"Weigh down" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... may, I now convey the reader to an ice-bound forest. Deep snow has buried the frozen ground. Masses of snow weigh down the branches of the leafless trees; and evergreens, which are not leafless, are literally overwhelmed, almost obliterated, by the universal covering. But the scene is by no means dismal. A blue sky overhead and a bright ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... the charms of such a life as that led by the Bannerworths; but what it must have been when they were supplied by ample means, with nothing to prey upon their minds, and no fearful mystery to hang on and weigh down their spirits, he ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... a standing order of this H[ouse] that the merit of elections be not determined by the number of voices, or right of electors, but by weight; and that one Whig shall weigh down ten Tories. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... I fear they come too late. Her father's crimes Sit heavy on her, and weigh down her prayers. A crown usurped; a lawful king deposed, In bondage held, debarred the common light; His children murdered, and his friends destroyed,— What can we less expect than what we feel, And ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... on the tipping track, the lever on the front end of the car is knocked up so as to allow the coal to fall out, and the end of the long wooden pole is allowed to rise slowly by the rope being loosened, the coal then shoots out of the car. When empty the Chinamen weigh down on the pole and bring the track, with the car on it, back to its former position, making the rope fast to the belaying pin, and the car is run back to make way for another. We were told that in this way five ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... sorrow, his soul seemed to float upwards to those cool depths of the outer firmament where no sorrow is. His eyes grew glassy and fixed, and his body rigid in the night-dews; and his spirit, soaring beyond the power of earthly forces to weigh down its flight, rose to that lofty sphere where the morning and the evening are but one eternal day, where the mighty unison of the heavenly chorus sends up its grand plain-chant to ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... the Earl and his family. Denham was received as kindly as before; and it was very evident the affection existing between Lady Sophy and Captain Falkner had in no way decreased. During the last day of his stay on shore, however, a degree of melancholy seemed to weigh down his captain at times. Occasionally he talked in his usual lively and animated manner, and spoke hopefully of the future, when, the war being ended, he might with honour sheath his sword and take up his abode ...
— The Heir of Kilfinnan - A Tale of the Shore and Ocean • W.H.G. Kingston
... published works; and a positive, not a comparative, appreciation of their characteristic excellencies, deficiencies, and defects. I know no claim that the mere opinion of any individual can have to weigh down the opinion of the author himself; against the probability of whose parental partiality we ought to set that of his having thought longer and more deeply on the subject. But I should call that investigation ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Mr Mark, sir," said Dan. "Look at old Brown going along yonder with his foreloping. Why, it would take three of that little chap to make one of he, and I don't know how many of him to weigh down Buck Denham in a pair of scales. But is the little one coming along ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... cheerfulness of manner. Not that she ever for a moment forgot the recollection of her love and her loss; but she considered her sorrows too sacred for a subject of conversation on one hand, and on the other, that her grief was her own, and that she had no right to intrude it upon others, or to weigh down and sadden their lives by what was sent for her to bear. Hence her presence was always welcome to the peasants, who regarded her with reverence and affection, as she passed, accompanied by her little daughter, from cottage ...
— Peak's Island - A Romance of Buccaneer Days • Ford Paul
... witnessed, but in offences? There were no divinity, but by reason of compassion for revenges are brutish and mortal. All those times past, the loves, the sights, the sorrows, the desires, can they not weigh down one frail misfortune? Cannot one drop of salt be hidden in so great heaps of sweetness? I may then conclude, Spes et fortuna, valete! She is gone in whom I trusted, and of me hath not one thought of mercy, nor any respect of that that was. Do with me now, therefore, ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... secondary changes. He gives the familiar example of the Giant Stag of the Irish peat, the enormous antlers of which required not only a much stronger skull cap, but also greater strength of the sinews, muscles, nerves and bones of the whole anterior half of the animal, if their mass was not to weigh down the animal altogether. It is inconceivable, he says, that so many processes of selection should take place SIMULTANEOUSLY, and we are therefore forced to fall back on the Lamarckian factor of the use and disuse of functional parts. And how, ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... is not likely to want a magnificent satin dinner-gown with a court train. A much less expensive frock would answer her requirements far better, for, with the ever-changing fashions, the costly material would have to be cut up and altered many a time before it was worn out. It is a pity to weigh down a young girlish bride with heavy brocades and silks that stand alone. Her freshness and beauty will stand a simpler setting, and look all the sweeter in it. There are so many soft, diaphanous fabrics made now, which fall into graceful draperies, that I ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux
... father), but a weapon which he had snatched in haste, and by mistake, belonging to his charioteer Metiscus. That after all this Jupiter, who was partial to the Trojan, and distrustful of the event, though he had hung the balance and given it a jog of his hand to weigh down Turnus, thought convenient to give the Fates a collateral security by sending the screech-owl to discourage him; for which they quote these ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... Like many another his brain exposed to such tremendous pressure for two or three days, was not quite normal. It was quickly heated and excited by fancies, and time and place alone were enough to weigh down even the coolest and most seasoned. He pressed close to his Confederate friends, whose names he never knew, and who never knew his, and they, feeling the same influence, never for an instant left the ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler
... done if I were to tell you all the miseries that we shall undergo if we be so foolish and wicked as to take this CURSED COIN. It would be very hard if all Ireland should be put into one scale, and this sorry fellow Wood into the other, that Mr. Wood should weigh down this whole kingdom, by which England gets above a million of good money every year clear into their pockets, and that is more than the English do by all the ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... puffs up and bursts the guilty,—all this pictured itself to my imagination, and formed itself into the most frightful combinations; since false vows, hypocrisy, perjury, blasphemy, all seemed to weigh down the unworthy person at this most holy act, which was so much the more horrible, as no one could dare to pronounce himself worthy: and the forgiveness of sins, by which every thing was to be at last; done away, was found limited by so many conditions, ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... Comedy' being obviously of different species from the 'Iliad' or the 'Nibelungen Lied.' Modern Italians, again, are distinguished from the French, the Germans, and the English in being the conscious inheritors of an older, august, and strictly classical civilisation. The great memories of Rome weigh down their faculties of invention. It would also seem as though they shrank in their poetry from the representation of what is tragic and spirit-stirring. They incline to what is cheerful, brilliant, or pathetic. The dramatic element in human life, external to the personality of the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... it a vision that had visited his waking dreams? The spell is dissolved; he is still on earth, and earthly thoughts and worldly crimes return and weigh down his soul." ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 367 - 25 Apr 1829 • Various
... because, compelled to choose between you two, and to deceive either one or the other, love has conquered friendship; do not punish me for it, for it has not been done blindly, and you will, I trust, consider the reasons which have caused the scale to weigh down in your favour. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... slight in itself, and more than common—just one of the unrecorded humble tragedies which daily engulf the Little Peoples. But I had seen a butterfly's wing save him alive; and so I did not doubt now that a little bird's nest could weigh down the balance which would put him definitely upon the side of ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... refused to descend and weigh down her eyelids: on the morrow she was to call upon Dent's mother, and the thought of this call preoccupied her with terror. She was one of the bravest of souls; but the terror which shook her was the terror that shakes them all—terror lest ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... But public outrage of his country's flag, To which his patriotic heart had pledged Its faith as to a bride. The bold, proud chief, Th' avenging host, and the swift-coming death Appalled him not. Nor life with all its charms, Nor home, nor wife, nor children could weigh down The fierce, heroic instincts to destroy The insolent invader. Ellsworth fell, And Jackson perished 'mid the pack of wolves, Befriended only by his own great heart And God approving. More than Roman soul! O type of our impetuous chivalry! May this young nation ever ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... Lizzie almost had made up her mind to break it off. All that she would gain did not seem to weigh down with sufficient preponderance all that she would lose. Such were her feelings on the Tuesday night. But on the Wednesday morning she received a note which threw her back violently upon the Fawn interest. ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... gratitude, and it is this internal combat between his natural goodness and his anger that devours him. Every year that has passed has deposited at his feet, on one side, the great works of this man, and on the other, his crimes. It is the last which now weigh down the balance. The King sees them and is indignant; he would punish, but all at once he stops and weeps. If you could witness him thus, Madame, you would pity him. I have seen him seize the pen which ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... must be hidden.—I wonder where he is to-night. Oh, I've no right to think of him at all. Why can't I say, 'Stop,' and end it?—this miserable stealing away of my thoughts until will, like a jailer, pursues and drags them back. Why should a presentiment of danger to him weigh down my spirit to-night? What other peril can he be exposed to except that of marrying a beauty and an heiress? Ah! peril enough, if his heart shrinks like mine. Here, now, quit," and the word came sharply ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe |
