"Setback" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for a "time." It is better that we leave him behind closed doors with his doctors and his temperature. We may knock every morning and ask how he is, and we shall be told that he is no better. He was even delirious at times. And it is only worth while going into this setback of G. G's because there are miracles connected with it—his daily letter ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... ability now to stay what she had put in motion. She was as one who, having wantonly released some complex mechanism, stands aghast and powerless at the consequence of his rashness. And yet, despite the seeming setback to her hopes, the conviction that had urged her to this step was still strong in her; she still had faith in its ultimate achievement. She touched the girl's shoulder in a quick caress. "You are worn out, child. Go to bed and rest now, and think to-morrow," ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... significance of Bobby's appearance in this company, as indicating the new political move which sought to ally the younger business element with the progressive party that had been so long in safe, sane and conservative control of municipal affairs, except for the temporary setback of the recent so-called "citizens' movement" hysteria. Bobby frowned more deeply as he read on, and Mr. Bates grinned more and ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... clouds, ill wind; visitation, infliction; affliction &c (painfulness) 830; bitter pill; care, trial; the sport of fortune. mishap, mischance, misadventure, misfortune; disaster, calamity, catastrophe; accident, casualty, cross, reverse, check, contretemps, rub; backset^, comedown, setback [U.S.]. losing game; falling &c v.; fall, downfall; ruination, ruinousness; undoing; extremity; ruin &c (destruction) 162. V. be ill off &c adj.; go hard with; fall on evil, fall on evil days; go on ill; not prosper &c 734. go downhill, go to rack ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... never could credit for a moment. Mullins lay still unconscious, and not until he recovered strength was he to talk with or see anyone. Graham had given faint hope of recovery, and declared that everything depended on his patient's having no serious fever or setback. In a few days he might be able to tell his story. Then the mystery as to his assailant would be cleared in a breath. Janet had taken deep offense that the commanding officer should have sent her brother into close arrest without first hearing of the extreme provocation. ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... the people there was a general feeling of relief; the ultimate in weapons had been used; the grass would wear itself out in good time; meanwhile, they were thankful the effect of the atomicbomb had been no worse. If anything the spirit of the country, despite the great setback, was better after the dropping ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... are very sweet with fair size kernels ... Giant hickory from Ontario seems hardy but particular about the kind of soil ... Carpathian walnuts killed back quite a lot, so did most of my hybrid walnuts ... Some Manchurian walnuts ... got a setback with spring frosts ... Heartnuts got a rough deal last winter [1942-43.]" Mr. Young wrote to Dr. J. Russell Smith in 1948: "I have been using pollen of Broadview and Carpathian [Persian walnuts] on my blacks and while ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various
... countries in the world. Its economy is hobbled by political turmoil, conflict with Libya, drought, and food shortages. Consequently the economy has shown little progress in recent years in overcoming a severe setback brought on by civil war in the late 1980s. More than 80% of the work force is involved in subsistence farming and fishing. Cotton is the major cash crop, accounting for at least half of exports. Chad is highly dependent on foreign aid, especially ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... but held the peace by hiding his face in his coffee cup. Sarah, though checked by this flank attack, was herself an old hand in the art. So temporary was the setback that she scarcely paused ere hurling her assault ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... no setback, Corny would have gone into Pensacola Bay in a few hours more, in nominal command of the steamer, though of course Galvinne was the ...
— Stand By The Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... great Northwest about 1880. Those familiar with the history of the state of Washington declare that dry-farming was in successful operation in isolated districts in the late '70's. By 1890 it was a well-established practice, but received a serious setback by the financial panic of 1892-1893. Really successful and extensive dry-farming in the Columbia Basin began about 1897. The practice of summer fallow had begun a year or two before. It is interesting to note that both in California and Washington there are districts in which dry-farming ...
— Dry-Farming • John A. Widtsoe
... [25] the rapid courier, who in a single skip could traverse 108,000 li (36,000 miles), started in pursuit and caught her up, but the astute goddess was clever enough to slip through his fingers. Sun Hou-tzu, furious at this setback, went to ask Kuan-yin P'u-sa to come to his aid. She promised to do so. As one may imagine, the furious race she had had to escape from her enemy had given Shui-mu Niang-niang a good appetite. Exhausted with fatigue, and with an empty stomach, she caught ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... result was what the Emperor had intended, in the expectation of using for his own ends all the military resources of the country; something which he was in fact able to do as long as we were successful. But on the first setback, the thirty-two sovereigns, by agreement among themselves, united in opposition to France, and their coalition with the Russians overthrew the Emperor Napoleon, who was thus punished for not following the ancient policies ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... Ages," Rynason said. "Maybe they didn't see that thousand-year setback coming...." He stopped, and stood up in the low passageway among the ancient circuitry. "So here we are, second-guessing the Outsiders. And outside, their proteges have disintegrators probably left by the Outsiders, and they're just waiting ...
— Warlord of Kor • Terry Gene Carr
... little inevitable friction here, some little setback there. But it all works, it all works to the one great end. I'm sorry I wasn't present for the end of the meeting to hear what success there was this month, but that's a detail. The dream has come true. It's here, and we're living it! [At ...
— The Gibson Upright • Booth Tarkington
... Such a setback indeed very nearly happened to Polikey early in his career. He married while still young, and God gave him much happiness. His wife, who was a shepherd's daughter, was a strong, intelligent, hard-working woman. She bore him many children, each ...
— The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... and established business—I will say little of that—but you are risking the prosperity of a whole countryside. If Mr. Baker's enterprises should quit this section, the civilization of the state would receive a serious setback. Thousands of men would be thrown out of employment, not only on the company's works, but all along the lines of its holdings; electric light and power would increase in price—a heavy burden to the consumer; the country trolley lines must quit business, for only with water-generated ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... has few natural resources, and the economy depends heavily on high-class tourism, offshore banking, lobster fishing, and remittances from emigrants. The economy, and especially the tourism sector, suffered a setback in late 1995 due to the effects of Hurricane Luis in September but recovered in 1996. Anguillan officials have put substantial effort into developing the offshore financing sector. A comprehensive package of financial services legislation ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... great ethnic unity; they are the largest and most compact national group in that continent. With all the good and bad points of their race, too methodical and at the same time easily depressed by a severe setback, they are still the most cultivated people on earth. It is impossible to imagine that they can disappear, much less that they can reconcile themselves to live in a condition of slavery. On the other hand, the Entente has built ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti
... motives. They would consider that because of our size we were acting the part of the bully in order to reap financial benefit. They call us the 'Dollar Republic,' you know. Our interests in Central and South America would suffer a severe setback." ...
— The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border • Gerald Breckenridge
... by these employers ran, as yet, very much on antiquated lines. Perhaps it was that the use of machinery had received a setback, twenty years earlier, by the "Swing Riots," of which a few memories still survive; at any rate haymaking, harvesting, threshing—all the old tasks, indeed—were still done by hand; thatch had not gone out of use for barns and stables; nor, for house-roofs, had imported ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... recall her vividly to those who knew her. The arrival for the meeting by the last train; the early start back next morning; the endeavour to see her friend's daughter, who she remembers is in Dollar; the light-heartedness over "disasters in the House" (evidently the setback to some Suffrage Bill in the House of Commons)—these are all like Elsie Inglis. So, too, are her praise of the Federation secretaries, her eager looking forward to the procession, and the request ...
— Elsie Inglis - The Woman with the Torch • Eva Shaw McLaren
... October 2004 in Rome, gave member states two years for ratification either by parliamentary vote or national referendum before it was scheduled to take effect on 1 November 2006; defeat in French and Dutch referenda in May-June 2005 dealt a severe setback to the ratification process, though it has continued more slowly with Finland ratifying in December 2006; as of January 2007, 18 countries have ratified the Constitutional Treaty; Germany has made revival ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... until the structure reaches the river's bed. Those responsible for locating Benares on the outer periphery of a great bend in the Ganges proved themselves to possess no engineering foresight. But India's controlling religion can receive no setback by the destruction of a few score tawdry buildings consecrated to its gods, for they will be replaced by better shrines and temples, rising from places beyond even the iconoclasm of ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... from that day on there were no more tricks played on old Nathan Keener, and though the big stick was not so much in evidence, it was a long time before any of the Elderflowers made any headway in winning even so much as a grunt from him. It was a great setback to the enthusiasm of the girls, but as Reliance told Esther Ann, she should not have tried so venturesome a thing at the very outset. "Mrs. Conway says we should have worked up to it gradually. It's just like training a wild animal, you have to win its confidence first." But ...
— A Dear Little Girl's Thanksgiving Holidays • Amy E. Blanchard
... if they refused to hold their hands even from that country, they sailed into the very harbor of Ostia, and also of other cities in the vicinity, burned the ships and ravaged everything. Finally, as no setback occurred, they took up their abode on the land, disposing of whatever men they did not kill, and of the spoils they took quite fearlessly, as if in their own territory. And though some plundered in one region and others elsewhere,—it ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... away where some strange artist-folks were boarding. Sandy got a great deal of money there, for not only did the mistress of the house pay him well, but a man and woman gave him a dollar for posing for them while they sketched him. Reaching Trouble Neck, Sandy met his first setback. Miss Lowe was away; the little cabin was closed and on the door was pinned a scrap of paper which confided to any chance visitor that the owner would be gone for several days. Marcia Lowe had set out for that far place among ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... drop in tourism, and the worst drought of the century caused sugar production to fall sharply. In contrast, sugar and tourism turned in strong performances in 1989, and the economy rebounded vigorously. In 1990 the economy received a setback from cyclone Sina, which cut sugar output by an estimated 21%. Sugar exports recovered in 1991-92. National product: GDP - exchange rate conversion - $1.4 billion (1992 est.) National product real growth ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... retaining the support of a sufficient majority of the German people—just as the victory over Austria brought King William and Bismarck forgiveness from their parliamentary opponents. On the other hand, any severe setback to Germany in the realization of its aggressive plans would strengthen the domestic opposition and might lead to a severe internal crisis. It all depends upon whether German national policy has or has not overstepped the limits ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... switch willows for a glimpse of the setback of the water beyond the bar. Away down in the old eddy he discovered a shanty-boat, and to cover his involuntary ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... thirty-yard line Brimfield had a setback and her progress was halted when Gafferty was caught off-side. It became second down then with fifteen to go and Rollins trotted back up the field and held his arms out. But Claflin wasn't looking for a punt on second down and so was not deceived as to her opponent's ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... is more than one kind of patronage. We lost the public kind, or a greater part of it, in 1901, but Tammany has an immense private patronage that keeps things going' when it gets a setback ...
— Plunkitt of Tammany Hall • George Washington Plunkitt
... recently received a staggering setback from our traditional enemy due to a certain unexpected innovation in their battle techniques, and we realized that our cause could end only in eventual defeat. As it shall, unless your ...
— The Women-Stealers of Thrayx • Fox B. Holden
... reputation as a mild lunatic, sat down to twirl his thumbs and await the outcome, confidently anticipating there would be none. "They" had outwitted him and not five hundred guineas would tempt "them," he believed. It remained only to contrive a triumph in despite of this setback. ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... maneuver the vote had once more slipped beyond the attainment of women. Mrs. Seal was in a condition bordering upon frenzy. The duplicity of Ministers, the treachery of mankind, the insult to womanhood, the setback to civilization, the ruin of her life's work, the feelings of her father's daughter—all these topics were discussed in turn, and the office was littered with newspaper cuttings branded with the blue, if ambiguous, marks of her displeasure. She ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... been led to hope for, and when the greatest north-easter that had blown for fifty years bruised and tore the rugged little coast, she "wrote it up" as a matter of course—as a bird-dog points or a carrier pigeon wheels for home. And then Molly Dickett received what was literally her first setback in ten years: the City Editor sent her ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... setback to Bill, who had expected to play on Injun's feeling of resentment. He rolled a cigarette and planned a new line of attack. He knew that all the punchers would be glad to see him fail to make Injun talk, and this didn't make Bill any more easy in his mind. It may have been pleasing to him ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... economy is based on sugar, bauxite, and tourism. In 1985 it suffered a setback with the closure of some facilities in the bauxite and alumina industry, a major source of hard currency earnings. Since 1986 an economic recovery has been under way. In 1987 conditions began to improve ...
— The 1990 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... neither enthusiasm nor added interest. He accepted the position with seeming indifference. Hellbeam to him was just an employer. A means to those ends which he had in view. If Hellbeam turned him down it would mean a setback, but not a disaster, and Idepski appraised setbacks at their simple value, without exaggeration. Besides, he knew that this Swede, powerful, wealthy as he was, could not afford to do without him in this matter. His intolerant, hectic temper mattered nothing at all. He paid for the privilege ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... to him for his brilliant work. From then until the end of the year 1901, numbers of smaller captures continued to be reported from the same region, where Plumer, Spens, Mackenzie, Rawlinson, and others were working. On the other hand there was one small setback which occurred to a body of two hundred Mounted Infantry under Major Bridgford, who had been detached from Spens's column to search some farmhouses at a place called Holland, to the south of Ermelo. The expedition set forth upon the night of December ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... It was a sorry time, take it all in all. Let's not talk of it, Merry. Our sorority has a setback from which ...
— Ruth Fielding At College - or The Missing Examination Papers • Alice B. Emerson
... much for the mood he was in after a setback like that to his good resolutions. I was inclined to believe with Casey that Providence had ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... Parliament, largely elected by fake votes, which did not represent the English people; that this fake Parliament was autocracy's last ditch in England; that it choked for a time the English democracy which, after the setback given it by the excesses of the French Revolution, went forward again until to-day the King of England has less power than the President of the United States? I suppose everybody in the world who knows the important ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister
... to his feet. The breath had been partly knocked out of him. Baleful eyes rolled at Pan. Instinctive wrath, however, had been given a setback. Hardman had been forced to think of something beside the frustration of his ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... large and pathetic through illness and suffering, which Lena turned piteously upon her without answering, "there, there, child; never mind now. Heat your breakfast, my dear, for you look quite spent and worn out. Ye've got a setback by yesterday's doin's that'll last a week. Come, now, Miss Lena, take this nice chicken an' put a bit ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... votaries that I was a trickster and that what had been in reality the most notable demonstration of "the people's strength" ever given was only another evidence of the "System's" infallibility. If this deceit had prevailed, the task I have undertaken of enlightening the public would have had a setback. Relying on my previous work, I put forth the following announcement Monday morning, December ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... dash headlong into enterprises, and for that reason they have within themselves no quality of endurance (since it is impossible for reckless audacity to prevail for any time), and if they once suffer any setback they are unable (especially by reason of the fear to which they then fall a prey) to recover themselves: they are plunged into a state of panic corresponding to their previous fearless daring. In a brief period they rush vehemently to the most opposite extremes, since they can furnish no motive ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... accuracy, quicker results with less effort, and so they broke with the old Italians, the basis of whose teaching was beautiful tone and beautiful singing. In spite of the honesty of purpose of all those who followed the new way, the results were calamitous. The art of singing received a serious setback. Voices without number were ruined. From the middle to the end of the nineteenth century the scientific idea was rampant, and during that period it is probable that the worst voice teaching in the history of the world was done. Large numbers ...
— The Head Voice and Other Problems - Practical Talks on Singing • D. A. Clippinger
... movement represents the application of the rationalistic method to the spiritual problems of Jewish life. Having taken place in Russia, it was bound to be delayed in its coming for nearly a century. It received the first setback in its career when the pogroms broke out in the early "eighties," and the Russian Government inaugurated its policy of hounding and repression. The type which the Haskalah movement produced is the "Maskil," a man who curls his lip at ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... spirit of music to be heard from vocal cords than from the cords and reeds and brazen tubes of piano, organ, string quartet, and orchestra. Thus, when the phonograph threatened to identify song with music in general, it threatened to give the art a setback and make the singer the arch-enemy of the wider musical culture. Fortunately the phonograph now gives promise of averting this peril by bringing up its reproduction of absolute music near ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... you suppose happened to me last winter?" Mrs. Bates went on. "I had the greatest setback of my life. I asked to join the Amateur Musical Club. They ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... a setback stop you. Think of it as a mere incident that has to be overcome before ...
— The Power of Concentration • Theron Q. Dumont
... Ellen, "that he made Jesus most dislikeable. But with all the attention Christianity gets, it can put up with a setback here and there." ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... bring about greater complications in the motor processes which the child uses most habitually, and with this complication to get greater inhibition along the undesirable lines of his activity. Inhibition is the damming up of the processes for a period, causing some kind of a "setback" of the energies of movement into the sensory centres, or the redistribution of this energy in more varied and less habitual discharges. With older children a rational method is to analyze for them the mistakes they have made, showing the penalties they have brought ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... The only apparent setback which the adoption of the Constitution had thus far received was in New Hampshire, where the convention met early in February and then adjourned until June to see what the other States might do. But this delay proved to be of no consequence ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand
... A temporary setback to the progress of the new Anglicanism was afforded by the reign of Mary Tudor (1553-1558), the daughter of Catherine of Aragon, and a devout Roman Catholic. She reinstated the bishops who had refused to take the oath of royal supremacy and punished those who had taken it. She prevailed upon Parliament ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... Belgians, had retreated to and reoccupied Louvain. Immediately the devastation of that city and the holocaust of its population commences. The inference is irresistible that the army as a whole wreaked its vengeance on the civil population and the buildings of the city in revenge for the setback which the Belgian arms had inflicted on them. A subsidiary cause alleged was the assertion, often made before that civilians had fired ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... arresting Andrea Costa, for whom they had been searching for more than a year on account of his participation in the International congress at Geneva. Although these events were something of a setback, the revolutionists decided that they had gone too far to retreat. It was then that Bakounin wrote: "And now, my friends, there remains nothing more for me but to die. Farewell!"[23] On the way to Italy he wrote to his friend, Guillaume, saying good-by to him and announcing, without explanation, ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... not be. It is an unthinkable calamity. It means that the very process of capitalistic development is hindered, stopped. It means a setback of ten years in the process. It means work, endless work, to overcome the setback. It means not alone the passage of all this radical legislation with the consequent disadvantages, but it means the fingers of the mob clutching at our grip of control. It means anarchy. It means ruin and ...
— Theft - A Play In Four Acts • Jack London
... bookshop, they stopped before the window, looked at his latest output, and smiled contemptuously. The workman's insurance no longer paid as it used to, for the credit of the Prudentia and its agents had suffered a violent setback. ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... said solemnly. "The old gal's got a bad setback. Ain't none of us goin' to git a wink o' sleep to-night, or I miss my guess. Wonder how the wind is." Here he moved to the door and peered out. "Nor'-east and puffy, just as I thought. We're goin' to hev some weather, Sam—ye ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... blew. Cobber got the ball, and kept it moving. Once there was a brief setback when Gridley got the pigskin and sought to push it back. After four yards, however, Cobber took it and moved down ...
— The High School Freshmen - Dick & Co.'s First Year Pranks and Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... Municipal ownership of public utilities seems to have been given a serious setback by the very costly and unsuccessful experiment this city undertook in operating its own electric and water plants during the past year. It appears that city officials are just as susceptible to the charm of money ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson |
