"Compassing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... leaving it on the right, too, and Dawson's on the left of the trail where it passes to the left of said Dawson's and onward thence to Tomahawk, thus making the route cheaper, easier of access to all who can get at it, and compassing all the desirable objects so considered by others, and, therefore, conferring the most good upon the greatest number, and, consequently, I am encouraged to hope we shall. However, I shall be ready, and happy, to afford you still further information ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... it may happen, of two wayfarers, the one will gain in pace upon the other half the distance say in every five-and-twenty miles, [25] though both alike are young and hale of body. The one, in fact, is bent on compassing the work on which he started, he steps out gaily and unflinchingly; the other, more slack in spirit, stops to recruit himself and contemplate the view by fountain side and shady nook, as though his object were to court each gentle ...
— The Economist • Xenophon
... which part of my forces the opportunity of engaging was afforded, I routed the enemy; and because I could not overtake by land his army of infantry, which was rapidly hurried away, as if in flight, having returned to the ships with all the speed I could, after compassing such an extent of sea and land, I have met him at the foot of the Alps. Whether do I appear, while declining the contest, to have fallen in unexpectedly with this dreaded foe, or encounter him in his track? ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... everywhere the traces of the descent of modern Socialism from one of its ancestors,—German philosophy. Thus great stress is laid on the dictum that Communism is not a mere party doctrine of the working-class, but a theory compassing the emancipation of society at large, including the capitalist class, from its present narrow conditions. This is true enough in the abstract, but absolutely useless, and sometimes worse, in practice. So long as the wealthy classes not only do not feel ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... such a way that its contradictions, instead of condemning it, justify it, its diversity producing its adaptation and its adaptation producing benefits.—This is no barren formula. A sentiment of such grandeur, of such comprehensive and penetrating insight, an idea by which Man, compassing the vastness and depth of things, so greatly oversteps the ordinary limits of his mortal condition, resembles an illumination; it is easily transformed into a vision; it is never remote from ecstasy; ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... daybreak on each man had drink to spare. The might of waters waxed, the men wailed loud, Old bearers of the spear; they strove to flee The fallow stream; they fain would save their lives And seek a refuge in the mountain caves, Firm earth's support. An angel drove them back, 1540 Compassing all the town with gleaming fire, With savage flames. Wild beat the sea within; No troop of men could scape from out the walls. The waves waxed, and the waters thundered loud; The firebrands flew; the flood welled up ...
— Andreas: The Legend of St. Andrew • Unknown
... the tones, which, reflected from all sides, mixed as it were in the middle, and loaded the ear with a confused ringing noise, similar to what I once heard when nearly drowned in the Thames. If the man had had any intention to increase my alarm, he could not have taken a more effectual way of compassing his intention; for his language—the true and natural diction of spirits—responded to by the confused ringing echoes of the bell, and acting upon a mind already enervated by the weight of the genius of superstition, appeared to be all that ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... to Alexander, and called also upon Draga. It has even been suggested that Russia arranged the affair, and that Draga was her tool. This is, however, improbable. It was more likely the achievement of an ambitious and most foolish woman. But that Russia jumped at it as the very best means of compassing Alexander's ruin cannot be doubted, for no less a person than the Tsar accepted the post of Kum (Godfather) at the wedding, thus publicly announcing his approval of the marriage at which he was represented by a proxy, when it was celebrated at Belgrade ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... always indolence. There are two ways of compassing our desires. One is that which David himself tells us is the 'young lions' way, of struggling and fighting, and that often ends in 'lacking and suffering hunger'; the other is that of waiting on the Lord, and that always ends in 'not lacking any good.' If we ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the Criminaloid. Criminaloids, as we have seen, are recruited from all ranks of society and strike every note in the scale of criminality, from petty larceny to complicated and premeditated murder, from minting spurious coins to compassing gigantic frauds, which inflict incalculable damage upon the community. The magnitude of a crime does not imply greater criminality on the part of its author, but rather that he is a man of brilliant endowments, whose ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... showed to many others, and especially to two who were compassing his death; one of whom gave him a severe wound in the neck, and would have brained him, or cut off his head; but the king took it most patiently, saying: 'Forsothe and forsothe, ye do fouly to smyte a kynge enoynted so.' The other ...
