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More "Oppressive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... forest my forebodings became painfully oppressive. I imparted them to Clayley. My friend had been occupied ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... more than that. For when later, at Argeles, I looked over the day, I was able to formulate for the first time the extraordinary impressions that Lourdes had given me. There was everything hostile to my peace—an incalculable crowd, an oppressive heat, dust, noise, weariness; there was the disappointment of the churches and the image; there was the sour unfamiliarity of the place and the experience; and yet I was neither troubled nor depressed nor irritated nor disappointed. ...
— Lourdes • Robert Hugh Benson
... jungle, possible only to such meteorological conditions as obtained there. Wind there was none, nor sunshine. Only occasionally was the sun of that reeking world visible through the omnipresent fog, a pale, wan disk; always the atmosphere was one of oppressive, hot, humid vapor. In the exact center of the city rose an immense structure, a terraced cone of buildings, as though immense disks of smaller and smaller diameter had been piled one upon the other. In ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... would be unable to improve their condition very materially except by government aid, and, even when so raised to a somewhat higher level, have no power to harm capitalism. Compulsory arbitration or some similar device must therefore replace such crudely restrictive and oppressive measures as have hitherto been applied ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... dead season of Paris, and everything had the air of suspended animation. The solitude of the Place Vendome was something oppressive; I felt, as I trod its lonely sidewalk, as if I were wandering through Tadmor in the Desert. We were indeed as remote, as unfriended,—I will not say as melancholy or as slow,—as Goldsmith by the side of the lazy Scheldt or the wandering Po. Not a soul did either ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... so perfect as to be almost oppressive, until half an hour before sunrise, when a low strain of sweetest music arose on the air, gradually swelling in volume, and finally ending in a wild burst which caused Poyor to ...
— The Search for the Silver City - A Tale of Adventure in Yucatan • James Otis
... later I followed, glad to get out of the oppressive atmosphere, and joined him in the back of Vincenzo's drug-store, where he was again at work. As there was no back window there, it was quite a job to lead the wires around the outside from the back yard ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... of these animals is an old story, but it loses so much in the telling, that their gentleness, obedience, and sagacity seemed as strange to me as if I had never heard or read of these attributes. The swinging motion, under a hot sun, is very oppressive, but compensated for by being so high above the dust. The Mahout, or driver, guides by poking his great toes under either ear, enforcing obedience with an iron goad, with which he hammers the animal's head with quite as much ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... was affected by the purling of Natasha's voice, mingled with the quavering hum of the samovar, and recalled the noisy evening parties of her youth—the coarseness of the young men, whose breath always smelled of vodka—their cynical jokes. She remembered all this, and an oppressive sense of pity for her own self gently stirred her worn, ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... warm weather came, Ernestine began to fail rapidly. She suffered no new pain, and uttered no complaint, but as the days went by, and the intense heat of summer burned all purity and life from the air, she just seemed to droop, and bow her head feebly beneath the oppressive heat; and the frail stem of life snapped, with the weight of its own slight self. They had hoped against hope, that the sad end could be fought off, and with the first coming of warm days, Mrs. Dering had proposed ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... the common near the station, and entered the pillared aisles of the pines, the air was less oppressive, but a dun haze seemed on every side to curtain the horizon, and the stars looked bleared and tired in the breathless vault above her. A man driving two cows toward town, stared at her; then a wagon drawn by four horses rattled ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... The practical test of night temperature is whether one wishes for a blanket to sleep under. In Madras and Bombay all the year round, in New York through several months of summer, in Paris or sometimes even in London for a few days in July or August, a light blanket is oppressive, and the continuance of the high day temperature through the hours of darkness exhausts and enfeebles all but vigorous constitutions. But in South Africa it is only along the coast, in places like Durban, Delagoa Bay, or Beira, that one feels inclined to dispense ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... this oppressive thought, that my wife could not but notice my trouble. But how could I tell her of the spectral inverted commas that dodged every move of her dear head?—tell her that our own original firstborn, just beginning to talk as never baby talked, was an unblushing plagiarism of his great-great-great-grandfather, ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... exercising his autocratic power in a comfortable arm chair. Like the Greek gods, he went down from his Olympus and took his place in the ranks of ordinary mortals, superintending the work with his own eyes, and taking part in it with his own hands. If he was as arbitrary and oppressive as any of the pyramid-building Pharaohs, he could at least say in self-justification that he did not spare himself any more than his people, but exposed himself freely to the discomforts and dangers under which thousands of ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... Russian training and traditions, there was a party of officers whose admiration for the war-lord ran away with their discretion. And the celebrated loan of half a milliard francs, which Austrian financiers undertook to advance to Bulgaria—on outrageously oppressive conditions—set the crown to the work of many years. This transaction was not intended by either party to be purely financial. Its political bearings were evidenced by the circumstances in which it ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... her niece were on the terrace in the evening coolness. The atmosphere was less oppressive here by the flowing tide than anywhere else in London; but even here there was a heaviness in the night air, and Henriette sprawled her long thin legs wearily on the cushioned bench where she lay, and vowed that it would be sheer folly for ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... and entered the room she indicated. From that room, too, the daylight was completely excluded, and it had an airless smell that was oppressive. A fire had been lately kindled in the damp old-fashioned grate, and it was more disposed to go out than to burn up, and the reluctant smoke which hung in the room seemed colder than the clearer air,—like our own marsh mist. Certain wintry branches of candles on the high ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... has occasionally a remarkably fine view of the Himalayas, mountains intercepted by large tracts of very high land, probably Bootan. The coldest weather we have experienced here was when the thermometer sank to 46 degrees; even in the middle of the day the sun is not oppressive. It is singular enough, that the first attempts, so to speak, at a Fauna occur here. The woods abound with small birds. I shot one squirrel, with a very short tail and rounded head. Red deer (the Gyee of the Burmese) occur, though rarely. Two or three solitary snipes may ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... Among them were the following: "Resolved, That it is the deliberate judgment of this Synod that the rebellion against the constitutional Government of this land is most wicked in its inception, unjustifiable in its cause, unnatural in its character, inhuman in its prosecution, oppressive in its aims, and destructive in its results to the highest interests of morality and religion." "Resolved, That we deeply sympathize with all loyal citizens and Christian patriots in the rebellious portions of our country, and we cordially invite their cooperation, in ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente
... without word from her husband grew longer, and when at last a letter came it was vague and unsatisfactory. He hoped he was better; he hoped to find a foothold; and then came again several days of silence which were almost as oppressive to Mildred ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... and the soft south wind fanned his hollow and pallid cheek. Death was near, though the principle of life struggled hard with the King of Terrors. It was now that that bewildered and Pharasaical faith which had so long held this professor of religion in a bondage even more oppressive than open and announced sins, most felt the insufficiency of the creed in which he had rather been speculating than trusting all his life, to render the passing hour composed and secure. There had always been too much of self in Deacon Pratt's moral temperament, to ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... standing army? Not freedom. What's general happiness? Not universal misery. Liberty ain't the window-tax, is it? The Lords ain't the Commons, are they?' And the red-faced man, gradually bursting into a radiating sentence, in which such adjectives as 'dastardly,' 'oppressive,' 'violent,' and 'sanguinary,' formed the most conspicuous words, knocked his hat indignantly over his eyes, left the room, and slammed ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... on for a long time, swelling at moments into a roar of frenzied rage, then sinking to an uneven growl, broken by spasmodic yells. On asking what it meant, I was told that a crowd of poor folk had gathered before the Municipio to demonstrate against an oppressive tax called the fuocatico. This is simply hearth-money, an impost on each fireplace where food is cooked; the same tax which made trouble in old England, and was happily got rid of long ago. But the hungry plebs of Cotrone lacked vigour for any effective self-assertion; ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... the need for protection against oppressive feudal lords, as well as against thieves, swindlers, and dishonest workmen, had been the typically urban organization known as the merchant gild or the merchants' company. In the year 1500 the merchant gilds were everywhere on the decline, but they still preserved ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... I might as well try to bale all the salt water out of the sea as to mention every glaring and notorious instance where an oppressive government has appointed some discarder of all Higher Law for its servant in crushing the People. Come therefore ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... not yet experienced, to receive the complex impression which results from all these separate sensations. If he has not wandered over arid plains, if his feet have not been scorched by the burning sands of the desert, if he has not breathed the hot and oppressive air reflected from the glowing rocks, how shall he delight in the fresh air of a fine morning. The scent of flowers, the beauty of foliage, the moistness of the dew, the soft turf beneath his feet, how shall all these delight his senses. How shall the song of the birds arouse voluptuous emotion ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... the pall of fate over him—the awful stillness of the court was oppressive, was suffocating; a deathly faintness came upon him, for now, for the first time, he fully realized the awful doom that threatened him. Not long his nature bowed under the burden—his spirit rose to throw it off, and once more the fine ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... his orders were fulfilled, his army united, and that a battle claimed his presence. He at length departed from Wilna on the 16th of July, at half-past eleven at night; he stopped at Swentziani, while the heat of the 17th was most oppressive; on the 18th he was at Klubokoe: taking up his residence at a monastery, whence he observed that the village which it commanded bore more resemblance to an assemblage of savage huts ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... fades into night the monotony of this strange prospect grows oppressive. I seek the engine-room, and in the company of some of the few half-drowned sufferers we have already picked up from temporary rafts, I forget the general aspect of desolation in their individual misery. Later we meet the San Francisco packet, and transfer a number of our passengers. From ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... those silent hallways, the muffled rustling of her skirts and the sound of her flying feet on the waxed and polished wood. Then the silence suddenly became oppressive. ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... of ease is experienced shortly after taking Apis. The painful sensitiveness of the pit of the stomach and of the abdomen, together with the troublesome, disagreeable and oppressive distention and weight, soon disappear; the tongue gradually loses its swollen and cracked appearance, its dirty redness, its slimy coating, its sore spots, tardy indentations along its edges, the burnt feeling at its tip, which is dotted with very fine vesicles, that cause a good ...
— Apis Mellifica - or, The Poison of the Honey-Bee, Considered as a Therapeutic Agent • C. W. Wolf
... [Footnote: McAfee MSS.] He faced dangers from the waters, from the Indians, from lawless whites of his own race, and from the Spaniards themselves. The New Orleans customs officials were corrupt, [Footnote: Do. VOL III-8] and the regulations very absurd and oppressive. The policy of the Spanish home government in reference to the trade was unsettled and wavering, and the attitude towards it of the Governors of Louisiana changed with their varying interests, beliefs, caprices, and apprehensions. In consequence the conditions of the ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... reply, and it seemed to Ralph as if he could hear the pulsations of his own heart, so oppressive was the silence. ...
— Ralph Gurney's Oil Speculation • James Otis
... spread, luminous and crimson, over the dark and rugged ground on which they stood, and drew an innumerable variety of shadows from crag and hollow. An oppressive and sulphureous exhalation served to increase the gloomy and sublime terror of the place. But on turning from the mountain, and towards the distant and unseen ocean, the contrast was wonderfully great; the heavens serene and blue, the stars still and calm ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... latter be sufficiently secure, that of the former is liable to change. But, admitting every benefit which possibly can flow from a just administration, with wise and humane princes, a government which is not properly based on the people, possesses an unavoidable and oppressive evil of the first magnitude, in the necessity of supporting itself by physical force and onerous impositions, against the ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... possibly dispense. And the result was, that Lord North yielded to fear what he had refused to justice, and the next year brought in bills to grant the Irish the commercial equality which they demanded. Some of the most oppressive and vexatious of the penal laws were also relaxed; and some restrictions which the Navigation Act imposed on commerce with the West Indies were repealed. But, strange to say, the English ministers still ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... something to talk to, to caress and to protect. He ascended the bank, and regaining the highroad resumed his vagrant way. Noon was now at the full, and the sun's heat seemed to create a silence that was both oppressive and stifling. He walked slowly, and began to feel that perhaps after all he had miscalculated his staying powers, and that the burden of old age would, in the end, take vengeance upon him for running ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... thunderstorms become prevalent, and are accompanied by more or less humid conditions, which, though good for fruit-development, are not quite so enjoyable as the drier months. Summer is our rainy season, and the rainfalls are occasionally very heavy. The weather is warm and oppressive, particularly in the more tropical districts; but these very conditions are those that are best suited to the production of tropical fruits. The climate of those districts having the heaviest summer rainfall is somewhat trying to Europeans, particularly women, ...
— Fruits of Queensland • Albert Benson
... the sky lowered and the sun vanished, they grumbled again and spoke of the hailstones, which would come to dash the blossoms of the fruit-trees and break the young vines. All day the thunder had menaced but had not fulfilled the threat, and when evening fell the air was still heavily oppressive. A rumbling sound caused the people to run to their lattice windows and look up at the sky, wondering if the storm had come at last; but it was only the echo of carriage-wheels rolling through the mediaeval archway, which led to the fields beyond the town. The diligence drew up ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... not press her further, but they clung closely to her, walking beside her, Tommy clinging to a hand on one side, Margery and Hazel on the other as the four Meadow-Brook Girls walked slowly toward the cook tent. An oppressive silence hovered over the ordinarily merry party as they seated themselves at the tables. Cora sat pale and motionless. Patricia's place was vacant. No sooner had grace been said than ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Under Canvas • Janet Aldridge
... those wise, thoughtful men discussed the great question that had brought them together. What could the colonists do to escape the oppressive laws that the King of England was trying to force ...
— Four Great Americans: Washington, Franklin, Webster, Lincoln - A Book for Young Americans • James Baldwin
... against all extravagance. Both qualities combine in that tender delineation of character which is, after all, one of his greatest charms. His Puritan blood shows itself in sympathy, not with the stern side of the ancestral creed, but with the feebler characters upon whom it weighed as an oppressive terror. He resembles, in some degree, poor Clifford Pyncheon, whose love of the beautiful makes him suffer under the stronger will of his relatives and the prim stiffness of their home. He exhibits the suffering of such a character ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... taxations, which he, in barbarous wise, should at his conquest lay upon them; and exact and force them to be paid with an over, and above of what is appointed." He goes on to argue, that if this would be a severe trial at the hand of a foreigner, how much more oppressive would it appear if exercised by a fellow countryman. "If these things are intolerable, what shall we think of such men as shall join to all this compliance with a foreign prince, to rob the church of God? yea, that shall become a ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Less oppressive are the streets where commerce is more apparent. Here, unless you would be smirched, it is necessary to walk fast and hold your coat-tails in. Packing cases are going down slides. Bales are coming ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... till near the line, they were much incommoded by the shifting of the wind; and by scarcity of water, many of the crew falling ill of the scurvy. When it sometimes fell entirely calm, the heat of the sun became more than ordinarily oppressive, owing to which some of the men became quite distracted, others fell into high fevers, and some had fits like the epilepsy. Their water, as it grew low, stunk abominably, and became full of worms. The salt provisions were in a manner ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... such as magistrates and military commanders, that it is a necessity, no Athenian records of gambling made splendid by the talents of its professors, no contention that instead of violating morals it only violates a legal institution which is in many respects oppressive and unnatural, no possible plea that the instinct on which it is founded is a vital one. Prostitution can confuse the issue with all these excuses: gambling has none of them. Consequently, if Mrs Warren ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... The actual feature of society, and of the laws that lie at the bottom of its development, had first to be known, before a general movement could take place for the removal of conditions, recognized as oppressive and unjust. The breadth and intensity of such a movement depends, however, upon the measure of the understanding prevalent among the suffering social layers and circles, and upon the measure of freedom of motion that they ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... tyrants, except three thousand who would not submit to banishment. These he sold for slaves, and with the money, as if to insult over them, built a colonnade at Megalopolis. Lastly, unworthily trampling upon the Lacedaemonians in their calamities, and gratifying his hostility by a most oppressive and arbitrary action, he abolished the laws of Lycurgus, and forced them to educate their children, and live after the manner of the Achaeans; as though, while they kept to the discipline of Lycurgus, there was no ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... life is all delete; there is no red spot left, fires do not radiate, you burn your hands all the time on what seem to be cold stones. It is odd, zero is like summer heat to us now; and we like, when the thermometer outside is really low, a room at about 48 degrees: 60 degrees we find oppressive. Yet the natives keep their holes at 90 ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the sources of wealth that lay open to men, to whom commerce was officially barred and who were supposed to have no direct interest in financial operations. Far ampler spheres of pecuniary enrichment, more uniformly legal if sometimes as oppressive, were open to the class of men who by this time had been recognised as forming a kind of second order in the State. The citizens who had been proved by the returns at the census to have a certain amount of realisable capital at their disposal—a class of citizens that ranged from ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... we doubled the Cape Verd Islands, without however seeing the land, which is almost always lost in mist, and steered direct for the Equator. Our progress was now impeded by calms, and the heat began to be oppressive; but care and precaution preserved the crew in perfect health, an effect which strict cleanliness, order, and wholesome diet, will seldom fail to produce, ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... not like the feeling of nervousness he had in realizing how deep they were below the desert and how narrow and oppressive were the canyon walls. He was glad that the strenuous day sent them off to bed and to sleep as soon as they had finished supper. ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... by those strokes, which, like sickness or bereavement, seem to come direct from heaven, or by those which, like malicious speeches or oppressive acts, seem to emanate from man, look up into the face of God, and say, "My Father, this is Thy will for me; Thine angels would have delivered me had it been best. But since they have not interposed, I read Thy choice for Thy child, and I am satisfied. It is sweet to drink the ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... that she had herself no longer a home in France, and few, very few friends there, she determined to return, if possible, that she might be released from the power of Montoni, whose particularly oppressive conduct towards herself, and general character as to others, were justly terrible to her imagination. She had no wish to reside with her uncle, M. Quesnel, since his behaviour to her late father and to herself, had been uniformly ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... His freedmen were all-powerful: money could do anything: the slaves were thirsting for an upheaval, and with so elderly an emperor were naturally expecting to see one soon. The evils of the new court were those of the old, and while equally oppressive were not so easily excused. Even Galba's age seemed comic and despicable to a populace that was used to the young Nero and compared the emperors, as such people will, in point of looks ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... with credit in the old French and Indian wars, and his immediate predecessors were among the earliest and the most efficient of the "Sons of Liberty," well known for their undaunted spirit in encouraging resistance to the arbitrary and oppressive ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... in the direction of the lake. It had been a terribly hot, oppressive afternoon. There was thunder in the air. Through the trees, ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... an article to finish, and she ought really to write to Dunaghee and Henriette and—well the rest must wait. Several other calls were also more than due, but it was useless even to consider those to-day. In spite of an oppressive sense of having much to do—perhaps because of it—Hadria felt as if it were a sheer impossibility to rise from that hearthrug. Besides, Martha would not hear of it. A desire to rest, to idle, to float down the stream, instead of trying always ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... so nearly commensurate. Therefore call these free states, or popular governments, or what you please; when we consider the majority of their inhabitants, and regard the natural rights of mankind, they must appear, in reality and truth, no better than pitiful and oppressive oligarchies. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Baalbec and the Bekaa, however, is far from being healthy. The chain of the Libanus interrupts the course of the westerly winds, which are regular in Syria during the summer months; and the want of these winds renders the climate extremely hot and oppressive. ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... upon him as he advanced; the ice crashed and yawned into fresh chasms at his feet, tottering spires nodded around him, and fell thundering across his path; and though he had repeatedly faced these dangers on the most terrific glaciers, and in the wildest weather, it was with a new and oppressive feeling of panic terror that he leaped the last chasm, and flung himself, exhausted and shuddering, on the firm turf ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... was indeed pressing. All the party had complained that the bad smells about the Red-hill became really oppressive. They did not know how great was the danger of their all falling ill of fever, in consequence; but every one of them felt languid and uncomfortable. Oliver made the circuit of the hill, to discover whether there was any cause for this evil that could be removed. He ...
— The Settlers at Home • Harriet Martineau
... heavy sleep, which fatigue and fasting had rendered more oppressive than refreshing, he found that the splendors of the night were succeeded by a heavy rain, and that he was wet through. He arose with stiffness in his limbs, pain in his head, and a dimness over his eyes, with a sense of weakness which almost disabled ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... position of affairs, the most sensible men in Athens perceived that Solon was a person who shared the vices of neither faction, as he took no part in the oppressive conduct of the wealthy, and yet had sufficient fortune to save him from the straits to which the poor were reduced. In consequence of this, they begged him to come forward and end their disputes. But Phanias of Lesbos says that Solon deceived both parties, ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... he went on to reflect upon the long monotonous years spent in that lonely house, shut in from the world by those everlasting hills. Albeit the house was an ideal house, set in a landscape of infinite beauty, the monotony must be none the less oppressive for a mind burdened with dark memories, weighed down by sorrows which could seek no relief from sympathy, which could never ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... the schemes devised for meeting these oppressive obligations without unduly taxing the voters; one of them, not especially wiser than the rest, was contributed by Mr. Lincoln. It provided for the issue of bonds for the payment of the interest due by the State, and for the ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... in the sanctum the gloom was too oppressive to permit an elevated tendency of either thought or spirit. I could do nothing but sit listless and inert. Paper and pencil were before me, but I could not write—I could not even think coherently, and was ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... heat was less oppressive, we had a lively game of 'Pussy Wants a Corner,' on the flat bluff-top, with the little trees for bases. Lena was Pussy so often that she finally said she wouldn't play any more. We threw ourselves down on the ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... money was all-powerful the power of money was used without stint and without scruple. Judges were bribed to do their duty, juries to convict, newspapers to support and legislators to betray their constituents and pass the most oppressive laws. By these corrupt means, and with the natural advantage of greater skill in affairs and larger experience in concerted action, the capitalists soon restored their ancient reign and the state of the laborer was worse than it had ever been before. ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... near, his early craving for the sea returned. The stately mansion of power had been to him the wearisome hospital of pain, and he begged to be taken from its prison walls, from its oppressive, stifling air, from its homelessness and its hopelessness. Gently, silently, the love of a great people bore the pale sufferer to the longed-for healing of the sea, to live or to die, as God should will, within sight of its heaving billows, within sound of its manifold voices. With wan, ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... so well muffled up and disguised, and the light of the lamp shining upwards so completely distorted the features, that I had no fear of recognition, unless the King's voice betrayed him. But when he spoke, breaking the oppressive silence of the room, his tone was as strange and hollow as ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... considered it as being much less directed against me personally, than against the increasing influence of the party of which I was a sort of chief. Even before this I had begun to withdraw myself from his power, which I always felt to be oppressive; and this new blow did not, by any means, tend to reunite us. His severe criticism had made me observant of my faults; but yet I do not know whether it would have produced any other effect than pain, had I not at ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... speak again, Minna sought refuge from the oppressive stillness in a little act of attention. She took a fire-screen from the chimney-piece, and tried to place it gently ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... blossom or inside the cavity of the "keel" of the flower, but the majority explore the petals and take possession of them. The time for laying the eggs has not yet arrived. The morning is mild; the sun is warm without being oppressive. It is the moment of nuptial flights; the time of rejoicing in the splendor of the sunshine. Everywhere are creatures rejoicing to be alive. Couples come together, part, and re-form. When towards noon the ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... people had engrossed what little was known of financial science in that day. For the multiplied enactments in Castile against them, see Ordenancas Reales, (lib. 8, tit. 3.) For the regulations respecting the Jews in Aragon, many of them oppressive, particularly at the commencement of the fifteenth century, see Fueros y Observancias del Reyno de Aragon, (Zaragoza, 1667,) tom. i. fol. 6.—Marca Hispanica, pp. 1416, 1433.—Zurita, Anales, tom. iii. lib. 12, ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... time, were lucrative but most oppressive, conferring upon favourites, or their nominees, an exclusive right to deal in any article of manufacture. But the patent to God's fearers, to trust in him when involved in darkness and distress, is a blessed ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... said Napoleon, as if relieved at once of an oppressive burden. "Write to my chancellor of the Legion of Honour, Lacepede, to send him a patent, and do you inform him ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... and a spirit with any wisdom is not over-eager to live at all. In those days men recognised immortal gods and resigned themselves to being mortal. Yet those were the truly vital and instinctive days of the human spirit. Only when vitality is low do people find material things oppressive and ideal things unsubstantial. Now there is more motion than life, and more haste than force; we are driven to distraction by the ticking of the tiresome clocks, material and social, by which we are ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... rustled mournfully. With the exception of the riders and an occasional Gila monster, no life was discernible. Cacti of all shapes and sizes reared aloft their forbidding spines or spread out along the sand. All was dead, ghastly; all was oppressive, startlingly repellent in its sinister promise; all was the ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... various occasions for her amusement, in her recess at Cardigan, and retirement elsewhere. These being dispersed among her friends and acquaintance, were by an unknown hand collected together, and published in 8vo. 1663, without her knowledge or consent. This accident is said to have proved so oppressive to our poetess, as to throw her into a fit of illness, and she pours out her complaints in a letter to Sir Charles Cotterel, in which she laments, in the most affecting manner, the misfortune and the injuries which had been ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... Speisesaal, and we Britishers possessed the summer house; so we were all happy. The whole glory of the place was in the forest; for it was not flat sandy forest that has no undergrowth, and wearies you very soon with its sameness and its still, oppressive air. It was up hill and down dale forest, full of lovely glades, broken by massive dolomite rocks; the trees not set in serried rows, but growing for the most part as the birds and the wind planted them; ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... tomb, hurried to Jerusalem as fast as possible. I never was so glad to get home again before. I never have enjoyed rest as I have enjoyed it during these last few hours. The journey to the Dead Sea, the Jordan and Bethlehem was short, but it was an exhausting one. Such roasting heat, such oppressive solitude, and such dismal desolation can not surely exist elsewhere on ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... There they stood in the water to their necks, and watched the great fire as it divided at the little prairie, and swept around them, passing to left and right. It was a grim sight. All the heavens seemed ablaze, and the clouds of smoke were suffocating. Even there in the river the heat was most oppressive, and at times the faces of the boys were almost scorched. Then they would thrust their heads under the water, and keep them there as long as they could hold their breath, coming up again greatly refreshed. The wild game clustered ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... that I will never treat any woman, child, or other person, whose life, comfort, or happiness may be placed within my power, in an oppressive, cruel, or cowardly manner, but that I will protect such from evil and danger so far as I can, and promote, to the utmost of my ability, their ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... drew nearer mid-day, the heat was more oppressive, and Hans found himself upon a moor which it took about an hour to cross. He felt it very hot and his tongue clave to the roof of his mouth with thirst. "I can find a cure for this," thought Hans; "I will milk the cow now ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... had grown into the busy burgesses whom we saw rustling their parchments and chinking their silver marks in the ears of Abbot Sampson in Richard's time, it is hard to say. Like all the greater revolutions of society, this advance was a silent one. The more galling and oppressive instances of serfdom seem to have slipped unconsciously away. Some, like the eel-fishery, were commuted for an easy rent; others, like the slavery of the fullers and the toll of flax, simply disappeared. ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... her black dress, so simply, so appealingly before him, that it was all that he could do not to catch her in his arms and bold her. He did indeed rise and stand beside her, and there in silence, with the dim room about them, the oppressive silence so ominous and sinister, they came together with a closeness that no earlier ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... surprise: she was the last one of whom she would have thought. But she had the delicacy not to cry out at it, and to make her comments mentally. Then, seeing that her silence was oppressive to Germain, she held out her basket to him, saying: "Well, is that any reason why you shouldn't help me in my work? Carry this load, and come and talk with me. Have you reflected, Germain? have you made up ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... stock it, he seized all the pretty pet fawns that his tenants had brought up, without paying them a farthing, or asking their leave. It was a sad day for the parish of St Dennis. Indeed, I do not believe that all his oppressive exactions and long bills enraged the poor tenants so much as ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to the formation of a Communist "peoples republic" in 1947 and the abdication of the king. The decades-long rule of dictator Nicolae CEAUSESCU, who took power in 1965, and his Securitate police state became increasingly oppressive and draconian through the 1980s. CEAUSESCU was overthrown and executed in late 1989. Former Communists dominated the government until 1996, when they were swept from power by a fractious coalition of centrist parties. Currently, the Social Democratic Party ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... so, you need not worry yourself about the matter. It is his business, and doubtless near forty year's experience has taught him what amount and kinds of restraint are needed, and what is merely burthensome and oppressive. I have heard him discuss these ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... life. Then Sir Francis had been jilted, and Dick had again become indispensable to him. But Dick had ever had a nasty way of speaking his mind and blowing up his patron, which sometimes became very oppressive to the Baronet. And now at the present moment he was more angry with him for what he had said as to Miss Altifiorla than for his remarks as to his conduct to the other lady. All that was simply severe in Dick's words he took ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope
... days were tickle subjects to meddle with, even in the most private company. The nation was in a state of terror against France, and against any at home who might be supposed to sympathise with the enormities she had just been committing. The oppressive act against seditious meetings had been passed the year before; and people were doubtful to what extremity of severity it might be construed. Even the law authorities forgot to be impartial, but either their alarms or their interests made too many of them vehement partisans instead of calm ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Mrs. Thrale) hated early ones. Nothing was more terrifying to him than the idea of going to bed, which he never would call going to rest, or suffer another to call it so. "I lie down that my acquaintance may sleep; but I lie down to endure oppressive misery, and soon rise again to pass the night in anxiety and pain." When people could be induced to sit up with him, they were often amply compensated by his rich flow of mind; but the resulting sacrifice of health and ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... remember anything I shall remember the forty-eight hours of that homeward voyage. He was comfortable at first, and then we ran into the humid, oppressive air of the Gulf Stream, and he could not breathe. It seemed to me that the end might come at any moment, and this thought was in his own mind, but he had no dread, and his sense of humor did not fail. Once when the ship rolled and his hat fell from the hook and made ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... hat, and undoing the oppressive convolutions of her hair, began to slowly arrange it ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... seemed to him at last that he was somehow only a graver equivalent of the young lover and that rustling Claudine was a lighter sketch of Madame de Mauves. The heat of the sun, as he walked along, became oppressive, and when he re-entered the forest he turned aside into the deepest shade he could find and stretched himself on the mossy ground at the foot of a great beech. He lay for a while staring up into the verdurous dusk overhead and trying mentally to ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James
... permitted the silence to last long enough to become almost oppressive; then he advanced to the gangway and, ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... deprecatory comment rising to his lips as he strove to dissipate the symbolic mood which was surely possessing him, for he felt himself uncomfortably conscious of the meaning wrought into the very stones about him, and to-day this over-mastering assertion of Venice—always Venice dominant—was oppressive. ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... in William, Prince of Orange and Count of Nassau. He is a national hero whose career bears a striking resemblance to that of Washington. Like the American patriot, he undertook the seemingly hopeless task of freeing his people from the oppressive rule of a distant king. To the Spaniards he appeared to be only an impoverished nobleman at the head of a handful of armed peasants and fishermen, contending against the sovereign of the richest realm in ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... imagining that they saw or heard something to indicate the proximity of the ferocious murderers. As for myself, if my outward man were less open to reproach, my inward condition was nothing much to boast of, and truly the horrors which continually presented themselves, joined to the oppressive midnight shadow and stillness which hung over the place of doom, would have damaged the nerve of ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan
... morning, and mind, I'm your friend if you're so minded. And now, what I says is—let's to sleep, for I must be early abroad." Here he reached into the little tent and presently brought thence two blankets, one of which he proffered me, but the night being very hot and oppressive, I declined it and presently we were lying side by side, staring up at the stars. But suddenly upon the stillness, from somewhere amid the surrounding boskages that shut us in, came the sound of one sighing gustily, and I ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... it was half-way between Bir el Abd and Bir el Magara. Here we overtook our camels, which, as usual, had preceded us; but we sent them on again, as we decided to pause for our midday meal. The wind being in the south, the air was terribly oppressive, and I felt some apprehension of the Hampsin. We accordingly pitched our tent in a hollow, overgrown with rushes, where we were to some extent protected from the scorching blasts. All our provisions were covered with the fine sand with which the air was filled. We ...
— The Caravan Route between Egypt and Syria • Ludwig Salvator
... intentions. He would soon have to leave that villa, for he could not remain alone with the young widow; therefore he must find out her plans before returning to Paris, in order that she might not yield to another's entreaties. He broke the oppressive silence ...
— Bel Ami • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... passed—again an August night, hot and oppressive as before, and again—though surely against my will, my better judgment, if you like—I visited the wood. Horse's hoofs just the same as before. The same galloping, the same figure, the same EYES! the same mad, panic-stricken flight home, and, early in the succeeding afternoon, a similar cablegram—this ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... work, as well as their results, were oppressive. In his youth, while trying to perfect himself in his study of the human form, he drew or modelled, from nude corpses. He had these conveyed by stealth from the hospital into the convent of Santo Spirito, where he had a cell and ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... of September was hot and oppressive. Early in the evening thunder clouds heaped the western sky, and occasional flashes of lightning ...
— Polly of the Hospital Staff • Emma C. Dowd
... tribute is liable to be immediately put to death. Ten or twelve of the chief noblemen or governors always reside with the Soldan to assist him with their councils and to carry his orders into execution. The Mameluke government is exceedingly oppressive to the merchants and even to the other Mahometan inhabitants of Damascus. When the Soldan thinks fit to extort a sum of money from any of the nobles or merchants, he gives two letters to the governor of the castle, in one of which is contained a list of such as he thinks ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... rooting and squealing little pigs, and was amused and interested, as if they were far removed from the vital issue of the hour. But all the time as she looked and laughed, and encouraged Glenn to talk, there seemed to be a strange, solemn, oppressive knocking at her heart. Was it only the ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... the window. Sad, oppressive thoughts rose up in his mind one after another about the prospective journey, the new and unexpected change that was coming into his life. He had no regrets at the thought of leaving St. Petersburg, as he would leave nothing behind that was especially dear to him, and he knew that he would be back ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... capacity and virtue, through the caprice of fortune, have often been overcome by men destitute of either talent or energy. But that that glory is the best when power, existing with high rank, forces, as it were, its inclinations to be angry and cruel, and oppressive under the yoke, and so erects a glorious trophy in the citadel ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... crimes, and torture elicited a few supposed confessions. They were then tried by the Inquisition, and the greater number were put to death by fire, the Grand Master last of all, while their lands were seized by the king. They seem to have been really a fierce, arrogant, and oppressive set of men, or else there must have been some endeavour to save them, belonging, as most of them did, to noble French families. The "Pest of France," as Dante calls Philip the Fair, was now the most formidable ...
— History of France • Charlotte M. Yonge
... treatment of the several States, establishing or interfering with religion, curtailing freedom of speech, or pursuing towards any citizen, even under legal forms, a course of conduct which is unjust or even oppressive. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... prerogative of imagination, that it can reconcile us to life where life is simplest and least adorned; and this is the reluctance and timidity of imagination that it shrinks away into twilight and folds its wings, when the pressure of reality is too heavy, and the materials of beauty too oppressive ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... find amid this motley crew Frivolities enough, friend Berthier—eh? My thoughts have worn oppressive shades despite such! What scandals of me do they bandy here? These close disguises render women bold— Their shames being of the light, not of the thing— And your sagacity has garnered much, I make no doubt, of ill and good report, That marked our ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... had escaped the persecution instituted in his later years by Kobad, and the sect of the Mazdakites, which, despite that persecution, was still strong and vigorous, were the first to experience the oppressive weight of his resentment; and the corpses of a hundred thousand martyrs blackening upon gibbets proved the determination of the new monarch to make his will law, whatever the consequences. In a similar spirit the hesitation of Mebodes to ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... ferns shoulder high were embanked. It was dark, the stars and the tints of the auroral lights were barely distinguishable through the mass of foliage overhead. Elza gazed around her fearsomely. The air was heavy, oppressive. Redolent with the perfume of wild flowers and the smell ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... the requirements of the public revenue from becoming oppressive, is to order each Province to supply those products in which it ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... good in its way as the glorious wildness of the Chase. One might have applied to it the Sophoclean thought—"How clever is man who can make all these things!"—so diverse, and so pleasant. And indoors, Duddon was oppressive by the very ingenuity of its refinement, the rightness of every touch. No overcrowding; no ostentation. Beautiful spaces, giving room and dignity to a few beautiful objects; famous pictures, yet not too many; and, in general, things rather suggestive than ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... one cause of the peace. Leopold, born in 1640, and educated by the Jesuits, became Emperor in 1658, and reigned 49 years. He was an adept in metaphysics and theology, as well as in wood-turning, but a feeble and oppressive ruler, whose empire was twice saved for him; by Sobiesld from the Turks, and from the French ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... remain here as long as we can bear the heat, which is not just now too oppressive, though it threatens to be so. We must be somewhere near, to see after our property in the case of an Austrian approach, which is too probable, we some of us think; and I just hear that a body of the French will remain to meet the contingency. Our Italians are ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... be paid annually at Easter. Thus cut off from their ordinary modes of living, they had recourse to the clipping of money and other illegal modes of debasing the coin; and after trials, fines, and executions of the most oppressive and unjustifiable description, were finally banished ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip
... the second act of the drama began; no one looked at the stage; after this living, breathing, impersonation of a simple story, a spoken drama seemed oppressive. Every one rejoiced when the second act was at an end. The curtain would ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... exaggerating prattle. This was hushed, indeed, in the presence of that crushed, prostrate, silent sorrow; but there was still an utter incapacity of true sympathy, that made the very presence of so many oppressive, even when they were not in murmurs discussing the ghastly tidings of massacres in other cities, and the ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... with their shining plates, only caught the oak of his box-door; and the tete-a-tete in the sultry, oppressive night went on as the speakers moved to a prudent distance; one of them thoughtfully chewing a bit of straw, after the immemorial habit of grooms, who ever seem as if they had been born into this world with a cornstalk ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... out of the way?" insisted Ricardo with an affectation of incredulity which Heyst accepted calmly, though the air in the room seemed to grow more oppressive with every word spoken. ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... about the time when Louis XIV. began to issue his oppressive edicts against the Huguenots. Protestant advocates were not yet forbidden to practise, but they already laboured under many disabilities. He continued, however, for some time to exercise his profession, with much ability, at Castres, Castelnaudry, and Toulouse. He was frequently employed ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... tyres, pretending I had a puncture should anyone become too inquisitive. Glancing at my watch, I found it was already twenty minutes to two. The moon was overcast, and the atmosphere stifling and oppressive, precursory of ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... spoken as if he might easily put it much better, yet as if the humour of contented understatement fairly sufficed for the occasion. He had played then, either all consciously or all unconsciously, into Charlotte's hands; and the effect of this was to render trebly oppressive Maggie's conviction of Charlotte's plan. She had done what she wanted, his wife had—which was also what Amerigo had made her do. She had kept her test, Maggie's test, from becoming possible, and had ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... personal property incalculable, with a wealth of material resources of every conceivable description, absolutely unknown and unknowable, she yet contrives to support her costly establishment by a system of oppressive taxation almost unparalleled in the annals of the human race. Some of you must remember the graphic but not exaggerated description of British taxation given by Sidney Smith in the Edinburgh Review. It was almost fifty years ago; but no less revenue ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... minutes before the wind strikes; and when they are in great numbers the air, to a height of ten or twelve feet above the surface of the ground, is all at once seen to be full of them, rushing past with extraordinary velocity in a north-easterly direction. In very oppressive weather, and when the swiftly advancing pampero brings no moving mountains of mingled cloud and dust, and is consequently not expected, the sudden apparition of the dragon-fly is a most welcome one, for then an immediate burst of cold wind is confidently looked for. In the ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... cool days of approaching autumn touched Jamestown, in 1607, spirits rose and hopefulness supplanted despair. Disease, which had reduced the number to less than fifty persons, subsided; the oppressive heat lessened; and Indian crops of peas, corn, and beans began to mature. Friendly relations were established with the natives, and barter trade developed. As the leaves fell, game became easier to get, ducks multiplied in the ponds and marshes, and ...
— The First Seventeen Years: Virginia 1607-1624 • Charles E. Hatch
... replied. "It was really my fault last night. I felt the heat oppressive. I opened the window myself and went out on to the verandah. When I came back I think that I did ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... the earliest reforms in existing laws and usages, so as to guard the country in future against frauds in the collection of the revenues and the Treasury against peculation, to relieve trade and commerce from oppressive regulations, and to guard law and morality ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... no authority of God to do so. The true priesthood had been taken from the earth with the death of the apostles and inspired men of God. Since then people were married to each other only by their own covenants, and if their marriage had not been productive of blessings and peace, and they felt it oppressive to remain together, they were at liberty to make a new choice, as much as if they had not been married. The Prophet taught that it was a sin for people to live together and beget children in alienation from ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... they are always the saddest and dreariest days of the year. I shudder at the name of holiday. I dread the approach of one, and thank heaven when it is over. I pass through, on a holiday, the most horrible sensations, the bitterest feelings, the most oppressive melancholy; in fact, I am ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... with tears, across nations and thrones, lonely, terrible, sublime with the stern sublimity of tragic scenes. They are not the sights and experiences to inspire joyous songs—melody is muffled by terror. Only lamentation finds voice, an endless, oppressive, anxious wail, sounding adown, through two thousand years, like a long-drawn sigh, reverberating in far-reaching echoes: "How long, O Lord, how long!" and "When shall a redeemer arise for this people?" These elegiac refrains Israel never wearies of ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... this plausible explanation of the unfortunate, but absurd, occurrence of which I have spoken, I next returned to the stern, where there were no oppressive odours to be encountered, and whence ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... of the branches and the wail of the wind among the chimneys. Not even a dog barked or rattled a chain, and from no chimney breathed a wisp of smoke. The house in the gloom of that melancholy evening had a singular eerie and tenantless look; and oppressive silence reigned there; and Mitchelbourne was unaccountably conscious of a growing aversion to it, as to something ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... emancipated from the dominion of the Archbishop of Rouen, who, by virtue of the cession made by Richard Coeur de Lion, exercised a despotic sway, even until the dissolution of the ancien regime. His privileges were oppressive, and he had and made use of the right of imposing a variety of taxes, which extended even to the articles of provision imported either by land or sea. Yet it must be admitted that the progress of civilization ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... in their war for freedom. What though a French privateer did occasionally seize an American ship? The Americans alone were to blame for that; for was not their attitude toward England, their natural foe, enough to inflame the French? And were not the British aggressions more oppressive than those of France? War there must be, but let it be declared ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... to how the rats run about on Mrs. Picture when she was on board of the ship." Thus Aunt M'riar, always with that haunting vice of perverting Art, Literature, Morals, and Philosophy to the oppressive improvement of the young. She seldom scored a success, and this time she was hoisted with her own petard. For Dolly jumped with delight at the prospect of a romance of fascinating character, combining Zoology and Travel. She applied for a place to hear it, on the knee ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... suppose that on the whole such families find it easier to survive in the country than in the city. The country offers occupation for the high grades during the busy season and yet does not require steady employment all through the year. The social penalties of mental inferiority are not likely to be so oppressive; certainly there is much less danger of coming into collision with the law. Our institutions find from experience that the feeble-minded take kindly to rough, out-door work and from this it is natural ...
— Rural Problems of Today • Ernest R. Groves
... which about this time overtook the slave-holders of St. Domingo, when their slaves threw off their oppressive yoke, added considerably to his rising fortunes. He happened to have two vessels in that port when the tocsin of insurrection rang out its fearful notes. Frantic with apprehension, many planters rushed with their costliest ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... the gloomy night, and upward to the stars. A spirit floated in the air before me,—a phantom draped in heavy sweeping robes of dense purple, but with eyes of such vivid and fiery brightness, that I could not look upon them; and my heart quailed in my bosom with a strange oppressive sense of fear and wonder. Then I felt that her awful gaze was fixed upon me, and a voice, low and sonorous as the tones of an organ, broke on my ear with an intense pathos, unutterably solemn:— Daughter of earth, I am the spirit of ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... there were no living soul but himself. . . . He went out on the balcony. The bay, like a living thing, looked at him with its multitude of light blue, dark blue, turquoise and fiery eyes, and seemed beckoning to him. And it really was hot and oppressive, and it would not have been ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... When cut for peeling they are of various sizes and lengths, depending on the texture of the bark. These rods afford the hazel-like walking-sticks so much esteemed by strangers, and which, though difficult to be procured during the prevalence of the oppressive cinnamon regulations, may now be very easily obtained from proprietors of grounds producing that spice. Cinnamon is barked at two periods of the year, between April and December. Those suckers which are considered fit for cutting, are usually about three-fourths of an inch in diameter, ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... highest sensuous faculty can give. The sight of a distant infinity—of heights beyond vision, this vast ocean which is at his feet, that other ocean still more vast which stretches above his head, transport and ravish his mind beyond the narrow circle of the real, beyond this narrow and oppressive prison of physical life. The simple majesty of nature offers him a less circumscribed measure for estimating its grandeur, and, surrounded by the grand outlines which it presents to him, he can no longer bear anything mean in his way of thinking. Who can tell how many luminous ideas, how many ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... less. Its introduction into America had actually been recommended on its merits by eminent Americans. It had been proposed by the Governor of Pennsylvania as early as 1739. It had been approved at one time by Benjamin Franklin himself. To-day it must seem to most of us both less unjust and less oppressive than the Navigation Laws, which the colonists bore ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... so alluring in May and June, had become an oppressive weight to those most sensitive to the weather, and as the air grew chill and the skies overcast, the women turned with apprehensive faces to the untracked northwest, out of which the winds swept pitilessly cold and keen. The land of the ...
— The Moccasin Ranch - A Story of Dakota • Hamlin Garland
... only after a long intolerably oppressive silence that she found her voice. "The misunderstanding isn't what you think," she said. "Nor what Graham thinks. It's his misunderstanding, not mine. He thinks that I am—a sort of innocent angel that he's not good enough for. And ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... iconoclasm; it was the breaking of a stone image. The people saw the building like a giant looking at them with a score of eyes, and they struck at it as at a carved fact. For of all the shapes in which that immense illusion called materialism can terrify the soul, perhaps the most oppressive are big buildings. Man feels like a fly, an accident, in the thing he has himself made. It requires a violent effort of the spirit to remember that man made this confounding thing and man could unmake it. Therefore the mere act of the ragged people in the street taking and destroying a ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... of these views, negro schools were frequently broken up and the school-houses burned; and in many places they were only safe under the immediate protection of the Federal troops. After many further particulars, especially as to the oppressive laws passed by the new governments, Mr. Schurz sums up: "To recapitulate; the white people of the South were harassed by pressing necessities, and most of them in a troubled and greatly excited state of mind. The emancipation ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... statesman; he was not an administrator; he could not do any genuine service as head of a department; he was not even a good clerk; he was a wretched speaker; he was consumed by a morbid shyness, almost as oppressive as that of the poet Cowper in a later day, or of Nathaniel Hawthorne, the American novelist, later still. His whole public career was at best but a harmless mistake. It has done no harm to his literary fame. The world has almost forgotten it. Even lovers ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... and mignonette, of orange in bloom, and of a hundred opening buds swept across their faces. The brilliant sunlight almost dazzled eyes that had grown accustomed to the cool shade of the patio, for Ronda is one of the sunniest spots on earth, and here the warmth is rarely oppressive. The garden was Moorish, and running water in aqueducts of marble, yellow with stupendous age, murmured in the shade of tropical plants. A fountain plashed and chattered softly, like the whispering of children. ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... of the oppressive conduct of Sir James Turner at Glasgow, during the time of the Engagement, is this—"Some regiments of horse and foot were sent to our town, with orders to quarter on no other but the magistrates, council, session, and their lovers. These orders were executed with ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... oppressive sense of loneliness? and desolation came over the minds of the cousins as they sat together at the foot of the pine, which cast its lengthened shadow upon the ground before them. The shades of evening were shrouding them, wrapping the lonely forest in gloom. The full moon had ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... man approached us. He was very heavy, very unwieldy, very unctuous and oppressive. He affected the "honest farmer," but so badly that the poorest husbandman would have resented it. There was a suggestion of a cheap lawyer about him that would have justified any self-respecting judge in throwing him ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... passed his hand over his forehead as if to disperse the mists of an oppressive dream, whose grotesque extravagance leaves behind a subtle sense of bodily danger and intellectual decay. In the passages and on the staircases of the old palace Montero's troopers lounged about insolently, smoking and making way for no one; the ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... thus run for some distance when the wind dropped, and she lay rolling in the trough of the still heavy sea. The sky overhead was dark and lowering, a drizzling rain fell, and the air was oppressive. The captain and officers looked anxious. They had cause to be so, for suddenly the wind again rose, now blowing from one quarter, now from another, and all hands were kept on deck ready to brace round the yards as might be required. For several days no observation ...
— The History of Little Peter, the Ship Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... rein to their passions, trusting that the coming ceremony will wipe out the score which they are running up so fast. On the other hand, when the ceremony has just taken place, men's minds are freed from the oppressive sense, under which they generally labour, of an atmosphere surcharged with devils; and in the first revulsion of joy they overleap the limits commonly imposed by custom and morality. When the ceremony takes place at harvest-time, the elation ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... part of our stay of a week, the sky was cloudless, and if the trade-wind failed for an hour, the heat became very oppressive. On two days, the thermometer within the tent stood for some hours at 93 degs.; but in the open air, in the wind and sun, at only 85 degs. The sand was extremely hot; the thermometer placed in some of a brown colour immediately rose to 137 degs., and how much above that it would ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... the virtues of passive resistance were inculcated and preached, and the great champion of popular rights told the people publicly and repeatedly that they might not be afraid to follow his advice, for that it mattered little how oppressive or stringent any act of parliament in defence of the Established Church might be, he would undertake to drive a coach and six through the very severest of its penalties. Nor were the Catholic priesthood idle during these times of storm ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... a deep unearthly voice was heard inside the hut. Every one trembled, and there ensued a silence so oppressive as to suggest the idea that all present were holding their breath, and afraid to ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... rebellious at the dusty, tiresome task, nor aware of the merciless heat of the early-summer sun. She was not indeed thinking at all of what she was doing, except that the physical effort of stooping and reaching and pulling was a relief to her, made slightly less oppressive the thunder-heavy moral atmosphere she breathed. She was trying to think, but the different impressions came rushing into her mind with such vehement haste that they dashed against each other brutally, to ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... me. I must see the light beyond with my own eyes. Whitman's indomitable faith I admire, but cannot share. My torch will not kindle at his great flame. From our youth up our associations with the dead and with the grave are oppressive. Our natural animal instincts get the better of us. Death seems the great catastrophe. The silver cord is loosened, and the golden bowl is broken. The physical aspects of death are unlovely and repellent. And the spiritual aspects—only the elect ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... favored, and found a stone imbedded tightly in the cloven hoof. He pried it out with his knife and mounted again. Wolf shone faintly far ahead, and presently he uttered a mournful cry which sent a chill to the rider's heart. The silence had been oppressive before; now it was terrible. It was not a silence of life. It had been broken suddenly by Wolf's howl, and had closed sharply after it, without echo; it ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... frayed rope end which lay between us and a backward somersault, when my ears were assailed by an uncanny sound, half grunt, half moan. For an instant I thought it was the wretched pony moved to protest by the grade and my oppressive weight. But the pony was breasting the steep most gallantly, all things considered. The miserable sound was repeated a second later, just as our little four-footed friend struck the level, and I discovered that it was my driver's appeal to his steed. It is a sound ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... betokened a scorching day; and just as people had begun to say, "What a sultry morning!" lo, in one moment the wind would set in from the sea, strong, salty, fresh, invigorating; and, behold, it was cool! Or if the afternoon seemed for a little while oppressive in the streets of the old town, it was only necessary to go down to the end of the Avenue to find a temperature cool enough to be called chilly. Nobody ever thought of driving without a shawl, and the shawl was ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... one hundred and sixteen deaths from cholera were reported, and that night the air was of that peculiarly oppressive, deathly kind that seems to lie like lead on the brain ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... fell upon the Court-room—a profound, breathless silence that became oppressive before the next official ...
— A Woman's Part in a Revolution • Natalie Harris Hammond
... intervals might be heard the howl of the prairie wolf, and the occasional lowing of cattle gave her hope of the neighbourhood of man. But there was nothing but the wild and lonely plain, and she felt a keen desire to see a light or hear a voice, the solitude was so oppressive. It was very cold, and a hard frost lay on the ground. At last, however, she heard the bark of a dog, and then the too common sound of a man swearing; she saw a light, and in another minute found herself at a large house eleven ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... not feel so bitter, your Excellency," volunteered Anderson. "Military orders, however necessary, always seem oppressive to ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... onwards was a continued scene of misery; for the wounded and the sick were many, the heat oppressive, the thirst intolerable; and the ferocious Djezzar was hard behind, and the wild Arabs of the desert hovered round them on every side, so that he who fell behind his company was sure to be slain. How hard and callous the hearts of ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... on, and Nic followed close behind, the splashing of their feet echoed softly from the walls, and the man's voice sounded shut in and smothered. The air felt hot too, and oppressive, while the smouldering wood glowed and made the convict's figure stand out like a solid carved block moving dimly outlined before ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... entire distance, which we travel in brave silence. Indeed, we cannot speak,—the oppressive strain upon the chest is so great. Step after step, hand over hand, up we go. At last, warmer air greets us, lights flicker from above; the trap-door is reached; we are on the surface again; we are out of the depths,—and our hearts whisper ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... Paris for Brussels is to exchange excitement for tranquillity, a crowd for a few, the oppressive newness and vivacity of to-day for a mild animation tempered with a flavor of bygone ages. Brussels has been called a miniature Paris. I should rather consider her as the younger sister of the great city—less beautiful, less decked out, less accomplished, less versed in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... Van Voorden exclaimed, "were I but younger I too would go out with the Ghentois to battle. I care but little myself as to the rights of the quarrel, though methinks that Ghent is right in resisting the oppressive taxes which, contrary to their franchise, the earl has laid on the city. But that is nothing. One has but to look upon the faces of the crowd to feel one's blood boil at the strait to which their lord, instead of fighting them boldly, has, like a coward, reduced them by famine. But now when ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... the busy burgesses whom we saw rustling their parchments and chinking their silver marks in the ears of Abbot Sampson in Richard's time, it is hard to say. Like all the greater revolutions of society, this advance was a silent one. The more galling and oppressive instances of serfdom seem to have slipped unconsciously away. Some, like the eel-fishery, were commuted for an easy rent; others, like the slavery of the fullers and the toll of flax, simply disappeared. No one could ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... great features France is the same as ever. An oppressive air of solitude seems to hover over these rich and extended plains, while we are sensible that, whatever is the motive of the desolation, it cannot be sterility. The towns are small, and have a poor appearance, and more frequently ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... usual health; and, therefore, he continued in full employment. At the end of the four months (Jan. 1830), his cough had increased much, his palpitation of heart, dyspnoea, and bronchial irritation had become very oppressive, and general exhaustion had manifested itself. Recourse was had at this period of the affection to bleeding, blisters, and expectorants, which relieved him only temporarily, and while under this treatment, he—having a large family dependent on his exertions for their support—continued ...
— An Investigation into the Nature of Black Phthisis • Archibald Makellar
... this meant. And another time she said, "Perhaps it's that I'm making an honest effort to do my share." But it was true and real, the fact that after such work the reading of the day's news of the world brought her a less oppressive sense of guilt. And stranger than this, music had greater vitality for her. She felt it a deeper, richer soil than even she had dreamed of, and struck her roots profoundly into depths which kept her whole complicated organism ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... before the one set for their departure was intensely warm and oppressive, and everybody was almost ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... silent tent, on a wardrobe trunk. What manner of night it was, whether starlit or sullen, Carl did not know; he was aware only that it was oppressive, and that Eve was in his arms in the darkness. He kissed her moist, hot neck. He babbled incoherently of the show people, but every word he said meant that he was palpitating because her soft body was against his. He knew—and he was sure ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... our stay of a week the sky was cloudless, and if the trade-wind failed for an hour the heat became very oppressive. On two days the thermometer within the tent stood for some hours at 93 degrees; but in the open air, in the wind and sun, at only 85 degrees. The sand was extremely hot; the thermometer placed in some of a brown colour ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... as "earthquake weather." The wild cattle moved uneasily in the distance without feeding; herds of unbroken mustangs approached the confines of the hacienda in vague timorous squads. The silence and stagnation of the old house was oppressive, as if the life had really gone out of it at last; and Aunt Viney, after waiting impatiently for the young people to come in to chocolate, rose grimly, set her lips together, and went out into the lane. The gate of the ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... all agreed to report as much as I have now stated to the House—the Report being confined chiefly to the Presidencies of Bombay and Madras. If I were now submitting the case of the population of India I would say that the taxes of India are more onerous and oppressive than the taxes of any other country in the world. I think I could demonstrate that proposition to the House. I would show that industry is neglected by the Government to a greater extent probably than is the case in any other country in the world which has been for any length ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... hopes of bringing his tirade to an end, "your friendship is slightly oppressive. Confine your attentions to your own grievances. I ...
— That Mother-in-Law of Mine • Anonymous
... then, for a nervous sense of loneliness was creeping upon her; and though there had been nothing to prevent her from rising and going away, she had felt that something was holding her in her seat, a shadowy something that was oppressive and not natural, that descended upon her out of the gloomy heights, and that rose around her from the secret depths below, where the great dead lay side by side ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... concealed purpose, keep in mind her noble motives, and pursue in our fancy the under current of feeling, working in her mind throughout. The terror and the power of Shylock's character,—his deadly and inexorable malice,—would be too oppressive; the pain and pity too intolerable, and the horror of the possible issue too overwhelming, but for the intellectual relief afforded by this double ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... several seconds and only the monotonous ticking of the clock upon the wall broke the oppressive silence. ...
— The Marx He Knew • John Spargo
... standing silent and motionless as statues at their guns; even the remarks interchanged between the officers were expressed in low murmurs only loud enough to reach the ear for which they were intended, the oppressive silence being intensified rather than broken by an occasional "Luff! luff, you may, ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... of oatmeal and water for himself at half-past nine o'clock each evening, and to go to bed at ten. He opened the door to throw out some water that remained in the saucepan from its last cleansing. It froze as it fell upon the soil. He looked at the night, and shook himself to throw off an oppressive sensation of being clasped in the icy ribs of the air, for the mercury had descended below the familiar region of crisp and crackly cold and marked a temperature at which the numb atmosphere seemed on the point of congealing into black solidity. ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... the animals in the country were starving from the deficiency of all kinds of grain. The pastures, we could ourselves see, were dry, and in many parts burnt to chaff, while the present summer beginning with oppressive heat, and the preceding one having been equally unfavourable to the pasturage, the scarcity of food was severely and fatally felt ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... winning the freedom they have always desired. Wherefore, let us take good courage and behave like the wise husbandman of scripture, who gathered the wheat into his barn, but uprooted and burned the tares that had half-choked the good grain. The tares of England are her oppressive rulers, and the time of harvest has come. Ours it is to pluck up these tares and make away with them all—the wicked lords, the unjust judges, the lawyers—every man, indeed, who is dangerous to the common good. Then shall we all have peace in our time and security for the future. ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... lieutenant-governor, freed from even the slight control afforded by their presence, had given full scope to the worse parts of his peculiar and complicated character. More than ever was his administration of his native island marked by unblushing egotism. Oppressive, grasping, unguarded in speech, and almost unrestrained in action, he seemed, from one point of view, the model of a sordid, short-sighted despot, making hay while the sun shone. But he had a fund of caution which kept him from proceeding quite ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene
... individual subject this distinction has no meaning at all. For the laws passed by a Democratic Parliament are coercive and compulsory in precisely the same manner and degree as are the laws of a despotic monarchy or a close oligarchy. There is, indeed, a "tyranny of the majority" which can be quite as oppressive to the individual as the tyranny of the one or the few, and much less easy to evade. From the point of view of the enfranchised community, however, the term "free" has a meaning, and its use can ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw
... instability, and on them an array of glittering poets, Shelley, Rossetti, Keats, Browning, and odd volumes of Ruskin, South Place Sermons, Socialistic publications in torn paper covers, and above, science text-books and note-books in an oppressive abundance. The autotypes that hung about the room were eloquent of aesthetic ambitions and of a certain impermeability to implicit meanings. There were the Mirror of Venus by Burne Jones, Rossetti's Annunciation, Lippi's Annunciation, and the Love of Life and Love and Death of Watts. And ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... civilization and the charm of New York came over me with depressing effect. I began to wish that Clayton would appear. I had not decided to accept his kindly offer. I must be off to-morrow. The air seemed oppressive. Was it so warm? I put my hand to my brow. It was hot. Perhaps I was not well. The trip I had just ended was after all wearisome. I had not slept well some nights. I sensed that I was fatigued. What would a ride of more than 200 miles on a pony do to me? But on the other hand ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... tendency is no more perceptible on the page of history, in political and religious affairs, than in the relations of social life. The gradual advance in political ideas, as relating to the liberty of the people, modified the oppressive trade-caste systems of the older nations, and wholly abolished them in the more advanced. Competitive industry introduced intelligence and self-reliance among the people. The doctrine of the equality of men elevated the spirit of the laborer, and dispersed, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... at ease anywhere in the world. Eve fitted into Paris as naturally as in her native London, I began to feel at home there myself. It was a city of happy people—care free, natural, sympathetic. There was a lack of restraint which, after the oppressive dignity of London, was a rare treat. No one was critical. Every one accepted my halting and faulty French without ridicule or condescension. The amiability and the friendliness of the French people thawed my heart and began to lift ...
— The Log-Cabin Lady, An Anonymous Autobiography • Unknown
... that spring noonshine when two young men (we will call them Dactyl and Spondee) set off to plunder the golden bag of Time. These creatures had an oppressive sense that first Youth was already fled. For one of them, in fact, it was positively his thirtieth birthday; poor soul, how decrepitly he flitted in front of motor trucks. As for the other, he was ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... our impressions at the time, and from the stains on the table, a very considerable quantity must have been produced. I may remark in conclusion that there was no scent in the room before the seance, and that we could distinguish several different perfumes which made the atmosphere so oppressive that we were glad to seek a purer air so soon as the seance came ...
— Psychic Phenomena - A Brief Account of the Physical Manifestations Observed - in Psychical Research • Edward T. Bennett
... of sight; for they now know how to disperse and disappear, when circumstances require it. But then are they the most dangerous; for suspicion is laid asleep, and they keep watch in the dark. Oh! my dear young lady, if you knew their frightful ability! In my hatred of all that is oppressive, cowardly, and hypocritical, I had studied the history of that terrible society, before I knew that the Abbe d'Aigrigny belonged to it. Oh! it is dreadful. If you knew what means they employ! When I tell you that, thanks to their diabolical devices, the ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... Europe was chained to the soil, without freedom, or property, or knowledge; and the two orders of ecclesiastics and nobles, whose numbers were comparatively small, alone deserved the name of citizens and men. This oppressive system was supported by the arts of the clergy and the swords of the barons. The authority of the priests operated in the darker ages as a salutary antidote: they prevented the total extinction of letters, mitigated the fierceness ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... Lancaster, which proved so salubrious to the pensioners of the British government before named, grew oppressive to this tory bachelor, as we find by a lengthy petition in Massachusetts Archives (clxxiii, 546), wherein he begs for a wider range, and especially for leave to go to the sea-shore. ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume I. No. VI. June, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... thirsty, and he looked round for those fruits he had heard of; but he could see none of them at the time, and the more he sought his way out, the deeper he seemed to get into the forest. The air was very sultry and oppressive, too; he grew weary and faint, quite sick at heart, and even the limbs of his good horse seemed to be failing him, and hardly able to ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... see you, not having had that old pleasure for a long time. I am at this moment deaf in the ears, hoarse in the throat, red in the nose, green in the gills, damp in the eyes, twitchy in the joints, and fractious in the temper from a most intolerable and oppressive cold, caught the other day, I suspect, at Liverpool, where I got exceedingly wet; but I will make prodigious efforts to get the better of it to-night by resorting to all conceivable remedies, and if I ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... had ebbed from him with his blood, or waned with his fever. And whereas he had before sought both gain and power, restrained by as few scruples as the worst men of a bad age, he rose a pursuer of both, but within bounds; so that, though he was still hard and grasping and oppressive, it was possible to say of him that he was no worse than his class. Close-fisted, at Father O'Hara's instance he could open his hand. Hard, at the Father's prayer he would at times remit a rent or extend a bond. ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... glad to get home again before. I never have enjoyed rest as I have enjoyed it during these last few hours. The journey to the Dead Sea, the Jordan and Bethlehem was short, but it was an exhausting one. Such roasting heat, such oppressive solitude, and such dismal desolation can not surely exist elsewhere on ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the blazing sunshine, that even then was oppressive, the expedition started. The white men leading, Felix coming immediately behind, and eleven of the soldiers, bearing the tents and stores ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... valley of Feiran, which is not more than an hundred paces across, the high mountains on each side, and the thick woods of date-trees, render the heat extremely oppressive, and the unhealthiness of the situation is increased by the badness of the water. The Tebna are far from being as robust and healthy as their neighbours, and in spring and summer dangerous fevers reign here. ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... mass of human flesh, he saw his father's body, crushed and terribly mangled; his face wore an expression of suffering, his whole body seemed borne down by a heavy and oppressive weight. ...
— The Silver Lining - A Guernsey Story • John Roussel
... World War II led to the formation of a Communist "peoples republic" in 1947 and the abdication of the king. The decades-long rule of dictator Nicolae CEAUSESCU and his Securitate police state became increasingly oppressive and draconian through the 1980s. CEAUSESCU was overthrown and executed in late 1989. Former communists dominated the government until 1996 when they were swept from power by a fractious coalition of center-right parties. Today the Communist Party, renamed the Party of Social Democracy, ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... of suffrage by the women in Wyoming for the past quarter of a century has wrought no harm and has done great good in many ways; it has largely aided in banishing crime, pauperism, and vice from this State, and that without any violent or oppressive legislation; it has secured peaceful and orderly elections, good government, and a remarkable degree of civilization and public order; and we point with pride to the facts that after nearly twenty-five years of Woman Suffrage not one county ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... in keeping their sleuths ever on the alert for the unearthing of the plans of the anti-trust advocates. In every city detectives are untiring in their efforts to discover the work of the Committee of Forty. It is suspected that the committee is to obtain damaging evidence against some of the most oppressive of the monopolies and bring the full story of the wholesale robbery of the people out as a climax in ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... anything to them in the hope to comfort them; yet, while they were thus incapacitated for all action, I could serve them essentially by placing myself at the head of their affairs, and relieving them of common cares and duties, that must otherwise have been neglected, or have proved irksome and oppressive. ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... the wager was a spur to urge me forward at greater speed. The place was strangely, painfully still; even the savage yelling of the distant Indians seemed to die away as I advanced, and nothing broke the oppressive silence but an occasional flutter of leaves, or my own deep breathing. I had gone, I take it, half or three-quarters of a mile, not directly north, but circling ever to the eastward, seeking thus to reach the house from the rear, when ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... a certain stage in this part of the ceremony there was a pause. No one left the plaza, but every one stood as still as a graven image, and not a sound broke the hush, apparently of breathless expectancy. The stillness was so unearthly that it became oppressive, and a few white friends who were with me began to urge in whispers that we leave the plaza as all was evidently at an end, and go back to our camp below the mesa, when suddenly there rang out such a wild, exultant shout of unrestrained, unmeasured rejoicing as only Indians can give in moments ...
— The Unwritten Literature of the Hopi • Hattie Greene Lockett
... uncivilized countries to conceal minerals or other natural products with which they may become acquainted, from the fear of being obliged to pay increased tribute, or of bringing upon themselves a new and oppressive labour. ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... once he seemed unburdened of shackles that had weighted him down to the point of madness. Every fiber in his body responded to that glorious roar of the fire; a thing seemed to snap in his head, freeing it of an oppressive bondage, and in the heart of the flames he saw home, and hope, and life—the things familiar and precious long ago, which the scourge of the north had almost beaten dead in his memory. He saw the broad Saskatchewan shimmering its way through the yellow plains, banked in by the foothills and ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood
... fortunate fellow-travellers. As we neared the French coast I realised gradually how good it would be to see Roger again, and found time to regret a little of my solitary lingering through the damp English winter, which seemed more oppressive in retrospect than ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... from the sea sends a flying throb of white light across the mirror below, or the sweeping wings of a hawk paint their moth-like image on the blue surface, or a little flaw of wind shudders across the water in a black ripple; but except for these casual stirs of Nature, all is still, oppressive, and beautiful, as earth seems to the trance-sleeper on the brink ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... being quite out of breath by the time she got indoors went slowly up-stairs and down the long hall to Eleanor's room. The house was very still—evidently its inmates were all out watching the hoop-rolling. Betty found herself walking softly, in sympathy with the almost oppressive silence. Eleanor's door was ajar, so that Betty's ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... nature of its exactions by a name of blandishment. An enormous grievance was long the office of purveyance. A purveyor was an officer who was to furnish every sort of provision for the royal house, and sometimes for great lords, during their progresses or journeys. His oppressive office, by arbitrarily fixing the market prices, and compelling the countrymen to bring their articles to market, would enter into the history of the arts of grinding the labouring class of society; a remnant of feudal tyranny! The very title of this ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... the camp-meeting I returned to Chicago. As I started homeward, I found that the oppressive heat had greatly reduced my strength. Because of the heat, too, I had been tempted to drink too much ice-water, lemonade, etc. When about sixty miles from home, my heart began to fail, and I saw that unless the Lord helped me I was not going to be able to get through. I can not express to ...
— Trials and Triumphs of Faith • Mary Cole
... October we doubled the Cape Verd Islands, without however seeing the land, which is almost always lost in mist, and steered direct for the Equator. Our progress was now impeded by calms, and the heat began to be oppressive; but care and precaution preserved the crew in perfect health, an effect which strict cleanliness, order, and wholesome diet, will seldom fail to produce, ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... past midnight. The fire was out, on the hearth. A strange stillness pervaded the room. It grew oppressive. Margaret rose and went towards the old woman, who seemed to have dropped asleep. She took the withered hand in her own. It dropped lifeless. She was dead; the two whose lives had become as one by suffering, were parted. Sibyl had gone to that world ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... from this disaster, its empire rested on unstable foundations. The subject races were attached to their oppressive masters by no ties save those of force. When Assyria grew exhausted by its career of conquest, they were quick to strike a blow for freedom. By the middle of the seventh century Egypt had secured her independence, and many other provinces were ready to revolt. Meanwhile, beyond the eastern ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... though it assumed a positive intellectual form, was in fact negative in its aim and scope. It meant simply, we will not be exploited. But that end has now been attained. There is no fear now that government will be oppressive; and the only problem of the future is, how to make it efficient. But efficiency, it is certain, can never be secured by democratic machinery. We must, as Allison rightly maintains, have trained and skilled persons. How these are to be secured is a matter of detail, though no doubt of important ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... during the dry months, but with the oncoming of the heavy showers, which usher in the rainy season, become damp and uncomfortable and make it necessary for the occupants to return to the lowlands just at the time when Baguio is growing most attractive and the heat of Manila is becoming most oppressive. ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... questions are intimately connected with the status of the negro in southern society, it is obvious that a correct solution can be more easily obtained if he has a voice in the matter. In the right to vote he would find the best permanent protection against oppressive class-legislation, as well as against individual persecution. The relations between the white and black races, even if improved by the gradual wearing off of the present animosities, are likely to remain long under the troubling influence of prejudice. It is a notorious ...
— Report on the Condition of the South • Carl Schurz
... Absentee landlordism was oppressive both to the cotter's body and to his soul, for it not only bound him to perpetual poverty but kindled within him a deep sense of injustice. The historian, Justin McCarthy, says that the Irishman "regarded the right to have a bit of land, his share, exactly as other people regard the right to live." ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth
... "We spent a hot oppressive day with very little wind in cruising leisurely round it as close in shore as we could get. I should guess that it was about eleven miles round, measuring from the ends of the promontories. We saw no signs whatever of habitation ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... doubtless, by the Roman hegemony to a name—which involved the property of the soil and the right to a distinct administration and jurisdiction of their own.(25) Some years later not only were the old confederacies again allowed to have a shadowy existence, but the oppressive restriction on the alienation of ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... the house she pondered upon the maid's-room. It was a slant-roofed, small-windowed hole above the kitchen, oppressive in summer, frigid in winter. She saw that while she had been considering herself an unusually good mistress, she had been permitting her friends Bea and Oscarina to live in a sty. She complained to Kennicott. "What's the matter with it?" he growled, as they stood on the perilous stairs ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... there is, whether nullification is a peaceful and an efficient remedy against an unconstitutional act of the general government, and may be asserted, as such, through the State tribunals. Both parties agree that the acts against which it is directed are unconstitutional and oppressive. The controversy is only as to the means by which our citizens may be protected against the acknowledged encroachments on their rights. This being the point at issue between the parties, and the very object of the majority being an efficient protection of the ...
— Remarks of Mr. Calhoun of South Carolina on the bill to prevent the interference of certain federal officers in elections: delivered in the Senate of the United States February 22, 1839 • John C. Calhoun
... as he placed a candle-screen before Annie, who, having a headache, found the light oppressive, he said with a graceful mixture of play and earnest, impossible ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... church-membership;—principles for which they have earnestly contended from the beginning. The student of history will readily perceive how they thus came into collision with the ruling powers. They were fined in Massachusetts and Connecticut for resistance to oppressive ecclesiastical laws, they were imprisoned in Virginia, and throughout the land were subjected to contumely and reproach. This dislike to the Baptists as a sect, or rather to their principles, was very naturally shared by the higher institutions of learning ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various
... outside of Spain, but if they could do no better, at least go to the Peninsula. He urged that through education only could progress be hoped for. In one of his speeches he had warned the Spanish government that continued oppressive measures would drive the Filipinos from their allegiance and make them wish to become subjects of a freer power, suggesting England, whose possessions ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... the progress of the day; and, the wind dying down, the atmosphere was oppressive. By the time Stephensport, Ky. (695 miles), was reached, in the middle of the afternoon, the sun was beating fiercely upon the glassy flood, and our awning came again into play, although it could not save us from the annoyance ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... great birds her surroundings seemed to lose their only element of active and conscious life. The brooding sunlit evening became oppressive, so that in the space of a moment Damaris passed from solitude, which is stimulating, to loneliness, which is only sad. Meanwhile the shadow cast by the ilex trees had grown sensibly longer, softer in outline, more transparent ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... the oppressive heat of the day and the fatigue of hard thinking, Mr. Downing was working up for a brain-storm, when Fate once more intervened, this time in the shape of Riglett, a junior ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... down the long table, seated beside Daisy Musgrave, obviously to their mutual satisfaction. A bubbling oasis of gaiety surrounded them. Evidently the general atmosphere of state and ceremony was less oppressive in that quarter. ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... into the coals on the hearth. It was all over and done with, the house empty and still, Dolly Ferrara gone back to her uncle's home. Even the Cove was bare of fishing craft. He was alone under his own rooftree, alone with an oppressive ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... first arrived at New York, the effect of the climate upon me was immediate. On the 5th of May, the heat and closeness were oppressive. There was a sultriness in the air, even at that early period of the year, which to me seemed equal to that of Madras. Almost every day there were, instead of our mild refreshing showers, sharp storms of thunder and lightning; but the air did not appear to me to be ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... upon which the government has developed to its present Constitutional form are chiefly lines of resistance to oppressive enactments in these two matters. The dynastic and military history of England, although picturesque and interesting, is really only a narrative of the external causes which have impeded the Nation's growth toward its ideal of "the greatest possible ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... always existed, but not in the history of the world was it ever a craze, a madness, until your time and mine. This lust has rotted these nations; it has made them hard, sordid, ungentle, dishonest, oppressive. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... seemed somewhat sleepy and tired; and was withal so tiny, that he might almost have taken her between his thumb and finger, and twirled her above his head; yet she poised herself before him on a mullein-stalk and looked every inch a queen. Robin found her gaze oppressive; for her eyes were hard, and cold, and gray, as if they had been ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... last, after a long and weary night to many within and without the abbey. Every thing betokened a dismal day. The atmosphere was damp, and oppressive to the spirits, while the raw cold sensibly affected the frame. All astir were filled with gloom and despondency, and secretly breathed a wish that, the tragical business of the day were ended. The vast range of Pendle ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... a heavy burden, signifies that you will be tied down by oppressive weights of care and injustice, caused from favoritism shown your enemies by those in power. But to struggle free from it, you will climb to ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... small, yet so significant, a feature of that large, white, luminous and inauspicious face. It is an hortation which, by whomsoever delivered, would tend to dispirit the bravest and most honest of witnesses. The presence of a judge is always, as I have said, oppressive. The presence of three is trebly so. Yet not a score of them serried along the bench could have outdone in oppressiveness Sir Charles Russell. He alone, among the counsel I have seen, was an exception to the rule that by a judge every one in court is levelled. On the bench, ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... group gathered before the fire. In the midst of it, I saw the tall, almost boyish figure of Bonny Page, and the sight of her gallant air and her brilliant, vivacious smile aroused in me instantly the oppressive self-consciousness of our first meeting. I remembered suddenly that I had dressed carelessly in the morning, that I had tied my cravat in a hurry, that my coat fitted me badly and I had neglected to send it back. All the innumerable details of life—the little things I despised ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... Oregon, Dakota, and Third Infantry troops and a battery of the Utah Light Artillery, with other troops following, including Ben's battalion with Major Morris at its head. As before, the advance was along the main road and through the rice-fields, cane-brakes, and the jungle, with the air so oppressive that it felt as though coming out of ...
— The Campaign of the Jungle - or, Under Lawton through Luzon • Edward Stratemeyer
... convinced me that happiness in that rank is more a shadow than a substance. It was a memorable saying of Pope Adrian IV., 'that he knew no one more unhappy than the Sovereign Pontiff; his throne is a seat of thorns; his mantle is an oppressive weight; his tiara shines splendidly indeed, but it is not without a devouring fire.' If I had been ambitious," continues Petrarch, "I might have been preferred to a benefice of more value than yours;" and he refers to the fact of the ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... round a rickety table, on which a large coarse tallow candle, stuck in a bottle, flared and guttered, and emitted an odour even more powerful than that of the tobacco smoke with which the room was filled. The air was heavy, the heat oppressive, and both the house-door and that of the guard-room, which was at right angles to it, just within the passage, were left open. Whilst some few of the men, their arms crossed upon the table, and their heads laid upon them, dozed away the time till their turn for going on sentry ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... at leaving him there ill,—only a coolie, to be sure, only an atom among the 34,000,000 of the Empire, but not less precious to our Father in heaven than any other. It was a brilliant day, with the mercury 86 degrees in the shade, but the heat was not oppressive. At noon we reached the Tone, and I rode on a coolie's tattooed shoulders through the shallow part, and then, with the kurumas, some ill- disposed pack-horses, and a number of travellers, crossed in a ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... intensity,—until at length the very figures on the tapestry with which the room was hung appeared animated with power to scare and affright me. The wind moaned ominously without, and raised strange echoes within; oppressive feelings crowded on my soul. At length the gale swelled to a hurricane—a whirlwind, seldom experienced in this delicious clime. Howlings in a thousand tones appeared to flit through the air; and piercing lamentations ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... heather to High Horcum. The huge shoulders of the moors are now majestically indistinct, and towards the west the browns, purples, and greens are all merged in one unfathomable blackness. The tremendous silence and the desolation become almost oppressive, but overhead the familiar arrangement of the constellations gives a sense of companionship not to be slighted. In something less than an hour a light glows in the distance, and, although the darkness is now complete, ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... In sultry noon's oppressive ray, Beneath the holme, of ample shade, His listless limbs he loves to lay On herbage, matted in the glade; Hears down the steeps the white rills dashing play, Till under the long grass they purl away; While, on wing of swift vibration, Murmuring range the ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... prisoners should be assigned tasks according to their ability. All men are not alike equally skilled in the same kind of labor. All these things should be taken into account. No prisoner should be forced to carry a burden that is oppressive, in order to fill the coffers of avaricious contractors. Again, I ask that there be some humane person, whose duty it is to see that these helpless men, whose lips are sealed, are not oppressed by this damnable contract system. Let us treat these unfortunate ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds
... marked enough in the earlier period of the Middle Ages (in Anselm, for example), faded out, they became more and more mere landlords, although from the conditions of their landlordism, living as they did on their land and amidst of their tenants, they were less oppressive than the lay landlords. ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... blood fighting freely in the open, he was a match for the lustiest. But New York, with its submerging, jostling multitudes, its thickly crowding human vastness, and, more than all, its atmosphere of dollar-chasing, apparent and oppressive even to the transient ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... the town guests had their plain bare Speisesaal, and we Britishers possessed the summer house; so we were all happy. The whole glory of the place was in the forest; for it was not flat sandy forest that has no undergrowth, and wearies you very soon with its sameness and its still, oppressive air. It was up hill and down dale forest, full of lovely glades, broken by massive dolomite rocks; the trees not set in serried rows, but growing for the most part as the birds and the wind planted them; a varied natural forest tended but not dragooned by man. The ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... was oppressive. But nevertheless, Cola, I have not lacked company—half the matronage of Rome ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... literary regime as well as the old political regime. The last century still weighs upon the present one at almost every point. It is notably oppressive in the matter of criticism. For instance, you find living men who repeat to you this definition of taste let fall by Voltaire: "Taste in poetry is no different from what it is in women's clothes." Taste, then, is coquetry. Remarkable words, which ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... one of the very pleasantest garden-books I have encountered. One reason for this is that it is about such a lot of other things besides gardens. Volumes that are exclusively devoted to what I might call horticultural hortation are apt to become oppressive. But AGNES and EGERTON CASTLE are persons far too sympathetic not to avoid this danger. Instead of lecturing, they talk with an engaging discursiveness that lures you from page to page, as it might from bed to border, were ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 25, 1914 • Various
... been driven to hostilities by the oppressive and tyrannous measures of Great Britain, having been compelled to commit the essential rights of men to the decision of arms, and having been at length forced to shake off a yoke which had grown too burdensome to bear, they declared ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... the guards on duty, that was out of the question. He waited, listening, as the check-down continued in nearby compartments. Then silence fell again. The heavy yeast aroma had grown more and more oppressive; now suddenly a fan went on with a whir, and a cool draft of freshened reprocessed air poured down from the ventilator shaft above ...
— Gold in the Sky • Alan Edward Nourse
... terrify the blacks that to escape from him they would penetrate farther into the jungle. His motive was purely selfish, but his methods, compared with those of Leopold, were almost considerate. The work the State to-day requires of the blacks is so oppressive that they have no time, no heart, ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... the game began there was dead silence in the room—a silence so oppressive that the click of the balls sounded sharp and clear, and the whizzing hum of the grasshoppers, moving in swarms, came in rolling crescendoes and quavering diminuendoes from the parched and barren paddocks all around, as distinctly as if the table had been set out in the open bush. ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... to lose a friend is to lend him money. There is nothing which seems to affect the mind more, and color the very heart's blood, than money. There seems a curse in it sometimes, so potent is it for mischief. Poverty, if it be too oppressive grinding down the face, may often hurt the heart-life; but perhaps oftener still it only reveals what true treasures there are in the wealth of the affections. Whereas, we know what heartburnings, and rivalries, and envyings, are occasioned by this golden apple of discord. Most of the disputes ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... earth and drew nearer to the place where a great serpent lay supine and coiled round the whole world. Ah! then the ancients must have referred to this, where the light is so ghastly, and the woods are endless, and are so still and solemn and grey; to this oppressive loneliness, amid so much life, which is so chilling to the poor distressed heart; and the horror grew darker with their fancies; the cold of early morning, the comfortless grey of dawn, the dead white ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... am a check on them down-stairs—papa, and Charlotte, and all—they are very kind, considerate, and yet'—she paused—'and it is a naughty feeling; but when I feel all those dear kind eyes watching me always, and wanting me to be happy, it is rather oppressive, especially when I can't; but if I try not to disappoint them, I do make such a bad hand of it, and am sure to break down afterwards, and that grieves mamma ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... when the bateau was run ashore and tied up, but tonight there were no singing voices or wild laughter of men whose hours of play-time and rest had come. To Carrigan, looking through his window, there was an oppressive menace about it all. The shadowy figures ashore were more like a death-watch than a guard, and to dispel the gloom of it he lighted two of the lamps in the cabin, whistled, drummed a simple chord ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... and 'ice-blink' girdles the horizon. The weather is wretched—a stagnant calm of air and ocean alike, the latter obscured by dense pack through which no swell can penetrate, and a wet mist hangs like a pall over land and sea. The silence is oppressive. There is nothing to do but to stay in one's sleeping-bag, or else wander in the soft snow and become thoroughly wet." Fifteen inches of snow fell in the next twenty-four hours, making over two feet between August 18 and 21. A slight swell ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... earthquakes are comparatively of much less frequent occurrence (as for instance, in Southern Europe), a very general belief prevails, although unsupported by the authority of inductive reasoning,* that a calm, an oppressive p 207 heat and a misty horizon, are always the ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... that conspiracy should have cut him off in the full vigor of his faculties, in the very meridian of his glory, and on the brink of completing a series of gigantic achievements. Amongst these are numbered—a digest of the entire body of laws, even then become unwieldy and oppressive; the establishment of vast and comprehensive public libraries, Greek as well as Latin; the chastisement of Dacia; the conquest of Parthia; and the cutting a ship canal through the Isthmus of Corinth. The reformation of the calendar he had already accomplished. And of all his projects it ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... suffer in their pockets. They are abundantly able to protect their own property; they know how to make money on the short side of the market as well as the long side. But the managers of the concerns of small capital are seldom able to do this. Oppressive laws cause suffering to them, to the mere holders of stock in all corporations, to the creditors of all, to the employees, and to the customers. Many of these laws profess to be meant to favor small people as against big people—to restrain ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... necessary to support the King's Government, religion, schools, and to reward public services, should be raised without such oppressive taxes as would oppress the natives, and shackle ...
— Speeches of His Majesty Kamehameha IV. To the Hawaiian Legislature • Kamehameha IV
... sensible that the revenue would continue forever, and the abuses immediately return, his demand was unanimously rejected. About three years after, the pope demanded and obtained the tenth of all ecclesiastical revenues, which he levied in a very oppressive manner; requiring payment before the clergy had drawn their rents or tithes, and sending about usurers, who advanced them the money at exorbitant interest. In the year 1240, Otho the legate, having in vain attempted the clergy in a ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... between two characters who both perhaps desire what is best for you, but who are so totally different that you will never know whom or which one to please. The Crown Prince has made himself free—and how did he do it? Only by courage and independence. He tore himself loose from the oppressive bondage imposed on him by the caprice of others, and won the means to complete his education. And now he sends to you from Rheinsberg his friend, the Prince Hereditary of Baireuth, to be a support and protection to you and to the Queen—so that here in this Court where they ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... period, since her first seclusion at Udolpho, and her mind was sometimes so overwhelmed with an apprehension, that Valancourt was no more, or that he lived no longer for her, that the company even of Blanche became intolerably oppressive, and she would sit alone in her apartment for hours together, when the engagements of the family allowed her ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... instance, that nature has denied to you that melodious and flexible voice in which it is our custom every day to render homage to the Father, to express all the sacred feelings of our hearts, all our love for each other, the joy we have in life, and even our griefs and sorrows. For grief is like a dark, oppressive cloud, until from lip and hand it breaks in the rain of melody, and we are lightened, so that even the things that are painful give to life a new and chastened glory. And as with music, so with all other arts. There is a twofold pleasure ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... weary sound, and the heavy breath, And the silent motions of passing death, And the smell, cold, oppressive, and dank, Sent through the ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... adventure really fascinated her, because she hates the Senor so. Anyway, I followed through several inner rooms of oppressive magnificence which the Spaniard reserves for his own use. Then we entered a corridor. No lock could be seen, but the Senora touched the panel in a certain way. It closed of itself as we entered, with the sound of a lock indeed—a heavy, oiled, smooth-running ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... friend to a very free system of commerce and to hold it as a truth that commercial shackles are generally unjust, oppressive, and impolitic; it is also a truth that if industry and labour are left to take their own course, they will generally be directed to those objects which are the most productive, and this in a more certain and direct manner than ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... for the work of achieving political independence a century later. Naturally it was in Massachusetts at the same time that the faults of the theocracy were most conspicuous. It was there that priestly authority most clearly asserted itself in such oppressive acts as are always witnessed when too much power is left in the hands of men whose primary allegiance is to a kingdom not of this world. Much as we owe to the theocracy for warding off the encroachments of the crown, we cannot be sorry that it was itself ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
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