"Oppressive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... replied. "It was really my fault last night. I felt the heat oppressive. I opened the window myself and went out on to the verandah. When I came back I think that I did ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... the earliest reforms in existing laws and usages, so as to guard the country in future against frauds in the collection of the revenues and the Treasury against peculation, to relieve trade and commerce from oppressive regulations, and to guard law and morality ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... no authority of God to do so. The true priesthood had been taken from the earth with the death of the apostles and inspired men of God. Since then people were married to each other only by their own covenants, and if their marriage had not been productive of blessings and peace, and they felt it oppressive to remain together, they were at liberty to make a new choice, as much as if they had not been married. The Prophet taught that it was a sin for people to live together and beget children in alienation from ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... they are always the saddest and dreariest days of the year. I shudder at the name of holiday. I dread the approach of one, and thank heaven when it is over. I pass through, on a holiday, the most horrible sensations, the bitterest feelings, the most oppressive melancholy; in fact, I am ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... with tears, across nations and thrones, lonely, terrible, sublime with the stern sublimity of tragic scenes. They are not the sights and experiences to inspire joyous songs—melody is muffled by terror. Only lamentation finds voice, an endless, oppressive, anxious wail, sounding adown, through two thousand years, like a long-drawn sigh, reverberating in far-reaching echoes: "How long, O Lord, how long!" and "When shall a redeemer arise for this people?" These elegiac refrains Israel never wearies of ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... this plausible explanation of the unfortunate, but absurd, occurrence of which I have spoken, I next returned to the stern, where there were no oppressive odours to be encountered, and whence ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... of the branches and the wail of the wind among the chimneys. Not even a dog barked or rattled a chain, and from no chimney breathed a wisp of smoke. The house in the gloom of that melancholy evening had a singular eerie and tenantless look; and oppressive silence reigned there; and Mitchelbourne was unaccountably conscious of a growing aversion to it, as to something ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... emancipated from the dominion of the Archbishop of Rouen, who, by virtue of the cession made by Richard Coeur de Lion, exercised a despotic sway, even until the dissolution of the ancien regime. His privileges were oppressive, and he had and made use of the right of imposing a variety of taxes, which extended even to the articles of provision imported either by land or sea. Yet it must be admitted that the progress of civilization ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... in their war for freedom. What though a French privateer did occasionally seize an American ship? The Americans alone were to blame for that; for was not their attitude toward England, their natural foe, enough to inflame the French? And were not the British aggressions more oppressive than those of France? War there must be, but let it be declared ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... to how the rats run about on Mrs. Picture when she was on board of the ship." Thus Aunt M'riar, always with that haunting vice of perverting Art, Literature, Morals, and Philosophy to the oppressive improvement of the young. She seldom scored a success, and this time she was hoisted with her own petard. For Dolly jumped with delight at the prospect of a romance of fascinating character, combining Zoology and Travel. She applied for a place to hear it, on the knee ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... suppose that on the whole such families find it easier to survive in the country than in the city. The country offers occupation for the high grades during the busy season and yet does not require steady employment all through the year. The social penalties of mental inferiority are not likely to be so oppressive; certainly there is much less danger of coming into collision with the law. Our institutions find from experience that the feeble-minded take kindly to rough, out-door work and from this it is natural ...
— Rural Problems of Today • Ernest R. Groves
... which about this time overtook the slave-holders of St. Domingo, when their slaves threw off their oppressive yoke, added considerably to his rising fortunes. He happened to have two vessels in that port when the tocsin of insurrection rang out its fearful notes. Frantic with apprehension, many planters rushed with their costliest ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... the gloomy night, and upward to the stars. A spirit floated in the air before me,—a phantom draped in heavy sweeping robes of dense purple, but with eyes of such vivid and fiery brightness, that I could not look upon them; and my heart quailed in my bosom with a strange oppressive sense of fear and wonder. Then I felt that her awful gaze was fixed upon me, and a voice, low and sonorous as the tones of an organ, broke on my ear with an intense pathos, unutterably solemn:— Daughter of earth, I am the spirit of ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... there were no living soul but himself. . . . He went out on the balcony. The bay, like a living thing, looked at him with its multitude of light blue, dark blue, turquoise and fiery eyes, and seemed beckoning to him. And it really was hot and oppressive, and it would not have been ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... When cut for peeling they are of various sizes and lengths, depending on the texture of the bark. These rods afford the hazel-like walking-sticks so much esteemed by strangers, and which, though difficult to be procured during the prevalence of the oppressive cinnamon regulations, may now be very easily obtained from proprietors of grounds producing that spice. Cinnamon is barked at two periods of the year, between April and December. Those suckers which are considered fit for cutting, are usually about three-fourths of an inch in diameter, ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... highest sensuous faculty can give. The sight of a distant infinity—of heights beyond vision, this vast ocean which is at his feet, that other ocean still more vast which stretches above his head, transport and ravish his mind beyond the narrow circle of the real, beyond this narrow and oppressive prison of physical life. The simple majesty of nature offers him a less circumscribed measure for estimating its grandeur, and, surrounded by the grand outlines which it presents to him, he can no longer bear anything mean in his way of thinking. Who can tell how many luminous ideas, how many ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... less. Its introduction into America had actually been recommended on its merits by eminent Americans. It had been proposed by the Governor of Pennsylvania as early as 1739. It had been approved at one time by Benjamin Franklin himself. To-day it must seem to most of us both less unjust and less oppressive than the Navigation Laws, which the colonists bore ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... so alluring in May and June, had become an oppressive weight to those most sensitive to the weather, and as the air grew chill and the skies overcast, the women turned with apprehensive faces to the untracked northwest, out of which the winds swept pitilessly cold and keen. The land of the ...
— The Moccasin Ranch - A Story of Dakota • Hamlin Garland
... only after a long intolerably oppressive silence that she found her voice. "The misunderstanding isn't what you think," she said. "Nor what Graham thinks. It's his misunderstanding, not mine. He thinks that I am—a sort of innocent angel that he's not good enough for. And ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... iconoclasm; it was the breaking of a stone image. The people saw the building like a giant looking at them with a score of eyes, and they struck at it as at a carved fact. For of all the shapes in which that immense illusion called materialism can terrify the soul, perhaps the most oppressive are big buildings. Man feels like a fly, an accident, in the thing he has himself made. It requires a violent effort of the spirit to remember that man made this confounding thing and man could unmake it. Therefore the mere act of the ragged people in the street taking and destroying a ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... of these views, negro schools were frequently broken up and the school-houses burned; and in many places they were only safe under the immediate protection of the Federal troops. After many further particulars, especially as to the oppressive laws passed by the new governments, Mr. Schurz sums up: "To recapitulate; the white people of the South were harassed by pressing necessities, and most of them in a troubled and greatly excited state of mind. The emancipation ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... statesman; he was not an administrator; he could not do any genuine service as head of a department; he was not even a good clerk; he was a wretched speaker; he was consumed by a morbid shyness, almost as oppressive as that of the poet Cowper in a later day, or of Nathaniel Hawthorne, the American novelist, later still. His whole public career was at best but a harmless mistake. It has done no harm to his literary fame. The world has almost forgotten it. Even lovers ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... and mignonette, of orange in bloom, and of a hundred opening buds swept across their faces. The brilliant sunlight almost dazzled eyes that had grown accustomed to the cool shade of the patio, for Ronda is one of the sunniest spots on earth, and here the warmth is rarely oppressive. The garden was Moorish, and running water in aqueducts of marble, yellow with stupendous age, murmured in the shade of tropical plants. A fountain plashed and chattered softly, like the whispering of children. ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... of the oppressive conduct of Sir James Turner at Glasgow, during the time of the Engagement, is this—"Some regiments of horse and foot were sent to our town, with orders to quarter on no other but the magistrates, council, session, and their lovers. These orders were executed with ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... oppressive sense of loneliness? and desolation came over the minds of the cousins as they sat together at the foot of the pine, which cast its lengthened shadow upon the ground before them. The shades of evening were shrouding them, wrapping the lonely forest in gloom. The full moon had ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... man approached us. He was very heavy, very unwieldy, very unctuous and oppressive. He affected the "honest farmer," but so badly that the poorest husbandman would have resented it. There was a suggestion of a cheap lawyer about him that would have justified any self-respecting judge in throwing him ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... passed his hand over his forehead as if to disperse the mists of an oppressive dream, whose grotesque extravagance leaves behind a subtle sense of bodily danger and intellectual decay. In the passages and on the staircases of the old palace Montero's troopers lounged about insolently, smoking and making way for no one; the ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... thus run for some distance when the wind dropped, and she lay rolling in the trough of the still heavy sea. The sky overhead was dark and lowering, a drizzling rain fell, and the air was oppressive. The captain and officers looked anxious. They had cause to be so, for suddenly the wind again rose, now blowing from one quarter, now from another, and all hands were kept on deck ready to brace round the yards as might be required. For several days no observation ...
— The History of Little Peter, the Ship Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... rein to their passions, trusting that the coming ceremony will wipe out the score which they are running up so fast. On the other hand, when the ceremony has just taken place, men's minds are freed from the oppressive sense, under which they generally labour, of an atmosphere surcharged with devils; and in the first revulsion of joy they overleap the limits commonly imposed by custom and morality. When the ceremony takes place at harvest-time, the elation ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... part of our stay of a week, the sky was cloudless, and if the trade-wind failed for an hour, the heat became very oppressive. On two days, the thermometer within the tent stood for some hours at 93 degs.; but in the open air, in the wind and sun, at only 85 degs. The sand was extremely hot; the thermometer placed in some of a brown colour immediately rose to 137 degs., and how much above that it would ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... the virtues of passive resistance were inculcated and preached, and the great champion of popular rights told the people publicly and repeatedly that they might not be afraid to follow his advice, for that it mattered little how oppressive or stringent any act of parliament in defence of the Established Church might be, he would undertake to drive a coach and six through the very severest of its penalties. Nor were the Catholic priesthood idle during these times of storm ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... a deep unearthly voice was heard inside the hut. Every one trembled, and there ensued a silence so oppressive as to suggest the idea that all present were holding their breath, and afraid to ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... rebellious at the dusty, tiresome task, nor aware of the merciless heat of the early-summer sun. She was not indeed thinking at all of what she was doing, except that the physical effort of stooping and reaching and pulling was a relief to her, made slightly less oppressive the thunder-heavy moral atmosphere she breathed. She was trying to think, but the different impressions came rushing into her mind with such vehement haste that they dashed against each other brutally, to ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... me. I must see the light beyond with my own eyes. Whitman's indomitable faith I admire, but cannot share. My torch will not kindle at his great flame. From our youth up our associations with the dead and with the grave are oppressive. Our natural animal instincts get the better of us. Death seems the great catastrophe. The silver cord is loosened, and the golden bowl is broken. The physical aspects of death are unlovely and repellent. And the spiritual aspects—only the elect ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... favored, and found a stone imbedded tightly in the cloven hoof. He pried it out with his knife and mounted again. Wolf shone faintly far ahead, and presently he uttered a mournful cry which sent a chill to the rider's heart. The silence had been oppressive before; now it was terrible. It was not a silence of life. It had been broken suddenly by Wolf's howl, and had closed sharply after it, without echo; it ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... frayed rope end which lay between us and a backward somersault, when my ears were assailed by an uncanny sound, half grunt, half moan. For an instant I thought it was the wretched pony moved to protest by the grade and my oppressive weight. But the pony was breasting the steep most gallantly, all things considered. The miserable sound was repeated a second later, just as our little four-footed friend struck the level, and I discovered that it was my driver's appeal to his steed. It is a sound ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... betokened a scorching day; and just as people had begun to say, "What a sultry morning!" lo, in one moment the wind would set in from the sea, strong, salty, fresh, invigorating; and, behold, it was cool! Or if the afternoon seemed for a little while oppressive in the streets of the old town, it was only necessary to go down to the end of the Avenue to find a temperature cool enough to be called chilly. Nobody ever thought of driving without a shawl, and the shawl was ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... one hundred and sixteen deaths from cholera were reported, and that night the air was of that peculiarly oppressive, deathly kind that seems to lie like lead on the brain ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... fell upon the Court-room—a profound, breathless silence that became oppressive before the next official ...
— A Woman's Part in a Revolution • Natalie Harris Hammond
... intervals might be heard the howl of the prairie wolf, and the occasional lowing of cattle gave her hope of the neighbourhood of man. But there was nothing but the wild and lonely plain, and she felt a keen desire to see a light or hear a voice, the solitude was so oppressive. It was very cold, and a hard frost lay on the ground. At last, however, she heard the bark of a dog, and then the too common sound of a man swearing; she saw a light, and in another minute found herself at a large house eleven ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... not feel so bitter, your Excellency," volunteered Anderson. "Military orders, however necessary, always seem oppressive to ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... onwards was a continued scene of misery; for the wounded and the sick were many, the heat oppressive, the thirst intolerable; and the ferocious Djezzar was hard behind, and the wild Arabs of the desert hovered round them on every side, so that he who fell behind his company was sure to be slain. How hard and callous the hearts of ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... on, and Nic followed close behind, the splashing of their feet echoed softly from the walls, and the man's voice sounded shut in and smothered. The air felt hot too, and oppressive, while the smouldering wood glowed and made the convict's figure stand out like a solid carved block moving dimly outlined before ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... entire distance, which we travel in brave silence. Indeed, we cannot speak,—the oppressive strain upon the chest is so great. Step after step, hand over hand, up we go. At last, warmer air greets us, lights flicker from above; the trap-door is reached; we are on the surface again; we are out of the depths,—and our hearts whisper ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... Paris for Brussels is to exchange excitement for tranquillity, a crowd for a few, the oppressive newness and vivacity of to-day for a mild animation tempered with a flavor of bygone ages. Brussels has been called a miniature Paris. I should rather consider her as the younger sister of the great city—less beautiful, less decked out, less accomplished, less versed in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... Van Voorden exclaimed, "were I but younger I too would go out with the Ghentois to battle. I care but little myself as to the rights of the quarrel, though methinks that Ghent is right in resisting the oppressive taxes which, contrary to their franchise, the earl has laid on the city. But that is nothing. One has but to look upon the faces of the crowd to feel one's blood boil at the strait to which their lord, instead of fighting them boldly, has, like a coward, reduced them by famine. But now when ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... the busy burgesses whom we saw rustling their parchments and chinking their silver marks in the ears of Abbot Sampson in Richard's time, it is hard to say. Like all the greater revolutions of society, this advance was a silent one. The more galling and oppressive instances of serfdom seem to have slipped unconsciously away. Some, like the eel-fishery, were commuted for an easy rent; others, like the slavery of the fullers and the toll of flax, simply disappeared. No one could ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... great features France is the same as ever. An oppressive air of solitude seems to hover over these rich and extended plains, while we are sensible that, whatever is the motive of the desolation, it cannot be sterility. The towns are small, and have a poor appearance, and more frequently ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... usual health; and, therefore, he continued in full employment. At the end of the four months (Jan. 1830), his cough had increased much, his palpitation of heart, dyspnoea, and bronchial irritation had become very oppressive, and general exhaustion had manifested itself. Recourse was had at this period of the affection to bleeding, blisters, and expectorants, which relieved him only temporarily, and while under this treatment, he—having a large family dependent on his exertions for their support—continued ...
— An Investigation into the Nature of Black Phthisis • Archibald Makellar
... this meant. And another time she said, "Perhaps it's that I'm making an honest effort to do my share." But it was true and real, the fact that after such work the reading of the day's news of the world brought her a less oppressive sense of guilt. And stranger than this, music had greater vitality for her. She felt it a deeper, richer soil than even she had dreamed of, and struck her roots profoundly into depths which kept her whole complicated organism ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... before the one set for their departure was intensely warm and oppressive, and everybody was almost ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... silent tent, on a wardrobe trunk. What manner of night it was, whether starlit or sullen, Carl did not know; he was aware only that it was oppressive, and that Eve was in his arms in the darkness. He kissed her moist, hot neck. He babbled incoherently of the show people, but every word he said meant that he was palpitating because her soft body was against his. He knew—and he was sure ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... our stay of a week the sky was cloudless, and if the trade-wind failed for an hour the heat became very oppressive. On two days the thermometer within the tent stood for some hours at 93 degrees; but in the open air, in the wind and sun, at only 85 degrees. The sand was extremely hot; the thermometer placed in some of a brown colour ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... as "earthquake weather." The wild cattle moved uneasily in the distance without feeding; herds of unbroken mustangs approached the confines of the hacienda in vague timorous squads. The silence and stagnation of the old house was oppressive, as if the life had really gone out of it at last; and Aunt Viney, after waiting impatiently for the young people to come in to chocolate, rose grimly, set her lips together, and went out into the lane. The gate of the ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... all agreed to report as much as I have now stated to the House—the Report being confined chiefly to the Presidencies of Bombay and Madras. If I were now submitting the case of the population of India I would say that the taxes of India are more onerous and oppressive than the taxes of any other country in the world. I think I could demonstrate that proposition to the House. I would show that industry is neglected by the Government to a greater extent probably than is the case in any other country in the world which has been for any length ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... hopes of bringing his tirade to an end, "your friendship is slightly oppressive. Confine your attentions to your own grievances. I ...
— That Mother-in-Law of Mine • Anonymous
... then, for a nervous sense of loneliness was creeping upon her; and though there had been nothing to prevent her from rising and going away, she had felt that something was holding her in her seat, a shadowy something that was oppressive and not natural, that descended upon her out of the gloomy heights, and that rose around her from the secret depths below, where the great dead lay side by side ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... concealed purpose, keep in mind her noble motives, and pursue in our fancy the under current of feeling, working in her mind throughout. The terror and the power of Shylock's character,—his deadly and inexorable malice,—would be too oppressive; the pain and pity too intolerable, and the horror of the possible issue too overwhelming, but for the intellectual relief afforded by this double ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... several seconds and only the monotonous ticking of the clock upon the wall broke the oppressive silence. ...
— The Marx He Knew • John Spargo
... standing silent and motionless as statues at their guns; even the remarks interchanged between the officers were expressed in low murmurs only loud enough to reach the ear for which they were intended, the oppressive silence being intensified rather than broken by an occasional "Luff! luff, you may, ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... of oatmeal and water for himself at half-past nine o'clock each evening, and to go to bed at ten. He opened the door to throw out some water that remained in the saucepan from its last cleansing. It froze as it fell upon the soil. He looked at the night, and shook himself to throw off an oppressive sensation of being clasped in the icy ribs of the air, for the mercury had descended below the familiar region of crisp and crackly cold and marked a temperature at which the numb atmosphere seemed on the point of congealing into black solidity. ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... the animals in the country were starving from the deficiency of all kinds of grain. The pastures, we could ourselves see, were dry, and in many parts burnt to chaff, while the present summer beginning with oppressive heat, and the preceding one having been equally unfavourable to the pasturage, the scarcity of food was severely and fatally felt ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... winning the freedom they have always desired. Wherefore, let us take good courage and behave like the wise husbandman of scripture, who gathered the wheat into his barn, but uprooted and burned the tares that had half-choked the good grain. The tares of England are her oppressive rulers, and the time of harvest has come. Ours it is to pluck up these tares and make away with them all—the wicked lords, the unjust judges, the lawyers—every man, indeed, who is dangerous to the common good. Then shall we all have peace in our time and security for the future. ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... lieutenant-governor, freed from even the slight control afforded by their presence, had given full scope to the worse parts of his peculiar and complicated character. More than ever was his administration of his native island marked by unblushing egotism. Oppressive, grasping, unguarded in speech, and almost unrestrained in action, he seemed, from one point of view, the model of a sordid, short-sighted despot, making hay while the sun shone. But he had a fund of caution which kept him from proceeding quite ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene
... individual subject this distinction has no meaning at all. For the laws passed by a Democratic Parliament are coercive and compulsory in precisely the same manner and degree as are the laws of a despotic monarchy or a close oligarchy. There is, indeed, a "tyranny of the majority" which can be quite as oppressive to the individual as the tyranny of the one or the few, and much less easy to evade. From the point of view of the enfranchised community, however, the term "free" has a meaning, and its use can ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw
... instability, and on them an array of glittering poets, Shelley, Rossetti, Keats, Browning, and odd volumes of Ruskin, South Place Sermons, Socialistic publications in torn paper covers, and above, science text-books and note-books in an oppressive abundance. The autotypes that hung about the room were eloquent of aesthetic ambitions and of a certain impermeability to implicit meanings. There were the Mirror of Venus by Burne Jones, Rossetti's Annunciation, Lippi's Annunciation, and the Love of Life and Love and Death of Watts. And ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... civilization and the charm of New York came over me with depressing effect. I began to wish that Clayton would appear. I had not decided to accept his kindly offer. I must be off to-morrow. The air seemed oppressive. Was it so warm? I put my hand to my brow. It was hot. Perhaps I was not well. The trip I had just ended was after all wearisome. I had not slept well some nights. I sensed that I was fatigued. What would a ride of more than 200 miles on a pony do to me? But on the other hand ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... tendency is no more perceptible on the page of history, in political and religious affairs, than in the relations of social life. The gradual advance in political ideas, as relating to the liberty of the people, modified the oppressive trade-caste systems of the older nations, and wholly abolished them in the more advanced. Competitive industry introduced intelligence and self-reliance among the people. The doctrine of the equality of men elevated the spirit of the laborer, and dispersed, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... at ease anywhere in the world. Eve fitted into Paris as naturally as in her native London, I began to feel at home there myself. It was a city of happy people—care free, natural, sympathetic. There was a lack of restraint which, after the oppressive dignity of London, was a rare treat. No one was critical. Every one accepted my halting and faulty French without ridicule or condescension. The amiability and the friendliness of the French people thawed my heart and began to lift ...
— The Log-Cabin Lady, An Anonymous Autobiography • Unknown
... that spring noonshine when two young men (we will call them Dactyl and Spondee) set off to plunder the golden bag of Time. These creatures had an oppressive sense that first Youth was already fled. For one of them, in fact, it was positively his thirtieth birthday; poor soul, how decrepitly he flitted in front of motor trucks. As for the other, he was ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... our impressions at the time, and from the stains on the table, a very considerable quantity must have been produced. I may remark in conclusion that there was no scent in the room before the seance, and that we could distinguish several different perfumes which made the atmosphere so oppressive that we were glad to seek a purer air so soon as the seance came ...
— Psychic Phenomena - A Brief Account of the Physical Manifestations Observed - in Psychical Research • Edward T. Bennett
... of sight; for they now know how to disperse and disappear, when circumstances require it. But then are they the most dangerous; for suspicion is laid asleep, and they keep watch in the dark. Oh! my dear young lady, if you knew their frightful ability! In my hatred of all that is oppressive, cowardly, and hypocritical, I had studied the history of that terrible society, before I knew that the Abbe d'Aigrigny belonged to it. Oh! it is dreadful. If you knew what means they employ! When I tell you that, thanks to their diabolical devices, the ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... Europe was chained to the soil, without freedom, or property, or knowledge; and the two orders of ecclesiastics and nobles, whose numbers were comparatively small, alone deserved the name of citizens and men. This oppressive system was supported by the arts of the clergy and the swords of the barons. The authority of the priests operated in the darker ages as a salutary antidote: they prevented the total extinction of letters, mitigated the fierceness ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... Lancaster, which proved so salubrious to the pensioners of the British government before named, grew oppressive to this tory bachelor, as we find by a lengthy petition in Massachusetts Archives (clxxiii, 546), wherein he begs for a wider range, and especially for leave to go to the sea-shore. ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume I. No. VI. June, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... thirsty, and he looked round for those fruits he had heard of; but he could see none of them at the time, and the more he sought his way out, the deeper he seemed to get into the forest. The air was very sultry and oppressive, too; he grew weary and faint, quite sick at heart, and even the limbs of his good horse seemed to be failing him, and hardly able to ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... see you, not having had that old pleasure for a long time. I am at this moment deaf in the ears, hoarse in the throat, red in the nose, green in the gills, damp in the eyes, twitchy in the joints, and fractious in the temper from a most intolerable and oppressive cold, caught the other day, I suspect, at Liverpool, where I got exceedingly wet; but I will make prodigious efforts to get the better of it to-night by resorting to all conceivable remedies, and if I ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... had ebbed from him with his blood, or waned with his fever. And whereas he had before sought both gain and power, restrained by as few scruples as the worst men of a bad age, he rose a pursuer of both, but within bounds; so that, though he was still hard and grasping and oppressive, it was possible to say of him that he was no worse than his class. Close-fisted, at Father O'Hara's instance he could open his hand. Hard, at the Father's prayer he would at times remit a rent or extend a bond. ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... ancestors were stanch patriots, on both sides, and served with credit in the old French and Indian wars, and his immediate predecessors were among the earliest and the most efficient of the "Sons of Liberty," well known for their undaunted spirit in encouraging resistance to the arbitrary and oppressive acts which occasioned ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... glad to get home again before. I never have enjoyed rest as I have enjoyed it during these last few hours. The journey to the Dead Sea, the Jordan and Bethlehem was short, but it was an exhausting one. Such roasting heat, such oppressive solitude, and such dismal desolation can not surely exist elsewhere on ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the blazing sunshine, that even then was oppressive, the expedition started. The white men leading, Felix coming immediately behind, and eleven of the soldiers, bearing the tents and stores ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... valley of Feiran, which is not more than an hundred paces across, the high mountains on each side, and the thick woods of date-trees, render the heat extremely oppressive, and the unhealthiness of the situation is increased by the badness of the water. The Tebna are far from being as robust and healthy as their neighbours, and in spring and summer dangerous fevers reign here. ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... mass of human flesh, he saw his father's body, crushed and terribly mangled; his face wore an expression of suffering, his whole body seemed borne down by a heavy and oppressive weight. ...
— The Silver Lining - A Guernsey Story • John Roussel
... World War II led to the formation of a Communist "peoples republic" in 1947 and the abdication of the king. The decades-long rule of dictator Nicolae CEAUSESCU and his Securitate police state became increasingly oppressive and draconian through the 1980s. CEAUSESCU was overthrown and executed in late 1989. Former communists dominated the government until 1996 when they were swept from power by a fractious coalition of center-right parties. Today the Communist Party, renamed the Party of Social Democracy, ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... of suffrage by the women in Wyoming for the past quarter of a century has wrought no harm and has done great good in many ways; it has largely aided in banishing crime, pauperism, and vice from this State, and that without any violent or oppressive legislation; it has secured peaceful and orderly elections, good government, and a remarkable degree of civilization and public order; and we point with pride to the facts that after nearly twenty-five years of Woman Suffrage not one county ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... in keeping their sleuths ever on the alert for the unearthing of the plans of the anti-trust advocates. In every city detectives are untiring in their efforts to discover the work of the Committee of Forty. It is suspected that the committee is to obtain damaging evidence against some of the most oppressive of the monopolies and bring the full story of the wholesale robbery of the people out as a climax in ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... anything to them in the hope to comfort them; yet, while they were thus incapacitated for all action, I could serve them essentially by placing myself at the head of their affairs, and relieving them of common cares and duties, that must otherwise have been neglected, or have proved irksome and oppressive. ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... the wager was a spur to urge me forward at greater speed. The place was strangely, painfully still; even the savage yelling of the distant Indians seemed to die away as I advanced, and nothing broke the oppressive silence but an occasional flutter of leaves, or my own deep breathing. I had gone, I take it, half or three-quarters of a mile, not directly north, but circling ever to the eastward, seeking thus to reach the house from the rear, when ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... a certain stage in this part of the ceremony there was a pause. No one left the plaza, but every one stood as still as a graven image, and not a sound broke the hush, apparently of breathless expectancy. The stillness was so unearthly that it became oppressive, and a few white friends who were with me began to urge in whispers that we leave the plaza as all was evidently at an end, and go back to our camp below the mesa, when suddenly there rang out such a wild, exultant shout of unrestrained, unmeasured rejoicing as only Indians can give in moments ...
— The Unwritten Literature of the Hopi • Hattie Greene Lockett
... uncivilized countries to conceal minerals or other natural products with which they may become acquainted, from the fear of being obliged to pay increased tribute, or of bringing upon themselves a new and oppressive labour. ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... once he seemed unburdened of shackles that had weighted him down to the point of madness. Every fiber in his body responded to that glorious roar of the fire; a thing seemed to snap in his head, freeing it of an oppressive bondage, and in the heart of the flames he saw home, and hope, and life—the things familiar and precious long ago, which the scourge of the north had almost beaten dead in his memory. He saw the broad Saskatchewan shimmering its way through the yellow plains, banked in by the foothills and ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood
... fortunate fellow-travellers. As we neared the French coast I realised gradually how good it would be to see Roger again, and found time to regret a little of my solitary lingering through the damp English winter, which seemed more oppressive in retrospect than ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... from the sea sends a flying throb of white light across the mirror below, or the sweeping wings of a hawk paint their moth-like image on the blue surface, or a little flaw of wind shudders across the water in a black ripple; but except for these casual stirs of Nature, all is still, oppressive, and beautiful, as earth seems to the trance-sleeper on the brink ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... being quite out of breath by the time she got indoors went slowly up-stairs and down the long hall to Eleanor's room. The house was very still—evidently its inmates were all out watching the hoop-rolling. Betty found herself walking softly, in sympathy with the almost oppressive silence. Eleanor's door was ajar, so that Betty's ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... nature of its exactions by a name of blandishment. An enormous grievance was long the office of purveyance. A purveyor was an officer who was to furnish every sort of provision for the royal house, and sometimes for great lords, during their progresses or journeys. His oppressive office, by arbitrarily fixing the market prices, and compelling the countrymen to bring their articles to market, would enter into the history of the arts of grinding the labouring class of society; a remnant of feudal tyranny! The very title of this ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... the camp-meeting I returned to Chicago. As I started homeward, I found that the oppressive heat had greatly reduced my strength. Because of the heat, too, I had been tempted to drink too much ice-water, lemonade, etc. When about sixty miles from home, my heart began to fail, and I saw that unless the Lord helped me I was not going to be able to get through. I can not express to ...
— Trials and Triumphs of Faith • Mary Cole
... October we doubled the Cape Verd Islands, without however seeing the land, which is almost always lost in mist, and steered direct for the Equator. Our progress was now impeded by calms, and the heat began to be oppressive; but care and precaution preserved the crew in perfect health, an effect which strict cleanliness, order, and wholesome diet, will seldom fail to produce, ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... past midnight. The fire was out, on the hearth. A strange stillness pervaded the room. It grew oppressive. Margaret rose and went towards the old woman, who seemed to have dropped asleep. She took the withered hand in her own. It dropped lifeless. She was dead; the two whose lives had become as one by suffering, were parted. Sibyl had gone to that world ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... from this disaster, its empire rested on unstable foundations. The subject races were attached to their oppressive masters by no ties save those of force. When Assyria grew exhausted by its career of conquest, they were quick to strike a blow for freedom. By the middle of the seventh century Egypt had secured her independence, and many other provinces were ready to revolt. Meanwhile, beyond the eastern ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... though it assumed a positive intellectual form, was in fact negative in its aim and scope. It meant simply, we will not be exploited. But that end has now been attained. There is no fear now that government will be oppressive; and the only problem of the future is, how to make it efficient. But efficiency, it is certain, can never be secured by democratic machinery. We must, as Allison rightly maintains, have trained and skilled persons. How these are to be secured is a matter of detail, though no doubt of important ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... during the dry months, but with the oncoming of the heavy showers, which usher in the rainy season, become damp and uncomfortable and make it necessary for the occupants to return to the lowlands just at the time when Baguio is growing most attractive and the heat of Manila is becoming most oppressive. ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... questions are intimately connected with the status of the negro in southern society, it is obvious that a correct solution can be more easily obtained if he has a voice in the matter. In the right to vote he would find the best permanent protection against oppressive class-legislation, as well as against individual persecution. The relations between the white and black races, even if improved by the gradual wearing off of the present animosities, are likely to remain long under the troubling influence of prejudice. It is a notorious ...
— Report on the Condition of the South • Carl Schurz
... Absentee landlordism was oppressive both to the cotter's body and to his soul, for it not only bound him to perpetual poverty but kindled within him a deep sense of injustice. The historian, Justin McCarthy, says that the Irishman "regarded the right to have a bit of land, his share, exactly as other people regard the right to live." ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth
... "We spent a hot oppressive day with very little wind in cruising leisurely round it as close in shore as we could get. I should guess that it was about eleven miles round, measuring from the ends of the promontories. We saw no signs whatever of habitation ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... doubtless, by the Roman hegemony to a name—which involved the property of the soil and the right to a distinct administration and jurisdiction of their own.(25) Some years later not only were the old confederacies again allowed to have a shadowy existence, but the oppressive restriction on the alienation of ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... the house she pondered upon the maid's-room. It was a slant-roofed, small-windowed hole above the kitchen, oppressive in summer, frigid in winter. She saw that while she had been considering herself an unusually good mistress, she had been permitting her friends Bea and Oscarina to live in a sty. She complained to Kennicott. "What's the matter with it?" he growled, as they stood on the perilous stairs ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... there is, whether nullification is a peaceful and an efficient remedy against an unconstitutional act of the general government, and may be asserted, as such, through the State tribunals. Both parties agree that the acts against which it is directed are unconstitutional and oppressive. The controversy is only as to the means by which our citizens may be protected against the acknowledged encroachments on their rights. This being the point at issue between the parties, and the very object of the majority being an efficient protection of the ...
— Remarks of Mr. Calhoun of South Carolina on the bill to prevent the interference of certain federal officers in elections: delivered in the Senate of the United States February 22, 1839 • John C. Calhoun
... as he placed a candle-screen before Annie, who, having a headache, found the light oppressive, he said with a graceful mixture of play and earnest, impossible ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... church-membership;—principles for which they have earnestly contended from the beginning. The student of history will readily perceive how they thus came into collision with the ruling powers. They were fined in Massachusetts and Connecticut for resistance to oppressive ecclesiastical laws, they were imprisoned in Virginia, and throughout the land were subjected to contumely and reproach. This dislike to the Baptists as a sect, or rather to their principles, was very naturally shared by the higher institutions of learning ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various
... outside of Spain, but if they could do no better, at least go to the Peninsula. He urged that through education only could progress be hoped for. In one of his speeches he had warned the Spanish government that continued oppressive measures would drive the Filipinos from their allegiance and make them wish to become subjects of a freer power, suggesting England, whose possessions ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... the progress of the day; and, the wind dying down, the atmosphere was oppressive. By the time Stephensport, Ky. (695 miles), was reached, in the middle of the afternoon, the sun was beating fiercely upon the glassy flood, and our awning came again into play, although it could not save us from the annoyance ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... great birds her surroundings seemed to lose their only element of active and conscious life. The brooding sunlit evening became oppressive, so that in the space of a moment Damaris passed from solitude, which is stimulating, to loneliness, which is only sad. Meanwhile the shadow cast by the ilex trees had grown sensibly longer, softer in outline, more transparent ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... the oppressive heat of the day and the fatigue of hard thinking, Mr. Downing was working up for a brain-storm, when Fate once more intervened, this time in the shape of Riglett, a junior ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... down the long table, seated beside Daisy Musgrave, obviously to their mutual satisfaction. A bubbling oasis of gaiety surrounded them. Evidently the general atmosphere of state and ceremony was less oppressive in that quarter. ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... into the coals on the hearth. It was all over and done with, the house empty and still, Dolly Ferrara gone back to her uncle's home. Even the Cove was bare of fishing craft. He was alone under his own rooftree, alone with an oppressive ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... first arrived at New York, the effect of the climate upon me was immediate. On the 5th of May, the heat and closeness were oppressive. There was a sultriness in the air, even at that early period of the year, which to me seemed equal to that of Madras. Almost every day there were, instead of our mild refreshing showers, sharp storms of thunder and lightning; but the air did not appear to me to be ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... upon which the government has developed to its present Constitutional form are chiefly lines of resistance to oppressive enactments in these two matters. The dynastic and military history of England, although picturesque and interesting, is really only a narrative of the external causes which have impeded the Nation's growth toward its ideal of "the greatest possible ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... always existed, but not in the history of the world was it ever a craze, a madness, until your time and mine. This lust has rotted these nations; it has made them hard, sordid, ungentle, dishonest, oppressive. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... seemed somewhat sleepy and tired; and was withal so tiny, that he might almost have taken her between his thumb and finger, and twirled her above his head; yet she poised herself before him on a mullein-stalk and looked every inch a queen. Robin found her gaze oppressive; for her eyes were hard, and cold, and gray, as if they had been ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... last, after a long and weary night to many within and without the abbey. Every thing betokened a dismal day. The atmosphere was damp, and oppressive to the spirits, while the raw cold sensibly affected the frame. All astir were filled with gloom and despondency, and secretly breathed a wish that, the tragical business of the day were ended. The vast range of Pendle ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... a heavy burden, signifies that you will be tied down by oppressive weights of care and injustice, caused from favoritism shown your enemies by those in power. But to struggle free from it, you will climb to ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... small, yet so significant, a feature of that large, white, luminous and inauspicious face. It is an hortation which, by whomsoever delivered, would tend to dispirit the bravest and most honest of witnesses. The presence of a judge is always, as I have said, oppressive. The presence of three is trebly so. Yet not a score of them serried along the bench could have outdone in oppressiveness Sir Charles Russell. He alone, among the counsel I have seen, was an exception to the rule that by a judge every one in court is levelled. On the bench, ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... near, his early cravings for the sea returned. The stately mansion of power had been to him the wearisome hospital of pain, and he begged to be taken from its prison walls, from its oppressive, stifling air, from its homelessness and its hopelessness. Gently, silently, the love of a great people bore the pale sufferer to the longed-for healing of the sea, to live or to die, as God should will, within sight of its heaving billows, within sound of its manifold voices. With ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... group gathered before the fire. In the midst of it, I saw the tall, almost boyish figure of Bonny Page, and the sight of her gallant air and her brilliant, vivacious smile aroused in me instantly the oppressive self-consciousness of our first meeting. I remembered suddenly that I had dressed carelessly in the morning, that I had tied my cravat in a hurry, that my coat fitted me badly and I had neglected to send it back. All the innumerable details of life—the little things I despised ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... Oregon, Dakota, and Third Infantry troops and a battery of the Utah Light Artillery, with other troops following, including Ben's battalion with Major Morris at its head. As before, the advance was along the main road and through the rice-fields, cane-brakes, and the jungle, with the air so oppressive that it felt as though coming out of ...
— The Campaign of the Jungle - or, Under Lawton through Luzon • Edward Stratemeyer
... convinced me that happiness in that rank is more a shadow than a substance. It was a memorable saying of Pope Adrian IV., 'that he knew no one more unhappy than the Sovereign Pontiff; his throne is a seat of thorns; his mantle is an oppressive weight; his tiara shines splendidly indeed, but it is not without a devouring fire.' If I had been ambitious," continues Petrarch, "I might have been preferred to a benefice of more value than yours;" and he refers to the fact of the ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... round a rickety table, on which a large coarse tallow candle, stuck in a bottle, flared and guttered, and emitted an odour even more powerful than that of the tobacco smoke with which the room was filled. The air was heavy, the heat oppressive, and both the house-door and that of the guard-room, which was at right angles to it, just within the passage, were left open. Whilst some few of the men, their arms crossed upon the table, and their heads laid upon them, dozed away the time till their turn for going on sentry ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... at leaving him there ill,—only a coolie, to be sure, only an atom among the 34,000,000 of the Empire, but not less precious to our Father in heaven than any other. It was a brilliant day, with the mercury 86 degrees in the shade, but the heat was not oppressive. At noon we reached the Tone, and I rode on a coolie's tattooed shoulders through the shallow part, and then, with the kurumas, some ill- disposed pack-horses, and a number of travellers, crossed in a ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... intensity,—until at length the very figures on the tapestry with which the room was hung appeared animated with power to scare and affright me. The wind moaned ominously without, and raised strange echoes within; oppressive feelings crowded on my soul. At length the gale swelled to a hurricane—a whirlwind, seldom experienced in this delicious clime. Howlings in a thousand tones appeared to flit through the air; and piercing lamentations ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... heather to High Horcum. The huge shoulders of the moors are now majestically indistinct, and towards the west the browns, purples, and greens are all merged in one unfathomable blackness. The tremendous silence and the desolation become almost oppressive, but overhead the familiar arrangement of the constellations gives a sense of companionship not to be slighted. In something less than an hour a light glows in the distance, and, although the darkness is now complete, ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... In sultry noon's oppressive ray, Beneath the holme, of ample shade, His listless limbs he loves to lay On herbage, matted in the glade; Hears down the steeps the white rills dashing play, Till under the long grass they purl away; While, on wing of swift vibration, Murmuring range the ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... prisoners should be assigned tasks according to their ability. All men are not alike equally skilled in the same kind of labor. All these things should be taken into account. No prisoner should be forced to carry a burden that is oppressive, in order to fill the coffers of avaricious contractors. Again, I ask that there be some humane person, whose duty it is to see that these helpless men, whose lips are sealed, are not oppressed by this damnable contract system. Let us treat these unfortunate ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds
... marked enough in the earlier period of the Middle Ages (in Anselm, for example), faded out, they became more and more mere landlords, although from the conditions of their landlordism, living as they did on their land and amidst of their tenants, they were less oppressive than the lay landlords. ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... blood fighting freely in the open, he was a match for the lustiest. But New York, with its submerging, jostling multitudes, its thickly crowding human vastness, and, more than all, its atmosphere of dollar-chasing, apparent and oppressive even to the transient ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... the town guests had their plain bare Speisesaal, and we Britishers possessed the summer house; so we were all happy. The whole glory of the place was in the forest; for it was not flat sandy forest that has no undergrowth, and wearies you very soon with its sameness and its still, oppressive air. It was up hill and down dale forest, full of lovely glades, broken by massive dolomite rocks; the trees not set in serried rows, but growing for the most part as the birds and the wind planted them; a varied natural forest tended but not dragooned by man. The ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... was oppressive. But nevertheless, Cola, I have not lacked company—half the matronage of Rome ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... literary regime as well as the old political regime. The last century still weighs upon the present one at almost every point. It is notably oppressive in the matter of criticism. For instance, you find living men who repeat to you this definition of taste let fall by Voltaire: "Taste in poetry is no different from what it is in women's clothes." Taste, then, is coquetry. Remarkable words, which ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... one of the very pleasantest garden-books I have encountered. One reason for this is that it is about such a lot of other things besides gardens. Volumes that are exclusively devoted to what I might call horticultural hortation are apt to become oppressive. But AGNES and EGERTON CASTLE are persons far too sympathetic not to avoid this danger. Instead of lecturing, they talk with an engaging discursiveness that lures you from page to page, as it might from bed to border, were ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 25, 1914 • Various
... been driven to hostilities by the oppressive and tyrannous measures of Great Britain, having been compelled to commit the essential rights of men to the decision of arms, and having been at length forced to shake off a yoke which had grown too burdensome to bear, they declared ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... the guards on duty, that was out of the question. He waited, listening, as the check-down continued in nearby compartments. Then silence fell again. The heavy yeast aroma had grown more and more oppressive; now suddenly a fan went on with a whir, and a cool draft of freshened reprocessed air poured down from the ventilator shaft above ...
— Gold in the Sky • Alan Edward Nourse
... terrify the blacks that to escape from him they would penetrate farther into the jungle. His motive was purely selfish, but his methods, compared with those of Leopold, were almost considerate. The work the State to-day requires of the blacks is so oppressive that they have no time, no heart, ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... the game began there was dead silence in the room—a silence so oppressive that the click of the balls sounded sharp and clear, and the whizzing hum of the grasshoppers, moving in swarms, came in rolling crescendoes and quavering diminuendoes from the parched and barren paddocks all around, as distinctly as if the table had been set out in the open bush. ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... to lose a friend is to lend him money. There is nothing which seems to affect the mind more, and color the very heart's blood, than money. There seems a curse in it sometimes, so potent is it for mischief. Poverty, if it be too oppressive grinding down the face, may often hurt the heart-life; but perhaps oftener still it only reveals what true treasures there are in the wealth of the affections. Whereas, we know what heartburnings, and rivalries, and envyings, are occasioned by this golden apple of discord. Most of the disputes ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... earth and drew nearer to the place where a great serpent lay supine and coiled round the whole world. Ah! then the ancients must have referred to this, where the light is so ghastly, and the woods are endless, and are so still and solemn and grey; to this oppressive loneliness, amid so much life, which is so chilling to the poor distressed heart; and the horror grew darker with their fancies; the cold of early morning, the comfortless grey of dawn, the dead white ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... am a check on them down-stairs—papa, and Charlotte, and all—they are very kind, considerate, and yet'—she paused—'and it is a naughty feeling; but when I feel all those dear kind eyes watching me always, and wanting me to be happy, it is rather oppressive, especially when I can't; but if I try not to disappoint them, I do make such a bad hand of it, and am sure to break down afterwards, and that grieves mamma ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... when the bateau was run ashore and tied up, but tonight there were no singing voices or wild laughter of men whose hours of play-time and rest had come. To Carrigan, looking through his window, there was an oppressive menace about it all. The shadowy figures ashore were more like a death-watch than a guard, and to dispel the gloom of it he lighted two of the lamps in the cabin, whistled, drummed a simple chord ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... and 'ice-blink' girdles the horizon. The weather is wretched—a stagnant calm of air and ocean alike, the latter obscured by dense pack through which no swell can penetrate, and a wet mist hangs like a pall over land and sea. The silence is oppressive. There is nothing to do but to stay in one's sleeping-bag, or else wander in the soft snow and become thoroughly wet." Fifteen inches of snow fell in the next twenty-four hours, making over two feet between August 18 and 21. A slight swell ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... earthquakes are comparatively of much less frequent occurrence (as for instance, in Southern Europe), a very general belief prevails, although unsupported by the authority of inductive reasoning,* that a calm, an oppressive p 207 heat and a misty horizon, are always the ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... that conspiracy should have cut him off in the full vigor of his faculties, in the very meridian of his glory, and on the brink of completing a series of gigantic achievements. Amongst these are numbered—a digest of the entire body of laws, even then become unwieldy and oppressive; the establishment of vast and comprehensive public libraries, Greek as well as Latin; the chastisement of Dacia; the conquest of Parthia; and the cutting a ship canal through the Isthmus of Corinth. The reformation of the calendar he had already accomplished. And of all his projects it ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... suffer in their pockets. They are abundantly able to protect their own property; they know how to make money on the short side of the market as well as the long side. But the managers of the concerns of small capital are seldom able to do this. Oppressive laws cause suffering to them, to the mere holders of stock in all corporations, to the creditors of all, to the employees, and to the customers. Many of these laws profess to be meant to favor small people as against big people—to restrain ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... necessary to support the King's Government, religion, schools, and to reward public services, should be raised without such oppressive taxes as would oppress the natives, and shackle ...
— Speeches of His Majesty Kamehameha IV. To the Hawaiian Legislature • Kamehameha IV
... sensible that the revenue would continue forever, and the abuses immediately return, his demand was unanimously rejected. About three years after, the pope demanded and obtained the tenth of all ecclesiastical revenues, which he levied in a very oppressive manner; requiring payment before the clergy had drawn their rents or tithes, and sending about usurers, who advanced them the money at exorbitant interest. In the year 1240, Otho the legate, having in vain attempted the clergy in a ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... between two characters who both perhaps desire what is best for you, but who are so totally different that you will never know whom or which one to please. The Crown Prince has made himself free—and how did he do it? Only by courage and independence. He tore himself loose from the oppressive bondage imposed on him by the caprice of others, and won the means to complete his education. And now he sends to you from Rheinsberg his friend, the Prince Hereditary of Baireuth, to be a support and protection to you and to the Queen—so that here in this Court where they ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... period, since her first seclusion at Udolpho, and her mind was sometimes so overwhelmed with an apprehension, that Valancourt was no more, or that he lived no longer for her, that the company even of Blanche became intolerably oppressive, and she would sit alone in her apartment for hours together, when the engagements of the family allowed her ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... instance, that nature has denied to you that melodious and flexible voice in which it is our custom every day to render homage to the Father, to express all the sacred feelings of our hearts, all our love for each other, the joy we have in life, and even our griefs and sorrows. For grief is like a dark, oppressive cloud, until from lip and hand it breaks in the rain of melody, and we are lightened, so that even the things that are painful give to life a new and chastened glory. And as with music, so with all other arts. There is a twofold pleasure ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... weary sound, and the heavy breath, And the silent motions of passing death, And the smell, cold, oppressive, and dank, Sent through the ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... adventure really fascinated her, because she hates the Senor so. Anyway, I followed through several inner rooms of oppressive magnificence which the Spaniard reserves for his own use. Then we entered a corridor. No lock could be seen, but the Senora touched the panel in a certain way. It closed of itself as we entered, with the sound of a lock indeed—a heavy, oiled, smooth-running ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... friend to a very free system of commerce and to hold it as a truth that commercial shackles are generally unjust, oppressive, and impolitic; it is also a truth that if industry and labour are left to take their own course, they will generally be directed to those objects which are the most productive, and this in a more certain and direct manner than ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... for the work of achieving political independence a century later. Naturally it was in Massachusetts at the same time that the faults of the theocracy were most conspicuous. It was there that priestly authority most clearly asserted itself in such oppressive acts as are always witnessed when too much power is left in the hands of men whose primary allegiance is to a kingdom not of this world. Much as we owe to the theocracy for warding off the encroachments of the crown, we cannot be sorry that it was itself ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske |
