"Complicate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that would complicate matters, since it might necessitate my keeping Standish a prisoner here indefinitely in order to prevent him from denouncing me to the authorities. Give me your word of honour not to reveal my identity ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... no, with diversions fiercer and more earnest. There were continual altercations between farmers, small proprietors of land, government and city officials,—altercations so manifold and violent, that, even were there no hubbub of voices, and no incoherence of wrath and fear to complicate them, we should despair of setting them before the reader. An officer from the camp was expostulating with one of the municipal authorities that no corn had been sent thither for the last six or seven days, and the functionary attacked had thrown the blame on the farmer, and he in ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... wanted to enter. He was not exactly in a condition to be seen, especially if the person should prove to be an American officer. His fur parka, topping those khaki trousers and puttees of his, would seem at least to tell a tale, and might complicate matters considerably. Quickly seizing his blouse, he crowded his way far back into the depths of a ...
— Triple Spies • Roy J. Snell
... attachment has some advantages over the drop as a signal interpreter, in that it permits the code signals to be heard from a distance. Of course, the addition of spring contacts to the drop armature tends to complicate the structure and perhaps to cut down the sensitiveness of the drop, which ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller
... complicate matters, there had been the bankruptcy of his nephew, the Prince de Guimenee, whose debts had amounted to some three million livres. Characteristically, and for the sake of the family honour, Rohan had taken the whole of this burden upon his own shoulders. Hence ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... Soul! of Mohammed the complicate story: Sing, unfearful of Man, groaning and ending in care. Short the Command and the Toil, but endlessly mighty the Glory! Standing aloof if it chance, vainly our enemy's scare: What tho' we wretchedly fare, wearily drawing the Breath—, Malice in wonder may ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... that to-day, and it only tends to complicate matters. I cannot believe that your Rector had anything to do with that gold. But oh, if he would only explain. Are you sure that that box is not still among the ashes and ruins of the ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... would write to the mother, who had given her to them. We noted this—the second point we should have to prove if they lodged a suit against us—and any day the mother may come and complicate matters by working on the child's affections. Also, we have heard of a plot to decoy her away, should we be for a moment off guard; so we are very much on the watch, and we never let ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... thoroughness of preparation and only such a measure of despatch as can be secured without endangering thoroughness. Whether the projected expedition shall include troops, the conditions at the time must dictate. Troops with their transports will much complicate and increase the difficulties of the problem, and they may or may not be needed. The critical results can be accomplished by naval operations only; since nothing can be accomplished if the naval part of the expedition fails to secure the command of the sea; and the ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... Dieu, he paraphrased the Holy Scriptures, endeavoring to complicate their ordinarily obvious sense. In his other book Homme, and in his brochure le Jour du Seigneur, written in a biblical style, rugged and obscure, he sought to appear like a vengeful apostle, prideful and tormented with spleen, but showed himself a deacon touched ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... opinion, this method has little effect on the first stage of labor if properly administered; but it does undoubtedly prolong and tend to complicate the second stage; in fact, we are coming to look upon "twilight sleep" as being more distinctly a first stage procedure; that it bears the same relation to the first stage of labor that chloroform bears to the second stage—relieving the ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... just a little silly tale about a secret association of children and grownups, pledged to mutual help and a variety of altruistic aims—a scheme, with all its faults, at least human and understandable. But Miss C.J. DELAGREVE has chosen to complicate it by (apparently) a dash of the supernatural, in the person of a character called Saint Ken, about whom we are told that he lived in a tunnel on the Underground and employed himself in helping distressed passengers. Well, what I in my brutal ...
— Punch, Volume 156, January 22, 1919. • Various
... effect of price movements on distribution is to discover how they complicate the problems of wage settlement. Before proceeding to this main purpose, however, it is desirable to pay particular attention to one doctrine of the relation of wage change to price change which figures prominently in ...
— The Settlement of Wage Disputes • Herbert Feis
... tell Mrs. Woodyard," and before she could reply he had slipped over to Conny. That lady glanced at Isabelle, smiled on Cairy, and nodded. What she said to Cairy was: "So you've got a new interest. Take care, Tommy,—you'll complicate your life!" But apparently she did not regard Isabelle seriously; for presently she was saying to her, "Mrs. Bertram wants me to bring you around with ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... return when I did. Don't make her suffer that way again. If you don't give her beforehand some sort of plausible preparation for your next absence—for there will be another, and that before long—I shall enable her father to find out some plain truths about you that may complicate matters for you ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... on, "things are so complicated already that if we got married we should complicate them more. There's so much to be done—as to papa—and this house—and the future—of the kind of thing you don't know anything about. They're sordid things, too, that you'd be wasted on if you tried to ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... of Jimmy. The boy was going to complicate her life. She was by nature an unusually fearless woman, but she was beginning to realize that there might come a time when she would know fear—unless she could begin to live differently as Jimmy began to grow up. But how could she do that? There are things which ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... at most of the stations on the Bar the direction of the flow varies from hour to hour, going quite round the circle in a half-tidal day: the velocities and directions also vary with the depth. These circumstances complicate the computation a little, but the problem is still simple and direct. Everything depends upon ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... matters, he proved an awkward man where his affections were concerned, and he often came and sat by the girl's desk, evidently wishing to say something, and yet quite as evidently having nothing to say; and thus the situation became embarrassing. Jennie was a practical girl and had no desire to complicate the situation by allowing her employer to fall in love with her, yet it was impossible to go to him and ask that his attentions might be limited strictly to a business basis. The crisis, however, was brought on by Mr. Hardwick himself. One day, ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... the simplest; but a more elaborate plan is to so arrange the figures that any form of the blocks will form a square sum of 34. See the annexed solution, which the ingenious in may still further complicate: ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... may complicate the architect's personal problem, it should simplify and clarify his attitude toward his art. With no matter what seriousness and sincerity he may have undertaken his personal search for truth and beauty, he will come to question, ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... from the mustangs, that the three were secured without much trouble. Dick Morris insisted upon sailing in and clearing out the two marauders; but Tom was equally strenuous in demanding that they should not be disturbed. He was certain there were other warriors near by, and any such attempt would complicate matters. Accordingly they stole away with their recaptured animals and the one which was not exactly recaptured, and as soon as a convenient spot was selected Hardynge turned back for the boy, encountering ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... awful care to its mother," he said; "a responsibility that takes up her whole time and attention. I don't think I'd better complicate matters by getting into ...
— Paste Jewels • John Kendrick Bangs
... countered lightly, "we've enough suspecting to do already. There's Perry—and there's Morley. Don't let's complicate it too much. But what Miss Fulton has to say may be valuable. By the way, if I should need to do so, how can I persuade anybody that I have authority to ask questions, or to do anything else ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... would—give!" and then to complicate matters Sandy rolled over in a huddled heap and fainted dead away! Bob, bereft and frightened, hovered over him, emitting yelps and howls that shattered ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... to the States-General and to the Estates of Holland to convene a Synod to settle the disputed questions, but neither of these bodies in the midst of the negotiations for the truce was willing to complicate matters by taking a step that could not fail to accentuate existing discords. Six months after the truce was signed Arminius died. The quarrel, however, was only to grow more embittered. Johannes Uyttenbogaert took the leadership ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... continued, "that you are losing in both weight and color. That would be no advantage to yourself—and it might complicate Miss Dunton's problem. It's perplexing to an artist when one's subject changes under one's ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... and the Government had been informed of it, one cannot understand why General Beyers, with his fingers steeped in treason, was let loose upon the community to poison the loyalty of the Dutch along the country-side and to complicate the task of the Government. It seems that he should have been detained that evening, and thereby, having been turned from the path of suicide, other lives would also have been saved. When one considers the amount of harm that he was able to do subsequently, it is staggering to think what ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... with the difficulties of the situation. On the 27th of September Dana discussed at some length the army feeling toward the corps and division commanders who had been involved in the rout, and the embarrassment of Rosecrans in dealing with the subject. "The defects of his character," he wrote, "complicate the difficulty. He abounds in friendliness and approbativeness, and is greatly lacking in firmness and steadiness of will. He is a temporizing man, dreads so heavy an alternative as is now presented." ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... Mr Hawthorne is not contented with the natural and very strong impulse of the mechanician; he speaks throughout of his enthusiastic artisan as of some young Raphael intent upon "creating the beautiful." Springs, and wheels, and chains, however fine and complicate, are not "the beautiful." He might as well suppose the diligent anatomist, groping amongst nerves and tissues, to be stimulated to his task by an especial passion for ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... action; and the look-out aloft stated that there was no other sail in sight; consequently, Jim reckoned on bringing the enemy to book in about half an hour's time, and dealing summarily with him before the Union could complicate matters by putting in an appearance; a prospect which caused him no little satisfaction, as he felt that he might have had all his work cut out to deal effectively with the three, had the corvette been opposed to ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... missionaries had converted the Abenaqui to faith in the symbol of the crucifixion, and it was currently reported and credited in New England, that they had taught the savages to believe also the English were the people who had crucified our Saviour. To complicate matters again, the Chevalier de St. George (of whom there is no recollection except that he was anonymous, both as a prince, and as a man) sent his son, the fifth remove in stupidity, of the most stupid line of monarchs (not even excepting ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... said the old man to the notary towards the close of the evening. "I beg you to come to-morrow and draw up my guardianship account with Ursula, so as not to complicate my property after my death. Thank God! I have not withdrawn one penny from my heirs,—I have disposed of nothing but my income. Messieurs Cremiere, Massin, and Minoret my nephew are members of the family council appointed for Ursula, and I wish them to be present at the ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... without me—but I hoped he would send for me perhaps at the end of the Congress." He told me Lady Salisbury was there with her husband. He seemed rather sceptical as to the peaceful issue of the negotiations—thought so many unforeseen questions would come up and complicate matters. ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... to seem a meddler, but I feel that she will greatly complicate matters unless you are clever enough to step in and interfere. It is the old story of the tangled web; Miss Travers had no idea of doing anything—irregular. She simply did as thousands of others do, though I must say boys are usually the victims. ...
— Dorothy Dale's Queer Holidays • Margaret Penrose
... departments, factories, offices, and the universities; a circulation of men, a circulation of data and of criticism, the risks of dry rot would not be so great. Nor would it be true to say that these intelligence bureaus will complicate life. They will tend, on the contrary, to simplify, by revealing a complexity now so great as to be humanly unmanageable. The present fundamentally invisible system of government is so intricate that most people have given up trying to follow ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... by Smithers, stirring ever so slightly in the Tube. And then he caught a vague, distant uproar. It would have been faint and confused at best but the Tube was partly blocked by Smithers' body, and there were the multiple bends further to complicate the echoes. It was no more than a formless tumult through which faint yells came occasionally. It drew nearer and nearer. Tommy heard Smithers stir suddenly, almost as if he had jumped. Then there were scrapings which could only mean one thing: Smithers was climbing out of ...
— The Fifth-Dimension Tube • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... moment she can obtain her working papers (about fourteen years of age) with an enlightened apprenticeship in some productive occupation. Such training cannot be obtained satisfactorily in the market. The immature workers are present there in such large numbers that they complicate the industrial problem by their poverty and inability, and thus tend to lower the wage. Jane Addams, of Hull House, Chicago, says these untrained girls "enter industry at its most painful point, where ...
— The Making of a Trade School • Mary Schenck Woolman
... "Perhaps we'd better wait till Mrs. March comes down, and let things take the usual course. The Dryfoos ladies will want to call on her as the last-comer, and if I treated myself 'en garcon' now, and paid the first visit, it might complicate matters." ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... together. But he only said, "Si, si." He did not mean to quarrel with Emilio yet. To do so might complicate matters with ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... resisting the effects of toxic agents; namely, oxidation and elimination. This not only encourages the retention of toxic agents and natural excretory materials by which specific fevers are protracted, but it greatly increases the number of cases of pneumonia that complicate the epidemic influenza, or la grippe, as it has occurred ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... a drunken sleep of twenty or thirty years, and find them all married to richer husbands! Think how they would revile the weakness of the beer which could not keep you asleep forever. Think how you would complicate the real estate business, when you came to turn out the mistaken people who had occupied, improved, and sold your property during your brief absence. Think of the difficulties that would arise from the increase in the size ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II. No. 38, Saturday, December 17, 1870. • Various
... in other business circles. To adopt the time of a universal day for all transportation purposes throughout the world, and to use it collaterally with local time, would simply restore, and possibly still more complicate, the very condition of things in this country which the movement of last year was intended to and did to a great extent obviate. Railway managers desire that the time used in their service shall be either precisely the same as that used by the public, or shall ...
— International Conference Held at Washington for the Purpose of Fixing a Prime Meridian and a Universal Day. October, 1884. • Various
... "An' as if to complicate the sityooation for that onhappy sport who's gettin' out the Red Dog Stingin' Lizard, he begins to have trouble local. Thar's a chuck-shop at Red Dog—it's a plumb low j'int; I never knows it to have any grub better than beans, salt pig an' airtights,—which ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... felspar, and mica. It depends on the felspar present—i.e., whether it is orthoclase, oligoclase, or albite—whether the soil will be rich in potash or not. Granite containing orthoclase felspar produces a fairly fertile soil. An important consideration, which is apt to complicate this question, is the situation of such soils. They are generally so high above sea-level, that their fertility is seriously impaired on ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman
... in reality been normal enough until now. To-day he was really "queer," was conscious for the first time of the existence of a world whose adjacence to the real world was, in after days, to trouble him so often and to complicate life for him so grievously. The terror that had come down upon him when his father had left him seemed to-day utterly to soak through into the very heart of him. His mother was going to die unless something or somebody saved her. What was dying? Going away, he had always been told, with a golden ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... international: difficulties with the Transnistria region complicate controlling border crossing and customs regimes with Ukraine, despite concordance on 2003 delimitation and customs protocols ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... all branches of useful labor, it is likely to grow every year more difficult, as new departments of manufacture and trade divide the workers. The price of labor, even now higher in this country than in any other, will rise still higher, and thus complicate still more the problem of domestic life. Even if a reasonable quota of intelligent women choose domestic service, the demand will be increasingly beyond ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Mercedes loved Captain Alvarado and she cared nothing for Don Felipe. Not that Don Felipe was disagreeable to her, or to any one. He was a Spanish gentleman in every sense of the word, handsome, distinguished, proud, and gallant—but she did not, could not, love him. To complicate matters still further de Tobar was Captain Alvarado's cherished companion and ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... and as the elections were likely to take place before the year was out, he was glad of this chance to address a few remarks to the electors. He had been seriously upset ever since he heard that the young doctor was to be offered the nomination for the Liberals. That would complicate matters for him, and make it imperative that he should lose no opportunity of making ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... difficult to say; but this I know, that had he been at the time of the accident a man of good physique—which he undoubtedly was—and had there been no adverse circumstances to complicate the case, he would have recovered, and in course of time have been as sound in brain as you or I. But quiet of mind, peace of mind, contentment, are absolutely essential to recovery in such cases, and these were exactly ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... unbrokenly around its four sides at both upper stories, but Beloiseau shook his head: "They don't billong to the firz' building of that house, else they might have been Spanish, like here on the Cabildo and that old Cafe Veau-qui-tete. They would not be cast iron and of that complicate' disign, hah! But they are not even a French cast iron, like those and those"—he waved right and left to the wide balconies of the Pontalba buildings flanking the square with such graceful dignity. "Oh, they make that old house look pretty good, those balconie', but tha'z ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... so regarded it, for he replied quickly: "I hope you will not think me officious, or unmindful of your right to dictate in a matter so peculiarly your own affair. My only desire is to help you. Mr. Browne's departure would still further complicate a case already far to difficult of solution. My legal training has given me some little experience in these matters, and I only wish that you may have the benefit thereof. It is now nearly three-quarters ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... was when the interests of Canada appeared to him to be imperilled by the rumoured intention of Government to send thither large bodies of troops that had just returned from the Crimea. He thought it his duty to protest earnestly against any such proceeding, as likely, in the first place, to complicate the relations of Canada with the United States, and, in the second place, to arrest her progress ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... "the point raised by General Moritz must stand, and, of course, it needs the sanction of our respective heads. As Lord Haldane has pointed out, it does complicate matters to some extent. The Balkans concern Austria most; to my way of thinking it is quite within reason to accede this point. [As I write I recall vividly how grave they had all become. They knew what this ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... time was passing away, that if this strange scene were prolonged it would complicate everything, and that a single cloud upon the picture would eventually spoil the whole. Besides, the king's heart was filled with two or three new ideas; he had just derived fresh inspiration from the eloquent glances of Madame. Her look had said to him: "Since they are jealous of you, divide ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... picture of the life beyond. They despise documents which cannot be proved, and they do not, in my opinion, sufficiently realise that a general agreement of testimony, and the already established character of a witness, are themselves arguments for truth. Some complicate the question by predicating the existence of a fourth dimension in that world, but the term is an absurdity, as are all terms which find no corresponding impression in the human brain. We have mysteries enough to solve without ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Majesty, the King of Great Britain, had offered the Americans reparation, immediately and spontaneously, for the unauthorised attack upon the Chesapeake, but the American government taking advantage of the state of affairs in Europe, were endeavoring to complicate the difficulty, to the injury of that power which alone stood between it and an inevitable doom to the worst of tyranny. And in conclusion, he begged the representatives of the people to instruct their constituents, by the influence of their education and knowledge; to point out to them a sense ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... compelled to repeat the weighing of a somewhat complicate piece of apparatus, with an interval of several hours between, knows how many inaccuracies he is exposed to if he is compelled to take into calculation the changes of temperature and pressure, and the moisture on the surface of the apparatus. After fighting all these difficulties, and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... flooding in time of storm and lower flow in time of drought by the way its disruption alters the normal behavior of rainwater. The silt that storms wash off of it is not only a major ugly pollutant of flowing water below that point but can complicate flooding and bank-cutting and navigation and other things by settling out into bars and shoals ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... lecture room financial operations which to-day would be against the law. At that time they were well thought of, and even practiced by the eminent philanthropist who had endowed the very chair which Moreton occupied. The trustees felt that it was unkind and unnecessary to complicate their already difficult duties by such tactlessness, and their hearts began to turn against Moreton, as most of our hearts turn against those who make life too hard for us. Before long they asked him to resign on account of his ...
— The Beauty and the Bolshevist • Alice Duer Miller
... often able to do the very best charitable work, acting, with a full knowledge of the circumstances, with quick sympathy, and entire unselfishness. On the other hand, when considerations of public welfare, or conditions outside his personal experience complicate the situation, his charity is sometimes reckless ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... The scene of interest shifted to the papal court at Avignon, where ambassadors from Edward and Philip appeared to declare their masters' rights. The protracted negotiations were lacking in reality. The English, distrusting Clement as a French partisan, did their best to complicate the situation by complaints against papal provisions in favour of aliens "not having knowledge of the tongue nor condition of those whose governance and care should belong to them". English indignation rose ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... crime that may have been perpetrated silently. But beyond that I can see nothing. The apparent motivelessness of the thing makes the mystery all the darker, and the circumstances we are acquainted with, instead of helping us, seem to complicate ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... of criticism is to determine whether the author has reported the facts correctly. If he has given inexact information, it is indifferent whether he did so intentionally or not; to draw a distinction would complicate matters unnecessarily. There is thus little occasion to make a separate examination of an author's good faith, and we may shorten our labours by including in a single set of questions all the causes ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... of the princess)—"this death was so greatly to his advantage, that he soon consoled himself with the love of the attractive Bestuchef—this proud and intriguing woman who now, through the weakness of her husband, rules over Russia, and threatens by her plots and intrigues to complicate the history and peace of Europe. She is neither young nor beautiful; she is forty years of age, and you cannot believe that Trenck at four-and-twenty burns with love for her. But she adores him; she loves ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... it was and here it is, and now there was Martha to complicate the picture. Had Mrs. Bagley been alone, she and Tim could go off and marry and then settle down in Timbuctoo if they wanted to. But not with Martha. She was in the same intellectual kettle of sardines as James. Her taste in education was by no means ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... with energy, if not with skill. When he abandoned the steering oar, the raft began to whirl, and thus to complicate his labor. I caught a glance of the simple-minded fellow, as the craft turned, and I heard him yell, "Hookie!" He was nonplussed by the change of the raft; but he did not know enough to follow it round upon the outside. I am not sure this freak of the current ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic
... but little resemblance to that of St. Real's hero, we are not particularly concerned. The French Abbe's drift is to exalt the French princess and to give a telling picture of a pair of high-minded lovers who are brought to their death by a complicate intrigue begotten of jealousy, political hatred and religious fanaticism. After the death of Carlos the queen is poisoned and then, one after the other, all the conspirators meet with poetic justice. "Ainsi", the Abbe concludes, "furent expiees les morts a jamais deplorables d'un prince magnanime, ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... the assistant. "Don't complicate your diseases by adding heart trouble. Three times today I've caught you peeping at me through the crack of that door. Within fifteen seconds of the last peep I find you snoring. Therefore, ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... his side, and, with a look of terror and bewilderment, directed his attention to the compass, the needle of which no longer pointed to the north, but was dancing a mad dance, not remaining stationary for a single instant. To complicate the situation still further, the sun was suddenly obscured, absolute darkness invading both sea and sky. Only when the vivid lightning tore the dense clouds apart were those on board the Alcyon enabled to catch a glimpse of what ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... the point of bifurcation A a has become definitely unstable and A b has become stable. Hence the point of bifurcation is also a point of "exchange of stabilities between the two types." (In order not to complicate unnecessarily this explanation of a general principle I have not stated fully all the cases that may occur. Thus: firstly, after bifurcation A a may be an impossible type and A a will then stop at this point; or secondly, A b may have ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... A in this and other figures of the twelve orders indicates the defensive army, and B the offensive. The armies are represented each in a single line, in order not to complicate the figures too much; but it should be observed that every order of battle ought to be in two lines, whether the troops are deployed in columns of ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... to go with his father-in-law, but both the elder men justly thought that his ambiguous claims would but complicate the matter. The landlord was consulted as to the acting magistrates of the time, and gave ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... recondite doctrine was only for the wise. "It is hard to learn for an ordinary person," says Buddha himself. But it was the ordinary person that Buddhism took to its bosom. The reason can be only the one we have given. For the last stage before Arhat-ship Buddha had ready a complicate system. But he did not inflict it on the ordinary person.[32] It was not an essential but the completing of his teaching; in his own eyes truth as represented by the Four Great ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... arrange their work and all their activities to secure the best advantage. These arrangements, agreements, understandings—what are they but laws? To live without law is to live alone. Every family is a miniature State with a complicate system of laws, a supreme authority and subordinate authorities down to the latest babe. And as he who is loudest in demanding liberty for himself is sternest in denying it to others, you may confidently go to ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... the sad product of his illness of body, to fight against his friend, to battle against his one chance of recovery? That would complicate matters. That—Isaacson clearly recognized it—would place him at so grave a disadvantage that it might render his position impossible. What had been the scene last night after he had left the Loulia? How had it affected the sick man? Again he seemed to hear that dreadful laughter, the cries ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... Despenser; whereas it is shown by the Register that when Le Despenser and Constance were married, the latter was only four or five years old, while Kent was not even born. The rescue of the Mortimers comes in to complicate matters; but what shall be said, from the point of view of some writers, who submit that the whole was a mere pretext to imprison Constance and her brother, that the Mortimers were never stolen away ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... through with catalogue and pencil. By the time we have got ready our elaborate apparatus by which to secure happiness, the happiness is gone. It is too subtle to be contained in these receivers, garnished with compliments, and fenced round with etiquette. The more we multiply and complicate appliances, the more certain are we to drive ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... whose identity was therefore never lost, you will find only one other identified with positive assurance—the Ludwell House—Third and Fourth Statehouses row. The remaining 140 structures so far discovered by excavating have no clear-cut identity with their owners. To complicate matters more, bricks from many burned or dismantled houses were salvaged for reuse, sometimes leaving only vague soil-shadows for the archeologist to ponder. From artifacts associated with foundation traces, relative datings and, usually, the use of the structure can ...
— New Discoveries at Jamestown - Site of the First Successful English Settlement in America • John L. Cotter
... fistula-in-ano. Intestinal fistulae are sometimes met with in the abdominal wall after strangulated hernia, operations for appendicitis, tuberculous peritonitis, and other conditions. In the perineum, fistulae frequently complicate stricture of the urethra. ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... indeterminate status, slavery not being prohibited but permitted, by federal action, although most of this territory had been free soil under the old laws of Mexico. Moreover, as though sardonically to complicate all these much-mingled matters, there thrust up to the northward, out of the permitted slavery region of the South, the state of Missouri, quite above the fateful line of thirty-six degrees, thirty minutes, where slavery was permitted ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... he, with something of the air of a clinical professor expounding to his class. "Just sit in the corner there, that your footprints may not complicate matters. Now to work! In the first place, how did these folk come, and how did they go? The door has not been opened since last night. How of the window?" He carried the lamp across to it, muttering his observations aloud the while, but addressing them to himself rather ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... only outlet of Lake Tahoe, and therefore its natural outflow channel, together with the facts that its origin is in California and it then flows into Nevada, and that part of Lake Tahoe is in each state, has helped complicate the solution of the question as to who is entitled to the surplus waters of the Lake. This is discussed somewhat in a later ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... to complicate matters, and superinduce sickness in a delicate girl. To escape to the hills the good people of Arles could not follow a road, for the whole district between them and the range of Les Alpines was covered with one vast lagoon. They could not travel in boats, for the lagoon was shallow, ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... Irish taxation under recent Radical budgets forbids the possibility of addition to the ratepayer's burdens. The anomalous distribution of the grants in aid of Irish local taxation has done much to complicate the Poor Law question. The Royal Commission reported that "no account whatever is taken of the burden of pauperism, the magnitude of the local rates, or the circumstances of the ratepayers and their ability ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... red tape had been untied or cut, and the moment his discharge came Stratton took the first possible train out of New York. He did not even wire Bloss, his ranch-foreman, that he was coming. As a matter of fact he felt that doing so would only further complicate an already ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... not the observant tourist, and continued to enlarge and complicate his views of American life to the very bank of the Missouri. Unwittingly, however, for they knew him not nor saw him nor heard him, being occupied with the matter ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... be quite wrong, Mr Dunn. I should make you very comfortable; and you would not have the trouble and anxiety of wondering whether you should wear your purple and gold or your green and crimson dressing-gown at dinner. You complicate life instead of simplifying it ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... the success in South Carolina, as in his opinion this success will complicate the question of slavery. He is frightened as to what he shall do with Charleston and Augusta, provided these cities ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... acknowledged. "I confess that I am finding it bewildering. The very explanations calculated to simplify it seem but to complicate it further." And he looked ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... doodles on a calculation sheet. "We could. Just something else to work out. You must remember we're working in a four-dimensional medium. That would complicate matters a little. Not like working in three dimensions alone. ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... precautions have been taken with regard to sanitation. She is the child of rich people, but they have been wantonly neglectful, almost cruel in their negligence and ignorance. The mother, a young woman, is nearly certain to take the complaint and, to complicate everything, there is another baby expected before long. Now you understand. If you get into that house you are scarcely likely to go out of ...
— A Girl in Ten Thousand • L. T. Meade
... Other minor, local considerations complicate the matter stilt further; I pass them over in silence today, and will not repeat myself any more except on one point,—my religious devotion to our country and our art. To serve them somewhat, according to the moderate ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... Langhorne took it had served to complicate the case even further. While we had before been reasonably sure that Langhorne had the book, now we were sure ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... the pastor's house with his first wife, to be married to her after the Christian form, having made a satisfactory pecuniary arrangement with the second, who was a sister of the first. In this case there were no children to complicate settlement. After I had addressed the church upon their duty of doing more for the support of their pastor, even as I had betimes had to do before in white home missionary churches, the several responses were as decorous and assuring ...
— American Missionary, Volume 44, No. 6, June, 1890 • Various
... to be of their making," said Grace firmly. "I'll never set foot on that land Mr. Jallow claims if I can help it. It might complicate legal matters." ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Winter Camp - Glorious Days on Skates and Ice Boats • Laura Lee Hope
... effect instead of a rapid, favorable, and well-defined one. If it is given in the form of a fluid extract or tincture, its operation can be more definitely measured and counted on, but the amount of alcohol required to dissolve it is sufficient often to complicate its effects very prejudicially, while in any case the immense proportion of inert rubbish, gum, green extractive, woody fibre, and earthy residuum is so great as to be a severe tax on the digestive apparatus—often seriously to derange the stomach of the well man who uses it, and much more ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... further to complicate the situation, the door opened to admit the woman herself. She closed it, leaned against the wall, looking from one to ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... very long terms of settlements are obvious; the disadvantages, though equally real, are less obvious. Fluctuations in prices, and above all, in the price of silver, are among the many conditions which complicate the question. Except the Bengal landowners, most people now admit that the Permanent Settlement of Bengal in 1793 was a grievous mistake. It is also admitted that the ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... tigress, that had learned at last how weak was her fury against chains. He saw that same look many times afterward in the eyes of these women of the riverbanks—as the white troops moved past. There was not even a sex-interest to complicate ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... resemble "The Greater Glory" as closely as "Pendennis" resembles "Philip." And then there would be the deuce to pay. If he published it under his own name, he would render himself liable to the charge of having stolen a novel from the dead author of "The Greater Glory," and so complicate this already complicated web of literary theft; and if he threw sufficient dust into the eyes of Doria to enable him to publish under Adrian's name, he would be performing the task of the ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... poetical. To realise this situation, to define in a chill and empty atmosphere, the focus where rays, in themselves pale and impotent, unite and begin to burn, the artist has to employ the most cunning detail, to complicate and refine upon thought and passion a thousand-fold. The poems of Robert Browning supply brilliant examples of this power. His poetry is pre-eminently the poetry of situations. The characters themselves are always of secondary importance; often they are characters in themselves ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... becoming the head of the Government presided over by Sir Alfred Milner. What was the surprise of my friend when, instead of finding a sympathising auditor, he heard him say that he considered that for the moment the return of Rhodes at the head of affairs would only complicate matters; that it was still too soon after the Raid; that his spirit of animosity in regard to certain people might not help to smooth matters at such a critical juncture; and that, moreover, Rhodes ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... I do not wish to complicate the discussion by examining the differences, in degree or otherwise, in the various cases, or by introducing numerous qualifications; and therefore I do not add the names ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... assent. It implies that although we have fully defined a hypothetical case of goodness, we have so far simplified the conditions as to make our conclusions inadequate to moral experience. Accepting this qualification, it is now in order to complicate the situation; but retaining our analysis {48} of the elementary process, and employing terms in the meaning ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... dispatch: How much is to be done! My hopes and fears Start up alarm'd, and o'er life's narrow verge Look down—on what? A fathomless abyss! A dread eternity! How surely mine! And can eternity belong to me, Poor pensioner on the bounties of an hour? How poor, how rich, how abject, how august, How complicate, how wonderful is man! How passing wonder He who made him such! Who center'd in our make such strange extremes— From different natures, marvellously mix'd: Connexion exquisite! of distant worlds Distinguish'd link in being's endless chain! ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... where no second mate intervenes to complicate the question, the observer may be confronted with delicate problems; at what point, for example, does a mere liaison pass into something worthy of the name of marriage? What is the status of a union in which the parties are more or less permanently associated, but which ...
— Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia • Northcote W. Thomas
... five year old boy was very suddenly seized with pleurisy in its most violent form, and for hours he seemed in mortal agony. We had no efficient remedies, no doctor within thirty, perhaps fifty miles, and to complicate matters, I had lain down sick for the first time, thoroughly vanquished by fatigue and unusual exposure. But that sickness of mine had to be postponed, and we fought all that night with the fearful disease, using vigorously all the external remedies within our reach, cupping the dear child ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve
... afternoon a French Roman Catholic, each understanding a little English; and in each case I had special reasons for hope and longing that the sermon might bring some spiritual help. Instinctively, I avoided every expression which could in the least complicate my English and thus obscure the message to my foreign friends. And so thankful was I for the pruning of periods that resulted, that I am much disposed, in all future preaching, to put mentally before me those same ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... described as it is, everything has about it an atmosphere of something else. The combined and associated thoughts, though they set off and heighten particular ideas and aspects of the central conception, yet complicate it: a simple thing—'a daisy by the river's brim'—is never left by itself, something else is put with it; something not more connected with it than 'lion-whelp' and the 'peacock yew-tree' are ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... is trouble in the Conscription Bureau. Col. Preston, the new superintendent, finds it no bed of roses, made for him by Lieut.-Col. Lay—the lieutenant-colonel being absent in North Carolina, sent thither to compose the discontents; which may complicate matters further, for they don't want Virginians to meddle with North Carolina matters. However, the people he is sent to are supposed to be disloyal. Gen. Pillow has applied to have Georgia in the jurisdiction of his Bureau of Conscription, ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... task to make Schaunard understand what had taken place. A comical incident served to further complicate the situation. Schaunard, when looking for something in a sideboard, found the change of the five hundred franc note that Marcel had handed ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... came here," replied the girl steadily, "I should only fall in love with him again, and that would complicate matters." ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... anyway," declared General Totten, adding in his thoughts, for his further consolation, the assurance that, at half past eleven, so the clock on the wall revealed to his gaze, such an early riser as Morrison must be abed and asleep; therefore, the exception for the sake of politeness did not threaten to complicate affairs! ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... subject in controversy and serve to remove any erroneous impressions which may have been made elsewhere prejudicial to the rights of the United States. It was, among other reasons, with a view of preventing the embarrassments which in our peculiar system of government impede and complicate negotiations involving the territorial rights of a State that I thought it my duty, as you have been informed on a previous occasion, to propose to the British Government, through its minister at Washington, that early steps should ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... gravity, and leaning back in his chair, while he puffed a mouthful of smoke, the Chueta added: "You are right. Let us kill the dead! Let us crush beneath our feet all useless obstacles, old things that obstruct and complicate our pathway. We live according to the word of Moses, to the word of Jesus, of Mohammed, or of other shepherds of men, when the natural and logical thing would be to live according to what we ourselves think ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... means of a system equally conchological. He found that the social action in every part of the island was regulated and assisted by this process. Oyster-shells were first introduced; muscle-shells speedily followed; and, as commerce became more complicate, they had even been obliged to have recourse to snail-shells. Popanilla retired to rest with admiration of the people who thus converted to the most useful purposes things apparently so useless. There was no saying now what might not be done even with a nutshell. It was evident that the ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... are many and make whooping cough a critical disease for very young children. Bronchitis and pneumonia often complicate whooping cough in winter, and diarrhea frequently occurs with it in summer. Convulsions not infrequently follow the coughing fits in infants, and, owing to the amount of blood forced to the head during the attacks, nosebleed and dark spots on the forehead ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various
... lips were set like a vice, and I knew that no power on earth could move him now. The situation was decidedly unpleasant, and unfortunately there seemed to be no way out. True, he might kill the governor, but that would only still further complicate matters. ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... human element behind the whole British awakening? Will organised labour, an ancient sore on the British body, rise up and complicate these well-laid schemes for economic expansion? As with the question of practicability of the Paris Pact, there is ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson
... state of Hester Prynne and her lover, Arthur Dimmesdale, in the long years that follow their lawless passion. Their love story hardly concerns him at all. The interest of the novel does not depend on the development of the plot. No attempt is made to complicate the story by concealing the identity of Hester's lover or of her husband. The action takes place within the souls and minds of the characters, not in their outward circumstances. The central chapter of the book is named significantly: "The Interior of a Heart." The ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... What if Aunt Hannah, still unreconciled, turned him from the door? No matter! Rancour and grief have no hold on mortals walking in such an April world—in such an exquisite and sunlit beauty. On! let thought and nature be enough! Why complicate and cumber life with relations that do but give a foothold to pain, and offer less than ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... felt glad or sorry Henrietta's expert opinion confirmed her own suspicions, Damaris could not tell. It certainly tended to complicate the future; and for that she was sorry. She would have liked to see the road clear before her—anyhow for a time—complications having been over numerous lately. They were worrying. They made her feel unsettled, unnatural. In any case she trusted she shouldn't suffer again from those odious ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... complicate the financial trials of the burdensome mid-nineties, the depletion of the gold reserve demanded immediate attention. During the closing months of President Harrison's administration, in fact, the Secretary of ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... Navy, United States Navy, United States, stands by Union; keeps command of sea; size (1861); Welles's report on; Fox as Assistant Secretary of Navy; Promotion Board; training; growth; Naval War (1862); fivefold duty of; Farragut and; blockade-runners complicate task of; part in River War (1862) Navy Act Negroes, fidelity to South; North uses as troops; New York draft riots; see also Emancipation, slavery Nelson, William, at Shiloh New Hope Church (Georgia), fighting near New Madrid (Missouri), Pope at; Carondelet arrives ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... numerous local representatives. There were the bailiffs and seneschals, whose actual powers had quite disappeared, but whose offices served to complicate matters. Then there were the governors of provinces, well-fed gentlemen with fat salaries and little to do. The bulk of local administration fell into the hands of the intendants and their sub-delegates. ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... in the world it was that of eloquence, but he could get no cause to plead; and his aunt dying inopportunely, first his resources failed, and then his health. He had no sooner returned to his home, than, to complicate his difficulties completely, he fell in love with Mademoiselle Natalie de Bellefonds, who had just returned from Paris, where she had been completing her education. To expatiate on the perfections of Mademoiselle Natalie, would be a waste of ink and paper: it ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... asked me to determine the centre of gravity of a spherical sector. "The question is easy," I said to him. "Very well; since you find it easy, I will complicate it: instead of supposing the density constant, I will suppose that it varies from the centre to the surface according to a determined function." I got through this calculation very happily; and from this moment I had entirely gained the favour of the examiner. ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... fiery intensity and a resonant vibration of voice that scorched rather than comforted the woman who knelt beside him. The fervor of the man's emotion and the depth of his conviction, running like a torrent through the narrow channels of his understanding, were destined presently to complicate a situation sufficiently painful without intervention; for a time swiftly came when Septimus May forced his beliefs upon Chadlands and opposed them to the opinions of other people as deeply concerned as himself to explain ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts |
