"Straitness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sound understanding, and his solid judgment in prudential matters, both in private and public affairs. It is true he was never employed in the latter, the numerous family he had to educate, and the straitness of his circumstances, keeping him close to his trade; but I remember well his being frequently visited by leading men, who consulted him for his opinion in public affairs, and those of the church he belonged to; and who showed ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... of the warmest. We suspect that he lived to see that there was more reason in the drum-head religious discipline which made him, against his will, the founder of a commonwealth, than he may have thought at first. But for the fanaticism (as it is the fashion to call the sagacious straitness) of the abler men who knew how to root the English stock firmly in this new soil on either side of him, his little plantation could never have existed, and he himself would have been remembered only, if at all, as one of the jarring atoms ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... confusion; I then begged of the Lord, that, if my particular faith about my father's voyage to England were not a delusion, he would be pleased to renew it upon me. All this while my heart had the coldness of a stone upon it, and the straitness that is to be expected from the lone exercise of reason. But now all on the sudden I felt an inexpressible force to fall on my mind, an afflatus, which cannot be described in words; none knows it but he that has it.... It was told me, ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... He made their rude untutored hearts to burn And melt like gold refined. No brooding birds Sing better of the love that doth sojourn Hid in the nest of home, which softly girds The beating heart of life; and, strait though it be, Is straitness better than wide liberty. ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... tools; but his great excellence lay in a sound understanding and solid judgment in prudential matters, both in private and publick affairs. In the latter, indeed, he was never employed, the numerous family he had to educate and the straitness of his circumstances keeping him close to his trade; but I remember well his being frequently visited by leading people, who consulted him for his opinion in affairs of the town or of the church he belonged ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... substance, whence was all other substance; nor did I now desire to be more certain of Thee, but more steadfast in Thee. But for my temporal life, all was wavering, and my heart had to be purged from the old leaven. The Way, the Saviour Himself, well pleased me, but as yet I shrunk from going through its straitness. And Thou didst put into my mind, and it seemed good in my eyes, to go to Simplicianus, who seemed to me a good servant of Thine; and Thy grace shone in him. I had heard also that from his very youth he had lived most devoted unto Thee. Now he was grown into years; and by reason of so great ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... uncle, if every man universally is by this reason in prison already, after the proper nature of imprisonment, yet to be imprisoned in this special manner which alone is commonly called imprisonment is a thing of great horror and fear, both for the straitness of the keeping and for the hard handling that many men have therein. Of all the griefs that you speak of, we feel nothing at all. And therefore every man abhorreth the one, and would be loth to come into ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... many things relating to the promises, as to the largeness and straitness of words, as to the freeness and conditionality of them, which we are not able so well to understand; and, therefore, when Satan dealeth with us about them, we quickly fall to the ground before him; we often conclude that the words of the promise are too narrow and ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... relative of the one who was 'a widow indeed,' one who trusted in God, and continued in supplications and prayers day and night, was once brought into circumstances of peculiar straitness and trial. She had two daughters who exerted themselves with their needles to earn a livelihood; and at that time they were so busily engaged in trying to finish some work that had long been on their hands, they had neglected to make provision for their ordinary wants until they found themselves ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... the annual income of that state is at this day thirty millions of livres, or 1,350,000l. sterling, short of a provision for their ordinary peace establishment; so far are they from the attempt or even hope to discharge any part of the capital of their enormous debt. Indeed, under such extreme straitness and distraction labors the whole body of their finances, so far does their charge outrun their supply in every particular, that no man, I believe, who has considered their affairs with any degree of attention or information, but must hourly look for some extraordinary convulsion in ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... deferred the extremity of punishment and his death. He adds, "that Henry had Oldcastle committed to the Tower, influenced by the hope that he might bring (p. 365) him back to the true faith; and that when, towards the end of October, the straitness of his confinement was softened, and he was, under promise of renouncing his errors, released from his bond, he broke prison and escaped." This was written between Oldcastle's escape and his subsequent capture and death. If ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... branches of the veins, whence it again returns to the heart; so that its course amounts precisely to a perpetual circulation. Of this we have abundant proof in the ordinary experience of surgeons, who, by binding the arm with a tie of moderate straitness above the part where they open the vein, cause the blood to flow more copiously than it would have done without any ligature; whereas quite the contrary would happen were they to bind it below; that is, between the hand and the opening, or were to make the ligature ...
— A Discourse on Method • Rene Descartes |
