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Complication   /kˌɑmpləkˈeɪʃən/   Listen
Complication

noun
1.
The act or process of complicating.
2.
A situation or condition that is complex or confused.
3.
Any disease or disorder that occurs during the course of (or because of) another disease.
4.
A development that complicates a situation.  Synonym: ramification.
5.
Puzzling complexity.  Synonyms: complicatedness, knottiness, tortuousness.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Complication" Quotes from Famous Books



... obscure, unhappy records an interest, not merely political and historical, but human and dramatic. One catches a vision of strange characters, moved by mysterious impulses, interacting in queer complication, and hurrying at last—so it almost seems—like creatures in a puppet show to a predestined catastrophe. The characters, too, have a charm of their ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey

... that time we have the naive period of education, which holds to the general powers of nature, of national customs, and of destiny, and which lasts for a long time among the rural populations. But in the city a greater complication of events, an uncertainty of the results of reflection, a working out of individuality, and a need of the possession of many arts and trades, make their appearance and render it impossible for men longer to be ruled by mere custom. The Telemachus of Fenelon was educated to rule ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz

... Emperor's headquarters were at Donauwerth, and from thence he addressed to his soldiers one of those energetic and concise proclamations which made them perform so many prodigies, and which was soon circulated in every language by the public journals. This complication of events could not but be fatal to Europe and France, whatever might be its result, but it presented an opportunity favourable to the development of the Emperor's genius. Like his favourite poet Ossian, who loved best to touch his lyre midst the howlings of the tempest, ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... narrative is found in chapters xx. and xxvi., with respect to the incident of Abimelech; in the first of these narratives a serious complication is described as arising between Abimelech King of Gerar on the one hand and Abraham and Sarah on the other; in the second Abimelech is represented as interfering, in precisely the same way and with the same ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden

... a case of murder by the barrister, who had strangled his dishonored victim, and had then thrown her into the river. Anxious to save their sect from the stigma of suicide the Quakers concurred with the Tories in charging the young man with a hideous complication of crimes. The case against Spencer was laid before Chief Justice Holt, who at first dismissed the accusation as absurd, but was afterwards induced to commit the suspected man for trial; and in the July of 1699 the charge actually came before a jury at the Hertford Assizes. Four prisoners—Spencer ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson

... Play, Mrs. Kin peck soliloquizes thus: "I fell into a most unquiet sleep. I thought I saw Cliqueteaux, the old croupier, who died of love for me—of that and a complication of other disorders. A man that was a genius, with a wart on his nose. It was hereditary—the genius, not the wart," etc. Now this may be "funny," but it is not dramatic. It reminds one of the most forced passages of Artemas Ward's generally fresh and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various

... had come this new complication. It had begun to rain. Hopelessly lost in the woods and a storm coming on! It was a situation to try the patience of a saint. And the girls were not saints. They were just happy, fun-loving, lovable specimens of young American girlhood who could upon occasion show rather ...
— Billie Bradley on Lighthouse Island - The Mystery of the Wreck • Janet D. Wheeler

... complication of machinery was added the confusion of tongues. Natives of various races were employed as operatives. Foremen had been obtained from Europe. No fewer than seven separate languages were spoken in the shops. Wady Halfa became a second Babel. Yet the undertaking prospered. The ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill

... to re-establish my physical equilibrium, and I do not doubt that I shall regain my former good health. A very noticeable improvement has already shown itself, and you will better understand my gratitude when I tell you that, suffering from diabetes with a renal complication, I have had several attacks of glaucoma, but my eyes are now recovering their suppleness. Since then my sight has become almost normal, and my general ...
— Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion • Emile Coue

... complication exists in the movement of our own star, the sun. There is no more difficult problem in astronomy than that of disentangling the effects of the solar motion from those of the motions of the other stars. But the problem, difficult as it is, ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss

... her yet and by the complication thou seest now, wearing its turban over one ear in yonder howdah, it may come to pass that he will ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller

... pay from if not actually in the employ of our Secret Service Department. You will understand, therefore, that we, knowing of this complication in his life, naturally incline towards the theory of murder. Shall I be taking a liberty, sir, if I give you ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... I heard it, rang after me like a voice of judgment. "MAD!"—a fear had come over me, which, in all its frightful complication, was expressed by that one word—a fear which, to the man who suffers it, is worse even than the fear of death; which no human language ever has conveyed, or ever will convey, in all its horrible reality, to others. I had pressed onward, hitherto, because I saw a vision that led ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins

... Eustace, and if I call I shall find out. They say that Sir Griffin knows all about the necklace, and threatens to tell unless he is let off marrying. I rather think the girl is Lord George's daughter, so that there is a thorough complication. ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope

... when it occurs in persons who are addicted to intemperance. Again, in those who suffer from any disease affecting directly or indirectly the respiratory functions, such as consumption or heart disease, the supervention of an attack of acute bronchitis is an alarming complication, increasing, as it necessarily does, the embarrassment of breathing. The same remark is applicable to those numerous instances of its occurrence in children who are or have been suffering from such diseases as have always associated ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... him last night, the poor boy was as sane as I am. There is, however, a complication in this instance, which is not mentioned in the case related in print. The boy appears to have entirely forgotten every event in his past life, reckoning from the time when the bodily illness brought with it the strange mental ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins

... and I knew then that the type-writing machine was in action; but this was by no means a reassuring discovery. Who or what could it be that was engaged upon the type-writer at that unholy hour, 3 A.M.? If a mortal being, why was my coming no interruption? If a supernatural being, what infernal complication might not the immediate future ...
— The Enchanted Typewriter • John Kendrick Bangs

... and often I seem to have a deep feeling of something wonderful in what I look at. The Laocoon on this visit impressed me not less than before; it is such a type of human beings, struggling with an inextricable trouble, and entangled in a complication which they cannot free themselves from by their own efforts, and out of which Heaven alone can help them. It was a most powerful mind, and one capable of reducing a complex idea to unity, that imagined this ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... sentence are taken care of by the good sense of the reader. Do not sprinkle commas when the sentence is moving along freely with no complication ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever

... lawyer as a flash of most embarrassing light that possibly there was some complication of a dangerous and tender kind between Sir Edmund and his cousin. He could not dwell on such a notion now—it might be absolute nonsense, but it made him ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward

... Falconer family. Even they who are used to the ennui subsequent to dissipation, even they who have experienced the vicissitudes of coquetry, the mortifications of rivalship, and the despair of disappointed vanity, can scarcely conceive the complication of disagreeable ideas and emotions with which Miss Georgiana Falconer awoke the morning after the ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth

... Another international complication had arisen with Austria. On June 21, Martin Koszta, a Hungarian refugee and would-be American citizen, travelling under a United States passport, was arrested by the Austrian consul at Smyrna. Captain Ingraham ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson

... world you like, Charles, from a courtly General to a thrusting Loot in charge of some overwhelmingly important department or other, but do not be a Camp Commandant. As there is no terrible complication which may not occur in the life of such, so there is no bitter irony which may not follow all. The early afternoon of April 6th found the C.C. on the site of the now camp, surrounded by confusion and an angry crowd of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 2, 1917 • Various

... clearness of his speech had enabled him to use it with good effect in his negotiations with the Porte. 'Your eloquent words, the authority of your name, and the consideration that attaches to your character, have already contributed much and will contribute more still to hinder the darkening and complication of a question of itself perfectly clear and simple, and to avoid the troubling of the relations between two countries of which it is the natural mission to hold aloft together the flag of ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... start. A child! Jenny's child! Silver Cloud's grandchild! This was a complication he had not thought of. No! It was too late to tell his secret now. He only nodded his head abstractedly and said coldly, "I dare say he ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte

... but the same air is "sweet and wholesome" to the poet who gave being to Macbeth. The meridian of Shakespeare's power was reached when he created Othello, Macbeth, and Lear, complex personalities, representing the conflict and complication of the mightiest passions in colossal forms of human character, and whose understandings and imaginations, whose perceptions of nature and human life, and whose weightiest utterances of moral wisdom, are all thoroughly subjective and individualized. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various

... no sign that there was any complication in his affair with Mary Nestor, and of course Ned did not tell anything of ...
— Tom Swift in the Land of Wonders - or, The Underground Search for the Idol of Gold • Victor Appleton

... problems typical of the first step, the commander normally sets down the general plan of his immediate superior for the employment of the latter's entire force. When the linking of objective to objective, echelon by echelon, has involved no complication, the immediate superior's general plan will be a sufficient indication of the purpose for which the commander is ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College

... his own pacific views; and it is the possibility of such a contest occurring in France which renders the question so very delicate and difficult, and makes the issue dependent on contingencies which no sagacity can foresee or provide for. Out of this complication Palmerston's wonderful luck may possibly extricate him, though it must be owned that he is playing a very ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... anybody that Emma may have foreseen just this complication and quietly got rid of it first?" suggested Mrs. Dennis, the really practical member of our group, adding, "That's how I'd have served you ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather

... commanded by lieutenant-colonels, British authorities refused to exchange a captured Continental colonel for one of their lieutenant-colonels in the hands of the Americans. This complication caused the Continental Congress to cease promoting lieutenant-colonels to colonels, and so Marion remained as lieutenant-colonel of the Second Regiment, South Carolina Line, Continental Establishment, until mustered out of the service ...
— A Sketch of the Life of Brig. Gen. Francis Marion • William Dobein James

... Here was a new complication. Nino had certainly not contemplated setting up for an Italian teacher to all the world when he undertook ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford

... shapes his material as little as possible. The intrusion of a new force into a given setting, as in Lonely Lives, is as violent an interference with the sober course of things as he admits. From his noblest successes, The Weavers, Drayman Henschel, Michael Kramer, the artifice of complication is wholly absent. ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann

... there is a complication of national jealousy, suggesting the mastiff and the poodle. A perpetual war rages about flags. English craft may carry their colours as far up stream as Coniquet Island; beyond this point they must either hoist a French ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... its execution. If I am to exert myself for any object, it must in some way or other be my object. In the accomplishment of such or such designs I must at the same time find my satisfaction; although the purpose for which I exert myself includes a complication of results, many of which have no interest for me. This is the absolute right of personal existence—to find itself satisfied in its activity and labor. If men are to interest themselves for anything, they must, so to speak, have part of their existence involved ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... way through the complication of narrow streets, which perplex that portion of the city, a carriage passed him. It was driven rapidly, but not too fast for the light of a gas-lamp to flare upon a face within—especially as it was bent forward, appearing to recognize him, while a beckoning hand was protruded ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... which Servia and Greece were responsible there was an added complication arising from the attitude of Roumania. That kingdom—which had taken no active part in the late war, but which had secretly nursed a boundary grievance against Bulgaria dating back from the War of Liberation, when Russia ...
— Bulgaria • Frank Fox

... come against the slope if the area were sunk step by step below the sea level—in other words, each contour line marks the intersection of a horizontal plane with the elevation of the country. Practice on this somewhat difficult task will soon give the student some idea as to the complication of the surface of a region, and afford him the basis for a better understanding of what geography means than all the reading he can do will effect. It is most desirable that training such as has been described should be a part of our ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

... enveloping, vicious misfortune; to be beaten out of life by it, and at the same time to gain that monument out yonder and one's niche as hero by the grim device of an enemy's satire; by the acting of a scene that one would never have taken part in if one had realized it, is beyond any complication of tragedy known to ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post

... Meanwhile another complication had arisen. The people to whom the widow Schmittheimer had rented the lower part of the house declined to vacate the premises unless we paid them a bonus of fifteen dollars. Alice indignantly protested that we had no fifteen dollars to throw ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field

... it was certain that Peregrine Oakshott was the plague of the Close, where his father, an ex-officer of the Parliamentary army, had unwillingly hired a house for the winter, for the sake of medical treatment for his wife, a sufferer from a complication of ailments. Oakwood, his home, was about five miles from Dr. Woodford's living of Portchester, and as the families would thus be country neighbours, Mrs. Woodford thought it well to begin the acquaintance ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Dick having forced Fortune to stand and deliver, he had been held up himself, and made to give hostages to the enemy. That is, as his letter disclosed, he was on the point of pegging out with a complication of disorders that even whiskey had failed to check. All that his thirty years of prospecting had netted him was one daughter, nineteen years old, as per invoice, whom he was shipping East, charges prepaid, for Jerome to clothe, feed, educate, comfort, and cherish ...
— Options • O. Henry

... the memory of his wife faded into insignificance. But there was no mere retrospect in the considering of Essie; very much alive she presented, outside the Penny iron, the one serious preoccupation, complication, ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... this anecdote, describes his disorder as an acrid humour, distilling itself on his nerves, and baffling the skill of his physicians; the sciatica, rheumatism, in a word, a complication of maladies attacked him, sometimes successively, sometimes together, and made of our poor Abbe a sad spectacle. He thus describes himself in one of his letters; and who could be in ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... has been occasioned by a realization of the frequency of septic abortion, the most significant indication of which is the number of women who lose their lives as the result of this complication. ...
— Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Various Aspects of the Problem of Abortion in New Zealand • David G. McMillan

... of Perry's evening, the ultimate chance on which he risked his fortunes. He rose and looked first at Betty, where she sat weakly, aghast at this new complication, and then at the individual who swayed from side to side on his ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... for Contador, and the omission of the words "Duc d'Uzeda," which can alone set right a flagrant anachronism—if we consider the effect of all these circumstances, we shall look in vain for any reason to doubt the result which such a complication ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various

... add, that this complication of disorders completely deprived poor Mrs. Tibbs of all her inmates, except the one whom she could have best spared—her husband. That wretched little man returned home, on the day of the wedding, in a state of partial intoxication; and, under the influence of wine, excitement, and ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... at noon, I found myself 25 minutes to the northward of my reckoning; whether occasioned by bad steerage, a bad account, or a current, I could not determine; but was apt to judge it might be a complication of all; for I could not think it was wholly the current, the land here lying east-by-south, and west-by-north, or a little more northerly and southerly. We had kept so nigh as to see it, and at farthest had not been above twenty leagues from it, but sometimes ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton

... without bitterness. Although there had indeed been bitterness in his soul, it passed away in the atmosphere of Mr. Bentley's house. The process now taking place in him was the same complication of negative and positive currents he had felt in her presence before. He was surprised to find that his old antipathy to agnosticism held over, in her case; to discover, now, that he was by no means, as yet, in view of ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... a little pang of conscience, and seemed suddenly to become conscious of a new coil, tightening about her, in this wretched complication. Unable to see her way, ignorant of her sister's motives, urged on by the idea that Sybil's happiness was involved, she was now charged with want of feeling, and called upon for a direct ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams

... that every relapse and every complication that have ever occurred in any disease being treated by any physician from the top to the bottom of the profession' even if the treatment was the very best that could be furnished by the highest skill in any of the ...
— Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment • John H. Tilden, M.D.

... The whole complication touched him too nearly, hurt and bewildered him too bitterly, for cool consideration. He only saw that which had been his pride converted into a reproach, a two-edged sword barring the way to marriage: and in the bitterness ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver

... coming sorrow occurs in the Diary; but in his report, sent home a month later, and dated August 4, 1885, he wrote: 'Mrs. Gilmour is very ill, and now very weak. I fear all hope of her recovery is taken away. Her trouble is a run-down, but the serious complication is her lungs. We are at the hills in a temple with another family, the Childs. Mrs. Child came out in the same ship with Mrs. Gilmour, when, as Miss Prankard, she came first to China. Mrs. Child renders invaluable service to ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour

... two companions about this new danger. There was no point in dampening the energy they were putting into our arduous rescue work. But when I returned on board, I mentioned this serious complication to ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne

... in Godfrey being deep in thought. It seemed to him that the island was now under the empire of some occult power. The reappearance of this fire, the presence of wild animals, did not all this denote some extraordinary complication? ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne

... excitedly. "Advise! This is what I advise—to let Ramona and Alessandro marry. I can't help all you say about our obligations. I dare say you're right; and it's a cursedly awkward complication for us, anyhow, the way ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson

... turn which threatened to involve England in a dangerous complication. The peace between the great powers had not been concluded: the truce they had made was broken off at the instigation of the Pope; hostilities began again, and Philip II returned to England for a couple of months to induce her to join in the war against France. The diplomatic ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke

... a complication Eloquent had not foreseen. Among his father's friends cards were regarded as the Devil's Books, and he did not know the ace of spades from the knave ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker

... slight; the narrative drags painfully in some parts, and in other parts the authoress has recourse to very violent expedients, as where she brings in the "startling Adelphi stage-effect" of the flood to drown Tom and Maggie, in order to escape from the unmanageable complication of her story. Both in "Adam Bede" and in "The Mill on the Floss" the chief interest is over long before the tale comes to an end; and in looking at the whole series together we see something of repetition. ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... Another complication arises in the variation in visibility or luminosity of energy of wave-lengths within the range of the visible spectrum. Obviously, no amount of energy incapable of exciting the sensation of light will be visible. The energy ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh

... found in Heitman Michael his master. Jurgen had never reckoned upon that, and he considered it annoying. If Heitman Michael perforated Jurgen the future would be altered, certainly, but not quite as Jurgen had decided it ought to be remodeled. So this unlooked-for complication seemed preposterous, and Jurgen began to be irritated by the suspicion that he was getting himself ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell

... he had little thought of peril and adventures to come. The time, the girl and the place, were all at hand, and he plunged headlong into a complication that kept him for weeks in Chicago, strongly inclined to stay permanently, yet reluctant to settle in a city so little to his liking, when the great out-doors was calling ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony

... is a complication rarely seen except in children under 3 years of age. They have a peculiar histologic structure in this region, as is shown by Logan Turner. Even at the predisposing age subglottic edema is a very unusual sequence ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson

... and essential incident of most human lives; it had been a cataclysmic thing with him. Probably it would be impossible for even the girl ever fully to understand. And he needed to be alone to gather strength and mental calmness for the meeting of the problem ahead of him, a complication so unexpected that the very foundation of that stoic equanimity which the mountains had bred in him had suffered a temporary upsetting. His happiness was almost an insanity. The dream wherein he had wandered with a spirit of the dead ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood

... against the perversity of reason—the indifference of power—the complication of folly—and the ascendancy of turpitude, which, separately or conjointly, continue to produce circumstances so cruel and preposterous! Let it be recorded, said I, to the eternal disgrace of all modern statesmen, of many hundreds of ambitious legislators, and of our scientific ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips

... was fixed principally upon the east in making provision for the enormous influx expected from Europe and America, an unexpected complication was brought about in the west by means of our allies, the Masai. In order to find a new field for their love of adventure, which they could no longer bring into play against the Swahili, Wa-Duruma, Wa-Teita, Wa-Taveta, and Wa-Kikuyu, whom we had made their allies, the Masai fell upon the Nangi ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka

... interest was tinctured with an essence of the enthusiastic, which to other eyes than his own—even to her eyes—might seem to hold a stronger personal note, he did not admit to himself. That would have meant another complication and a fresh alarm, so if the idea came he laughed it away as preposterous. But in a fashion those were very good days. He was ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck

... intercourse is to be as far as possible confined to persons legally married; those departing from this rule are, at all events, to observe secresy. The slaves are not to be of the same race as the masters. As regards punishment, there is a great complication, owing to the author's theory that wickedness is not properly voluntary. Much of the harm done by persons to others is unintentional or involuntary, and is to be made good by reparation. For the loss of balance or self-control, making the essence ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain

... being guided throughout its development to maturity by an unconscious memory, Dr. Creighton says that "Professor Bain calls reproduction the acme of organic complication." "I should prefer to say," he adds, "the acme of organic implication; for the reason that the sperm and germ elements are perfectly simple, having nothing in their form or structure to show for the ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler

... request, the Georgia bill came up. So did Senator SCHURZ. He approved of almost all propositions which tended to complicate questions, because the more complication the more offices, the more offices the more patronage, and the more patronage the more fees. He knew that it was an alluring precedent which was offered them in the action of the legislature of Georgia, retaining itself for double the term it was elected to serve. But it was ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 2, April 9, 1870 • Various

... I am going to meet my fate to-night as you met yours in another way. Was there ever such a complication in the life-affairs of ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith

... Yes. He owned to me in the parlour of my farmhouse that he had been very much concerned then at the possible consequences. But as he was making this artless confession I said to myself that, whatever consequences and complications he might have imagined, the complication from which he was suffering now could never, never have presented itself to his mind. Slow but sure (for I conceive that the Book of Destiny has been written up from the beginning to the last page) it had been coming for something like six years—and now it had come. The complication was there! ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad

... no break in this series of steps in molecular complication, and I am unable to understand why the language which is applicable to any one term of the series may not be used to any of the others. We think fit to call different kinds of matter carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley

... volume of annotations, in which, that nothing might be lost of his own notes, he has included many things not directly relating to Rabelais, is full of observations and curious remarks which are very useful additions to Le Duchat. One fault to be found with him is his further complication of the spelling. This he did in accordance with a principle that the words should be referred to their real etymology. Learned though he was, Rabelais had little care to be so etymological, and it is not his theories but those of the modern ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... for a moment, and his tone altered as he said: "Senora, there seems to be an unhappy complication in our way, and this we must remove. First, may I ask, are you a friend to ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach

... little rivalries between her two big sons to which the petty events of their life in common gave rise day by day. Another little circumstance, too, just now disturbed her peace of mind, and she was in fear of some complication; for in the course of the winter, while her boys were finishing their studies, each in his own line, she had made the acquaintance of a neighbor, Mme. Rosemilly, the widow of a captain of a merchantman who had died at sea two years before. The young widow—quite young, only three-and-twenty—a ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant

... the Prince continued, 'what has come of it? Taxes, army, cannon - why, it's like a box of lead soldiers! And the people sick at the folly of it, and fired with the injustice! And war, too - I hear of war - war in this teapot! What a complication of absurdity and disgrace! And when the inevitable end arrives - the revolution - who will be to blame in the sight of God, who will be gibbeted in public opinion? I! ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson

... legions were left in Egypt to protect them if they were faithful, or to coerce them if they misconducted themselves. The Alexandrian episode was over, and Caesar sailed for Syria. His long detention over a complication so insignificant had been unfortunate in many ways. Scipio and Cato, with the other fugitives from Pharsalia, had rallied in Africa, under the protection of Juba. Italy was in confusion. The popular party, now absolutely ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude

... being considered—what the princess actually declared him to be—a rude fellow and a bore. But the danger of their profligacy was a more delicate and ominous text for censure. In the peril of any public exposure was involved an additional complication of guilt. Perez was not the only favoured votary of the versatile siren. His rival, or rather his partner, was—Philip of Spain! The revelation of promiscuous worship, threatened by Escovedo, sounded like a knell to Perez ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various

... transitory, because life has not yet accumulated and presented itself in forms which recommend themselves to literature. The wars must come, the clamorous problems must arise, the new types of character must be evolved, the picturesque social complication must develop, a life must come, and then will be the true time for a literature.... Literature grows feeble and conceited unless it ever recognizes the priority and superiority of life, and stands in genuine awe before the greatness of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... She had never thought of this. That she herself suffered she knew; that the prince suffered she also knew; but that this unknown girl, whatever her folly, lay smitten to the heart brought a new complication into her ideas. "Even if he ever did come to—" she held up her unspoken sentence there—"I'd ha' stolen him ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King

... but things are much more mixed up than that. In some ways I rather wish we had Sylvia Courtney with us. She's president of our Browning Society and tremendously good at every kind of complication. What I feel is that we're rather like those boys in the poem who went out to catch a hare and came on a lion unaware. I haven't got the passage quite right but ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham

... was from Hartwell and was official. Briefly, it expressed regret over Firmstone's serious accident, satisfaction at his recovery, and congratulations that a serious complication had been met and obviated with, all things considered, so slight a loss to the company. ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason

... assure. And the dividing line is not always marked and clear. He knew that the issue of taking her, even as his wife, was made difficult by the senseless opposition of her father. The opinion of the world brought up still another complication. Supposing he should take her openly, what would the world say? She was a significant type emotionally, that he knew. There was something there—artistically, temperamentally, which was far and beyond ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser

... the Digestion, which we have just gone through, goes on quietly from one end to the other without any complication. ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace

... This complication in the arrangement of the apparatus has no importance as regards those tuning forks the number of whose vibrations exceeds a hundred per second, for in such a case these are given an amplitude of a few millimeters only; but it would be of importance with ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882 • Various

... conceived by hearing it repeated; it is too flagrant to be extenuated, and too gross to admit exaggerations: to oblige a man to make oath against himself, to subject himself by his own voice to penalties and hardships, is at once cruel and ridiculous, a wild complication of ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson

... blood-vessel proved to have been the immediate cause of death, but ossification of some of the vessels near the heart had begun years before and a complication of disorders had been gradually setting in. The King's mode of life was not one which gave him any chance of rallying against such disorders. He was reckless in his food and drink, and had long been in the way of cheering and stimulating himself by glasses of cherry-brandy taken at any moment ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy

... the doctor coming many times and shaking his head doubtfully over questions about his patient. "The throat is much better—the danger from that is quite past; but—the fever does not go down, and I can't quite tell what the complication is. He is too young to have had a mental shock, so I can only assume that the too great activity of his mind is now against us. I understand that he has ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten

... inhabitants of the city. All these scenes occurring in the midst of the darkness of the night, the people having been awakened from their sleep by a sudden alarm, were attended, of course, by a dreadful panic and confusion; and, to complete the complication of horrors, Areus, with the Spartan army under his command, who had followed Pyrrhus in his approach to the city, and had been closely watching his movements ever since he had arrived, now burst in ...
— Pyrrhus - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... I not hear you say," asked the gentleman, who had before now been made the recipient of the disastrous complication of the story, "that the girl was well quit of the jackanapes, for she could not have a worse bargain made for her than she had nearly blundered into on ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler

... in compelling the French to enter into negotiations with a government which they refused to recognize had already placed them in a more than awkward position. By this new complication they found themselves in the ambiguous attitude of treating with this government while shielding with their flag the outlawed representatives of a defeated rival party who had fought it as illegitimate. Not only did this exasperate the Liberals and arouse the ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson

... mean to make a determined resistance?" said Nicholas. "Recollect that you are resisting the law. I wish I could induce you to resort to the safer expedient of flight. This affair is already dark and perplexed enough, and does not require further complication. Find any place of concealment, no matter where, till some arrangement can be ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... child is suffering with an affection of the lungs or throat, it never cries loudly or continuously. A distress in breathing causes a sort of subdued cry and low moaning. If there is a slight cough it is generally a sign that there is some complication with ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols

... events. If I have the misfortune to be under that influence, so has he. If it has a little twisted me, it may have a little twisted him too. I don't say that he is not an honourable man, out of all this complication and uncertainty; I am sure he is. But it taints everybody. You know it taints everybody. You have heard him say so fifty times. Then why should ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... For myself, I must avow that, in all my reading—and I have read Thucydides and have studied and admired the master statesmen of the world—for solidity of reason, force of sagacity, and wisdom of conclusion under a complication of difficult circumstances, no body of men can stand in preference to the general Congress of Philadelphia. The histories of Greece and Rome give us nothing like it, and all attempts to impress servitude on such a mighty continental people must ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... danger of adventures and gales, and it is only now and then that there appears on the face of facts a sinister violence of intention—that indefinable something which forces it upon the mind and the heart of a man, that this complication of accidents or these elemental furies are coming at him with a purpose of malice, with a strength beyond control, with an unbridled cruelty that means to tear out of him his hope and his fear, the pain of his fatigue and his longing for rest: which means to smash, to destroy, to ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad

... more movements spiritualizes itself into consciousness. But as soon as we compare the structure of the spinal cord with that of the brain, we are bound to infer that there is merely a difference of complication, and not a difference in kind, between the functions of the brain and the reflex activity of the medullary system."[Footnote: Matter and Memory, pp. 17- 18 (Fr. p. 15).] The brain is no more than a kind of central telephone exchange, its office is to allow ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn

... was informed of this unexpected complication, and of the discovery made by Fragoso that Torres was an old captain of the woods belonging to the gang who were employed about ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne

... has placed them before us with remarkable clearness; and I must endeavour, as far as I can in my own fashion, to give you some notion of how they work. We shall find it easiest to take a simple case, and one as free as possible from every kind of complication. ...
— The Conditions Of Existence As Affecting The Perpetuation Of Living Beings • Thomas H. Huxley

... oath to grant a kind and honorable reception in her dominions to himself, his wife and children, should any untoward event compel them to quit their country. But that never-failing caution which, in all the complication and diversity of her connexions with foreign powers, withheld Elizabeth from ever, in a single instance, committing herself beyond the power of retreat, caused her to waive compliance with the extraordinary proposal of Ivan. She entertained his ambassadors however with ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... away and preparing to run before the wind to escape any such hideous complication, he was abruptly brought up all-standing by the information that the colour of the lady's soul was pink. She knew this to be a fact beyond dispute, because she never could do her best work save when garbed exclusively in pink. She enumerated several articles ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance

... lean but very slightly on the extravagance and extreme apparent singularity of their pretensions. I might have omitted them, but on the whole it seemed more just to the claims of my argument to suggest the vast complication of improbabilities involved in the statements enumerated. Every one must of course judge for himself as to the weight of these objections, which are by no means brought forward as a proof of the extravagance of ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... there was in my brain some strange insistent compulsion, as though some one were forcing me to remember something that I had forgotten, or as though again some one were fore-warning me of some peril or complication. I had, very distinctly, that impression, so familiar to all of us, of passing through some experience already known: I had seen already the dim lamp, the square patch of evening sky, Nikitin, Andrey Vassilievitch.... I knew that in a moment Trenchard.... ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole

... Patriotism of Mais? The tricolor Municipal returns without effect: your Sansculottic rills continue flowing, combining into brooks: towards noontide, led by tall Santerre in blue uniform, by tall Saint-Huruge in white hat, it moves Westward, a respectable river, or complication ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... only expresses, just as in the animals and other organic beings, her own intention. It is true the intention of nature may go here much further, and the means she employs to reach her end may offer in their combination more of art and complication; but all that ought to be placed solely to the account of nature, and can confer no advantage ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... you no," she repeated. "Who knows but my husband may be watching me! What a complication for my divorce if he should surprise us ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... describe his life at Belgrave House to Fay. She was a shrewd little person in her way, and her quaint remarks were very refreshing. He even thought that he would confide in her after a fashion, and hint at a certain difficulty and complication that had come into his life; he was rather desirous of knowing her opinion; but he began in such a roundabout fashion that Fay was quite perplexed. She understood at last that he was talking about ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... members stayed in the Great Chamber. I was informed that this was one trick among others concerted to ruin me, and, telling the Duc d'Orleans of it, he said that if the old buffoon, the Keeper of the Seals, was concerned in such a complication of folly and knavery, he deserved to be hanged by the side of Mazarin. But the sequel showed that I was not out in ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... with essentials; its triumphs are more perfect, if less profitable, in a worldly sense. There is, in short, more truth in its working for a historian to detect and to show. It is a thing of infinite complication and suggestion. None of these escapes the art of Mr. Henry James. He has mastered the country, his domain, not wild indeed, but full of romantic glimpses, of deep shadows and sunny places. There are no secrets left within his range. ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad

... and, secondly, because he had escaped without telling her of the sundered lives of Emmy and himself. By the time he went to bed, however, having pondered for some hours over the interdependent relations between Zora, Sypher, Emmy, and himself, he had entangled his mind into a condition of intricate complication. He longed to continue to sun himself in the presence of his divinity. But being a married man (no matter how nominally), too much sunning appeared reprehensible. He had also arranged for the sunning of Clem Sypher, and was aware of the indelicacy of two going through this delicious process at the ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke

... delicate health for some years, and now a complication of disorders denied all hope of recovery. She sung a hymn of triumph until the struggles of death interrupted her. Mrs. Graham displayed great firmness of mind during the last trying scene, and when the spirit of her daughter ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham

... self-perpetuation of society. Men have always tried, and are trying still, to solve the problem of well living in this respect. The men, the women, the children, and the society have joint and several interests, and the complication is great. At the present time population, race, marriage, childbirth, and the education of children present us our greatest problems and most unfathomable mysteries. All the contradictory usages ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... weapon makes things any clearer to Walt, but rather add to their complication. With increased ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid

... he intended to give it not in a limited proportion, but in the largest measure. But when they consider the nature of wars, that they militate against the law of preservation, that they include the commission of a multitude of crimes, that they produce a complication of misery and suffering to man, they conceive they would not be doing their duty as Christians, or giving to Christianity its due honour, if they were not to admit the larger meaning of the words in question as well as the less. Reason too, pleads for the one as ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson

... grateful task before her! She will raise up the fallen one, set him on his feet, make him happy.... It is not Ivanov she loves, but this task. Argenton in Daudet's book says, "Life is not a novel." Sasha does not know this. She does not know that for Ivanov love is only a fresh complication, an extra stab in the back. And what comes of it? She struggles with him for a whole year and, instead of being raised, ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov

... be so in the greatest diversity and complication of the reality is proved in a very simple manner. All that takes place in War takes place through armed forces, but where the forces of War, i.e., armed men, are applied, there the idea of fighting must of necessity be ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz

... its way to print came through the New York Sun and Will H. Low, to whom Mr. Whistler sought to convey a piece of his mind via the newspaper channel, under date of May 8th, 1903, This grew out of a complication in which Mr. Low became involved with the Hanging Committee of the Society of American Artists over the placing in its exhibition of "Rosa Corder" and two marines by Whistler borrowed from Charles L. Freer, of Detroit, on the condition that they be hung "in a ...
— Whistler Stories • Don C. Seitz

... by the Infinite. The plank beneath sways it to and fro; it is moved by the ship; the sea lifts the ship, and the wind keeps the sea in motion. This destroyer is a toy. Its terrible vitality is fed by the ship, the waves, and the wind, each lending its aid. What is to be done with this complication? How fetter this monstrous mechanism of shipwreck? How foresee its coming and goings, its recoils, its halts, its shocks? Any one of those blows may stave in the side of the vessel. How can one guard against these terrible gyrations? One has to do with a projectile ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various

... and duties and suchlike, which is the mask men use to cover what will not bear considering. Let me write of it no more. The open wickedness of the world we live in is preferable to hypocrisy and cringing. I will rather laugh with others than be a laughing-stock. I sicken at this complication of folly and falsity. I go to the Bath shortly, and look for change and pleasure there, though Mr Wortley speaks of passing through on his way to Bristol, I know not for what. Lord Hervey is resolved to come there, though I fear it will not please his lady, who ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington

... know that if it did not swallow romance it should have done so. I don't suppose I could ever think as much of any woman as I do of you, and I know that no woman could make my house so bright and cheerful. I was afraid of any complication that might hurt my prospects as a physician, my standing in the opinion of a careful and discriminating public; so, influenced by that sense of self-protection, I broke our engagement. But now I beg of you to ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read

... interest is absent from his dramas; but it is subordinate to others, and is so interwoven with them that we are rarely conscious of it apart, and rarely feel in any great strength the half-intellectual, half-nervous excitement of following an ingenious complication. What we do feel strongly, as a tragedy advances to its close, is that the calamities and catastrophe follow inevitably from the deeds of men, and that the main source of these deeds is character. The dictum that, with Shakespeare, 'character is destiny' is no doubt an exaggeration, and one that ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... points insisted on or contested; these have not gone back far enough; they have not touched the central fact, to set it forth in its force and finality. The fact is original and inherent, behind and at the root of the entire matter, with all its complication and circumstance. We have to ask a question to which it is the answer, and whose answer is that of the whole ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.

... "a peculiar complication of the social problem in America was the existence in the Southern States of many millions of recently freed negro slaves, but partially as yet equal to the responsibility of freedom. I should be interested to know just how the new order adapted itself to the condition of ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy

... envoy of The Tatler—he had gone to lie down in very truth. He had felt a pang of his old pain, the result of the agitation wrought in him by this forcing open of a new period. His old programme, his old ideal even had to be changed. Say what one would, success was a complication and recognition had to be reciprocal. The monastic life, the pious illumination of the missal in the convent cell were things of the gathered past. It didn't engender despair, but at least it required adjustment. Before I left him on that occasion ...
— The Death of the Lion • Henry James

... nez. There was no mistaking her disapproval. I had seen it before. We were Americans and she was Mrs. Portheris of Half Moon-street, Piccadilly. I saw that she recognised me and was trying to make up her mind whether, in view of the complication of Mr. Dod, to bow or not. But the woman who hesitates is lost, even though she be a British matron of massive prejudices and a figure to match. In Mrs. Portheris's instant of vacillation, I stepped forward with such enthusiasm that she was compelled to take down her pince nez and hold out ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan

... safe to say that no one can give a valid reason for the existence of male and female, and that while this elaboration of the reproducing individual into two parts may be necessary for some purpose, at first glance it appears like an interesting but mysterious complication. ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson

... There is a complication of interests at present springing up in Europe, which is difficult to fathom. Just now it seems as if the Polish insurrection were being fomented by Austria, at French instigation, in order that the hands of Russia may be tied, so that in case of war with ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... A new complication arose when they reached the rustic inn where Bob and the carriage had been left. One of Bob's shoes was found to be loose, and it was necessary to get it fixed before ...
— Miss Merivale's Mistake • Mrs. Henry Clarke

... could hardly believe such a tale was true—of his Una's father, as he still thought Vivian Callingham. But a strange chance happened to reveal a still further complication. It came out in this way. I had given Jack a recent photograph of myself in fancy dress, which hung up over his mantelpiece. As the weather-worn visitor's eye fell on the picture, he ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen

... moment they had no more to say. All around them there was silence, born of Mrs. Viveash and her brooding, of young Reggy's trouble with Miss Probyn, and of some queer triangular complication in the converse of Brocklebank, Lady Paignton, and Mr. Higginson. In that moment and that pause Straker thought again of Miss Tarrant. It was, he said to himself, the pause and the moment for her appearance. And (so right was he in his ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair

... of taking his place. I saw I had been a simpleton. Up to that day I had no suspicion that Mr. De Saussure liked me more than would be convenient; and indeed I had no fear now of his heart being broken; but I saw that his unlucky suit made a complication in my affairs that they certainly did not need. - Mamma approved it; yes, I had no doubt of that. I knew of a plantation of his, Briery Bank, only a few miles distant from Magnolia and reputed to be very rich in its incomings. And, no doubt Mr. ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell

... two boys, rescued from such a complication of perils, pass their first moments in getting a gasp ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng

... has left this interesting exposition of his principles and policy: "In the diplomatic complication which agitated Europe, I saw a brilliant opportunity of exercising and loudly proclaiming a foreign policy, extremely new and bold in fact, though moderate in appearance, the only foreign policy which in 1840 suited the peculiar ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... exalt, only in the description thereof you seem more ingenious than they: for whereas they erroneously call it Christ, the light of Christ, faith, grace, hope, the spirit, the word that is nigh, &c. you give it the names due thereto, viz. A complexion or complication and combination of all the virtue of the soul, the human nature, the dictates of it, the principles of reason, such as are self-evident, than which there is nothing mankind doth naturally assent to (p. 6-11). Only here, as I have said, you glorify your errors also, with ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... an auxiliary engine, of the Porter-Allen type, for driving the pumps and man engines when the main engine is not working. It makes a 160 revolutions per minute, the same as the rope wheels The seeming complication of the arrangement is due to the fact that it had to be adapted to existing works, for increased depths, and put in without interfering with the daily operation ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 492, June 6, 1885 • Various

... or disprove that. He believes it, and you know that it is not to his interest to believe it. There is nothing very joyful about such a complication—a poor, little foundling thrusting himself upon one like a thunderbolt, without warning, and upon the very evening of one's marriage. But Jean believes that the child is his, and I—and all of us—must we not accept it as he has accepted it, as the child's father has ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant

... over the water, my whole attention would be drawn to the shadows under the banyan tree. Some of its aerial roots, creeping down along its trunk, had formed a dark complication of coils at its base. It seemed as if into this mysterious region the laws of the universe had not found entrance; as if some old-world dream-land had escaped the divine vigilance and lingered on into ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore

... enchantment. The power of movement is as mysterious as the power of thought. Memory, and dreams that are the indistinct echoes of dead memories are alike inexplicable. Universal harmony springs from infinite complication. The momentum of every step we take in our dwelling contributes in part to the order of the Universe. We are connected by ties of thought, and even of matter and its forces, with the whole boundless Universe and all the past and coming ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... make friends with the chief himself. That's the best plan. If he is responsive, my family will be spared the necessity of receiving one of my ears by mail with a delicate request for $20,000 ransom, accompanied by a P. S. enclosing the other ear to emphasize the importance of the complication." ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs

... the complication I spoke of. But it need not hinder you girls from going to spend the winter in camp—or at ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Winter Camp - Glorious Days on Skates and Ice Boats • Laura Lee Hope

... body, the trade of which was auxiliary to its sovereignty, was effected by degrees and under disguise. It is not strange, therefore, that the mercantile and political transactions of this great corporation should be entangled together in inextricable complication. The commercial investments have been purchased out of the revenues of the empire. The expenses of war and government have been defrayed out of the profits of the trade. Commerce and territory have contributed to the improvement of the same spot of ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... its general features, but the means provided for its execution were found insufficient. A further complication arose from the fact that a few months later Mr Mindeleff severed his connection with the Bureau of Ethnology and his knowledge became no ...
— The Repair Of Casa Grande Ruin, Arizona, in 1891 • Cosmos Mindeleff

... the complication involving British Columbia comes the opening of Panama, turning the Pacific Ocean into a parade ground for the world's fleets both merchantmen and war. Commercially Panama simply turns British Columbia into a front door, instead of a back door. ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut

... had quelled emotion into silence, and could preserve the limits laid down by duty and convention. But M. de Wimphen was announced, and as he came in the two friends exchanged glances. Both felt the difficulties of this fresh complication. It was impossible to enter into explanations with M. de Wimphen, and Louisa could not think of any sufficient pretext for asking to ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac

... not to send for the consul. He offered to release Uncle John if he would give the cabman a good lira in exchange for the bad one. The official fee would be five lira—or say three lira—or even two. Uncle John flatly refused to pay anything to anybody. Only war could settle this international complication—bloody and bitter war. The consul must cable at once for war-ships and troops. He would insist upon it. ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne

... romance as he came on toward her—potential lovers' quarrels, separation, the irate parent, a girl's pride, her foolish, solemn effort to fight him back for fear that she had led him on too far, a man's uneasy timidity, the complication of their circumstances—the memory of them all made little snares for his feet, as he came on toward her. But he came on, growing bolder as he came, deciding what to do as he came. It was a crisis for romance as he faced her across the old vine-covered stump. ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young

... voyage at sea, as given by an Oriental, is usually the most deplorable of narratives—filled with exaggerated fears, the horrors of sea-sickness, and endless lamentations of the evil fate of the writer, in being exposed to such a complication of miseries. Of the wailing of Mirza Abu-Talib we have already given a specimen: and the Persian princes, even in the luxurious comfort of an English Mediterranean steamer, seem to have fared but little ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various

... inflammation of the Urinary Organs often occur in men, either alone or as a complication of Seminal Disease and Weakness. The Seminal Vesicles lie just behind the bladder, while the Seminal Ducts pass through the body of the Prostate Gland, and open into the urethra (or urine channel) upon its surface (see Fig. 5). Hence, any inflammation or congestion ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown

... the place of interminable details that would be tedious and tame. What best merits attention at present is the general situation, and the strange complication of feeling that arose from it. History itself, though a far more daring story-teller than romance, presents few things so strange(1) as the footing on which Gerard and Margaret now lived for many years. United by present affection, past familiarity, and a marriage irregular ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade



Words linked to "Complication" :   disease, hinderance, complexity, ramification, hindrance, tortuousness, complicate, knottiness, development, complexness, interference, state of affairs, situation, complicatedness



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