"Stumbling-block" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dependents] I. Thou shalt not oppress thy neighbor. II. Thou shalt not rob thy neighbor. III. The wages of a hired servant shall not remain with thee all night until the morning. IV. Thou shalt not curse the deaf. V. Thou shalt not put a stumbling-block before the blind. ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... child, he thinks himself worthy of praise. A lad is too much terrified to march that path, which is marked out by the rod. If the way to learning abounds with punishment, he will quickly detest it; if we make his duty a task, we lay a stumbling-block before him ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... mouth of an Old Testament prophet nearly six hundred years before the coming of "grace and truth" by the Savior, saying, "When a righteous man doth turn from his righteousness, and commit iniquity, and I lay a stumbling-block before him, he shall die: because thou hast not given him warning, he shall die in his sin, and his righteousness which he hath done shall not be remembered." Ezek. 3:20. What need be, and what can be, plainer than this text? Here ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... right we poor mortals constitute ourselves into instruments of destruction to our kind, and having once stopped to question, I saw the whole matter in such a different light that I knowingly put a stumbling-block in the path of so-called avenging justice, and thus courted the doom that at any moment may fall upon my head." And she actually looked up, as if expecting to see it fall then and there. "This Madame," ...
— The Bronze Hand - 1897 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... Tagus. Sixty thousand persons, victims to the dark power in its first or its second avatar, attested the Titanic scale upon which it worked. Here it was that the shallow piety of the Germans found a stumbling-block. Those who have read any circumstantial history of the physical signs which preceded this earthquake, are aware that in England and Northern Germany many singular phenomena were observed, more or less manifestly connected ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... have been, on the whole, kindly received by the natives, though they could not make out what he wanted there. A special stumbling-block to them was, how it came to pass that when, as sometimes happened, he and Mrs Moffat were disrespectfully treated, they did not retaliate. This was satisfactorily explained to the popular mind by the assertion ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... to typhus. Lady Glyde, on the day of my return, tried to force herself into the room to nurse her sister. She and I had no affinities of sympathy—she had committed the unpardonable outrage on my sensibilities of calling me a spy—she was a stumbling-block in my way and in Percival's—but, for all that, my magnanimity forbade me to put her in danger of infection with my own hand. At the same time I offered no hindrance to her putting herself in danger. If she had ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... in his chair, and his eyes narrowed. He scented opposition, and the greatest stumbling-block in Garnache's career had been that he could never learn to brook opposition from any man. That characteristic, evinced early in life, had all but been the ruin of him. He was a man of high intellectual gifts, of ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... acknowledge the truth of what I am saying, will often feel himself tempted by the difficulties of language to tell himself that some one little doubtful passage, some single collocation of words, which is not quite what it ought to be, will not matter. I know well what a stumbling-block such a passage may be. But he should leave none such behind him as he goes on. The habit of writing clearly soon comes to the writer who is a severe critic ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... idea effectually introduced into a man's mind is a direct obstruction of his dynamic activity. Every idea which is introduced from outside into a man's mind, and which does not correspond to his own dynamic nature, is a fatal stumbling-block for that man: is a cause of arrest for his true individual activity, and a ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... is true of atoms or globes is true of animals. Each has four "material" bodies, with each body on the corresponding globe —whether of the earth or of the Universe. This is the physical basis of the famous "chain of seven globes" that is such a stumbling-block in Hindu metaphysics. The spirit passes through four to get in and three to get out—seven in all. The Hindu understands without ...
— Ancient and Modern Physics • Thomas E. Willson
... stroking his long, untrimmed beard. "But I do not. We are both strong enough to resist all attacks. Any suspicion against Miassoyedeff must be removed. I will see that the Emperor promotes him to-morrow. Our one stumbling-block is ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... could have said on this point has been so much more ably stated by one whose enlightened view of geological science has taken away some difficulties from its cultivators, and, I hope, removed a stumbling-block from many respectable individuals, that I should only weaken by adding to the argument. [I allude to the critique of Dr. Ure's Geology in the British Review, for July, 1829; an Essay, equally worthy of ...
— Decline of Science in England • Charles Babbage
... that many of the best of men are against such occupation on Sunday, and that to abstain is to be on the safe side." So the novels were put away, and Sunday afternoon with the long evening became rather a stumbling-block to Lady Laura. ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there that today and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... notions as to space have been a great stumbling-block to realists. When two men look at the same table, it is supposed that what the one sees and what the other sees are in the same place. Since the shape and colour are not quite the same for the two men, this raises a difficulty, ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... government, to deprive her of her child. On the supposition that Pearl, as already hinted, was of demon origin, these good people not unreasonably argued that a Christian interest in the mother's soul required them to remove such a stumbling-block from her path. If the child, on the other hand, were really capable of moral and religious growth, and possessed the elements of ultimate salvation, then, surely, it would enjoy all the fairer prospect of these advantages by being transferred ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... ever sustained him; her solemn promise to be his wife, her tender love and constant affection-all these had rendered his hardships mere pastimes. But now matters were to assume a different aspect; a new stumbling-block was to appear in his path, and a most ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... occurs in one other place in the New Testament: this is (1 John 4:18), "Perfect love casteth out fear, because fear hath torment." In this last instance, it is evident that the idea of punishment is not found, but only that of suffering. In the LXX. (Ezek. 14:3, 4, 7) it is translated "stumbling-block," and means, says Schleusner (Lexicon in LXX.), "all that is the source of misfortune or suffering." Donnegan gives as its meaning, "the act of clipping or pruning; generally, restriction, restraint, reproof, check, chastisement; ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... excitement and forlorn war-threatened days, till 1775, with but scant popularity and slight happiness, with bitter differences of opinion with his people over atonement and imputation, and that ever-present stumbling-block to New England divines,—baptism under the Half Covenant,—till ...
— Diary of Anna Green Winslow - A Boston School Girl of 1771 • Anna Green Winslow
... than a bit of potter's clay, and the master potter—God help me!—is my own father! It's all plain enough now. He saw that I wasn't going to fall in with the attorney-general scheme; or perhaps he saw that I might be a stumbling-block if I should; so he planned this thing with McVickar—planned it deliberately! There is no fight, after all; it's merely one of the moves in the game that the 'boss' and the railroad should seem to be fighting each other. Good God! I can't believe it, and yet I've got to believe ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... lend themselves but ill to this interpretation, but texts never present difficulties to any one but the pundits; the poetry of the people is more subtle than science: it can never be held in check, and it overcomes the obstacles which prove a stumbling-block to criticism. By a happy turn of the imagination popular fancy has welded the two Marys together and thus created the marvellous type of Mary Magdalen. It has been made sacred by legend, and it is the legend ...
— Balthasar - And Other Works - 1909 • Anatole France
... of moral obligation or personal justice. Rightfully employed, the caucus in not only useful but necessary in the conduct and government of party interests. Wrongfully applied, it is a weakness, an offense, a stumbling-block in the way of ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... confirmed by the Roman and the Jewish historians. But, indeed, the event itself is not the subject of controversy. It is the conclusions drawn from it by the followers of Christ that are disputed. "Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling-block, and to the Greeks foolishness,"[081] still raises ...
— Exposition of the Apostles Creed • James Dodds
... being of the same age with Cicero, had already pushed himself into prominence, who was surnamed the Great, and who "triumphed" during these very two years in which Cicero began his career; who through Cicero's whole life was his bugbear, his stumbling-block, and his mistake. But on that side were the "optimates," the men who, if they did not lead, ought to lead the Republic; those who, if they were not respectable, ought to be so; those who, if they did not love their country, ought to love it. If there was a hope, it was with them. ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... that, before Costantine abolished the punishment of malefactors on the cross, the Christians, who well knew with S. Paul that Christ crucified was to the Jews a stumbling-block, and to the gentiles foolishness', prudently abstained from representing our Saviour nailed to the cross, and used rather to depict a lamb with a cross near it, of which instances may he seen in Rork's Hierurgia p. 520. The ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs
... not severe, and many men going out for a life of pleasure would find little difficulty in fulfilling them. The stumbling-block to most aspirants would be in the two first clauses, for one need only glance over the peerage to find to his astonishment how few really representatives of ancient families are possessed of good incomes. The large incomes are enjoyed by the self-made men who have been ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... the Divine Comedy involves, and before the fifteenth century Dante could hardly have found an illustrator. Botticelli's illustrations are crowded with incident, blending, with a naive carelessness of pictorial propriety, three phases of the same scene into one plate. The grotesques, so often a stumbling-block to painters, who forget that the words of a poet, which only feebly present an image to the mind, must be lowered in key when translated into visible form, make one regret that he has not rather chosen for illustration the more subdued imagery of the Purgatorio. Yet in the [53] ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... Christians is that natives have told me that none but missionaries and a few associated with them wished them to become Christians; that English people generally wished them to remain Hindus. It can be conceived how great is the stumbling-block thus put in our way. A Church of England missionary of great experience once said to me, "Would that there were no Europeans near us! We might then hope for progress." I am not to vindicate the remark. I mention it to show ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... blame it all to the steward, or to any other individual. Lay it rather to human nature, that stumbling-block of so many ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... My spirit is an offering(15) of the cross, which is a stumbling-block to unbelievers, but to us salvation and life eternal. "Where is the wise man? where the disputer?" [I Cor. 1:20.] Where is the boasting of those called prudent? For our God, Jesus Christ, was, according to the dispensation of God, conceived in the womb of Mary of the ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... motive of Judas Iscariot and of his Master; it must explain the conduct of Stylites on his pillar or Tiberius at Caprae or A Kempis in his cell or of Nelson in the cockpit of the Victory."] have been a stumbling-block to many, we must pause to note their inaccuracy, while insisting that they are no part of a sound utilitarian, or eudemonistic, theory. Far from the desire for happiness being the universal motive, it is one of the less common springs of conduct. Habit, inertia, instinct, ideals drive us this ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... said almost angrily, "I can't. And that's the rotten side of money. That's the stumbling-block for everybody who succeeds in collecting a lot of it. The distribution is infinitely harder than the collecting. I think we'd better pull up stakes, go back to New ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... the senses could enjoy. I find I could not translate the manuscript well. If it were not a manuscript I should not be so easily intimidated; but the hand, and errors in orthography or abbreviations, are a stumbling-block at the first setting out. I cannot bear to do anything I cannot do well; and I should lose ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... roused to what he called "just indignation," on that which to others appeared small provocation. The flash was always momentary, but it was severe while it lasted; and it had ever been a cross and a stumbling-block to him, spite of the polite name by which he called its manifestations. It was probably the recollection of the trouble it had brought to him, and of the struggles which even now it cost him, an elderly man, which made him so intolerant ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... Republicans, but the view taken by Southern Democratic leaders, of his "Freeport doctrine," or doctrine of "unfriendly legislation." His opposition to the Lecompton Constitution in the Senate, grievous stumbling-block to their schemes as it had proved, might yet be passed over as a reckless breach of party discipline; but this new announcement at Freeport was unpardonable doctrinal heresy, as rank as the abolitionism of Giddings ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... and apparently very serene. I shall be told, perhaps, that red cheeks are not incompatible with fanaticism and mysticism; but I fancy that Alyosha was more of a realist than any one. Oh! no doubt, in the monastery he fully believed in miracles, but, to my thinking, miracles are never a stumbling-block to the realist. It is not miracles that dispose realists to belief. The genuine realist, if he is an unbeliever, will always find strength and ability to disbelieve in the miraculous, and if he is confronted with a miracle as an irrefutable fact ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Goetz. It is as a tale, a narrative, and not as a drama, that it is to be read if it is to be enjoyed without the sense of artistic failure. The anachronisms with which the piece abounds, and which Hegel caustically noted, have been a further stumbling-block to the critics.[106] In the second scene of the first Act, Luther is introduced for no other purpose than to expound ideas which come strangely from his mouth, but which were effervescing in the minds of Goethe and his contemporaries—the ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... a worse stumbling-block in aesthetics, delusive and deceptive, casting a veil of borrowed splendour and sham beauty over everything? They sang of "The Knights' Vigil of Light." What knights' vigil? With patents of nobility and students' certificates; ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... and career were too important to be tacked to any woman's apron-strings, even though that woman was herself, and the plans she had so much delighted in she could see worthily carried out. She would not be the hindrance and stumbling-block to any good life, and least of all to his. But, until he met with a woman to be his wife and helpmate, she rejoiced to feel that she was first in his heart. When that event took place, as it ought to do before long, she would of course retire to a second and inferior position; ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... being weak is defiled. But meat commendeth us not to God: for neither if we eat are we the better; neither if we eat not are we the worse. But take heed lest by any means this liberty of yours become a stumbling-block to them that are weak. For if any man see thee which hast knowledge, sit at meat in the idol's temple, shall not the conscience of him which is weak be emboldened to eat those things which are offered to idols; and through thy knowledge ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... circumstances of the Scriptures. A few specimens will show how the latter strove to meet the great want. The coming of our Lord Jesus, 1 Cor. i. 7, is only the dawn of a temporal kingdom; "Christ is a stumbling-block to the Jews," because he would not throw off the Roman yoke as his countrymen had fondly hoped; the Apostle's determination "to know nothing but Jesus Christ crucified," meant that he knew nothing whatever of the second coming of Christ; "the Spirit ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... oil. bar, stile, barrier; [barrier to vehicles] turnstile, turnpike; gate, portcullis. beaver dam; trocha^; barricade &c (defense) 717; wall, dead wall, sea wall, levee breakwater, groyne^; bulkhead, block, buffer; stopper &c 263; boom, dam, weir, burrock^. drawback, objection; stumbling-block, stumbling-stone; lion in the path, snag; snags and sawyers. encumbrance, incumbrance^; clog, skid, shoe, spoke; drag, drag chain, drag weight; stay, stop; preventive, prophylactic; load, burden, fardel^, onus, millstone round one's neck, impedimenta; dead ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Christian at all, is one of those who will 'be saved so as by fire;' he is very loose and careless in his talk, is in bad repute for honesty, and, although not guilty of any offense which church authorities can take hold of, does many things which grieve the people of God, and are a stumbling-block to others. Yet, of his eleven or twelve children, seven are valued and useful Christians, and there is every reason to anticipate that the rest, as they grow up, will follow in the same course. Now, solve me this difficulty, that the careless professor should be so blessed in his ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... viz. that "everything is given," either at the beginning or at the end, whilst evolution is nothing if it is not, on the contrary, "that which gives." Let us take care not to confound evolution and development. There is the stumbling-block of the usual transformist theories, and Mr Bergson devotes to it a closely argued and singularly penetrating criticism, by an example which he analyses in detail. ("Creative Evolution", chapter i.) These ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy
... for some inscrutable reason a stumbling-block to average cooks, and even by experienced housekeepers is often looked upon as troublesome and expensive. Where large amounts of fresh meat are used in its preparation, the latter adjective might be appropriate; but stock ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell
... services to that tribe. His skill and patience made him all important in making treaties and negotiations with "The Six Nations" and other Indians. The Patriots very early realized that the Indians were to become a stumbling-block to any attempt at treating with Canada or maintaining what is called civilized warfare (can any warfare be civilized?). Schuyler, Hawley, Oliver Wolcott, and other distinguished men of high character attempted in vain to hold the Indians to neutrality. Congress at one time voted that Indians ...
— Colonel John Brown, of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, the Brave Accuser of Benedict Arnold • Archibald Murray Howe
... that be a stumbling-block in the way of your tender conscience. I am going to Killpatricks-town, where you'll be as welcome as light. You know them, they know you; at least you shall have a proper letter of invitation from my Lord and my Lady Killpatrick, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... a stumbling-block to modern thought as they were a help to the contemporaries of Jesus. The study of Jesus' life cannot ignore this fact, nor make little of it. It is fair to insist, however, that the question is one of evidence, not of metaphysical possibility. Men are wisely slow to-day to claim that they can ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... had tried to be civil to his sister after that, but since he was a stickler for social perfection and advancement, and so eager to get up in the world himself, he could not understand how she could possibly have done any such thing. He resented bitterly the stumbling-block she had put in his path. Now, among other things, his enemies would have this to throw in his face if they wanted to—and they would want to, ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... from home was his chief stumbling-block. He loved his father and mother with almost passionate devotion; he clung to his home with an intensity of concentrated love. He really had tried to please them, and to do his best; but yet they didn't seem to give him credit for it. ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... from the Wichita Eagle is noteworthy because in the Kansas campaign the year before, and in all previous years, it had been abusive beyond description and had at all times put every possible stumbling-block in the way of woman suffrage and berated ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... insurrectionary forces Westward and Northward. The provision in the Federal Constitution that no new State shall be formed within the jurisdiction of any other State without the consent of the Legislature of the State as well as of Congress, had always been the stumbling-block in the way of West Virginia's independence. Despite the hostilities and antagonisms of the two populations, Virginia would insist on retaining this valuable section of country within her own jurisdiction. But ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... the mercy of God to me, a poor worthless worm! After the prayer-meeting, two of the friends begged me in future to engage occasionally in public prayer. I have not done so latterly, because it is a mighty effort to me. But God forbid that my silence should be a stumbling-block to any. At the morning prayer-meeting, unasked, but not unmoved, I feebly opened my mouth, believing it to be my duty; and was blest in so doing.—This morning I awoke with 'Give unto the Lord of Thy substance.' Being about to purchase wearing apparel, I resolved ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... them as we cannot know them. Great or small, they are his. Great are all his results; small are all his beginnings. That we have to send many of his creatures out of this phase of their life because of their hurtfulness in this phase of ours, is to me no stumbling-block. The very fact that this has always had to be done, the long protracted combat of the race with such, and the constantly repeated though not invariable victory of the man, has had an essential and incalculable share in the development of humanity, which ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald
... duck-pond, and the commotion and consternation he created there have not yet subsided. All the reigning poets in this country except Emerson denied him, and many of our minor poets still keep up a hostile sissing and cackling. He will probably always be more or less a stumbling-block to the minor poet, because of his indifference to the things which to the minor poet are all in all. He was a poet without what is called artistic form, and without technique, as that word is commonly understood. ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... the light of this double way of viewing the right balance of the mind, the better understand the combination of earnestness with tolerance which inconsiderate persons are apt to find so awkward a stumbling-block in the scheme of philosophic liberalism. Many people in our time have so ill understood the doctrine of liberty, that in some of the most active circles in society they now count you a bigot if you ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 3 (of 3) - Essay 2: The Death of Mr Mill - Essay 3: Mr Mill's Autobiography • John Morley
... Self was the stumbling-block with most of my correspondents, I was anxious to write another book at once, also in the guise of a romance, to serve as a little lamp of love whereby my readers might haply discover the real character ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... become, and has indeed become, burdensome to a later age which no longer holds these ideas. Further, the doctrine of the Trinity has mixed up a fundamental truth of religion with abstruse philosophical speculations, and this has provided a stumbling-block rather ...
— Rudolph Eucken • Abel J. Jones
... of the times! It clears a way for itself, boldly pushing aside every stumbling-block in the shape of outworn prejudices and decaying customs. A century dawned, the promise of liberty and tolerance flaming on its horizon, to none so sweet as to the Jew. Who has the heart to cast the first stone upon a much-tried ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... British resentment strong against his new tariff. Again, ten years later, when reciprocity with the United States was finding favor in Canada, imperialists urged the counterclaims of a policy of imperial reciprocity, of special tariff privileges to other parts of the Empire. The stumbling-block in the way of such a policy was England's adherence to free trade. For the protectionist colonies preference would mean only a reduction of an existing tariff. For the United Kingdom, however, it would mean a complete reversal of fiscal policy and the abandonment of free ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... in fact, has proved a stumbling-block rather than an attraction. It is a new idea suddenly presented to people who have never considered the subject of recreation at all, save in connection with skittles, so to speak. Now it seems hardly necessary to erect a splendid palace for the better convenience ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... as simple as the discharge of a bullet from a rifle, and its masterpieces imply an infinitely greater force behind them." This true saying introduces us to the hardest problem of criticism, the paradox of literature, the stumbling-block of rhetoricians. To analyse the precise method whereby a great personality can make itself felt in words, even while it neglects and contemns the study of words, would be to lay bare the secrets of religion and life—it is beyond human competence. Nevertheless a brief ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... biographers, that he spoke at several meetings in Dublin. At the one in which he made his first appearance in public he aroused a large assembly to enthusiasm by his fervid eloquence, and yet, notwithstanding all his efforts, his toleration unfortunately became the great stumbling-block in his attempts on behalf of Ireland, for we learn that ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... would make his unfortunate ending a stumbling-block to those who cannot acquiesce in the fact that in every soul tares and wheat in various proportions grow side by side, and that which growth is to be victorious is not possible to predict with certainty; who deem it impossible that one who ends ill could ever have lived ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... by. And so I say to you who are wiser by the follies of your fathers, look not back too scornfully; for he who is ever watching to mock at the tripping of other men's feet is like to fall over a very small stumbling-block himself. ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... lad when he conducted experiments in competition, with his own hand, for a new Government gun, introducing a bullet of his own conception, firing every shot, and triumphing over every competitor. So the "Enfield" or "Pritchett rifle" brought him fame; but it proved the stumbling-block of his artistic career, for he found out for himself the truth that a man known for one thing has little chance in any other field—particularly in the artistic field. He was glad, however, when the Government eventually decided to manufacture ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... be more "proper" than she was at first. Her improprieties, so far as I could ever learn, arose from nothing more heinous than her possession of an intelligence more powerful and a courage more daring than that to which any of her neighbours could lay claim. Her outspokenness was a stumbling-block to many; and the offence of speaking her mind was aggravated by the circumstance, not always present at such times, that she had a mind to speak. To quote the language in which Farmer Perryman once explained ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... your former worthlessness." Thirdly, because, "in order to do away with man's presumption, the grace of God is commended in Jesus Christ, though no merits of ours went before," as Augustine says (De Trin. xiii, 17). Fourthly, because "man's pride, which is the greatest stumbling-block to our clinging to God, can be convinced and cured by humility so great," as Augustine says in the same place. Fifthly, in order to free man from the thraldom of sin, which, as Augustine says (De Trin. xiii, 13), "ought to be done in such a way that the devil should ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... God sent the promised Saviour. He, the Lord of heaven, came and lived as one of us. He gathered around him a few faithful souls, he preached his gospel of light and comfort to the poor, and wept over the very woes he had come down to remove. His humility proved a stumbling-block to the selfishness of the world, and his own nation rejected him. He conquered death and returned to his Father's home, but his spirit, which had always been present in some measure, now came with force, and began, through his followers, the task of ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... publishers are really more sinned against than sinning. They spend large sums, and incur large risks, in launching new ventures on the fickle sea of popular favor, and often their trouble is taken all in vain. It is really the stupid egotism of authors that is the stumbling-block in the way of true literature,—each little scribbler that produces a shilling sensational thinks his or her own work a marvel of genius, and nothing can shake them from their obstinate conviction. If every man or woman, before putting pen to paper, would be sure they had ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... your so frequently personifying nature as "selecting," as "preferring," as "seeking only the good of the species," etc., etc. To the few this is as clear as daylight, and beautifully suggestive, but to many it is evidently a stumbling-block. I wish, therefore, to suggest to you the possibility of entirely avoiding this source of misconception in your great work (if not now too late), and also in any future editions of the "Origin," and I think it may be done without difficulty and very effectually ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... Balthasar, "we have the habit of studying closely the things which chance to lie at our feet, giving but a look at the greater objects in the distance. Thou seest now but the title—KING OF THE JEWS; wilt thou lift thine eyes to the mystery beyond it, the stumbling-block will disappear. Of the title, a word. Thy Israel hath seen better days—days in which God called thy people endearingly his people, and dealt with them through prophets. Now, if in those days he promised them the Savior I saw—promised him as KING OF THE JEWS—the ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... yellow oxalis and the creeping white houstonia; and from a crevice in the wall, out of reach, leaned a stalk of goldenrod in full bloom. The reader may smile, if he will, but this last flower was a surprise and a stumbling-block. A vernal goldenrod! Dr. Chapman's Flora made no mention of such an anomaly. Sow thistles, too, looked strangely anachronistic. I had never thought of them as harbingers of springtime. The truth did not break upon me till a week or so afterward. Then, on the way to the beach at Daytona, where ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... given to the sick, which have been such a stumbling-block to our Allopathic brethren, their size is simply the result of the most careful experiments. Everyone can understand that if we give an Allopathic dose of Ipecac to a patient already sick and vomiting, or of Veratrum album to a patient suffering from Asiatic cholera or ...
— Personal Experience of a Physician • John Ellis
... been done since 1860 to realise the millennium then promised, contributed to the outbreak which was quelled when troops arrived from the mainland, but the ministers were blamed for not having taken better precautions against its occurrence. Another stumbling-block lay in the path of Ricasoli, namely, the application of the law for the suppression of religious houses, and the expropriation of ecclesiastical property. After an unsuccessful endeavour to cope with it, he dissolved the Chamber, ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... excellence with the pencil, which was manifested at a remarkably early age, he is said to have preferred the lessons of Angelo the fencing, to those of Burgess the drawing, master. He was not distinguished at school as a classical scholar, and Latin verses in particular proved so serious a stumbling-block that he always got a schoolfellow to do them for him. His famous friend and fellow-pupil, Thackeray, carried an indelible personal reminiscence of the Charterhouse about him in the shape of a broken nose, a ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... "Ah, true! I had forgotten that delectable passage in my story. Why, man, Bermudez went to her, told her that my aspirations and my prospects were so and so,—faring, brilliant,—that she, only she, stood in the way, an impassable stumbling-block to my glorious advancement,—told her, (devil!) that, with all my fine passion for her, he was aware that I was not without embarrassment on this score,—appealed to her disinterested love, to her pride,—don't you ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... that the ultimate truth is commensurate with reason, finds no stumbling-block in the doctrine that there may be laws through whose action inspiration is the enlightenment of mind as it exists in man, by mind as it underlies the motions which make up matter. The truth thus reached is not the formulae of the Calculus, nor the verbiage ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... Pitt, who was, probably, already resolved on accomplishing a legislative Union, thought, as far as we can judge, that Emancipation should follow, not precede, the Union, lest, if it should precede it, it might prove rather a stumbling-block in the way than a stepping-stone to the still more ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... in passing, the effect produced upon my mind by the first sight of the older editions of "the Garden of the Soul". I remember the stumbling-block it was to me, my sense of womanly delicacy was shocked. It was a dark page in my experience, when first I knelt at the feet of a mortal man to confess what should have been poured into the ear of God alone. I cannot dwell ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
... attention which she would gladly have dispensed with in the circumstances, since Eldred basely deserted her on each occasion; and she was introduced to Norton, who inspected her critically and flagrantly, as a possible stumbling-block to a promising career. Altogether, she was beginning to see India in a new perspective. Hitherto, in her aimless wanderings with Michael, she had merely looked on at its vast and varied panorama ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... to his breastplate,—'That gentleman, Captain Waverley, my grandsire,' he said, 'with two hundred horse, whom he levied within his own bounds, discomfited and put to the rout more than five hundred of these Highland reivers, who have been ever LAPIS OFFENSIONIS, ET PETRA SCANDALI, a stumbling-block and a rock of offence to the Lowland vicinage—he discomfited them, I say, when they had the temerity to descend to harry this country, in the time of the civil dissensions, in the year of grace sixteen hundred forty and two. And now, ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... the question of lengthened vitality between us. There is no miracle about this matter at all, and science finds no stumbling-block in the way of a complete explication of this riddle, if, in the light of nature, there be any such riddle. We claim there is not, when we interpret nature in the light of nature's God. Let the earth, or rather its silicious and other decaying ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... a passion is a stumbling-block to the practical man, and to the Philistine foolishness. Yet you may hear men praised because up to the day of death they were diligent in business,—business which added to life nothing more significant than that useful thing called money. Thoreau used to say that if a man spent ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... begin with the Bible," was the rejoinder, "you are three parts gone on the road to infidelity, and will go the other part before you know where you are. The Bible is not without its value to us the clergy, but for the laity it is a stumbling-block which cannot be taken out of their way too soon or too completely. Of course, I mean on the supposition that they read it, which, happily, they seldom do. If people read the Bible as the ordinary British churchman or churchwoman ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... to think that our fighting and victories may go hand in hand with a measure which is to prevent future war, he is 'opposed to the Administration,' is 'a selfish traitor thinking of nothing but the Nigger,' and altogether a stumbling-block and an untimely meddler. If he protest that he cares no more for the welfare of the Negro than for that of the man in the moon, he is still reviled as an 'abolitionist.' If he insist that emancipation will end the war, his 'conservative' foe becomes pathetic over his ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... spirit of this little book. I know of no inharmony here, however we may differ upon minor points of expediency as to the best methods of working for the political advancement of woman. And further, it is the deep conviction of us all that the chief stumbling-block in the way of our obtaining the use of the ballot, is the apprehension among men of low degree that they will surely be limited in their base and brutal and sensual indulgencies when women are ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... slaves, and the Bari natives assured me that there were large depots of slaves in the interior belonging to the traders that would be marched to Gondokoro for shipment to the Soudan a few hours after my departure. I was the great stumbling-block to the trade, and my presence at Gondokoro was considered as an unwarrantable intrusion upon a locality sacred to slavery and iniquity. There were about six hundred of the traders' people at Gondokoro, whose time was passed in drinking, quarrelling, and ill-treating the slaves. ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... this stumbling-block of a Thurstane. In the presence of a handsome rival, who, moreover, had started first in the race, slow was far from being sure. Coronado had discovered, by long experience in flirtation and much intelligent meditation upon it, that, if a man wants to win a woman, ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... made of it, as my opponent, or any true lover of the poet and the integrity of his language, can possibly be; but I see nothing rational in refusing to correct an almost self-evident misprint, which would redeem a fine passage that otherwise must always remain a stumbling-block to the most intelligent reader. We have all I trust but one object, i. e. to free the text of our great poet from obvious errors occasioned by extremely incorrect printing in the folios, and at ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 184, May 7, 1853 • Various
... a cattle-breeder avails himself. Pages would be required thus to state an objection and remove it. It would be better, as you wish to persuade, to say nothing. Leave out several sentences, and in a future edition bring it out more fully. Between the throwing down of such a stumbling-block in the way of the reader, and the passage to the working ants, in page 460, there are pages required; and these ants are a bathos to him before he has recovered from the shock of being called upon to believe the eye to have been brought to perfection, from a state of blindness or purblindness, ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... feature of the New Thought which is the greatest stumbling-block to those who view the movement from the outside is the claim it makes for Thought-power as an active factor in the affairs of daily life. As a mere set of speculative opinions people might be willing to pigeon-hole it along with the philosophic systems of Kant or ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... balance of the mind. To know that in the Church there have been sorrows and scandals, without the promises of Christ having failed, and even that it had to be so, fulfilling His word, "it must needs be that scandals come" (St. Matthew XVIII. 7), that they are therefore rather a confirmation than a stumbling-block to our faith, this is a necessary safeguard. To have some unpretentious knowledge of what is said and thought concerning Holy Scripture, to know at least something about Modernism and other phases of current opinion ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... gravely embraced. He may safely trust, if the society be in a normal condition, to its justice of assimilation and rejection. There are a few individuals for whom newness is a recommendation. But what are these few among the many to whom newness is a stumbling-block? Old ideas may survive merely because they are old. A new one will certainly not, among a considerable body of men in a healthy social state, gain any acceptance worth speaking of, merely because ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... was a very natural one. The fact of Charles being a Protestant had been the stumbling-block in the way of the match. A dispensation for the marriage of a Catholic princess with the Protestant prince of England had been asked from the pope, but had not yet been given. Charles had come to Madrid with the empty hope that his presence would ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... doubtless we are so to understand it when Holy Scripture warns us that the wisdom of God is foolishness before men, and when St. Paul observed that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is foolishness unto the Greeks, as well as unto the Jews a stumbling-block. For, after all, one truth cannot contradict another, and the light of reason is no less a gift of God than that of revelation. Also it is a matter of no difficulty among theologians who are expert in their profession, that the motives of credibility justify, ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... mother of evil!" cried the Muggletonian, a baleful light burning in his eyes. "Scarlet woman, whose vain apparel, whose uncovered hair and bared bosom, whose light songs and laughter have long been an offense and a stumbling-block to the righteous—thy cup of iniquity is full, thy life is forfeit, thy hour is come!" He drew a knife from his bosom and with an unearthly cry flourished it above his head, then rushed upon her, to be met by Landless, who hurled himself upon the would-be murderer ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... District of Columbia, he should be satisfied. All he wished was that it should be referred to some committee. He begged those members who could command a majority of the house, and who, like himself, were unwilling to make the abolition question a stumbling-block, to take a course which should treat petitions with respect. He wished a report. It would be easy to show that such petitions relative to the District of Columbia ought not to be granted. He believed the true course to be to let ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... grimy vaults of the British Museum have at last been brought to light, and the new Sculpture Room now opened to the public will amply repay the trouble of a visit, even from those to whom art is a stumbling-block and a rock of offence. For setting aside the mere beauty of form, outline and mass, the grace and loveliness of design and the delicacy of technical treatment, here we have shown to us what the Greeks and Romans thought about death; and the philosopher, the preacher, the ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... adorning by their lives the faith and doctrine of that Master whose name they bear. Hence arises the deplorable condition of the natives, who are brought into contact chiefly with the lowest and worst of the Europeans, and who, beside many other hindrances, have the great stumbling-block of bad examples, and evil lives, constantly before them in their intercourse with the Christians. And, as though that were not enough, as though fresh obstacles to the conversion of these nations to God's truth were needed and required, our holy religion is presented ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... room for everybody to go his own way without fear of running his head into people whom he wished to avoid. Our three friends, however, seemed fated to find in the person of Noaks junior a perpetual stumbling-block and cause of disquietude and annoyance. They had no sooner succeeded in setting him at a distance when an incident occurred which brought them once more into ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... Mr. Burmester, that the one idea at the Hochschule is technique, is not new by any means. In every school there are students with great talent, who find it difficult to subject themselves to the rigid discipline required by the teacher. It is the stumbling-block on which many fall. It is, nevertheless, a fact that without a solid technique the highest perfection in playing cannot be reached, and it is usually regarded as a hopeless case when the pupil antagonises the teacher. Many pupils are apt to try and run ahead ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... walking hastily up and down, Rodin continued: "Yes, it is worth attempting. The more I reflect upon it, the more feasible it appears. Only how to get at that wretch, Saint-Colombe? Well, there is Jacques Dumoulin, and the other—where to find her? That is the stumbling-block. I must not shout before I am out of ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... stumbling-block; the deputies could not agree on the details, passions were aroused, violent discussions took place. The Carlists, seeing a favorable opportunity, plunged the Basque provinces, Navarra, Cataluna, lower Aragon, ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... clean and single, I talk of common things— Words of the wharf and the market-place And the ware the merchant brings: Favour to those I favour, But a stumbling-block to my foes. Many there be that hate us," Said our ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling |
