"Duress" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... oath, in the presence of a large assembly of all the great potentates and chieftains of the realm, by which he should bind himself, under the most awful sanctions, to keep his word. Harold made no objection to this either. He considered himself as, in fact, in duress, and his actions as not free. He was in William's power, and was influenced in all he did by a desire to escape from Normandy, and once more recover his liberty. He accordingly decided, in his own mind, that whatever oaths he might take he should afterward consider as forced upon him, ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... at Lucknow, the Princesses were still under duress at Fyzabad. Food was allowed to enter their apartments only in such scanty quantities that their female attendants were in danger of perishing with hunger. Month after month this cruelty continued, till at length, after twelve hundred thousand ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of a woman by force and against her will. The resistance of the woman must be to the utmost of her power, but if she yield through fear or duress it is still rape. The woman is a competent witness, but her statements may be impugned on the ground of her previous bad character, and evidence may be called to substantiate the charge. The perpetrator must be above the age of ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... from Massachusetts says he does not wish to do any thing at all; that the North is under duress, and her people would despise themselves if they acted under duress. No! no! This is not true in any sense. We respect the people of the North too much to attempt to drive them, or to secure what we need by threats or intimidation. We want ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... that to me—and she will be sorry ere it is all over. This man has thwarted me twice already. Coming over on the steamer from America the scoundrel disappeared from the ship most remarkably, just when I had all arranged to put him into duress in Liverpool. I have yet to learn the secret of it. He must be discouraged ... you ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... married—but that left a loophole. When was a marriage not a marriage? Answer: When the parties were closely enough related by blood or marriage, or either of them was mentally incapable, under age, victims of duress, fraud, mistake, previously ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... any person pursues a public calling and sustains such relations to the public that the people must of necessity deal with him, and are under a moral duress to submit to his terms if he is unrestrained by law, then, in order to prevent extortion and an abuse of his position, the price he may charge for his services may be regulated by law. When private property is affected ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... pinewood on to a peering screen of new-born leaves, pale-faced and trembling. After a moment's rest, they turned southward to where the lean brown road went paving a deep corridor, straight, silent, its black walls towering. Distance and gloom lent these a grim symmetry, suggestive of duress; above, a grey ribbon of sky issued a stony comfort, such as prisoners use.... With a shiver, Every turned away his head. To the north the ground fell sharply, and the cut of the road vouchsafed a glimpse ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... Under the duress of the Augsburg Interim, Melanchthon relapsed into his old error. July 6, 1548, he (together with Caspar Cruciger, John Pfeffinger, Daniel Gresser, George Major, and John Foerster) agreed to the statement: "For this proposition is certainly true that no one can be saved without ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... as his old disappointment in love now seemed to him never to have inflicted. He found that his whole being had set toward the unseen owner of the voice which had charmed him, and it was like a stretching and tearing of the nerves to be going from her instead of going to her. He was as much under duress as if he were bound by a hypnotic spell. The voice continually sounded, not in his ears, which were filled with the noises of the train, as usual, but in the inmost of his spirit, where it was a low, ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... summoned, and some were either so young or so old and decrepit that they needed more time. The court thereupon granted him an extension. However, they didn't arrive on the day set, and this time their lawyer claimed that they were under duress and restrained by bodily fear—of the townspeople's cats. That all these cats, therefore should first be bound over to keep the peace! The court admitted the reasonableness of this, but the townsfolk refused to be responsible for their cats and the ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... of the matter struck me. It is intolerable for a human being to go on doing any task as a penance, under duress. No matter what the work is, one must spiritualize it in some way, shatter the old idea of it into bits and rebuild it nearer to the heart's desire. How was I to do this ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... guilty with his old partner, Montgomery. But the latter had benefited more largely from the crime, and Gordon had been a party to it under duress. ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... "gray angel of success;" Enduring purpose, waiting long and long, Headache or heartache, blent with sigh or song, Forever delving mid the strife and stress: Within the bleak confines of your duress Are laid the firm foundations, deep and strong, Whereon men build the right against the wrong,— The toil-wrought ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman
... officer—goes out into the empty street, under the light of the tall tower, whose clock has begun all over again its monotonous race toward midnight. No policeman accompanies the group. The girls are under no manner of duress. They have promised to go home with Miss Miner, and they go. The night's adventure, entered into with dread, with callous indifference, or with thoughtless mirth, ends in a quiet bedroom and ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr
... independence—and integrity is the least part—of Belgium. If Belgium is compelled to submit to allow her neutrality to be violated, of course the situation is clear. Even if by agreement she admitted the violation of her neutrality, it is clear she could only do so under duress. The smaller States in that region of Europe ask but one thing. Their one desire is that they should be left alone and independent. The one thing they fear is, I think, not so much that their integrity but that their independence should be interfered with. If in this war which is before ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... take any woman unlawfully and against her will, and by force, menace or duress, compel her to marry him, or to be defiled, he shall be fined not exceeding one thousand dollars and imprisoned in the penitentiary not ...
— Legal Status Of Women In Iowa • Jennie Lansley Wilson
... Dame Clackett cried out loudly, and in the confusion her chair was upset, and she became liberated from her duress. As soon as she was free, she laid about on all sides of her with her stick, pulled off the helmet and jacket in which she had been nearly smothered, and cried out at the top of ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... Adversaries, dragons, wyverns, serpents, Griffins were there, thirty thousand, no less, Nor was there one but on some Frank it set. And the Franks cried: "Ah! Charlemagne, give help!" Wherefore the King much grief and pity felt, He'ld go to them but was in duress kept: Out of a wood came a great lion then, 'Twas very proud and fierce and terrible; His body dear sought out, and on him leapt, Each in his arms, wrestling, the other held; But he knew not which conquered, nor which fell. That Emperour woke ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... space was mute. The moon, its duress passed, stood high, serene, alone. The doctor breathed, "She's passing." That child raised her lids and her eyes looked out upon ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... mind, After some little search the East Tennessee woman was found in camp, somewhat the worse for the experiences of the day before, but awaiting her fate content idly smoking a cob-pipe. She was brought to me, and put in duress under charge of the division surgeon until her companion could be secured. To the doctor she related that the year before she had "refugeed" from East Tennessee, and on arriving in Louisville assumed men's apparel and sought and ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... at least outwardly. We obey the Law because if we don't we will be punished. Our obedience is inspired by fear. We obey under duress and we do it resentfully. Now what kind of righteousness is this when we refrain from evil out of fear of punishment? Hence, the righteousness of the Law is at bottom nothing but love of ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... without comment a mere list of these:—maugre, 'sdeath, eke, erst, deft, romaunt, pleasaunce, certes, whilom, distraught, quotha, good lack, well-a-day, vermeil, perchance, hight, wight, lea, wist, list, sheen, anon, gliff, astrolt, what boots it? malfortunes, ween, God wot, I trow, emprise, duress, donjon, puissant, sooth, rock, bruit, ken, eld, o'ersprent, etc. Of course, such a word as "lady" is made to do good service, and "ye" asserts its well-known superiority to "you." All this the author evidently considers highly meritorious, although ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... shell fire and threatened death to any who should stir to escape. So for these twelve months, with only Isaac, Ben, and their wives as protectors and the splendid freedom to lock themselves in, they had suffered the duress of a guard camped in the grove, their every townward step openly watched and their front door draped with the stars and stripes, under which no feminine acquaintance could be enticed except the dear, ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... wish my right to that name acknowledged. My character has been under an impalpable shadow for ten years. On several occasions mysterious hints have reached me that in some manner I left the castle under a cloud. If Lord Rantremly will destroy the letter which I was compelled to write under duress, and if he will give me written acknowledgment that there was nothing to be alleged against me during my stay in the castle, he may enjoy his money in peace for all of me. I want none ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... at her composedly for a moment and said, "Mistress Marget, I am the last person in the world to think that any form of duress would influence your actions. On the other hand, since the opportunity has come, I make bold, even in the presence of Captain Gordon and our respective followers, to say a word in frankness, out of regard for you and your house. There are events pending which ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... she had resolved upon surrender—upon an outward surrender. Inwardly she knew it to be not more than a capitulation under duress, whose terms would remain for ever secret except to those clever at induction. And now, as the train took her swiftly to her fate, she made the best ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... evening of Friday, May 28th, there was a meeting at Faneuil Hall, and an attack on the Court House where Mr. Burns was illegally held in duress. In the attack a Mr. Batchelder was killed,—a man hired to aid in this kidnapping, as he had been in the stealing of Mr. Sims. To judge from the evidence offered before the Grand-Jury of the Massachusetts Court, and especially from the testimony of Marshal Freeman, ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... under full control, he was doomed to spend the rest of his life in a cell. This prisoner knows, of course, that he has been wronged, but he does not know how much; he does not know what life in a world of free men is. But he, after being kept for half of his lifetime under duress, must submit to the caprice of a man to whom the country has entrusted absolute power. No man is qualified to exercise absolute power; no man is justified in accepting it; but we bestow it upon every chance political appointee, and what he does with it puts us ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... people on this question of emancipation. Nothing for humanity, nothing to humanity. Whoever drew it, be he Mr. Lincoln or Mr. Seward, it is clear that the writer was not in it either with his heart or with his soul; it is clear that it was done under moral duress, under the throttling pressure of events. How differently Stanton would ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... found many of these hours of duress far from unpleasant; for among the prisoners in the Tower was none other than the Princess Elizabeth, sister to the Queen (and her successor on the throne); and we are told, on what authority does not appear, that there were many sweet and stolen meetings between ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... Executive will no longer be what the framers of the Constitution intended—an equal and independent branch of the Government. It is clearly the constitutional duty of the President to exercise his discretion and judgment upon all bills presented to him without constraint or duress from any other branch of the Government. To say that a majority of either or both of the Houses of Congress may insist upon the approval of a bill under the penalty of stopping all of the operations of the Government for want of the necessary supplies is to deny ...
— Messages and Papers of Rutherford B. Hayes - A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • James D. Richardson
... understood that no other interpretation was in my thought. I am seeking only to face realities and to face them without soft concealments. Victory would mean peace forced upon the loser, a victor's terms imposed upon the vanquished. It would be accepted in humiliation, under duress, at an intolerable sacrifice, and would leave a sting, a resentment, a bitter memory upon which terms of peace would rest, not permanently, but only as upon quicksand. Only a peace between equals can last. Only a peace the very principle of which is equality ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... few of the residents of the River Drive district, among them the Flaggs, but was a fairly representative mixture of all grades of society, including the poorest. These last were specimens under spiritual duress rather than free worshippers, and it was a constant puzzle to the reverend gentleman why, in the matter of attendance, they, metaphorically speaking, sickened and died. It had never been so in England. "Bonnets!" responded one day Mrs. Hallett Taylor, who had ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... rather be deprived of the right of suffrage, high punishment as it is, I would rather suffer all the penalties that would be inflicted even by the most malignant lawgiver, than to cower or cringe or yield to anything of mortal mould on this planet, except by duress and by force. No man dare charge me with that. I have endeavored to act here as an honest man feeling his own responsibilities, feeling the responsibilities of the oath upon him when he took it; obliged to interpret the Constitution ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... prayer in the market-place, These advertised humilities—decreed By proclamation, that we may be freed, And mercy find for once, and saving grace, Even while we forfeit all that made the race Worthy of Heavenly favor—and profess Our faith and homage only through duress, And dread of danger which ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... our duress here we were driven below by raw, incessant rain, and the confinement became irksome. At length, during the day and night of July 14th, the ice finally made off with itself, and the next morning the schooner followed suit. The ice, however, had not done with us. It lingered near the land, while ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... of the original mortgage deed supplied in equal innocence by Mr. Garland. I sometimes wonder what those worthy citizens would have said, if they had dreamt for a moment under what conditions of acute duress their deed ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... been unavailingly attempted, the refractory combatants were taken into custody, after an obstinate resistance, and conducted to "duress vile," in the Watch-house. ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... grounds that the *death-penalty for murder* can be justified. The life of the very worst of men should be sacrificed only for the preservation of life; for if it be unsafe to leave them at liberty, they may be kept under restraint and duress, without being wholly cut off from the means of enjoyment and improvement. The primeval custom of the earlier nations required the nearest kinsman of the murdered man to kill the murderer with his own hand, and in so doing to shed his blood, which was ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... an adventure here? Was she in duress either from this Ironhook or from her father, or from both? Did she need Hereward's help? If so, she was so lovely that he could not refuse it. And on the chance, he swallowed down his high ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... for intermarriage within the prohibited degrees of consanguinity and affinity, mental incapacity at time of marriage, impotence at time of marriage, force, menace, duress, or fraud in obtaining marriage, pregnancy of wife at time of marriage unknown to husband, adultery, wilful desertion for three years, conviction for an offence involving imprisonment ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... Nutter's not serious—you're not, Ma'am? We don't detain you, mind. The door's open. There's no false imprisonment or duress, mind ye, thanking you all the same, Miss, for your offer. We won't detain you, ah, ah. No, I thank you. Chalk the road for ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... in the unmarked grave while her tombstone lay in the rubble of an outhouse. The spell by which she had won the man to forgetfulness and neglect was not the same as that by which she had induced silence in the boy. A promise had been wrung from him—perhaps even under duress! Suddenly, terror swept over Christine Chaine. It was revealed to her, as in a vision, that the pink-and-white woman who laughed with such childlike innocence by day and whispered so passionately to her lover by night could be capable ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... more was requisite, and he remained beneath the level of the circumstances he thought he was overcoming; the fall of the throne was the consequence. How he developed, though, and grew great when in duress, and who should flatter himself that he could bear up with a firmness more unshaken against the severest trials? If M. de Polignac is not a type of the statesman, he will at least remain the complete model of the virtues of the ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... delay. This Berkeley thought Carver was glad of, since it gave him an opportunity to wean his soldiers away from him. But it proved a godsend for Berkeley. At about midnight a message came to him from Captain Larrimore, explaining that he and his crew served under duress, that there were only forty soldiers left on board the Rebecca, and that if he could send thirty or forty gentlemen to the ship, he was sure they, with the help of the sailors, ...
— Bacon's Rebellion, 1676 • Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker
... canvassers' certificate under any circumstances. Suppose the question to be put thus: Can the certificate of State canvassers, acting within the scope of their authority, be questioned by evidence of mistake, fraud, or duress; what should be the answer? Most certainly it ...
— The Vote That Made the President • David Dudley Field
... shortly after a smiling interview with the ladies of Fort Sibley, in which, with infinite spirit and the most perfect self-control, Miss Beaubien had informed them that she had promised to lead with Mr. Jerrold, and, since he was in duress, she would lead with no one, and sent them off wondering and greatly excited, there came running up to the carriage a telegraph messenger boy, ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... to sit in the conspicuous places of the world and loot all your patient accumulations. We are going to abolish your offspring and turn the princes among you into undignified slaves. Because, you see, specialized as we are, we are not quite specialized, we are specialized under duress, and at the first glimpse of a chance we abandon our cradles and drop our pots and pans and go for the vast and elegant side possibilities—of our specialization. Out we come, looking for the fun the men ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... Viscounty of Auxonne, and other territories, which had been made by his imperial captor the indispensable condition of his release, was entirely out of the question; and that his promises, extorted while he was in duress, were of no validity! Nevertheless, he offered, in lieu thereof, the payment of a larger ransom than had ever been proffered by a king of France. Indignant at a perfidy somewhat flagrant, even for an age tolerably well accustomed to breaches of faith, the emperor refused ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... the Scriptures had been published in almost every European language, doubtless an exaggeration but a significant one. Arrested and imprisoned at Brussels for this cause, Enzinas received while under duress visits from four hundred citizens of that city who were Protestants. To control the book trade an oath was exacted of every bookseller [Sidenote: 1546] not to deal in heretical works and the first "Index of prohibited books," ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... enough in his duress May go as far as dreams have gone; Who sees a little may do less Than many who are blind ...
— The Man Against the Sky • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... Generals Buller and Warren had forded the Tugela, en route to Ladysmith. That their plunge might stimulate Methuen to burn his boots and brave the turgid waters of the Modder, was the fervent wish of Kimberley at the end of fourteen weeks of irksome, emaciating duress. ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... whose ancestors were Hindoos but who became converts to Islam. Like all proselytes, they adhere more enthusiastically to their religion than do the men whose mother creed it is; and the fact that the Rangars originally became converts under duress is often thrown in their teeth by the Hindoos, who gain nothing in the way of brotherly regard in the process. A Rangar hates a Hindoo as enthusiastically as he loves a fight. Ali Partab began to drum his fingers on his teeth and to exhibit less ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... before her to make the pretence of suing for the pardon which they extorted by force of arms and duress. When each in his turn had made the brief pleading oration he had prepared, she dried her eyes and ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... yawning wood into its place, picked up his handkerchief and restored it to his pocket; and then, with some curiosity, began to examine the nature of that place of duress which had caused so much painful emotion to its rescued victim. "Man is a very irrational animal at best," quoth the sage, soliloquizing, "and is frightened by strange buggaboos! 'T is but a piece of wood! how little it really ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... freed him in September from actual duress. His disposition of the fleet of which he continued titular 'General,' though Frobisher and Burgh had royal commissions, proved successful. Already a Biscayan of 600 tons burden, the Santa Clara, had been captured and ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... replied Strong. He walked over and patted the cadet on the shoulder sympathetically. "I'm sorry, Tom," he said gently. "Your story is just too fantastic and you haven't even the slightest shred of evidence. Just a few words an unreliable witness said under duress." ...
— Sabotage in Space • Carey Rockwell
... custom. The Dharna is sometimes carried to very violent lengths and may either be executed on the Prince or his minister indifferently, with the same effect; as the Chief always makes it a point of honour not to eat or drink while his Diwan is in duress; sometimes the Dharna lasts for many days, during which time the party upon whom it is exercised is not suffered to eat or drink or wash or pray, or in short is not permitted to move from the spot where he sits, which ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell |
