of the most popular men of the age, Lord Nelson for example, had not been unfaithful husbands. We remember a still stronger ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... noon's oppressive ray, Beneath the holme, of ample shade, His listless limbs he loves to lay On herbage, matted in the glade; Hears down the steeps the white rills dashing play, Till under the long grass they purl away; While, on wing of swift vibration, Murmuring range ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... past midnight she began to be worried. Just then the light went out. Ah! The man was going away at last! She waited a long, nervous half hour. But there was no sound. She dared not move, for even when she shifted her position against the tree the oppressive silence seemed to ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... while he perused it, and saw his features writhing with anguish: and young Richardson said to his father, when they returned, that he hoped to be preserved from such diversion as had been that day the lot of Pope. From this time, finding his diseases more oppressive, and his vital powers gradually declining, he no longer strained his faculties with any original composition, nor proposed any other employment for his remaining life than the revisal and correction of his former works, ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... was a shabby sort of pension. The Pole painfully hobbled up the evil-smelling stairway, more crooked than a youth's counterpoint, and on the floor next to the top halted, breathing heavily. The weather was oppressive and he had talked too much to the ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... we must go back to the oppressive regime of ancient society. Quesnay's formula was, first of all, a protest against the restraints which hampered the free development of labor. But it did not tend to abrogate the office of legislator, nor to deprive society or the individual ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... depressing influence stole upon their spirits, and filled them with a dismal gloom. On every side, and far as the eye could see into the heavy distance, tall chimneys, crowding on each other, and presenting that endless repetition of the same dull, ugly form, which is the horror of oppressive dreams, poured out their plague of smoke, obscured the light, and made foul the melancholy air. On mounds of ashes by the wayside, sheltered only by a few rough boards, or rotten pent-house roofs, strange ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... camp-meeting I returned to Chicago. As I started homeward, I found that the oppressive heat had greatly reduced my strength. Because of the heat, too, I had been tempted to drink too much ice-water, lemonade, etc. When about sixty miles from home, my heart began to fail, and I saw that unless the Lord helped me I was not going ...
— Trials and Triumphs of Faith • Mary Cole
... to which the proven and the tried possess a flat and tasteless flavor. They are restless, anticipative people; they are the ones who blaze trails. To them great cities, established order, the intricate structure of well-settled life, are both monotonous and oppressive; they do not thrive well thereunder. But put them out on the fringe of things, transplant them to wild soil, and the sap runs, ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... may be commanded to search suspected places without evidence of a fact committed, or to seize any person or persons not named, or whose offence is not particularly described and supported by evidence, are grievous and oppressive, and ...
— The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens • Georg Jellinek
... acts, directed against the possession of arms and military training for unlawful purposes, cannot be considered oppressive under the circumstances then prevailing. Nor can exception be taken on the ground of principle to another for "preventing delay in the administration of justice in cases of misdemeanour," which, indeed, was amended, by Holland, with Eldon's consent, so as to benefit defendants ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... it came to finding, searching and burying them one by one, all sense of horror—though they were not pleasant to look upon—was forgotten in an overmastering feeling of pity, such as one feels at the tragic ending of a moving story, only so oppressive as to make the whole scene like a sad and impersonal dream, on which and as in a dream my mind kept recurring to a tableau which I must have seen over fifteen years ago in Madame Tussaud's of Edith ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer
... the plants, and an awning over the sunny side of the roof. The plants were mostly orchids, he learned. He had read of them, but never seen any before. No doubt they were curious; but he discovered nothing to justify the great fuss made about them. The heat grew oppressive inside, and he was glad to emerge into the garden. He paused under the grateful shade of a vine-clad trellis, took off his hat, and looked about him with a sigh of relief. Everything seemed old-fashioned and natural and delightfully ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... impatience, as though it would burst. She took refuge in caresses and in general remarks as to her joy on finding herself back again, leaving him to suppose that the gloom which hung around Pomeroy Court now had been too oppressive for her, and that she had ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... future lest you should not "redeem the time" as you ought to do to the glory of God? Trust God, and fear not! Lost time is a sad and oppressive thought to the child of God. What might he have done! What might he have been! How might he have improved his talents, and cultivated his spirit, and done good to relations, friends, neighbours, and to the world, ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... undertaken. Page after page was written, re-written, corrected, interlined, scratched, blotted and thrown in the fire. The work had been three times finished, and three times destroyed. It was a fourth time begun, and still the labour was no less oppressive, ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... daybreak the cattle were thrown off the bed ground and started grazing before the sun could dry out what little moisture the grass had absorbed during the night. The heat of the past week had been very oppressive, and in order to avoid it as much as possible, we made late and early drives. Before the wagon passed the herd during the morning drive, what few canteens we had were filled with water for the men. The remuda was kept with the herd, ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... turn towards the City of Mexico. This occurred at 10 o'clock in the morning. The day was very hot, and the sun, glancing vertically upon the flinty rocks that paved the causeway, rendered the heat more oppressive. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... became the absolute and dominant authority in all parochial matters. One curate complained of him and his nominee wardens (in 1806) that "these men had been so long in office, and had become so cruel and oppressive," that some of the parishioners resolved at last to dismiss them. The little oligarchy, however, was too strong to be ousted at any vestry that ever was called. As to the elected officials, the same curate records in a pamphlet which ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... teinds of parishes, should have been devoted to the spiritual interests of these parishes, whereas the vicars appointed by them being generally put off with a miserable pittance and left largely dependent on these hated and oppressive exactions—corpse presents, uppermost cloth, Pasche-offerings—could not fail to alienate the peasantry from the monasteries and their rural representatives. Such charges of oppression could never have ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... and reflection, while theirs were closed by passion and prejudice. They believed that all royal rulers were wicked, and the queen the most wicked of all; and that if she were but out of the way, with a few more, all would go right,—bread would be cheap, the nobility less extravagant and oppressive, and the king willing to govern by men of the people's choice. Lafayette saw that all this was very foolish. He saw that nothing could be worse than the state of France,—the tyranny of the nobility,—the ...
— The Peasant and the Prince • Harriet Martineau
... about the time when Louis XIV. began to issue his oppressive edicts against the Huguenots. Protestant advocates were not yet forbidden to practise, but they already laboured under many disabilities. He continued, however, for some time to exercise his profession, with much ability, at Castres, ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... cool days of approaching autumn touched Jamestown, in 1607, spirits rose and hopefulness supplanted despair. Disease, which had reduced the number to less than fifty persons, subsided; the oppressive heat lessened; and Indian crops of peas, corn, and beans began to mature. Friendly relations were established with the natives, and barter trade developed. As the leaves fell, game became easier to get, ducks multiplied in the ponds and marshes, and life in general ...
— The First Seventeen Years: Virginia 1607-1624 • Charles E. Hatch
... of hers. That fatality I felt for myself on the jetty of Guerande, when I read on the shores of the ocean your name. Yes, you will pass through my life as Beatrice passed through that of Dante. My heart will be a pedestal for that white statue, cold, distant, jealous, and oppressive. ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... noise or bustle, the ship was brought to its dock and the crew went ashore. The screams and calls, the rattle of vehicles and the babel of sounds we had been accustomed to on such occasions, were all missing. The silence and order were almost oppressive because they were so strange. But there was no lack of activity among the immense creatures who thronged around us. Everyone was busy, knowing apparently just what to do without direction from others, and just the ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... four o'clock in the afternoon, and the Academy was crowded. The crush was so oppressive that Lady Adelaide wanted to go away, but D'Arcy had expressed a wish to see No. 401, and D'Arcy's wishes were law to his father, so he struggled in search of the picture, and the others followed him. ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... my dear?" she asked, sitting down at the kitchen table. "I should like to have tea to-day before the gentlemen come in, if you do not mind. The weather is quite oppressive, and the schoolroom was very close because we only had one window open. Poor Mrs Bulteel is so subject to take cold from draughts, and I very nearly fell ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... body of oppressive law, in addition to their fundamental disabilities, burdened the English Catholics at the accession of James I. in 1603. That event they may well have looked forward to and welcomed with joy. James ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... even the little Peel Sahib that sits up of nights to shoot serow—I say, who, ever heard of these Sahibs coming into the hills without a down-country cook, and a bearer, and—and all manner of well-paid, high-handed and oppressive folk in their tail? How can they make trouble? ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... believer in harsh and bloody methods, no revolutionist. He aimed to secure moderate and reasonable reforms, to lessen the oppressive exactions of the friars, to examine into titles of their land, and to make possible the education and uplifting of his people. He loved Spain as he did his own country, and repeatedly used his influence against the rebellious measures proposed by other ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... womanly than I had supposed, and simpler. Even yet I don't see how you can carry this oppressive weight of advertising glory and ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... August dawned sultry and oppressive, but having decided to leave Inver for a long-promised visit to Ostersund on that day, and feeling that if I did not get the parting with the children over at once I should never succeed in going away at ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... Orleans. [Footnote: McAfee MSS.] He faced dangers from the waters, from the Indians, from lawless whites of his own race, and from the Spaniards themselves. The New Orleans customs officials were corrupt, [Footnote: Do. VOL III-8] and the regulations very absurd and oppressive. The policy of the Spanish home government in reference to the trade was unsettled and wavering, and the attitude towards it of the Governors of Louisiana changed with their varying interests, beliefs, ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... lamp frightened her. What had made it flare up like that and go out? And whose footsteps had she heard? With a chill feeling of fear she shut the door and turned again to her game. But for once the charm of the cards failed her. Where was Jasper, and why did he not return? Silence held oppressive empire; her fears plucked at her like ghostly hands. The lamp and the footstep—what did they mean? Had she ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... concerning himself individually. Had this been done in any other way than the consummately simple, delicate, and unobtrusive one which he has adopted, the whole would have been insufferable egotism, disgusting coxcombry, or oppressive dulness. Whereas, this personal identity is the charm, the strength, the soul of the book; he lives, he breathes, he moves through it; his pulse beats or stands still, his eye kindles or fades, his cheek grows pale with horror, colours with shame, or burns with indignation; we ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... good fellow, who gave himself no airs and understood his duties as a country gentleman; but he could not be more than on a par with Carbury of Carbury, though he was supposed to enjoy L7,000 a year. The Longestaffes were altogether oppressive. Their footmen, even in the country, had powdered hair. They had a house in town,—a house of their own,—and lived altogether as magnates. The lady was Lady Pomona Longestaffe. The daughters, who certainly were handsome, had been destined to marry peers. The ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... degraded condition of a province. This is an extremity to which no government will of choice accede. Revenue, therefore, must be had at all events. In this country, if the principal part be not drawn from commerce, it must fall with oppressive weight upon land. It has been already intimated that excises, in their true signification, are too little in unison with the feelings of the people, to admit of great use being made of that mode of taxation; nor, indeed, in the States where almost the sole ...
— The Federalist Papers
... upon which Otis had dwelt in his speech of 1761. Then follows an enumeration of grievances put forward in this crisis as their justification in the face of the world; yet of the twenty-nine specifications of oppressive acts, not more than five were manifestly illegal according to the prevailing system of English law. So far as the Declaration of Independence shows, liberality and concession on the part of England might even then have caused the ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... now was not of religion, or even dogma which in this room had so often been confused with religion. Eben Tollman was sitting in a stiff-backed chair across from his host. His face wore the immobile expression of a man who never forgets the oppressive fact that he is endowed ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... apprised that his orders were fulfilled, his army united, and that a battle claimed his presence. He at length departed from Wilna on the 16th of July, at half-past eleven at night; he stopped at Swentziani, while the heat of the 17th was most oppressive; on the 18th he was at Klubokoe: taking up his residence at a monastery, whence he observed that the village which it commanded bore more resemblance to an assemblage of savage huts than ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... weakened to the verge of exhaustion. Yet on the banks of the river, in the height of summer, smaller animals might still be found whose condition showed what had once taken place in the case of the larger kinds. Some appeared as already fully formed, and struggling to free themselves from the oppressive mud; others, as yet imperfect, feebly stirred their heads and fore feet, while their hind quarters were completing their articulation and taking shape within the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... with the same smile. "Still the conditions, I think, have never been oppressive to you nor your mother; and the only time they are likely to give you the least uneasiness will be when you come to make up your mind in the choice of your guardian. That will be on your eighteenth birthday,—the 20th, I think, of the ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... that this nation is its own judge when to accord the rights of belligerency, either to a people struggling to free themselves from a government they believe to be oppressive or to independent nations at ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ulysses S. Grant • Ulysses S. Grant
... and mother cannot have much longer to live in this troublesome and oppressive world; you cannot bear the yoke much longer. And as you approach another world, how desirable it is that you should have the prospect of a different destiny from what you have been called to endure in this world ...
— The Fugitive Blacksmith - or, Events in the History of James W. C. Pennington • James W. C. Pennington
... actual presence of almost all the objects and renowned localities that I had read about, and which had made London the dream-city of my youth. I had found it better than my dream; for there is nothing else in life comparable (in that species of enjoyment, I mean) to the thick, heavy, oppressive, sombre delight which an American is sensible of, hardly knowing whether to call it a pleasure or a pain, in the atmosphere of London. The result was, that I acquired a home-feeling there, as nowhere else in the world,—though afterwards ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... prejudiced, and defended, though ably, by counsel who were prejudiced. And therefore it is, your Honor, that I urge by all that is good and great in manhood, that I should not be subjected to the pains and penalties of this oppressive law, when I have not been tried, either by a jury of my peers, according to the principles of the common law, or by an impartial jury according to the Constitution of the ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... special mass of consciousness in which it is immersed and to gaze upon it pure and simple. At times that mass of consciousness is so engrossing that hardly a trace of the self remains. At times the sense of being shut up to one's self is positively oppressive. Between the two extremes there is endless variation. When we call self-consciousness the prerogative of man we do not mean that he fully possesses it, but only that he may possess it, may possess it more and more; and that in it, rather than in the merely ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer |
