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Yoke   Listen
noun
Yoke  n.  
1.
A bar or frame of wood by which two oxen are joined at the heads or necks for working together. "A yearling bullock to thy name shall smoke, Untamed, unconscious of the galling yoke." Note: The modern yoke for oxen is usually a piece of timber hollowed, or made curving, near each end, and laid on the necks of the oxen, being secured in place by two bows, one inclosing each neck, and fastened through the timber. In some countries the yoke consists of a flat piece of wood fastened to the foreheads of the oxen by thongs about the horns.
2.
A frame or piece resembling a yoke, as in use or shape. Specifically:
(a)
A frame of wood fitted to a person's shoulders for carrying pails, etc., suspended on each side; as, a milkmaid's yoke.
(b)
A frame worn on the neck of an animal, as a cow, a pig, a goose, to prevent passage through a fence.
(c)
A frame or convex piece by which a bell is hung for ringing it.
(d)
A crosspiece upon the head of a boat's rudder. To its ends lines are attached which lead forward so that the boat can be steered from amidships.
(e)
(Mach.) A bent crosspiece connecting two other parts.
(f)
(Arch.) A tie securing two timbers together, not used for part of a regular truss, but serving a temporary purpose, as to provide against unusual strain.
(g)
(Dressmaking) A band shaped to fit the shoulders or the hips, and joined to the upper full edge of the waist or the skirt.
3.
Fig.: That which connects or binds; a chain; a link; a bond connection. "Boweth your neck under that blissful yoke... Which that men clepeth spousal or wedlock." "This yoke of marriage from us both remove."
4.
A mark of servitude; hence, servitude; slavery; bondage; service. "Our country sinks beneath the yoke." "My yoke is easy, and my burden is light."
5.
Two animals yoked together; a couple; a pair that work together. "I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to prove them."
6.
The quantity of land plowed in a day by a yoke of oxen. (Obs.)
7.
A portion of the working day; as, to work two yokes, that is, to work both portions of the day, or morning and afternoon. (Prov. Eng.)
8.
(Chiefly Mach.) A clamp or similar piece that embraces two other parts to hold or unite them in their respective or relative positions, as a strap connecting a slide valve to the valve stem, or the soft iron block or bar permanently connecting the pole pieces of an electromagnet, as in a dynamo.
Neck yoke, Pig yoke. See under Neck, and Pig.
Yoke elm (Bot.), the European hornbeam (Carpinus Betulus), a small tree with tough white wood, often used for making yokes for cattle.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Yoke" Quotes from Famous Books



... French revolution. For centuries, the bible had been taken away, and the key of knowledge wrested from the people. For a little moment, France broke the chains which superstition had flung around her. Not content, however, with this, she attempted to break the yoke of God: she stamped the bible in the dust, and proclaimed the jubilee of licentiousness, unvisited, either by present or future retribution. Mark the consequence. Anarchy broke in like a flood, from whose boiling ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox

... the time, and ought to remember," said my Lord, quite calmly. "Murat was keen to emancipate himself from the yoke of the Emperor, and was playing for his own hand. Southwald and I had been sent informally from Malta to Naples to discover what lengths ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett

... us that in a city of Lydia, whose inhabitants, having fallen under the yoke of the Persians, had embraced the religion of the Magi, "there exists an altar upon which there are ashes which, in color, resemble no other. The priest puts wood on the altar, and invokes I know not what god by harangues taken from a book written ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various

... dancing instead of going to church. These stones were therefore called the Dancing Stones, or the "Merry Maidens." Some time ago a farmer, to whom the field on which they stand belongs, wishing to get rid of them, commenced operations by harnessing a yoke of oxen to one of the damsels; but he was warned to desist, in consequence of one of the animals falling down dead. Since then they have remained unmolested, except by the hammers ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston

... it is a good thing for a hero to die in his youth; for then is he perfect. The bark is not broken on the wand nor the neck worn by the yoke. ...
— The Treason and Death of Benedict Arnold - A Play for a Greek Theatre • John Jay Chapman

... lives by the Scripture rule, and endeavours to keep God's laws. His mind is in peace and tranquillity; he walks sure who keeps innocence, and takes heed to the thing that is right. He is secure, God is his friend, that Infinite Being; and He has said, 'Come unto Me, ye that are heavy laden, My yoke is easy.' But guilt is, certainly, a heavy load; it sinks and damps the spirits. 'A wounded spirit who can bear!' And the evil subtle spirit waits (I am persuaded) to drive the sinner to despair; but godliness makes a cheerful heart. Let not past errors discourage; who ...
— Excellent Women • Various

... inflamed the racial hatred which untoward incidents helped to stir up. In Mr. Gandhi they have found a strangely potent leader who appeals to the religious emotions of both Hindus and Mahomedans to shake themselves free from the degrading yoke of an alien civilisation, and implores them to return to the ancient and better ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol

... like unto a jewel of price, we who in this sinful world have our being, may enter into the Eternal Kingdom, being eternally freed from the yoke of birth and death. ...
— Buddhist Psalms • Shinran Shonin

... wear the crown of England. Such a prospect, there can be no doubt, tore his sullen soul with bitter recollections, and made him resolve, more sternly than ever, that the haughty island should groan beneath no yoke but his own. The mere subjugation of England by Spanish arms, and the occupation of its throne by a Spaniard, not himself, were insufficient to glut the hatred, and avenge the insulted majesty of Philip. For his own hands and his own purposes he reserved the task; ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various

... by force of arms, but seemingly by the consent of the Roman people. The commonwealth had received a deadly wound in the former civil wars betwixt Marius and Sylla. The commons, while the first prevailed, had almost shaken off the yoke of the nobility; and Marius and Cinna (like the captains of the mob), under the specious pretence of the public good and of doing justice on the oppressors of their liberty, revenged themselves without form of law on their private enemies. Sylla, in ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden

... among the nations, pre-eminent in knowledge, pre-eminent in military glory, the cradle of philosophy, of eloquence, and of the fine arts, had been for ages bowed down under a cruel yoke. All the vices which oppression generates, the abject vices which it generates in those who submit to it, the ferocious vices which it generates in those who struggle against it, had deformed the character of that miserable race. The valour which had ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... some brief time in the real-estate venture, and hailing from the same far-away Eastern State and city, these two had been at first yoke-fellows, and afterward, as if by tacit consent, inert enemies. As widely separated as the poles in characteristics, habits, and in their outlook upon life, they had little in common, ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde

... against the king of Persia, and to go to Jerusalem and win it by assault. For this purpose he endeavoured to draw the Jews to his party by many deceitful signs, affirming that he was sent from God to free them from the yoke of the nations, and to restore them to the holy city; and he succeeded in persuading many that he was ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr

... marsh, instead of making glad the City of God! And may I say that you, and those like you, with ardent spiritual instincts, make the mistake of thinking that we exclude you; indeed it is not so. You would find the yoke as easy and the burden as light as ever. In submission you would gain and not lose the liberty of which ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... will even own that, though I am insulted, I shall still perhaps have difficulty enough to free myself. Maybe, notwithstanding the cure I am attempting, my heart may for a long time smart with this wound. Freed from a yoke which I was happy to bend under, I shall take a resolution never to love again. But no matter, since your hatred repulses a heart which love brings back to you, this is the last time you shall ever be troubled by the ...
— The Love-Tiff • Moliere

... of my four fellow-countrymen. Two were medical and two were law students, but all impartially endured the landlady's despotic yoke. They were as frightened of her as a boy robbing an orchard would be of ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... account of Poland, may be acceptable at the present time, when this heroic people are making a noble effort to throw off the yoke of Russian despotism. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 486 - Vol. 17, No. 486., Saturday, April 23, 1831 • Various

... indeed the true heir to the crown, being the younger brother of king Edmund Ironside, who had a son Edward, sirnamed (from his exile) the outlaw, still living. But this son was then in Hungary; and, the English having just shaken off the Danish yoke, it was necessary that somebody on the spot should mount the throne; and the confessor was the next of the royal line then in England. On his decease without issue, Harold II usurped the throne, and almost at the same instant came on the Norman ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone

... do as I have done to you. Verily, verily, I say unto you, the servant is not greater than his lord, neither he that is sent greater than he that sent him. If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them." Matt xi. 29, 30, "Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." Matt. xx. 27, 28, "And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant. Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... cruelty is recorded of a bailie named Landenburg, who publicly reproved a peasant for living in a house above his station. On another occasion, having fined an old and much respected laborer, named Henry of Melchi, a yoke of oxen for an imaginary offence, the Governor's messenger jeeringly told the old man, who was lamenting that if he lost his cattle he could no longer earn his bread, that if he wanted to use a plough he had better draw it himself, being only a vile peasant. To this insult Henry's son Arnold ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... so much fertility goes with every yoke of steers or pair of fat hogs. But it is less loss, in proportion, than when the corn, or oats, ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd

... equal pace as oxen in the yoke, I, with that laden spirit, journey'd on Long as the mild instructor suffer'd me." (Purg. ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery

... the judgment in selecting his Ministers, and the constancy of persevering in his choice, possessed by your George III.; had the helm of Spain been in the firm and able hands of a Grenville, a Windham, and a Pitt, the Cabinet of Madrid would never have been oppressed by the yoke of the Cabinet of St. Cloud, nor paid a heavy tribute for its bondage, degrading as ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith

... novelists whose names head this chapter should be treated each in a chapter to himself. But after trying several plans (for I can assure such readers that the arrangement of this History has been the reverse of haphazard) I have thought it best to yoke them. That they have more in common with each other, not merely than either has with Hugo or Dumas, or even George Sand, but than either of these three has with the others, few will deny. And as a practising novelist Beyle ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... single yoke of oxen, which he used regularly in his farm labour, and also in dragging his wood to market. Within a week each lost an ox; one dying of some bovine distemper,—the other being so injured by the fall of a tree, that his owner had ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid

... see her again this very morning and perhaps she will greet me again with that same kindly, glorious smile. And surely she would smile did she know that I was free from the yoke to which I had bent myself in a moment of forgetfulness. My duty had been to Penelope since that day when we rode from the clearing, and from that day my heart had always been with her. Reading from the past, her destiny and mine were written before me in clear, ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd

... business yoke, was, if not lively himself, a willing spectator of Caroline's liveliness, a complacent listener to her talk, a ready respondent to her questions. He was something agreeable to sit near, to hover round, to address and look at. Sometimes he was better ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... a torment. To regain quiet pulses he forced his mind to dwell upon the details of his "conversion"—his sudden resolve to live a new life and to give himself up to the service of the divine Master. The yoke was not easy; the burden was not light. On the contrary. He remembered innumerable contests with his rebellious flesh, contests in which he was never completely victorious for more than a few days together, but in which, especially during the first heat of the new enthusiasm, ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris

... except to be overwhelmed among so many voices, and sanction with your presence the abuses and wrongs that are afterwards perpetrated? The fewer rights they allow you, the more reason you will have later to throw off the yoke, and return evil for evil. If they are unwilling to teach you their language, cultivate your own, extend it, preserve to the people their own way of thinking, and instead of aspiring to be a province, aspire to be a nation! Instead of subordinate thoughts, think independently, ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal

... bunting (or yellow hammer) can be a pet; and he has the sweetest little whispering song. If you have a caged bunting, his seed should be soaked in cold water for some hours before it is given to him, and he must have the yoke of a hard-boiled egg, meal-worms, ants' eggs, and any insects you can catch for him. He must also have plenty of opportunities for bathing, and as much fresh ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher

... confidence in one's powers. There was little doubt, the gossips maintained, that many of the younger women of his parish would have been willing, in certain contingencies, to lift for him that other end of his yoke under which poor Mrs. Stoker was fainting, unequal to ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... by, when thought of Christ Made His Yoke easy and His Burden light; When my heart stirred within me at the sight Of Altar spread for awful Eucharist; When all my hopes His promises sufficed, When my Soul watched for Him by day, by night, When my lamp lightened and my robe was white, And all seemed loss, except the Pearl unpriced. ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti

... wagoners of Freedom Whose chargers chew the cud, Whose wheels have braved a dozen years The gravel and the mud; Your glorious hawbucks yoke again To take another jag, And scud through the mud Where the heavy wheels do drag, Where the wagon creak is long and low And the ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine

... dubeflava. Yelp hundbleki. Yeoman (farmer) farmisto. Yes jes. Yes, truly jes, vere. Yesterday hieraux. Yesterday, the day before antauxhieraux. Yet tamen. Yet (adv.) ankoraux. Yew taksuso. Yield (surrender) kapitulaci, cedi. Yield (produce) produktajxo. Yoke jugo. Yolk of egg ovoflavo. Yonder tie, tien. You vi, vin. Young juna. Young (offspring) ido, idaro. Young lady (unmarried) frauxlino. Young man (unmarried) frauxlo. Younger plijuna. Youngest la plej juna. Youngster junulo—ino. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... predicament possible is to be unhappily yoked together. You see, it is impossible to break the yoke. The more you pull apart, the more galling the yoke. The minister might bring you up again, and in your presence read the marriage ceremony backward, might put you on the opposite sides of the altar from where you were ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage

... what was intended. Those who followed Christ did not learn to love their enemies or to turn the other cheek. They learned instead to use the Inquisition and the stake, to subject the human intellect to the yoke of an ignorant and intolerant priesthood, to degrade art and extinguish science for a thousand years. These were the inevitable results, not of the teaching, but of fanatical belief in the teaching. The hopes which inspire Communism are, in the main, as admirable as those instilled by the ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell

... said, with a slight smile; "but such doings as that would never have helped our country to free herself from the British yoke; and these men were too brave and patriotic to try it; they were freemen and never could be slaves; to them death was preferable to slavery. We may well be proud of the skill and courage with which Lieutenant-Colonel Smith defended his fort against ...
— Elsie's Vacation and After Events • Martha Finley

... of the Moor, and his childish lack of reflection. His black eyes had the fixity of the eyes of a bird of prey, and they were framed, like a vulture's, by a bluish membrane devoid of lashes. His forehead, low and narrow, had something menacing. Evidently, this man was under the yoke of some single and unique thought. His sinewy arm ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac

... became in the 10th century a great centre of trade with the East, and continued to be till the discovery of the route round the Cape, after which it began to decline, till it fell eventually under the yoke of Austria, from which it was wrested in 1866, and is now part of the modern kingdom of Italy, with much still to show of what it was in its palmy days, and indications of a measure of recovery from its ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... of zeal. Here zeal was the tool of worldliness. A King, whose character may be best described by saying that he was despotism itself personified, unprincipled ministers, a rapacious aristocracy, a servile Parliament, such were the instruments by which England was delivered from the yoke of Rome. The work which had been begun by Henry, the murderer of his wives, was continued by Somerset, the murderer of his brother, and completed by Elizabeth, the murderer of her guest. Sprung from brutal passion, nurtured by selfish policy, the Reformation in England displayed ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... was the lock that lay upon our lips, This was the yoke that we have undergone, Denying us all pleasant fellowships As in our time and generation. Our pleasures unpursued age past recall. And for our pains—we are ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling

... more address than ourselves, then we repine equally at our own dulness, and envy the acuteness that accomplishes the speaker; or, if we converse with duller animals than ourselves, then we are weary to draw the yoke alone, and fret at our being in ill company; but if chance blows us in amongst our equals, then we are so at guard to catch all advantages, and so interested in point d'honneur, that it rather cruciates than recreates us. How many make themselves cheap by these occasions, whom we had valued highly ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... not content with snarling up our native appointments, Congress complicated matters still more dangerously by its treatment of foreigners. The members of Congress were colonists, and the fact that they had shaken off the yoke of the mother country did not in the least alter their colonial and perfectly natural habit of regarding with enormous respect Englishmen and Frenchmen, and indeed anybody who had had the good fortune to be born in Europe. The result was that they distributed ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge

... remain in the bank, to suffer through the years its impositions; he was not going to be saddled with the responsibility of choosing between hopeless monotony and a life of blind recklessness. That miserable lot was for others, whom Nelson would some day assist in throwing off the yoke. ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen

... like the Day, a master o'er a Slave, A Presence which is not to be put by; Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height, Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke The years to bring the inevitable yoke, Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife? Full soon thy Soul shall have her earthly freight, And Custom lie upon thee with a weight Heavy as frost, and ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various

... him, "that though he held him hemmed in by famine and the sword, yet that, being mindful of human vicissitudes, he would, if they would make a treaty with him, allow them to depart uninjured; only that they must pass under the yoke, and quit Numidia within ten days." These terms were severe and ignominious; but, as death was the alternative[137], peace was concluded as ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust

... men of the place, a sin-ruled race, slandering, cried, "O King, these Jewish knaves open our graves! Our bones they burn, into charms to turn, health to earn." The king angrily spoke: "I will weighten their yoke, and their villainy repay; all the Jews who, from to-day, die in this town, to the pit take down, to the pit hurry all, without burial. Who buries a Jew, the hour shall rue; bitter his pang, on ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams

... to think I might be something to thee, when I felt Thy helpless warmth about my barren breast In the dead prime: but may thy mother prove As true to thee as false, false, false to me! And, if thou needs must needs bear the yoke, I wish it Gentle as freedom'—here she kissed it: then— 'All good go with thee! take it Sir,' and so Laid the soft babe in his hard-mailed hands, Who turned half-round to Psyche as she sprang To ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... master of the house would occasionally address a remark to his serving man about the farm, such as, "How a good yoke of bullocks at Ciren Fair?" or, "How a score of ewes now?" meaning how much are they worth. Once the serving man took the initiative, asking, "Shall we sow the headlands with wheat?" receiving the reply, "With ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs

... acquainted with any portion of your intentions, I should feel quite justified in remaining silent about them. If the fellow is foolish enough to compel you to serve him against your will, he need feel no surprise at your taking an early opportunity to free yourselves from so galling a yoke. And now, in order that I may not be a restraint upon you, I will relieve you of my presence by going aft and volunteering. But believe and trust in my friendship always, even should circumstances assume such a character as to ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood

... be of the riches of the earth and of the dew of heaven. You shall live by your sword and your descendants shall serve his descendants. But in time to come they shall break loose and shall shake off the yoke of your brother's rule and ...
— The Wonder Book of Bible Stories • Compiled by Logan Marshall

... in one sheaf Bound together for belief. Yes, I said—that he will go And sit with these in turn, I know. Their faith's heart beats, though her head swims Too giddily to guide her limbs, Disabled by their palsy-stroke From propping mine. Though Rome's gross yoke Drops off, no more to be endured, Her teaching is not so obscured By errors and perversities, That no truth shines athwart the lies: And he, whose eye detects a spark Even where, to man's the whole seems dark, May well ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke

... men of Ekron. Then the wise men of the Philistines were called together, and they counselled that the Ark should be returned with a trespass-offering to Israel, and that it should be carried in a new cart by two milch kine on which there had come no yoke, and that their calves should be brought home from them. Then if the kine of their own accord took the cart to Bethshemesh, it would be known that it was the God of Israel who had plagued the land; but if they refused to go, then it might be chance which had done it. The Ark was placed in the cart, ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford

... come to the yoke. It is a stiff place, and I feel as though I were bogged up to the axle. But, "sutjes, sutjes," as the Boers say—I am sure I don't know how they spell it—softly does it. A strong team will come through at last, that ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard

... embroidered with high-flashing colour of Eastern reminiscence—the great subtropic garden of the Sultan-i-bagh, for example, its palms, orange grove and lotus tank, the call of the green parrots, chant of the well-coollie and creak of the primitive wooden gearing, as the yoke of cream white oxen trotted down and laboriously backed up the walled slope ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... Without any delay: By the mass, if I had not been, Thou haddest not been worth a Flander's pin At this present day. The time were too long now to declare, How many and great the number are, Which have deceived be; And brought clean from God's law Unto thy yoke and awe, Through the enticement of me. I have been busied since the world began, To graff thy laws in the heart of man, Where they ought to be refused: And I have so mingled God's commandments With vain zeals ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley

... till he saw a buffalo turning a well-wheel; but he fared no better from it, for it answered: "You are a fool to expect gratitude! Look at me! While I gave milk they fed me on cotton-seed and oil-cake, but now I am dry they yoke me here, and give me ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... cease not to be greater slaves than the people they govern." He goes on in the next paragraph to tell us that if he were only to consider force and the effects of it, he would say that if a nation was constrained to obey and did obey, it did well, but that whenever it could throw off its yoke and did throw it off, it acted better. His words, written in 1762, became a text for the pioneers of the French Revolution. But they would have done well to read further into the book. As Rousseau goes on, we find a different conception. He passes from considering the fiction of a social contract ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... happened in Jean-Christophe's case. Under his yoke he took full stock of the value of liberty and he never frittered away the precious minutes with useless words or actions. His natural tendency to write diffusely, given up to all the caprice of a mind sincere ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland

... nature sinful, of which we have so many evidences in Bunyan's own writings; its repression of all that makes life brighter and more joyous, and the sour sanctimoniousness which frowned upon innocent relaxation, had rendered its yoke unbearable to ordinary human nature, and men took the earliest opportunity of throwing the yoke off and trampling it under foot. They hailed with rude and boisterous rejoicings the restoration of the Monarchy ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables

... circumstances of the common beggar in the streets of Jerusalem; that is what the word "poor" as Christ used it actually means. These blessed poor are no longer slaves to the tyranny of things. They have broken the yoke of the oppressor; and this they have done not by fighting but by surrendering. Though free from all sense of possessing, they yet possess all things. "Theirs is ...
— The Pursuit of God • A. W. Tozer

... no lotuses are grown; The horse's yoke no ass will ever bear; Rice never springs from seeds of barley sown; A courtezan is not an ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka

... a dark, frantic, yelling host, with irresistible fury, and, perchance, patriotism! Shall we deny to those men what we claim for ourselves—love of hearth and home, of country, of freedom? Can we not sympathise with men who groaned under an insolent and tyrannical yoke, and who, failing to understand or appreciate, the purity of the motives by which we British were actuated, could see nothing in us except the supporters of ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne

... glimpsed by the feudal sovereigns, who thought that the people lived for them rather than they for the people. And when, as in England, the King's good-nature had been abused by swarms of foreign-born relations, who had not even his claims on the people, no wonder the yoke had been galling beyond endurance. Of the end Edward could not bear to think—of the broken friendships—the enmity of kindred—the faults on either side that had embittered the strife, till he had been forced ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge

... purpose the patriarchal gear of native fashion; narrow carts with great lumbering wheels were covered by matting arched upon bent saplings, and had within a depth of clean rice-straw on which at night mattresses were spread. Beneath each yoke went a pair of milk-white oxen with large mild eyes and pendulous dewlaps, great beasts of a fine Homeric dignity and worthy of Nausicaa's wain. They swung along with a leisurely rolling gait; and if their silent feet moved ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith

... Rabbis laid upon them. Pharisaism had reduced religion to a branch of mechanics, a vast network of rules which closed in the life of man on every side, a burden grievous and heavy to be borne, which crushed the soul under its weary load. This was the yoke of which Peter said that neither they nor their fathers were able to bear it. Was it any marvel that from such a system men should turn to Him who cried, "Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me; for My yoke is easy, and My burden is light"? ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson

... were possessed of an uninterpreted longing to join their brothers of the wilderness in their care-free wanderings, and be forever free themselves from the yoke of sledge and whip and the toil and drudgery of the trail. But so like men were the beasts that they never had the courage to cast themselves free from the shackles of their man-master, though it required but a resolution and a plunge ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace

... feeling, has altogether parted company from the notion of political government. It must be remembered that this state of things is not confined to the nations which are or have lately been under the yoke of the Turk. It extends also to the nations or fragments of nations which make up the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. In all the lands held by these two powers we come across phenomena of geography, race, ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... places. The she-dogs are as good as their she-mistresses, and horses and asses march along with dignity and run their noses against anybody who comes in their way. 'That has often been my experience.' At last the citizens become so sensitive that they cannot endure the yoke of laws, written or unwritten; they would have no man call himself their master. Such is the glorious beginning of things out of which tyranny springs. 'Glorious, indeed; but what is to follow?' The ruin of oligarchy is the ruin of democracy; for there is ...
— The Republic • Plato

... YOKE. A transverse board or metal bar, a substitute for the tiller, which crosses the head of a boat's rudder, and having two lines extending from its opposite extremities to the stern-sheets of the ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... and most populous in all the Duchy of Guyenne, and contained the finest cities, towns, and castles and fortresses in the said duchy, which were free and quit of all taxes and imposts, and with privileges conferred on them and confirmed by the King of France when they shook off the English yoke; and the said land of Quercy, after having returned to its legitimate sovereigns, has testified to them the greatest loyalty; yet have its inhabitants been grievously injured, assailed, beaten, robbed, ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould

... accompanied by Carroll's brother, a Jesuit priest and a future archbishop, failed to achieve-more by diplomacy than their generals had done by the sword. The Canadians seemed, content enough to wear the British yoke. In the spring, when a British fleet arrived with reenforcements, the American troops retired in haste and, before the Declaration of Independence had been proclaimed, Canada was free from the last of its ten ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton

... who was standing ploughing, that his ox lowed before him. An Arab was passing, and heard its voice. He said 'O Jew! O Jew! unyoke thine ox, and loose thy ploughshare, for the Temple is desolate.' It lowed a second time, and he said, 'O Jew! O Jew! yoke thine ox and bind thy ploughshare, for King Messiah is born.' The Jew said, 'What is His name?' He answered 'Menachem.' He asked again, 'What is His father's name?' He said, 'Hezekiah.' He asked, 'From whence is He?' He replied, ...
— Hebrew Literature

... no more, illustrious senors, Heaven's mercies are infinite; new cities will rise from the ashes of the old, new mines pour forth their treasures into the sanctified laps of the faithful, and new Indians flock toward the life-giving standard of the Cross, to put on the easy yoke and light burden ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... form in particular, which was devised by Ruhmkorff for the purpose of repeating Faraday's celebrated experiment on the magnetic rotation of polarized light, is liable to this defect. Indeed, this form of electromagnet is often designed very badly, the yoke being too thin, both mechanically and magnetically, for the purpose which it has ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various

... Missouri would be the battle ground and he, with many others, took their families and negroes and went south, taking what they could in wagons, for there were no railroads then in that section. There was quite a train with the droves of cattle, mules and horses. One wagon had six yoke of oxen to it; had to get into it by a ladder, the kind that was used to freight across the plains. The family went in the family carriage that my father brought from Kentucky. I remember the time when this carriage was purchased, with the two dapple gray horses, and silver ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation

... Rome, In whome the ancient Brutus vertue shines, That purchast first the Romaine liberty, Let me imbrace thee: liue victorious youth, 160 When death and angry fates shall call me hence, To free thy country from a Tyrants yoke. My harder fortune, and more cruell starrs. Enuied to me so great a happines. Do not prolong my life with vaine false hopes, To deepe dispaire and sorrow I am vow'd: Do not remououe me from that setled thought, With hope of ...
— The Tragedy Of Caesar's Revenge • Anonymous

... yoke of steers and Pete Mufraw stopped at the brush-fence to watch the plow cut its way right through rocks and stumps. When they reached the end of the furrow Paul picked up the plow and the oxen with one arm and turned them around. ...
— The Marvelous Exploits of Paul Bunyan • W.B. Laughead

... cannot cope with the taxes imposed upon them [at the last Indiction?]. The former practice is to be reverted to, and they are not to be called upon to pay more than they did in the days of Odoacer.' [An evidence that in one case at least the fiscal yoke of Odoacer was lighter than that ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)

... was! What liberty! It seemed as if those patriots in the Up-the-Ladder Club had been oppressed by a terrible yoke of bondage, domestic especially, but it was all lifted and thrown off that day. There was freedom—to blow horns, freedom to fire crackers, freedom to "holler," freedom to crack torpedoes, freedom to buy pea-nuts, buns, ...
— The Knights of the White Shield - Up-the-Ladder Club Series, Round One Play • Edward A. Rand

... dictator, took the field that very day, used wariness as well as speed, and simultaneously with Minucius attacked the AEqui, killing very many of them and capturing the rest alive: the latter he led under the yoke and then released. This matter of the yoke I shall briefly describe. The Romans used to fix in the ground two poles (upright wooden beams, of course, with a space between them) and across them they would lay another transverse ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio

... the strap, arising from the difficulty of getting it properly adjusted. I contented myself with its use, however, until the spring of 1861, when I hit upon a contrivance which has proved a complete success. It consists of a wooden yoke fitting across my shoulders, and having two chains connected with it in such a manner as to enable me to lift on every occasion to the most advantage. With this contrivance my lifting-power has advanced with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various

... an opportunity of going, unnoticed, to a bear-stack, and fathom it three times round. The last fathom of the last time, you will catch in your arms the appearance of your conjugal yoke-fellow. ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson

... So you have been among the Philistines?" that was his lordship's first remark. Robarts laughed as he took his friend's hands, and bethought himself how truly that was the case; that he was, in very truth, already "himself in bonds under Philistian yoke." Alas, alas, it is very hard to break asunder the bonds of the latter-day Philistines. When a Samson does now and then pull a temple down about their ears, is he not sure to be engulfed in the ruin with them? There is no horse-leech that sticks so ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope

... will listen to my counsel, he will throw off the pope's yoke altogether," rejoined Anne. "Nay, your eminence may frown at me if you will. Such, I repeat, shall be my counsel. If the divorce is speedily obtained, I am your friend: if not—look ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth

... whose mind has sprung From Mammon's yoke while yet unwrung Or spoilt for nobler duty:— Who still can gaze on Nature's face With all a lover's zeal, and trace In every ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 331, September 13, 1828 • Various

... such a little atom of a country do alone? One can only wonder that she ever dared to dream of freedom! But a desire for freedom makes frail, weak bodies marvellously strong sometimes. She resolved that she would not longer endure the Turkish yoke; and she called to her old kinsmen in Greece to come and take her into their Christian kingdom. She said: "We are the same in race and in religion, let us become one ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 20, March 25, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... direction are confined to the ambition of being prima inter pares—a position which is vigorously and even bitterly attacked by the other Protestant sects whenever she either tries to assert it or has it thrust upon her. These ex-Dissenters have a lively remembrance of the yoke they endured in the old country, and even now that the spirit of supremacy has so completely died out, they spring up to do battle against any formality that recalls it to them. Thus, a few years ago the whole colony ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny

... who had not followed the insurrectionary army, met in an obscure inn, where Macquart had made an appointment with them. When about fifty men were assembled, he made a speech, in which he spoke of personal vengeance that must be wreaked, of a victory that must be gained, and of a disgraceful yoke that must be thrown off. And he ended by undertaking to deliver the town-hall over to them in ten minutes. He had just left it, it was quite unguarded, he said, and the red flag would wave over it that very night if they so desired. The workmen deliberated. At that moment the reaction seemed to be ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola

... me?" said the other. "Oh, I see your shoulder is galled and your neck shows mark of the yoke." The old bullock answered "Whether my master treats me well or ill I owe him money and have to stay here until I have paid him off. When I have paid him five hundred rupees I shall go." "How will you ever pay back ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas

... tyranny of it makes our names hated throughout the world. We have no right to enforce our sway upon the peace-loving farmers and the ignorant blacks of South Africa. They rightly hate us for it, and so do the millions of India, upon whom our yoke is held by armies of soldiers who have to be maintained by their victims. It casts one down to think of it, just as the sight of those ridiculous rifle-butts and the thought of the diseased sentiment behind ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson

... not to be dominated by "foreign influence." Many Chinese can be bribed, but the Chinese in general cannot be fooled, and no glowing compliments about China's "masculine" attitude can deceive them as to the yoke they must wear should they decide to surrender themselves and place their nation at the disposal of ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte

... return from this his first excursion into the outer world, his father, tired of failure in Indiana, packed his family and all his worldly goods into a single wagon drawn by two yoke of oxen, and after a fourteen days' tramp through the wilderness, pitched his camp once more, in Illinois. Here Abraham, having come of age and being now his own master, rendered the last service of his minority by ploughing the ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln

... whom he afterwards conducted away from Syracuse[17]—that wherever they sat down, they were sufficiently numerous and well-organized to become at once a city. A body of such troops might effectually assist, and would perhaps encourage, the Babylonian population to throw off the Persian yoke, and to relieve themselves from the prodigious tribute[18] which they now paid to the satrap. For these reasons, the advisers of Artaxerxes thought it advantageous to convey the Greeks across the Tigris out of Babylonia, beyond all possibility of returning ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote

... their grounds, their yoke of oxen, and their marriage joys, were invited to come; but they made their excuse, and that served the turn. But when he comes to deal with the worst, he saith to his servants, Go ye out and bring them in hither. "Go ...
— The Jerusalem Sinner Saved • John Bunyan

... good people! I must interrupt my stream of eloquence, and spout forth a stream of water, to replenish the trough for this teamster and his two yoke of oxen, who have come all the way from Staunton, or somewhere along that way. No part of my business gives me more pleasure than the watering of cattle. Look! how rapidly they lower the watermark on the sides of the trough, till their capacious stomachs are moistened with a gallon ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin

... Scrapbook, Library of Congress. In 1890, after visiting the John Brown Memorial at North Elbe, New York, Susan B. Anthony wrote: "John Brown was crucified for doing what he believed God commanded him to do, 'to break the yoke and let the oppressed go free,' precisely as were the saints of old for following what they believed to be God's commands. The barbarism of our government was by so much the greater as our light and knowledge are greater than those of two thousand years ago." Harper, ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz

... of the reproaches and invectives which he addressed and the fine argument which he formed for himself, he had fallen again more than ever under the yoke, precisely because he ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France

... Mark's proclaim in solemn muffled tones the death of their Duke, they were utterly undone with sorrow and grief. Their support, their hope, was now gone, and they would have to bend their necks to the Genoese yoke, they cried, in despite of the fact that Dandolo's loss did not seem to have any very counteractive effect upon the progress that was being made with all necessary warlike preparations. The "dear good count" had loved to live in peace and quietness, preferring to follow the ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann

... is a quaint* law, *strange That every wight shall love or be to-draw!* *torn to pieces But I forsake alle such company; For mine intent is not for to die, Nor ever, while I live, *on Love's yoke to draw.* *to put on love's yoke* "For lovers be the folk that be alive, That most disease have, and most unthrive,* *misfortune And most endure sorrow, woe, and care, And leaste feelen of welfare: What needeth it against ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... to the wedding and saw Pierre the savage transformed into Pierre the citizen, the yoke-bearer. I feared the transformation was not final. Yet I could never read my giant. There were unexpected ridges of principle in the general slough of his makeup and perhaps the Indian girl was resting on ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith

... and rapidly and surely the aboriginal inhabitants decreased in numbers. Several revolts occurred, but were crushed with barbarous severity. At length the colonists of Spain conceived the hope of throwing off the yoke of the mother country. Although frequently defeated, the people of Chili were, by the aid of Lord Cochrane, at last successful. General San Martin, who had become the president, entered Lima on the 19th of July 1821, the viceroy La Cerna being cut off from any support from Spain by the Chilian fleet ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston

... the system he attempted to reform, even as it is impossible to present the Protestant Reformation without first considering mediaeval Catholicism before the time of Luther. It was the object of Buddha to break the yoke of the Brahmans, and to release his countrymen from the austerities, the sacrifices, and the rigid sacerdotalism which these ancient priests imposed, without essentially subverting ancient religious ideas. He was a moralist ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord

... I have great contempt. They are neither black nor white, neither good nor bad, neither to be admired nor hated. They are all things, at all times; they are always fawning on the great Arabs, and always cruel to those unfortunates brought under their yoke. If I saw a miserable, half-starved negro, I was always sure to be told he belonged to a half-caste. Cringing and hypocritical, cowardly and debased, treacherous and mean, I have always found him. He seems to be for ever ready to fall down and worship ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... recognize that he is the Lord's. The appearance is that the more closely one is conjoined to the Lord the less one is one's own. This appearance prevails with all the evil. It also prevails with those who from religion believe that they are not under the yoke of the law and that no one can of himself do good. All these inevitably think that to be free only to do good and not to think and will evil is not to be one's own. Inasmuch as a man who is conjoined to the Lord does not will and cannot think or will evil, they ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg

... will never come at all;" which seems to me, neither Scripture nor common sense. To come to Christ, in the proper sense of the words, is to become better;—it is to cease to live to ourselves and sin, and to live to God. Hence Christ, in connection with Mr. Batty's text says, "Take my yoke upon you, and learn of Me, for I am meek, and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls." The meaning of this is, give up the service of self and sin, and serve me. Take me for your pattern, and be as I am, and live as I live. ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker

... continuous mine which explodes at the same time. The first column of flame which shoots up is on the frontiers of Alsace and Franche-Comte, in the vicinity of Belfort and Vesoul, a feudal district, in which the peasant, over-burdened with taxes, bears the heavier yoke with greater impatience. An instinctive argument is going on in his mind without his knowing it. "The good Assembly and the good King want us to be happy, suppose we help them! They say that the King has ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... the Countess G——, "every day more and more took possession of his soul. Adversity and the companionship of great thoughts strengthened him so much, that he was able to cast off the yoke of even ordinary passions, only retaining those among the ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... eye. Now and then amusing things happened. The onion-man was a joy long waited for. This worthy was a tall and bony Jersey Protestant with a raucous voice, who strode up our street several times a week, carrying a yoke across his shoulders, from the ends of which hung ropes of onions. He used to shout, at abrupt intervals, in a tone which might ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse

... captive by the waters of Babylon, and the sons of Jacob were in bondage to our kings. The tribes of Israel are scattered through the mountains like lost sheep, and from the remnant that dwells in Judea under the yoke of Rome neither star nor sceptre ...
— The Story of the Other Wise Man • Henry Van Dyke

... this unseemly shopkeeper's spirit which attempts to drag to the mercantile level even the highest concerns of humanity. At the same time there came to some a conception of how deep and great, how overwhelming this German spirit must be, that it not only forces such aliens into its yoke, but, as in the case of Heine and Mendelssohn, often produces in them profoundly affecting tones of longing for participation in its sublime nature. Wagner's feeling at this, the most confused uproar which has been heard in the present time, could only have been like that of Goethe, namely, that ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl

... is this that rages in my entrails? Has viper's blood, infused in these herbs, deceived me? Or has Canidia dressed this baleful food? When Medea, beyond all the [other] argonauts, admired their handsome leader, she anointed Jason with this, as he was going to tie the untried yoke on the bulls: and having revenged herself on [Jason's] mistress, by making her presents besmeared with this, she flew away on her winged dragon. Never did the steaming influence of any constellation so raging as this rest upon the thirsty Appulia: ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace

... an' pooched it syne, An' quately winked an e'e; "The road's a bond that we canna deny, An' its linkit you an' me In the kindly yoke o' the gaun-about folk, ...
— The Auld Doctor and other Poems and Songs in Scots • David Rorie

... and desire for union, stronger than any pangs of emotion, a lovely state of free proud singleness, which accepted the obligation of the permanent connection with others, and with the other, submits to the yoke and leash of love, but never forfeits its own proud individual singleness, even while ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence

... this quaint little land hold in their hearts a love and a confidence that is not surpassed by any of the lordly monarchs who measure their patriotism by miles and millions. The Graustarkians are a sturdy, courageous race. From the faraway century when they fought themselves clear of the Tartar yoke, to this very hour, they have been warriors of might and valor. The boundaries of their tiny domain were kept inviolate for hundreds of years, and but one victorious foe had come down to lay siege to Edelweiss, the capital. Axphain, a powerful principality in the north, had conquered Graustark ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... sacrifice (vicarious suffering) as a blessed law of Nature ("the secret of the universe is learnt on Calvary"), and of the necessity of annihilating "the self" as the principle of evil, are pressed with a harsh and unnatural rigour. Our blessed Lord laid no such yoke upon us, nor will human nature consent to bear it. The "atonement" of the world by love is much better delineated by R.L. Nettleship, in a passage which seems to me to exhibit the very kernel of Christian Mysticism in its social ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge

... gallery at random, and saw the king passing along, leaning with one arm on the shoulder of M. d'Argenson. "Oh, base servility!" I thought to myself. "How can a man make up his mind thus to bear the yoke, and how can a man believe himself so much above all others as to take such ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... The town of the merchants, with its Rhone, its silk-workers, its crossroads, extending north, east, south and west, from Lyons to Marseilles, from Nimes to Turin. The French city, the accursed city, longing for a king, jealous of its liberties, shuddering beneath its yoke of vassalage, a vassalage of the priests with the clergy for ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas

... was awake all the time, and listenin', as long as Jim was there," said Bone, "but six yoke of oxen couldn't 'a' dragged his two eyes open, or him out of bed, to mingle in ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels

... to whom does this epithet apply better? To us who dress as the generality of men, thus leaving no doubt as to our sex and freeing our consciences from the ignominious Roman yoke, direct ourselves by that straight and narrow way which leads to salvation; or to this black band which secretly and maliciously makes of a man its prey from the moment in which he sees the light of day until the moment in ...
— Brazilian Sketches • T. B. Ray

... of 1790 was not confined to France, nor yet to Europe. Crossing the Atlantic, it equally affected the nations of the New World—especially those who for three centuries had submitted to the yoke of Spain. These, profiting by the example set them by the English colonies in the north, had taken advantage of the confusion of affairs in Europe, and declared their independence ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid

... They were still bound to the London merchants who had supplied them with the means for emigration, and these partners in the enterprise were impatient of the lack of returns. As the Pilgrims gradually grew better off they were the more anxious to remove the yoke which interfered with their independence, and some members of the community who were richer than the others agreed, in exchange for a monopoly of the Indian trade and the surrender of the accumulated wealth of the colony, to pay its debt to the English shareholders. The colony thus achieved its freedom, ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann

... air: much ado, and little help: in no age so little so much made of; every one highly in his own favour. Something made of nothing, in spight of Nature: numbers made of cyphers, in spight of Art. Oxen and asses, notwithstanding the absurdity it seemed to Plautus, drawing in the same yoke: the Gospel taught, not learnt; Charity cold; nothing good, but by imputation; the Ceremonial Law in word abrogated, the Judicial in effect disannull'd, the Moral abandon'd; the Light, the Light in every man's lips, but mark their eyes, and you will say they are rather like owls than eagles. ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church

... the Valley of Fear. The spring had come with running brooks and blossoming trees. There was hope for all Nature bound so long in an iron grip; but nowhere was there any hope for the men and women who lived under the yoke of the terror. Never had the cloud above them been so dark and hopeless as in the early summer of ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... saith, "my yoke is easy, and my burden is light," because He helpeth to bear them; else indeed we should not be able to bear them. And in another place He saith, "His commandments are not heavy"; they are heavy to our flesh, but being qualified with the Spirit ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various

... "Throwing off the yoke, declaring ourselves independent, and putting ourselves under the protection of America, who will gladly receive us, aware that we shall be a source not only of ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat

... his charioteer to lead out the horses and yoke the chariot. The charioteer led out the horses and yoked the chariot, and Cuchulain mounted his chariot. And they came on the track of the army. They found the trail of the men of Erin leading past them from that part into another. "Alas, O master Laeg," cried Cuchulain, "by no ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown

... and by rapid night-marches turned the flank of his most carefully chosen positions. The line of the Dniester was abandoned; the line of the Pruth was lost. It was plain that the Visigoths, like their Eastern brethren, if they remained in the land, must bow their heads beneath the Hunnish yoke. To avoid so degrading a necessity, and if they must lose their independence, to lose it to the stately Emperors of Rome rather than to the chief of a filthy Tartar horde, the great majority of the Visigothic nation flocked ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin

... out as the greatest danger in the vicinity. The party was then invited to examine an ancient volume of official records, where it was chronicled that on the 7th of October, 1802, a man who was driving two yoke of cattle was struck by lightning in that exact spot and, with all his animals, was instantly killed. The occurrence had been deemed at the time so remarkable that the circumstance, with a minute description of the locality, had been recorded, though long forgotten by all but perhaps ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various

... the white yoke-lines, gave the order to shove off; the boat's head swung away from the side of the frigate; the oars fell with their blades flat on the water; and we began to glide rapidly up the harbour, propelled by the sturdy arms of the crew. I felt very proud as I looked at the captain ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston

... heads, with metal-bossed headstalls and frontlets. A curved pole, upheld on their withers, covered with scarlet panels, two collars surmounted by balls of polished brass, bound together by a light yoke bent like a bow with upturned ends; a bellyband and breastband elaborately stitched and embroidered, and rich housings with red or blue stripes and fringed with tassels, completed this strong, graceful, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various

... partly through the misrepresentations of a kinsman he had trusted, partly through the influence of a wife he had loved, he had been drawn into schemes which he believed bounded to the emancipation of Italy from a foreign yoke by the united exertions of her best and ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... resources of the country, by encouraging the influx of freemen from Europe, and especially of mechanics and manufacturers. They were anxiously looking forward to the time when they could cast off the yoke of oppression which the mother country had forced upon their necks. The multiplication of the negro population was considered as a barrier to the success of their measures, and as most dangerous to virtue and the welfare of the country. It was increasing the indebtedness ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... evening she knits and sings, While ever the pendulum tireless swings The moments around, with its tick and stroke, Nor hastes for the festal, nor lags for the yoke. And grandmother never repines at her fate Of being the last ...
— Fun And Frolic • Various

... alone, for a more penetrating glance showed that he had a yoke-fellow as big and black as himself; and guided by a red-sashed boy in scarf and shawl they advanced towards us slowly but so surely that I suspected something more than a coincidence. The great lumbering animals were like blobs of ink against the snow, and the lithe figure of ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... the conventional kind. It would be so, not on account of any inferiority to his ideal in Maud, for he felt that there was no height of his own thought whither she would not in time follow him; but simply because no point of principle would demand a refusal of the yoke of respectability, with its attendant social advantages. And the thought of thus binding himself to Maud had nothing repulsive, for the links between them were not of the kind which easily yield, and loyalty to a higher and nobler nature may well ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing

... concocts a peace that shall presently involve us in internecine war, as he anticipates:—but why dwell on facts so patent? —I ask, did ever Hellene before Agesilaus so enter heart and soul upon his duty; whether it were to help some tribe to throw off the Persian yoke, or to save from destruction a revolted district, or if nothing else, at any rate to saddle the Persian with such troubles of his own that he should cease to trouble Hellas? An ardent hater of Persia surely was he, who, when his own country was at war with Hellenes, ...
— Agesilaus • Xenophon

... "Even under the direful yoke of the necessity of daily poisoning by narcotics, it is somewhat less horrible through the knowledge that it was not from any craving for pleasurable animal excitement, but from pain, delusion, error, of the worst ignorance, medical sciolism, and (alas! too late the plea of error was removed from ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day

... swore to be faithful to the throne. These ceremonies were performed by both the kings, who, with their friends, afterwards conversed together, giving and receiving presents. Now Gelon, a trusty friend of Neoptolemus, after giving Pyrrhus a friendly welcome, presented to him two yoke of oxen for the plough. Myrtilus, the cupbearer, who was present, asked Pyrrhus for these oxen, and as Pyrrhus did not give them to him but to some one else, he did not conceal his annoyance, which was observed ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long

... and France on the other, and consequently the first-named nations were very glad to commission privateers to prey upon the commerce of France. There were also privateers who had been sent out by some of the Central American republics who had thrown off the Spanish yoke, and these, considering Spanish vessels as their proper booty, were very much inclined to look upon English vessels in the same light, as the English and Spanish were allies. And when a few French privateers came also upon the scene, they helped to make the ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton

... more, than the city of teeming millions with all its wealth and might, they seem to me to typify human freedom and the struggle for it. Thence came the vikings that roved the seas, serving no man as master; and through the dark ages of feudalism no lord long bent the neck of those stout yeomen to the yoke. Germany, forgetting honor, treaties, and history, is trying to do it now in Slesvig, south of the Nibs, and she will as surely fail. The day of long-delayed justice, when dynasties by the grace of God shall have been replaced by government ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis

... liberty is founded on this justification by faith. This liberty consists of three parts. First, believers renouncing the righteousness of the law look only to Christ. Secondly, the conscience, freed from the yoke of the law, voluntarily obeys the will of God. This cannot be done under the dominion of the law. Thirdly, under the Gospel we are free to use things indifferent. The consciences of believers, while seeking the assurance ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various

... racial name of several tribes who can be traced to the southern provinces of China. They spread thence, in fanlike fashion, from Laos to Assam, and the middle section ultimately descended the Menam to the sea. The Siamese claim to have assumed the name Thai (free) after they threw off the yoke of the Cambojans, but this derivation is more acceptable to politics than to ethnology. The territories which they inhabited were known as Siem, Syam or Syama, which is commonly identified with the Sanskrit Syama, dark or brown.[189] But the names Shan and A-hom seem to ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot

... He marries but one. You ask me why I want to marry you. I cannot tell you why. Many times since we first met I have asked myself why. I, who have openly scoffed at the yoke, and boasted proudly of my freedom. I do not know why, unless it is that to me you are the embodiment of all womanhood—of all that is desirable and worth while, or maybe the reason is in the fact that while I am with you I am supremely happy, and while ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx

... conquered (which God forbid!), then my last wish, which I pray you, I conjure you, to fulfil, my last and supreme wish would be that you, my dear and deserving German relatives, should leave an enslaved country for some other not yet under the yoke. ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... like Anarchy. In Friendship false, implacable in Hate: Resolv'd to Ruine or to Rule the State. To Compass this, the Triple Bond he broke; The Pillars of the Publick Safety shook: And fitted Israel for a Foreign Yoke. Then, seiz'd with Fear, yet still affecting Fame, Usurp'd a Patriot's All-attoning Name. So easie still it proves in Factious Times, With publick Zeal to cancel private Crimes: How safe is Treason, and how sacred ill, here none can sin against the Peoples Will: Where Crouds can wink; and no offence ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various

... England had the means to equip a navy, vanished: Napoleon henceforth set his hopes on exhausting England's resources by compelling every State on the Continent to exclude her commerce. Trafalgar forced him to impose his yoke upon all Europe, or to abandon the hope of conquering Great Britain. If national love and pride have idealised in our great sailor a character which, with its Homeric force and freshness, combined something of the violence and the self-love of the heroes of a rude age, the common estimate ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... the world, and the infinite terrors of Judgment; Songs of ineffable sorrow, and wailing compassionate warning For the generations that hardened their hearts to their Saviour; Songs of exultant rapture for them that confessed Him and followed, Bearing His burden and yoke, enduring and entering with Him Into the rest of His saints, and the endless reward of the blessed. Loud the people sang: but through the sound of their singing Brake inarticulate cries and moans and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various

... established the artistic kinship between Von Weber and Wagner, to which I have alluded, was a direct fruit of this patriotism. In 1813 Von Weber went to Prague to organize a German opera. A part of the following summer he spent in Berlin. Prussia was leading Europe in the effort to throw off the yoke of Bonaparte, and the youths of the Prussian capital, especially the students, were drunken with the wine of Korner's "Lyre and Sword." While returning to Prague Von Weber stopped for a while at the ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... pursue ends most patiently, letting our thoughts have the benefit of time, before reducing them to practice. Manchester wants cotton—wants it free-grown—that she may relieve herself from the yoke of King Slavery; but she cannot yet solve the problem by which the throbbings of her manufacturing philanthropy may be set at rest. She thinks long and strong of it, but there it rests—and there's the rub. John is blind, and Cotton ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton

... convent of Tor di Specchi represent this vision, and are visible to this day. The Pope John XXIII., and Sigismund, king of the Romans, had at last succeeded in forming a league, with the object of delivering Italy from the intolerable yoke of Ladislas, king of Naples. This tyrant had assembled a numerous army, and was marching upon Bologna; but the measure of his iniquities was now full, and the hand of death arrested him on his way. An illness, occasioned by his incredible excesses, seized him between ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton

... priest, I hear, my son, and to take Christ's yoke more closely upon you. It is no easy one in these days, though love will make it so, as Himself said. I suppose it ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson

... unto Ragnhild and asked her hand, and she answered: 'Indeed feel I that my father, King Hakon, is dead, since I am to be given to a peasant, fine man though thou art and of mighty prowess. Were King Magnus alive would he never yoke me with any mate less than a king, nor can it be awaited now that I will wed a man without princely rank.' Now after this went Hakon to King Harald & opened unto him of the colour of the speech of Ragnhild, & withal to his memory again commended the agreement betwixt himself and ...
— The Sagas of Olaf Tryggvason and of Harald The Tyrant (Harald Haardraade) • Snorri Sturluson

... of us" ventured Brutus, his gaze travelling toward Olga. There was lewd admiration in that steady glance. "But we'll fool the old fox. The time will soon be here for the blow that frees Graustark from the yoke. She will be the pioneer among our estates, we the first of the individuals in equality; here the home seat of perfect rulership. There is nothing that can stop us. Have we not the most powerful of friends? Who is greater and shrewder than Count ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... large sacred edifices that preceded it. The date of the first building is stated to have been A.D. 655—fifty-eight years after the introduction of Christianity into England by St. Augustine; and so large were the foundation stones, that it required eight yoke of oxen to draw them. From this it may be inferred that the structure was not, like many of the Anglo-Saxon churches of this period—built entirely of wood; though it was probably far inferior in size and style of architecture to the building which ...
— The New Guide to Peterborough Cathedral • George S. Phillips

... Reformation was the outcome were not to be controlled by them. The spirit of which they were the product was not to be controlled by any fetters they could forge. The Reformation emancipated the intellect of Europe from the yoke of tradition and blind obedience to authority; it let loose the illuming flood of thought which had been accumulating behind the more rigid barriers of the Church, and swept away as things of straw the feebler barriers the ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens

... Stamp Act, quartering British troops in the public buildings of Boston, and other measures which the Colonies considered oppressive, and even tyrannical, to show the line of Franklin's intercession in behalf of his countrymen, and how they came to throw off the yoke of bondage. ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer

... remain, and establish themselves in Judea, who, by degrees, reorganized a regular system of government, which became the centre of Jewish operations, not only for those in Judea, but for such as were dispersed in other nations. But the yoke of foreign masters was so grievous and burdensome, that they were continually restless and impatient; and, in consequence of a general revolt under the emperor Adrian, in 134, they were a second time slaughtered in multitudes, and were driven to madness and despair. ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward

... to be yoked and hitched to the cart. If he had asked them to bridle and saddle an untamed African lion they would not have been more unwilling or less competent. So the farmer, telling them the animal was very gentle and harmless, proceeded to yoke and hitch him, hoping, he said, that having once seen the operation, his new hands would know how. The yoke was a sort of collar, and when the hitching was done the bull stood in the shafts of the cart just as a horse would. ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy

... he, giving glory to the might Of those good steeds, and to Atreides' self; And filled with joy was Menelaus' soul. Straightway his henchmen from the yoke-band loosed The panting team, and all those chariot-lords, Who in the race had striven, now unyoked Their tempest-footed steeds. Podaleirius then Hasted to spread salves over all the wounds Of Thoas and Eurypylus, gashes scored Upon their frames when from the cars ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus

... customary copying. A national character is but the successful parish character; just as the national speech is but the successful parish dialect, the dialect, that is, of the district which came to be more—in many cases but a little more—influential than other districts, and so set its yoke on books and on society. I could enlarge much on this, for I believe this unconscious imitation to be the principal force in the making of national characters; but I have already said more about it than I need. Everybody who weighs even half ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot

... indifferently to his wants. It seems the quarrels they had, had so embittered them towards one another that very little of that friendship was to be seen in either, which makes the marriage bond easy and the yoke of matrimony light. His complaints with respect to her occasioned some enquiries as to whether he were not jealous of her person; such suspicions being generally the cause of married people's greatest dislikes. What he spoke on this head was exceedingly modest, far from that rancour which might ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward

... obscure shelter where moult the wings which will bear it farther than suns and stars. He who should inspire and lead his race must be defended from travelling with the souls of other men,—from living, breathing, reading, and writing in the daily, time-worn yoke of their opinions. "In the morning, solitude," said Pythagoras,—that Nature may speak to the imagination, as she does never in company, and that her favorite may make acquaintance with those divine strengths ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various

... kingdom come!" For this we pray in vain, Unless He does in our affections reign. How fond it were to wish for such a King, And no obedience to his sceptre bring, Whose yoke is easy, and His burthen light; His service freedom, and His judgments ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various

... v. n. to turn to the right, applied to horses in the yoke. He will neither haup nor wind, he will neither turn to the right nor left; a ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton

... state was so ordered as to inspire the most ardent patriotism in the hearts of the citizens, so that the latter would be very hard to persuade to betray their country, and be ready to endure anything rather than submit to a foreign yoke. (131) After they had transferred their right to God, they thought that their kingdom belonged to God, and that they themselves were God's children. (132) Other nations they looked upon as God's enemies, and regarded with intense ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part IV] • Benedict de Spinoza



Words linked to "Yoke" :   duet, oppression, two, stable gear, saddlery, connexion, cloth, distich, duo, conjoin, mate, dyad, couplet, duad, coupling, join, fabric, tack, unyoke, connecter, animal husbandry, connector, inspan, pair



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