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Fetter   Listen
verb
Fetter  v. t.  
1.
To put fetters upon; to shackle or confine the feet of with a chain; to bind. "My heels are fettered, but my fist is free."
2.
To restrain from motion; to impose restraints on; to confine; to enchain; as, fettered by obligations. "My conscience! thou art fettered More than my shanks and wrists."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Fetter" Quotes from Famous Books



... to your letter of yesterday, but I am unable to take precisely your view of our mutual position. With the fullest acknowledgment of your generous conduct to me in the past, I must still maintain that an obligation of this kind cannot fairly fetter me as you appear to expect that it should. Granted that a benefactor's wishes may constitute a claim; there must always be a reservation as to the quality of those wishes. They may possibly clash with more imperative considerations. Or a benefactor's veto might impose ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... broke from 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 ...
— Poems and Ballads (Third Series) - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... they are not curs'd Like me? Evanthe frowns not angry on them, The wind may play upon her beauteous bosom Nor fear her chiding, light can bless her sense, And in the floating mirror she beholds Those beauties which can fetter all mankind. Earth gives her joy, she plucks the fragrant rose, Pleas'd takes its sweets, ...
— The Prince of Parthia - A Tragedy • Thomas Godfrey

... SLANG. A fetter. Double slanged; double ironed. Now double slanged into the cells for a crop he is knocked down; he is double ironed in the condemned cells, ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.

... dungeon dug so deep, Was ever tyrant's fetter forged so strong, Was e'er such deadly poison in the draught The false wife mingles for the trusting fool, As he whose willing victim is himself, Digs, forges, mingles, for his ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... in such a sense as to degrade herself for your sake? Neither you nor she nor I hold the creed that justifies such martyrdom. Am I to teach you such things? Shame! Have the courage of your convictions. You have released her, and you must be content to leave her free. The desire to fetter her again ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing

... drowned by partisan clamor. The treasury has hundreds of millions in its vaults and a fraction of 1 per cent of our surplus will only be required, under a just disbursement, to isolate and destroy the diseases which fetter our ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... natural man, and into this man was introduced an artificial man, whereupon a civil war arose within him, lasting through life. [3326]. . If you propose to become a tyrant over him,. . . do your best to poison him with a theory of morals against nature; impose every kind of fetter on him; embarrass his movements with a thousand obstacles; place phantoms around him to frighten him. . . . Would you see him happy and free? Do not meddle with his affairs. . . Remain convinced of this, (wrote Diderot) that these wise legislators have formed ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... God's altar!—is there any thing worse, do you ask? Yes! To work a human being from youth to old age, to appropriate the labor of that being exclusively, to rob it of the blessings of this life, to poison every domestic charity, to fetter the intellect by the power of fatal ignorance, to withhold the privileges of the gospel of love; and then, when the hollow cough comes under an inclement sky, when the shadows slant, when the hand trembles, when the gait is shuffling, ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams

... 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 not ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... English alliance was unpopular in France itself. "Seek no friendship from the English, Sire!" said Pierre de Breze, the Seneschal of Normandy, "for the more they love you, the more all Frenchmen will hate you!" All Lewis could do was to fetter Edward's action by giving him work at home. When Margaret appealed to him for aid after Towton he refused any formal help, but her pledge to surrender Calais in case of success drew from him some succour in money and men which enabled the queen to renew ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green

... dear Athena! Goddess chaste, and wise and brave, From the snares of Polyxena Thou would'st fain thy favourite save. Tell me, is it not far better That it should be as it is? Jove's behest we cannot fetter, Fate's decrees ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon

... lovers; one run mad. Her foes their honest execrations pour; Her lovers only should detest her more. Flavia is constant to her old gallant, And generously supports him in his want; But marriage is a fetter, is a snare, A hell, no lady so polite can bear. She's faithful, she's observant, and with pains Her angel brood of bastards she maintains. Nor least advantage has the fair to plead, But that of guilt, above the marriage-bed. Amasia hates a prude, and scorns restraint; Whate'er ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young

... the blind grovelings of man as the dome of heaven swings above earth. But how long, gentle Master, shall such as this be declared thy Father's ways? How long shall superstition and idolatry retain the power to fetter the souls of men? Is there no end to the black curse of ignorance of Truth, which, after untold centuries, still makes men sink with vain toil and consume with disease? And—are those who sit about Peter's gorgeous tomb and approve these things unerring guides to ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... grace how great a debtor Daily I'm constrained to be Let that grace, Lord, like a fetter, Bind my wandering heart ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte

... you! But remember you this, that I will be free—free as the wind which now kisses your forehead, and lifts those topmost branches of the tree! I love freedom, power, and honour! Conduct me to these, help me to obtain these, and my gratitude will secure to you my love; will fetter me to you with stronger bonds than those of ceremony and prejudice, to which I only submit out of regard to those who otherwise would weep over me, and whom I would not willingly distress more than ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer

... followed it by a burst of generous applause. For this stranger himself was a marked personage, and his recent arrival at Naples had divided with the new opera the gossip of the city. And then as the applause ceased, clear, full, and freed from every fetter, like a spirit from the clay, the Siren's voice poured forth its entrancing music. From that time Viola forgot the crowd, the hazard, the whole world,—except the fairy one over with she presided. It seemed that the stranger's presence only served ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... PROMETHEUS. I speak nothing; fetter these wrists well, that I shall not flee,—so that I shall be here on your return. Tell you all? I have already told you that a new race shall people the earth, formed of the chosen spirits of the extinct humanity; the multitude of others will perish. A noble family, all-seeing ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis

... we saw a very mitigated evil in milk and butter, and we were conscious of stifled longings after the abomination of meat. Only Mallory, Rollins, and Miss Ringtop had reached that loftiest round on the ladder of progress where the material nature loosens the last fetter of the spiritual. They looked down upon us, and we meekly admitted ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various

... spake Siggeir: "There lies a wood-lawn green In the first mile of the forest; there fetter these Volsung men To the mightiest beam of the wild-wood, till Queen Signy come again And pray me a boon for her brethren, the ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris

... our streams did fetter, Oh! then how her old bones would shake! You would have said, if you had met her, 'Twas a hard time for Goody Blake. Her evenings then were dull and dead; Sad case it was, as you may think, For very cold to go to bed, And then for cold not ...
— Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I. • William Wordsworth

... of Warsaw, has recorded a case which resembles that of A.N., but there was no inversion and the attraction of fetters was active rather than passive; the subject desired to fetter and not to be fettered. It is possible that this difference is not fundamental, though Stcherbak regards the case as one of fetichism of sadistic origin ("Contribution a l'Etude des Perversions Sexuelles," ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... that the governance 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

... circlet from the hawthorn bush, where it fell 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 ...
— Westminster Abbey • Mrs. A. Murray Smith

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

... The fifth phenomenon is the performance of deeds (karma). On account of attachment to names, etc., there arise all the variations of deeds, productive of individuality. "The sixth phenomenon is the suffering due to the fetter of deeds. Through deeds suffering arises in which the mind finds itself entangled and curtailed of its freedom." All these phenomena have thus sprung ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta

... her mair than she deserved. My mistress, the Countess, persevered and said, Elspeth Cheyne, this unruly boy will marry with the false English blood. Were days as they have been, I could throw her into the Massymore* of Glenallan, and fetter him in the ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... 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 help if you ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson

... 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

... wretchedness of a pumiced foot—the despair of owner and veterinary—is experienced. The smith, whose clumsy contrivance has been the cause of all the woe, has abundant reasons to offer for the disease, and his unfailing resort of the "Bar Shoe." This atrocious fetter is supplemented with leather pads, sometimes daubed with tar, and the horse hobbles to his task. Not unfrequently the crust at the front of the hoof sinks in, adhering to the sole; circulation being ...
— Rational Horse-Shoeing • John E. Russell

... to become himself the hostage for all Munster. In Connaught, Conor, (from whom the O'Conors take their family name), son of the Prince, came voluntarily to his camp, and was received with open arms. Kellachan alone was submitted to the indignity of wearing a fetter. With these distinguished hostages, Murkertach and his leather-cloaked "ten hundred" returned to Aileach, where, for five months, they spent a season of unbounded rejoicing. In the following year, the Roydamna transferred the hostages to King Donogh, as his suzerain, thus setting ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... 'You are the equal of the fairest duchesses. Your voice is like a siren's, your hands command respect and love. Ah! that arm!—place bracelets upon it, and how pleasingly it would rest upon the velvet of a robe! Your locks are chains which would fetter all men. And you could lay all your triumphs at Adolphe's feet, show him your power and never use it. Then he would fear, where now he lives in insolent certainty. Come! To action! Inhale a few mouthfuls ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac

... little to brush 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

... 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 dangling ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad

... 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 ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon

... table, uncommonly merry. The King showed himself altogether content; and his bright clever talk and sprightly sallies, awakening everybody to the like, left not the least trace visible of the weighty toils he was then engaged in;—as if the weightier these were, the less should they fetter the noble openness (FREYMUTHIGKEIT) of this high soul, which is not to be cast down by ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle

... he went off to his office in Fetter Lane, leaving Joanna to the unrelieved society of his mother, for which he apologised profusely. Indeed, she found her days a little dreary, for the old lady was not entertaining, and she dared not go about much by herself in so metropolitan a place as Lewisham. Every ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith

... every young man whom he met. He was originally an Independent minister in Wales, where the people are mostly Dissenters, but he came to London when he had not passed middle life, and took charge of the church in Fetter Lane. He was tall, broad-shouldered, handsome, erect, but was partly disabled by a strangely nervous temperament which, with an obscure bodily trouble, frequently prevented him from keeping his engagements. Often and often messengers had to be dispatched late on ...
— The Early Life of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford

... 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, ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola

... 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

... fortunes of make-believe people and make-believe incidents. Scott does not always keep quite strictly to fact. He is of the same mind as the old poet Davenant who thought it folly to take away the liberty of a poet and fetter his feet in the shackles of an historian. Why, he asked, should a poet not make and mend a story and frame it more delightfully, merely because austere historians have entered into a bond to truth. So ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall

... Othello probable as a jealous husband, or gives him exactly the words that a jealous husband might have used, but because he creates in him an image of more than human energy, and puts into his mouth words of a more splendid poetry than any one but Shakespeare himself could have found to say. Fetter the poetic drama to an imitation of actual speech, and you rob it of the convention which is its chief glory and best opportunity. A new colour may certainly be given to that convention, by which a certain directness, rather of Dante than of Shakespeare, ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... here you hold him fetter'd; Oh! give him to me——If ever The touch of nature throbb'd within your breast, Admit me to Evander. In these caves I know he pines in want; let me convey Some charitable succour to ...
— The Grecian Daughter • Arthur Murphy

... to Captain Nemo. He believes that escaping from the Nautilus is impossible. We are not even constrained by our word of honor. No promises fetter us. We're simply captives, prisoners masquerading under the name "guests" for the sake of everyday courtesy. Even so, Ned Land hasn't given up all hope of recovering his freedom. He's sure to take advantage of the first chance that comes his way. No doubt I will do likewise. And yet I will feel ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne

... her fiery 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 ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil

... who was called the Marshal, with orders to Gallus as to when and where he was to deliver over his charge upon the morrow. With him he brought a packet, which, when opened, proved to contain a splendid golden girdle, fashioned to the likeness of a fetter. The clasp was an amethyst, and round it were cut these words: "The gift of Domitian to her who ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard

... of the Dutch word Bouerie which New Yorkers know so well?), across the way, leads toward the river where once the Carmelite friary (White Friars) formerly stood, and to a region which Scott has made famous in "Nigel" as "Alsatia." Fetter Lane, and Great and Little New Streets, leading therefrom, are musty with a literary or at least journalistic atmosphere. Here Izaak Walton, the gentle angler, lived while engaged in the vocation of hosier at the ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun

... limbs that Thou hast given me. If it be Thy Will that paralysis should fetter my arms, my eyes no longer see the light, my tongue be unable to articulate, my GOD, I yield ...
— Gold Dust - A Collection of Golden Counsels for the Sanctification of Daily Life • E. L. E. B.

... your ballad is published, and so inferior, that I wonder we could tolerate it. Dugald Stewart read yours to **** the other day. When he came to the fetter dance,[124] he looked up, and poor ***** was sitting with his hands nailed to his knees, and the big tears rolling down his innocent nose in so piteous a manner, that Mr. Stewart could not help bursting out a-laughing. An angry man was ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... account he received of the education of any of them, was from Thomas Howard, proprietor of a glass and china shop, No. 50, Fetter-lane, Fleet-street. This person, who preached among the Calvinists, said, that in the winter of 1811, he had assisted in the establishment of a Sunday School in Windmill-street, Acre-lane, near Clapham. It ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland

... may speak low, till we are united and more strong. Not a moment is to be lost! Audacious tyranny, that dared to fetter him, already lifts the dagger against his life. Oh, my friends! With the advancing twilight my anxiety grows more intense. I dread this night. Come! Let us disperse; let us hasten from quarter to quarter, and call out the ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

... be easy to prove anything against him. One thing, therefore, he prayed for with all his heart—that the rest might yet escape. He told his party something of the course of events, but not too much. On the Sunday that intervened he went to hear mass in Fetter Lane, where numbers of Catholics resorted; and there, piece by piece, learned more of the plot than even Anthony had ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson

... happy Maid that can detain Old hoary Time in fetter'd Chain, What wouldst thou have to set him free, ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany - Parts 2, 3 and 4 • Hurlo Thrumbo (pseudonym)

... and all Thine shall be Ours, and no more shall any man crave For riches that serve for nothing but to fetter ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various

... 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 twenty ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole

... the first fetter could be dragged to where he knelt, he sprang up with the fire of fury in his eyes, and made a rush at the mandarin, seized him, and it would have gone ill with his gaudy costume, had not a couple of the officers ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn

... noble Kriemhild," thus Sir Dietrich spake, "Spare this captive warrior, who full amends will make For all his past transgressions; him here in bonds you see; Revenge not on the fetter'd th' ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock

... sophistical arguments which convict himself but could never convince a correspondent, and which astonish and amuse the calm reader of after days. 'A kind of ineffable, sickening disgust seizes my mind when I think of this most despotic, most unrequired fetter which prejudice has forged to confine its energies.... Anti-matrimonialism is as necessarily connected with scepticism as if religion and marriage began their course together,' for both are the fruit of odious superstition. He was endeavouring to persuade Harriet Westbrook to join ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... famous for his cure of his Grace the Duke of Albermarle, is removed from Bristol to London, and may be spoken with every day, especially in the forenoon, at his house in West Harding Street, in Goldsmith's Rents, near Three Legged Alley, between Fetter ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 57, November 30, 1850 • Various

... we will, for the present, bring forth but one picture. That of a Black Nun was wont to fetter the eyes of visitors in the royal galleries of France, and my Sister of Mercy, too, is of that complexion. The old woman was recommended as a laundress by my friend, who had long prized her. I was immediately ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... clients never to be in a hurry for work. Squercum was the very opposite to this. He had established himself, without predecessors and without a partner, and we may add without capital, at a little office in Fetter Lane, and had there made a character for getting things done after a marvellous and new fashion. And it was said of him that he was fairly honest, though it must be owned that among the Bideawhiles of the profession ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope

... 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 nothing to do with fetters or prisoners; it was so called because 'fewters,' or idle persons, were often found lurking amongst the back gardens. One of the short turnings out of this lane had the odd name of Three Leg Alley; nobody seems to know why. It is supposed that Gracechurch ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various

... liberty. Even an unlawful relation felt like a fetter so soon as it demanded any sacrifice of time or interests. Also, he did not like to give less than he received. For, since the passing of his unscrupulous youth, he had not cared to receive the gift of a human destiny only to throw it aside as ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann

... what I want. It can't be done, it must be felt, and that it never will be. When there's a mutual antagonism, gratitude becomes a fetter, intolerable ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... 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 I have ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn

... Emperor. For this the French ambassador offered him the alliance of his sovereign and considerable subsidies. But Gustavus Adolphus was justly apprehensive lest the acceptance of the assistance should make him dependent upon France, and fetter him in his career of conquest, while an alliance with a Roman Catholic power might excite distrust among ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