— Henry the Sixth - A Reprint of John Blacman's Memoir with Translation and Notes • John Blacman
... "The worst of it is she sees so many evil things compassing her about. She says the only thing to do is to laugh them away. But she can't laugh herself. And so I have to. But when I go away from her—oh! I can't bear ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... much in going by the bridge as in braving the tempest. I think we are in the same error when we set up philosophy and prosperity in opposition to each other, taking up with the one when we cannot get the other, as if philosophy were not over all, compassing our life as the blue sky overarches the earth, brightening, vivifying, harmonising all, whether we look up to see whence the light comes ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... etern, Y-clenched *overthwart and ende-long* *crossways and lengthways* With iron tough, and, for to make it strong, Every pillar the temple to sustain Was tunne-great*, of iron bright and sheen. *thick as a tun (barrel) There saw I first the dark imagining Of felony, and all the compassing; The cruel ire, as red as any glede*, *live coal The picke-purse, and eke the pale dread; The smiler with the knife under the cloak, The shepen* burning with the blacke smoke *stable The treason of the murd'ring in the bed, The open war, with woundes all be-bled; Conteke* ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... that decides That as each thing to more perfection grows, It feels more sensibly both good and pain. Though ne'er to true perfection may arrive This race accurs'd, yet nearer then than now They shall approach it." Compassing that path Circuitous we journeyed, and discourse Much more than I relate between us pass'd: Till at the point, where the steps led below, Arriv'd, there Plutus, the ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... real Bernadotte. Those who called him a disguised friend of Napoleon little knew the depth of his hatred for the Emperor, a hatred which was even then compassing the earth for means of overthrowing him, and saw in the person of a lonely French exile beyond the Atlantic an instrument of vengeance. Already he had bidden his old comrade in arms, Moreau, to come over and direct the people's war against the tyrant who had exiled him; and the ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... most famous and peerlesse gouernement of her most excellent Maiesty, her subiects through the speciall assistance, and blessing of God, in searching the most opposite corners and quarters of the world, and to speake plainly, in compassing the vaste globe of the earth more then once, haue excelled all the nations and people of the earth. For, which of the kings of this land before her Maiesty, had theyr banners euer beene in the Caspian sea? which of them hath euer dealt with the Emperor of Persia, as her Maiesty ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... second, reform and economy in government. After the new parties were well under way, the Democrats in most of the States, being in a hopeless minority, made common cause with them in the hope of thus compassing the defeat of their hereditary rivals, the old-line Republicans. In Missouri, however, where the Democracy had been restored to power by the Liberal-Republican movement, the new party received ...
— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck
... Joshua'; a kind and benevolent reply, which does equal honour to his head and heart. The editor of this little volume, like Goldfinch in the 'Road to Ruin,' 'would not stay away for a thousand pounds.' He has already looked about for a tall horse and a taxed cart, and he has some hopes of compassing a drab coat and a white hat, for he has no wish to appear singular ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... and laughed. Sir Roger de Launay laughed with him; the idea was too irresistibly droll. But the King was bent on mischief, and determined to lose no time in compassing it. ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... off the ears of both of us, so we went away in a rage, furious about the payment he had promised us, and yet withheld; in spite of all this, you are now showing favour to his people, and will not join us in compassing the utter ruin of the proud Trojans with their wives ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... get away, but find difficulty in compassing a passage in a ship of war. They had better let me go; if I cannot, patriotism is the word—"nay, an they'll mouth, I'll rant as well as ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... received with a rapturous welcome by the Absian tribe. But the hostile and the envious continued to plot against him. They still aimed at preventing his marriage, and compassing his death. Amarah, who aspired to Ibla's hand, backed by all the chieftains hostile to Antar, renewed his suit and pretensions. Ibla was carried off from her house among the Absians, and taken to another tribe. Then ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous
... enemy's country and its subsequent mortifying withdrawal, when contrasted with the brilliant success resulting from Farragut's dash by the forts, afford a very useful lesson in the adaptation of means to ends and the selection of a definite objective, upon compassing which something happens. The object of the United States Government being to control the lower Mississippi, that was effected by means of isolating its defenses, which then fell. When the further object was sought of controlling the course of the stream above, ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... The India proprietor, therefore, will always be, in the first instance, a politician; and the bolder his enterprise, and the more corrupt his views, the less will be his consideration of the price to be paid for compassing them. The new regulations did not reduce the number so low as not to leave the assembly still liable to all the disorder which might be supposed to arise from multitude. But if the principle had been well established and well executed, a much greater inconveniency grew ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... contradiction. I judge it likely, and with confidence, that Reason would prerequire for his God, a Being, at once infinitely easy to be apprehended by the lowest of His spiritual children, and infinitely difficult to be comprehended by the highest of His seraphim. Now, there can be guessed only two ways of compassing such a prerequirement: one, a moral way; such as inventing a deity who could be at once just and unjust, every where and no where, good and evil, powerful and weak; this is the heathen phase of ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... resided the noted Colonel John Okey, one of the regicides "charged with compassing and imagining the death of the late King Charles I." in October, 1660. Nineteen of these "bold traitors," (among whom was Okey,) fled from justice, and were attainted, and Barber's Barn was in his tenure at the time of his attainder. His interest ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 348, December 27, 1828 • Various
... misfortunes were ever rendered impossible, it would not be in virtue of the victory of the faith of Laud, or of that of Milton; and, as little, by the triumph of republicanism, as by that of monarchy. But that the one thing needful for compassing this end was, that the people of England should second the efforts of an insignificant corporation, the establishment of which, a few years before the epoch of the great plague and the great fire, had been as little noticed, ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... cut out of the firme stone, led to the scale and compassing passage in the center, with winding steps tending to the highest parte of the stately Pyramides, and opening vpon the outside of the catill or cube: vpon the which the shining obeliske was founded. And among the rest of such notable ...
