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Fetter   Listen
noun
Fetter  n.  (Chiefly used in the plural, fetters.)
1.
A chain or shackle for the feet; a chain by which an animal is confined by the foot, either made fast or disabled from free and rapid motion; a bond; a shackle. "(They) bound him with fetters of brass."
2.
Anything that confines or restrains; a restraint. "Passion's too fierce to be in fetters bound."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Fetter" Quotes from Famous Books



... going to meet under circumstances, in which it was indispensable, that the chief of the state should govern without contradiction: yet he foresaw, that the representatives, misled by their ardent love of liberty, and by the fear of despotism, would seek to fetter his exercise of authority, instead of seconding ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon

... world would have induced Pierre to live with her any longer. She was compromising him; it was with her that he would have liked to make a start. But he found himself between two very embarrassing alternatives: to keep her, and thus, in a measure, share her disgrace, and bind a fetter to his feet which would arrest him in his ambitious flight; or to turn her out, with the certainty of being pointed at as a bad son, which would have robbed him of the reputation for good nature which he desired. Knowing that he would be in want of everybody, he desired to secure an untarnished ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola

... giovane; I am but repeating what I hear in my shop; as you may perceive, my eloquence is simply the cream which I skim off my clients' talk. Heaven forbid I should fetter my impartiality by entertaining an opinion. And for that same scholarly objection to the Greeks," added Nello, in a more mocking tone, and with a significant grimace, "the fact is, you are heretics, Messer; jealousy has nothing to do with it: if you would just change ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... next day, and as I entered the room to spread the tea table, I heard him say, "Don't wait any longer. Send for them to-morrow." I saw through the plan. They thought my children's being there would fetter me to the spot, and that it was a good place to break us all in to abject submission to our lot as slaves. After the doctor left, a gentleman called, who had always manifested friendly feelings towards my grandmother and her family. Mr. Flint ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)

... is easier to break a chain than to stretch it; but remember that when broken, your part of the chain, Julia, will still remain with you, and fetter and disgrace you through life. Why should a woman be so circumspect in her choice? Is it not because when once made she must abide by it? "She sets her life upon the cast, and she must stand the hazard of the die." From domestic uneasiness a man ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth

... tho' in trade, (Which oftentimes will Genius fetter) Read works of fancy, it is said; ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger

... Percy G. Marshall had been an outspoken friend of the Negro. The white South, Ensal felt, had at one time seemed to fetter its pulpit, not allowing it much latitude in dealing with great moral questions that chanced to have an accompanying political aspect. Ensal had looked on with profound admiration as the young Rev. Mr. Marshall, by precept and by example, boldly led the way for an enlarged ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs

... primitive religion; for primitive religion is inseparable from the primitive tribe, and Caliban the savage, who has never known society, was a conception as unhistorical as it was exquisitely adapted to the individualist ways of Browning's imagination. Tradition and prescription, which fetter the savage with iron bonds, exist for Caliban only in the form of the faith held by his dam, which he puts aside in the calm decisive way of a modern thinker, as one who has nothing to fear from the penalties of heresy, and ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford

... had told him in that long-ago time when they parted that she wouldn't keep up a correspondence with him. She felt that she had ort to leave him free. And he wuz poor, and he would not fetter her with a memory she might perhaps better forgit. Poor things! lovin' and half broken-hearted, and both hampered with duties, and ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley

... reason why some gentle wives have so few attractions beside that of sex. Add to this, sedentary employments render the majority of women sickly, and false notions of female excellence make them proud of this delicacy, though it be another fetter, that by calling the attention continually to the body, cramps the activity of ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]

... most happily adapted to his purpose. Emily had hitherto been in an unusual degree exempted from the oppression of despotism. Her happy insignificance had served her as a protection. No one thought it worth his while to fetter her with those numerous petty restrictions with which the daughters of opulence are commonly tormented. She had the wildness, as well as the delicate frame, of the bird that warbles unmolested in ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin

... frank. When you asked me to become your wife, neither of us contemplated the long separation involved in this cruise abroad, which I ardently desire for many reasons to make; and I am unwilling to fetter either you or myself by an engagement during my absence. I want to be entirely free, bound by no promise; and could I ask ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... often to disturb the quiet of the mind, and betray one into considerable inconveniences, faults, and follies. Great weaknesses are sometimes fed by temptations which seem almost of too little moment to deserve notice. And though these infirmities should not arise to any great height, they always fetter the soul, and are an absolute impediment to ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... a man possesses the Christian spirit, and is governed by Christian principle, the more anxious will he be to do justice to every other system of religion, and to hold his own without taint or fetter ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis

... treatment of Robin. He had talked a great deal about the young generation, about its impatience of older theories and manners, its dislike of authority and restraint; and Harry, remembering his own early hatred of restriction and longing for freedom, was determined that he would be no fetter on his son's liberty, that he would be to him a friend, a companion rather than a father. After all, he felt no more than twenty-five—there was really no space of years between them—he was as young to-day as he had been ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole

... clear and true light, because at the present day there is an evident disposition on the part of constituencies to avail themselves of Peel's conduct in this instance as a precedent, in spite of his protest against its being so regarded, and to fetter their representatives with precise instructions; and a corresponding willingness on the part of candidates to purchase support at elections by a submissive giving of pledges on a variety of subjects, so numerous as to leave themselves no freedom of judgment at all. On the great ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge

... we trust affected their hearts. They will abolish a needless and unjust protectorate. The limb, which is now disjointed and bleeding, will be united to the body politic. What belongs to the red man shall hereafter in truth be his; and, thirsting for knowledge and aspiring to be free, every fetter shall be broken and ...
— Indian Nullification of the Unconstitutional Laws of Massachusetts - Relative to the Marshpee Tribe: or, The Pretended Riot Explained • William Apes

... crowd—Chinese, Minchia, Lolo, and other specimens of hybridism unknown to me. Yet I suppose the majority of them may be called happy. Certainly the simplicity of the life of the common people, their freedom from fastidious tastes, which are only a fetter in our own Western social life, their absolute independence of furniture in their homes, their few wants and perhaps fewer necessities, when contrasted with the demands of the Englishman, is to them a state of high civilization. Here were farmers, mechanics, shopkeepers, and retired ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle

... worse things! And these serfs be born to starve, bred up to it, and 'tis better to starve here than to perish hereafter, better to purge the soul by lack of meat than to make of it a fetter of the soul!" ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol

... rolls, and will roll on, swelling till it will finally submerge all endeavours to mislead the instincts of freemen, to fetter the energies of the nation, to stifle its spirit, and to check the growing aspirations of the people's ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth

... grey of an autumn morning, but in great spirits of his own, Prosper left Gracedieu for High March. The satisfaction of having braved the worst of an adventure was fairly his; to have made good disposition of what threatened to fetter him by shutting off any possible road from his advance; and to have done this (so far as he could see) without in any sense withdrawing from Isoult the advantages she could expect—this was tunable ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett

... behind, was a youth: he took the old woman by the hand, and said: "Can it be true, Alexia, that certain rites and spells, as those old wild stories, in which I could never put faith, tell us, can fetter the free will of man, and make love and hatred ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck

... condescend Thus on my footsteps to attend, To thee my lonely lamp shall burn By fallen Genius' sainted urn, As o'er the scroll of Time I pore, And sagely spell of ancient lore, Till I can rightly guess of all That Plato could to memory call, And scan the formless views of things; Or, with old Egypt's fetter'd kings, Arrange the mystic trains that shine In night's high philosophic mine; And to thy name shall e'er belong The honours ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White

... lived with the living, moving present,—his engravings being his pleasures; portraits, as they are now to many a high-hearted man of talent, his means of subsistence; heavy weights of mortality that fetter and clog the ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... some other abominable place, even if it were no worse than a tinker's shop. He was absolutely terrified at the prospect. After all his high hopes, and all his confidence in his supple limbs, the judges, the lawyers, and the constables might fetter his muscles so that he could not get away—so that he could not even run away to sea, which was his ultimate intention, whenever he could make up his mind to leave ...
— Work and Win - or, Noddy Newman on a Cruise • Oliver Optic

... whole appeared to him very simple and straightforward, the idea that his friendship should in any way fetter him was the last thing that could enter his head. That Charles was his best friend seemed to him as entirely natural as that he himself danced best, rode best, was the best shot, and that the whole world was ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland

... these voyages not proving very fortunate, I grew weary of the sea, and intended to stay at home with my wife and family. I removed from the Old Jewry to Fetter Lane, and from thence to Wapping, hoping to get business among the sailors; but it would not turn to account. After three years' expectation that things would mend, I accepted an advantageous offer ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift

... of matrimony. Be they of iron or of silk, the good wife discovereth not; for it is only in an unholy struggle that they bind and fetter. ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee

... echoes there, Inquisitive, responded "where?" And mourn'd the missing fetter: A something else a little space Must render duty in its place, Till ...
— London Lyrics • Frederick Locker

... the free-thinking Sophist, "The times are refined In sense to a wondrous degree; Your old-fashion'd faith does but fetter the mind, And it 's wrong not to seek to be free." Says the sage Politician, "Your natural share Of talents would raise you much higher, Than thus to crawl on in your present low sphere, And it 's wrong in you ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... forgiveness, he was so far appeased, that he modified the curse, and granted that I should still retain consciousness, and remain as a fetter on your feet for two ...
— Hindoo Tales - Or, The Adventures of Ten Princes • Translated by P. W. Jacob

... hast chosen well; On in the strength of God! Long as one human heart shall swell Beneath the tyrant's rod. Speak in a slumbering nation's ear, As thou hast ever spoken, Until the dead in sin shall hear, The fetter's link ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... kept thee far from human state, Who hadst a dungeon only for thy throne, O son, rejoice, and bless thy bitter fate, The slavery of kings thou hast not known, What if thy wasted arms are bleeding yet, And wounded with the fetter's cruel trace, No earthly diadem has ever set A stain ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo

... the operations of the siege; being near the house, having a perfect cover, possessing water, wood, and other conveniences. From that point the Nest could be watched, and any favourable chance improved. Thither, then, Susquesus was told to proceed; though it was not thought advisable to fetter one so shrewd, with too many instructions. Several of us accompanied the Onondago to the gate, and saw him moving across the fields, towards the wood, in his usual loping trot. A bird could scarcely have flown more directly to ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper

... so degraded by the life here, it seemed as if I were a part of it all, a part of my own hateful surroundings but now, I know I am not; now," she continued, lifting her head proudly and raising her arms slowly with a beautiful gesture, "they can fetter me no longer! The chains that have held me so long and so cruelly are already bursting; even now, I can rise above them; soon, ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour

... of their power, it has no reason to fear abuse of their authority. As the people is always able to signify its wishes to those who conduct the government, it prefers leaving them to make their own exertions, to prescribing an invariable rule of conduct which would at once fetter their activity and ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al

... people do not call that a strong fetter which is made of iron, wood, or hemp; far stronger is the care for precious stones and rings, for ...
— The Dhammapada • Unknown

... displaying the bosom; her apron was filthy. But when she smiled, asking for money, her teeth were white and regular, and her eyes flashed darkly. She was attractive in a heavy sensual fashion, attractive and at the same time horribly repellant: she was the sort of woman who might fetter a man to herself by some degrading, insuperable passion, the true Carmen of the famous story whom a man might at once love and hate; so that though she dragged him to hell in shame and in despair, he would never find the strength to free himself. But where among that bastard ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham

... you, do not be over-hasty. You have so long thought of taking a journey into foreign countries to improve your knowledge of agriculture. Carry out this plan now; travel, and look about you in the world before you fetter yourself ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer

... vote was obtained from the Treasury for the erection of a national depository, wherein our vast archives should be assembled under a single roof, and not till 1855 that the magnificent Tabularium in Fetter Lane was opened for the reception of ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various

... trouble, and pleased with a vague anticipation of some intervention that might recall the word which even in these five dragging moments had already begun to corrode and eat into her heart like a rusting fetter. The oarsmen in the wherries bent their muscles to the strife, the boats danced over the tiny crests, the ladies sang their breeziest sea-songs to cheer them at the work. The sail-boat rounded a curve and was almost out ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various

... when Richard was slain, and placed it on his step-son's head. The daisy root belongs to Derby's wife and Henry's mother, Lady Margaret, whose tomb we shall see in the south aisle. The falcon with a fetter-lock was a badge of Edward IV., which his daughter Elizabeth adopted after her marriage to the ...
— Westminster Abbey • Mrs. A. Murray Smith

... Fetter'd to the fleeting hours, All our powers, Vain and brief, are borne away; Time, my soul, thy ship is steering, Onward veering, To the ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold

... raphia beneath his mandibles. This, to him, is a familiar thing, representing the gramineous fibre so frequent in the case of burial in grass-covered soil. Tenaciously the shears gnaw at the bond; the vegetable fetter is severed and the Mouse falls, to be ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... and curled. In a tiny white heap of dead ashes Lie buried the hopes of your world. There were mad foolish vows in each letter, It is well they have shrivelled and burned, And the ring! oh, the ring was a fetter, It was better removed ...
— Poems of Cheer • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... is already brightening with a new hope. Without rising to the supreme height of Danton, who cried "Let my name be blighted that France be free," I feel a humbler pleasure in reflecting that I may have been instrumental in breaking the last fetter on the freedom of ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote

... from doing some unlawful deed there and then: as when a man prevents another from throwing himself over a precipice, or from striking another. But to him alone who has the right of disposing in general of the actions and of the life of another does it belong primarily to imprison or fetter, because by so doing he hinders him from doing not only evil but ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... But through it all she now heard a much smaller sound quite close, a regular tick, tick. She glanced at the parcel she had forgotten, then in an instant, as a sudden idea occurred to her, she had the paper off. Yes, it was. It was Johnny's great old-fashioned gold watch, with the fetter chain ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad

... a gloss says on Rom. 6:6, "that we may serve sin no longer—Like a man who, having captured a redoubtable enemy, slays him not forthwith, but suffers him to live for a little time in shame and suffering; so did Christ first of all fetter our punishment, but at a future ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... themselves, even at the Gallows; and if I come to have an Occasion to speak freely of the Matter, I may perhaps convince you that the Devil's possessing Power is much lessen'd of late, and that he either is limited, and his Fetter shortened more than it has been, or that he does not find the old Way (as I said before) so fit for his Purpose as he did formerly, and therefore takes other Measures, but I must adjourn that to a Time and Place by itself: But we are told that there are another Sort of People, ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe

... In Fleet Street yesterday there was at lunch with us an American Army officer who discoursed heartily about a certain literary public-house. He quoted a long passage from Dickens showing how somebody took various turnings near Fetter Lane, easily to be recognized, till they arrived at this very tavern. Such enthusiasm is admirable, yet embarrassing. In return, I inquired after several young American poets, whose work, seldom ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson

... directly across; 'Tis ever dry walking there, on the moss— Besides, you go gently all the way uphill. I stooped under and soon felt better; My head grew lighter, my limbs more supple, As I walked on, glad to have slipt the fetter. My mind was full of the scene I had left, That placid flock, that pastor vociferant, —How this outside was pure and different! The sermon, now—what a mingled weft Of good and ill! Were either less, Its fellow had colored ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke

... stone. The wooer, too, had come, Max prophesied; Reputed wealthy; with the azure eyes And Saxon-gilded locks—the fair, clear face, And stalwart form that most women love. And with the jewels of some virtues set On his broad brow. With fires within his soul He had the wizard skill to fetter down To that mere pink, poetic, nameless glow, That need not fright a flake of snow away— But if unloos'd, could melt an adverse rock Marrow'd with iron, frowning in his way. And Malcolm balanc'd him by day and night; And ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford

... are troubled with pebbles That fetter and fret what the water would utter, And it rushes and splashes in tremulous trebles; It makes haste through the shallows, its ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis

... if Cicero were now alive, it would be found difficult to fetter his moral sentiments by narrow systems; or persuade him, that no qualities were to be admitted as virtues, or acknowledged to be a part of PERSONAL MERIT, but what were recommended by The ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume

... damsel bright, There's few than I should know her better; Full many a gay and gallant knight She holds in love's enchanting fetter. ...
— Axel Thordson and Fair Valborg - a ballad • Thomas J. Wise

... and learn that of an alien, is the worst badge of conquest—it is the chain on the soul. To have lost entirely the national language is death; the fetter has worn through. So long as the Saxon held to his German speech he could hope to resume his land from the Norman; now, if he is to be free and locally governed, he must build himself a new home. There is hope for ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis

... efforts to renew the battle in the Protestant Church been wanting in these latter days. The attempt in the Church of England, in 1864, to fetter science, which was brought to ridicule by Herschel, Bowring, and De Morgan; the assemblage of Lutheran clergy at Berlin, in 1868, to protest against "science falsely so called," are examples of these. Fortunately, ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... her neck the yoke, and rent the fetter, and mocked the rod: Shrines of old that she decked with gold she turned to dust, to the dust she trod: What is she, that the wind and sea should fight beside her, and war ...
— Poems and Ballads (Third Series) - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... child? Yes! To have a specific doctrine clearly in mind does not fetter the young soul, any more than to be taught the apparent facts of geography and history, which may change either in reality or in his own interpretation as his mind matures. A doctrine is a practical ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown

... Paul—but only on one condition, that you never ask me questions as to who I am, or where I am going. You must promise me to take life as a summer holiday—an episode—and if fate gives us this great joy, you must not try to fetter me, now or at any future time, or control my movements. You must give me your word of honour for this—you will never seek to discover who or what was your loved one—you must never try to follow me. Yes, I will come for now—when ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn

... O Lord, how can I be otherwise than happy? When divine Love has enfranchised the soul, what power can fetter it? How small the world appears to a heart that God fills with himself! I love thee, my Lord, not only with a sovereign love, but it seems to me I love thee alone, and all creatures only for thy sake. Thou art so much the soul of my soul, and the life of my life, that I have no ...
— Letters of Madam Guyon • P. L. Upham

... where they lift up their faces and scan, Over the wave-heaps, thy coming; despite thee, Thou canst not fetter the soul of a ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... yourselves, you will never have the power. These long indulged appetites of ours grow with indulgence; and that which first was light as a cobweb, and soft as a silken bracelet, becomes heavier and solider until it is an iron fetter upon the limb, which no man can break. There is nothing more awful in life than the influence of habit, so unthinkingly acquired, so inexorably certain, so limiting our possibilities and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... limitations. Remember the triumphant cry of St. Francis of Assisi: "WELCOME, SISTER DEATH!" "Be witness"—of all that goes on but be not entangled. Reserve to yourself the power to remain unattached at all times. Accept nothing however pleasant, if it conceals a fetter into thy Soul. At a word stand ready to sever any connection that gives a hint of soul-bondage. Keep thy mind clear. Keep thy will pure. Attain the Impersonal Standpoint, O you man! there alone ...
— The Doctrine and Practice of Yoga • A. P. Mukerji

... Hindu institutions the Maratha holds a very inferior situation, being just removed one degree above those castes which are considered absolutely unclean. He is happily free from the rigorous observances as regards food which fetter the actions of the higher castes. He can eat of all kinds of food with the exception of beef; can dress his meal at all times and seasons; can partake of all victuals dressed by any caste superior to his own; washing and praying ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell

... when imperial Juno, from above, Saw Dido fetter'd in the chains of love, Hot with the venom which her veins inflam'd, And by no sense of shame to be reclaim'd, With soothing words to Venus she begun: "High praises, endless honors, you have won, And mighty trophies, with ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil

... asked what part of London I was most identified with after Clifford's Inn itself, I should say Fetter Lane—every part of it. Just by the Record Office is one of the places where I am especially prone to get ideas; so also is the other end, about the butcher's shop near Holborn. The reason in both cases is the same, namely, that ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler

... to a weak one," said the chief accountant of the mines, whom the Egyptians called the 'scribe of the metals.' "And fetter those together who ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... do not hope to bind the wind Or set a fetter on the sea— It is enough to feel his love Blow by like ...
— Love Songs • Sara Teasdale

... who would fetter thought in order to perpetuate an effete authority, who would give the skinny hand of the past a scepter to rule the aspiring and prophetic present, and seal the lips of living scholars with the dicta of dead scholastics, Masonry will never ground arms! Her plea is for government without ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton

... is a term in use among convicts, and means so to bend the round ring of the ankle fetter that the heel can be drawn up ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke

... him; in one moment this new guest Has drove me out from this false woman's breast; They, that would fetter love with constancy, Make bonds to chain themselves, but leave him free With what impatience I her falsehood bear! Yet do myself that, which I blame in her; But interest in my own cause makes me see That act unjust in her, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott

... baronage. He regarded their discussions, their protests, their delays, not as the natural hesitation of men called suddenly, and with only half knowledge, to the settlement of great and complex questions, but as proofs of a conspiracy to fetter and impede the action of the Crown. The Commons on the other hand listened to the king's hectoring speeches, not as the chance talk of a clever and garrulous theorist, but as proofs of a settled purpose to change the character of the monarchy. In a word, James had succeeded in some ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green

... mores! and O tempora! can pedantry compel Musicians who write choruses to construe them as well? Is this (I ask) the way to deal with genius great and high? Why fetter it with Latin Prose? ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley

... or foregoes? Oh, for one brief hour (I ask no more) of living honour, one feeling of conscious, unfearing certainty that Fame has conquered Death! and then for this humble and impotent clay, this drag on the spirit which it does not assist but fetter, this wretched machine of pains and aches, and feverish throbbings, and vexed inquietudes, why, let the worms consume it, and the grave hide—for Fame there ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... course, were out of her range altogether. She took the prospectus out of her pocket, and ran her eyes over it again. Capital, L500,000, in shares of L100 each. Solicitors, Messrs Somebody Something & Co., Fetter Lane, E.C. Bankers, The Shoreditch & Houndsditch Amalgamated Banking Corporation, St Mary Axe. Acquisition of machinery, so much. Cost of working, so much. Estimated returns—something perfectly enormous. It all looked wonderful, quite wonderful. She again ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour

... Timor, Roti and Anabao. A passage between the islands Timor and Anabao. Kupang and Laphao Bays. The islands Omba, Fetter, Banda and Bird. A description of the coast of New Guinea. The islands Pulo Sabuda, Cockle, King William's, Providence, Gerrit Denis, Anthony Cave's and St. John's. Also a new passage between New Guinea and New Britain. The islands Ceram, Bonao, Bouro, and several islands before unknown. The coast ...
— A Continuation of a Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier

... tenderness for the stone-incrusted institutions of the mother-country. The reason may be (though I should prefer a more generous explanation) that he recognizes the tendency of these hardened forms to stiffen her joints and fetter her ankles, in the race and rivalry of improvement. I hated to see so much as a twig of ivy wrenched away from an old wall in England. Yet change is at work, even in such a village as Whitnash. At a subsequent visit, looking more critically ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... sufferings began; but that such was the strength of Karl's will, and his fear of doing anything that might give a pretext for banishing him from the presence of Lilith, that he was able to conceal his feelings far too successfully for the satisfaction of Teufelsbuerst's art. Yet he had to fetter himself with all the restraints that self-exhortation could load him with, to refrain from falling at the feet of Lilith and kissing the hem of her garment. For that, as the lowliest part of all that surrounded her, itself kissing the earth, seemed ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald

... Dol, And laugh'd within those trenches, and grew fat With thinking on the booties, Dol, brought in Daily by their small parties. This dear hour, A doughty don is taken with my Dol; And thou mayst make his ransom what thou wilt, My Dousabel; he shall be brought here fetter'd With thy fair looks, before he sees thee; and thrown In a down-bed, as dark as any dungeon; Where thou shalt keep him waking with thy drum; Thy drum, my Dol, thy drum; till he be tame As the poor black-birds were in the great frost, ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson

... Loyalty. Humbly Dedicated and Presented to his most Excellent Majesty Charles the Second, of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland, true Hereditary King. London, Printed by E.C. for H. Seile, over against St. Dunstan's Church in Fleet-street, and for W. Palmer at the Palm-Tree over against Fetter-lane end in Fleet Street. 1660." It is a duodecimo volume, the dedication to Charles occupying twenty-one pages, and the main body of the text 177 pages, with a peroration in thirty-nine additional pages addressed to Monk and ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson

... gave free rein to his vision of national destiny. Disclaiming any immediate wish for tropical expansion in the direction of either Mexico or Central America, he yet contended that no man could foresee the limits of the Republic. "You may make as many treaties as you please to fetter the limits of this giant Republic, and she will burst them all from her, and her course will be onward to a limit which I will not venture to prescribe." Why, then, pledge our faith never to annex any more of Mexico or any ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson

... august opinion, Stirling paddled back in his dug- out canoe to the swamps of Arkansas, much amused, if not impressed, with the negro's simple method of successfully disposing of a case, so unlike the usual procrastinating customs which fetter the courts presided over by ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop

... certainty, realized that this was the moment—to strike when he was weakest. A man, shaken free of the ties that bind him to one woman, is more ready than another in the reaction of indifference which follows to fetter himself again in order that life may seem less void, less hollow ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston

... meaning and bearing and come to their own conclusions; listening to others wiser or not wiser than themselves, eagerly seeking help, but never, oh never fettering their minds by an unconditional and premeditated submission to anybody else's, or rather pretending so to fetter it, for a mind will make itself heard, and there's much false modesty in the disclaimer of all power or right to judge—that very disclaimer being in fact, as you say, an exercise of private judgment and a rebellion ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell

... of their state of inertia very much more quickly. Weingartner, in writing upon this point (with especial reference to the public performance) says:[36] "He should know it [the score] so thoroughly that during the performance the score is merely a support for his memory, not a fetter on his thought." The same writer in another place quotes von Buelow as dividing conductors into "those who have their heads in the score, and those who have the ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens

... faculty is absent, its place may be supplied through the development of that artistic sense which files, weighs, and adjusts,—which reconciles the utmost freedom and force of thought with the mechanical symmetries of language,—and which, first a fetter to the impatient mind, becomes at length a pinion, holding it serenely poised in the highest ether. Only the rudiment of the sense is born with the poet, and few literary lives are fortunate enough, or of sufficiently varied experience, to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various

... said, waving his hand toward the unhappy gladiator, "put out his eyes, fetter him foot and hand, and cast him to ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert

... from the common offices, from that infinite number of troublesome rules that fetter a man of exact honesty in civil life, are in my opinion very discreet, what peculiar sharpness of constraint soever they impose upon themselves in so doing. 'Tis in some sort a kind of dying to avoid the pain of living well. ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... trying years of the war; through the boisterous struggle for reconstruction, and constantly since, Mr. Blaine's voice has always been heard pleading for the cause of equality, arguing for freedom, and combating all propositions that aimed to restrict human rights or fetter human progress. That he has sometimes been swayed by partisan rather than statesmanlike considerations is highly probable, but even that can but prove his zeal and devotion ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 1, October, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... invented the expression for our benefit, or whether she only quoted it, I do not know. I only remember its use as a check on the indiscriminate 'collecting' and 'grubbing' of a large family; a mystic warning not without force to fetter the same fingers in later life, with all the ...
— Verses for Children - and Songs for Music • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... conditions for its own benefit, appeals to that which is as much its own fault as the factory system, excuses the sin of to-day with the sin of yesterday? And if the Factory Act did not in some measure fetter their hands, how this "humane," this "benevolent" bourgeoisie, which has built its factories solely for the good of the working-class, would take care of the interests of these workers! Let us hear how they acted before ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels

... power to make regulations for the Territories did not confer general jurisdiction. It was not proper nor just to prohibit slavery in the Territories. Penning the negro up in the old States would only make him wretched and miserable, and would not strike a single fetter from his limbs. Mr. Toombs simply asked that the common territory be left open to the common enjoyment of all the people of the United States; that they should be protected in their persons and property by the general government, until ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall

... the fourth I know, if men place bonds on my limbs, I so sing that I can walk; the fetter starts from my feet, and the manacle from ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson

... heart the Goddess went her way 50 Unto the fatherland of storm, full fruitful of the gale, AEolia hight, where AEolus is king of all avail, And far adown a cavern vast the bickering of the winds And roaring tempests of the world with bolt and fetter binds: They set the mountains murmuring much, a-growling angrily About their bars, while AEolus sits in his burg on high, And, sceptre-holding, softeneth them, and strait their wrath doth keep: Yea but for that the earth and sea, and vault of heaven the deep, ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil

... fashion, invariably swallowing the snake head first. On one occasion when I watched attentively, Ophio, having seized a ring-snake by the middle, held it doggedly still for one quarter of an hour, while the lesser snake did its very best to work its way out of the jaws, and also to fetter its captor by twirling itself over his head and coiling round his neck. This continued while Ophio, with his head and neck raised, remained motionless, and after the quarter of an hour commenced ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various

... value in indicating the tendency of Nelson's military conceptions. He assumes, implicitly, a certain freedom of movement on the part of the two opponents, unrestricted by the friction and uncertainty which in practice fetter action; and the use which, under these conditions, he imagines either will make of his powers, may not unfairly be assumed to show what he thought the correct course ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... looking after, lest he get himself into mischief." Amos looked puzzled. "In other words," continued his brother, "I could not bear the thought of your getting again into the clutches of that horrid man; so I have come over, not to be a spy upon you, or any fetter on your movements, but just to be at hand, to give you a ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson

... you as my friend if you will let me. But I know we could not make each other happy—the time for that has gone by. I would never be satisfied, nor would you. Esterbrook, will you release me from a promise which has become an irksome fetter?" ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... restraint. Chain cables and stout ropes keep her bound to stone posts at the edge of a paved shore, and a berthing-master, with brass buttons on his coat, walks about like a weather-beaten and ruddy gaoler, casting jealous, watchful glances upon the moorings that fetter a ship lying passive and still and safe, as if lost in deep regrets of her days of liberty and ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad

... at the same time I dimly felt that you might object to certain things and ask to have them altered, and I have always wanted to write my own ideas, and not other people's. With my temperament, I see now that it was a mistake to fetter myself by obligations to anybody, but the mistake was made in my girlhood when I knew little of the world and perhaps less of myself. Nevertheless, I wish you to believe, dear Mrs. Goldsmith, that all the blame for the unhappy situation which has arisen I put upon ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... views mentioned or adopted by the author in the text. I have verified these references in one or two cases, and have found that several writers, at all events, do not hold the opinions to which their names are attached [23:1]. But, under any circumstances, these lists will not fetter the judgment of any thoughtful mind. It is strange indeed, that a writer who denounces so strongly the influence of authority as represented by tradition, should be anxious to impose on his readers another less honourable yoke. There is at least a presumption (though in individual ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot

... despair, but the other held her with incredible strength. The lean and bony fingers which bruised her, clenched on her flesh and met around it. One would have said that this hand was riveted to her arm. It was more than a chain, more than a fetter, more than a ring of iron, it was a living pair of pincers endowed with intelligence, ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... active religious campaign, drawing such crowds of all kinds of people that the various churches in turn closed their doors upon him, and eight months later he followed Whitefield into open air preaching, after consultation with the Fetter Lane Society. This Society had been organized at the time of Boehler's visit to London, and was composed of members of the earlier Methodist societies, Germans residing in London, and English who had been interested in salvation by Zinzendorf and the Moravian companies bound for Georgia. ...
— The Moravians in Georgia - 1735-1740 • Adelaide L. Fries

... for Peace, and conquer'd it at last, The rav'ning vulture's leg seems fetter'd fast! Britons, rejoice! and yet be wary too: The chain may break, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... Fetter Lane still keep the old names they had when their appearance was not that of streets or business thoroughfares, but quiet lanes between Holborn and Fleet Street, dotted with private houses. Fetter Lane had ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various

... the power of the new bond of a common faith. The world was then broken up into sections, which were sometimes bitterly antagonistic and at others merely rigidly exclusive. The only bond of union was the iron fetter of Rome, which crushed the people, but did not knit them together. But here are Paul the Jew, Phoebe the Greek, and the Roman readers of the epistle, all fused together by the power of the divine love that melted ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren

... will not to her enemies; though it is probable that your narrow-minded politicians, thinking to please you thereby, may some time or other unnecessarily make such a proposal. Trade flourishes best when it is free, and it is weak policy to attempt to fetter it. Her treaty with France is on the most liberal and generous principles, and the French, in their conduct towards her, have proved themselves to be philosophers, ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... ministering as it does in a thousand ways and with ever-increasing efficacy to our wants and comforts, has but an inferior educational power. Acquaintance with the uniform co-existences and sequences of phenomena is not a mental tonic. Such knowledge not only leaves us unmoved,—it has a tendency even to fetter the free play of the mind and to chill the imagination. It unweaves the rainbow, and leaves us the dead chemical elements. The information we have gained is practical, but it does not exalt the soul or render us more keenly alive to the divine beauty which ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding

... voyage, and encounter a rough courtesy—generous, when not brutal; to solicit commiseration from the harsh delegates of a nation's vengeance, or the hucksters of its mercy. Sad lot! fraught with anguish, with terror, and trembling: every moment passed in fear of some new fetter—of some fresh official caprice, or sudden separation! Such scenes of mental and physical martyrdom have been often known to professional men, who enter the interior of life, and watch the operations of secret sorrow. The mould of Tasmania covers ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West

... Of Rome came into his handes tway, He shope* upon this queen to do vengeance; *prepared And with his legions he took his way Toward Zenobie, and, shortly for to say, He made her flee, and at the last her hent,* *took And fetter'd her, and eke her children tway, And won the land, and ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... you who stands steadfastly near me, Knows me and likes me for just what I am, Some one like you who knows just how to cheer me, Some one who's real without pretense or sham. Some one whose fellowship isn't a fetter Binding my freedom—who's loyal all through, Some one whose life in this world makes it better, Blest to me, best to me—Some one ...
— Some One Like You • James W. Foley

... since I have written to your excellency, and for no other reason than that nothing has occurred to me worthy of being commemorated. This present fetter will inform you that about a month ago I arrived from the Indies, by the way of the great ocean, brought, by the grace of God, safely to this city of Seville. I think your excellency will be gratified to learn the result of my voyage, and the most ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson

... Gunpowder Plot secured its latest or its saddest victim. Soon after Sir Henry Bromley's departure from Hendlip, Mrs Abington came to London, bringing Anne Vaux with her, and they took lodgings in Fetter Lane, then a more aristocratic locality than now. Here they remained for a few weeks, doing all that could be done to help Garnet, and poor Anne continually haunting the neighbourhood of his prison, and trying to catch glimpses of him, if not to obtain stolen interviews, at the garden gate. But ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt

... for help, unable to go on or to turn back, and clung to the fleeting, extinguished life with an endless longing: then, out of the blue distances, from the hills of my ancient bliss, came a shiver of twilight, and at once snapped the bond of birth, the fetter of the Light. Away fled the glory of the world, and with it my mourning; the sadness flowed together into a new, unfathomable world. Thou, soul of the Night, heavenly Slumber, didst come upon me; the region gently upheaved itself, ...
— Rampolli • George MacDonald

... it off, and it touched their fins as well. Then they tried to slip down with the current, and thus leave it behind. But, no! the thing, whatever it was, although its touch was soft, refused to let go, and held them like a fetter. The more they struggled, the tighter became its grasp, and the whole foremost rank of the salmon felt it together; for it was a great gill-net, a quarter of a mile long, stretched squarely across the ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... of the Hebrew prophets and poets, Merodach, in taking to himself this group of stars, published his shame and folly. He had ascended into heaven, but his glittering belt was only his fetter; he was bound and gibbeted in the sky like a captive, a rebel, and who could loose ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder

... Thing done. In a rosery of Fetter lane of Gerard, herbalist, he walks, greyedauburn. An azured harebell like her veins. Lids of Juno's eyes, violets. He walks. One life is all. One body. Do. But do. Afar, in a reek of lust and squalor, hands are ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... the King bade his Queen question the bath-woman with fire and grievous blows, they tortured her with all manner tortures, but could not bring her to confess or to accuse any. Then he commanded to cast her into prison and manacle and fetter her; and they did as he bade. One day, after this, as the King sat in the inner court of his palace, with the Queen by his side and water flowing around him, he saw the pie fly into a crevice in a corner of the wall and pull out the necklace, whereupon he cried out to a damsel who was with him, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... connection; but when once we are interested in the individuals concerned, we are so quick to perceive the connection, even though it be exceedingly distant and indirect, that the dramatist who should always hold the fear of Mrs. Craigie's aphorism consciously before his eyes would unnecessarily fetter and restrict himself. Even the driest scientific proposition may, under special circumstances, become electrical with drama. The statement that the earth moves round the sun does not, in itself, stir our pulses; yet what playwright has ever invented a more dramatic utterance ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer



Words linked to "Fetter" :   fetter bush, manacle, hamper, trammel, cuff, fetter bone, bond, handcuff, restrain



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