"Compassing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... family then living with him consisted of a son and a daughter: the former a man of fearless courage and integrity, the latter a gentlewoman of good wit and discretion, as will be seen hereafter. Consulting, amongst themselves as to the best means of compassing the king's escape, it was resolved Mistress Lane should visit a kinswoman of hers with whom she had been bred, that had married one Norton, and was now residing within five miles of Bristol. It was likewise decided she should ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... days! And while Italy, under the wing of science, was plotting her independence, I was busy in forging the chains of that dependence which was to be a more unmixed source of happiness to me, than the independence which Italy was compassing has yet ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... received with a rapturous welcome by the Absian tribe. But the hostile and the envious continued to plot against him. They still aimed at preventing his marriage, and compassing his death. Amarah, who aspired to Ibla's hand, backed by all the chieftains hostile to Antar, renewed his suit and pretensions. Ibla was carried off from her house among the Absians, and taken to another tribe. Then Antar set out in search ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous
... prohibition laid upon our first parents. He immediately Dedie's to bring about their ruin by inciting them to scorn divine commands, assuring them that the knowledge of good and evil will make them equal to God, and having discovered this method of compassing his purpose, steals away to devise ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... high and somewhat nasal treble, compassing the extra feet of Mr. Rouse's doubtful version with skill, and gliding nimbly over the gaps in prosody by the aid of his ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... tree. What a quantity of berries it has!" the doctor said. "That's because it is a hard winter. Miss Bright, you are right in you conviction. Valentine Cresswell is—has been—totally evil, and is deliberately, coldly, but with determination, compassing the utter ruin of the man who trusts him and believes ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... who were meant by the toast, and was transported with rage. She at once wrote an account of the circumstance to Madame de Maintenon, who, for her part, was quite as furious. 'Inde ira'. They never pardoned M. d'Orleans, and we shall see how very nearly they succeeded in compassing his death. Until then, Madame de Maintenon had neither liked nor disliked M. d'Orleans. Madame des Ursins had omitted nothing in order to please him. From that moment they swore the ruin of this prince. All the rest of the King's life M. d'Orleans did not fail ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... diversity producing its adaptation and its adaptation producing benefits.—This is no barren formula. A sentiment of such grandeur, of such comprehensive and penetrating insight, an idea by which Man, compassing the vastness and depth of things, so greatly oversteps the ordinary limits of his mortal condition, resembles an illumination; it is easily transformed into a vision; it is never remote from ecstasy; it can express itself only through symbols; ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... possessed by her might somehow furnish an explanation of her lover's strangely base behavior? More and more did this fixed thought engross her mind. She felt that she must know—must see this woman and her colorless father. Desire grew to resolve; resolve bred inquiry as to ways of compassing an interview; and in the midst of the inquiry, came Madame le Claire's messenger. Her answer was the putting on of her cloak for a visit ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... compositions, small in size, yet compassing what measureless values of reminiscence, contemporary portraitures, manners, idioms and beliefs, with deepest inference, hint and thought, to tie and touch forever the old, new body, and the old, new soul. These! and still these! bearing the freight so dear—dearer than pride—dearer than ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... Northumberland himself hath been on the Bench," said John, "and it is of the act of compassing and procuring his death that my Lord ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... resided the noted Colonel John Okey, one of the regicides "charged with compassing and imagining the death of the late King Charles I." in October, 1660. Nineteen of these "bold traitors," (among whom was Okey,) fled from justice, and were attainted, and Barber's Barn was in his tenure at the time of his attainder. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 348, December 27, 1828 • Various
... personal characteristics, Columbus united a restless spirit, a firm will, and a singularly enthusiastic temperament. The latter faculty gave him a consuming zeal for his undertakings, which was as rare as it proved ultimately successful in compassing his great discovery. He was discouraged by no rebuffs, would take no denials. His motto seemed to be never to despair, and never to let go. His spiritual nature was as remarkable as his intellectual. Here, his imagination was the predominant faculty. He firmly believed himself divinely ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... the dramas, are no mechanical tricks, no obvious compassing of sickly sweetnesses. The accent falls where it should, unstrained. The disguised alliteration comes, as almost always in Milton also, not from set and conscious purpose, but from the promptings of a mind vibrating with ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... meditation again, and bring it down: what's become of man's great extent and proportion, when himself shrinks himself and consumes himself to a handful of dust; what's become of his soaring thoughts, his compassing thoughts, when himself brings himself to the ignorance, to the thoughtlessness, of the grave? His diseases are his own, but the physician is not; he hath them at home, but he must send ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... temporary obscuration. But this suggestion can only be received as an ingenious and expressive hint; it cannot be taken as an explanation. There is as much difficulty, as will be presently seen, in the way of admitting that comets have shadows of any kind, as there would be in compassing the idea that bodies of enormous length can be whirled round through millions of miles in the minute. The truth is, the comet's tail is yet an unguessed puzzle, and vexes even the wits of the wise. It keeps grave men seated on the horns of a dilemma, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various
... fretfulness and peevish discontent, and with that we have first to deal. In a week's time, I will make a sound, sane man of you; and then I will teach you how to get the colours you seek—yes!' he added, smiling, 'even to the compassing of Correggio's blue.' ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... Murchisons could afford to give it. They could never have afforded, in the beginning, to possess it had it not been sold, under mortgage, at a dramatic sacrifice. The house was a dignified old affair, built of wood and painted white, with wide green verandahs compassing the four sides of it, as they often did in days when the builder had only to turn his hand to the forest. It stood on the very edge of the town; wheatfields in the summer billowed up to its fences, and corn-stacks in the autumn camped around ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... no longer, whether or not the dangers resulting from James's succession were real, and such as ought to be guarded against by parliamentary provisions, but whether the exclusion or restrictions furnished the most safe and eligible mode of compassing the object which both sides pretended to have in view. The argument upon this state of the question is clearly, forcibly, and, I think, convincingly, stated by Rapin, who exposes very ably the extreme folly of trusting to measures, without consideration of the men who are to execute ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox
... unconsciously sowed the seeds of his eventual return. For with added years, the boy felt added longing to escape his entailed misery, by compassing for his father and himself a voyage to the Promised Land. By his persevering efforts he succeeded at last, against every obstacle, in gaining credit in the right quarter to his extraordinary statements. ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... allow his detestation of the informers to compromise his safety. When at length, in 96, the Emperor was assassinated in the palace, and the Senate raised Nerva to the purple, Pliny stepped forward as the champion of the oppressed, and impeached Publicius Certus for compassing the death of Helvidius Priscus, though he was only so far successful that he prevented Certus from enjoying the consulship which had been promised him. Pliny revised the speech and published it in book form, and Certus died a few days after it appeared, haunted, so Pliny tells ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... here a shock is produced, an indirect and negative pleasure proceeding from pain. Since the sublime exceeds the functional capability of our sensuous representations and does violence to the imagination, we first feel small at the sight of the absolutely great, and incapable of compassing it with our sensuous glance. The sensibility is not equal to the impression; this at first seems contrary to purpose and violent. This humiliating impression, however, is quickly followed by a reaction, and the vital ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... man had drink to spare. The might of waters waxed, the men wailed loud, Old bearers of the spear; they strove to flee The fallow stream; they fain would save their lives And seek a refuge in the mountain caves, Firm earth's support. An angel drove them back, 1540 Compassing all the town with gleaming fire, With savage flames. Wild beat the sea within; No troop of men could scape from out the walls. The waves waxed, and the waters thundered loud; The firebrands flew; the ...
— Andreas: The Legend of St. Andrew • Unknown
... entirely consistent with himself. Its utterances were in clear accord with the platform upon which he had been nominated and with his letter of acceptance. It is one of the anomalies of politics that the clear-cut sentences measurably instrumental in compassing his defeat in 1888, were upon the banners of his triumphant partisans in ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... thousand dollars; Joseph agreed to pay that sum, and, as he had access to the house at his pleasure, he was to unbar and unfasten the back window, so that Crowninshield might gain easy entrance. Four days before the murder, while they were deliberating on the mode of compassing it, he went into Mr. White's chamber, and, finding the key in the iron chest, unlocked it, took the will, put it in his chaise-box, covered it with hay, carried it to Wenham, kept it till after the murder, and then burned it. After securing the will, he gave notice to Crowninshield that ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... home life, and the desperate expedients to which she was driven (whether by compulsion or from her own regard for Davies) to repel and dismiss him, did not strike me as they might have done as the crowning argument in favour of the course we had adopted the night before, that of compassing our end without noise and scandal, disarming Dollmann, but aiding him to escape from the allies he had betrayed. To Davies, the man, if not a pure abstraction, was at most a noxious vermin to be trampled on for the public good; while ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... indignant as the bargaining became more paltry, and he continued to heap bitter reproaches upon the queen, who, without having any children or known inheritor of her possessions, should nevertheless, be so desirous of compassing his eternal disgrace and of exciting the discontent of his subjects for the sake of an evanescent gain for herself. At such a price, he avowed, he had no wish ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... been twenty-two days upon the river, and it was uncertain how long we should be in compassing the distance we had still to run. Considering all things, we had, as yet, been extremely fortunate; and I hoped that we should terminate our journey without the occurrence of any fatal accident. Had the country corresponded with the noble stream that traversed it, we should have been proportionably ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... in withholding his pay was to prevent his running from his ship, so far from compassing that desirable end it had exactly the contrary effect. Both the preventive and the disease were of long standing. With De Ruyter in the Thames in 1667, menacing London and the kingdom, the seamen ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... cannot profess that I completely agree. The nolo episcopari, though still in use, is so directly at variance with the tendency of all human aspirations of rising priests in the Church of England. A lawyer does not sin in seeking to be a judge, or in compassing his wishes by all honest means. A young diplomat entertains a fair ambition when he looks forward to be the lord of a first-rate embassy; and a poor novelist when he attempts to rival Dickens or rise above Fitzjames, commits no fault, though he may ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... enemy's country and its subsequent mortifying withdrawal, when contrasted with the brilliant success resulting from Farragut's dash by the forts, afford a very useful lesson in the adaptation of means to ends and the selection of a definite objective, upon compassing which something happens. The object of the United States Government being to control the lower Mississippi, that was effected by means of isolating its defenses, which then fell. When the further object was sought of controlling ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... This country is spoken of as being a tract wherein was produced good gold, "b'dolach" (translated "bdellium") and "shoham" (translated "onyx.") The second branch was Gihon, which is described as similarly compassing the district of K[u]sh. Here our A.V., by substituting "Ethiopia" for the original "C[u]sh," has made a gloss rather than a translation; and this gloss has given rise to several errors of commentators in identifying the site of Eden. The Revised ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... utmost end of the heavens is his egress; and his compassing-regress is unto the utmost-ends of them: and none ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... figures of the stormers were seen leaping with fierce hardihood into the ditch and struggling madly up the ramparts, or tearing furiously at the palisades. But the defences were strong, and the assailants fell literally in scores. Napier tells how "the axemen of the light division, compassing the fort like prowling wolves," discovered the gate at the rear, and so broke into the fort. The engineer officer who led the attack declares that "the place would never have been taken had it not been for the coolness of these men" in absolutely walking round the fort to its rear, discovering ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... like the dark fathomless waste of waters shelving away to nameless shapeless perils such as the old Greek mariners drew upon their charts as compassing the shores they knew. ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... thieving, having committed the theft, came towards morning to the grotto, and there quarrelled, and the stronger slew the other, and took himself off. Aroused by the noise, Gisippus witnessed the murder, and deeming that he had now the means of compassing, without suicide, the death for which he so much longed, budged not a jot, but stayed there, until the serjeants of the court, which had already got wind of the affair, came on the scene, and laid violent hands upon ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... have been perfectly satisfied with a wooden "aula" as the dwelling place of a powerful thegn, but then we should have looked for it on something of a mound, like the home of Wiggod at Wallingford. Certainly, a frightfully stinking ditch of no great width, compassing a square field, is a poor find after the hopes with which we set out. But, in the absence of all help from books or men, it is all that we have to offer. We should be glad if anybody would tell us of something better; but this is all we could make ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman
... that the center would be pierced and the French armies cut in two. If this attack succeeded it would free at once the German right and separate into two impotent parts the entire French military force. During the 7th, 8th, and 9th of September the Imperial Prussian Guard directed to the compassing of that end all its energy and courage. All in vain. General Foch not only checked the German onslaught, but drove it back. Thus the French center was not pierced, Von Kluck was not relieved, and he found himself in a position that grew more and ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... said Father Rocco, walking away, and speaking partly to the servant, partly to himself. "My caution has misled me," he continued, pausing thoughtfully when he was left alone in the roadway. "I should have risked using the mother's influence sooner to procure the righteous restitution. All hope of compassing it now rests on the life of the child. Infant as she is, her father's ill-gotten wealth may yet be gathered back to the ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... ourselves what we want and what we ought to desire. Most men are exceedingly in earnest, and determined to be heard in their own cause, and well able to make themselves understood. Scribes and Pharisees compassing sea and land to make one proselyte are a good and bad type of our activity in the pursuit of our own ends. Innumerable and infinitely varied are the shifts employed to secure attention, to effect the sale of merchandise, and to increase income. Nor are the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... passed. Charley's life was running in a tiny circle, but his mind was compassing large revolutions. The events of the last few days had cut deep. His life had been turned upside down. All his predispositions had been suddenly brought to check, his habits turned upon the flank and routed, his mental ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... times came. He said that if they supposed that we were all burnt in the house when it was fired, it would give them a fair opportunity of calling you an impostor, and treating you accordingly; and that there were so many anxious to have a gift of the property that you would have thousands of people compassing your death. He said that your making known yourself and claiming your property would be the very conduct that your enemies would wish you to follow, and would be attended with most fatal consequences; for he said, to prove that you were Edward Beverley, you ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... Cecile, dancing—all abandoned, a child of dalliance, a nymph irresolute—to the music of a flageolet; sometimes another whose radiance fascinated, whose presence yet had terror, for (in the manner of dreams that at their maddest have some far-compassing and tremendous philosophy such as in the waking world is found in poems) she was more than herself, she was the other also, at least sharing the secrets of that great sisterhood of immaculate and despoiled, and, looking in his face, compelled ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... bulwarks which should mock the might Of armies compassing, Secure not those, who hold one ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... what a pitch of arrogance he has come—this man who gives you no choice to act or to remain quiet, but brags about and talks words of overwhelming insolence, as they tell us. He is not such a character as to rest with the possessions which he has conquered, but is always compassing something else, and at every point hedging us, dallying and supine, in narrower and narrower circles. When, then, Athenians, when will you do what you ought? As soon as something happens? As soon, great Jove! as necessity compels you? Why, what does necessity compel you to think now of your ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... simple hearts—yellow tea roses, moss roses with their firm, shapely buds, monthly roses that bore nearly all the year in a warm spot, the white briar that is dear to north country people, besides standards in their glory, with full round purple blossom. Among the roses, compassing them about and jostling one another, some later, some earlier in bloom, most of them together in the glad summer days, one could find to his hand wall-flowers and primroses, sweet-william and dusty-miller, daisies red and white, forget-me-nots and ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... series of sharp attacks, with the design of thus surprising and overpowering the enemy. A man comes to a fixed intention to kill his enemy; he forms a plan to entrap him into his power, with the design of then compassing his death; as the law can not read the heart, it can only infer the intent from the evidences of design. Intent denotes a straining, stretching forth toward an object; purpose simply the placing it before oneself; hence, we speak of the purpose ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... kingdom, not only with those who were envious and jealous of Temujin, but also with all those who, for any reason, were disposed to put themselves in opposition to Vang Khan's government. Thus a formidable conspiracy was formed for the purpose of compassing Temujin's ruin. ...
— Genghis Khan, Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... excited universal sympathy. He lost heavily in purse and left the Court with a ruined reputation. It was natural that a man so evil-minded should regard Ramda as the author of misfortunes due to his own wicked nature. He plotted the poor Brahman's destruction, but no effectual means of compassing it suggested itself. ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... cannot cast the mental eye along it and see the end from the beginning. We are fighting in the dark, and cannot take the measure of our foe. Every step must be preordained and provided for in the mind. Hence also the fact that to vanquish one mile in the woods seems equal to compassing three in the open country. The furlongs are ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... top above the starres did sore, One foote on Thetis, th'other on the Morning, One hand on Scythia, th'other on the More, Both heaven and earth in roundnesse compassing; Iove fearing, least if she should greater growe, The old giants should once againe uprise, Her whelm'd with hills, these seven hils, which be nowe Tombes of her greatnes which did threate the skies: Upon her head he heapt Mount ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... insipid fable out of Speculum Historiale or Gesta Romanorum and expound it allegorically, tropologically, and anagogically. And after this manner do they and their chimera, and such as Horace despaired of compassing when he wrote ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... either side the great and still ice sea Are compassing snow mountains near and far; While, dominant, Schreckhorn and Finsteraar Hold their grim peaks ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... began What time the Greeks, first firing their own camp Steer'd all their galleys from the shore of Troy. Already, in the horse conceal'd, his band Around Ulysses sat; for Ilium's sons Themselves had drawn it to the citadel. And there the mischief stood. Then, strife arose 620 Among the Trojans compassing the horse, And threefold was the doubt; whether to cleave The hollow trunk asunder, or updrawn Aloft, to cast it headlong from the rocks, Or to permit the enormous image, kept Entire, to stand an off'ring to ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... sea, twenty miles to the south, to which by another creek on this side, we transport our goods by water within four or five miles and then carry them overland to the vessel; thereby avoiding the compassing of Cape Cod with those dangerous shoals, and make our voyage to the southward with far less time and hazzard. For the safety of our vessel and our goods we also there built a house and keep some servants, who plant ...
— Cape Cod and All the Pilgrim Land, June 1922, Volume 6, Number 4 • Various
... Jupiter's self deigned Yield of the freest gree his loves though gotten of Godheads. Thee Thetis, fairest of maids Nereian, vouchsafed to marry? Thee did Tethys empower to woo and wed with her grandchild; Nor less Oceanus, with water compassing th' Earth-globe? 30 But when ended the term, and wisht-for light of the day-tide Uprose, flocks to the house in concourse mighty convened, Thessaly all, with glad assembly the Palace fulfilling: Presents afore they bring, and joy in faces declare they. Scyros desert ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... stood out against the isolation, the suspicion as to his sanity, the patronizing pity of men who but a little while before had felt honored when he spoke to them. For four months he gave battle to unseen and silent foes compassing him on every side. He had no spirit for the fight; his love of Dorothy Hallowell and his complete rout there had taken the spirit out of him—and with it had gone that confidence in himself and in his luck which had won him so ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... of strength, and who, with all the glories of Nature about him and the love and beauty of an exquisite womanhood at his hand for possession, could nevertheless devote his energies to the science of destruction and the compassing of death without compunction, on the lines Roger Seaton had laid down as ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... be held to carry. The TEMPER which a saying may comport is an extra-logical matter. It may indeed be hotter in some individual absolutist than in a humanist, but it need not be so in another. And the humanist, for his part, is perfectly consistent in compassing sea and land to make one proselyte, if ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... cruelty to bless, That cruelty which banished me the place Where I, at least, had gazed upon your face. And when no more I saw your beauty beam The harsher yet your cruelty did seem; Yet in obedience failed I not, and this Hath been the means of compassing my bliss. For Time, love's parent, pitiful at last, Upon my woe commiserate eyes hath cast, And done to me so excellent a turn, That, if I now come back, think not I yearn To sigh and dally, and renew the spell— I only come ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. III. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... of the Roman armies could shake their blind self-confidence. But at the first sight of the encircling armies, the Christians knew that the time for flight was at hand. But how to flee was the question, with the compassing lines drawn close about the city. Moreover, the Zealots, the furious war party in power, would be little likely to allow any number to pass out to ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... man, who is bent on indulging his palate and his appetite, should not be guilty of irregularity. Hence it was that to avoid this vice, as soon as I found myself arrived at maturer years, I embraced a regular and sober life. It is, no doubt, true, that I found some difficulty in compassing it; but, in order to conquer this difficulty, I beseeched the Almighty to grant me the virtue of sobriety; well knowing, that he would graciously hear my prayer. Then, considering, that when a man is about to undertake ...
— Discourses on a Sober and Temperate Life • Lewis Cornaro
... their end by fraud, when violence will not avail them Attachment to a half-drowned land and to a despised religion Barbara Blomberg, washerwoman of Ratisbon Believed in the blessed advent of peace Compassing a country's emancipation through a series of defeats Don John of Austria Don John was at liberty to be King of England and Scotland Ferocity which even Christians could not have surpassed Happy to glass ...
— Quotations From John Lothrop Motley • David Widger
... might feast upon the prey, The dam pursues the winged thief, And deprecates so great a grief; But safe upon the lofty tree, The Eagle scorn'd the Fox's plea. With that the Fox perceived at hand An altar, whence she snatch'd a brand, And compassing with flames the wood, Put her in terror for her brood. She therefore, lest her house should burn, ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... the Lord's salvation, Watchful in thy station stand; Heed the heavenly proclamation, Heed the Master's great command. Mark old error's gathering forces Compassing our Zion round; Know in truth thine own resources, Give the ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... side of the Lord Chief Justice lie three portly volumes labelled, "The Law of Divorce." It will be evident from the foregoing, that from an early period, the satirists on the popular side gave credit to the prince and his advisers for being members of a secret conspiracy for compassing the ruin of the erring ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... spent? Something within her, the something, perhaps, that felt rejected, strove to reject in its turn, did surely reject. Pride burned in her like a fire that cruelly illumines night, shining upon the destruction it is compassing. ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... NOT," I cried again; and in the compassing dark, the two gleamed out like spectres that waited on the dead; neither answered me; each stood still and sad, and looked ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... is to be presumed that by that standard Mark Twain's works will ultimately be judged—there is no more significant passage in Huckleberry Finn than that in which Huck struggles with his conscience over the knotty problem of his moral responsibility for compassing Jim's emancipation. Nothing else is needed to show at once Mark Twain's preoccupation with the workings of human conscience in the unsophisticated mind and his conviction that, with the "lights that he had," Huck was justified in ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... were two women with black veils covering them from head to foot. At the sound of the herald's trumpet, one of the two stepped forward and accused him of compassing the death of her husband. When she had ended her plaint the herald blew another blast, and another veiled woman came forward and charged him with her son's murder. Then the herald inquired if there was not yet a third victim, but was answered ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... gouernement of her most excellent Maiesty, her subiects through the speciall assistance, and blessing of God, in searching the most opposite corners and quarters of the world, and to speake plainly, in compassing the vaste globe of the earth more then once, haue excelled all the nations and people of the earth. For, which of the kings of this land before her Maiesty, had theyr banners euer beene in the Caspian sea? which of them hath euer dealt with the Emperor of Persia, as her Maiesty ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... the Meccan pilgrimage, whilst the people were making circuit about the Holy House and the place of compassing was crowded, behold, a man laid hold of the covering of the Ka'abah[FN182] and cried out, from the bottom of his heart, saying, 'I beseech thee, O Allah, that she may once again be wroth with her husband ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... conveniences and comforts of life, I do not profess here to discuss; but I would maintain, and mean to show, that it is an object, in its own nature so really and undeniably good, as to be the compensation of a great deal of thought in the compassing, and a great deal of trouble in ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... O God of battles! steel my soldiers' hearts. Possess them not with fear. Take from them now The sense of reckoning, if the opposed numbers Pluck their hearts from them. Not to-day, O Lord, O, not to-day, think not upon the fault My father made in compassing the crown! I Richard's body have interred new, And on it have bestow'd more contrite tears Than from it issued forced drops of blood. Five hundred poor I have in yearly pay, Who twice a day their wither'd hands hold up Toward heaven, to pardon blood; and I have built ...
— The Life of King Henry V • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]
... those penalties extended no further than to lifelong imprisonment and forfeiture of goods. Their lives could only be exacted by proving that they had maliciously attempted to deprive Henry of his title of Supreme Head;[934] their opportunities in the Tower for compassing that end were limited; and it is possible (p. 332) that they would not have been further molested, but for the thoughtlessness of Clement's successor, Paul III. Impotent to effect anything against the King, the Pope did his best ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... still reproduces the gill-arches of our fish-ancestors, so this book exhibits everywhere the traces of the descent of modern Socialism from one of its ancestors,—German philosophy. Thus great stress is laid on the dictum that Communism is not a mere party doctrine of the working-class, but a theory compassing the emancipation of society at large, including the capitalist class, from its present narrow conditions. This is true enough in the abstract, but absolutely useless, and sometimes worse, in practice. So long as the wealthy classes not only do not feel the want of any emancipation, but ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... interesting woman has a number of pretty traits in common with her town-bred sisters; only, whereas in these they are laboriously acquired, in her they are severely natural. I am sure, that, if I were to plant her in Madison Square to-morrow, she would, after one quick, all-compassing glance, assume the nil admirari in a manner to drive the greatest lady of them all to despair. Johnson is a man of excellent intentions, but no taste. Two or three times I looked at Miss Blunt to see what impression his sallies were making upon her. They seemed to produce ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... fair array, Whose bands to succour ravaged France prepare, And notes and talks of ensigns they display, And names of British lords, to him repair One and another, crowding to survey His courser, single of its kind, or rare: All thither hasten, wondering and astound, And compassing the warrior, ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... always in trouble with men and women. He never ceased his abuse of Burr, whose election as senator angered him. Later, when Burr was the choice of congress as minister to Paris, backed especially by Madison and Monroe, Hamilton succeeded in compassing his defeat. Again, when Adams had decided upon some important appointment for Burr, Hamilton succeeded in defeating him. This made Burr's promotion to the vice-presidency and his own downfall the more ...
— Jukes-Edwards - A Study in Education and Heredity • A. E. Winship
... Methods for compassing a Design, come not so much from the Quickness and Fertility of an industrious Wit, as a dim-sighted Understanding, which makes us pitch upon every fresh Matter that presents itself to our groping Fancy, and does not furnish us with Judgment ...
— The Present State of Wit (1711) - In A Letter To A Friend In The Country • John Gay
... Russia turn now? Recent events, M. Sven Hedin assured his countrymen, have already answered the query. Northwards. The great Slav Empire covets an ice-free harbour in Norway, and until this war broke out was busily engaged in compassing its end. At any future moment it may again start off on this enterprise. It is the duty of patriotic Swedes ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... side by side against the Danes, he used a hook of his own making, with such effect, that I was fain to pause and laugh, while myself in the very act of splitting an iron headpiece. But perchance that is not a suitable method of compassing our ends, besides it would cost the thrall his life, and I should be sorry to aid in bringing about the death of Kettle Flatnose, whose island is a happy one if it counts many such clear-headed and ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... Battailes, steele my Souldiers hearts, Possesse them not with feare: Take from them now The sence of reckning of th' opposed numbers: Pluck their hearts from them. Not to day, O Lord, O not to day, thinke not vpon the fault My Father made, in compassing the Crowne. I Richards body haue interred new, And on it haue bestowed more contrite teares, Then from it issued forced drops of blood. Fiue hundred poore I haue in yeerely pay, Who twice a day their wither'd hands hold vp Toward Heauen, to pardon blood: And I haue built two Chauntries, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... proceeding step by step in every line, with the same kind of caution and circumspection (though I cannot say upon quite so religious a principle) as was used by John de la Casse, the lord archbishop of Benevento, in compassing his Galatea; in which his Grace of Benevento spent near forty years of his life; and when the thing came out, it was not of above half the size or the thickness of a Rider's Almanack.—How the holy man managed the affair, unless he spent the greatest part of his time in combing his whiskers, ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... must be some way of compassing a meeting with his brother, one that would excite no suspicion, and one evening when he had been talking the matter over with his friends, and a score of ideas had been proposed, each of which possessed some failing spot and caused ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... there to chapel; where it was most infinite full to hear Dr. Critton. [Creighton.] The Doctor preached upon the thirty-first of Jeremy, and the twenty-first and twenty-second verses, about a woman compassing a man; meaning the Virgin conceiving and bearing our Saviour. It was the worst sermon I ever heard him make, I must confess; and yet it was good, and in two places very bitter, advising the King to do as the Emperor Severus did, to hang up a Presbyter John (a short ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... country, would certainly not be guilty of treason with us, if these words be retained. The convictions of treason of that kind in England, have been under that branch of the statute which makes the compassing the king's death treason. Foster, 196, 197. But as we omit that branch, we must by other means reach ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... for the frozen northern seas. By 1st June he had reached a region where there was no night, and a few days later a strange sight startled the whole crew, "for on each side of the sun there was another sun and two rainbows more, the one compassing round about the suns and the other right through the great circle," and they found they were "under 71 degrees of the ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... Apis; and whirling round it in mad circles, working themselves into frenzy by rapid motion and frantic shouts, were the people,—men and women, mingled in the licentious dance, who, six short weeks before, had sworn to the Covenant. Their bestial deity in the centre, and they compassing it with wild hymns, were a frightful contradiction of that grey altar and the twelve encircling stones which they had so lately reared, and which stood unregarded, a bowshot off, as a silent witness ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... but find difficulty in compassing a passage in a ship of war. They had better let me go; if I cannot, patriotism is the word—"nay, an they'll mouth, I'll rant as well ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... they had been preserved by Moses, entertained a hatred to him, and were very eager in compassing their designs against him, as suspecting that he would take occasion, from his good success, to raise a sedition, and bring innovations into Egypt; and told the king he ought to be slain. The king had also some intentions of himself to the same purpose, and this as well out of envy at his glorious ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... had decided to relieve Kansas of her Indian encumbrance by compassing the removal of all her tribes, indigenous and immigrant, to Indian Territory. It mattered not that the former had a title to their present holdings by ancient occupation and long continued possession and the latter a title in perpetuity, guaranteed by the treaty-making power under the United States ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... of state, playing her monkey tricks to amuse the old sultan, snatching sealed orders from his hand and making the royal dotard chase her round the council chamber. She swore to ruin the duke and, aided by a cabal of Jesuit sympathisers and noble intriguers, succeeded in compassing his dismissal. The Parlement of Paris paid for its temerity: it and the whole of the parlements in France were suppressed, and seven hundred magistrates exiled by lettres de cachet. Every patriotic Frenchman now felt the gathering storm. Madame ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... too, and an athletic and daring youth. In him that peculiarly ferocious political passion which occasionally showed itself among Southerners was further inflamed by brandy and by that ranting mode of thought which the stage develops in some few. He was the leader of a conspiracy which aimed at compassing the deaths of others besides Lincoln. Andrew Johnson, the Vice-President, was to die. So was Seward. That same night one of the conspirators, a gigantic boy of feeble mind, gained entrance to Seward's house and wounded three people, including Seward himself, who was lying already injured in ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... us hand and foot and sell us over into some distant island. He tried, moreover, to cut off the ears of both of us, so we went away in a rage, furious about the payment he had promised us, and yet withheld; in spite of all this, you are now showing favour to his people, and will not join us in compassing the utter ruin of the proud Trojans with ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... proportion as the image wasted away, the life of the individual who was the object contrived against, was undermined and destroyed. Another was by incantations and spells. Either of these might fitly be called the "compassing or imagining the death." Imagination is, beside this, the peculiar province of witchcraft. And in these pretended hags the faculty is no longer desultory and erratic. Conscious of their power, they are supposed to have subjected it to system and discipline. They ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... some distance from the spot, and, beside myself with joy, I started to run unto it. With the swift motions which spirits make, and which I was beginning now to master in a clumsy manner and low degree, I came, compassing the space between myself and all I loved or longed for, and so brought myself tumultuously into the street where the house stood; there, at a stone's throw from it, I felt myself suddenly stifled with my haste, or from some cause, and, pausing (as we used to say) to gather breath, I found that ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... crime, and in the proof required, are the mildest and most indulgent, and consequently the most equitable, that are any where to be found. The two chief species of treason contained in the statute of Edward III. are the compassing and intending of the king's death, and the actually levying of war against him; and by the law of Mary, the crime must be proved by the concurring testimony of two witnesses, to some overt act, tending ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... toward Catholics, yet he meant well. He viewed his office as only transitory, and stood ready to surrender it so soon as the new king's will could be learned; but when Slaughter arrived with commission as governor, Leisler's foes succeeded in compassing his execution for treason. This unjust and cruel deed began a long feud between the popular and the aristocratic ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... unbroken. Summer and winter, seed-time and harvest, return in their stated order with a sublime precision, affording to man one of the noblest of all the occasions he enjoys of proving the high powers of his far-reaching mind, in compassing the laws that control their exact uniformity, and in ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... were desirous of heaven, of what use could wealth be to us? The treasurer of heaven (Kuvera) had kept a large treasure for us. When we found that death could not, by any means, overtake us all, it was then, O child, that we regarded this as the best means (of compassing our desire). They who commit suicide never attain to regions that are blessed. Reflecting upon this, we abstained from self-destruction. That which, therefore thou desirest to do is not agreeable to us. Restrain thy mind, therefore, from the sinful act of destroying the whole world. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... and laughed. Sir Roger de Launay laughed with him; the idea was too irresistibly droll. But the King was bent on mischief, and determined to lose no time in compassing it. ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli |
