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Depress   /dɪprˈɛs/   Listen
Depress

verb
(past & past part. depressed; pres. part. depressing)
1.
Lower someone's spirits; make downhearted.  Synonyms: cast down, deject, demoralise, demoralize, dismay, dispirit, get down.  "The bad state of her child's health demoralizes her"
2.
Lower (prices or markets).
3.
Cause to drop or sink.  Synonym: lower.
4.
Press down.  Synonym: press down.
5.
Lessen the activity or force of.



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"Depress" Quotes from Famous Books



... toward the metropolis. Slowly the landscape faded. Vineyards and chicken ranches and orchards and rolling hills studded with live oaks gave place to the electric-lighted tentacles of the city. The lights blinked by at Hiram. They helped depress him, for they were a part of the modernity that he feared. Suburbs grew to a continuous stretch of lighted streets and houses. Always those lights blinked on every side. There was witchery in all of it—in the smell of the city close at hand, in the cold salt air from the bay, in the chunk-a-lunk, ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins

... efforts that Hawthorne was in Rome, and she is graphically depicted in his notebooks in her boyish cap at work in the clay. Gibson was an artist, con amore, and Miss Hosmer's joyous abandon to her art captivated his sympathy. "In my art what do I find?" he questioned; "happiness; love which does not depress me; difficulties which I do not fear; resolution which never abates; flights which carry me above the ground; ambition which tramples no one down." Master and pupil were akin in their unwearied devotion to ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting

... trotted up to a brow to inspect us. I had a fairly good shot at him and missed. This disheartened us both. Meat was the one thing we now sorely needed to save the rapidly diminishing supply of hams. Fred said nothing, but I saw by his look how this trifling accident helped to depress him. I was ready to cry with vexation. My rifle was my pride, the stag of my life - my ALTER EGO. It was never out of my hands; every day I practised at prairie dogs, at sage hens, at a mark even if there was no game. A few days before we got to Laramie I had killed, right and left, two wild ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke

... Open his pores, which have been shut up all his life. Grand thing for him. He couldn't be going on better. I was afraid that the heat would depress him, and lay him on his back: don't you see that so long as he keeps active he will not feel ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn

... wine, good wine, should do it! Upon my soul," half seriously, half humorously, securing the bottle, "you shall drink no more of it. Wine was meant to gladden the heart, not grieve it; to heighten confidence, not depress it." ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville

... this fragrance. It is distributed in the nicest proportion; neither so strong as to depress the organs, nor so faint as to elude them. We are soon cloyed at a sumptuous banquet, but this pleasure never loses its poignancy, never palls the appetite; here luxury itself is innocent; or rather, in this case, indulgence is not capable of excess. Our amusements for the forenoon ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to India; of a Shipwreck on board the Lady Castlereagh; and a Description of New South Wales • W. B. Cramp

... Patmore. You cannot read him too often or too carefully; as far as I know he is the only living poet who always strengthens and purifies; the others sometimes darken, and nearly always depress and discourage, the ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... contemplation of so worthy a theme is marred by the 'ifs' and 'buts' of controversial strife. Alas! that we cannot depress the sectional opposing interests which are but secondary to a condition of political consolidation, and elevate above these distracting and isolated evils, the great and eternal principle, Strength as it alone exists in Unity. Alas! that with the beam of suicidal measures we blind the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... columns rising up from it with their bases submerged. There is proof that at one time these ruins were fifteen or twenty feet lower than they are now, and that they have since come up again. The next earthquake may depress the whole coast again, in which case the floor of the temple will be once more deep under water; or it may raise it so as to bring the ruins all up once more, high ...
— Rollo in Naples • Jacob Abbott

... or Depress as directed!" If the carriage is fitted with a quoin, handspikemen standing between the handspikes and the side of the ship, place their handspikes on the steps of the carriage and raise the breech. As soon as the quoin is free, the 2d Captain takes hold of it with both hands and withdraws the ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN

... Hartford going ahead strong with the engine, her head was fairly pointed up the stream, and she passed by without serious injury. Deceived possibly by the report of the howitzers in her top, which were nearly on their own level, the Confederates did not depress their guns sufficiently to hit her as often as they did the ships that followed her. One killed and two wounded is her report; and one marine fell overboard, his cries for help being heard on board the other ships as they passed by, unable ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis

... on the Siboney road, he would have given Colonel Escarrio time enough to reach Santiago with the reinforcements from Manzanillo before the decisive battle, and would also have given the climate and the Cuban fever more time to sap the strength and depress the spirits of our badly equipped and improperly fed troops. The final struggle on the hills east of the city might then have had ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan

... divisions, one commanded by Decatur, and fully met expectations by capturing two enemy ships in most sanguinary, hand-to-hand fighting. Meantime the main squadron drew close in shore, so close, it is said, that the gunners of shore batteries could not depress their pieces sufficiently to score hits. All these preliminaries were watched with bated breath by the officers of the old Philadelphia from behind ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson

... say it, and more sorry because it is so. It is a pity that so lovely a gift from the Hand Divine should be so wickedly perverted. Beauty ought to inspire rather than weaken its possessor, ought to elevate rather than depress her. And it would, if woman-life was rightly appreciated, if the woman-soul was rightly taught, and the woman-heart of humanity rightly awakened to its grand capacities and duties. Woman is not alone to blame ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver

... my Dictionary. Your praise was welcome, not only because I believe it was sincere, but because praise has been very scarce. A man of your candour will be surprised when I tell you, that among all my acquaintance there were only two, who upon the publication of my book did not endeavour to depress me with threats of censure from the publick, or with objections learned from those who had learned them from my own Preface. Your's is the only letter of goodwill that I have received; though, indeed, I am promised something of ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... been in a whirl of excitement preparing my watery path as a motor-boat adventuress, and buying a dress or two to suit the part. It doesn't even depress me that Phil has selected hers with the air of acquiring a ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson

... assured security for all citizens whose enterprise may lead them beyond the border, and an end to the outrages and depredations which now dog the footsteps of the traveller, in the prairies, and arrest and depress the most advantageous commerce. Such a post need not be stronger than fifty men; twenty-five to be employed as hunters, to supply the garrison, and the residue as a defense against any hostility. Situated here upon the good lands of the Arkansas, in the midst of abundance of timber, while it ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving

... methods to things which are unlike. But in the calculation of details an ignorance was exhibited which passed the bounds of decency. Mistakes of five or six per cent are, in these complex affairs, not only to be expected but almost to be desired; they help to depress ministerial cocksureness. But in this case there was an error of 200 per cent, a circumstance which incidentally established in the English mind a pleasing legend of Irish dishonesty. The Insurance Bill was ushered in with greater prudence. The "government," ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle

... pull out choke button all the way. Advance spark lever about half way and throttle lever about one-quarter way and depress ...
— Marvel Carbureter and Heat Control - As Used on Series 691 Nash Sixes Booklet S • Anonymous

... his. It might have been the enervating influence of the mild spring air; it might have been the pressure of certain recollections which he had not yet succeeded, in the two months which had passed since the farewell dinner at Webb Atchison's, in so putting aside that they should not often depress and at times even dominate his spirit. Though he had left the old life completely behind him, and had settled into the new with all the conviction and purpose he could summon, he was subject, especially when physically weary, as to-night, ...
— The Brown Study • Grace S. Richmond

... sure, on the first face and blush of it, Durant had wondered how on earth Mrs. Fazakerly could tolerate the Colonel; but, when he came to think of it, there was no reason why she should not go a great deal farther than that. The Colonel's dullness would not depress her, she having such an eternal spring of gaiety in herself. She might even find it "soothing," like the neighboring landscape. And as she loved her laughter, it was not improbable that she loved its cause. Then she had the inestimable advantage of knowing the worst of him; her ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair

... success. The cold drizzle fell on the shelter of brush and saplings, and some of it seeped through. Now and then a drop found its way down his neck, and it felt like ice. Physically he was very miserable, and it began to depress his spirit. He hoped that Tayoga would not be long in obtaining ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler

... Timbuctoo, and leave the Soudan trade altogether. The traffic to Soudan is two-thirds in slaves or more. I knew, however, that to expect such a thing from the Turks, was all but hopeless,—their grand maxim of Government being to depress and to destroy, not to help and build up,—and I made to them the proposition chiefly with the object of diverting the odium of the accusation from myself. But yet, who does not see that the proposal is well worthy the attention of any Government that wishes to establish in Africa a legitimate ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... proceeding from their high condition; but in the poor it may be a defensative against dishonesty, and may shew a natural bravery of mind, perhaps, if properly directed, and manifested on right occasions, that the frowns of fortune cannot depress. ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson

... to his people. Lewellyn, prince of Wales, had been deeply engaged with the Mountfort faction; had entered into all their conspiracies against the crown; had frequently fought on their side; and, till the battle of Evesham, so fatal to that party, had employed every expedient to depress the royal cause, and to promote the success of the barons. In the general accommodation made with the vanquished, Lewellyn had also obtained his pardon; but as he was the most powerful, and therefore the most obnoxious vassal ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume

... come to business. Will you order one of my rods? Look at this specimen one? See: it is of the best of copper. Copper's the best conductor. Your house is low; but being upon the mountains, that lowness does not one whit depress it. You mountaineers are most exposed. In mountainous countries the lightning-rod man should have most business. Look at the specimen, sir. One rod will answer for a house so small as this. Look over these recommendations. ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville

... in which there is no one to take its part? That Physical Science itself will be ultimately the loser by such ill treatment of Theology, I have insisted on at great length in some preceding Discourses; for to depress unduly, to encroach upon any science, and much more on an important one, is to do an injury to all. However, this is not the concern of the Church; the Church has no call to watch over and protect Science: but towards Theology she has a distinct duty: it is one of the special ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman

... confidence in the superior amount of their own performances, or in the greater vigour of their own exertions, that they reconcile themselves to their low views of the satisfaction of Christ, and of the influence of the Spirit; but it should rather seem their plan so to depress the required standard of practice, that no man need fall short of it, that no superior aid can be wanted for enabling us to attain to it. It happens however with respect to their simple method of morality, as ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce

... to invariably have it all their own way. There were times when, under cover of the darkness, one or two of us would creep right into the harbour entrance and, getting so close under the cliff that it became impossible for the Russians to depress their heavy guns sufficiently to reach us, would boldly engage the forts with our quick-firers, and even with rifle-fire, picking off any gunners that were foolhardy enough to expose themselves, and not unfrequently dismounting or otherwise putting out of action a few of their lighter guns. It ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood

... known, and been in habits of intimacy with, have perished in this manner; and the expectation of Le Bon,* with our numbers which make us of too much consequence to be forgotten, all contribute to depress and ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady

... opportunity favored me. I expected the fox to cross the road a few yards below me, but just then I heard him whisk through the grass, and he bounded upon the fence a few yards above. He seemed to cringe as he saw his old enemy, and to depress his fur to half his former dimensions. Three bounds and he had cleared the road, when my bullet tore up the sod beside him, but to this hour I do not know whether I looked at the fox without seeing my gun, or whether ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs

... the matter seriously. The whaling voyage was still exciting his ambition, however, and he began to enquire of every one he thought likely to know, when the people of Hudson would send their first ship to the South Sea. Then the thought of leaving Mattie would depress his spirits, and for a time shake his resolution. The trouble with him at first was how he could separate from his parents; now his love for Mattie was ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams

... to live with him. She refused. He had expected that and did not let it depress him, for he was sure that sooner or later she would yield. His love was irresistible. He told the old woman of his wishes, and found somewhat to his surprise that she and the neighbours, long aware of them, were strongly urging Sally to accept his offer. After all, every native ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham

... not relative. It is absolute. It is not for man to depress himself by measuring himself against the eternities and the immensities external to him. What he has to do is to look inward upon himself, to fathom the eternities and the immensities in his ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne

... couldn't name or understand. She didn't mention the matter to Bill. She couldn't have told why, for the plain reason that in her simplicity she was not aware of her own virtues. A sportswoman to the last hair, she simply did not wish to depress him with her fears. There was a suspense, a strange hush and breathlessness in the ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall

... road-runner up from the lower valley, peeking and prying, and he never had any patience with the water baths of the sparrows. His own ablutions were performed in the clean, hopeful dust of the chaparral; and whenever he happened on their morning splatterings, he would depress his glossy crest, slant his shining tail to the level of his body, until he looked most like some bright venomous snake, daunting them with shrill abuse and feint of battle. Then suddenly he would go tilting and balancing down the gully in fine disdain, only to return ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various

... publication of the Lilliputian System of Politics is postponed till the meeting of Parliament. This work, which will be replete with cuts and characters, is not intended to exalt or depress any particular country, to support the pride of any particular family, or to feed the folly of any particular party, but to stimulate the mind to virtue, to promote universal benevolence, to make mankind happy. Those who would know more of the matter may enquire ...
— Goody Two-Shoes - A Facsimile Reproduction Of The Edition Of 1766 • Anonymous

... utmost rigour, the laws of forfeiture and attainder. Their lives were indeed commonly spared; but their estates were confiscated, and either annexed to the royal demesnes, or conferred with the most profuse bounty on the Normans and other foreigners [w]. While the king's declared intention was to depress, or rather entirely extirpate the English gentry [x], it is easy to believe that scarcely the form of justice would be observed in those violent proceedings [y]; and that any suspicions served as the most undoubted proofs of guilt against a people thus devoted to destruction. It was crime sufficient ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume

... we reject. If we maintain that virtuous love constitutes its own heaven, we must also maintain that vicious love constitutes its own hell. If we cannot do the last we certainly cannot do the first. And the positive school can do neither. It can neither elevate one kind of love nor depress the others; and for this reason. The results of love in both cases are, according to their teaching, bounded by our present consciousness; and our present consciousness, divorced from all future ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock

... depress me by the enumeration of so many difficulties, he went on to cheer me with the example of the Prince of Pastors, the Bishop of our souls, the Author and Finisher of our faith, who preferred shame and toil to joy, that He might further the ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus

... in an extremity of weather, he said only to them, 'Necesse est ut eam, non ut vivam.' But it may be truly affirmed that there was never any philosophy, religion, or other discipline, which did so plainly and highly exalt the good which is communicative, and depress the good which is private and particular, as the Holy Faith; well declaring, that it was the same God that gave the Christian law to men, who gave those laws of nature to inanimate creatures that ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps

... disuse and his use of parliaments, Henry strengthened the royal power, the initiative of all legislation remaining in his hands. To the same end he continued to depress the great nobles and to create a new nobility dependent on royal favour. All who threatened to display a dangerous ambition, from Buckingham on, were struck down; the House of Norfolk survived till the end of the reign, when the Duke was attainted and his son was sent ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... by some invisible hand, the molten silver is broken in its smoothness. The Royal Coachman quietly disappears. With all the brakes shrieking on your desire to shut your eyes and heave a mighty heave, you depress your ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White

... lived, if they could help it: But most of them, if they were forc'd to it, would behave very well, and actually receive Benefit from being there; especially in Armies, where Nothing being less wanted than contrite Hearts and broken Spirits, Nothing is mention'd that is mortifying, or would depress the Mind; and if ever any thing melancholy is slightly touch'd upon, it is done with great Art, and only to make a Contrast with something reviving, that is immediately to follow, which will flatter their Pride, and make them highly delighted ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville

... distinction in that age, who applied themselves with true patriotism to the task of purifying and ennobling their mother tongue. Both were aware of the transcendent quality of the Grecian literature; but that splendor did not depress their hopes of raising their own to something of the same level. As respected the natural wealth of the two languages, it was the private opinion of Cicero, that the Latin had the advantage; and if Csar did not accompany him to that length, ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... seen in the legislative body and in journalism. Mirabeau was, by no means, the only example. Such members of the legislative body as Jullien of Toulouse, Delaunay of Angers, Fabre d'Eglantine and their disciples, were among the most noxious of those conspiring by legislative action to raise and depress securities for stock-jobbing purposes. Bribery of legislators followed as a matter of course, Delaunay, Jullien and Chabot accepted a bribe of five hundred thousand livres for aiding legislation calculated to promote the purposes of certain ...
— Fiat Money Inflation in France - How It Came, What It Brought, and How It Ended • Andrew Dickson White

... pressure of the air against the hind wings would raise them all to a nearly horizontal position, and at the same time bend up their posterior margins a little, producing an upward and onward motion. At the upward stroke the pressure on the hind wings would depress them considerably into an oblique position, and from their great flexibility in that direction would bend down their hind margins. The resultant would be a slightly downward and considerably onward motion, the two strokes ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant

... was very trying, for there was nothing so galling to Washington as to be unable to fight. He wanted to get to the south, but he was bound hand and foot by lack of force. Yet the obstacles did not daunt or depress him. He wrote in June that he felt sure of bringing the war to a happy conclusion, and in the division of the British forces he saw his opportunity taking shape. Greene had the southern forces well in hand. Cornwallis ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge

... and flourishing town which had not already as many members as it could, with any show of reason, claim. Almost all therefore that was taken from the small boroughs must have been given to the counties; and there can be no doubt that whatever tended to raise the counties and to depress the towns must on the whole have tended to raise the Tories and to depress the Whigs. From the commencement of our civil troubles the towns had been on the side of freedom and progress, the country gentlemen and the country clergymen on the side of authority ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... well as in joy, youth transforms the light cobweb into the cable. Self-deception has changed the blood in thy veins, the thoughts in thy soul; but do not forever cling to this one black spot! Neither wilt thou! it will spur thee on to activity, will enervate thy soul, not depress thee! The melancholy surprise of thy grandfather's death, whom thou didst believe active and well, has now made thee dejected, and thy thoughts so desponding. But there will come better days! happy days! Thou art young, and youth brings health ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen

... of his father's plight, a haunting dread that Colonel Harrington might make him some trouble, and the uncertainty of continued work in the express service, all combined to depress his mind with anxiety and suspense, and he tried to dismiss the themes by whistling a quiet, soothing tune as he started to get the hammer to put the ...
— Bart Stirling's Road to Success - Or; The Young Express Agent • Allen Chapman

... Phaseolus coccineus of Lamarck, originally came from Mexico, as I am informed by Mr. Bentham. The flowers are so constructed that hive and humble-bees, which visit them incessantly, almost always alight on the left wing-petal, as they can best suck the nectar from this side. Their weight and movements depress the petal, and this causes the stigma to protrude from the spirally-wound keel, and a brush of hairs round the stigma pushes out the pollen before it. The pollen adheres to the head or proboscis of the bee which is at work, ...
— The Effects of Cross & Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom • Charles Darwin

... wine and ribbons, and why not cheap divorces? Philosophers tell us that the alternate action of the seasons is one of the purest and most enduring of all sources of enjoyment; that perpetual summer or spring would weary and depress; but in the ever-changing aspect of nature, and in the stimulation which diversity excites, we find an unfailing gratification. If, therefore, it be pleasant to be married, it may also be agreeable to be unmarried. It takes some time, however, before society accommodates itself to ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever

... him that challenged them. And when they had informed Saul what was the resolution of the young man, the king sent for him to come to him: and when the king asked what he had to say, he replied, "O king, be not cast down, nor afraid, for I will depress the insolence of this adversary, and will go down and fight with him, and will bring him under me, as tall and as great as he is, till he shall be sufficiently laughed at, and thy army shall get great glory, when he ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus

... Delaware on Christmas Eve. It was a very solemn moment, and he was the only man in the darkness of that night who fully understood what was at stake; but then, as always, he was calm and serious, with a high courage which nothing could depress. ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt

... principal road, I came out in front of the fortifications close under some of the guns and obtained a good survey of them. The enemy, apprehending an assault, opened fire on us with a single discharge from one piece of artillery,(10) which he was not able to depress sufficiently to do us any harm. We, however, withdrew precipitately, and I attempted at once to report to McClellan the situation and location of the guns of the enemy and the strength and position of his fortified camp, but, instead of thanks for the information, ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer

... ribbons, and a pink young man with his hair parted in the middle and his shirt-bosom resplendent with brilliants of the last water. They were at the piano, singing "Days of Absence" in a manner calculated to depress the most buoyant spirits. I rang the bell, and the green young lady and pink young man began on the second verse. No answer. Again I rang the bell, and the songsters began on the third verse. No answer. Once more I rang the bell, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various

... white and dark red are the only colors to be seen. From a distance all the houses produce an effect of black trimmed with strips of linen, and present an appearance partly festal, partly funereal, leaving one in doubt whether they enliven or depress. At first sight I felt inclined to laugh: it seemed impossible that these houses were not playthings and that serious people could live inside them. I should have said that after the fete for which they had been ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis

... own race I was permitted to learn singularly little, yet what small knowledge of it I was able to gain, seemed to depress me much. Perhaps it was at first only the manifest reluctance of my old preceptor to discuss with me my paternal ancestry that gave rise to the terror which I ever felt at the mention of my great house, ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft

... tell you that if you do the first—if you endeavour to depress or disguise the talents of your subordinates—you are lost; for nothing could imply more darkly and decisively than this, that your art and your work were not beloved by you; that it was your own prosperity that you were seeking, and your own skill only that you ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin

... she could not imagine. It did not depress her so much as it awed her. The light on the hills was the light of happiness, and the blueness of the clear sky banished all idea of sadness which a valley called the Valley of Tombs might have suggested. Yet it did affect her so profoundly that ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer

... say, "what puts you in the dumps to day? You are as solemn as the upper bench in Meeting. I shall have to call Alice to raise your spirits; my presence seems to depress you." ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 4. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner

... Lukman[FN336] said to his son, 'There be three who are known only in three several cases; the merciful man is unknown save in time of wrath, the brave only in battle, and thy friend in time of need.' It is said that the oppressor shall be depress though by people praised, and that the oppress is at rest though by people blamed. Quoth Allah Almighty,[FN337] 'Assuredly deem not that those who rejoice in what they have done, and who love to be praised for what they have not done, shall escape ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... British had already regained their lead before the Civil War of the sixties; and the subsequent inland development of the United States, with the momentous change from wood and sails to steel and steam, combined to depress the American mercantile marine in favour of its ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood

... same question to a parish-boy, or to one of the trencher-caps in the —— cloisters, and the impudent reply of the one shall not fail to exasperate any more than the certain servility, and mercenary eye to reward, which he will meet with in the other, can fail to depress ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb

... would be offensive, if not injurious, is thus avoided, and those little angles are removed which obstruct the onward course of society. A sensible man will gain more by being ridiculed than praised, just as adverse criticism, when judicious, ought to raise rather than depress. Lever remarks, with regard to acquiring languages, that "as the foreigner is too polite to laugh, the stranger has little chance to learn." A compendium of humorous sayings would, if rightly read, give a valuable ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... and to all intelligent persons who have observed their own bodily and mental conditions. This is the curve of health. It is a mistake to suppose that the normal state of health is represented by a straight horizontal line. Independently of the well-known causes which raise or depress the standard of vitality, there seems to be,—I think I may venture to say there is,—a rhythmic undulation in the flow of the vital force. The "dynamo" which furnishes the working powers of consciousness and action has its ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... the national movement in Italy, then the grateful Ferdinand bestowed on them a mandate to put a similar stop to the "Croat separatism"; he also suspended the Ban and declared him a traitor to the Fatherland. This did not unduly depress Jella[vc]i['c], for in the month of June he was solemnly installed by the Patriarch Rajacsich in the cathedral of Zagreb. On this occasion the Mass was sung in old Slavonic by the Bishop of Zengg, and on leaving the cathedral another service was held in the Orthodox ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein

... Eastern races, Religion and Philosophy have combined to depress Love, truth reasserts itself in popular sayings, as for instance in the Turkish proverb, "All women are perfection, especially ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock

... was the principal laborer on the farm, for they could not afford a hired hand. That he was constantly afflicted with a dull headache in the evenings was not to be wondered at; nor that the sight and thought of his gray-haired father, who was turned fifty, should depress his spirits and impart a tinge of gloom to his musings. It was under circumstances like these that he composed his first song, the inspiration of which was a daughter of the blacksmith who had loaned him the 'History ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... he thinking of Beryl, I wonder. But I didn't hear his answer, for it was at that moment that I caught Fred's voice. He had told me he was going to call for me. I think he fancied that the old Cruelty would depress me—as dreams of it have, you know; and he wanted to come and carry me away from it, just as at night, when I've waked shivering and moaning, I've felt his dear arms lifting me out of the black ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson

... ward. And the carbonic acid they give off at nights would not poison a fly. Nay, in overcrowded rooms, they actually absorb carbonic acid and give off oxygen. Cut-flowers also decompose water and produce oxygen gas. It is true there are certain flowers, e.g., lilies, the smell of which is said to depress the nervous system. These are easily known by the smell, ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale

... I together can put about a year through in half an hour. Look here, you mustn't take this too much to heart. I shall be all right in a few hours. It's impossible to depress me. And of course, when you can't do anything, there's no need of being ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... years, my highest compliment to the literary taste of a friend to present him with a copy.... I arrived half an hour before Lamb, and had time to learn something of his peculiarities. Some family circumstances have tended to depress him of late years, and unless excited by convivial intercourse, he never shows a trace of what he once was. He is excessively given to mystifying his friends, and is never so delighted as when he has persuaded some one into a belief in one of his grave inventions.... ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston

... discouragement cannot but become immoderate. An excess of one-seventh will cause a fall of price by three-sevenths. But the simultaneous excess on the Continent may raise the one-seventh to two-sevenths, and in a much greater proportion will these depress the price. The evil will then be enormous; the discouragement will be ruinous; much capital, much land, will be withdrawn from the culture of grain; and, supposing a two years' succession of such excessive crops, (which effect is more common than a single year's excess,) the result, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various

... extracted the precious stones from the very shrine of St. Alban; and you have not punished these men, but have rather knowingly supported and maintained them. If any of your brethren be living justly and religiously, if any be wise and virtuous, these you straightway depress ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude

... superhuman virtue, which cares not to take what is lawfully within its reach. Yet, as the strongest bodies are those which can equally well support the extremes of heat and cold, so the noblest minds are those which prosperity does not render insolent and overbearing, nor ill fortune depress: and here Aemilius appears more nearly to approach absolute perfection, as, when in great misfortune and grief for his children, he showed the same dignity and firmness as after the greatest success. Whereas ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch

... punch until the whole card is ready," the other explained. "You depress into position the various keys you want until all the records needed for this one card are ready. Then you can glance over your keyboard, comparing what might be called your map of depressed keys with the line of the schedule you are copying. If one is wrong, you can release that ...
— The Boy With the U.S. Census • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... fairly indeed be said, that to restore the freedom of the corn trade, while protecting duties on various other commodities are allowed to remain, is not really to restore things to their natural level, but to depress the cultivation of the land below other kinds of industry. And though, even in this case, it might still be a national advantage to purchase corn where it could be had the cheapest; yet it must be allowed that the owners of property in land would ...
— Observations on the Effects of the Corn Laws, and of a Rise or Fall in the Price of Corn on the Agriculture and General Wealth of the Country • Thomas Malthus

... those long-sighted men, who consider the succession of events from afar off, who always finish a design begun; who are capable, I do not say of dissembling either a misfortune or an offence, but of rising above either, instead of letting it depress them; deep natures, independent by their firmness in daring all and suffering all; who, whether they resist their inclinations out of foresight, or whether, out of pride and a secret consciousness of their resources, they defy what is called ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 2 of 3) - Essay 1: Vauvenargues • John Morley

... defeat,—they had borne these in the past, they were bearing them still, they were ready to bear them in the future. War did not fright them—though the coming conflict was plainly going to be more bitter than any before. The great array of Grant on the north bank of the Rapidan did not depress them—had they not met and defeated at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville a force as great, and could not they ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke

... prospective piping time of peace the advance in the industrial arts will continue at an accelerated rate; which may confidently be expected to affect the practicable increased production of merchantable goods; from which it follows that it will act to depress the prices of these goods; from which it follows that if a profitable business is to be done in the conduct of productive industry a greater degree of continence than before will have to be exercised in order not to let prices ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen

... Harrington's porter. Mais laisons la ce discours triste, and let us talk of the living and lively world." Selwyn made his world brighter by his wit and pleasantries, and the sight of an execution did not depress his spirits. "With his strange and dismal turn," wrote Walpole, "he has infinite fun and humour in him."* And the author of a social satire blunted his thrusts at Selwyn by a long explanatory note which concludes with the remark that "George is a ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue

... Lysander carver at his table, adding, by way of insult to the Ionians, "Let them go now, and pay their court to my carver." Upon this, Lysander thought fit to come and speak with him; and a brief laconic dialogue passed between them as follows: "Truly, you know very well, O Agesilaus, how to depress your friends;" "Those friends," replied he, "who would be greater than myself; but those who increase my power, it is just should share in it." "Possibly, O Agesilaus," answered Lysander, "in all this there may be more said on your part than done on mine, but I request you, for the ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... will find that it is the spirit of domination which they mistook for zeal in the cause of freedom. This will make every sect strive for pre-eminence, and the hatred they now shew us will, if we are subdued, be diverted from a superior whom they cease to fear, to equals whom they wish to depress; the anarchy and discord they will then experience will lead the moderate and well-informed to remember with regret the mild government of ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West

... comforts him, Sway'd in that country, where the water springs, That Moldaw's river to the Elbe, and Elbe Rolls to the ocean: Ottocar his name: Who in his swaddling clothes was of more worth Than Winceslaus his son, a bearded man, Pamper'd with rank luxuriousness and ease. And that one with the nose depress, who close In counsel seems with him of gentle look, Flying expir'd, with'ring the lily's flower. Look there how he doth knock against his breast! The other ye behold, who for his cheek Makes of one hand a couch, with frequent sighs. They are the ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

... central rib or spine of each, and the lateral branchings, strengthen and carry it. I find much confused use, in botanical works, of the words Vein and Rib. For, indeed, there are veins in the ribs of leaves, as marrow in bones; and the projecting bars often gradually depress themselves into a transparent net of rivers. But the mechanical force of the framework in carrying the leaf-tissue is the point first to be noticed; it is that which admits, regulates, or restrains the visible motions of the leaf; while the system of circulation can only ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin

... though the stream's descent was so slight that on earth its current would have been very slow, here it rushed along like a mountain torrent, the reason, of course, being that a given amount of water on Jupiter would depress a spring balance 2.55 times as much as on ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor

... long as he remained, we indulged in anticipations as to the future. From the time of his departure a gloomy silence pervaded the camp; we were, indeed, placed under the most trying circumstances; every thing combined to depress our spirits and exhaust our patience. We had gradually been deserted by every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air. We had witnessed migration after migration of the feathered tribes, to ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt

... followed, or arrived simultaneously like a broadside fired into the life of the city. Public processions "with whatever patriotic motive" were sternly prohibited. "Purveyors of false news, or of news likely to depress the public spirit" would be dealt with by courts-martial and punished with the utmost severity. No musical instruments were to be played after ten o'clock at night, and orchestras were prohibited in all restaurants. Oh, Paris, was even your laughter to be abolished, if you had any heart ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs

... always seemed to depress Fred's courage. Besides which, he was never in good spirits when he had to go long without food, which made me fear he would not bear being cast adrift at sea without provisions as well as his grandfather had done. I was not surprised when ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing

... us, and so long as he remained we indulged in anticipations as to the future. From the time of his departure a gloomy silence pervaded the camp; we were, indeed, placed under the most trying circumstances, everything combined to depress our spirits and exhaust our patience. We had witnessed migration after migration of the feathered tribes, to that point to which we were so anxious to push our way. Flights of cockatoos, of parrots, of pigeons, and of bitterns; birds, also, whose ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc

... large room with all conveniences for study; collected books of every kind; quitted every science at the first perception of disgust; returned to it again as soon as my former ardour happened to revive; and having no rival to depress me by comparison, nor any critick to alarm me with objections, I spent day after day in profound tranquillity, with only so much complaisance in my own improvements, as served to excite and animate ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson

... life were a time of peace and honor. His bark, after a fitful voyage, had glided into safe and peaceful waters. The calamity of blindness did not much depress him—"What matters it so long as I can hear?" he said. And good it is to know that the capacity to listen and enjoy, to think and feel, to sympathize and love—to live his Ideals—were his, even to the night of his ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard

... he went on. "If my friendship is worth anything, it ought to enable me to share those troubles with you. You have had a little further disagreement with your husband, I think, and bad luck at the tables. You ought not to let either of these things depress you too much. Tell me, do you think that I could help ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... sank in a rectangular channel, from the center outward down to about mid-depth near the banks. Its depression seemed not to depend on the depth, slope, velocity, or wind; probably the air itself, being a continuous source of surface retardation, would permanently depress the maximum velocity, while wind failed to effect this, owing to its short duration. On any vertical the mid-depth velocity was greater than the mean, and the bed velocity was the least. The details ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882 • Various

... bloody tracks;[1] Bright Phillis mending ragged smocks: And radiant Iris in the pox. These are the goddesses enroll'd In Curll's collection, new and old, Whose scoundrel fathers would not know 'em, If they should meet them in a poem. True poets can depress and raise, Are lords of infamy and praise; They are not scurrilous in satire, Nor will in panegyric flatter. Unjustly poets we asperse; Truth shines the brighter clad in verse, And all the fictions they pursue Do but insinuate what is true. Now, should my praises owe their truth ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... kiva.—The tendency to depress or partly excavate the ceremonial chamber existed in Zui, as in all the ancient pueblo buildings which have been examined; but the solid rock of the mesa tops in Tusayan did not admit of the necessary excavation, and the persistence ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff

... which he naturally dwelt on some of the topics that were interesting to a commercial community. He gave a somewhat new view of "Protection" when he called it a remnant of heathenism. The heathen would be dependent on no one; they would depress all other communities. Christianity taught us to be friends and brothers, and he was glad that all restrictions on the freedom of trade were now done away with. He dwelt largely on the capacity of Africa to furnish us with useful articles ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie

... Edward, but I wasn't going to miss a game of golf on such a lovely day. My spirits rose. Not even the fact that there were no caddies left and I had to carry my own clubs could depress me. ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne

... containing medicine for the relief of pain—particularly those that are advertised as remedies for headache. Practically without exception, all such drinks contain coal-tar preparations that greatly depress the heart, and have in a number of instances been followed by death. Drugs of this character should be taken with the utmost circumspection, and only on the ...
— Health on the Farm - A Manual of Rural Sanitation and Hygiene • H. F. Harris

... heavy losses to merchant shipping that were taking place—that neither he nor anyone else in the United States had realized that the situation was so serious. This was, of course, largely due to the necessity which we were under of not publishing facts which would encourage the enemy or unduly depress our own people. Further, he informed me that an idea was prevalent in the United States that the morale of the German submarine crews had been completely broken by their losses in submarines. This impression was the successful result of certain action on our part taken with ...
— The Crisis of the Naval War • John Rushworth Jellicoe

... furnished with clavicles, or collar-bones, not only use their foremost feet as hands, as men, monkies, cats, mice, squirrels, &c. but elevate their ribs in respiration as well as depress the diaphragm for the purpose of enlarging the cavity of the chest. Hence an inflammation of the diaphragm is sudden death to those animals, as horses and dogs, which can only breaths by depressing the diaphragm; ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... he had no eye for such things, took alarm at last, and resolved that the way to depress France was to assist the king of France. On January 5, after the queen's letter of December 16 had been received, he declared that Austria would support the elector of Treves, and would repel force by force, if he was attacked for the harbouring of emigres. At ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... dawn. When no bombs fell close there was always the constant drone announcing their possibility. To men in huts or in the open, without lights or any means of shelter, the terror carried nightly overhead was greater far than that which ever served to depress Londoners. ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose

... art weary and depress'd, I'll lull thee to thy sleep; And when dark fancies vex thy breast, I'll sit ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie

... a rule each vivisection consisted of two procedures, aside from the preliminary operation. In the first place, the normal pressure of the blood was reduced by various methods, calculated to depress the vital powers of the animal, and to induce a condition of collapse, and this was followed by such "stimulation" of nerves as would tend to cause the blood-pressure to rise in an animal not perfectly ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell

... the burdens imposed upon their soil and industry. Therefore, resolved—That it is the duty of the people of England, for the sake alike of England, of India, and of the enslaved throughout the world, to require of the legislature the immediate removal of all imposts which depress the agricultural energies of the native population; and the institution of a strict and impartial inquiry, in India, into the condition of the natives, and into the conduct and the acts arising out of the peculiar government ruling over them, which affect their wellbeing, and retard their prosperity. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... Aylwin, with whom he was talking! She could not take her eyes from its long, thin outlines, the apostolic white hair, the eager eyes and quivering mouth, contrasting with the patient courtesy of manner. Yet in her present soreness and heat, the saintly charm of the old man's figure did somehow but depress ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... some communities, that the use of tobacco operates, as a preservative against infectious and epidemic diseases. This must be a mistake. Whatever tends to weaken or depress the powers of the nervous system predisposes it to be operated upon, by the causes of these diseases. If tobacco afford protection, in such cases, why does it not secure those who use it, against cholera? In no communities, perhaps, has that disease committed more frightful ravages, ...
— An Essay on the Influence of Tobacco upon Life and Health • R. D. Mussey

... said by some that drunkenness is on the increase in this island. I have no trusty proof of it: but I can believe it possible; for every cause of drunkenness seems on the increase. Overwork of body and mind; circumstances which depress health; temptation to drink, and drink again, at every corner of the streets; and finally, money, and ever more money, in the hands of uneducated people, who have not the desire, and too often not the means, of spending it in ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley

... became eligible to office among the Signory; but when about to take his seat with them, a law was made that no nobleman who had become of the popular class should be allowed to assume that office. This gave great offense to Benchi, who, in union with Piero degli Albizzi, determined to depress the less powerful of the popular party with ADMONITIONS, and obtain the government for themselves. By the interest which Benchi possessed with the ancient nobility, and that of Piero with most of the influential citizens, the Guelphic ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli

... instruct the ignorant, soften the obdurate, and (as occasion shall demand) cheer, depress, repel, allure, disturb, assuage, console, or terrify."—Jerningham's Essay on Eloquence, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... contacts—their emotions, feelings and manifestations of energy—are those we are best adapted to react to, those most valuable in stirring us up. Scenery, the grandeur of the outer world, finally depress the most of us, and we can bear these things best in company. Who has not, on a long railroad journey, watched with weariness and flickering interest valley and hill and meadow swing by and then sat up with energy ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson

... while the plague is among us; therefore, father, I implore you to discontinue it. Let there be services held daily in the church, but I beseech you strive in your discourses to cheer the people rather than to depress them, and to dwell more upon the joys that await those who die as Christian men and women than upon the sorrows of those who remain behind. My wife and mother will anon be down in the village and will strive to cheer and ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty

... task worthy of a volume, and requiring that space in order to be creditably performed, to show how war affects literature, at what points they meet, where they are at variance, if any wars stimulate, and what kinds depress the intellectual life of nations. The subject is very wide. It would embrace a discussion of the effects of war when it occurs during a period of great literary and artistic splendor, as in Athens and in the Italian Republics; whether intellectual ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various

... greatly depress the fine fellows who clung so tenaciously to that square mile of crags and cliffs. The great spirit of cheery optimism, the light-hearted, careless good fellowship, and the muscle and grit of the invaders ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie

... it has been recorded by one[48] who knew him well, that at the time of his death he had certainly the youngest heart of all who had ever attained his age; he was possessed of a buoyancy which misfortune might temporarily depress, but could not subdue. To the close of his career, he rejoiced in the sports and field exercises of his youth; in his best days he had, in the games of leaping and running, been usually victorious ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various

... It's not that I wouldn't be flattered, you know, by your interest, and all that," he went on, awkwardly. "It's only because it's such a beastly harrowing recital and shows me up in such—such an inefficient light. It would depress you, and it couldn't do me any good. The things about myself are what I want to ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan

... unhealed or uncomforted; consider, we beseech Thee, the sufferings of this Thy little child, deprived of all the joys which Thou hast made so sweet for those who are strong and straight in their youth, and who have no ailment to depress their courage or to quench the ardour of their aspiring souls. Look compassionately upon him, oh gentle King and Master of all such children!—and even as Thou wert a child Thyself, be pleased to heal him of his sad infirmity. For, if Thou wilt, ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli

... that many prisoners of the crown, influenced by bad example, ignorance, and want, had lost their liberty; that it would be unkind and unjust to obstruct their progress to competence and reformation. These excuses for a policy which tended to depress honest workmen only convinced them that it was time to retire from the country. A more powerful class might have shown that the proper office of mercy is to shorten the duration of a sentence, and not to inflict punishment on unoffending families ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West

... laws of England tend to depress the general condition of the poor in two ways. Their first obnoxious tendency is to increase population without increasing the food for its support. A poor man may marry with little or no prospect of being able to ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various

... idler parts of Nibelungen discussions perhaps the idlest are the attempts made by partisans of Icelandic and German literature respectively to exalt or depress these two handlings, each in comparison with the other. There is no real question of superiority or inferiority, but only one of difference. The older handling, in the Volsunga Saga to some extent, but still more in the Eddaic songs, has perhaps the finer touches of pure clear poetry in single ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury

... other passengers, and the car smelled of lamp-oil. All surrounding influences tended to depress Brady's ordinarily buoyant spirits, and he wished he had stayed at home, or at any rate had left Flint behind. Meanwhile his companion, apparently wholly oblivious of the frigidity of his companion's manner, sat with his hat ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin

... rooms and old-world furniture, had much disappointed her. It needs the sort of education which nothing could ever give to Susy Drummond, to appreciate a place like the Towers. Hester and Jane Macalister had also between them contrived to depress her, and it was a subdued and rather crestfallen Susy who now crossed the magnificent octagon hall in pursuit of the ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade

... sinister enough to drape the heavens in black, and silence all the songs of the angels. This law, we are told, can have no moral interpretation consistent with freedom and responsibility. The more than tendency of much that is being written and said is to depress the mind with a sense of the relentless force of general laws and influences, and to diminish in the individual the conviction of his power to contend against them. I would avoid dogmatism about this matter and simply say that this seems plain to me: for one drawback we meet along ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd

... imprinted a cold ring just between the eyes. He did not flinch at the grisly contact. His hand was as firm as a rock. He must depress the muzzle just a trifle—it would make more certain. He began to press the trigger, ever so faintly, then a little more firmly, strangely wondering how much more imperceptible a degree of pressure would be required to produce the roaring, ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford

... encouragement he had received was that Sunday in the country, when for the fraction of a second she had let him hold her hand. Since then he had written her five letters and received but one brief note in reply. Her silence, however, did not depress him. She had told him she hated to write letters, a sentiment he fully shared. Only in this case he could not help himself. The moment anything of interest happened, he was seized with an uncontrollable impulse to tell Eleanor. He would rush home from the ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice

... friends, that saddest and most universal sorrow of old age, joined with illness to depress his last years. Beauclerk died in 1780, Thrale in 1781, Levett and Mrs. Williams, two of the humble friends to whom his charity had given a home in his house, in 1782 and 1788. He was left almost alone. Yet the old courage and love of society ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey

... beyond all praise this morning; and I repeatedly discerned a morbid sporting dread of giving the adversary less than fair play. It was sad to me to consider myself as such to Catherine's son, but I was determined not to let the thought depress me, and there was much outward occasion for good cheer. The morning was a perfect one in every way. The rain had released all the pungent aromas of the mountain woods through which we passed. Snowy height came in dazzling contrast with a turquoise sky. The toy town of Zermatt spattered the ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung

... followed, of like purpose and absurdity. For swimming he only used his tail, but for balancing and steering, his feet and hands. Would he rise to the surface, he must flick his tail, and turn his toes and fingers upwards. Would he seek the bottom, he must depress them. Would he lie motionless, suspended in mid-water, he must point them straight ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English

... best order and at a slow pace, to within musquet-shot of the insurgents, where he halted in some low ground, in such a situation that his men were secure from the cannon-balls of the enemy, which all flew over their heads, although the gunners used every effort to depress their guns so as to fire low. At this time the platoons of musquetry on the wings of both armies kept up a close fire, Alvarado and Valdivia using every effort to cause their men take good aim, while the president and archbishop encouraged ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr

... allowed to remain below par, should more of them be issued, or should the United States avail itself of its technical privilege to pay off part of the bonded debt in "lawful money" manufactured by the printing-press, the weakest item in the total might easily depress the whole. ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson

... would patiently and fully live out the present; and since the future can be only the ripened fruit of the present, its promise would be neutralized, as well as actual experience dwarfed, by a definite revelation. Nor, conversely, need the want of a certified future depress the present spiritual and moral life. It is in the nature of the Soul that it would suffer from the promise. The existence of God is a justification for hope. And since the certainty would be injurious ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... appropriated and were appropriating the common lands. Lord John Russell one day observed in the House of Commons that the burgesses were originally chosen from among the inhabitants of the towns they represented, but that, in the reign of Anne, the landlords, to depress the shipping interest, opened the borough representation to all qualified persons without regard to domicile. [Footnote: 36 Hansard, Third Series, 548.] Lord John was mistaken in his date, for the change occurred earlier, but he described correctly ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams

... the taste of the time; the judgment which they have once pronounced, some are too lazy to discuss, and some too timorous to contradict; it may however be, I think, observed, that their power is greater to depress than exalt, as mankind are more credulous of censure ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson

... had been talking a good deal to me of his troubles and difficulties, and the subject always tends to depress me. He is so zealous that he gets many snubs and buffetings from people of a different way of thinking from himself, and I don't like to hear of such humiliations to a man of his age, the more particularly as I don't think earnestness does any ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy

... it was founded in the school of Christianity, which was, that all men are by nature equal; that they are wisely and justly endowed by their Creator with certain rights which are irrefragable, and no matter how human pride and avarice may depress and debase, still God is the author of good to man; and of evil, man is the artificer to himself and to his species. Unlike Plato and Socrates, his mind was free from the gloom that surrounded theirs. Let the name, the worth, the zeal, and other excellent qualifications ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various

... of water, a professor something like one of the prehistoric creatures he is talking about, with his long hair and long words, his egotistical learning, his platitudes and pauses and mumblings, combine to depress the youngster, who all the time is longing for the fresh air and an hour of cricket or football. Then the notes he is supposed to take! True, there is a certain momentary feeling of pleasure and importance on ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss

... Bridge (a place famous for the first meeting of the first presbytery of the Seceders) for L11 of salary. Thence he removed to Foresthill, near Alloa, where a damp school-room, poverty, and hard labour in teaching, united to injure his health and depress his spirits. At Foresthill he wrote his poem 'Lochleven,' which discovers no small descriptive power. Consumption began now to make its appearance, and he returned to the cottage of his parents, where ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... husband; that this falsehood itself, the deposit of barbarism, tends perpetually to brutalize the marriage relation by subjecting wives as irresponsible tools to the capricious authority of husbands; that this degradation of married women re-acts inevitably to depress the condition of single women, by impairing their own self-respect and man's respect for them; and that the final result is that system of tutelage miscalled protection, by which the industry of women is kept on half-pay, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... very bad indeed but didn't say so, for Highboy was finding pleasure in his rhymes and she hadn't the heart to depress him. She held tight to Andy's hand and ...
— The Cat in Grandfather's House • Carl Henry Grabo

... or stock to be grafted with a sharp priming saw at a point where the stump will be from one to two and a half inches in diameter. Split through the center of the stub with a sharp knife as shown in figure 1, using a mallet. Depress the point of the splitting knife and strike with the mallet, cutting the bark and sap down the side of the stub instead of tearing it, then depress the handle and cut down the other side in the same way. Open the split slightly with a hardwood wedge, as in figure 2. Slightly bevel ...
— Walnut Growing in Oregon • Various

... now become very dangerous, a little is done in the licit line: grotesquely carved sticks, calabashes rudely ornamented with ships and human figures, the neat bead-work grass-strings used by the women to depress the bosom, and cashimbos or pipes mostly made about Boma. All were re-baptized in 1853, but they show no sign of Christianity save crosses, and they are the only prostitutes on ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... which distinguish Frenchmen from natives of every country, none is more prominent than a kind of never-failing elasticity of temperament, which seems almost to defy all the power of misfortune to depress. Let what will happen, the Frenchman seems to possess some strong resource within himself, in his ardent temperament, upon which he can draw at will; and whether on the day after a defeat, the moment of being deceived ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)

... as to make it likely they may claim, through laws founded upon it, relief or assistance. The direct contrary is the truth: it may be unanswerably maintained that its tendency is to raise, not to depress; by stamping a value upon life, which can belong to it only where the laws have placed men who are willing to work, and yet cannot find employment, above the necessity of looking for protection against hunger and other natural evils, either to individual and casual charity, to ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... effect, the missile striking the testudo on the left wing and disabling three men. Before the advantage could be followed up the files had been closed again and the formation had advanced so far that the catapults became useless, it being impossible to depress them beyond a certain angle. The front rank had now reached the barrier, and the axes fell furiously upon the wooden leaves of the gate. The Doomsmen on the walls renewed the attack with hand-weapons, the slingers and archers hurling their missiles ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen

... perceive has not occurred to you. This is that the equal distribution of estates and the small property of our citizens, both of which seem connected with our form of government, if not essential to it, actually tend to depress the sciences. Science demands leisure and money. Our citizens have property only to give their sons a four years' education, a time scarcely sufficient to give them a relish for learning, and far inadequate to wide and profound researches. As soon as a young man has closed ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder

... investigation. The hostages particularly, were really imposing in their appearance; an air of solemnity overspread their manly countenances, whilst their eyes bespoke that unquailing spirit which the habits and vicissitudes of a sylvan life are calculated rather to raise than depress. The Indians, when uncontaminated by the vices of the whites, are really a fine people; and it is melancholy to reflect that in a few centuries the red-man will be known only by name, for his total extinction seems ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall

... SEDATIVES.—Agents which depress the vital energies, without destroying life; as aconite, digitalis, hellebore, hydrochloric acid, hyoscyamus, ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings

... to me, many familiar only through their epitaphs in the windy cemetery above the cliff. Of the rest, the pretty girls he named were now grandmothers, the young men long since bent and rheumatic; the youngest well over fifty. This, however, seemed to depress him little. His eyes would sadden for a moment, then laugh again. "Well, well," he said, "wrinkles, bald heads, and the deafness of the tomb—we have our day notwithstanding. Pluck the bloom of it—hey? a commonplace ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... accessible to an appeal to my emotions; and you are very cunning in making such appeals. I will meet you to this extent. I dont mean that you are a bad man. I dont mean that I dislike you, in spite of your continual attempts to discourage and depress me. But you have a mind like a looking-glass. You are very clear and smooth and lucid as to what is standing in front of you. But you have no foresight and no hindsight. You have no vision and no ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw

... have not been particularly well since I wrote last; indeed, the weather has been so horrible that it is enough to depress anybody's spirits, and, of course, mine. I did very wrong not to bring you when I came, for without you I cannot get on at all. Left to myself a gloom comes upon ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter

... It was an injury and affront to Julia, who ought to have been Mr. Crawford's choice; and, independently of that, she disliked Fanny, because she had neglected her; and she would have grudged such an elevation to one whom she had been always trying to depress. ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... conception was of the vaguest. The average intelligence of the masses thereabout is not high; the change noticeable before crossing the Virginia line becoming more and more marked as one travels straight south. Whether the monotonous stretches of pine barren depress mentally, or frequent recurring "ager" prostrates physically, who shall say? But to the casual glance along that railroad line, was not presented an unvarying picture of bright, ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon

... hands, the little push-piece P is pressed inwards by the thumb (Fig. 210) so as to depress the right-hand end of R and bring B into gear with D, which in turn moves E, mounted on the end of the minute-hand shaft. The hands can now be moved in either direction by turning M. On releasing the ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams

... endured had not forced her to abandon other people's maladies for the care of her own, the sense of her real peril would have done so. This masterful, tireless woman, whom no sadness nor abomination of her habitual environment could depress or daunt, lived under a menace, and was sometimes laid low, like a child. She rested now in Maggie's room, with a poultice for a pillow. A few hours previously no one in the house had guessed that she had any weakness whatever. Her collapse ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... sooner than people in general expect. On these data you can judge as well as we can here. I confess myself to be sanguine in my hopes of his recovery. In the meantime, no pains are spared to circulate all sorts of lies, in order to depress people's spirits on this subject; and the support which is given to these gloomy ideas by the language and conduct of the physicians does certainly produce a ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham

... Haddington. Bishops, with Spottiswoode, the historian, Archbishop of Glasgow, sat in the Privy Council, and their progressive elevation, as hateful to the nobles as to the Kirk, was among the causes of the civil war under Charles I. By craft and by illegal measures James continued to depress the Kirk. A General Assembly, proclaimed by James for July 1604 in Aberdeen, was prorogued; again, unconstitutionally, it was prorogued in July 1605. Nineteen ministers, disobeying a royal order, appeared and constituted ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang

... found in any age of the world, either philosophy, or sect or religion, or law or discipline, which did so highly exalt the good of communion, and depress good private and particular, as the holy Christian faith: hence it clearly appears that it was one and the same God that gave the Christian law to men who gave those laws of nature ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou

... intolerable if in the city at any rate they are not to take the lead. And so, when a warrior renowned for victories and triumphs shall turn advocate and appear among them in the forum, they endeavor their utmost to obscure and depress him; whereas, if he gives up any pretensions here and retires, they will maintain his military honor and authority beyond the reach of envy. Events themselves not long after showed the truth ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... she would not depress Victoire's enthusiastic hope: to please her, the good nun added, that she felt better this morning than she had felt for months, and Victoire was happier than she had been since Mad. de Fleury left France. But, alas! it was ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth

... was good hearing! Peggy held her head high for the rest of that evening, and felt as if nothing would have power to depress her for the future. But, alas, when the pendulum is at its highest it begins to swing downwards. Peggy's heart sank as she watched Robert drive away from the door the next morning, and it went on sinking more and more during ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey

... and he will return to earth's level. He sees the truth, he feels the divine reality; and the certainty and the gladness are such that not even the prevision of his own relapse into dimmer perception can depress him. The hour speaks with command to the hours that are to follow; it bids them to fidelity, to love, ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam

... reminded of this more than once, and it never failed to depress us properly. If one had ever lived in Pittsburg, Fall River, or Kansas City, I should think it would be almost impossible to maintain self-respect in a place like Edinburgh, where the citizens "are released from the vulgarizing dominion ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... rapidly sinking into a very dismal frame of mind, which an outsider would have termed a fit of the blues. He sat in his straight-backed chair taking notes of such parts of the 'Lamentations' as would tend to depress the spirits of the 'Elect' on Sunday, and teach them to regard life in a proper ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume

... future period, be made the seats of new empires, by draining off from the old world that superfluity of population which, like an insupportable burden of fruit on a tree, unless removed, would tend to depress and destroy the trunk which produced ...
— The Present Picture of New South Wales (1811) • David Dickinson Mann



Words linked to "Depress" :   weaken, change, demoralize, take down, move, get down, demoralise, let down, bring down, displace, modify, elate, chill, discourage, alter, depression



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