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Compromising   /kˈɑmprəmˌaɪzɪŋ/   Listen
Compromising

adjective
1.
Making or willing to make concessions.  Synonyms: conciliatory, flexible.
2.
Vulnerable to danger especially of discredit or suspicion.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Compromising" Quotes from Famous Books



... cite or comment on individuals, save as they may illustrate the point under discussion. But I am the less reluctant to animadvert upon this or that employee of the penitentiary, because I feel satisfied that, so far from compromising him with the higher prison authorities, abuse from me would only recommend him to their favor.—Mr. Ivy, such as he was, conducted us to a bench outside a closed door, already partly occupied by three or four half naked convicts, white and black. ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne

... your noble hospitality, from death. This benefit conferred gives you an unlimited claim on my gratitude, and a claim, to a certain extent, on my confidence. I will tell you as much of the history of the wanderer you have harboured, as I can tell without compromising my own peace of mind—my own security, moral and physical, and that ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte

... argument was that the peace of the church must never be bought with money or this would endow its disturbers. His wisdom was well evidenced by events in the next reign. With this advice he urged them to sleep over the matter and discuss it next day. But the struggle to avoid compromising principles in order not only to serve the hour, but to save the love and, perhaps, the lives of friends was a very severe strain to him. When they had gone out he was dismally cast down and acknowledged that ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson

... connection with Russia. The Cossacks, therefore, to whom the pursuit was intrusted, had instructions to act cautiously and according to circumstances on coming up with them. The result was, through the prudent management of Assarcho, that the clan, without compromising their pride or independence, made such moderate submissions as satisfied the Cossacks; and eventually both chiefs and people received from the Czarina the rewards ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... the right place; and sometimes I cannot help thinking that your heart is better than the world believes it to be, else how could you so readily divine the hearts of others? How quickly have you devised the best of schemes to promote my daughter's happiness, without compromising her imperial station! Christina shall be Stadthalterin of Hungary; and in her name and my own I thank you for the suggestion. One thing, however, lies heavy on my heart. It is the thought of the blow I am about to inflict upon my poor Joseph. How will he ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... academical mind, but Holcroft added to a rich and curious experience of life and a vein of native originality, wide reading and something more than a mere amateur's taste for music and art. It was Holcroft who drove Godwin out of his compromising Unitarianism into a view which for some years he boldly described as Atheism. His religious opinions were afterwards modified (or so he supposed) by S. T. Coleridge; but that influence is not conspicuous in his posthumous essay on ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford

... accused him publicly of coveting for himself the throne of Mexico. However this may be, it seems to be a fact that when in Havana, on his way to Vera Cruz, General Prim, upon being approached by the clerical leaders, had declined in no compromising tones to recognize them, and had shown himself inclined to deal with the Liberals openly. See correspondence published by Domenech, loc. cit., vol. ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson

... the Faubourg Saint-Germain, that is to say the high aristocracy, who, after appearing at first submissive and even serving Napoleon in the time of his prosperity, had become his enemy and without openly compromising themselves, attacked, by all means, the ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot

... reaching London (1884) was of that collapse. Mr. and Mrs. Coulomb, the former a skilled mechanic, had confessed at Madras that they had all along been assisting Madame Blavatsky in frauds; elaborate contrivances were discovered behind the shrine, and compromising letters written by the high priestess were produced. Madame Blavatsky declared that the contrivances were put in the shrine to ruin her; but Coulomb could have done that by a small mechanism, whereas the arrangements were extensive and expensive, requiring such time as must have ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various

... comical. The soldier habit of making the Hurrah for Lincoln our answering war-cry to the Hurrah for Davis of our enemies in the field, made a bewildering puzzle of such an outburst. The meeting with the Southern commissioners was denounced as a weak compromising of our cause. He saw no force in the argument that weak hearts among us would be strengthened when they saw that now as upon former overtures the Confederate authorities insisted upon independence as the necessary condition of peace, whilst Mr. ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox

... up now, and forgetting all about compromising, he dashed at one of his assailants, hitting out furiously, getting several blows home, in spite of the stick, and the next minute would have torn it from the young scoundrel's grasp if the other had not attacked ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn

... "Of course not. Let's see, now. How was it you happened to get sent up on that Springfield job? Was it because you wouldn't prove an alibi for fear of compromising somebody in extremely high-toned society? Or was it simply a case of a mean old jury that had it in for you? It's always one or the other with you ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry

... and once only—to give her a decent reason for not calling again—that I understand I am compromising her good name, or something of the sort. I have accepted too much hospitality at her hands to drop her brusquely, without a word ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... as "the medicine of immortality" applied to the consecrated elements, where we are meant to understand that the elements have a mysterious power of preserving the receiver from the natural consequences of death.[328] But when we find that the same writers who use compromising phrases about the change that comes over the elements,[329] also use the language of symbolism, and remember, too, that a "miracle" was a very different thing to those who knew of no inflexible laws in the ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge

... notice of it. In fact, I begin to like the rascal: you know I was never favourably impressed with him. By Jove! it is not every mistress that can have such a devoted attendant. I only hope his over zeal in your service may never get you into some compromising position. He is hardly, with all his virtues, the proper servant for a young lady to have about her; he has had no training—no proper training at all, you see. But you must let the villain nurse himself for a day or two ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald

... the other hand, however, they approved of all controversies really necessary in the interest of truth, rejected and condemned all forms of indifferentism and unionism, and strenuously opposed every effort at sacrificing, veiling, or compromising any doctrine by ambiguous formulas for the sake of external peace or any other policy whatsoever. (CONC. ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente

... difficult to fix the exact date of the Trial. Boz, writing some ten years after the event, seems to have got a little confused and uncertain as to the exact year of the Trial. He first fixed the opening of the story in 1817: but on coming to the compromising incident in Goswell Street, which occurred only a few weeks later, he changed the year to 1827. Then Jingle's anachronism of the French Revolution of July suggested that the new date would not do. So 1830 was next ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald

... righteousness in business; and thence to speak of the jeweller's; after which Cosmo introduced that of the ring. Giving a short narrative of the finding of it, and explaining the position of Lady Joan with regard to it, so that his host might have no fear of compromising himself, he ended with telling him he had brought it to him, and ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... subject, because Miss Gordon hopes to establish a similar institution near her home in the South; where so many of our countrywomen, rendered destitute in consequence of the late war, need training which will enable them to do faithful remunerative work, without compromising their feminine refinement. While in Europe she inspected various industrial organizations; saw Kaiserswerth, and the Training Schools for Nurses, even the Swedish 'Naas Slojd', and her visit here is solely to verify the flattering accounts she has received ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... notions of men, there will be such a peace as men have overdrugged with opium, that deep lethargy just before the mortal convulsions and death! All attempts at evasion, at adjourning, at concealing and compromising are in vain. The reason of our long agitation is, not that restless Abolitionists are abroad, that ministers will meddle with improper themes, that parties are disregardful of the country's interest. These are symptoms only, not ...
— Conflict of Northern and Southern Theories of Man and Society - Great Speech, Delivered in New York City • Henry Ward Beecher

... candour in giving heaped measure to those on the aristocratic side in politics, and in being critically severe on others. Thus Sir Walter Scott is lauded to the skies for his romantic powers, without any allusion to his political demerits (as if this would be compromising the dignity of genius and of criticism by the introduction of party-spirit)—while Lord Byron is called to a grave moral reckoning. There is, however, little of the cant of morality in the Edinburgh Review—and it is quite ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt

... who hadn't been snubbed by her—Mrs. Tudor Carstairs and Mrs. Sanderson-Spear—I was simply overwhelmed with unsolicited advice and undesirable attention. Indeed, it was all I could do to steer a dignified course between that uncompromising Scylla, Blakely's mother, and the compromising Charybdis of my self-elected champions. But I managed it, somehow. Dad bought me a stunning big automobile in Los Angeles, and Blakely taught me how to run it; then, Blakely was awfully fond of golf; and we spent loads of time at the Country Club. And of course there ...
— Cupid's Understudy • Edward Salisbury Field

... manner in which you may grow to greatness within that frivolous mind, within that soul of lacework, to use Napoleon's phrase. You may learn how a man may exhibit a soul of steel, may enter upon this little domestic war without ever yielding the empire of his will, and may do so without compromising his happiness. For if you exhibit any tendency to abdication, your wife will despise you, for the sole reason that she has discovered you to be destitute of mental vigor; you are no ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac

... cried. "In the first place I should be compromising with my conscience, and in the second place I should be defenceless ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer

... from another, while you yourself poured your own burning tale into her ear? Two things I most admire in nature," went on the free baron, with emphasis. "A dare-devil who stops not for man or Satan, and—an honest man. You take but a compromising middle course; and will hang, a ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham

... for the bill nearly proved the utter ruin of our hero. His uncle failed, and left him to pay it. The lawyer took out a writ against him. It would have been well for Tom if he had paid the money at once, but he went on dallying and compromising with the lawyer, till he became terribly involved in his web. To increase his difficulties work became slack; so at last he packed his things upon his carts, and with his family, consisting of his wife and three daughters, ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow

... dapper in appearance; but a close observer could see a difference. Management was perceptible in his dress. He had no watch; but the diamond remained on his finger—for the present; and yet society had nothing seriously compromising to say against him. It was rumoured that he had seen the interior of Clichy twice. So had Sir Ronald, who was now the darling of the Faubourg; but then, note the difference. Sir Ronald had re-issued with plenty of money—or credit, which to society is the same thing; while poor Bertram ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold

... face. They carry on an eternal warfare, which is renewed in every age, under new names and new forms. Accomplished facts and renovating thought divide the world between them. They at one time moderate its speed, and at others, spur it on its way. But these two forces, instead of compromising the destinies of humanity by their opposing action, maintain and balance them, as the contrary impulses given by the hand of the Great Architect has peopled the universe with worlds which ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... arrest of the offender and Kierson was taken into custody. Loris' course was not dictated by caprice. If his august father knew that he had sought an alliance with a daughter of the despised Hebrew race, he would vent his wrath upon Loris' head for compromising the honor of the ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith

... jests, without gaiety or joking of any description, we breakfasted quietly and decorously together, and at an hour when, in view of the compromising circumstances of the previous evening, we could set out without attracting undue notice, I set off with Minna for a long walk beyond the city gates. Then we parted, and from that day forward freely and openly gratified our desires as an acknowledged ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... liaison, if you like,—but, all the same, if known of a Mademoiselle de Fontonelles, a compromising, a fatal entanglement. There you are. Look! for this, then, all this story of cock and bulls and spirits! Mademoiselle has been discovered with her lover by some one. This pretty story shall ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte

... European Oriental, if I may so speak, that I ever met with, and more thoroughly unaffected and unreserved in his communication with us than is the habit with eastern great men, who always seem afraid of compromising themselves by too much condescension. An instance of this occurred during another visit. While we were chatting on indifferent subjects a native rajah was announced, as being desirous of paying a visit of ceremony. Jung immediately stepped forward to receive him with much politeness. The rajah commenced ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant

... not very patriotic. You might go there and ask for Del Ferice. You could see him without going to his house—without compromising your dignity." ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford

... Shakespearian! "Stability thy name is woman!" he exclaims bitterly, for he fears love with the compromising domesticity of marriage. It is his rigorous transvaluation of all moral values and conventionalities that proclaims this Hamlet a man of the future. No half-way treaties with the obvious in life, no crooking the pregnant hinges of his opinions to the powers that be. An anarch, ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker

... effect on public sentiment, deepening the gloom of every reverse, adding to the discouragements which an embarrassed commerce and trade brought to men's hearts, by domestic echoes of weariness of the strife, and favoring the growth of a disaffected, compromising, unpatriotic feeling, which always stood ready to break out with any offered encouragement. A sense of nearness of the people to the Government which the organization of the women effected, enlarged their sympathies ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett

... that the remedies which they applied to one disease of the State were certain to generate another disease, and to render another remedy necessary. Their knowledge was inferior to ours: nor were they always able to act up to their knowledge. The pressure of circumstances, the necessity of compromising differences of opinion, the power and violence of the party which was altogether hostile to the new settlement, must be taken into the account. When these things are fairly weighed, there will, we ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... avoid aiming after needless singularity, we desire to go on simply according to Scripture, without compromising the truth; at the same time thankfully receiving any instruction which experienced Believers, after prayer, upon Scriptural ground, may have to give ...
— A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, First Part • George Mueller

... would have set him on the throne of Poland—but, of a truth, under the vassalage of the Emperor of the French! Kosciusko was not to be consoled for Poland by riches bestowed on himself, nor betrayed into compromising her birthright of national independence by the casuistry that would have made his parental sceptre the instrument of a ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... and by his persistence forced him into a reluctant mariage de convenance. Zygmunt Krasinski was undoubtedly in a painful position, for he could not openly declare himself without still further compromising his father's position. He hated his father's policy, but he loved the man who had trained him to love his country, and, above all, he feared him. It was a new and tragic variant on odi et amo, which drove Zygmunt Krasinski into a strange life of ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner

... up," observed the nobleman; "and as Fanfaro does not yet suspect who he really is, he can go on compromising himself. Have you any further details with ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere

... for other purposes. For the photographic work of Mr. Collins was strictly commercial—and peculiar. There were fingerprints to be photographed and identified for purpose of private revenge, photographs of people to be merged and repictured in compromising closeness for reasons of blackmail. And even X-Ray photography was included in ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various

... these days to a stooping, scraggy kind of gauntness) a most delightful companion, admirably well-informed, vivacious, and unusually gifted in the matter of deductive powers and the sense of humour. Also, that (whatever the ship's chatterboxes might say) there had been nothing in the faintest degree compromising in our relations ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson

... your misfortune is irremediable; and I cannot and will not attempt to alleviate it, for fear of compromising myself. This is, therefore, my last letter—I can risk nothing more for you. Do not attempt to write to me, for I should return your letter unopened. Our separation must be forever, but I will always remain your friend; and ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach

... but that decision did not entirely extricate me from my difficulties. The collection of revolutionary pamphlets was still in my possession, and I had promised to return it. For some little time I did not see how I could keep my promise without compromising myself or others, but at last—after having had my shadowers carefully shadowed in order to learn accurately their habits, and having taken certain elaborate precautions, with which I need not trouble the reader, as he is not likely ever to require them—I paid ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... 21. — The Chancellor is now crowded with all the canvas she can carry, and at times her topmasts threaten to snap with the pressure. But Curtis is ever on the alert; he never leaves his post beside the man at the helm, and without compromising the safety of the vessel, he contrives, by tacking to the breeze, to urge her ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne

... immediate purpose. But in the endeavor to establish and popularize his theory, a radical critic cannot afford any similar concessions. His own opinions can become established only by the displacement of the traditional opinions; and the way to displace a traditional error is not to be compromising and conciliatory, but to be as uncompromising and as irritating as one's abilities and one's vision of the truth will permit. The critic in his capacity as agitator is living in a state of war with his opponents; ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly

... in the flushed hands clasped loosely on his knees, his eyes turned upon his hostess with a look of almost infantile candour. It was as if he mutely implored her to forget yesterday's encounter, and on no account to mention in what compromising company he had been seen. His engaging smile seemed to take for granted that she was a lady of pity and understanding, who would never have the heart to give a poor prodigal away. His eyes intimated that Mrs. Majendie knew what it amounted to, ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair

... "that the king may possibly have had the idea of annoying some one here; were it not for that, the king would not show himself so earnest in his attentions as he is; he would not run the risk of compromising, from mere thoughtlessness of disposition, a young girl against whom no one has been hitherto able to ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... proceeded to discuss the question whether a cats' home could be properly started with thirty pounds, whether she had not better send fifty. Miss Hendersyde made her conscience quite comfortable by compromising: she said that she thought thirty was enough to begin with; that if more were needful, Lady Ryehampton could give it later. ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson

... not strike me so in the least; at all events, I could make the proposal on your behalf, without compromising yourself, though I should be far more sanguine of success if you addressed M. ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... great admirer of the compromising verdicts of juries, in civil suits that admit of a question as to amounts. They are an admirable invention to settle questions of guilty or not guilty, but an enlightened court would, nine times in ten, do more justice in the cases just named. Would it not ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper

... aware that by a surreptitious correspondence he ran some risk of compromising Rena. But he had felt, as soon as he had indulged his first opportunity to talk of her, an irresistible impulse to see her and speak to her again. He could scarcely call at her boarding-place,—what possible proper excuse could ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt

... those days. Let the reader picture to himself two dare-devils between twenty and thirty years of age, allied by some common responsibility, the sequence, perhaps of some misdeed, or, by a more delicate and generous interest, the fear of compromising their family name. Then you will know of Guyon and Amiet all that I can recall. The latter had a sinister countenance, to which, perhaps, he owes the bad reputation with which all his biographers have credited him. ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere

... was unnecessary, and was wantonly thrown in by him, she seized on it to escape from her compromising silence: 'I know nothing ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... in the opposite direction. Glaucon rose, shook the sand from his cloak, and stood an instant with his head whirling. The voice of his boyhood friend, of the man who had ruined him because of a suspicion of treason—and now deep in compromising talk with the agent of the chief of the peace party at Sparta! And wherefore had Mardonius spoken those mysterious words at their parting, "Beware of Democrates"? For an instant the problems evoked made him forget even ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis

... his word—he had sent her back St. Just's compromising letter . . . for he was on the ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy

... or the other sacrifices self on the altar of their nascent friendship. Upon this ability to compromise depends their married happiness. Returning to the rationality which they forsook during mating-time, they cannot live a joint rational existence without compromising. If they be compatible, they will gradually grow to fit, each with the other, into the common life; compromise, on certain definite points, will become automatic; and for the rest they will exhibit a tacit and reasoned recognition of the ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London

... had been acted outside which saved Eustacia from all possibility of compromising herself that evening at least. While Wildeve had been preparing his moth-signal another person had come behind him up to the gate. This man, who carried a gun in his hand, looked on for a moment at the other's operation by the window, walked up to ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy

... as they seem suitable, just reasonable, or even possible. It means that you have entirely grasped the ideas of the leader who has given the order and that you take every possible means of satisfying him. Discipline does not mean silence, abstention, only doing what appears to you possible without compromising yourself; it is not the practice of the art of avoiding responsibilities. On the contrary, it is action in the sense ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... sight, so widely different from what she expected, Bathilde, not thinking that she might perhaps be compromising her lover, sprang toward the door, calling for help, but on reaching the threshold, either from weakness, or from the blood, her foot slipped, and she fell backward with a ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)

... girl in a tone of cold contempt, "after leading us to this compromising position, you are ready to abandon us at ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau

... Arithmetic and Algebra, not forgetting my old enemy Euclid and his compromising propositions, with a synopsis of English History, and the physical and political geography of the globe, besides a lot of lesser "ologies," of no interest to anyone save my coach and myself, but all of which were included ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson

... Christian name, becomes for us a sort of personal embodiment of the suppressed fury of Emily Bronte's own soul. The cautious prudence and hypocritical reserves of the discreet world of timid, kindly, compromising human beings has got upon the nerves of this formidable girl, and, as she goes tearing and rending at all the masks which cover our loves and our hates, she seems to utter wild discordant cries, cries like ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys

... however, I almost had a pitched battle with Hal, to prevent him from accompanying Juanita to her home; and it was only through compromising, and permitting him to ride a few miles in the carriage with ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens

... and one day she saw Escovedo-Romanesco sitting opposite to her at the table d'hote, in very animated conversation with a Russian lady; only his hair had turned black since she had seen him last. Evidently his light hair had become too compromising for him. ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant

... denied that Marius had the least important share in the actual successes: the conquest of Numidia up to the edge of the desert was the work of Metellus, the capture of Jugurtha was the work of Sulla, and between the two Marius played a part somewhat compromising the dignity of an ambitious upstart. Marius reluctantly tolerated the assumption by his predecessor of the name of conqueror of Numidia; he flew into a violent rage when king Bocchus afterwards consecrated a golden effigy at the Capitol, which represented the ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... the earth, not for a thousand years, but for ever; for how much shall thy voice be our clarified successors when even to my dull, unpurged soul thou canst speak such high things and bring it a sense of an impersonal, all-compromising One who is in me and I in Him, flesh of His flesh and soul of ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson

... guards; no description of property or persons being exempted from some kind of tax or other. For all eatables brought into the city, a certain excise was exacted: for all law-suits or trials in whatever court, the fortieth part of the sum in dispute; and such as were convicted of compromising litigations, were made liable to a penalty. Out of the daily wages of the porters, he received an eighth, and from the gains of common prostitutes, what they received for one favour granted. There was a clause in the law, that all bawds who kept women for prostitution ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus

... was an accident that this twelfth Congress was composed almost one-half of new members; but more likely it was the result of popular impatience with the compromising foreign attitude of the National Government. It was an incipient political revolution, without involving a change of administration, a form of rebuke not infrequent in the history of the Republic. The fact that these new and inexperienced members, known as "war-hawks," were able ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks

... centuries, encouraged the belief that many things, which a rigid inquiry would reject as fallacious, must yet be accepted because they work in what the mathematician calls "practice." By this means, a timid, compromising spirit, or else a sacerdotal belief in mysteries not intelligible to the profane, has been bred where reason alone should have ruled. All this it is now time to sweep away; let those who wish to penetrate into ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell

... was always more the queen than the woman, had no sooner regained her power than her first royal act was to exhume Rizzio, who had been quietly buried on the threshold of the chapel nearest Holyrood Palace, and to have him removed to the burial-place of the Scottish kings, compromising herself still more by the honours she paid him dead than by the favour she had ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... been as great as would have marked the presence there of the girl herself. While considering this it had come to Stuart, like a flash of inspiration, that here was a way by which he could test the responsibilities and conditions of married life without compromising either himself, or the girl to whom he would suppose himself ...
— Cinderella - And Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis

... my friend of a few hours," she said, smiling at him. "The fear has not seized you yet? You are not afraid that over my simple luncheon table I shall ask you compromising questions?" ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... farmers, her tenants, had left Etchezar, leaving the barn empty, the house more lonely, and naturally her modest income was much diminished. Moreover, in an imprudent investment, she had lost a part of the money which the stranger had given for her son. Truly, she was too unskilful a mother, compromising in every way the happiness of her beloved Ramuntcho,—or rather, she was a mother upon whom justice from above fell heavily to-day, because of her past error.—And all this had vanquished her, all this had hastened and aggravated the malady which the physician, called ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti

... convention was, in its majority, composed of men belonging to the first two of the four classes above mentioned. There were several Union men in it of the inoffensive, compromising kind—men who had been opposed to secession in the beginning, and had abstained from taking a prominent part in the rebellion unless obliged to do so, but who had, at least, readily acquiesced in what was going on. But there was, as far as I have been able to ascertain, only one man there ...
— Report on the Condition of the South • Carl Schurz

... father and the doctor scouted the idea; but there was in the mere suggestion enough to be very agitating. To avoid the possibility of a meeting with Hamlin, as well as to acquit her conscience of a goading conviction of unfairness to him, she had already once risked compromising herself by sending that midnight warning to Lee, nor did she grudge the three weeks' sickness it cost her, seeing it had succeeded. Nor was the idea of meeting him any less terrifying now. The result of her experiences in the last few months had been that all her old self-reliance ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy

... morning he was told of her departure from Pisa. A letter was privately given to him, telling him that the girl had left the place out of a feeling of honor, and had hidden herself beyond the possibility of discovery, to prevent him from compromising himself with all his friends by marrying her. Naturally enough, he would not believe that this was her own doing; and, naturally enough also, when Father Rocco was sent for, and was not to be found, he suspected the priest of being at the bottom of the business. I never saw a man in such a fury ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins

... not reply immediately; he hesitated between the sorrow it would cause the two children to give up the search, and the fear of compromising the expedition. ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne

... became a marchioness, and pronounced her second "Yes," before a very few friends, at the office of the mayor of the English urban district, and malicious ones in the Faurbourg were making fun of the whole affair, and affirming this and that, whether rightly or wrongly, and compromising the present husband to the former one, even declaring that he had partially been the cause of the former divorce, Monsieur de Baudemont was wandering over the four quarters of the globe trying to overcome his homesickness, and to deaden his longing for love, which ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... But the compromising terms of peace galled him, and he was not satisfied with a country only half free. In the region around Genoa, he enrolled a thousand men to go on what looked like a desperate enterprise. Garibaldi had talked ...
— The World War and What was Behind It - The Story of the Map of Europe • Louis P. Benezet

... recover from his first impulse, which had been to answer it with a negative; he saw in a moment that an admission of his acquaintance with Mrs. Roy (Mrs. Roy!—it was prodigious!) was necessarily helping him to learn more. Besides, it needn't be compromising. Very likely Mrs. Percival would hear one day that he had once wanted to marry her. So, when he joined his companions a minute later he remarked that he had known Miss Gressie years before, and had ...
— Georgina's Reasons • Henry James

... to collect and sift evidence, and determine particular facts; comparatively few have given serious thought to the lines of research and the speculations which have been considered in this paper. They have been reasonably shy of compromising their work by applying theories which are still much debated and immature. But historiography cannot permanently evade the questions raised by these theories. One may venture to say that no historical change or transformation will be fully understood until it is explained ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others

... earlier attentions. She had seen glances toward her mother, and had caught in his tones an estimate which, however true, incensed her greatly. Her old traits began to assert themselves, and gradually her will accorded with Strahan's hope. If, without compromising herself, she could humble this man, bringing him to her feet and dismissing him with a rather scornful refusal, such an exertion of power would give her much satisfaction. Yet her pride, as well as her principle, led her to determine that he should ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe

... conciliating nor a compromising nature. Her idea of "squaring things" was to become the best scholar in her classes and humiliate several young ladies of her own age who had held the first position with an ease that had bred laxity. Greatly to the satisfaction of the ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton

... occurring at this time, came near compromising the power which Catherine had so painfully built up. The following scene, preserved in history, took place, on the very day the envoys returned from Geneva, in the hotel de Coligny near the Louvre. At his coronation, Charles IX., who was greatly attached ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac

... us to remain here," he continued, "because it may be that your relations, aided by the Embassy, will have traced us before then, and if they should come upon us alone together, nothing that I could say or prove could keep the situation from looking compromising,"—he now spoke with his old calm, and Stella felt her confidence reviving. He would certainly arrange what was best for them, she could ...
— The Point of View • Elinor Glyn

... Emperor said to us, 'It is important in the interest of my policy that Paris should be destroyed without a single person leaving it or escaping,' Maret I am sure would have kept the secret, but he could not have abstained from compromising himself by seeing that his family got clear of the city. On the other hand, I, for fear of letting the truth leak out, would have let ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon

... definitely appear, though there is a vague impression that he left something to be desired in the way of devotion. A certain interest attaches to him as the brother of the beautiful Louise de La Fayette, maid of honor to Anne of Austria, who fled from the compromising infatuation of Louis XIII, to hide her youth and fascinations in the cloister, under the black robe and the cherished name of Mere ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason

... adventures, their treasures found in a day and gambled in a night, their direct, crude speech, their generosity and cruelty, their heroism and bestiality, their religion and profanity, their self-sacrifice and obscenity—a true and fearless setting forth of a passing phase of history, un-compromising, sincere; each group in its proper environment; the valley, the plain, and the mountain; the ranch, the range, and the mine—all this, all the traits and types of every community from the Dakotas to the Mexicos, from Winnipeg to Guadalupe, gathered together, swept together, welded and riven together ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... shall at last be happy, free, and beloved. Oh, God be praised that the man whom I love is not entangled in this conspiracy, that I could disclose the whole plot, mention the names of all the conspirators, without fear of compromising him. Yes, I thank Thee, my God, that Kolbielsky has no ...
— A Conspiracy of the Carbonari • Louise Muhlbach

... his line, to put his arm about her when they drove back together in the hansom, and speak to her of the cottage at Reading—this he could do very well; and he continued to inflame her senses until she withdrew herself from his arm, and he feared that he was compromising his chance of seeing ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore

... at the card-table, was succeeded by his cousin, Maximilian Joseph of Pfalz-Zweibrucken, from whom, on account of his numerous family, no voluntary cession was to be expected either for the present or future. Thugut and Lehr-bach, the rulers of the Viennese cabinet, in the hope of compromising and excluding him, as a traitor to the empire, from the Bavarian succession, by the production of proofs of his being the secret ally of France, hastily resolved upon the assassination of the French ambassadors at Rastadt, on the bare supposition of their having in their ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks

... to your office, then," Dorothea said, "instead of compromising my reputation by sneaking up ...
— Out Like a Light • Gordon Randall Garrett

... Gottfried, Ebbo froze towards him and Dame Johanna no more, save that a naturally imperious temper now and then led to fitful stiffnesses and momentary haughtiness, which were easily excused in one so new to the world and afraid of compromising his rank. In general he could afford to enjoy himself with a zest as hearty as that ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge

... and the good humor of the conductor must be exercised to the utmost, especially if the offending voice belongs to a prominent member of, and perhaps a liberal contributor to, the church. In such a case, one may sometimes, without unduly compromising one's reputation for veracity, inform the offending member that his method of singing is very bad indeed for his voice, and if persisted in will ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens

... their chief virtue is their patriotism—if we may thus describe the fidelity they observe in all their relations with persons of the same origin as their own, their readiness to help one another, and the inviolable secrecy which they keep for each other's benefit, in all compromising matters. And indeed something of the same sort may be noticed in all mysterious associations which are beyond the pale of ...
— Carmen • Prosper Merimee

... received. The mistake she made, and which in after years she freely acknowledged, was in excess of zeal. But Angelina was a born radical, and if a thing was wrong, it was wrong, and she could not see why it should not be righted at once. Temporizing with a wrong, or compromising with it in any way, were things outside of her reasoning, and she never would admit that they were justifiable under any circumstances. It was, of course, difficult to apply this principle in the desired reform of her ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney

... to Knapwater the next day, and for nearly a week lived in a state of indecision. I could not hit upon a scheme for proving my wife dead without compromising myself. ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy

... anguish—the worst, perhaps, of the torments of the mind. If the honest Englishman had been the victim of a mystification, or rather knavery, my regard for M—— M——'s honour compelled me to find a way to undeceive him without compromising her; and such was my plan, and thus fortune favoured me. Three or four days after, Mr. Murray told the doctor that he wished to see me. We went to him, and he greeted ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... seized by her creditors, but her almoner carried them to his own house, and De Thou had them placed in the royal library. Unluckily it was thought wiser to strip the books of the coats with Catherine's compromising device, lest her creditors should single them out, and take them away in their pockets. Hence, books with her arms and cypher are exceedingly rare. At the sale of the collections of the Duchesse de Berry, a Book of Hours of Catherine's ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang

... deep for that," replied Cayrol. "He will return. He knows that in compromising the Prince it is as if he had compromised the firm of Desvarennes, therefore he is quite easy on ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet

... hunt, presented to her formally before all the court the Duc de Carolan as her future husband. Remember, if you are found here you will not only be sent straight to some fortress, where you may remain till you are an old man, but you will do her harm by compromising her still further, in which case the king might be so enraged, that he might order her ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty

... before—his first moment of survey impressed that clearly on him. Yet her presence in his home at this compromising hour signified that she was involved, remotely or intimately, in his own tangled affairs. The thought impelled him to closer ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin

... divided between his fear of compromising Florence in some way by not going, and his horror of leaving Mr Toots in possession of the house with a chance of finding out the secret, was a spectacle of mental disturbance that even Mr Toots ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... compromising Castaldo, who is alone with her; and she ends the act by requesting the Austrian to murder Martinuzzi; to which he is so obliging as to consent, the more so, as an order comes from the Secretary of State for foreign affairs, of his own government, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 5, 1841 • Various

... pity toward him from time to time in a furtive and half afraid way, and some of the youngest of the men plainly had compassion on the young fellow—a compassion exhibited in their faces but not in any more active or compromising way. But the great majority of the people present showed entire indifference to the youth and his sorrows. Marsh sat with his head down, but one could catch the malicious gleam of his eyes through his shaggy brows. He was watching that young fellow with evident ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... moment. But I don't need to tell a man of the world, like you, that such things cannot remain unseen. And that they are, well, compromising, because of the mere fact ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad

... to avoid any scandal. From the moment that I accept a portion of the inheritance it will be evident that there is nothing wrong. I can say: 'My wife accepts it because I, her husband, accept'—I, who am the best judge of what she can do without compromising herself." ...
— Bel Ami • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant

... through the weird courses provided by a cook professing a knowledge of French cuisine without taking any compromising notice of each other. When the meal was over Vassili inscribed the number of his bedroom in large figures on the label of his bottle of St. Emilion—after the manner of wise commercial-travellers in continental ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman

... cipherdom, find an affirmative position. His thousand and three affairs of gallantry, after becoming, at most, two immature intrigues leading to sordid and prolonged complications and humiliations, have been discarded altogether as unworthy of his philosophic dignity and compromising to his newly acknowledged position as the founder of a school. Instead of pretending to read Ovid he does actually read Schopenhaur and Nietzsche, studies Westermarck, and is concerned for the future of the race instead of for the freedom ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw

... with compromising jewels in their possession. The last guest gone, the house searched from top to bottom, not a single pearl had been found.... I arrived just when the investigations had terminated: at the moment when they were about to take the Princess home. She had regained consciousness by this ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre

... very astute and unscrupulous pair. While suspicion was to be directed against him, she would be making quiet preparations for a very different denouement. She arrives from Middlingham with all the compromising items in her possession. No suspicion attaches to her. No notice is paid to her coming and going in the house. She hides the strychnine and glasses in John's room. She puts the beard in the attic. She will see to it that sooner or later they are ...
— The Mysterious Affair at Styles • Agatha Christie

... the rival systems debated their merits with suavity and mutual respect, but they met with scornful silence a compromising spirit who held that it was better to throw off your coat and boots, but keep your pantaloons on. Meanwhile, the steamer was hanging idle upon the current, against which it now and then stirred a careless wheel, still waiting for the return of the small ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... could settle to nothing till he had seen her again; there was a curious jealousy in his heart about Ashton; he would have given anything he possessed to be able to disillusion her, but knew it was impossible without hopelessly compromising himself. ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres

... wakened with difficulty. They took care of the benighted wanderers, and the farmer drove them back to the hotel the next morning in his own waggon. They were received by Mrs. Gould with great demonstrations both of affection, pity and dismay, and she declared that the affair had been so shocking and compromising that it was impossible to stay where they were. She made Elvira take her meals in her room rather than face the boarding-house company, paid the bills (all of course with Elvira's money) and carried her off to ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge

... trusting to their masks. And Helena herself was bent on going with them, if she could only manage it without being discovered at Gleninch. Mr. Macallan was one of the strait-laced people who disapproved of the ball. No lady, he said, could show herself at such an entertainment without compromising her reputation. What stuff! Well, Helena, in one of her wildest moments, hit on a way of going to the ball without discovery which was really as ingenious as a plot in a French play. She went to the dinner in the carriage from Gleninch, having sent Phoebe to Edinburgh before her. It was ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins

... Manlius, leaving Cethegus and Lentulus to keep up the ferment in Rome. To several persons of position he sent letters announcing that he was retiring to Marseilles; but, with misplaced confidence, he sent one of a different and extremely compromising tenor to Quintus Catullus, which the recipient read to the senate. It was next reported that he had assumed the consular attributes and joined Manlius; whereupon he was proclaimed a public enemy, a general levy was decreed, Antonius was appointed to take the field, while ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... being shot as spies. The officer had us searched, but found nothing contraband on us and let us go, though he did not seem quite satisfied. He really thought he had found something suspicious when he spied in my basket a small metal case. It contained nothing more compromising, however, than a piece of Vinolia soap. We had not the least idea which way to go when we were released, and went wrong first, and had to come back through that horrible camp again. Seven times we were stopped ...
— Field Hospital and Flying Column - Being the Journal of an English Nursing Sister in Belgium & Russia • Violetta Thurstan

... on the part of the husband. It is rather the instinct of the sex to assert their superiority of position and importance, when a proper occasion offers. When out of the reach of observation, and in no danger of compromising his own dignity, the husband is willing enough to relieve his spouse from the burden that custom imposes on her, by ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie

... me, it is clear I have to come after Cappadocia. It's simply disgraceful the way she carries on when one takes her out, making acquaintances like this, casually, all over the place. The maids flatly refuse to air her, even on a string. They say it becomes a little too compromising. But, as I explain to them, she's not a bit the modern woman. She belongs to a stage of social development when pretty people infinitely preferred being compromised to being squelched." The speaker laughed again quietly. "I'm not altogether sure they weren't right. When you are squelched, ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet

... queer little game! From the day I first met you I felt that you were coquetting with me, coquetting mysteriously, obscurely, coquetting as only you can without showing it to others. Little by little you conquered me with looks, with smiles, with pressures of the hand, without compromising yourself, without pledging yourself, without revealing yourself. You have been horribly upright—and seductive. I have loved you with all my soul, yes, sincerely and loyally, and to-day I do not know what feeling you have in the depths of your heart, what thoughts you have hidden ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant

... her than there had been for him when she so treacherously thrust the knife into his heart. What he had discovered was different from anything his imagination had pictured in connection with her. Nothing could be more compromising, and the marvel of it was that she had been able to keep the facts concealed from the world so long. Only a woman could have done it, and only the cleverest of women at that. No wonder she had danced in public. ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown

... was infatuated with the naughty, tricksy young beauty of Wuthering Heights. Her violent temper did not frighten him, although his own character was singularly sweet, placid and feeble; her compromising friendship with such a mere boor as young Heathcliff was only a trifling annoyance easily to be excused. And when his own father and mother died of a fever caught in nursing her he did not love her less for the sorrow she brought. A fever she had wilfully taken in despair, and a sudden ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson

... of The Biglow Papers, Mr. Lowell wrote: "We have given back to England the excellent adjective lengthy ... thus enabling their journalists to characterize our President's messages by a word civilly compromising between long and tedious, so as not to endanger the peace of the two countries by wounding our national sensitiveness to British criticism." Lengthy is used chiefly of discourses or writings, and implies tediousness. Long is used of anything ...
— Practical Exercises in English • Huber Gray Buehler

... from starvation, and assert that it will benefit the revolution but little to conquer all Europe if the Government of the United States replies by starving all Europe. They advocate, therefore, the conciliation of the United States even at the cost of compromising with many of the principles they hold most dear. And Lenin's prestige in Russia at present is so overwhelming that the Trotski group is forced reluctantly to follow him. ...
— The Bullitt Mission to Russia • William C. Bullitt

... much. Try as he might to do justice to the Jinnee's gratitude and generosity, he could not restrain a bitter resentment at the utter want of consideration shown in overloading him with gifts so useless and so compromising. No Jinnee—however old, however unfamiliar with the world as it is now—had any right to be ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey

... is always compromising," explained the priest, "only it does it so slowly that no one man lives long enough to quite catch it at the trick. No; the great secret of the Catholic Church is that it doesn't debate with sceptics. No matter what points you make against it, it is never betrayed into answering ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic

... of self? I might mention many, but let us take the simplest words that we are continually using,—self-will, self-confidence, self-exaltation. Self-will, pleasing self, is the great sin of man, and it is at the root of all that compromising with the world which is the ruin of so many. Men can not understand why they should not please themselves and do their own will. Numbers of Christians have never gotten hold of the idea that a Christian ...
— The Master's Indwelling • Andrew Murray

... messenger, thrust upon her without asking permission, was not agreeable to Jacqueline, and she resolved as she dropped the missive, which, even on the outside, looked compromising, into the nearest post- box, to be more reserved in future. For which reason she responded coldly to a sign Madame Saville made her when, in the evening, she ...
— Jacqueline, v3 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)

... vied with one another in their enthusiasm for him. Wishing to seem independent of his good fortune, he always showed dignity and energy in the field. His affability called forth devotion. He constantly helped in the trenches and could mingle with his soldiers on the march without compromising his dignity as general. Three legions awaited him in Judaea, the Fifth, Tenth, and Fifteenth, all veterans from his father's army. These were reinforced by the Twelfth from Syria and by detachments of the Twenty-second and the Third,[462] brought over from Alexandria. This force was accompanied ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus

... not only impervious to public opinion, but were also ready enough to disregard the views of the Home Government itself when those views failed to coincide with their own plans for self-aggrandizement. Some of the evidence taken was of the most compromising character, while the refusal of leading members of the Compact to answer certain questions propounded to them did not tend to place matters in a more favourable light. Archdeacon Strachan's response to many of the questions put to him amounted to a practical contempt of the Committee. ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... favourite Lady Eleanor. No expiatory apology could be urged to weaken the effect of sentiments attested by his own writing, and they were obliged to yield him to the storm, as the King now declared that mercy would be compromising blood. Walter was in despair. Lady Eleanor still determined to watch for a favourable moment; they both continued his firm friends, and would punctually remit ample sums for his support, till some change in the state of affairs should again admit ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West

... the study where the candle that Ibarra had lighted was still burning. He saw the books and papers and found the arms, the jewels, and the sacks of money. Reconstructing in his imagination the scene that had taken place there and seeing so many papers that might be of a compromising nature, he decided to gather them up, throw them from the window, ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... had told him that her grandmother Mingott and the Wellands objected to her living in a "Bohemian" quarter given over to "people who wrote." It was not the peril but the poverty that her family disliked; but that shade escaped her, and she supposed they considered literature compromising. ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton

... these two men, so little known to one another on certain sides. How could it last without a shadow down to the very death of Francis, when we always find Ugolini the very soul of the group who are compromising the Franciscan ideal? No answer to this question is possible. The same problem presents itself with regard to Brother Elias, and we are no better able to find a satisfactory answer. Men of loving hearts seldom have a perfectly clear intelligence. They often become fascinated by men the ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier

... before Rupilius, who questioned him about the strength and the plans of the remaining fugitives. He asked for a moment to collect his thoughts, covered his head with his cloak, and died of suffocation, in the hands of his guard and in sight of the general, before a compromising word had passed his lips. King Eunus was not made of such stern stuff. When Enna, impregnable in its natural strength, had been taken by treachery, he fled with his bodyguard of a thousand men to still more ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge

... when the English Cabinet believed that an attempt might be made to negotiate for peace, without compromising its honour. In the preceding March, the ambassador to the Helvetic States had been authorized to inquire of the Government of France, through the medium of their representative, whether they were disposed to entertain ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham

... appear, from an examination of the records of this office, and particularly of the accounts (to the date of their last settlement) of the collectors of the customs, and of the several marshals of the United States, that any forfeitures had been incurred under the said act." A supplementary and compromising and ineffective act of 1818 sought to concentrate efforts against smuggling by encouraging informers; and one of the following year that authorized the President to "make such regulations and arrangements as he may deem expedient ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley

... did," said Colonel Moreland gravely. "We've been keeping pretty close to you in case you should have trouble with those six strange niggers. And we hoped we'd find you two in some such compromising position," he sighed. "Well, set a crank to catch ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... exhibited, as in his former ones; and in this he shows also, as he has shown before, his earnest desire to find a way whereby, without compromising truth or surrendering sacred convictions of the heart, serious men of very different sides might be glad to find themselves in some points mistaken, in order that they might find themselves at one. This philosophy, not of comprehension but of ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church

... everything, talked to everybody, knew every detail of the biography of Fyodor Pavlovitch and all the Karamazovs. Of the envelope, it is true, he had only heard from Mitya himself. But he described minutely Mitya's exploits in the "Metropolis," all his compromising doings and sayings, and told the story of Captain Snegiryov's "wisp of tow." But even Rakitin could say nothing positive about Mitya's inheritance, and confined ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... much as it amused my fellow-passengers and interested the man in the corner, made me feel in a most painful position. My looks and blushes, I am aware, were most compromising; and my condition generally, without luggage, without rug, without even a newspaper, enveloped me in such an atmosphere of mystery and suspicion that I half began to wonder whether I was not an ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed

... in any woman, in a sister intolerable. But if she had been carrying on any kind of intercourse whatever with Philip, a stop must be put to it at once; she was disobeying her father's strongest feelings and her brother's express commands, besides compromising herself by secret meetings. He left home the next morning in that watchful state of mind which turns the most ordinary course of ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... possessed. Francis had claims on Naples, and his dependant, D'Albret, on Navarre. Charles had suzerain rights over Milan and a title to Burgundy, of which his great-grandfather Charles the Bold had been despoiled by Louis XI. Yet the Emperor had not the slightest intention of compromising his possession of Naples or Navarre, and Francis was quite as resolute to surrender neither Burgundy nor Milan. They both became eager competitors for the friendship of England, which, if its resources were inadequate to support the position ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard

... took no further notice of him, but turned around to my original position in the ranks. What was said subsequently I do not know, for I paid no further attention to either party. I heard nothing said at any time about taking my eyes away, or of Cadet Anderson compromising his dignity. Having thus reviewed the circumstances which gave rise to the charge, may it please the court, I wish to say a word as to the witnesses. Each of these cadets testifies to the fact that they have discussed the case in every particular, both with each other and with ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper

... do not know this Doctor Heath, consequently can have no object in hunting him down; but, believing him guilty, and holding the proof that I do, I must make known the truth, otherwise I should be compromising myself, and compounding a felony." Here Mr. Belknap took up his hat. "I will send in my statement of expenses, etc., to-morrow, Miss Wardour. This withdrawal of the case has been so sudden, so unexpected, that I am not prepared for a settlement of accounts." ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch

... to receive no visitors at home—at least, none of a compromising kind. The Marchese Lamberto was often with her: of course, naturally! He was well known to be always a sort of second amateur manager: neither the theatre nor little Ercole Stadione could go on without him. And then the Marchese Lamberto was—the Marchese ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... an Englishman, and could not for the life of him consider Esteban as anything but a puppy for seeing him in a compromising situation. So much was he annoyed that he did not remark any longer that Manuela was another person, sitting stiffly, strained against his arm, every muscle on the stretch, as taut as a ship's cable in the tideway, her face in rigid ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett

... annoying, this letter from Selah,' Herbert Le Breton murmured to himself, as he carefully burnt the compromising document, envelope and all, with a fusee from his oriental silver pocket match-case. 'I had hoped the thing had all been forgotten by this time, after her long silence, and my last two judiciously chilly letters—a sort of slow refrigerating process for ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen

... the return of the detachment which had gone out to disarm the convoy of Wang Tsao-tsun. This detachment had met Colonel Domojiroff, who ordered them not only to disarm but to pillage the convoy and, unfortunately, Lieutenant Strigine executed this illegal and unwarranted command. It was compromising and ignominious to see Russian officers and soldiers wearing the Chinese overcoats, boots and wrist watches which had been taken from the Chinese officials and the convoy. Everyone had Chinese silver and gold also ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski

... Girls in his day didn't stay out late unless they had a beau. Ten o'clock was the limit, anyhow. But did he take advantage of my unprotected maiden innocence? Not he. He stood there in the snow and delivered a lecture on the error of my ways, then took me to a delicatessen shop—afraid of compromising himself in a restaurant—and stuffed me with sandwiches and bananas. Even there, while we were perched on two high stools, he didn't make love to me as any human man would have done. He just ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... him in a compromising situation, all right," Frank said. "But you said 'one of the men who visited the rooms that night.' Who were ...
— Boy Scouts in Mexico; or On Guard with Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson

... Ramses II., or whether, in similar circumstances, he instinctively and naturally followed the same line of march. In either case, he certainly showed on all sides greater wisdom than his predecessor, and having attained the object of his ambition, avoided compromising his success by injudiciously attacking Damascus or Babylon, the two powers who alone could have offered effective resistance. The victory he had gained, in 879, over the brother of Nabu-baliddin had immensely flattered ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... cheerful, energetic, fertile in resources. The days are all too short for him. All his faculties give their consent to his work; say "yes" to his occupation. He is a man; he respects himself and is happy because all his powers are at play in their natural sphere. There is no compromising of his faculties, no cramping of legal acumen upon the farm; no suppressing of forensic oratorical powers at the shoemaker's bench; no stifling of exuberance of physical strength, of visions of golden crops and blooded cattle amid the loved country life in the dry clergyman's ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden

... flourished under the Second Empire, when Napoleon III. made a point of acquainting himself with the private correspondence of his own relatives, his ministers, and his generals. After the revolution of September 1870, hundreds of copies of more or less compromising letters, covert attacks on or criticisms of the Imperial Government, billets-doux also between Imperial princes and their mistresses, and so forth, were found at the Palace of the Tuilleries; and some of them were even published ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly

... apprehended, and anything beyond the simplest necessaries was liable to seizure as contraband of war; personal arrest might possibly follow, but the Federal outposts were said to content themselves, as a rule, with confiscation and appropriation, unless any documents of a compromising nature were found. Such a course was obviously pleasanter for all parties, than sending in prisoners—with their effects. Now it so chanced, that in the modest—not to say scanty—outfit, which I thought it worth while to bring out from home, was a certain ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence

... said was pacific and compromising. While I think he wanted the constitutionality of the "Tenure Bill" tested, I think now he would be glad either to get the vacancy of Secretary of War, or have the office just where it was ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... complaints and such a demand were under existing circumstances, it was thought proper, without compromising the Government as to the course to be pursued, to meet them promptly and to give the explanations that were desired on every subject with the utmost candor. The result has proved what was sufficiently well known before, that the charge of a systematic hostility being ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 2: James Monroe • James D. Richardson

... instance, an order of preachers of the gospel; He did not institute an order of popes and cardinals. Neither, however, did He institute an order of 'religion-teaching' schoolmasters; and the question not yet settled, and of which, without compromising a single article in our standards, either side may be espoused, is, whether our Saviour manifested His wisdom in not making use of the schoolmaster, or whether, without indicating His mind on the subject, He left the schoolmaster to be ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller

... property of the aristocracy, thus forcing the Tory Parliament and the Tory Ministry to repeal the Corn Laws. A revolt would naturally have followed, but the bourgeoisie stood safely in the background and could await the result without compromising itself if the worst came to the worst. At the end of July business began to improve; it was high time. In order not to lose the opportunity, three firms in Staleybridge reduced wages in spite of the improvement. {232} Whether they did so of their own motion ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels

... this peace we seek to prevent war at any place and in any dimension. If, despite our best efforts, a local dispute should flare into armed hostilities, the next problem would be to keep the conflict from spreading, and so compromising freedom. In support of these objectives we maintain forces ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... the cove without compromising his dignity, and perhaps believing that he had gained the victory, the rhinoceros, as soon as he delivered the thrust, had galloped off ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid

... together. But she had assisted you since the murder, and she was hardly likely to do that if she was on friendly terms with the blackmailer and knew you had killed him. So it came to my mind that you might have used her in an attempt to get the compromising letters. And then it occurred as a remote possibility that she might, after all, be the guilty person, but, to assume that, it was necessary to explain away the ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest

... mystified, doubtful of the real feelings of Maurice, and uncertain what course he meant to pursue, but well assured that he would keep his word; and, if he did, it would be impossible for him to introduce this delicate subject without compromising himself,—nay, without positively offering himself to Bertha. The very mention of such a theme would be a proposal; and, with this consolatory reflection, he returned to ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... Jones began to look very gloomy, and to recognize his companion. "However," rejoined the Dean, "don't you be alarmed; you have so good a talent at delivery, that I hereby declare, you have done more honor to my sermon this day, than I could do myself; and by way of compromising the matter, you must accept of this half-guinea for the justice you have done in the ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous

... and performed the funeral ceremonies over the body on the morning of the 8th; still he seemed to narrate the circumstances of the event with some reserve, while there was a good deal of discrepancy in the evidence of the other eye-witnesses, as recorded in the report, seemingly from the dread of compromising Ensign Platt. ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman

... that he had, in some way, been compromising himself, went and sat down beside his wife, to be out of the temptation to do it again, and Mr Millar said again, to Graeme, very ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson



Words linked to "Compromising" :   yielding, uncompromising, vulnerable, conciliatory



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