— Hypnerotomachia - The Strife of Loue in a Dreame • Francesco Colonna
... received as an ingenious and expressive hint; it cannot be taken as an explanation. There is as much difficulty, as will be presently seen, in the way of admitting that comets have shadows of any kind, as there would be in compassing the idea that bodies of enormous length can be whirled round through millions of miles in the minute. The truth is, the comet's tail is yet an unguessed puzzle, and vexes even the wits of the wise. It keeps grave men seated on the horns of a dilemma, so long as their ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various
... ways of compassing this necessity. One is to buy, if possible, in piece ends and mill waste, such materials as Turkey red, blue and green ginghams, and blue domestics and denims, as well as all the dark colours which come in tailors' cuttings. The other and better ...
— How to make rugs • Candace Wheeler
... have, and ever will, incline them to this offense. Eager appetites to secular and sensual goods; violent passions, urging the prosecution of what men affect; wrath and displeasure against those who stand in the way of compassing their desires; emulation and envy towards those who happen to succeed better, or to attain a greater share in such things; excessive self-love; unaccountable malignity and vanity are in some degrees connatural to ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... unable to comprehend. A new era begins, however, with the Codes. Wherever, after this epoch, we trace the course of legal modification we are able to attribute it to the conscious desire of improvement, or at all events of compassing objects other than those which were aimed at in the ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... the utmost end of the heavens is his egress; and his compassing-regress is unto the utmost-ends of them: and none ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... set out upon a tour of inspection. Such a visit might disclose the wrong done to Florestan, who is the Minister's friend and believed by him to be dead, and Pizarro resolves to shield himself against the consequences of such a discovery by compassing his death. He publishes his resolution in a furious air, "Ha! welch' ein Augenblick!" in which he gloats over the culmination of his revenge upon his ancient enemy. It is a terrible outpouring of bloodthirsty rage, and I have yet to hear the singer who can cope with its awful ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... corona is no modern discovery. Indeed, it is too conspicuous an apparition to escape notice from the least attentive or least practised observer of a total eclipse. Nevertheless, explicit references to it are rare in early times. Plutarch, however, speaks of a "certain splendour" compassing round the hidden edge of the sun, as a regular feature of total eclipses;[162] and the corona is expressly mentioned in a description of an eclipse visible at Corfu in 968 A.D.[163] The first to take the phenomenon into ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... above the starres did sore, One foote on Thetis, th'other on the Morning, One hand on Scythia, th'other on the More, Both heaven and earth in roundnesse compassing; Iove fearing, least if she should greater growe, The old giants should once againe uprise, Her whelm'd with hills, these seven hils, which be nowe Tombes of her greatnes which did threate the skies: Upon her head he heapt Mount Saturnal, ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... caution has misled me," he continued, pausing thoughtfully when he was left alone in the roadway. "I should have risked using the mother's influence sooner to procure the righteous restitution. All hope of compassing it now rests on the life of the child. Infant as she is, her father's ill-gotten wealth may yet be gathered back to the ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... for compassing a Design, come not so much from the Quickness and Fertility of an industrious Wit, as a dim-sighted Understanding, which makes us pitch upon every fresh Matter that presents itself to our groping Fancy, and does not furnish us ...
— The Present State of Wit (1711) - In A Letter To A Friend In The Country • John Gay
... condition of which seemed thus early to portend the interest which almost immediately after converged upon it, because of King Thebau's wholesale slaughter of his relatives. Reaching Mandalay, the capital of Native Burmah, in the beginning of February 1879, I immediately set about compassing an interview with the young king. Both Mr. Shaw, who was our Resident at Mandalay at the time of my visit, and Dr. Clement Williams whose kindly services I found so useful, are now dead, and many changes have occurred since ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... deigned Yield of the freest gree his loves though gotten of Godheads. Thee Thetis, fairest of maids Nereian, vouchsafed to marry? Thee did Tethys empower to woo and wed with her grandchild; Nor less Oceanus, with water compassing th' Earth-globe? 30 But when ended the term, and wisht-for light of the day-tide Uprose, flocks to the house in concourse mighty convened, Thessaly all, with glad assembly the Palace fulfilling: Presents afore they bring, and joy in faces declare they. ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... of France. In these circumstances, not daring to risk the delay of an amendment to the Constitution prior to such final action, he proposed reconciling consistency with duty by procuring confirmation of the treaty by the Senate and compassing its unquestionable validation ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... desperate expedients to which she was driven (whether by compulsion or from her own regard for Davies) to repel and dismiss him, did not strike me as they might have done as the crowning argument in favour of the course we had adopted the night before, that of compassing our end without noise and scandal, disarming Dollmann, but aiding him to escape from the allies he had betrayed. To Davies, the man, if not a pure abstraction, was at most a noxious vermin to be trampled on for the public good; while the ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... was too well contrived for compassing such an end, to have been an accident, and portions of it strongly suggest the hand of Norton. It was passed in May, 1661, when it was becoming evident that hanging must be abandoned, and its provisions can only be explained on the supposition that it was the intention ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... brought its kindred in increasing numbers. But, although charmed at first with its melody, the novelty wore off; and when, night after night, there were three or four of these birds waking the echoes beneath my bedroom window, trying in jealous rivalry each to outdo the other in compassing the whole gamut, “in the rich mazes of sound,” my admiration considerably abated, and I became rather disposed to vote the performance a veritable surfeit of song, to the utter banishment of much-needed ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... truth very well. We are not very patient with those who affect to know better than ourselves what we want and what we ought to desire. Most men are exceedingly in earnest, and determined to be heard in their own cause, and well able to make themselves understood. Scribes and Pharisees compassing sea and land to make one proselyte are a good and bad type of our activity in the pursuit of our own ends. Innumerable and infinitely varied are the shifts employed to secure attention, to effect the sale of merchandise, and to increase income. Nor are ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... is the second particular) partly from God's hiding of his face, and changing his dispensations about them, and compassing them with clouds, and partly from themselves and their own ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... themselves into frenzy by rapid motion and frantic shouts, were the people,—men and women, mingled in the licentious dance, who, six short weeks before, had sworn to the Covenant. Their bestial deity in the centre, and they compassing it with wild hymns, were a frightful contradiction of that grey altar and the twelve encircling stones which they had so lately reared, and which stood unregarded, a bowshot off, as a silent witness against them. Note the strange, irresistible fascination of idolatry. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... been perfectly satisfied with a wooden "aula" as the dwelling place of a powerful thegn, but then we should have looked for it on something of a mound, like the home of Wiggod at Wallingford. Certainly, a frightfully stinking ditch of no great width, compassing a square field, is a poor find after the hopes with which we set out. But, in the absence of all help from books or men, it is all that we have to offer. We should be glad if anybody would tell us of something better; but this is all we could make out for ourselves. ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman
... law be urged, I fear that your having gone to this meeting at all, and consented to designs against the government of the King, and afterwards concealing the plans for introducing foreign forces, and for compassing the death of the King, must be considered by the peers as nothing short of paramount treason itself. Let me beseech you, therefore, my lord, to be most careful and guarded in your speech; to content yourself with simply denying all treasonable intentions, and to leave me, and ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... parson nor of peasant." Which was duly done. But Colonel Glover, not untouched by that curiosity inherent to mankind, as well as womankind, took pains to cast about whether this was not one who had a hand in compassing the death of King Charles I.; and this coming, in some strange manner (through inquiries he had made in London), to the ears of Authority, he was distinctly told that his prisoner was not one of those bold bad men who, misled ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... throne-room of the Caliphate. There he saw the curtains and the forty doors and Al- 'Ijli and Al-Rakashi the poet, and 'Ibdan and Jadim and Abu Ishak[FN35] the cup-companion and beheld swords drawn and the lions[FN36] compassing the throne as the white of the eye encircleth the black, and gilded glaives and death-dealing bows and Ajams and Arabs and Turks and Daylamites and folk and peoples and Emirs and Wazirs and Captains and Grandees and Lords of the land and men of war in band, and in ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... a place—and that the noblest—for Dorcas making garments for the poor, and for Mary sitting at the feet of Jesus, just as truly as there is for Elijah confounding a false religion by his noble opposition; for John the Baptist making a king tremble on his throne; or for the Apostle Paul "compassing sea and land" by his wisdom and ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... 1906-07 at the Metropolitan Opera House began on November 26th and lasted seventeen weeks, compassing sixty-eight subscription performances of twenty-three operas and twenty-nine extra performances. Mr. Conried announced at the close of the supplementary season that his receipts had aggregated $1,005,770.20; but this sum doubtless included the receipts from the Boston season. The season ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... a legal way, those who are the troublers of Israel, the firebrands of hell, the Korahs, the Balaams, the Doegs, the Rabshakehs, the Hamans, the Tobiahs, the Sanballats of our time, which done, we are satisfied. Neither have we begun to use a military expedition to England as a mean for compassing those our pious ends, until all other means which we could think upon have failed us: and this alone is left to us, ULTIMUM ET UNICUM REMEDIUM, ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... engagements, and to maintain ourselves, we built a small pinnace at Manomet, a place on the sea, twenty miles to the south, to which by another creek on this side, we transport our goods by water within four or five miles and then carry them overland to the vessel; thereby avoiding the compassing of Cape Cod with those dangerous shoals, and make our voyage to the southward with far less time and hazzard. For the safety of our vessel and our goods we also there built a house and keep some servants, who plant corn, raise swine, and are always ready to go out with the bark—which ...
— Cape Cod and All the Pilgrim Land, June 1922, Volume 6, Number 4 • Various
... college, and eschewing all society but that of pious men, until now: I may not judge for the best, in my ignorance of this sinful human nature), tell me of better plans and wiser projects for accomplishing my end; but do not bid me rest, with Satan compassing me ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... leaders, who support themselves and have "made a good thing" out of Socialism by carrying water on one shoulder for gullible voters, and on the other for their credulous disciples. This is not the first time that self-serving, hypocritical teachers, in compassing sea and land to make proselytes, have made them twofold more the children of hell ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... far from right in reasoning that the Mediterranean should, and therefore would, be the chief scene of operations. In Bonaparte's eyes, to invade Britain was, justly, the greatest of all ends, the compassing of which would cause all the rest to fall. Nelson, weighing the difficulties of that enterprise more accurately than could be done by one unaccustomed to the sea, doubted the reality of the intention, and thought it more consonant ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... parties in the kingdom, not only with those who were envious and jealous of Temujin, but also with all those who, for any reason, were disposed to put themselves in opposition to Vang Khan's government. Thus a formidable conspiracy was formed for the purpose of compassing ...
— Genghis Khan, Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... inevitable doom, until the generals of Juistinian trod Italy into barren servitude. Only when the purpose of his life was shattered, when—Theodoric long dead—his still faithful service to the Gothic rule became an idle form, when Belisarius was compassing the royal city of Ravenna, and voice of council could no longer make itself heard amid tumult and ruin, did Cassiodorus retire from useless office, and turn ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... talks Israel unconsciously sowed the seeds of his eventual return. For with added years, the boy felt added longing to escape his entailed misery, by compassing for his father and himself a voyage to the Promised Land. By his persevering efforts he succeeded at last, against every obstacle, in gaining credit in the right quarter to his extraordinary statements. In short, charitably stretching a technical point, the American Consul ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... accuracy as far as she reaches. There is a wide difference between elementary knowledge and superficial knowledge—between a firm beginning, and an infirm attempt at compassing. A woman may always help her husband by what she knows, however little; by what she half-knows, or mis-knows, ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... the dramas, are no mechanical tricks, no obvious compassing of sickly sweetnesses. The accent falls where it should, unstrained. The disguised alliteration comes, as almost always in Milton also, not from set and conscious purpose, but from the promptings of a ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... committed the theft, came towards morning to the grotto, and there quarrelled, and the stronger slew the other, and took himself off. Aroused by the noise, Gisippus witnessed the murder, and deeming that he had now the means of compassing, without suicide, the death for which he so much longed, budged not a jot, but stayed there, until the serjeants of the court, which had already got wind of the affair, came on the scene, and laid violent ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... explanation of her lover's strangely base behavior? More and more did this fixed thought engross her mind. She felt that she must know—must see this woman and her colorless father. Desire grew to resolve; resolve bred inquiry as to ways of compassing an interview; and in the midst of the inquiry, came Madame le Claire's messenger. Her answer was the putting on of her cloak for a visit ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... somewhat lax morality occasionally, as in Ann. xiii. 17 sqq., when speaking of Nero's murder of his brother Britannicus. In Ann. xi. 19 he approves of compassing a ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... By this time not more than a quarter of a mile of the forest separated Baree from the lone wolf, but the lone wolf was also an old wolf, and with the directness and precision of long experience, he swerved in the direction of the hunters, compassing his trail so that he was heading for a point half or three-quarters of a mile in advance of ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... frowning up from the open patio into the hot, cloudless sky. On the ridge of his tiled roof a foul buzzard blinked at him from red-rimmed eyes, across the yellow wall a lizard ran for shelter, at his elbow a macaw compassing the circle of its tin prison muttered dreadful oaths. Outside, as the washerwomen beat their linen clubs upon the flat rocks of the river, the hot, stale air was spanked with sharp reports. In Camaguay ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... needlessly bitter toward Catholics, yet he meant well. He viewed his office as only transitory, and stood ready to surrender it so soon as the new king's will could be learned; but when Slaughter arrived with commission as governor, Leisler's foes succeeded in compassing his execution for treason. This unjust and cruel deed began a long feud between the popular and the aristocratic ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... the Circumambient Society, to explain that she should not be present at their evening meeting. One of the rules of this society was to take always a winding road when going upon society business, as the word "circumambient" means "compassing about." It was one of its laws to copy Nature as far as possible, and a straight line is never seen in Nature. Therefore she could not send a direct note to say she should not be present; she could only hint it in general conversation with the secretary; and she was obliged to take ...
— The Last of the Peterkins - With Others of Their Kin • Lucretia P. Hale
... in the season of pilgrimage, whilst the people were making the enjoined circuits about the Holy House and the place of compassing was crowded, a man laid hold of the covering of the Kaabeh and cried out, from the bottom of his heart, saying, 'I beseech Thee, O God, that she may once again be wroth with her husband and that I may lie with her!' A company of the pilgrims heard him ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous
... palate and his appetite, should not be guilty of irregularity. Hence it was that to avoid this vice, as soon as I found myself arrived at maturer years, I embraced a regular and sober life. It is, no doubt, true, that I found some difficulty in compassing it; but, in order to conquer this difficulty, I beseeched the Almighty to grant me the virtue of sobriety; well knowing, that he would graciously hear my prayer. Then, considering, that when a man is about to undertake any thing of importance, which he knows ...
— Discourses on a Sober and Temperate Life • Lewis Cornaro
... in a congenial soil, would grow into a tree in whose branches all the birds of the air might dwell. It was the initial misfortune of the Brook-Farmers to establish themselves on a picturesque but gravelly and uncongenial soil, whose poverty went very far toward compassing the ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... of his body much [like] unto an ox. The biggest are bigger then any ox whatsoever. Those are to be found about the lake of the Stinkings & towards the North of the same. They come not to the upper lake but by chance. It's a pleasur to find the place of their abode, for they tourne round about compassing 2 or 3 acres of land, beating the snow with their feete, & coming to the center they lye downe & rise againe to eate the bows of trees that they can reach. They go not out of their circle that they have ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson
... (the practice of allowing any advocates to appear before the Grand Jury has long fallen into disuse); that the murder of the King should be precisely laid in the indictment, and be made use of as one of the overt acts to prove the compassing of his death; that any act tending to the compassing of the King's death besides the one laid in the indictment might be given in evidence; that the two witnesses required in treason need not speak to the same overt act;[33] ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various
... that Themistocles was in great repute among the barbarians, having promised the king to lead his army, whenever he should make war upon Greece. But Themistocles, it is said, abandoning all hopes of compassing his designs, very much out of the despair of overcoming the valor and good-fortune of Cimon, died a voluntary death. Cimon, intent on great designs, which he was now to enter upon, keeping his navy about the isle of Cyprus, sent messengers to consult the oracle of Jupiter Ammon upon some secret ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... in now decreeing its expulsion from the throne, it acts under the natural law of self-preservation, being driven to pronounce this sentence by the full conviction that the house of Lorraine-Hapsburg is compassing the destruction of Hungary as an independent State: so that this dynasty has been the first to tear the bands by which it was united to the Hungarian nation, and to confess that it had torn them in the face of Europe. For many causes a nation is justified, before God and man, in expelling ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... was able to extemporize, 'but it were a thousand pities to put the attainments of Her Royal Highness to a test altogether too severe. Your Majesty can scarcely with justice expect the very organs of her speech to prove capable of compassing words so long, and ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... family then living with him consisted of a son and a daughter: the former a man of fearless courage and integrity, the latter a gentlewoman of good wit and discretion, as will be seen hereafter. Consulting, amongst themselves as to the best means of compassing the king's escape, it was resolved Mistress Lane should visit a kinswoman of hers with whom she had been bred, that had married one Norton, and was now residing within five miles of Bristol. It was likewise decided she should ride ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... northern seas. By 1st June he had reached a region where there was no night, and a few days later a strange sight startled the whole crew, "for on each side of the sun there was another sun and two rainbows more, the one compassing round about the suns and the other right through the great circle," and they found they were "under 71 degrees of the height ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... drama, was supplied with the necessary maps and information, and rode, during the 18th, in company with Generals Grant, Thomas, W. F. Smith, Brannan, and others, to the positions occupied on the west bank of the Tennessee, from which could be seen the camps of the enemy, compassing Chattanooga and the line of Missionary Hills, with its terminus on Chickamauga Creek, the point that I was expected to take, hold, and fortify. Pontoons, with a full supply of balks and chesses, had been prepared for the ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... first instance, those Pharisees who were then and there compassing the death of Jesus. They ostentatiously professed that they were doing God service; yet they were spreading a net for the feet of the innocent, and preparing to shed his blood. Wearing broad phylacteries, ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... by the ministers of Spain, Peru, Chile, and Ecuador. In consequence of the absence of a representative from Bolivia, the conference was adjourned until the attendance of a plenipotentiary from that Republic could be secured or other measures could be adopted toward compassing ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson
... he could not check an impulse to raise his arm and wipe her eyes, but Lin Tai-y speedily withdrew several steps backwards. "Are you again bent," she said, "upon compassing your own death! Then why do you knock your hands and kick your feet about ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... Arrive at their end by fraud, when violence will not avail them Attachment to a half-drowned land and to a despised religion Barbara Blomberg, washerwoman of Ratisbon Believed in the blessed advent of peace Compassing a country's emancipation through a series of defeats Don John of Austria Don John was at liberty to be King of England and Scotland Ferocity which even Christians could not have surpassed Happy to glass themselves in so brilliant a mirror His personal graces, for the moment, took the rank of ...
— Quotations From John Lothrop Motley • David Widger
... marked skill, yet he leaves the path behind him strewn thick with the sweat-drops of his mortification. In his pride of wit and cleverness, he had looked with scorn upon plain common people as no better than blockheads; and had only thought to use them, and even his own powers of mind, for compassing the means of animal gratification. But he now stands thoroughly degraded in his own sight, and this too in the very points where he had built his conceit of superiority. He finds that all his wit and craft were not enough to prevent even Sir Hugh, ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... certain peaks, canons, and clear meadow spaces which are above all compassing of words, and have a certain fame as of the nobly great to whom we give no familiar names. Guided by these you may reach my country and find or not find, according as it lieth in you, much that is set down here. And more. The earth ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... God, let us eat bread and salt together, thou and I.' So Tuhfeh came forward and ate of those meats and tasted somewhat the like whereof she had never eaten, no, nor aught more delicious than it, what while the slave-girls stood compassing about the table and she sat conversing and laughing with the queen. Then said the latter, 'O my sister, a slave-girl told me of thee that thou saidst, "How loathly is yonder genie Meimoun! There is no eating [in his presence]."'[FN227] ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... penalty, I 'll bear the shame!' You have closed your eyes; you have tried to stifle remembrance, to persuade yourself that you were not behaving as badly as you seemed to be, and there would be some way, after all, of compassing bliss and yet escaping trouble. You have faltered and drifted, you have gone on from accident to accident, and I am sure that at this present moment you can't tell what ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... they desired their own augmentation and aggrandizement at your expense and to your detriment. Such were the words of your letters, Mon seigneur, and you did me the honor, whilst recognizing the connection between my fortunes and those of your Majesty, to add expressly that they were compassing my ruin together with your own. . . . And now, Monseigneur, when I hear it suddenly reported that your Majesty has made a treaty of peace with those who have risen up against your service, providing that your edict be broken, your loyal subjects banished, and the conspirators armed, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... things, Athenians, to what a pitch of arrogance he has come—this man who gives you no choice to act or to remain quiet, but brags about and talks words of overwhelming insolence, as they tell us. He is not such a character as to rest with the possessions which he has conquered, but is always compassing something else, and at every point hedging us, dallying and supine, in narrower and narrower circles. When, then, Athenians, when will you do what you ought? As soon as something happens? As soon, great Jove! as necessity ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... hemisphere had veil'd the horizon round: When satan, who late fled before the threats Of Gabriel out of Eden, now improv'd In meditated fraud and malice, bent On Man's destruction, maugre what might hap Of heavier on himself, fearless returned By night he fled, and at midnight returned From compassing the earth; cautious of day, Since Uriel, regent of the sun, descried His entrance, and foreworned the Cherubim That kept their watch; thence full of anguish driven, The space of seven continued nights he rode With darkness; thrice the equinoctial line He circled; ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... had won her game,—first, by compassing the murder of her husband; second, by ordering the murder of her step-son. It is pleasant to say that she profited little by the latter base deed. The people were incensed by the murder of the king, and Dunstan resolved that Ethelred ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... the ditch and struggling madly up the ramparts, or tearing furiously at the palisades. But the defences were strong, and the assailants fell literally in scores. Napier tells how "the axemen of the light division, compassing the fort like prowling wolves," discovered the gate at the rear, and so broke into the fort. The engineer officer who led the attack declares that "the place would never have been taken had it not been for the coolness of these men" in ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... presumed that by that standard Mark Twain's works will ultimately be judged—there is no more significant passage in Huckleberry Finn than that in which Huck struggles with his conscience over the knotty problem of his moral responsibility for compassing Jim's emancipation. Nothing else is needed to show at once Mark Twain's preoccupation with the workings of human conscience in the unsophisticated mind and his conviction that, with the "lights that he had," Huck was justified ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... the shadow of the crosstree from which shortly he would dangle in the article of death, a stark offence before the sight of mortal eyes, he halted and stood reviling all who had a hand in furthering and compassing his condemnation. Profaning the name of his Maker with every breath, he cursed the President of the United States who had declined to reprieve him, the justices of the high court who had denied his appeal from the verdict of the lower, the judge who had tried him, the district ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... black idea of violence to a bad mind contemplating violence; hold up before a man remotely compassing the death of another person, the spectacle of his own ghastly and untimely death by man's hands; and out of the depths of his own nature you shall assuredly raise up that which lures and tempts him on. The laws which regulate those ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... necessary to part children and parents, husbands and wives, and brethren from each other. Neither in the partition of friends and relations was any law kept, only each fell where the lot took him. O powerful Fortune! who goest hither and thither with thy wheels, compassing the things of the world as it pleaseth thee, if thou canst, place before the eyes of this miserable nation some knowledge of the things that are to come after them, that they may receive some consolation in the midst of their great ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... Lincolnshire property, and at the period of the great scandal in London he was palsied, and waited on by his grandson and heir Ralph Thorkill Kirby, the hero of an adventure celebrated in our Law courts and on the English stage; for he took possession of his coachman's wife, and was accused of compassing the death of the husband. He was not hanged for it, so we are bound to think him ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... little ships, the miracles that have buoy'd them, and by incredible chances safely convey'd them, (or the best of them, their meaning and essence,) overlong wastes, darkness, lethargy, ignorance, &c., have been a few inscriptions—a few immortal compositions, small in size, yet compassing what measureless values of reminiscence, contemporary portraitures, manners, idioms and beliefs, with deepest inference, hint and thought, to tie and touch forever the old, new body, and the old, new soul! These! and still these! ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... her great age, had been compelled to take some rest. The count sat up, worn out with fatigue, in a downstairs room hard by that in which they were compassing the ruin of all most dear to him ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE COUNTESS DE SAINT-GERAN—1639 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... hide the truth from myself, but I do not think that, when this began, I meditated to do him any wrong. I may have thought how serviceable his inheritance would be to us, and may have wished him dead; but I believe I had no thought of compassing his death. Neither did the idea come upon me at once, but by very slow degrees, presenting itself at first in dim shapes at a very great distance, as men may think of an earthquake or the last day; then drawing nearer and ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... officially informed that his commission was in danger, unless he set up the Loggan Stone again in its proper place. The materials for compassing this achievement were offered to him, gratis, from the Dock Yards; but he was left to his own resources to defray the expense of employing workmen to help him. Being by this time awakened to a proper sense of the mischief he had done, and to a tolerably strong conviction of ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... Charley's life was running in a tiny circle, but his mind was compassing large revolutions. The events of the last few days had cut deep. His life had been turned upside down. All his predispositions had been suddenly brought to check, his habits turned upon the flank and routed, his mental postures ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Ralph Lane went in one of the Frigats which we had taken, to Roxo Bay vpon the Southwest side of Saint Iohn, to fetch salt, being thither conducted by a Spanish Pilot: as soone as hee arriued there, hee landed with his men to the number of 20. and intrenched himselfe vpon the sandes immediatly, compassing one of their salte hils within the trench: who being seene of the Spaniards, there came downe towardes him two or three troopes of horsemen and footemen, who gaue him the looking, and gazing on, but durst not come neere him to offer any resistance, so that Master ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... long while. Whither, it was asked, can Russia turn now? Recent events, M. Sven Hedin assured his countrymen, have already answered the query. Northwards. The great Slav Empire covets an ice-free harbour in Norway, and until this war broke out was busily engaged in compassing its end. At any future moment it may again start off on this enterprise. It is the duty of patriotic Swedes to ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... choose, of course, as you are too high up for me to be able to reach you," he said, keeping his voice as steady as he could, although his teeth were chattering still; "but all the time you stay there you keep me here, so in compassing your own death you compass ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... of their merciful deliverance and of the supply of provisions afforded by their bountiful God to them, disregarding the exhortations of the chaplain, Master Hunt, to live peaceable lives, formed conspiracies against the governor and admiral with the intent of compassing their deaths. Happily, from want of union, these plots were discovered, but order was not restored until their ringleader had been seized and ...
— The Settlers - A Tale of Virginia • William H. G. Kingston
... inferior energy, it might burn the whole universe. It is said, O child, that this weapon hath not a peer in the three worlds. Keep it, therefore, with great care, and listen to what I say. If ever, O hero, any foe, not human, contendeth against thee thou mayst then employ it against him for compassing his death in battle.' Pledging himself to do what he was bid, Vibhatsu then, with joined hands, received ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... There they sat with solemn faces, posing as sticklers for law and religion, and all the while they were seeking grounds for killing Him. Was that Sabbath work? Whether would He, if He cured the shrunken arm, or they, if they gathered accusations with the intention of compassing His death, be ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... of the case coincided with the practice of men eminent in the school of medicine to which I then belonged. I am not a disciple of that school now, having found a system of exacter science, and one compassing more certain results with smaller risk and less ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur |