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

... indulge in invidious comment: The Times, too, may gird, and declare 'tis absurd not to know one's own Labyrinth better. The Times is my friend, but a trifle too fond of the goad and the scourge and the fetter; You really can't rule the whole civilised world with the aid of the whip and the closure; Though I should enjoy—but no matter, my boy, let us try to maintain our composure! When shall we get out? That's a matter of doubt, cross-hedges my pathway still chequer, The clue I've ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 23, 1891 • Various

... tie which absence has loosened, or which the wear and tear of every-day intercourse, little uncongenialities, unconfessed misunderstandings, have fretted into the heart, until it bears something of the nature of a fetter? Any cup at our home-table whose sweetness we have not fully tasted, although it might yet make of our daily bread a continual feast? Let us reckon up these treasures while they are still ours, in ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston

... they walked, the little space between them was hung with brilliant strands, like gossamer chains of gold, already linking them together; every second fixing another slender, precious fetter, binding them closer, drawing her nearer. He waited until they passed into the shadows of the deserted Carewe Street before he spoke. There he stopped abruptly; ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington

... it is practically carried out by a continued system of surrender and re-settlement—a device of lawyers which is, in its historical development, an evasion (rather than a part) of the law. Nevertheless, I think it is a matter of importance that the shackles which fetter land should be loosened, and that the present powers of owners to tie up land legally should be very much curtailed. It is a sad proof of the way riches cling to the heart of man even when he is leaving this world, that, whatever powers of tying up land are sanctioned, an owner will usually ...
— Speculations from Political Economy • C. B. Clarke

... orchella weed, gum copal, cocoa-nut oil, and other articles of native produce, and a very large (though secret) trade in human bodies and—we had almost written—souls, but the worthy people who dwelt there could not fetter souls, although they could, and very often ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne

... a strong one 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

... curse, my curse upon him, That man whom pity held in the wilderness, Who saved the feet alive from the blood-fetter And loosed ...
— Oedipus King of Thebes - Translated into English Rhyming Verse with Explanatory Notes • Sophocles

... laboriously built up about the art, one is struck by the promptitude with which the question of the modern stage is made clear and distinct. The drama has but to take a step to break all the spider's webs with which the militia of Lilliput have attempted to fetter its sleep. ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... their behaviour to each other. The chain that binds them is a chain of mutual forbearance, of mutual endurance, of mutual love; and if these be broken, then is the bond gone. Marriage is no fetter about a man or woman, binding both to that which they may get ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding

... body, but shall not fetter the tongue," responded Herriot, in no way dismayed by the threats of his enraged persecutors, or their preparations to confine and torture his person; "for I will speak, and you shall hear, ye tyrants! Listen then, ye red-handed assassins! The blood of your murdered victim has cried up ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson

... from the scroll and crown, Fetter and prayer and plough— They that go up to the Merciful Town, For her gates are closing now. It is their right in the Baths of Night Body and soul to steep, But we—pity us! ah, pity us! We wakeful; oh, pity us!— We must ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling

... transition. The great question was still undecided: Shall liberty or tyranny prevail—barbarism or civilization? This question depended upon the answer to another: Shall the Church of God be free or become the creature of temporal power? Already William the Conqueror and Henry of Austria were trying to fetter the spouse of Christ—already the gulf was opening that threatened spiritual Rome with destruction. Then it was that Gregory VII saved the Church as Curtius saved the city; but while the pagan has been raised to the skies, the Christian ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles

... to 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 ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper

... insistence that the babe's name should be John—none of his kindred being known by that name—they appealed to his father, who with trembling hand inscribed on the wax of the writing tablet the verdict, "His name is John." So soon as he had broken the iron fetter of unbelief in thus acknowledging the fulfilment of the angel's words, "his mouth was opened immediately, and his tongue loosed, and he spake, blessing God. And fear came on all that dwelt round about them." All these ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer

... not stop, then, to demean, and embarrass, and fetter herself by comparisons of herself with any thing finite. She has no right to do this. The perfection which the word of God requires, is the standard or measure by which she should compare herself. She may, indeed, sometimes compare herself with herself—her present self with her past ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott

... prerogatives have been thus diminished, the claim that you shall act with judicial impartiality has increased, and has become a fetter. To oppose any course of ministerial action to-day is by implication to ally yourself with the other side. You are in the position of a judge whose directions the jury has authority to ignore, and from ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman

... been overlaid from age to age by concretions which had gathered round it, as was the case previously to the Reformation,(1018) it has been free thought which has attacked the system, and, piercing the error, has removed those elements which had been superadded. Or, when the church has attempted to fetter human thought in other departments than its own proper domain of religion, as when the ecclesiastical authorities disgraced themselves by vetoing the discoveries of Galileo,(1019) it has been to free ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar

... 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 matter, which set him singing before the larks were off the ground. He ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett

... on the watch all the time, and I at once concluded that she spoke of my children. The doctor came the 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 carried ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)

... friends, and certainly 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 ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... curiously round the little thin ring which he held, and indeed it were hopeless to suppose so frail a fetter ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... you need not stare at me as if you were throttled. What business has he to go and fetter himself with a wife again. One would have thought he had had enough with the other. It is as I have always said, there's a soft ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood

... baffled leader seizeth, With fetter'd hands, his Iron Crown— A dread abyss his spirit freezeth! Down, down he goes, to ruin down! And Europe's armaments are driven, Like mist, along the blood-stain'd snow— That snow shall melt 'neath summer's heaven, With the last ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various

... cannot imagine what it has cost me to fetter this poor heart, stifle my words, and blind my eyes. Maria, it must ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... brawl'd among the trees Stood still, the murmur of that song to hear; No green leaf stirr'd, and fetter'd seem'd the breeze. ...
— Romantic Ballads - translated from the Danish; and Miscellaneous Pieces • George Borrow

... there ought not to be about me Any bard who may not know That Elphin the son of Gwyddno Is in the land of Artro, Secured by thirteen locks, For praising his instructor; And then I Taliesin, Chief of the bards of the west, Shall loosen Elphin Out of a golden fetter." ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest

... 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 International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... chains 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

... this may be one 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 ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]

... feel the better For watching the uncouth play Of limbs that slip the fetter, Pretend ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson

... will doth recklessly pursue Her, who, unshackled by love's heavy chain, Flies swiftly from its chase, whilst I in vain My fetter'd journey pantingly renew; The safer track I offer to its view, But hopeless is my power to restrain, It rides regardless of the spur or rein; Love makes it scorn the hand that would subdue. The triumph ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch

... fear of honour? Tell me, by a gentle bleat, ye little butting rams, do you sigh thus for your soft, white ewes? Do you lie thus conceal'd, to wait the coming shades of night, 'till all the cursed spies are folded? No, no, even you are much more blest than man, who is bound up to rules, fetter'd by the nice ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn

... for him were these days Of clerkly and sluggish calm— To the petrel the swooping gale! Austere he seemed, but the hearts Of all men beat in his breast; No fetter but galled his wrist, No wrong that was not his own. What if those eloquent lips Curled with the old-time scorn? What if in needless hours His quick hand closed on the hilt? 'Twas the smoke from the well-won fields ...
— The Sisters' Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... the more elderly among the living. I did well there, and I passed on into the world. And then at last I began to understand the value of my inheritance; for all that had been my grandmother's was now mine. My people wished me to marry, but I had no desire to fetter myself. So I took the sponge in my strong, young hands, and tried to squeeze it dry. And I did not know that I was sad—I did not know it until, at the age of thirty-three, just seventeen years after ...
— The Return Of The Soul - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens

... that the chains have come to fetter the minds of mortals. Why is the Mohammedan everywhere a slave? It is because his Prophet subdued him in the name of the Deity, just as Moses before him subjugated the Jews. In all parts of the world we see that priests were the first law-givers ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier

... 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 to come ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald

... the bird selects for its mate the bird it likes best; that love and affection go to the pairing of all creatures, save man and woman; and that only with them is it a practice to bind together, and fetter for life, those whose hearts are far apart. And he knew, that the Great Spirit disliked that force or constraint should be used in affairs of this kind. So, in obedience to the will of his master, as well as the dictates of his own reason, and the affection he bore her, ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones

... must be sanctioned by the Senate; and all appointments made by the President must be confirmed by the Senate. The list is short; and one is disposed to think, when first hearing it, that the thing itself does not amount to much. But it does amount to very much; it enables the Senate to fetter the President, if the Senate should be so inclined, both as regards foreign politics and home politics. A Secretary for Foreign Affairs at Washington may write what dispatches he pleases without reference to the Senate; but the Senate interferes before those dispatches can have resulted in any fact ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope

... Held at bay by the practical sense of Henry, they had told on the more headstrong nature of his sons. Richard and John both held with Glanvill that the will of the prince was the law of the land; and to fetter that will by the customs and franchises which were embodied in the barons' claims seemed to John a monstrous usurpation of his rights. But no imperialist theories had touched the minds of his people. ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green

... 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

... that in the struggles of life you will never suffer from this marriage, not because my daughter will not make you happy—from this side I am easy—but because the situation that fate has made for us will weigh on you and fetter you? I know my daughter-her delicacy; her uneasy susceptibility, that of the unfortunate; her pride, that of the irreproachable. It would be a wound for her that would make happiness give way to unhappiness, for she could not ...
— Conscience, Complete • Hector Malot

... supposed that he had hastily prepared it in consequence of certain reported disturbances in the previous spring. He was, therefore, taunted with having been a member of the 'fourth estate,' and now desiring to fetter the liberty of the press. He therefore confessed, and it must be admitted that it required less courage in him than it had required in his grandfather to confess, to the sin of having written for the newspapers. In point of fact, however, as he pointed out, the proposed ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... not give cause for the use of force; for we shall fetter him hand and foot in such a manner that no better safeguard will be necessary." So saying, our friend the lawyer smiled complaisantly, all over his round face, looking, with his long moustache, for all the world like the moon, when a long ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai

... there is no thought of victory now; we are not so far north as I had expected; the northwest wind has come again, and we are drifting south. And yet the future does not seem to me so long and so dark as it sometimes has done. Next September 6th ... can it be possible that then every fetter will have burst, and we shall be sitting together talking of this time in the far north and of all the longing, as of something that once was and that will never be again? The long, long night is past; the morning is just breaking, and a glorious new day lies before us. ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen

... improvisations upon universal history and the designs of God; but I flatter myself I am more nearly acquainted with the latter than Mr. Bancroft. A man, in the words of my Plymouth Brother, "who knows the Lord," must needs, from time to time, write less emphatically. It is a fetter dance to the music of minute guns—not at sea, but in a region not a thousand miles from the Sahara. Still, I am half-way through volume three, and shall count myself unworthy of the name of an Englishman if I do not see the back of volume six. The countryman ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... was feeling very ill now. His fur overcoat had become unbuttoned and the bitter wind that blew across the Park seemed to benumb his body and fetter his limbs so that he ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers

... answered the stranger, "and in these days it is better to travel two than one, and four than two. But being no more than two, we must e'en hope for the best if we fall not in with other belated travellers. My business brooked not delay; wherefore I came alone. I mislike the fetter of a retinue of servants, and I have had wonderful good hap on the roads; but there be others who tell a different tale, and I often join company when I find a traveller to ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green

... every class sovereign over its own fate. Corruption may steal from a man his independence; capital may starve, and intrigue fetter him, at times; but against all these, his vote, intelligently and honestly cast, is, in the long run, his full protection. If, in the struggle, his fort surrenders, it is only because it is betrayed from ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.

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

... indebted, although they had more than once raised his salary (once in order to enable him to dispense with working for the "Pictorial Times"); but his indebtedness he felt as a tie, which was none the less irksome that it was a golden fetter which bound him to his friends. Still, to the end he sent in his satires, couplets, and epigrams—stinging, brilliant, and original—jokes and sarcasms by the score, but extremely ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann

... were 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 I have about had time to settle down to reflection after leaving, ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler

... Cambridge "Beehive," up and down alternate days, the Bull, Royston, and the Catherine Wheel, Bishopsgate Street, and White Bear, Piccadilly; the Cambridge "Telegraph," daily, the Red Lion, Royston, and the White Horse, Fetter Lane; the "Rocket," daily, the Bull, Royston, and White Horse, Fetter Lane; the "Wisbeach," daily, the Bull Hotel, Royston, and Belle Sauvage and Golden Cross, London; the "Stamford," up and down alternate days, the Crown, Royston, and the Bell and ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston



Words linked to "Fetter" :   cuff, hamper, hobble, trammel, fetter bush, manacle, shackle, confine



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