"Constraint" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and the open somehow brought relief and the delicate constraint between them relaxed as they sauntered slowly into the house where Shiela presently went away to dress for the Ascott function, and Hamil sat down on the veranda for a while, then retired to undertake the embellishment ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... expected that he would not obey her commands. But at that moment the flourish of trumpets and kettle-drums from a high balcony which overlooked the hall announced the entrance of the maskers, and relieved Leicester from the horrible state of constraint and dissimulation in which the result of his ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... laughed at the irony of the argument, and their laugh did much to do away with the constraint, the tension of their mood. More gayly she mentioned certain ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... "a talk" can be got up when people are in the right spirit, on any subject, and that the subject of all others most difficult to get up this "talk" upon, is religion. Mr Sudberry knew this; he felt much inclined at one time that night to talk about fishing, but he laid strong constraint on himself; and gave the conversation a turn in the right direction. The result was "a talk"—a hearty, free, enthusiastic communing on the Saviour, the soul, and eternal things, which kept them up late and sent ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... on her searchingly and almost sadly. Vincenzo was right: the girl was beautiful, not with the forced hot-house beauty of the social world and its artificial constraint, but with the loveliness and fresh radiance which nature gives to those of her cherished ones who dwell with her in peace. I had seen many exquisite women—women of Juno-like form and face—women whose eyes were basilisks ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... pretext to take drastic measures without constraint, he summoned the Priest and ordered him to ring the Church bell at the burial of ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... and we get all these in the good news of One that has died for us, and that lives to be our Lord. The will needs authority which is not force. And where is there an authority so constraining in its sweetness and so sweet in its constraint as in those silken bonds which are stronger than iron fetters? Hope, imagination, and all other of our powers or weaknesses, our gifts or needs, are satisfied when they feed on Christ. If we feed upon anything else it turns to ashes that break our teeth and make our palates gritty, and have ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... cleanse the outside of the platter, to conceal defects by gloss and glitter. Its theory of politeness and its maxims of behavior are drawn from a state of things so different from that which here prevails, that they produce in us little besides an exaggerated ungracefulness, a painful constraint, a complete artificiality of conduct and character. We are trying to shine in borrowed plumes. We would glisten with foreign varnish. To produce an effect is our endeavor. We prefer to act, rather than ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... study he recommends children because they permit forms of expression to appear vigorously and without constraint; lunatics, because they are subject to strong passions without control; galvanized persons, in order to facilitate the muscles involved, and finally, to establish the identity of expression among all races of men and beasts. Of these objects only children are important for ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... friendship and in love, his unmerited disgrace, and his long, lonely twilight-life at Raveloe, with the sole companionship of his loom, in which his muscles moved "with such even repetition, that their pause seemed almost as much a constraint as the holding of his breath." Here, as in all George Eliot's books, there is a middle life and a low life; and here, as usual, I prefer the low life. In "Silas Marner," in my opinion, she has come nearest ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... the opportunity. Would she permit him to meet her and Miss Ringrose at Hampstead? Without shadow of constraint or affectation, Eve replied that such a meeting would give her pleasure: she mentioned place and time at which they ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... chair, and insisted upon order; but both gentlemen continued struggling, and endeavoring, notwithstanding the constraint of their friends, to ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... are two to this bargain," said Dan, good-humouredly. "I would not consent to have her on such terms. She must fix and arrange everything without constraint from any one—not ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... exalted friend, Isel went forward as quickly as was in her, to receive her with all possible cordiality, and to usher her to the best place in the chimney-corner. Aliz greeted the family pleasantly, but with a shade of constraint towards their German guests. For a few minutes they talked conventional nothings, as is the custom of those who meet only ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... constraint of the dinner Dr. Harpe sat with a lurking smile upon her face. The domestic storm she had raised had been prompted solely by one of those impulses of deviltry which she seemed sometimes unable to restrain. It was not the part of wisdom to antagonize Symes, but her desire to convince him, ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... foot six inches straight to the rear, left knee slightly bent; clasp the hands, without constraint, in front of the center of the body, fingers joined, right hand uppermost, left thumb clasped by the thumb and forefinger of the right hand; preserve silence and ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... more, O ye laurels, and once more Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere, I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude, And with forced fingers rude Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year. Bitter constraint, and sad occasion dear Compels me to disturb your season due: For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime, Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer: Who would not sing for Lycidas? he knew Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme. He must not float upon ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... loan. For this it was that they had been awaiting for two hours; this was the object of their visit and the fixed idea which gave them during the meal that absent, falsely attentive manner. But here no more constraint, no more pretence. In that peculiar social world of theirs it is of common knowledge that in the Nabob's busy life the hour of coffee remains the only time free for private audiences, and each desiring to profit by it, ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... many, both high and low, rich and poor, bond and free, old and young, men and women. To them the worship of God is tedious and disagreeable. They neither find pleasure in it, nor expect benefit from it. And therefore their attendance is not from choice, but from constraint. ...
— An Address to the Inhabitants of the Colonies, Established in New South Wales and Norfolk Island. • Richard Johnson
... in a constraint which was becoming unbearable when the blessed doorbell rang and delivered us, and Miss Josephine St. Michael entered with John Mayrant. He wore a most curious expression; his eyes went searching about the room, and at length settled upon Juno with a light in them as ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... at him without a trace of emotion or constraint in her large, quiet face, and their eyes met for a moment in that brief, fixed, baffling fashion that seems to prove that mankind is after all but a dumb masked creature saddled with the vain ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... McLaughlin's wife would repeat Honey's cryptic remarks to the boss, and so, next day, he felt a natural constraint when in the presence of the senior partner. Constraint in the one reacted upon and caused constraint in the other, until it looked as if McLaughlin and Skinner, who had once been quite sociable as boss and clerk, would be little ...
— Skinner's Dress Suit • Henry Irving Dodge
... constraint on both—so much so that Olive heard, without testifying much pain, news which a few days before would have grieved her to the heart. This visit was a good-bye. Sara had been suddenly sent for by her grandfather, who lived ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... with the constraint put upon him, took up a bit, which he put to his mouth trembling, and ate with a reluctance that astonished us. But what surprised us yet more was, that he had no thumb; which none of us had observed before, though ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... soon as he was in a separate command he began to curry favor with Congress and scheme against his commander. This was not unknown to Washington, who afterwards wrote, "I discovered very early in the war symptoms of coldness & constraint in General Gates' behavior to me. These increased as ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... I don't like at all this new-made burgomaster! His insolence grows daily ever faster. No good from him the town will get! Will things grow better with him? Never! We're under more constraint than ever, And pay more tax than ...
— Faust • Goethe
... accrues in the choice of change and variety and of experience far and wide, with all the world for stage—a stage set and appointed by this very art of choice—all future generations for witnesses and audience. When you talk with a man who has in his nature and acquirements that freedom from constraint which goes with the full franchise of humanity, he turns easily with topic to topic; does not fall silent or dull when you leave some single field of thought such as unwise men make a prison of. The men who will not be broken from a little set of subjects, who talk earnestly, hotly, with ...
— On Being Human • Woodrow Wilson
... do not touch my lord! Whoever shoots at him, I set him there; Whoever charges on his forward breast, I am the caitiff that do hold him to it; And though I kill him not, I am the cause His death was so effected; better 'twere I met the ravin lion when he roared With sharp constraint of hunger; better 'twere That all the miseries which nature owes, ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... 1827, and when great numbers began to be immersed into Christ, under his labors, and new churches began to be erected by him and other laborers in the field, did the Baptist associations begin to declare non-fellowship with the brethren of the reformation. Thus by constraint, not of choice, they were obliged to form societies out of those communities that split, upon the ground of adherence to the apostles' doctrine. The distinguishing characteristics of their views and practices ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... yet could no man, at any time, discouer him doing of that, which necessitie of nature requireth. Moreouer, he would take a hot yron out of the fire, with his bare hand; neuer changed his apparell, but by constraint, and vsed to lie in strawe, with his head downe, and his heeles vpwards. Spare he was of speech, and, instead of halfe his words, vsed this terme Size, as I will Size him, for strike him, hee is a good Size, for man, &c. Ouer-sleeping, or some other accident, made him to lose a day, in his account ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew
... beauty had come all in a single morning, like the crocuses. This beauty began to awe Richard; it had the effect of seeming to remove her further and further from him. He grew moody and restless when they were together, and was wretched alone. His constraint did not escape Margaret. She watched him, and wondered at his inexplicable depression when every one in the household was rejoicing in her recovery. By and by this depression wounded her, but she ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... power not to will it, and when I do not will it it is likewise in my power to will it. I neither am nor can be compelled in my will; for I cannot will what I actually will in spite of myself, since the will I mean evidently excludes all manner of constraint. Besides the exemption from all compulsion, I am likewise free from necessity. I am conscious and sensible that I have, as it were, a two-edged will, which at its own choice may be either for the affirmative or the negative, the yes or the no, and turn itself either towards ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... there is no dependence to be placed on them. It is made clear to us that they are sadly depraved, nor can I describe many of the scenes which take place. Suffice it to say that, like other heathens who know not God, they give themselves up to work all manner of abominations without constraint or shame. We place a guard during the night; but when we awake there is great shouting among our party for missing articles, and it is found that we all have been robbed of articles of dress, knives, pistols, handkerchiefs, and pocket-books. Phineas declares ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... for the most part to dislike me. I hate their little crawling ways, their conventionalities, their deceits, their narrow rights and wrongs. They take offence at my brusque outspokenness, my disregard for their social laws, my impatience of all constraint. Among my books and my drugs in my lonely den at Mansie I could let the great drove of the human race pass onwards with their politics and inventions and tittle-tattle, and I remained behind stagnant and happy. Not stagnant either, for I was working in my own little ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... suffered very much from the constraint imposed on him by my position, and did, for the first time in his life, for my sake do that in secret which he could not speak upon the housetops. Mea culpa all of it! If one of us two is to be blamed, it is I, at whose representation of circumstances he submitted to do violence to his own ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... conversation had been carried on in a somewhat stiff and irrelevant manner; this more especially on the side of the squatter, who—notwithstanding his endeavours to assume an air of easy nonchalance—was evidently labouring under suspicion and constraint. From the fact of Stebbins having sent a message to forewarn him, of this visit, he knew that the schoolmaster had some business with him of more than usual importance; and it was a view to ascertain the nature of this ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... had elapsed since he had been haranguing the admiring company of his friends, and his words came easily. Moreover, it was a long time since he had broken through the constraint he felt in Don Paolo's presence, and the opportunity having presented itself was ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... prisoner; and even all the favour with which he had himself been treated could not make him forget the fate of his companions, or the warning which it afforded him to how sudden or slight an accident his own life might at any time fall a sacrifice. But it is certain that, where no such sense of constraint is felt, not only the notion, but even the reality, of savage life has a strong charm for many minds. The insecurity and privation which attend upon it are deemed but a slight counterbalance to the independence, ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... truth, the situation at that moment was decidedly strained. But Risler's good-humor banished all constraint. He apologized to his partner for not being at home, and insisted upon showing Frantz the house. They went from the salon to the stable, from the stable to the carriage-house, the servants' quarters, and the conservatory. Everything was new, brilliant, gleaming, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the better for the law, in the sense, I mean, in which law involves constraint? Or would it not be better still if the same life were pursued freely for ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... prospering ambition in my life. When I attended your course, I believed that I should come to be a great healer, and I felt almost happy—even though I was still the one boarder in the house with that horrible mask, and ate and drank in silence and constraint with the mask before me, every day. As I had done every, every, every day, through my school-time ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... with constraint. Her heart was heavy—the hopes and ambitions she had cherished of adding lustre to her fame for the joy and pride of her lover, seemed all crushed at one blow. She was too young and inexperienced to realise ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... they must remain. Yet the rumour persisted and gradually began to work like poison in his mind. He was too proud to mention the matter to the farmers when they came up for the autumn salving of the sheep, but a constraint in their manner deepened his suspicions, and all through the winter a pall of gloom enshrouded his mind like the pall of gloom on the moors themselves. Spring brought dark foreboding to yet darker certainty. From his mountain eyrie Peregrine could now see bands of men ...
— Tales of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... Poet writes from immediate feeling, and is intensely animated by his subject. Delicacy is likewise indispensibly requisite, because the reader is apt to be disgusted with the least appearance of constraint or harshness in a poem, whose principal excellence lies in the happy and elegant turn of a pointed reflection. In short, little sallies and picturesque epithets have a fine effect in pieces of this kind, as by the former the passions are forcibly inflamed, and by ...
— An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients • John Ogilvie
... her daughter in the principles of Christianity, and had checked the evil propensities of her husband as long as she lived, but after her death, which had taken place shortly before the events we have been describing, all constraint had been removed from the evil propensities of the misguided man, and he joined the murderous gang who had just met ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... dream,—a kind of despair. I had got into a net through my own timidity and weakness, and I did not see how to get out of it. I clung to my own home-people that fortnight as I had never done before. Their voices, their ways were all so pleasant and familiar to me, after the constraint in which I had been living. I might speak and do as I liked without being corrected by Madame Rupprecht, or reproved in a delicate, complimentary way by Monsieur de la Tourelle. One day I said to my father that I did not want to ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... therefore therein he is not free. So a man striking himself, or his friend, by a convulsive motion of his arm, which it is not in his power, by volition or the direction of his mind, to stop or forbear, nobody thinks he has in this liberty; every one pities him, as acting by necessity and constraint. ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... laughed at these explanations, though there was a little constraint upon them all. The ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... the laws of prudence and necessity." [29] The dissimulation of Julian lasted about ten years, from his secret initiation at Ephesus to the beginning of the civil war; when he declared himself at once the implacable enemy of Christ and of Constantius. This state of constraint might contribute to strengthen his devotion; and as soon as he had satisfied the obligation of assisting, on solemn festivals, at the assemblies of the Christians, Julian returned, with the impatience of a ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... labour bent Their business, murmuring, ply 'Gainst graver hours that bring constraint To sweeten liberty; Some bold adventurers disdain The limits of the little reign And unknown regions dare descry; Still as they run they look behind, And hear a voice in every wind, ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... particular would totally defeat the object in view, and would lead to many and irremediable bad consequences, and would make the children affected and false, or would create a degree of embarrassment and constraint which must prevent the natural action of the understanding or the feelings. ... In the registry of such observations, considered as contributing to a history of the human mind, nothing should be neglected as trivial. The circumstances which may seem most ...
— Richard Lovell Edgeworth - A Selection From His Memoir • Richard Lovell Edgeworth
... Bitter constraint and sad occasion dear Compels me to disturb your season due; For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime, Young Lycidas, and hath not ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... several attempts to start conversation, all of which Jean ignored, manifestly to her growing constraint. Presently Jean, having decided what he wanted to say, suddenly began: "I like ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... Constraint deepened as the visit was prolonged. Mrs. Conyers begged Mrs. Meredith for a recipe that she knew to be bad; and when Mrs. Meredith had left the room for it, she rose and looked eagerly out of the windows ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... miracle. If I felt obliged to accept literally these stories, or to lose my faith in the voice of God which speaks through the men of the Bible I should care greatly. In the true view of the Bible I am delivered from solicitude about these traditions, and am under no constraint of credulity. Those who can believe the story of Elisha and the bears, or of Elijah's ascension into heaven, may; those who cannot, need not; and both alike should reverently read their Bibles, not for these tales of wonder, but for the ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... Public opinion must be the only agent in this: the most reluctant shall not be forced; the most timid shall not be alarmed by any thing we are to do. Hitherto and henceforward our plan has been and shall be without constraint on any one, and never shall we offer any argument or invitation to humanity divorced from patriotism. To this truly quiet, unofficious spirit, do I trust for bringing about the time when we shall be one homogeneous nation of freemen; when those great principles now true of ...
— The Trial of Reuben Crandall, M.D. Charged with Publishing and Circulating Seditious and Incendiary Papers, &c. in the District of Columbia, with the Intent of Exciting Servile Insurrection. • Unknown
... to this deepest Reality certainly arise within my own mind, emotion, will; and these my faculties cannot, upon the whole, be constrained by my fellow mortals; indeed, as men grow more manysidedly awake, all attempts at any such constraint only arrest or deflect the growth of these intimations. Yet the dispositions necessary for the sufficient apprehension of these religious intimations—sincerity, conscientiousness, docility—are not, even collectively, ...
— Progress and History • Various
... sat and smoked until their tongues were dry and sore. It was a relief for them to smoke; not so much to kill time as to break the long awkward pauses in their conversation. Inwardly they had both decided that it was impossible any longer to bear the constraint ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... sort of religious solemnity prevailed. No unbecoming word might fall from the lips of any of the company, and a censor, armed with a hand-bell, was appointed to mark and punish instantly any infraction of the rule. But at the stroke of twelve all this was changed. Constraint gave way to license; pious hymns were replaced by Bacchanalian ditties, and the shrill quavering notes of the village fiddle hardly rose above the roar of voices that went up from the merry brotherhood of the Green Wolf. Next day, the twenty-fourth of June or Midsummer Day, ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... not mean; or in that village two leagues away, with those good people who were so pleased to see us and gave us such delicious cream?" Emile will not hesitate; he is not vain and he is no chatterbox; he cannot endure constraint, and he does not care for fine dishes; but he is always ready for a run in the country and is very fond of good fruit and vegetables, sweet cream and kindly people. [Footnote: This taste, which I assume my pupil to have acquired, is a natural result of his education. Moreover, ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... private behavior, in her affections, the same vehemence and the same passion which her brother showed in public life. Ready for all excesses, and not blushing to confess them, loving and hating with fury, incapable of controlling herself, and opposed to all constraint, she did not belie the great and haughty family from which she ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... effects. In 1825 he travelled abroad, was gone some years, was impressed by Velasquez, Correggio, and Rembrandt, and completely changed his style. He then became a portrait and historical painter. He never outlived the nervous constraint that shows in all his pictures, and his brush, though facile within limits, was never free or bold as compared with a Dutchman like Steen. In technical methods Landseer (1802-1873), the painter of animals, was somewhat like him. That is to say, they both ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke
... garden I was fain To mourn among my scattered roses; Alas for that last rosebud which uncloses To Autumn's languid sun and rain When all the world is on the wane! Which has not felt the sweet constraint of June, Nor heard the ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... a similarity, however, between his mother's words and Hilda's, which was not so easily explained, and the coincidence was oddly in harmony with the oppressive constraint that had reigned at Greifenstein during the vacation. Greif could not help thinking very seriously of it all, as he drove rapidly through the forest to the railway station; so seriously indeed, that he at last shook himself with a movement ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... their party degenerate into a drunken rout; and another thing was even more sure—that Scottie Macdougal would keep his head better than the best of the others. But what the alcohol would do would be to cut the leash of constraint and dig up every strong passion among them. For instance, Jeff Rankin was by far the most equable of the lot, but, given a little whisky, ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... only to two days. After two days, Adrian was to return to Basle, and to be seen no more at Granpere till he came to claim his bride. In regard to the choice of the day, Michel declared roundly that no constraint should be put upon Marie. She should have her full privileges, and no one should be allowed to interfere with her. On this point Marie had brought herself to be almost indifferent. A long engagement ...
— The Golden Lion of Granpere • Anthony Trollope
... in the stanza of Spenser—a stanza of which we think it difficult to say whether the excellencies or defects are the greatest. The paramount advantage is the variety of tone and pause of which it admits. The great disadvantages are, the constraint of such complicated rhymes, and the long suspension of the sense, especially in the latter half of the stanza. The noblest conception and most brilliant diction must be sacrificed, if four words in one place, and three in another cannot be found rhyming to each other. And as to the suspension ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... and turned away, confused. People avoided him in the street, for the simple reason that they knew not what attitude to take in such painful circumstances. The stricken man was very conscious of, but could not understand, the constraint and diffidence of those people who did pluck up sufficient courage to say ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... street-lamps gleamed luridly from their stands, serving only to make the dreary darkness visible. Lorrimer's late merry fancies were all extinguished as suddenly as they had blazed forth. Even his sturdy guide showed a depression and constraint that strangely contrasted with his former gayety. He vainly drew upon his mirth-account; there was no issue, "Beastly fog!" said he, "we might drill holes in it, and blast it with gunpowder!" They ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... Raymond had remained with Adrian and Idris. He was naturally frank; the continued absence of Perdita and myself became remarkable; and Raymond soon found relief from the constraint of months, by an unreserved confidence with his two friends. He related to them the situation in which he had found Evadne. At first, from delicacy to Adrian he concealed her name; but it was divulged in the course of his narrative, and her former lover heard with the most acute ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... freedom—her release from the monotonous constraint of her daily confinement at the Inn—the unaccustomed independence of her new activities which justified her most untoward goings and comings—was very soothing to her. She liked the feeling of slipping out of the house at night, accountable to no one except the redoubtable ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... that there was nothing to do but to take the proffered hand, so irresistible was the constraint of his host's courtesy, although felt to be without warmth or cordiality. Disguising his inward protest by a light laugh he said: "I could shake hands with almost any one on such a mutual understanding. Well, since we have begun on the basis of such absolute frankness on my part, ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... the king, modifying his last observation, "if women are not all eyes and ears! I neither heard nor saw all that. A little constraint—a natural blush to punctuate their talk—the meeting seemed conventional enough. 'Tis through your own romantic ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... evening, but you have made it pleasant to me by telling me what you thought of me. And before you go I want you to believe that I shall try to keep that good opinion." She spoke frankly in contrast to the slight worldly constraint of Barker's manner; it seemed as if they had changed characters. And then ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... looked confusedly from one to the other, quickly noting the constraint in the manner of every officer present and the sudden disappearance of her husband. There was an odd silence for a moment: ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... whispered, "And are you angry with me, dear friend?" The Knight pressed her soft hand, and stroked down her ringlets. Not a word could he say; his distress at the old man's harshness toward Undine had sealed his lips; and so each couple remained sitting opposite the other, in moody silence and constraint. ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... stretched a grassy path where other couples were strolling and Johnny Byrd guided her past them. They walked in silence. He kept his hand on her arm and from time to time glanced about at her in a half-constraint that was no part of his ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... of love to Christ ("if ye love me, keep my commandments,"—John 14:15) to prompt him to a faithful Christian life. On this point James Denny in "The Death of Christ" says, "The love which is the motive of it acts immediately upon the sinful; gratitude exerts an irresistible constraint; His responsibility means our emancipation; His death, our life; His bleeding wound, our healing. Whoever says, 'He bore our sins,' says substitution; and to say substitution is to say something which involves an immeasurable obligation to Christ, and has therefore in it an incalculable ...
— God's Plan with Men • T. T. (Thomas Theodore) Martin
... the Rabbi were done and all . . . well, uncertainty over. For there was a note of anxiety, almost of horror, in the Rabbi's voice, and he had not let the Fathers go so lightly unless under severe constraint. What was it? Surely he would not attack their minister in face of his people. . . . The Rabbi do that, who was in all his ways a gentleman? Yet . . . and then the Rabbi abruptly quitted historical exposition ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... movements of the day, and has the general air of friendliness in his personal manners. It continually seems that all the outer world's affairs are well judged of, but when he comes to draw conclusions of moral men who have the power of affecting his own interests, there is apparent constraint, or palpable narrow-mindedness. ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... her that he also had enjoyed the evening, and was bound to say it in no voice of hypocritical constraint. 'It has ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... which was of course the captive Gelimer, who, with a purple robe on his shoulders, paced through the streets, shouting ever and anon in a melancholy voice, "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity". When the procession reached the palace, Gelimer by constraint and Belisarius willingly prostrated themselves at the feet of "Justinianus Augustus". The promises on the faith of which the Vandal king had surrendered himself were well kept. He might have been raised to the dignity of Patrician, if he would have renounced ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... the cups of various size, The least containing bumpers three, And nine the rest.—Come, no disguise! Nor yet constraint, the ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... moment they looked at one another in constraint. Mrs. Archdale also had altered, altered far less than John Coxeter, but she was aware, as he was not aware, of the changes which long nearness to death had brought her; and for almost the first time in her life she ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... was not far away; she had been standing in the next room, listening intently to every word of the conversation, and only kept from coming in by a certain constraint that made a brother whom she had not met for so many years seem almost as much a stranger as if he had not been connected with ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... lowly fading from her mind, when one morning, as she was returning from the parsonage, Mr. Leigh joined her, and asked permission to attend her home. The sound of his voice, the touch of his hand, brought back all the embarrassment and constraint, and called up the flush of confusion so often attributed to other sources than that from ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... the next room perhaps to Charles) of the time when he rose "as early as the day." What would he not have given to wet his boots once more with morning dew, and follow his vagrant fancy among the meadows? The only alleviation to the misery of constraint lies in the disposition of the prisoner. To each one this place of discipline brings his own lesson. It stirs Latude or Baron Trenck into heroic action; it is a hermitage for pious and conformable spirits. Beranger tells us he found prison life, with its regular ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... are not in the position of the continental Churches. No constraint is upon you. You can get Episcopacy, if you desire it. Neither does the Church of England stand relatively towards you, as the Gallican Church towards the Huguenots. You admit the purity of our doctrine, and do not consider our discipline unscriptural. If you were to ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... public care will rarely allow them to speak on any other subject than business, can be a remedy large enough for so large an evil. True it is, that a peculiarly frank or jovial temperament in a sovereign may do much for a season to thaw this punctilious reserve and ungenial constraint; but that is an accident, and personal to an individual. And, on the other hand, to balance even this, it may be remarked, that, in all noble and fashionable society, where there happens to be a pride in sustaining what ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... with some constraint and shyness, but presently warming to my task and growing interested, I became animated and vivacious in my manner, so that when I ceased I saw her sitting there, her hands clasped about one knee, her eyes upon my face, her lips parted a little, the ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... will then, as you will, little ones," Jean Jacques acquiesced with a half-sigh; but he did not look at his daughter. Somehow, suddenly, a strange constraint possessed him where Zoe was concerned. "Then let us have Zoe's song; let us have 'La Claire Fontaine'," cried the black-eyed young madcap who held ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... comparatively few impudent people, with their own ends to serve. This book is somewhat open to like objections. Its title is too pretentious; its style is braggart, and tainted with the vulgarity of an English flash reporter; and yet this is tempered by a certain constraint, as if the writer could not but occasionally think how ill such a style was suited to his subject. The portrait is wretched, and a certain likeness to Mr. Morphy adds ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... in the hospital at Interlaken," said Ralph, addressing Lord Tamerton with marked constraint. "He has merely sustained a fractured patella. With your ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 147, August 12, 1914 • Various
... own way, as she always did; and half-past nine found her back at her deserted post behind the teapot. Desmond fancied that she looked paler than usual; that her cheerfulness was veiled by a shadow of constraint. But as Paul was present, enjoying his first normal breakfast, he contented himself with scrutinising her, when her attention seemed to be taken up elsewhere. As a matter of fact, Honor knew precisely how often ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... breathing once more their native air, tear off their clothes and become savages again. Somewhat similar may have been David's case, who, inheriting in a vivid degree the manly instincts of his forefathers, had forcibly and by constraint of circumstances lived a life wholly opposed to these impulses—an artificial life, therefore. But now at length he had come into his birthright, and felt ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... each. The king was delighted with this evangelical method of extending reformed religion in Ireland. Congratulating his deputy, he expressed a hope that many, by such means, would be brought to conformity in religion, who would hereafter 'give thanks to God for being drawn by so gentle a constraint to their own good.' The 'gentle constraint' was imposed in all directions. The Privy Council decreed that none but a member of the Church of England could hold any office under the Crown. The old Catholic families of the Pale humbly ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... not to finish, in fulfilment of a solemn, universal, and inevitable decree, the constraint that I have put upon myself might at length become oppressive, and my yoke prove somewhat heavy. But all that will finish soon, for all undertakings come to an end. I left you young, beautiful, adored, and triumphant in the land of enchantments. But six years have passed, and they assure ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... based economic adjustment effort by the government. The economy depends on substantial inflows of economic assistance from the IMF, the World Bank, and individual donor nations. The closure of traditional trade routes through Mozambique continues to be a constraint on the economy. ...
— The 1991 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... of ruffled black hair; her eyes and teeth gleamed with equal brightness and directness of purpose. It was suggested to Gerald by her air and manner that she had forgotten the spectators. Her freedom from constraint was shared by Charlie. Seeing them together reminded Gerald that Charlie was after all Italian,—one forgot it sometimes. He tried to remember which of the bits of scandal tossed on to the dust-heap at the back of his memory was the one fitting this ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... a twitch of Miss Betsey's head, after each of these sentences, as if her own old wrongs were working within her, and she repressed any plainer reference to them by strong constraint. So my mother suspected, at least, as she observed her by the low glimmer of the fire: too much scared by Miss Betsey, too uneasy in herself, and too subdued and bewildered altogether, to observe anything very clearly, or to know what ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... is the strangest thing about the will,—this affair so extremely complex, for which the people have only one name. Inasmuch as in the given circumstances we are at the same time the commanding AND the obeying parties, and as the obeying party we know the sensations of constraint, impulsion, pressure, resistance, and motion, which usually commence immediately after the act of will; inasmuch as, on the other hand, we are accustomed to disregard this duality, and to deceive ourselves about it by ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... be a wrong thing towards whomsoever was ordained to be my successor, to use the heritors to the custom of the minister paying for the reparations of the manse, as it might happen he might not be so well able to afford it as me. So in a manner, by their persuasion, and the constraint of the justice of the case, I made a report of the infirmities both of doors and windows, as well as of the rotten state of the floors, which were constantly in want of cobbling. Over and above all, I told them of the sarking of the roof, which was as frush as a puddock-stool; ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... not been with me," replied Hillhouse with some constraint; "indeed, I think he was to be sent ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln
... ahead with Benito and Dolores; Dave and Alaire followed leisurely. Now that the moment of their parting was at hand, they lingered by the way, delaying it as long as possible, feeling a natural constraint at what was in ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... together in silence, their former brief intimacy a mere memory, neither realizing exactly how best to resume a conversation which had been interrupted by so solemn a service. It was Miss Norvell who first broke the constraint. ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... constraint on both sides, which Link relieved by pushing between them with a big ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... kingdom is "not of this world." And therefore this King is unlike every other King. He seeks His possessions not by fighting, but by "lighting"; not by coercion, but by constraint. His servants do not go forth with swords, but with lamps; not to drive the peoples, but to lead them. His visible throne is a cross, and His conquests are made in ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... to be a trocheus another the iambus, and so entermingled not by election but by constraint of their seuerall accents, which ought not to be altred, yet comes it to passe that many times ye must of necessitie alter the accent of a sillable, and put him from his naturall place, and then one sillable, of a word polysillable, or one word monosillable, will abide to be made sometimes long, ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... smile was now released from its terrible constraint. A slight tremor, born of that deliverance, passed over her face, and left it rosy. But having committed herself to the policy of hesitation she had a certain delicacy in ...
— The Immortal Moment - The Story of Kitty Tailleur • May Sinclair
... but too well conjecturing what was passing in the mind of the other, she durst not ask his opinion. But, soon regaining her usual composure, she led the way to the dinner-table, where the meal that followed was partaken much as the one that preceded it,—in silence and mutual constraint, which was only relieved by an occasional forced, ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... and his language was so accurate, and his sentences so neatly constructed, that his conversation might have been all printed without any correction. At the same time, it was easy and natural; the accuracy of it had no appearance of labour, constraint, or stiffness; he seemed more correct than others, by the force of habit, and the customary ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... splendid women, foreign and English. The comparison rose sharply now, with Aminta's novel, airy, homely, unchallengeing assumption of an equal footing beside her lord, in looks and in tones that had cast off constraint of the adoring handmaid, to show the full-blown woman, rightful queen of her half of the dominion. Between the Aminta of then and now, the difference was marked as between Northern and Southern women: the frozen-mouthed ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... two people no longer stand to each other in the relation of mere acquaintances is generally that the tones of their voices change, while they feel a slight and unaccountable constraint when they happen ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... Thackeray's version does not tell us; but Scottish versions do. 'She longed fu' sair her love to see.' Elsewhere a supernatural being, 'The Billy Blin,' or a fairy, clad in green, gives her warning. The fickleness of the hero is caused, sometimes, by constraint, another noble 'has his marriage,' as his feudal superior, and makes him marry, ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... was the shyness and awkwardness of inexperienced youth, a feeling of constraint; an impression of perplexity and wonder, as though some one had suddenly knocked at the door. Anna Sergueyevna, "the lady with the toy dog" took what had happened somehow seriously, with a particular gravity, as though thinking that this was her downfall and very strange ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... agitated and faltered; the other broke out in invectives. The President said to him: "Sir, we are here the lawful authority and sole representatives of law and of right. We know that we cannot oppose to you material force, but we will leave this chamber only under constraint. We will not disperse. Seize us and convey us ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... passed, a certain constraint appeared to have arisen between Evie and myself. I told myself that the idea was foolish, and yet I knew that it was not so. Mind, I had not the slightest doubt as to the strength of Evie's love for me. She expressed it clearly, yet there was something ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... not failed to mark the air of constraint and dispirited lassitude which had characterized the Marchese during the commencement of their conversation. And he, as others had done, attributed it to the supposition that the Marchese was very rapidly growing old—likely enough, was breaking up. Nor ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... an iron figure of repression. So severe was the constraint that he put upon himself that he had given no sign of his emotion, even at the near approach of Donna Mercedes, and the hand which signed his name beneath her father's as the principal witness was as steady as if it held merely the sword in some deadly combat. He endured passively the affectionate ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... that she was in his drawing-room, he could scarcely believe his joyful ears. He had to put a constraint on himself to walk to its door in a decorous fashion fit for Mawley's eyes, and not dash to it at full speed. He entered the room with his ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... but the chieftains stayed there by constraint, and every day the Thynians, doing pleasure to Phineus, sent them gifts beyond measure. And afterwards they raised an altar to the blessed twelve on the sea-beach opposite and laid offerings thereon and then entered their swift ship to row, nor did they forget to bear with them ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... over our sons' sons be the last resolute tyranny prepared by one age for the coercion, constraint, and defeat of the future? To impose that compulsion has been hitherto one of the strongest of human desires. It is one, doubtless, to be outgrown by the human race; but how slowly that growth creeps onwards, let this success in the stencilling ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... had first found this home for Tessa, on his return from Rome, more than a year and a half ago, he had acted, he persuaded himself, simply under the constraint imposed on him by his own kindliness after the unlucky incident which had made foolish little Tessa imagine him to be her husband. It was true that the kindness was manifested towards a pretty trusting thing whom it was ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... a long time now since she had met Archelaus out of doors, as he had several times half-coaxed, half-bullied her into doing. Now she felt a constraint with him she had not previously, as though there were some portent in the simple act of seeing her home there had never been before. She had, of course, flirted with him in a very innocent way, if her methods had been a little cruder ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... cooperation to develop. External factors such as the international war on terrorism, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the war between the US-led coalition and Iraq probably will drive real annual GDP growth levels back below their 3.5% spike in 2002. A long-run economic constraint is the pressure on water supplies caused by rapid population growth, industrial expansion, and ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... with light and night and change, The lakes alive with wind and cloud and sun, Made answer, by constraint sublime and strange, To the ardent hand that ...
— Poems and Ballads (Third Series) - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... occupied, and from which he could not escape, was not wide enough to afford room for any violent movements; and the imminent danger of getting a hoof over the cliff, evidently inspired him with fear and constraint. The assailant having plenty of space to move in, was able to "back and fill" at pleasure, now receding foot by foot, then rushing forward, rising erect, and striking down again. Each time he made his onslaught with renewed impetus, ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... this general mortification in presence of an acquaintance seen after a long interval was the special constraint due to the identity of the acquaintance. It was with George Cannon that she had first deceived and plotted against her ingenuous mother's hasty plans. It was her loyalty to George Cannon that had ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... council had any power in the present situation of affairs to act otherwise than as prescribed by Gonzalo Pizarro and his officers; but that the judges had called in this manner on the members of this extraordinary council, as recorded witnesses of the constraint and oppression under which they all ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... vinculum, copula; pl. shackles, manacles, fetters, constraint; pl. imprisonment, captivity, bondage, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... child,—this incipient treachery of his own will,—Wotan becomes stern, lays down his command irrevocably, with threats of crushing retribution if this child of his shall dare to palter with his expressed will. "Keep a watch over yourself! Hold yourself in strong constraint! Put forth all your valour in the fight!... Have well in mind what I command: Siegmund is to fall! This ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... we were shown into the room where he lay in bed. He received us with great outward show of courtesy, assuring us of the welfare of the Envoy and Trevor, but there was a constraint in his manner for which I could not account. We were shortly taken to another apartment, where we found Skinner, who had returned, being on parole, early in the morning. Doubt and gloom marked our meeting, and the latter was fearfully deepened by ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... seized upon the weak part of his own,—its gentleness, its fear of inflicting pain, its reluctance to say "No,"—that simple cause of misery to the over-timid. A few sentences more, full of courage, confidence, and passion, on the part of the woman, of constraint and yet of soothed and grateful affection on that of the man, and ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... their fortunes by standing by their friends in not undeserved trouble, and no one knew better than Bacon what was worthy and noble in human action. The choice lay before him. He seems hardly to have gone through any struggle. He persuaded himself that he could not help himself, under the constraint of his duty to the Queen, and he did his best to ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... entreat of thee, O thou fatal star to me, is that the hand thou demandest of me and wouldst give me, be not given out of complaisance or to deceive me afresh, but that thou confess and declare that without any constraint upon thy will thou givest it to me as to thy lawful husband; for it is not meet that thou shouldst trifle with me at such a moment as this, or have recourse to falsehoods with one who has ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... everything; and what we learn thus, we acquire not only more effectually, but more pleasantly. This forms our manners, our opinions, our lives. It is one of the strongest links of society; it is a species of mutual compliance, which all men yield to each other, without constraint to themselves, and which is extremely ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... legislature during political panics. It is grounded on the principle that the sovereign has at all times a right to inquire, through the judges of the superior courts, by what authority his or her subject is held in constraint. It issues, as a matter of right, upon the filing of an affidavit, averring that to the best of the belief of the deponent the individual sought to be brought up is illegally confined; and it is of the essence of the proceeding, that the person alleged to be suffering ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... I lost my pleasure in the study, for I feel little interest in the actions of a bird under the constraint of an unwelcome presence, or in the shadow of constant fear and dread. What I care to see is the natural life, the free, unstudied ways of birds who do not notice or are not disturbed by spectators. Nor ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... completeness everywhere; the cornfields gilt and far-stretching, the waters blue, the skies arching high and clear, and the sunsets succeeding each other in most glorious light and beauty." Some slight misunderstanding on Browning's part, the fruit of mischief-making gossipry, which caused constraint between him and his old friend was cleared away by the good offices of Milsand. While Miss Thackeray sat writing, with shutters closed against the blazing sun, Browning himself "dressed all in white, with a big white umbrella under his arm," arrived to take her hand with all his old cordiality. ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... charmer, and it was not until an attempt was made to kill the snake that the birds would avail themselves of their wings, and fly into a forest one hundred rods distant. The movements of the birds while around the snake seemed to be voluntary, and without the least constraint; nor did they utter any distressing cries, or appear enraged, as I have often seen them when squirrels, hawks, and mischievous boys attempted to rob their nests, or catch their young ones; but they seemed to be drawn by some allurement or enticement, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 282, November 10, 1827 • Various
... Conscious, perhaps, that his capacity was rather solid than brilliant, he gave unremitting attention to the affairs of the nation in every department of the government; and, perhaps not very unnaturally, conceived that his doing so justified him, as far as he might be able, in putting a constraint on his ministers to carry out his views. Thus, he had notoriously induced Lord North to persevere in the late civil war in America long after that minister had seen the hopelessness of the contest; and it ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... each party addressing their inuendoes to the bookseller, who afraid to disoblige either the rich or the fashionable, preserved, as much as it was in the power of his muscles, a perfectly neutral countenance. At last, in order to relieve himself from his constraint, he betook himself to count the subscribers, and Miss Turnbull seized this moment to desire that her name might be added to the list. Lady Bradstone's eyes were immediately fixed upon her with complacency—Lady Stock's flashed ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... the day in which any special constraint among people is more disagreeable than at any other time, and then at dinner the servants must see it. I think there might be some awkwardness if he were to ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... universal, providential pre-arrangement, whose conditions can be discerned and discretionally acted on by human intelligence. The sense of freedom arises when the individual independence develops itself according to its own laws, without external collisions or hindrance; that of constraint, where it is thwarted or confined by other Natures, or where, by combination of external forces, the individual force is compelled into a new direction. Moral choice would not exist safely, or even at all, unless it were bounded by conditions ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... and individuals are shaped, I call upon you, Senators, Representatives, judges, fellow-citizens, here and everywhere, to unite with me in an earnest effort to secure to our country the blessings, not only of material prosperity, but of justice, peace, and union—a union depending not upon the constraint of force, but upon the loving devotion of a free people; "and that all things may be so ordered and settled upon the best and surest foundations that peace and happiness, truth and justice, religion and piety, may be established among ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... intended, he had neither words nor voice; and tho' he saw her every day, was often alone with her, and had opportunity enough to have revealed himself, yet could he not get the better of his timidity for a great while, and perhaps should have been much longer under this cruel constraint, had not an accident favoured his wishes beyond what he could have hoped, or even imagined, and by shewing him part of what passed in her soul, emboldened him to unfold what his own laboured ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... feast. At length, when neither thirst nor hunger more They felt unsatisfied, to new delights Their thoughts they turn'd, to song and sprightly dance, Enlivening sequel of the banquet's joys. 190 An herald, then, to Phemius' hand consign'd His beauteous lyre; he through constraint regaled The suitors with his song, and while the chords He struck in prelude to his pleasant strains, Telemachus his head inclining nigh To Pallas' ear, lest others should his words Witness, the blue-eyed Goddess thus bespake. My inmate and my friend! far from my ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... the view might be from the other side I did not investigate that morning; I preferred to leave the birds the slight screen afforded by the foliage, for since there could be no pretense of hiding myself from them, my desire was to let them fancy themselves hidden from me, and so feel free from constraint and be natural in their actions. I hoped, by approaching quietly and unobtrusively, by being careful never to frighten or disturb them in any way, to convince them that I was harmless, and to induce them to forget, or ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... She saw a certain constraint in his manner first, as she had perceived it in his note. She felt unaccountably hurt by it, and when he took her hand a little coldly and inquired for her health, a rush of feelings overwhelmed her and she burst ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... no ability could meet. It had that inevitable disadvantage which belongs to all ministerial and secondary works: the order and choice of topics being all determined by the "Eikon," Milton, for the first time, wore an air of constraint and servility, following a leader and obeying his motions, as an engraver is controlled by the designer, or a translator by the original. It is plain, from the pains he took to exonerate himself from such a reproach, that he felt his task to be an invidious one. The majesty ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... so young as might have been desired in a lover, a singularly pleasing man; and whatever feeling unfavourable to him had found its way into my mind, arose altogether from the dread, not an unreasonable one, that constraint might be practised upon my inclinations. I reflected, however, that Lord Glenfallen was a wealthy man, and one highly thought of; and although I could never expect to love him in the romantic sense of the term, yet I had no doubt but that, all things considered, I might be more happy with him ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... of a Christian church must be voluntary, and not by the constraint of force or hypocrisy. In Christ's church ALL must be free, and not a mixture of free-men and ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... deciduous trees. With sufficient amplitude to conceal a look of primness that often arises from symmetry, we observe a certain negligent flowing of its leafy robes that adds to its dignity a grace which is apparent to all. It seems to wear its honors like one who feels no constraint under their burden; and when smitten by a tempest, it bids no defiance to the gale, bending to its wrath, but ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... part, had begun to feel an increasing constraint in the company of a friend who had an unpleasantly keen eye for his weak points, and with whom he was always conscious of a certain inferiority which, as he could discover no reason for it, galled his vanity ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... followed by general imitation and recognition. The usage becomes traditional and is transformed into an obligatory custom or rule; the persons acquire a permanent status and are invested with powers of material or moral constraint. This is the stage of tradition and authority; very often it is the last stage, and continues till the society is destroyed. The usage is relaxed, the rules are violated, the persons in authority cease to be ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois |
