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Besetting   Listen
adjective
Besetting  adj.  Habitually attacking, harassing, or pressing upon or about; as, a besetting sin.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Besetting" Quotes from Famous Books



... control of reason; whose ideas are no less vigorous or exuberant because they move in a steady and ordered train; and who, in their most fervent reactions against abuses or crimes, resist that vehement temptation to excess which is the besetting infirmity of generous natures. Condorcet was very different from this. Whatever he wished he wished unrestrainedly. As with most men of the epoch, the habit of making allowances was not his. We observe something theological in his hatred of theologians. Even in his letters ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley

... they are removed from the excitement of life and the deceit of its dreams. 'Sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily.' For the long years of our stay here, God's seeking love lingers round every one of us, yearning over us, besetting us behind and before, courting us with kindnesses, lavishing on us its treasures, seeking to win our poor love. It is sometimes said that this is a state of probation. But that phrase suggests far too cold an idea. God does not set us here ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... I fear from what I have observed of your temperament that you will have to strive against fickleness. Every one has his besetting fault—that is no disgrace to him, but it is a disgrace if he do not find it out, and by God's grace overcome it. I am not near to advise you what to do, but whatever line of life you choose, resolve to stick ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie

... course conclude that I did not delay one moment, after the receipt of this letter, returning to a home where such an angelic being waited to receive me. It seems impossible to me, now, that I could have done otherwise. Yet so it was. Pride, my besetting sin, made me inflict still deeper ...
— Hurrah for New England! - The Virginia Boy's Vacation • Louisa C. Tuthill

... man is not inclined alike to every kind of sin. One man, perhaps, is inclined to covetousness, another to swear and use bad words, another to lie and deceive, another to be angry and cruel; and that sin which a man feels himself most inclined to is called his besetting sin." ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood

... besetting sins. Ah, how I longed to know the substance of their discourse; for I felt a mysterious presentiment that in some way or another, my future destiny was connected with this stranger. I recalled the distress of Harrison, the dark hints he ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie

... refused its office, when I would fain have asked her what she meant. Her besetting sin, poor soul, is a proud spirit. She dried her eyes on a sudden, and spoke out freely, in these words: "I am not going to cry about it. The other day, father, we were out walking in the park. A horrid, bold, yellow-haired woman passed us in an open ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins

... were influenced by one common purpose of mischief, and aimed at the production of the same malignant end and effect. Suppose persons jointly charged in an indictment with the breaking of an house, are found on different sides of the same house, besetting and endeavouring to enter it at the same time; you need not shew that they had actually met, and previously contrived the plan of this joint robbery; the unity of their conduct proves their joint contrivance and concert to accomplish the same end; though, indeed, this is a case ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney

... to assure herself that her companion was conducting her in good faith to the home of her early years. An undefined feeling of insecurity was painfully besetting her, whichever way she turned. She considered and reconsidered the evidences he had brought to Cottage Island of the truth of his own statements, and of his own trustworthiness. It was all in vain. Could those papers have been forgeries? ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton

... by the Spirit disguised as the shepherd Thyrsis. But the Lady, having been lured into the haunt of impurity, is left spell-bound, and appeal is made to the pure nymph Sabrina, who is "swift to aid a virgin, such as was herself, in hard-besetting need." It is in the contention between Comus and the Lady in this scene that the interest of the mask may be said to culminate, for here its purpose stands revealed: "it is a song to Temperance as ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton

... exclaim—"Although he treated me so badly, I should love to hear the sound of his dear voice again!" There can be no doubt that Henry Mayhew was a genius, a fascinating companion, and a man of inexhaustible resource and humour—though humour was but one side of his brilliant mind. Indolence was his besetting sin; and ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann

... the besetting faults and failings of his temperament—an impulsive self confidence, followed by moments of revolt and lassitude and discouragement. He knew that a quiet stability was the quality he lacked, and that the fire of enthusiasm and the revolt against ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green

... superstition is the ever-delightful but ever-doubtful George Borrow's, who says that the Welsh ll is the same as the Spanish ll, but who is probably mistaken, most other authorities agreeing that if you pronounce it lhl you will come as near it as any Saeseneg need. It is a constantly besetting question in Wales, where the prefix Llan speckles the map all over, owing to that multitude of Saints who peopled the country in the times when a Saint's sons were every one saints, and none was of particularly ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells

... rather a besetting weakness of America to suppose that men who have never had any means for qualifying themselves for particular pursuits, are the most likely to succeed in them; and especially to fancy that those who "begin poor" are in a much better way for acquiring ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper

... The agitation now besetting the public mind had been adroitly fanned into flame by the evil genius of Lord Shaftesbury. Eachard states that if he was not the original contriver of this disturbance, "he was at least the grand refiner and improver of all the materials. And so much he ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy

... circumstances when it would have been quite proper that he should look for a remuneration. A slight colour stole over the face of the niece, as memory recalled to her mind these different occasions. Was that sensitive blush owing to her perceiving the besetting weakness of one who stood in the light of a parent to her, and towards whom she endeavoured to feel the affection of a child? We shall not gainsay this, so far as a portion of the feeling which produced that blush was concerned; but, certain it is, that the thought that Roswell had exerted ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper

... live—gave me a sort of stolid recklessness which amazingly helped me: stimulating me to taking risks in climbing which before I should have shrunk from, and so getting me on faster; and at the same time dulling my mind to the dreads besetting it and my body to its ceaseless pains begot of weariness and thirst and scanty food. So little, indeed, did I care what became of me that even when by the middle of my second day's march I saw no change in my surroundings I did not mind it much: but, to be ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier

... as Vava; she would not for worlds hurt any one's feelings willingly, and she knew too that she ought not to have said what she did; but pride was Stella's besetting sin, and she hated having to mix with people whom she considered her inferiors, and her present life and surroundings ...
— A City Schoolgirl - And Her Friends • May Baldwin

... and some one doubted it, but the governor who pardoned him happened to be in the meeting, and rose and said, "I pardoned that man myself." The governor pardoned him, and he lived a few years, but from the time he committed that sin he had to reap. Oh, reader, I plead with you, overcome your besetting ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Dwight Moody

... that she not only gave his profession at the moment, but at least suggested his career for the future; that she approximated the year of his father's death as the time when he was thrown upon the world; that she admonished him against his besetting habit, tobacco; that she read. minutely not only his characteristics, but his brother Orion's; that she outlined the struggle in his conquest of the river; that she seemingly had knowledge of Orion's ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... manly feeling and good English common-sense, it was painful in the extreme. Vanity, the love of my own way, and want of candour—(my father took a pinch of snuff between each count of the indictment)—these were my besetting sins, and would lead me into serious trouble. This new fad, just, too, when he had made most favourable arrangements for my admission into my Uncle Henry's office as the first step in a prosperous career. I didn't know; didn't I? Perhaps not. ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... enjoy waking this morning to find herself famous?" she asked, echoing Milly's word for me; and then, to Mrs. Baker's horror, she, too, had a tale to tell about reporters; they had been besetting her for information about her companion ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark

... the descent from Hermon. Jesus seems to have accompanied Peter to his home in Capernaum, to which the other disciples followed them. The favor which Christ showed the three in taking them to the mount may have caused a feeling of pride in them, and of jealousy in the nine. Pride was John's besetting sin, as we shall see. A great privilege had been granted him. Without telling the secret of Hermon to his fellow-disciples, he may, by improper word or act, or both, have shown a feeling of superiority, which displeased ...
— A Life of St. John for the Young • George Ludington Weed

... toper. The people in Pinchbrook said he was a good man, but, they used to add, with a shrug of the shoulders, "pity he drinks." It was a sad pity, but he seemed to have no power over his appetite. The allusion of Ben to his besetting sin was cruel and mortifying, for the old man had certainly tried to reform, and since the regiment left Boston, he had not tasted the intoxicating cup. He had declared before the mess that he had stopped drinking; so his resolution ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic

... to a powerful and generous horse, somewhat sluggish from his size, and requiring to be roused by a gad-fly; so the deity appears to have united me, being such a person as I am, to the city, that I may rouse you, and persuade and reprove every one of you, nor ever cease besetting you throughout the whole day. Such another man, O Athenians! will not easily be found; therefore, if you will take my advice, you will spare me. But you, perhaps, being irritated like drowsy persons who are roused from sleep, will strike me, and, yielding to Anytus, will unthinkingly ...
— Apology, Crito, and Phaedo of Socrates • Plato

... crumb-like contribution to the structure. The first thing to bear in mind (especially if we ourselves belong to the clerico-academic-scientific type, the officially and conventionally "correct" type, "the deadly respectable" type, for which to ignore others is a besetting temptation) is that nothing can be more stupid than to bar out phenomena from our notice, merely because we are incapable of taking part in ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... and indispensable; and that the display of a particular excellence, however good in itself, was by no means conclusive as to character; in short, that we perhaps as often meet with a favorite principle as with a besetting sin. ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper

... all to be recognized is the danger of idealism. It is the one besetting sin of the human race. It means the fall into automatism, ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence

... greatest factor in the ultimate development of the working girl as a wage-earning unit—the most potent force for the adjustment of all the difficulties besetting her at every turn, and for the righting of all her wrongs, social, economic, or moral—will be the attitude which she herself assumes toward the dispassionate consideration of those difficulties to be adjusted, and of those wrongs ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson

... of dedicating a whole page to one Sir PETER LAURIE, than the zoological Mr. CROSS would think of devoting an acre of his gardens to one ass, simply because it happened to be the largest known specimen of the species. But, without knowing it, Sir PETER has given a fine illustration of the besetting selfishness of the times. Had LAURIE been born to hide his ears in a coronet, he could not have more strongly displayed the social insensibility of the day. The prosperous saddler, and the wretched, woe-begone tailor, are admirable types of the giant ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... The besetting sin of both Montaigne's translators seems to have been a propensity for reducing his language and phraseology to the language and phraseology of the age and country to which they belonged, and, moreover, inserting paragraphs and words, not here and there ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... is a God like unto Thee, that pardonest iniquity?" And so saying, he entered on the heavenly light, and left for ever behind him the darkness and the danger of the pitfalls, and the face of shame, and the besetting weakness; for he too was clothed in raiment of light, and borne with joy ...
— The Rocky Island - and Other Similitudes • Samuel Wilberforce

... hitherto been inclined to regard my besetting sin (for even youngsters of four may have besetting sins) as only a childish peculiarity, at last began to take note of my dawdling propensities, and did their best to cure me of them. My father would watch ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... to such riddles, perhaps. But when the mind has positive, practical work to perform, and time keeps bringing all the time specific duties, or when, as in your case, a predisposition to vague speculation is the intellectual besetting sin, I think addition to such subjects to be avoided. I suppose all human beings have, in some shape or degree, the desire for that knowledge which is still the growth of the forbidden tree of Paradise, and the lust for which ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... to me, owing to my besetting thoughts. I willingly admit that the constant reading of Edgar Poe's works, and reading them in this place in which his heroes delighted, had exercised an influence on me which I did ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne

... character so famous as this part of Dundreary was made by Sothern. When he came to Newcastle on his first provincial tour I met him, and spent some pleasant evenings with him after the play. He was a man of refined speech and good social gifts. His besetting weakness, as I learned even then, was that addiction to practical jokes which, on more than one occasion in his subsequent career, involved him in unpleasant situations. One of his favourite tricks was to select some portly and self-important ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.

... wreaths into her stream Of pansies, pinks, and gaudy daffodils. And, as the old swain said, she can unlock The clasping charm, and thaw the numbing spell, If she be right invoked in warbled song; For maidenhood she loves, and will be swift To aid a virgin, such as was herself, In hard-besetting need. This will I try, And add the power of ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton

... selfish and petty family motives, it is useless to ignore. Unless the obstacle can be pushed aside, other efforts to inspire country people to a realization of their social opportunities must surely fail. Family life in the country can be saved from its besetting sin when rural leadership undertakes this task with the ...
— Rural Problems of Today • Ernest R. Groves

... distress, so much a matter of constitution with him, that at times it would seem that the best pleasures of life could but be snatched, as it were hastily, in one moment's forgetfulness of its dark, besetting influence. A sudden suspicion of hatred against him, of the nearness of "enemies," seemed all at once to alter the visible form of things, as with the child's hero, when he found the footprint on the sand of his peaceful, dreamy island. His elaborate philosophy had not put beneath his feet the ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater

... wants. We repeat, there is no reason why man should not live to be a hundred, or even more, if only proper care be exercised. The hurry of modern life is fatal to the expectation of longevity, so also is over-indulgence in the pleasures of the table, which is one of the besetting sins of the present generation. If from childhood the care of the human body was made the subject of constant instruction, the second generation from now would see such a marked change in the personnel of the race as would astound even the most sanguine. What if a ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell

... the last: these and many similar questions, in nowise directed by his will, obtruded themselves over and over again, countless times. Neither were they connected with fear: he was conscious of no fear. Rather, they originated in a strange besetting desire to know what to do when the time came; a desire gigantically disproportionate to the few swift moments to which it referred; a wondering that was more like the wondering of some other spirit ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens

... no immediate intention of climbing to the roof of the cabin. The truth of the matter was, Lub always showed a disposition to put things off; procrastination was one of his greatest faults, even as too much haste had always been X-Ray Tyson's besetting sin. There was the whole day before him; so what need of undue speed. Taking things easy had become second nature with Lub. Besides, as a final argument, he had gorged himself with the fine breakfast, which of course he ...
— Phil Bradley's Mountain Boys - The Birch Bark Lodge • Silas K. Boone

... those confined in the prisons of Nantes. This list they were to deliver when ready to the committee, which would know how to proceed, for Carrier had made his meaning perfectly clear. The first salutary measure necessary to combat the evils besetting the city was to wipe out at once the inmates of all the prisons ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini

... been my lot, in a somewhat active life in the city of Boston for twenty-five years, to meet every day an inspiring name that all the world knows, and that stands for what right resolution, the overcoming of besetting sins in youth, and persevering energy may accomplish against the ridicule of the world. There have been many books written having that ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth

... therefore experienced no such difficulty as we shall find besetting the Roman commanders of the next century, in persuading his men to follow him "beyond the world,"[74] and to dare the venture, hitherto unheard of in the annals of Rome, of crossing the ocean itself. We must remember that this crossing was looked upon by the Romans ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare

... Art; his generous ardor in behalf of whatever is noble and true; his scorn of all meanness, of all false pretences and conventional beliefs, softened as it was by compassion for the victims of those besetting sins of a cultivated age; his never-flagging impetuosity in pushing onward to some unattained point of duty or of knowledge: all this, along with his gentle, almost reverential affectionateness towards his ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle

... the portrait, "che fece quel altro pittore della detta Cornelia"; of his unwillingness to proceed to Nuvolara, unless the picture thus done at second hand should require alteration. In truth we have lighted here upon one of Titian's most besetting sins, this willingness, this eagerness, when occasion offers, to paint portraits without direct reference to the model. In this connection we are reminded that he never saw Francis the First, whose likeness he notwithstanding painted with so showy and superficial ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips

... than to enter the church with an express purpose of dozing there. Arm-chairs, sofas, and beds are the legitimate places for dozers. But there is no accounting for that conquering spirit of all-besetting drowsiness that attacks us at sundry times and places. It is in vain that we lengthen our limbs into an awakening stretch—that we yawn with the expressive suavity of yawning no more—that we dislocate our knuckle bones, and ruffle the symmetry of our visage, with a manual application; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various

... Monica, in a ravishing kimono, was perched on the leather railed seat running round the fireplace, one little foot in a satin slipper held out to the blaze. In that pretty room she made a charming picture, which for a moment almost made me forget the manifold dangers besetting me. ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams

... to return home, though she should be more sorry to leave the mountain castle than she could ever have believed possible. She entreated her father to take her home, but she received a sharp answer that she did not know what she was talking of: the Schlangenwald Reitern were besetting all the roads; and moreover the Ulm burghers had taken the capture of the Constance wine in such dudgeon that for a retainer of Adlerstein to show himself in the streets would be an absolute asking for ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Lines on going to Dorset. Letters to young Friends on the Christian Life. Narrow Escape from Death. Feeling on returning to Town. Her "Praying Circle." The Chicago Fire. The true Art of Living. God our only safe Teacher. An easily-besetting Sin. ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss

... to this fine but fearful soul with an exquisite tenderness. "Confusion of mind," with its inhibiting sadness and helplessness, is of all evils in the world the one most abhorrent to her clear, decisive, intuitive nature. Against this, his besetting danger, she seeks with all her customary vigour to protect her beloved disciple. The love rather than the wrath of God was, as we have seen, ever the chief burden of Catherine's teaching. Never did she dwell on it more earnestly than ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa

... hurricane to sweep them off the land, and the dwellings the "foul fiend" hath contaminated. Man's doing, and woman's suffering, and thence even arises the beauty of loveliness—woman's patience. In the very palpable darkness besetting the ways of domestic life, woman's virtue walks ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various

... truth is, that a vice never corrected a vice. Pope might be proud of the terror he inspired in those who feared no God in whom vanity was stronger than conscience: but that terror made no individual man better; and while he indulged his own besetting sin, he administered to the malignity of others. Your professed satirists always send me to think upon the opposite sentiment in Shakspeare, on "the mischievous foul sin of chiding sin." I remember once hearing a poem of Barry Cornwall's, (he read it to me,) about a strange winged ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson

... enjoyed my late excursion with Ellen with the greater zest because such pleasures have not often chanced to fall in my way. I will not tell you what I thought of the sea, because I should fall into my besetting sin of enthusiasm. I may, however, say that its glories, changes, its ebbs and flow, the sound of its restless waves, formed a subject for contemplation that never wearied either the eye, the ear, or the mind. Our visit at Easton was extremely pleasant; I shall always feel grateful to ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter

... catalogues. There is hardly a hill, rock, stream, or sea-fronting headland in the neighborhood of his home that he has not fondly remembered. Sometimes, we think, there is too much description, the besetting sin of modern verse, which has substituted what should be called wordy-painting for the old art of painting in a single word. The essential character of Mr. Whittier's poetry is lyrical, and the rush of the lyric, like that of a brook, allows few pictures. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various

... rain were fretting, And sudden gleams the mountain-tops besetting. I cannot let thee fade to ...
— Poems • Alice Meynell

... mirth and fun of life drifts farther from you, and you find the merry jest, which of old turned care into laughter, less ready on your lip, you must cultivate a wholesome optimistic view of life, to sustain your husband through the trials and disasters besetting most ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... he said, looking at the water. 'She found out my pet besetting sin on the spot, and paid it off. My God, how she understood! And she said I was better than she was! Better than she was!' He laughed at the absurdity of the notion. 'I wonder if girls guess at one-half ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling

... look much of a swell today," she said with a glance at his clothes. "And Finnegan's, though exclusive for the Bowery, is hardly what might be called smart. I am curious, Jerry. Curiosity is one of my besetting sins—otherwise I'd never have gotten inside your wall. I've been wondering what on earth you could have been doing ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs

... freely (I fear the notion of a certain physiological process is embraced by some minds, and that these words will be taken as curtly enunciating the Indian's besetting weakness; but pray be not too eager to dissever them from what is yet to come, as I protest that I am not now wishing to revert to this sad failing). He imbibes freely—the current fashions of the hour amongst whites. If raffling, for instance, be held in honour as a method for expediting ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie

... both too quickly and too harshly. That is one of our besetting sins. And I have paid too much heed to the opinion of others, and too little to the charity that should give us courage to do good. She, whom I despised, ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson

... cenizas del peor hombre que ha habido en el mundo; ruegan por el'—'Here lie the bones and ashes of the worst man that has ever been in the world; pray for him.' But like all Andalusians he was a braggart; for a love of chocolate, which appears to have been his besetting sin, is insufficient foundation for such a vaunt: a vice of that order is adequately punished by the corpulence it must occasion. However, legend, representing don Miguel as the most dissolute of libertines, is more friendly. The grave sister who escorts the visitor relates that ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham

... private opinion of the Masonic pontiff, impressed by his strong personality on the lodges he controlled, and propagated by the instruction of his rituals. The more discerning among his disciples regarded it as the besetting weakness of their grand old man, and surreptitiously during his life-time the cultus of Satan pure and simple, that is, of devil-worship, the adoration of the evil principle as evil, was practised at numerous Palladian centres. After his death, it is said to have unmasked altogether, ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite

... among men having good fortune and dwelling amid prizes of renown or the power of wealth restraineth in his heart besetting insolence, this man is worthy to have part ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar

... the magnetism of fashionable resort. The Queen of the Dew-drops was seen, carrying a pitcher! Up started four or five gallants, offering assistance, and standing round her, wrangling with one another, and besetting ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge

... dint of this constant comparison, can the critic save himself from the besetting error which makes men believe that there is some absolute progress in life and art, instead of, for the most part, mere eddyings-round in the same circle. I am tempted to glance at this, because of a passage which I read while this Essay was a-writing, a passage signed ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury

... is our will to live (abhinives'a). "This is our besetting sin that we will to be, that we will to be ourselves, that we fondly will our being to blend with other kinds of existence and extend. The negation of the will to be, cuts off being for us at least [Footnote ref 2]." This is true as much of Buddhism as of the Yoga abhinives'a, ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta

... good figure, wore fierce moustaches, and affected a military air. One suit of well-made, well-cut clothes by some means or other he managed to keep in a state of freshness and smoothness nothing short of marvellous. Borrowing was his besetting sin, and he was always head over ears in debt. Duns pursued him to the office and he sometimes hid from them in a huge safe which the office contained. It was a wretched life, but he brazened it out with ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow

... You feel that you are not only disobeying God yourself, but that you are providing others with excuses for disobeying him, and with examples of disobedience. You mourn over these considerations in bitterness of heart; you even pray for strength to resist this, your besetting sin, and then—you leave your room, and fall into the same sin ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady

... besetting sins would crop out and Lucile would cry, despairingly, "Oh, why did I do it; I knew I shouldn't," and Jessie would stop, when plunging nobly through a box of candies, to cry penitently, "Oh, I've eaten too many," and Evelyn would often be tempted ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield

... but proud of spirit, and haughty beyond his age; you may not remember, even I could not always look down his anger, or silence his loudness of speech. Why should he kill Mr. Barbary? I will tell you, child: the preacher, too, had discerned well your brother's besetting sin, and, being fearless in duty, from the Sabbath pulpit he spake of it plainly and with such point that it could not fail to come home directly to the bosom of the young man. This was on the very Lord's day before Mr. Barbary ...
— Chanticleer - A Thanksgiving Story of the Peabody Family • Cornelius Mathews

... years W.H. Smith made a list of subjects for daily prayer, embracing repentance, faith, love, grace to help, gratitude, power to pray, constant direction in all things, a right understanding of the Bible, deliverance from besetting sin, constancy in God's service, relatives and friends, missionaries, pardon for all ignorance and sin in prayer, etc., etc.; and it was one of the characteristics of his nature that he felt prayer both in youth and age to ...
— Beneath the Banner • F. J. Cross

... 'There are briars besetting every path, Which call for patient care; There is a cross in every lot, And an earnest need ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... will be in pretty much the same position there that Pharaoh occupied over their race in Egypt in olden time, and, if reports speak true, will wield the sceptre of authority over their captives in a somewhat similar style. Avarice is the besetting sin of the Israelite, and here his slaves are taxed beyond endurance. To exact the utmost from his labour is the constant aim, and I was informed that many of the slaves belonging to Jews were sent out, and compelled ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell

... exterminated with impunity, and which, in the more modern warfare of the country, would not have been neglected for a single hour. This sort of contempt for eminences, or rather dread of the labor of ascending them, might have been termed the besetting weakness of the warfare of the period. It originated in the simplicity of the Indian contests, in which, from the nature of the combats, and the density of the forests, fortresses were rare, and artillery next to useless. ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper

... and stockings were paired, and little trousers buttoned and little petticoats tied behind. The besetting cowardice of the family was its shirking of the ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

... convicted in my own mind of ingratitude for not having travelled long ago to Pembrokeshire, to show my most kind friends of Freestone that I remember their kindness, and that they made my stay so pleasant as to make me wish to test their hospitality again. Nothing but my besetting indolence (the strongest thing about me) could have prevented my doing this. I should like much to see Mr. and Mrs. Allen again, and Carew Castle, and walk along the old road traversed by you and me several times ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald

... compromise the essential principles of Christianity by politic concessions to heathenism, so that the successes of the Jesuit missions are magnified by reports of alleged conversions that are conversions only in name and outward form; second, a constantly besetting propensity to political intrigue.[27:1] It is hardly to be doubted that both had their part in the prodigious failure of the French Catholic missions and settlements within the present boundaries of ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... this coarse labour makes a man's hands horny, and, what is worse, the starvation, or, at least, impoverishment, of his intellect makes his mind horny; and, what is worst of all in a clergyman, who is stationed as a watchman on a church-steeple expressly to warn all others against the all-besetting danger of worldliness, such an incessant preoccupation of the heart by coarse and petty cares makes the spiritual apprehensiveness and every organ of spiritual sensibility more horny than the hoofs ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... pride or woman's insight. Nevertheless, amid all doubts and questionings his main purpose remained unwavering: he was here to ask Doris to marry him as soon as possible, so that he might rescue her and her father from the difficulties besetting them. ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell

... coadjutor, Robert Cruikshank, the best of the artist's coloured illustrations to the "English Spy" are contained in the first volume; in the second he falls into those habits of carelessness which, with all his ability and artistic talent, were a besetting weakness. Robert lacked the genius, the fine fancy, the careful, delicate handling of George. Up to the publication of the "Life," the brothers as we have seen had worked together frequently, but after this period ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt

... each evening, as the water wagons sometimes do not reach camp before the morning march is commenced. Excessive water drinking on the march is the besetting sin of the inexperienced soldier. One swallow of water calls for another. Soon your canteen is empty. Your stomach feels uncomfortable. You are still thirsty. If it is necessary to replace some of ...
— The Plattsburg Manual - A Handbook for Military Training • O.O. Ellis and E.B. Garey

... driven a knife to his heart, after which poor Corrie and the girl could have been easily dealt with; but fortunately (at least for his enemies, if not for himself) indecision in the moment of action was one of Keona's besetting sins. He suspected that other enemies might be near at hand, and that the noise of the scuffle might draw them to the spot. He observed, moreover, that the boy had a pistol, which, besides being a weapon that acts quickly and surely, even ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne

... to mourn, but, on the contrary, was called upon to rejoice in the addition of a new baby, the fine things that he had brought home were the cause of great satisfaction to his family. But alas! Mozwa, although almost perfect, for a savage, had one fault—one besetting sin ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne

... good-nature impart to genius, he had wit at will, as well as eloquence at command. Being frank and sincere in all his political opinions, he had all that strength in his oratory which arises from sincerity, although in his political conduct the love of intrigue was one of his besetting sins. By an unhappy perversion of mind it seemed as if he would always rather have obtained his end by a crooked path than by a straight one; but his speeches had nothing of this tortuosity; there was nothing covert in them, nothing insidious—no double-dealing, no disguise. His argument ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 476, Saturday, February 12, 1831 • Various

... would this old man keep prating of his political prophecies? Lavender asked of himself. Sheila had spoken scarcely a word all the evening; and of what interest could it be to her to listen to theories of revolution and the dangers besetting our hot-headed youth? She merely stood by the side of her father, with her hand on his shoulder. He noticed, however, that she paid particular attention whenever Ingram spoke; and he wondered whether ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various

... and republished them. Probably the prose writing of this, the richest period of genuine English literature, contains nothing finer than some of his sermons. They are free, to an astonishing degree, from the besetting vices of his age—vulgarity, and quaintness, and affected learning; and he was one of the first English preachers who, without submitting to the trammels of a pedantic logic, conveyed in language nervous, pure, and beautiful, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 73, March 22, 1851 • Various

... we have already made some comments. One goes to his books with confidence; in the assurance that whatever ever he saw is put down. Nothing is hidden and there is no attempt to Munchausenize. His besetting literary sin, as we said, was prolixity. Any one of his books reduced to one-quarter, or better, one-sixth the size, and served up artistically would have made a delightful work. As it is, they are vast storehouses filled ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright

... in struggling with besetting failings; you are learning to see in little trials the daily cross; and if you go on, the serenity which was a gift in her will ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge

... principles of the Christian religion are the most perfect and the most beautiful that can be imagined.... There is one virtue which is particularly Christian; this is the knowledge of our own heart in real humility. Hypocrisy is a besetting sin of all times, but particularly of the present, and many are the wolves in sheep's clothes. I am sorry to say, with all my affection for old England, the very state of its Society and politics renders many in that country essentially ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria

... illness but not of his extremity, and none but Hugh and the Gilmores knowing that only two doors from the bishop lay Basile, also stricken, and that Ramsey and the old nurse were with the boy. The young people fell into pairs confessing their contempt for the besetting peril. Vigil is wearisome and they were almost as weary of blind precautions as, secretly, were Hugh and others. The two Napoleonites "didn't believe doctors knew a bit more than other folks—if as much!" The two cousins so unimpeachably ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable

... conquering himself, his greatest enemy. As he looked upon his dissolute course, upon the events of the preceding night, and its fellow a week before, he was disgusted with himself, and wondered how he could so easily embrace his besetting sin. ...
— In School and Out - or, The Conquest of Richard Grant. • Oliver Optic

... sit scribbling here, I have acted a father's part, not only by scores of such unthrifty old children as himself, but by a progeny of far loftier pretensions. It may be well for persons who are conscious of any radical weakness in their character, any besetting sin, any unlawful propensity, any unhallowed impulse, which (while surrounded with the manifold restraints that protect a man from that treacherous and lifelong enemy, his lower self, in the circle of society where ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... Burke, and to come off with credit, might stimulate moderate vanity into public self-exposure; but in Paine vanity was the besetting weakness. It was now swollen by success and flattery into magnificent proportions. Franklin says, that, "when we forbear to praise ourselves, we make a sacrifice to the pride or to the envy of others." Paine did not hesitate to mortify both ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various

... his marriage he fell into a dangerous sickness and depression of spirits, from which he was only aroused by the dangers besetting Christendom from the advance of the Turks. Two years later, in 1529, he engaged in his famous conference at Marburg with Zwingli and other Swiss divines. The following year finds him at Coburg, while the diet sat at Augsburg. It was deemed prudent to intrust the interests of the Protestant cause ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various

... expression, which we have not before observed, at least in so marked a degree. The number opens with a caustic and well-deserved critique upon the writings of JAMES, the novelist; and we are the more gratified at this, because the defects of this romancer are the besetting sins of certain of our own novelists, who had at one time a fair degree of transient popularity. A lack of skill in the creation or accurate delineation of individual character, which, instead of representing men and women, are didactic ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various

... I lay there, of falling ill, and being unfitted for tomorrow, was so besetting, that I wonder it did not disable me of itself. It would have done so, pretty surely, in conjunction with the mental wear and tear I had suffered, but for the unnatural strain upon me that to-morrow ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens

... arrived at Naples, Nelson invited Lady Hamilton on board and she was no sooner on the deck than she made one dramatic plunge at him, and proceeded to faint on the poor shattered man's breast. Nelson, whose besetting weakness was love of approbation, became intoxicated with the lady's method of making love. Poor gallant fellow! He was, like many another, the victim of human weakness. He immediately believed that he and Emma had ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman

... new thought, a hope that was very beautiful, had come into Mrs. Churton's heart. All her life long she had had the delusion that "spiritual pride" was her besetting sin; and against this imaginary enemy she was perpetually fighting. And yet if some shining being had come down to tell her that her prayers for others had been heard, that all the worthless and vicious ...
— Fan • Henry Harford

... Woman, is a series of monologues addressed by one Lady Ann Spenworth to "a friend of proved discretion." I quote from the London Times of April 6, 1922: "In the course of them Lady Ann Spenworth reveals to us the difficulties besetting a lady of rank. She is compelled to live in a house in Mount street—for how could she ask 'The Princess' to visit her in Bayswater?—and her income of a few thousands, hardly supplemented by her husband's directorships, is depleted ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton

... anger, or a manly indignation? Did we spring up startled pygmies, or girded giants? If the former, let us veil our faces, and march swiftly (and silently) to merciful forgetfulness. If the latter, shall we not lay aside every weight, and this besetting sin of despondency, and run with patience the race set ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton

... who still moved over the Campus Martius; and, besetting their path wherever they turned, lay the gloomy numbers of the dying and the dead—the victims already stricken by the pestilence which had now arisen in the infected city, and joined the famine in its work of desolation and death. ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins

... established between us, at an expense of only three spills—once through an unexpected change of tactics; once through my own negligence; and once in spite of my best endeavours, for the faithless swamp was dry. I dare say I might have gradually weaned him from his besetting sin, but I did n't want to be pestered ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... portion of history, contained in verses 14-18, should not be permitted to conceal from us the intimate relation that subsists between this and the preceding parable. The application of the first for the reproof of covetousness, touched a besetting sin of the Pharisees, and stung them to the quick. Unable to bear in silence a rebuke which their own consciences recognised as just, they interrupted the preacher with rude derision. They attempted to shield their own open sores from painful probing ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... gay day-dream of youth—maturity—middle age—old age—for they have all their daydreams! Every passion which besets man from the cradle to the grave has its own visionary expectations. Each creature, each animal, from the tiger to the beetle, has its besetting insect, which preys upon it, gnaws it, irritates it, and so have all the ages of the soul and of the heart. Alas for human speculation of all kinds! Alas for every hope and aspiration! for those that are pure and high, but, growing out of earth, bear within themselves the bitter ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various

... Pearl estate, and found much to interest an inquiring mind. Murray, although there were some good points about him, was not considered trustworthy. In his cups he was quarrelsome and as choleric as a Welshman; and a fondness for liquor was his besetting sin. He was an excellent accountant and an efficient clerk, but could hardly be relied on when a clear head and ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper

... personal satire with which, to the reader of his day, the poem must have sparkled, and which time has destroyed for us, the features of our common humanity are so well portrayed, that to the latest generations will be there displayed the "forth-showing instances" of the Idola Tribus of Bacon, the besetting sins, frailties, and oddities of ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... also, that this commotion of the waves, and tottering or half-sinking of Peter, takes place even in our time, according to the spiritual sense daily. For every man's own besetting sin is the tempest. You love God; you walk upon the sea; the swellings of this world are under your feet. You love the world; it swallows you up; its wont is to devour, not to bear up, its lovers. But when your heart fluctuates with the desire of sin, ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various

... knew this. So did Hal Rutherford, the big man sitting next the wall. What would be their next move? Perhaps if he joined them he would find out. This course held its dangers, but long experience had taught him that to walk through besetting perils was less risk than to run ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine

... sanguine. They had only gone such a little way on the five-years' journey. But there were some very encouraging rays right around them. Kit Connelly's coffee-house was working to a charm. Jack began to think that drinking liquors was not so much a besetting sin, as a natural sequence of having nothing else to drink when you were cold or hot, or tired or hungry. The men fell into the habit of going to Kit's for their midday lunch, and presently some of the women went over. The room was so bright and pleasant; and, with Miss Rose there, ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas

... effect; he was beginning to recover himself. The old helpless habit of addressing all his complaints to his housekeeper was returning already with the re-appearance of Mrs. Lecount—returning insidiously, in company with that besetting anxiety to talk about his grievances, which had got the better of him at the breakfast-table, and which had shown the wound inflicted on his ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins

... pioneer of science, from the voyage of the Rattlesnake. For Forbes inspired his admiration and affection as a man of letters and an artist who had not merged the man in the man of science; free from pedantry or jealousy—the two besetting faults of literary and scientific men; earnest, disinterested, ready to give his time and influence to help any man who was working for the cause; one of the few to whom a proud man could feel obliged without losing a ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley

... the minds of the French people from the humiliation which the loss of their liberties had caused, and to direct their energies in new channels,—in other words, to inflate them with visions of military glory as his uncle had done, by taking advantage of the besetting and hereditary weakness of the national character. In the meantime the usurper bestowed so many benefits on the middle and lower classes, gave such a stimulus to trade, adorned his capital with such magnificent works ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord

... the while were besetting American commerce. In November, 1806, Napoleon's Berlin decree was promulgated, forbidding the introduction into France of the products of Great Britain and her colonies, whether in her own ships or those of other nations. ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay

... ecstatic and transcendental style. His chief work is Steps to the Temple (1646), consisting mainly of religious poems somewhat in the style of Herbert; his Weeping of the Magdalen is full of the most extravagant conceits, a fondness for which is, indeed, his besetting sin as a poet. His friend Cowley commemorated him ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin

... trade, and did the M'Aulays, as well as their kinsmen and allies, as much mischief as they could. This provoked another expedition against the tribe, in which I had my share; we surprised them effectually, by besetting at once the upper and under passes of the country, and made such clean work as is usual on these occasions, burning and slaying right before us. In this terrible species of war, even the females and the helpless do not always escape. One little maiden alone, who ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott

... surprised, and could not hide it. The gentle, simple, shrinking girl had changed into a self-reliant, keen-sighted woman, and from the serene height of her gracious womanhood calmly convicted him of his folly and his besetting weakness, and, manlike, his first impulse, thus convicted, was to resent ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan

... thought execrable) be really his great excellence, and his style (which used to be thought almost perfect) unworthy of this age of progress, then let us have his moral without his style, his matter without his form; or—that we may be sure of never falling for a moment into his besetting sins of terseness, grace, and completeness—without any form at all. If poetry, in order to be worthy of the nineteenth century, ought to be as unlike as possible to Homer or Sophocles, Virgil or Horace, Shakespeare or Spenser, Dante or Tasso, let those ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... Algernon a welcome visitor. He was continually haunted by the recollection of the ten thousand pounds that remorse had extorted from him, in the evil hour when death stared him in the face, and the fear of future punishment, for a brief season, triumphed over the besetting sin. He could not forgive Algernon for this dreadful sacrifice; and but for very shame would have asked him to return the money, giving him a bond to restore ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie

... eye, as the cause of his master's going so often astray. True it is, in all points of spirit befitting an honourable dog, he was as courageous an animal as ever scoured the woods—but what courage can withstand the ever-during and all-besetting terrors of a woman's tongue? The moment Wolf entered the house his crest fell, his tail drooped to the ground, or curled between his legs, he sneaked about with a gallows air, casting many a sidelong glance at Dame Van Winkle, and at the least ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... Sudata's king Believed religion but a comely cloak To hide besetting sins from public view, And sought the master in his new retreat To talk religion and to act a part, And greetings ended, said in solemn wise: "Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown; But my poor kingdom now is doubly blest In one ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles

... revealed to Hal in a flash of emotion, overwhelming him. He saw them as they would be, when no leader was at hand to make speeches to them. He saw them waiting, their life-long habit of obedience striving to reassert itself; a thousand fears besetting them, a thousand rumours preying upon them—wild beasts set on them by their cunning enemies. They would suffer, not merely for themselves, but for their wives and children—the very same pangs of dread that ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair

... coxcombs; this is one of the lies of the world, this diplomacy'—as if it were not also a most important and difficult branch of the national services. Abject reverence of great folk he regarded as the besetting disease of middle-class Englishmen; and so we find Lyndon remarking, by the way, that Mr. Hunt, Lord Bullingdon's governor, 'being a college tutor and an Englishman, was ready to go on his knees to any one who resembled a man of fashion.' And the kindly cynicism which discoloured Thackeray's ideas ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... spent, I arose [and went forth the tent] to do an occasion of mine, and none knew of my case save this woman. The dogs misdoubted of me and followed me and gave not over besetting me, till I fell on my back into a deep pit, wherein was water, and one of the dogs fell in with me. The woman, who was then a girl in the first bloom of youth, full of strength and spirit, was moved to pity on me, for that wherein I was fallen, and coming to me with a ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne

... hour of inauguration, and amongst the very birth-throes of Christianity. For in two separate modes the attention is secretly pointed and solicited to the grand serpentine artifice, which met and confronted the almost insurmountable difficulty besetting Christianity on its very threshold: First, by the record of the early therapeutic miracles, since in that way only, viz., by a science of healing, which the philosopher equally with the populace recognised as resting upon inspiration from God, could ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... been a sailor. Throughout the whole war of the revolution Bob had served in the navy, in some vessel or other, and with great good luck, never having been made a prisoner of war. In connection with this circumstance was one of the besetting weaknesses of his character. As often happens to men of no very great breadth of views, Bob had a notion that that which he had so successfully escaped, viz. captivity, other men too might have escaped had they been equally as clever. ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper

... servants in the sight of God. And if the ostrich were to strip off their feathers, the silkworm their dresses, the kid their gloves, and the marten demand his furs, what would be their state in the sight of man? Bare unto nakedness! This unlawful love for lawful things is one of the besetting snares of the great enemy ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various

... human figure, to make of it a vile arabesque, a shameful sight, is the besetting temptation of the younger generation. Naturally, it is good to get away from the saccharine and the rococo, but vulgarity is always vulgarity and true art is never vulgar. However, Kubin has plenty of precedents. A ramble through any picture-gallery on the Continent will prove that human nature ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker

... God of none effect." To some doctrines of kindred character and origin with these Paul refers when he warns his readers against "the worshipping of angels," "endless genealogies," "philosophy falsely so called," and various besetting heresies of the time. But others were so woven and assimilated into the substance of the popular Judaism of the age, as inculcated by the Rabbins, that Paul himself held them, the lingering vestiges of his earnest Pharisaic education and organized experience. They ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... spiritual condition we emphasize the many negatives rather than the single positive. One little weakness, we are apt to fancy, all men must be allowed, and we even claim a certain indulgence for that apparent necessity of nature which we call our besetting sin. Yet to break with the lower environment at all, to many, is to break at this single point. It is the only important point at which they touch it, circumstances or natural disposition making habitual ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond

... is not difficult to form some superficial opinion. He must have been an intelligent and cultivated man. It seems that he was near being a Fellow of his college at Oxford—Brasenose, as I judge from the Calendar. His besetting fault was pretty clearly that of over-inquisitiveness, possibly a good fault in a traveller, certainly a fault for which this traveller paid dearly ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James

... attraction of her unaffected grace and gentleness on the few occasions when he had been in her company—and that was all. If he had belonged to the present generation he would, under the circumstances, have fallen into one of the besetting sins of England in these days—the tendency (to borrow an illustration from the stage) to "strike an attitude" in the presence of a social emergency. A man of the present period, in Sir Patrick's position, would have struck an attitude of ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins

... thought was his duty—at first, when he swept into politics, inspired by the victory over the Rives crowd. Twelve years apparently was a long time to expect an inspiration to burn in the face of besetting temptations. ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse

... honesty he enjoyed. Take, for instance, a few paragraphs from his analysis of the rhetoric of authors on the subject of poverty. It is No. 202 of The Rambler. There is no better evidence of his perfect freedom from that slavery to words which is the besetting ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey

... hereditary obstinacy; but it is in me a dormant quality. Convince my understanding, and I am perfectly docile; stir my passions by coldness or affronts, and the devil would not drive me from my purpose. Let me record, I have striven against this besetting sin. When I was a boy, and on foot expeditions, as we had many, no creature could be so indifferent which way our course was directed, and I acquiesced in what any one proposed; but if I was once driven to make a choice, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... the eyes. M. de Lucan, however, greatly contrary to his custom, bestowed but very slight attention upon the spectacle of that smiling nature. He was preoccupied, to a degree that surprised himself, with his coming meeting with his step-daughter. Julia had been such a besetting thought in his mind that he had retained of her an exaggerated impression. He strove in vain to restore her to her natural proportions, which were, after all, only those of a child, formerly a naughty child, now a prodigal child. He had become accustomed ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet

... besetting sin, the vice that has more than once come near leading to his dismissal from the army. He is one of the men who cannot use wine or spirits in moderation. In consequence of some diseased action of the nutritive organs brought on by drink, he has lost the power of self-control when ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur

... exclaimed. "Toys have always been my besetting sin. Now I will make a grand collection, not for the Pope, as people pretend, but for our family. You will have two children to laugh at, Winnie. Your husband is one, you know." He sprang up. "I'll go into the Strand," he said. "There's a man near the Temple who has ...
— The Folly Of Eustace - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens

... are facts of solid reassurance, in that the best spirit of the South is facing the besetting ills, is combating them, and being thus aroused must eventually master and expel the evil spirit. The South has a burden to carry which the North does not easily realize. There the negro is not a remote problem of philanthropy; he is not represented by a few stray individuals; it ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam

... lungs, which are resting upon them, the stream of air they give forth, loses its evenness and continuity, with the result I have just stated. It will be seen from the above explanation that this tremolo, one of the greatest vices besetting modern singing, and which has hitherto been held by many to be incurable, may be got rid of completely, though perhaps not very quickly, by the simple remedy of lung gymnastics on the right principle. The tremolo may certainly also arise from weakness of some muscles in the voicebox or larynx, ...
— The Mechanism of the Human Voice • Emil Behnke

... ALBANS, 1561-1626. [Footnote: Macaulay's well-known essay on Bacon is marred by Macaulay's besetting faults of superficiality and dogmatism and is best left unread.] Francis Bacon, intellectually one of the most eminent Englishmen of all times, and chief formulator of the methods of modern science, was born in 1561 (three ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher

... room. It would be rather too much to say that Eleanor returned to her bed an hour and a half after she had left it with a totally changed character, but she did go back with a clearer recognition of her besetting sin of selfishness than ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler

... East as well as in the West, were the perils besetting the true Christian spirit at the very cradle ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... you knew my friend Professor Forbes. He is the best creature you can imagine, and helps me in all manner of ways. A man of very great knowledge, he is wholly free from pedantry and jealousy, the two besetting sins of literary and scientific men. Up to his eyes in work, he never grudges his time if it is to help a friend. He is one of the few men I have ever met to whom I can feel obliged, without losing a ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley

... I was sorry for my words that evening the moment I spoke. But I am hasty. I try my best to keep quiet when I'm angry; but now and then I express myself before I realize it. You can't expect perfection in anyone. A quick temper is my besetting sin. I try to overcome it; but until I do my friends must bear with me. No ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird

... man's "fall," that, when man had come to the knowledge of good and evil, the first practical duty which he recognized as incumbent upon himself, was the duty of concealment;[1] and from that day to this that duty has been incumbent on him. Man has a duty to conceal his besetting impurities of thought and inclinations to sin; to conceal such of his doubts and fears as would dishearten others and weaken himself by their expression; to conceal his unkindnesses of spirit and his unjust prejudices of feeling; to conceal, ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull

... think it may be, and often is, a benefit to be obliged to take a comprehensive survey of your subject; or to bring your results to a point, and give them, as it were, a tangible objective existence. The besetting sins of the investigator are two: the one is the desire to put aside a subject, the general bearings of which he has mastered himself, and pass on to something which has the attraction of novelty; and the ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley

... The other, whose besetting sin was certainly not loquacity, ejected a thin stream of tobacco-juice over the side, spat on his hands, and continued his laborious work until a crowd of dark shapes, surmounted by a network of rigging, loomed ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs

... if I were to summon them to Paris on such a mission. I received messages of ready acceptance, in the event of my succeeding in founding a German opera season in Paris on a solid basis, from Tichatschek, Mitterwurzer, Niemann the tenor, and also Luise Meyer in Vienna. My immediate and besetting care was then to discover in Paris a suitable man for the task, who would undertake the execution of my plan at his own risk. My object was to secure the Salle Ventadour for a spring season of two months after the close of the Italian opera. There ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner

... promises, and the hottest of firewater, to break faith with the English, and join their cause. These underhand dealings gave Washington much uneasiness of mind; and he complained to the French general, yet in a firm and dignified manner, of the unfair advantage thus taken of the besetting weakness ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady

... it was not without a severe struggle that I overcame a besetting propensity to confine myself to sedentary pursuits. The desire of retaliation soon became extinct. My pledge to my friend and sympathizer, that in two years I would cry quittance to my foe, would occasionally act as a spur in the side of my intent; but my two best aids in supplying me with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various

... Washington become one of the first to encounter the besetting plague of American mass production: the ...
— The Bounty of the Chesapeake - Fishing in Colonial Virginia • James Wharton



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