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Compassing   Listen
adjective
Compassing  adj.  (Shipbuilding) Curved; bent; as, compassing timbers.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Compassing" Quotes from Famous Books



... been perfectly satisfied with a wooden "aula" as the dwelling place of a powerful thegn, but then we should have looked for it on something of a mound, like the home of Wiggod at Wallingford. Certainly, a frightfully stinking ditch of no great width, compassing a square field, is a poor find after the hopes with which we set out. But, in the absence of all help from books or men, it is all that we have to offer. We should be glad if anybody would tell us of something better; but this is all we could make out for ourselves. The name is hardly a ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman

... owner of those very singular, those almost unique shoes? I have said that the motive of this murder must have been a personal one, and, behold! the owner of those shoes happens to be the one person in the whole of this district who could have had a motive for compassing the murdered man's death. Those shoes belong to, and were taken from the foot of, the prisoner, Alfred Draper, and the prisoner, Alfred Draper, is the only person living in this neighbourhood who ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman

... themselves and have "made a good thing" out of Socialism by carrying water on one shoulder for gullible voters, and on the other for their credulous disciples. This is not the first time that self-serving, hypocritical teachers, in compassing sea and land to make proselytes, have made them twofold more the children ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto

... on a fresh trail. By this time not more than a quarter of a mile of the forest separated Baree from the lone wolf, but the lone wolf was also an old wolf, and with the directness and precision of long experience, he swerved in the direction of the hunters, compassing his trail so that he was heading for a point half or three-quarters of a mile in advance ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood

... the whole universe. It is said, O child, that this weapon hath not a peer in the three worlds. Keep it, therefore, with great care, and listen to what I say. If ever, O hero, any foe, not human, contendeth against thee thou mayst then employ it against him for compassing his death in battle.' Pledging himself to do what he was bid, Vibhatsu then, with joined hands, received ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)

... and favored of God, could be destroyed. Not even the appearance of the Roman armies could shake their blind self-confidence. But at the first sight of the encircling armies, the Christians knew that the time for flight was at hand. But how to flee was the question, with the compassing lines drawn close about the city. Moreover, the Zealots, the furious war party in power, would be little likely to allow any number to pass ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer

... and religion, and all the while they were seeking grounds for killing Him. Was that Sabbath work? Whether would He, if He cured the shrunken arm, or they, if they gathered accusations with the intention of compassing His death, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren

... passed. Charley's life was running in a tiny circle, but his mind was compassing large revolutions. The events of the last few days had cut deep. His life had been turned upside down. All his predispositions had been suddenly brought to check, his habits turned upon the flank and routed, his mental postures flung into confusion. He had to start life again; but it could ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... act or to remain quiet, but brags about and talks words of overwhelming insolence, as they tell us. He is not such a character as to rest with the possessions which he has conquered, but is always compassing something else, and at every point hedging us, dallying and supine, in narrower and narrower circles. When, then, Athenians, when will you do what you ought? As soon as something happens? As soon, ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... trusting in Providence as much in going by the bridge as in braving the tempest. I think we are in the same error when we set up philosophy and prosperity in opposition to each other, taking up with the one when we cannot get the other, as if philosophy were not over all, compassing our life as the blue sky overarches the earth, brightening, vivifying, harmonising all, whether we look up to see whence ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau

... each man had drink to spare. The might of waters waxed, the men wailed loud, Old bearers of the spear; they strove to flee The fallow stream; they fain would save their lives And seek a refuge in the mountain caves, Firm earth's support. An angel drove them back, 1540 Compassing all the town with gleaming fire, With savage flames. Wild beat the sea within; No troop of men could scape from out the walls. The waves waxed, and the waters thundered loud; The firebrands flew; the flood ...
— Andreas: The Legend of St. Andrew • Unknown

... days! And while Italy, under the wing of science, was plotting her independence, I was busy in forging the chains of that dependence which was to be a more unmixed source of happiness to me, than the independence which Italy was compassing ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... love to see some boys playing with mud pies," sighed Polly, running her glance up and down the immaculate road, and compassing all the tiny gardens possible to her range ...
— Five Little Peppers Abroad • Margaret Sidney

... to battle with the solitude, and hunted patiently, sometimes with success, oftener without, the progenitors of the same quarry. So he prepares himself anew for the wild and perilous tramp. A day—two or three days—may pass without the compassing of a shot, or even hearing the whistle of the sentinel goat as he shrills the alarm far out of range and leads his fellows in twenty minutes to crags the hunter cannot reach in as many hours. Death crouches ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various

... days, set out on his return to Jethou, compassing the distance as far as Dover in the "Happy Return," which I had presented to him, but could get no further in her, as a gale from the south-west set in, and further attempt at crossing would have been suicidal. He therefore waited a few days for a stone steamer to take both him and ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling

... it is she sees so many evil things compassing her about. She says the only thing to do is to laugh them away. But she can't laugh herself. And so I have to. But when I go away from her—oh! I can't bear to think ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer

... should mock the might Of armies compassing, Secure not those, who hold one human ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... balked for the time of its expected prey, the parliament resolved to avenge the slight put upon its authority, by compassing the ruin of a larger number of victims. On the eighteenth of November, 1540, the order was given which has since become infamous under the designation of the "Arret de Merindol." The persons who had failed to obey the summons were sentenced to be burned ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... when contrasted with the brilliant success resulting from Farragut's dash by the forts, afford a very useful lesson in the adaptation of means to ends and the selection of a definite objective, upon compassing which something happens. The object of the United States Government being to control the lower Mississippi, that was effected by means of isolating its defenses, which then fell. When the further object was sought of controlling the course of the stream ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan

... be as a very shield, compassing him about through life. He may wander astray—there is no telling—in the heyday of his hot-blooded youth, for the world's temptations are as a running fire, scorching all that venture into its heat; but the good foundation ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood

... one day, in the season of pilgrimage, whilst the people were making the enjoined circuits about the Holy House and the place of compassing was crowded, a man laid hold of the covering of the Kaabeh and cried out, from the bottom of his heart, saying, 'I beseech Thee, O God, that she may once again be wroth with her husband and that I may lie with her!' A company of the pilgrims heard him and ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous

... action of fire; while, in proportion as the image wasted away, the life of the individual who was the object contrived against, was undermined and destroyed. Another was by incantations and spells. Either of these might fitly be called the "compassing or imagining the death." Imagination is, beside this, the peculiar province of witchcraft. And in these pretended hags the faculty is no longer desultory and erratic. Conscious of their power, they are supposed to have subjected it to system and discipline. ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin

... closed the Far Eastern chapter for a long while. Whither, it was asked, can Russia turn now? Recent events, M. Sven Hedin assured his countrymen, have already answered the query. Northwards. The great Slav Empire covets an ice-free harbour in Norway, and until this war broke out was busily engaged in compassing its end. At any future moment it may again start off on this enterprise. It is the duty of patriotic Swedes ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon

... satan, who late fled before the threats Of Gabriel out of Eden, now improv'd In meditated fraud and malice, bent On Man's destruction, maugre what might hap Of heavier on himself, fearless returned By night he fled, and at midnight returned From compassing the earth; cautious of day, Since Uriel, regent of the sun, descried His entrance, and foreworned the Cherubim That kept their watch; thence full of anguish driven, The space of seven continued nights ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton

... And bore them to her young away, That they might feast upon the prey, The dam pursues the winged thief, And deprecates so great a grief; But safe upon the lofty tree, The Eagle scorn'd the Fox's plea. With that the Fox perceived at hand An altar, whence she snatch'd a brand, And compassing with flames the wood, Put her in terror for her brood. She therefore, lest her house should burn, Submissive did the ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus

... the ears of both of us, so we went away in a rage, furious about the payment he had promised us, and yet withheld; in spite of all this, you are now showing favour to his people, and will not join us in compassing the utter ruin of the proud Trojans with ...
— The Iliad • Homer

... Scotland, addressed to Henry VIII.: 'We go a-hunting, and after that we have slain red-deer, we flay off the skin by and by, and setting of our barefoot on the inside thereof, for want of cunning shoemakers, by your grace's pardon, we play the cobblers, compassing and measuring so much thereof as shall reach up to our ankles, pricking the upper part thereof with holes, that the water may repass where it enters, and stretching it up with a strong thong of the same above our ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... the frozen northern seas. By 1st June he had reached a region where there was no night, and a few days later a strange sight startled the whole crew, "for on each side of the sun there was another sun and two rainbows more, the one compassing round about the suns and the other right through the great circle," and they found they were "under 71 degrees of ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge

... officially informed that his commission was in danger, unless he set up the Loggan Stone again in its proper place. The materials for compassing this achievement were offered to him, gratis, from the Dock Yards; but he was left to his own resources to defray the expense of employing workmen to help him. Being by this time awakened to a proper sense of the mischief he had done, and ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins

... times the Holt house had been a sort of fairyland to me: our own menage was simple and inexpensive, and, in contrast, the profusion and splendor of Jack's home had impressed me powerfully. Their expenditure was not moderated by what we call good taste, and they did not possess that fine grace of compassing elegance without ostentation which is one of the last results of culture; but as a boy I had missed nothing that money could buy in their house, and I had often thought how my mother would shine there. Mr. Holt had been a man to look up to with respect, although somewhat ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various

... thought that there must be some way of compassing a meeting with his brother, one that would excite no suspicion, and one evening when he had been talking the matter over with his friends, and a score of ideas had been proposed, each of which possessed some failing spot and caused it to be thrown aside, ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn

... of battles! steel my soldiers' hearts. Possess them not with fear. Take from them now The sense of reckoning, if the opposed numbers Pluck their hearts from them. Not to-day, O Lord, O, not to-day, think not upon the fault My father made in compassing the crown! I Richard's body have interred new, And on it have bestow'd more contrite tears Than from it issued forced drops of blood. Five hundred poor I have in yearly pay, Who twice a day their wither'd hands hold up Toward heaven, to pardon blood; and I have built ...
— The Life of King Henry V • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]

... who were the natural product of an age in which the faith of the Middle Ages was dying out before the double attack of scepticism and heresy. Amongst these was a priest named Roger Bolinbroke. Bolinbroke was seized on a charge of compassing the king's death by sorcery; and the sudden flight of Eleanor Cobham to the sanctuary at Westminster was soon explained by a like accusation. Her judges found that she had made a waxen image of the king and slowly melted it at a fire, a process which was held to account for Henry's growing weakness ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green

... its contradictions, instead of condemning it, justify it, its diversity producing its adaptation and its adaptation producing benefits.—This is no barren formula. A sentiment of such grandeur, of such comprehensive and penetrating insight, an idea by which Man, compassing the vastness and depth of things, so greatly oversteps the ordinary limits of his mortal condition, resembles an illumination; it is easily transformed into a vision; it is never remote from ecstasy; it can express itself only through symbols; it evokes divine figures.[3308]Religion ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... his camp and in a short time soldiers appeared with tape, stakes, sledges and spades and laid out an immense circle, all but compassing ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller

... arose to go round about the thoroughfares of the city, that he might spy him out a means of compassing his fell purpose, the which was to take vengeance of his brother on Alaeddin. So he entered a coffee-house in the market, a mighty fine place whither there resorted great plenty of folk, some to ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne

... retrograde motions upon thinking seriously of the irrevocable ceremony. We do not easily give up the desire of our hearts, and what we imagine essential to our happiness, let the expectation or hope of compassing it be ever so unreasonable or absurd in the opinion of others. Recurrings there will be; hankerings that will, on every but-remotely-favourable incident, (however before discouraged and beaten back by ill success,) ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson

... itch and scratch. And both these opinions do not want their supports. For the opinion of Socrates is much upheld by the general consent even of the epicures themselves, that virtue beareth a great part in felicity; and if so, certain it is, that virtue hath more use in clearing perturbations then in compassing desires. The sophist's opinion is much favoured by the assertion we last spake of, that good of advancement is greater than good of simple preservation; because every obtaining a desire hath a show of advancement, ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon

... length of, "the Havilah." This country is spoken of as being a tract wherein was produced good gold, "b'dolach" (translated "bdellium") and "shoham" (translated "onyx.") The second branch was Gihon, which is described as similarly compassing the district of K[u]sh. Here our A.V., by substituting "Ethiopia" for the original "C[u]sh," has made a gloss rather than a translation; and this gloss has given rise to several errors of commentators in identifying the site of Eden. ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell

... office of Chief Superintendent of Education. All the stir among the District Councils, and about the school law, etc., are but the schemes and measures set on foot by the party in power for the purpose of compassing the great object in view of ousting ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson

... be such a bold man, master," replied she. "There are many such men who would consider they did the Intendant and themselves good service by compassing your destruction!" ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... innate to men, which ever have, and ever will, incline them to this offense. Eager appetites to secular and sensual goods; violent passions, urging the prosecution of what men affect; wrath and displeasure against those who stand in the way of compassing their desires; emulation and envy towards those who happen to succeed better, or to attain a greater share in such things; excessive self-love; unaccountable malignity and vanity are in some degrees connatural to all men, and ever prompt them to this dealing, as appearing the most efficacious, ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various

... narrations. Captain Rushton was astonished to find that the same man, Ben Haley, who had been the cause of his misfortunes, had also come so near compassing ...
— Brave and Bold • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... his palate and his appetite, should not be guilty of irregularity. Hence it was that to avoid this vice, as soon as I found myself arrived at maturer years, I embraced a regular and sober life. It is, no doubt, true, that I found some difficulty in compassing it; but, in order to conquer this difficulty, I beseeched the Almighty to grant me the virtue of sobriety; well knowing, that he would graciously hear my prayer. Then, considering, that when a man is about to undertake any thing ...
— Discourses on a Sober and Temperate Life • Lewis Cornaro

... 1534, two Middlesex clergy, "walking to and fro in the cloyster garden at Sion, were there overheard compassing sedition and rebellion." John Hale, an eager, tumultuous person, was prompting his brother priest, Robert Feron, with matter for a pamphlet, which Feron was to write against the king.[398] "Syth the realm of England was first a realm," said Hale, "was there never in it so great a ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude

... found about the lake of the Stinkings & towards the North of the same. They come not to the upper lake but by chance. It's a pleasur to find the place of their abode, for they tourne round about compassing 2 or 3 acres of land, beating the snow with their feete, & coming to the center they lye downe & rise againe to eate the bows of trees that they can reach. They go not out of their circle that they have ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson

... round the Bastille singing at intervals at different points would have instantly attracted the attention of the sentries on the walls. Nor, even did he discover that his father was lying a prisoner in one of the cells facing outwards in the fortress, did he see any possibility of compassing his escape. The slits were wide enough only for the passage of a ray of light or the flight of an arrow. No human being could squeeze himself through them, and even if he could do so he would need a long rope ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty

... be engaged against the queen, and the kindred of the queen; it was that that made him he could not prosper; that brought him to contempt and the gallows. Had he sought to ruin another people, probably he might have brought his design to a desired conclusion; but his compassing the death of the queen spoiled all. Satan, also, when he fighteth against the church, must be sure to come to the worst, for God has a concern in that; therefore, it is said, "The gates of hell shall not prevail against it"; but this hindereth ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... shadow of the crosstree from which shortly he would dangle in the article of death, a stark offence before the sight of mortal eyes, he halted and stood reviling all who had a hand in furthering and compassing his condemnation. Profaning the name of his Maker with every breath, he cursed the President of the United States who had declined to reprieve him, the justices of the high court who had denied his appeal from the verdict of the lower, the judge who had tried him, the district attorney ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb

... the utmost end of the heavens is his egress; and his compassing-regress is unto the utmost-ends of them: and none is ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle

... any work I could do for them, I would go to Albany. If not, I would walk back to Lockport the next day, and try my fortune there. This gave me, for my first day's enterprise, a foot journey of about twenty-five miles. It was out of the question, with my finances, for me to think of compassing the train. ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale

... but find difficulty in compassing a passage in a ship of war. They had better let me go; if I cannot, patriotism is the word—"nay, an they'll mouth, I'll rant as well ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron

... passing to the right of it, and naturally leaving it on the right, too, and Dawson's on the left of the trail where it passes to the left of said Dawson's and onward thence to Tomahawk, thus making the route cheaper, easier of access to all who can get at it, and compassing all the desirable objects so considered by others, and, therefore, conferring the most good upon the greatest number, and, consequently, I am encouraged to hope we shall. However, I shall be ready, and happy, to afford you still further information upon the subject, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... NOT," I cried again; and in the compassing dark, the two gleamed out like spectres that waited on the dead; neither answered me; each stood still and sad, ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald

... absolute lustre, as compared with the sun; and in the case of the double stars the absolute mass of the components may be computed from the laws of gravitation. It is found that stars differ enormously among themselves in all these regards. As to speed, some, like our sun, barely creep through space—compassing ten or twenty miles a second, it is true, yet even at that rate only passing through the equivalent of their own diameter in a day. At the other extreme, among measured stars, is one that moves two hundred miles a second; yet even this "flying star," as seen from the earth, ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... in the prime of strength, and who, with all the glories of Nature about him and the love and beauty of an exquisite womanhood at his hand for possession, could nevertheless devote his energies to the science of destruction and the compassing of death without compunction, on the lines Roger Seaton had laid down as ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli

... sharp attacks, with the design of thus surprising and overpowering the enemy. A man comes to a fixed intention to kill his enemy; he forms a plan to entrap him into his power, with the design of then compassing his death; as the law can not read the heart, it can only infer the intent from the evidences of design. Intent denotes a straining, stretching forth toward an object; purpose simply the placing it before oneself; hence, we speak of the purpose rather than the intent or intention ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... Congress had decided to relieve Kansas of her Indian encumbrance by compassing the removal of all her tribes, indigenous and immigrant, to Indian Territory. It mattered not that the former had a title to their present holdings by ancient occupation and long continued possession and the latter a title in perpetuity, guaranteed by the treaty-making power ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel

... extended no further than to lifelong imprisonment and forfeiture of goods. Their lives could only be exacted by proving that they had maliciously attempted to deprive Henry of his title of Supreme Head;[934] their opportunities in the Tower for compassing that end were limited; and it is possible (p. 332) that they would not have been further molested, but for the thoughtlessness of Clement's successor, Paul III. Impotent to effect anything against the King, ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard

... tour of inspection. Such a visit might disclose the wrong done to Florestan, who is the Minister's friend and believed by him to be dead, and Pizarro resolves to shield himself against the consequences of such a discovery by compassing his death. He publishes his resolution in a furious air, "Ha! welch' ein Augenblick!" in which he gloats over the culmination of his revenge upon his ancient enemy. It is a terrible outpouring of bloodthirsty rage, and I have yet to hear the ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... the second particular) partly from God's hiding of his face, and changing his dispensations about them, and compassing them with clouds, and partly from themselves and their own ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)

... dungeon; and did he trouble to look in the morning, which is unlikely enough seeing that he would be sure of our fate, he would be unable to descend the stairs, and could not reach to the door, and so discover that the bar had been removed. No; whatever his motive may have been in compassing my death, he is doubtless satisfied that he has attained it, and we need have no further fear of pursuit from him. The rain has ceased, and I think that it will be a fine night; we will walk on, and ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty

... hearts—yellow tea roses, moss roses with their firm, shapely buds, monthly roses that bore nearly all the year in a warm spot, the white briar that is dear to north country people, besides standards in their glory, with full round purple blossom. Among the roses, compassing them about and jostling one another, some later, some earlier in bloom, most of them together in the glad summer days, one could find to his hand wall-flowers and primroses, sweet-william and dusty-miller, daisies red and white, forget-me-nots and pansies, pinks and carnations, marigolds ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren

... a fowl-house;* (* Despite Lee's proclamations against indiscriminate foraging, "the hens," he said, "had to roost mighty high when the Texans were about.") he had an unerring scent for whisky or "apple-jack;" and the address he displayed in compassing the destruction of the unsuspecting porker was only equalled, when he was caught flagrante delicto, by the ingenuity of his excuses. According to the Confederate private, the most inoffensive animals, in the districts through ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... that it is possible to form such a conception of the forms and space relations of the ultimate particles of matter that their mutual attractions may be explained by invoking that same law of gravitation which holds the stars and planets in their course. What, then, is this all-compassing power of gravitation which occupies so central a position in the ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams

... France prepare, And notes and talks of ensigns they display, And names of British lords, to him repair One and another, crowding to survey His courser, single of its kind, or rare: All thither hasten, wondering and astound, And compassing ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... without them, like Africa, except for its frontage upon the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, have shown no native initiative in maritime enterprise. Africa was further cursed by the mockery of desert coasts along most of her scant thalassic shores. In the Americas, we find the native races compassing a wide maritime field only in the Arctic, where the fragmentary character of the continent breaks up the ocean into Hudson's Bay, Davis Strait, Baffin Bay, Gulf of Boothia, Melville Sound and Bering Sea; and in the American Mediterranean of the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico. ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... substance from me. This he failed to do, however, though he rubbed me long and frequently, on that and many other occasions. I was very disappointed at not being able to have an emission, and on every occasion that offered I endeavored to excite myself to the extent of compassing this. I used to ask to go out of school two or three times a day, and retired to the closet, where I practised on myself most diligently, but to no purpose, at that time, though I began to have pleasurable ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... attorney-general, 'that their guilty consciences, and fear of losing their heads, was the cause of their flight.' The jury, however, had exactly the same sort of difficulty that troubled the juries in our late Fenian trials about finding the accused guilty of compassing the death of the sovereign. But Sir John laboured to remove their scruples by explaining the legal technicality, and arguing that, 'whoso would take the king's crown from his head would likewise, if he could, take his head from his shoulders; ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin

... happily, highly augmented, 25 Peleus, Thessaly's ward, whomunto Jupiter's self deigned Yield of the freest gree his loves though gotten of Godheads. Thee Thetis, fairest of maids Nereian, vouchsafed to marry? Thee did Tethys empower to woo and wed with her grandchild; Nor less Oceanus, with water compassing th' Earth-globe? 30 But when ended the term, and wisht-for light of the day-tide Uprose, flocks to the house in concourse mighty convened, Thessaly all, with glad assembly the Palace fulfilling: Presents afore they bring, ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus

... consisted of a son and a daughter: the former a man of fearless courage and integrity, the latter a gentlewoman of good wit and discretion, as will be seen hereafter. Consulting, amongst themselves as to the best means of compassing the king's escape, it was resolved Mistress Lane should visit a kinswoman of hers with whom she had been bred, that had married one Norton, and was now residing within five miles of Bristol. It was likewise ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy

... mind caught infinite calculations carried into infinity; an apotheosis of geometry compassing the rhythms of unknown spatial dimensions; concentration of the equations of ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt

... power. The India proprietor, therefore, will always be, in the first instance, a politician; and the bolder his enterprise, and the more corrupt his views, the less will be his consideration of the price to be paid for compassing them. The new regulations did not reduce the number so low as not to leave the assembly still liable to all the disorder which might be supposed to arise from multitude. But if the principle had been well established and well executed, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... but one desire, and that is the preservation and perpetuation of life. This is its purpose or, rather, its strongest urge not only with men but with all animal life. Sometimes to create one fish a million eggs are spawned. Nature is profligate both in spawning life and compassing its destruction. In the human species the capacity for life is immeasurably beyond its fruition. A large portion of those who are born die an early death. And that human life shall not be extinct, Nature plants the life-giving desire deep in the constitution of man. ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow

... evidence before the Grand Jury (the practice of allowing any advocates to appear before the Grand Jury has long fallen into disuse); that the murder of the King should be precisely laid in the indictment, and be made use of as one of the overt acts to prove the compassing of his death; that any act tending to the compassing of the King's death besides the one laid in the indictment might be given in evidence; that the two witnesses required in treason need not speak to the same overt act;[33] that the ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various

... dramas, are no mechanical tricks, no obvious compassing of sickly sweetnesses. The accent falls where it should, unstrained. The disguised alliteration comes, as almost always in Milton also, not from set and conscious purpose, but from the promptings of a mind vibrating with ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker

... garments for the poor, and for Mary sitting at the feet of Jesus, just as truly as there is for Elijah confounding a false religion by his noble opposition; for John the Baptist making a king tremble on his throne; or for the Apostle Paul "compassing sea and land" by his ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson

... obscuration. But this suggestion can only be received as an ingenious and expressive hint; it cannot be taken as an explanation. There is as much difficulty, as will be presently seen, in the way of admitting that comets have shadows of any kind, as there would be in compassing the idea that bodies of enormous length can be whirled round through millions of miles in the minute. The truth is, the comet's tail is yet an unguessed puzzle, and vexes even the wits of the wise. It keeps grave men seated on the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various

... negative pleasure proceeding from pain. Since the sublime exceeds the functional capability of our sensuous representations and does violence to the imagination, we first feel small at the sight of the absolutely great, and incapable of compassing it with our sensuous glance. The sensibility is not equal to the impression; this at first seems contrary to purpose and violent. This humiliating impression, however, is quickly followed by a reaction, and the vital forces, which were at first checked, ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... accuracy as far as she reaches. There is a wide difference between elementary knowledge and superficial knowledge—between a firm beginning, and an infirm attempt at compassing. A woman may always help her husband by what she knows, however little; by what she half-knows, or mis-knows, she will only ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin

... herself to learn the particulars of Mr. Constantine's fate had been achieved, determined as she was not to close her eyes whilst the man whom she valued above her life remained a prisoner and in sorrow, she thought it best to consult with Miss Dorothy respecting the speediest means of compassing his emancipation. ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... first instance, those Pharisees who were then and there compassing the death of Jesus. They ostentatiously professed that they were doing God service; yet they were spreading a net for the feet of the innocent, and preparing to shed his blood. Wearing broad phylacteries, making long prayers, and offering many ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... let to a tenant by the creditors of his estate, only because its condition was unfit for tenancy. But now Mr. Maule began to think whether he might not possibly give the lie to these people who were compassing his death, by returning to the halls of his ancestors, if not in the bloom of youth, still in the pride of age. Why should he not live at Maule Abbey if this successful marriage could be effected? He almost knew ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope

... unconsciously sowed the seeds of his eventual return. For with added years, the boy felt added longing to escape his entailed misery, by compassing for his father and himself a voyage to the Promised Land. By his persevering efforts he succeeded at last, against every obstacle, in gaining credit in the right quarter to his extraordinary statements. In short, charitably stretching a technical point, ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville

... been found a short time before, and was in the possession of Emmeline's mother. That mother was a woman of strong passions and determined character. The first shock of the catastrophe over, her grief was almost supplanted by a rage for vengeance, in the compassing of which no doubt she vaguely imagined she would be doing something to right her daughter. Hence the protracted concealment of the murderer was bitterness to her soul, and she vowed herself to discovery and revenge as the one business of her life. In this her ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald

... center would be pierced and the French armies cut in two. If this attack succeeded it would free at once the German right and separate into two impotent parts the entire French military force. During the 7th, 8th, and 9th of September the Imperial Prussian Guard directed to the compassing of that end all its energy and courage. All in vain. General Foch not only checked the German onslaught, but drove it back. Thus the French center was not pierced, Von Kluck was not relieved, and he found himself in a position that grew ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... of the Criminaloid. Criminaloids, as we have seen, are recruited from all ranks of society and strike every note in the scale of criminality, from petty larceny to complicated and premeditated murder, from minting spurious coins to compassing gigantic frauds, which inflict incalculable damage upon the community. The magnitude of a crime does not imply greater criminality on the part of its author, but rather that he is a man of brilliant endowments, whose culture and talents multiply his opportunities and ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero

... beheading himself, for last night, when he and I fought side by side against the Danes, he used a hook of his own making, with such effect, that I was fain to pause and laugh, while myself in the very act of splitting an iron headpiece. But perchance that is not a suitable method of compassing our ends, besides it would cost the thrall his life, and I should be sorry to aid in bringing about the death of Kettle Flatnose, whose island is a happy one if it counts many such clear-headed ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne

... of the Lord's salvation, Watchful in thy station stand; Heed the heavenly proclamation, Heed the Master's great command. Mark old error's gathering forces Compassing our Zion round; Know in truth thine own resources, Give the trumpet's ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams

... hand untill it be compleated. But what saith the Scripture? {96e}{96f} Let no man go beyond, and defraud his Brother in any matter, because the Lord is the avenger of all such. But this kind of Breaking is a going beyond my Brother; This is a compassing of him about that I may catch him in my net; and as I said, an art to rob my Brother, and to pick his pocket, and that with his consent. Which doth not therefore mitigate, but so much the more greaten and make odious the offence. For men that are thus wilily abused cannot help themselves, ...
— The Life and Death of Mr. Badman • John Bunyan

... honour or the conveniences and comforts of life, I do not profess here to discuss; but I would maintain, and mean to show, that it is an object, in its own nature so really and undeniably good, as to be the compensation of a great deal of thought in the compassing, and a great deal of ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman

... of parson nor of peasant." Which was duly done. But Colonel Glover, not untouched by that curiosity inherent to mankind, as well as womankind, took pains to cast about whether this was not one who had a hand in compassing the death of King Charles I.; and this coming, in some strange manner (through inquiries he had made in London), to the ears of Authority, he was distinctly told that his prisoner was not one of those bold bad men who, misled by Oliver Cromwell, had signed that fatal Warrant:—the ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... now been twenty-two days upon the river, and it was uncertain how long we should be in compassing the distance we had still to run. Considering all things, we had, as yet, been extremely fortunate; and I hoped that we should terminate our journey without the occurrence of any fatal accident. Had the country corresponded with the noble stream that traversed it, we should ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt

... end of us, but He bringeth your counsels to nought. He throweth them down, so that your devices against us have no effect." "By thy life," said the philosopher, "it is even so; we meet annually for the purpose of compassing your ruin, but a certain old man comes and upsets all your projects" ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various

... noted Colonel John Okey, one of the regicides "charged with compassing and imagining the death of the late King Charles I." in October, 1660. Nineteen of these "bold traitors," (among whom was Okey,) fled from justice, and were attainted, and Barber's Barn was in his tenure at the time of his attainder. His interest in the premises ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 348, December 27, 1828 • Various

... breathing the spirit of the Civil War period and the Pauline doctrine declared before the Areopagus, announced in the preaching and work of Christ and emphasized by the Declaration of Independence; the latter pregnant with reverence, piety, and patriotism; the twain compassing man's duty higher than which human conception is lost. Privileged indeed is one to live under the aegis of such twin declarations. Fortunate indeed to have the authorization of official acts blessed by ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various

... object in withholding his pay was to prevent his running from his ship, so far from compassing that desirable end it had exactly the contrary effect. Both the preventive and the disease were of long standing. With De Ruyter in the Thames in 1667, menacing London and the kingdom, the seamen of the fleet flocked to town in hundreds, clamouring for their wages, ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson

... so directly at variance with the tendency of all human wishes, that it cannot be thought to express the true aspirations of rising priests in the Church of England. A lawyer does not sin in seeking to be a judge, or in compassing his wishes by all honest means. A young diplomat entertains a fair ambition when he looks forward to be the lord of a first-rate embassy; and a poor novelist, when he attempts to rival Dickens or rise above Fitzjeames, commits no fault, though he may be foolish. Sydney Smith truly said ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... certain peaks, canons, and clear meadow spaces which are above all compassing of words, and have a certain fame as of the nobly great to whom we give no familiar names. Guided by these you may reach my country and find or not find, according as it lieth in you, much that is set down here. ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin

... rage. She at once wrote an account of the circumstance to Madame de Maintenon, who, for her part, was quite as furious. 'Inde ira'. They never pardoned M. d'Orleans, and we shall see how very nearly they succeeded in compassing his death. Until then, Madame de Maintenon had neither liked nor disliked M. d'Orleans. Madame des Ursins had omitted nothing in order to please him. From that moment they swore the ruin of this prince. All the rest ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... and the desperate expedients to which she was driven (whether by compulsion or from her own regard for Davies) to repel and dismiss him, did not strike me as they might have done as the crowning argument in favour of the course we had adopted the night before, that of compassing our end without noise and scandal, disarming Dollmann, but aiding him to escape from the allies he had betrayed. To Davies, the man, if not a pure abstraction, was at most a noxious vermin to be trampled on for the public good; ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers

... secretary of the Circumambient Society, to explain that she should not be present at their evening meeting. One of the rules of this society was to take always a winding road when going upon society business, as the word "circumambient" means "compassing about." It was one of its laws to copy Nature as far as possible, and a straight line is never seen in Nature. Therefore she could not send a direct note to say she should not be present; she could only hint it in general conversation with the secretary; and she was obliged to ...
— The Last of the Peterkins - With Others of Their Kin • Lucretia P. Hale

... There are two ways of compassing our desires. One is that which David himself tells us is the 'young lions' way, of struggling and fighting, and that often ends in 'lacking and suffering hunger'; the other is that of waiting on the Lord, and that always ends in ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... Minister with very clearly defined conceptions of what must be done to expand the exiguous fighting forces of his country in face of the tremendous emergency with which it stood suddenly confronted. He was little disposed to modify the plans which he had formed for compassing that end, when subordinates pointed out that these clashed with arrangements that were already in full working order, or that they ignored the existence of formations which only stood in need of nursing and of consolidation to render them really valuable ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell

... and that they desired their own augmentation and aggrandizement at your expense and to your detriment. Such were the words of your letters, Mon seigneur, and you did me the honor, whilst recognizing the connection between my fortunes and those of your Majesty, to add expressly that they were compassing my ruin together with your own. . . . And now, Monseigneur, when I hear it suddenly reported that your Majesty has made a treaty of peace with those who have risen up against your service, providing that your edict be broken, your loyal subjects banished, and ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... he was always in trouble with men and women. He never ceased his abuse of Burr, whose election as senator angered him. Later, when Burr was the choice of congress as minister to Paris, backed especially by Madison and Monroe, Hamilton succeeded in compassing his defeat. Again, when Adams had decided upon some important appointment for Burr, Hamilton succeeded in defeating him. This made Burr's promotion to the vice-presidency and his own downfall the more ...
— Jukes-Edwards - A Study in Education and Heredity • A. E. Winship

... to lie about the belly and such other conveyances of the body as let in pleasure and not pain; and are of opinion, that all the brave and ingenious inventions that ever have been were contrived at first for the pleasure of the belly, or the good hope of compassing such pleasure,—as the sage Metrodorus informs us. By which, my good friend, it is very plain, they found their pleasure in a poor, rotten, and unsure thing, and one that is equally perforated for pains, by the very passages ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... step by step in every line, with the same kind of caution and circumspection (though I cannot say upon quite so religious a principle) as was used by John de la Casse, the lord archbishop of Benevento, in compassing his Galatea; in which his Grace of Benevento spent near forty years of his life; and when the thing came out, it was not of above half the size or the thickness of a Rider's Almanack.—How the holy man managed the affair, unless he spent the greatest part ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne

... regall Is the circle compassing all: The dominion great and large Which God hath geuen to her charge: Whithin which most spatious bound She enuirons her people round, Retaining them by oth and liegeance. Whithin the pale of true obeysance: Holding imparked as it were, Her people like to heards of deere. ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham

... people of Kansas had been referred back to them for settlement, it would have been humiliating enough to have had to exult over it as a victory of Freedom. With what depth of shame, then, should we contemplate the compassing of their end by the Slavocrats, through the venal surrender of the rights so long and so manfully asserted, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... frie of lads and lasses young With thirstie eare thee compassing about, Thy Nectar-dropping Muse, thy sugar'd song Will swallow down with eagre hearty draught; Relishing truly what thy rymes convey, And highly praising thy ...
— Democritus Platonissans • Henry More

... he is not his own apothecary, his own physician, as they are. Call back therefore thy meditation again, and bring it down: what's become of man's great extent and proportion, when himself shrinks himself and consumes himself to a handful of dust; what's become of his soaring thoughts, his compassing thoughts, when himself brings himself to the ignorance, to the thoughtlessness, of the grave? His diseases are his own, but the physician is not; he hath them at home, but he must send for ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne

... present they know all that is necessary for the cultivation of yams, &c., they build houses sufficient for the purpose of their present life, they are giving up fighting, losing-faith in their old charms and contrivances for compassing the death of their enemies; they will very likely soon be at peace throughout the whole island. Well, then, they will be very idle, talk infinite scandal, indulge in any amount of gluttony; professing to believe our religion, their whole life will contradict ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge

... give them a fair opportunity of calling you an impostor, and treating you accordingly; and that there were so many anxious to have a gift of the property that you would have thousands of people compassing your death. He said that your making known yourself and claiming your property would be the very conduct that your enemies would wish you to follow, and would be attended with most fatal consequences; for he said, to prove that you were Edward Beverley, ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat

... obloquy, and foully slandered; they have been described as utterly base, fattening on the spoils of a cowed and terror-ridden peasantry. Utterly unscrupulous, fearing neither God nor man, hesitating at no crime, deterred by no consideration from oppressing their tenantry, and compassing their interested ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis

... from myself, but I do not think that, when this began, I meditated to do him any wrong. I may have thought how serviceable his inheritance would be to us, and may have wished him dead; but I believe I had no thought of compassing his death. Neither did the idea come upon me at once, but by very slow degrees, presenting itself at first in dim shapes at a very great distance, as men may think of an earthquake or the last day; then drawing nearer and nearer, and losing something of its horror and ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens

... bullets are not all that wound.... I have a feeling here of dying fires, A sense of strong and deep unworded censure, Which, compassing about my private life, Makes all my public service lustreless In my own eyes.—I fear I am much condemned For those dear Naples and Palermo days, And her who was the sunshine of them all!... He who is with himself dissatisfied, Though all ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... act of the Mexican Liberal Congress was naturally painted in its worst colours by the reactionary representatives of the Conservative party in Europe, who, desirous of bringing back a priestly and monarchical regime, thought this an opportunity and motive for compassing it by means of European intervention. In justice to Mexico at that period it must be chronicled that repudiation of her debts was not intended; only suspension in her temporary distress. But the reprehensible Act of President Miramon, in violating the British ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock

... of the Wolfmark, find the prisoner, Helene, called Gottfried, guilty of witchcraft, and especially of compassing and causing the death of our predecessor, the most noble Duke Casimir, and we do hereby adjudge that, on the morning of Sunday presently following, Helene Gottfried shall be executed upon the common scaffold by the axe of the executioner. Of our clemency is this sentence ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... is merely the relieving his misery."—Wayland's Moral Science, p. 417. "The accumulating too great a quantity of knowledge at random, overloads the mind instead of adorning it."—Formey's Belles-Lettres, p. 5. "For the compassing his point."—Rollin's Hist., ii, 35. "To the introducing such an inverted order of things."—Butler's Analogy, p. 95. "Which require only the doing an external action."—Ib., p. 185. "The imprisoning my body is to satisfy your wills."—GEO. FOX: Sewel's Hist., ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... Compassing the head of East Harbor Creek the next day, and reaching a deep valley, fed with numerous springs, the exhausted travellers, whose provisions consisted but of "biscuit and Holland cheese, with a little bottle of aqua vitae," eagerly halted by one ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various

... to Oldport very late, I'm afraid," he ventured, feeling his way toward a compassing of his plan. The express package could wait. "I'm very sorry. I wish——" Here he broke off his speech to ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various

... ill-digested (I have been a student, living in a college, and eschewing all society but that of pious men, until now: I may not judge for the best, in my ignorance of this sinful human nature), tell me of better plans and wiser projects for accomplishing my end; but do not bid me rest, with Satan compassing me round, ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell

... or Methods for compassing a Design, come not so much from the Quickness and Fertility of an industrious Wit, as a dim-sighted Understanding, which makes us pitch upon every fresh Matter that presents itself to our groping Fancy, and does not furnish ...
— The Present State of Wit (1711) - In A Letter To A Friend In The Country • John Gay



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