"Obstructive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a hand on the old man's shoulder, but Sagan shook it off—'then, Captain Colendorp, he must go—to make room for another who can better fill his place! Just as Wallenloup must go to give room to another and less obstructive chief.' ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... ground to get into a good flanking position for next day's battle. So the two sides met; and it was past midnight when Longstreet settled down. Lee wanted a sword thrust. Longstreet gave a pin prick. We shall meet Longstreet again, in the same character of obstructive subordinate, at Gettysburg. But he was, for the most part, a very good officer indeed; and the South, with its scanty supply of trained leaders, could not afford to make changes like the North. The fault, too, was partly Lee's; ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... obscurity about this saying; but no doubt its esoteric meaning was, that once you accounted for anything by direct Divine interposition, you stood committed to a controversial attitude which would render you an obstructive to liberal thought. ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... Travels sensed the possibility of Swift's use of certain portions of his narrative to vent disappointment at his failure to receive the church preferment he thought he deserved and to carry on his personal vendetta against obstructive bishops like the "crazy Prelate" Sharpe, Archbishop of York, one of the detestable and "dull Divines" pilloried in the autobiographical poem "The Author ...
— A Letter From a Clergyman to his Friend, - with an Account of the Travels of Captain Lemuel Gulliver • Anonymous
... rulers, Poland was a weak monarchy. Lack of natural boundaries made national defense difficult. Civil war between the two peoples who composed the state and foreign war with the neighboring Germans worked havoc and distress. An obstructive parliament of great lords rendered effective administration impossible. The nobles possessed the property and controlled politics; in their hands the king gradually became a puppet. Poland seemed committed to ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... motives, neither is action "sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought" to such an extent that it becomes impossible. The evidence is all considered and each motive fully weighed. But this once done, decision follows. No dilatory and obstructive tactics are allowed. The fleeting impulse is not enough to persuade to action, neither is action unduly delayed after the ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... Ireland, which movement was started in the "seventies," was gaining ground, and every election returned to the House more members pledged to its support. Those who were bent upon obtaining Home Rule at any cost used obstructive means against other legislation to gain their object, but as yet the movement was confined to the members who had been elected by ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... landholders, who, in most countries, are very Conservative in tendency, the ancient cleavage is likely to disappear. Indeed, an ideal Second Chamber ought perhaps to give special weight to urban and industrial interests, while aiming, not at an obstructive, but at a revising body of steady, ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... this the meaning of it becomes ever more clear and distinct, ordered and organized, and at the same time more substantial, more real, more lively and potent. In becoming known what was before dead and dark and threatening or obstructive or hostile is made transparent, alive, utilisable, contributing to the constantly growing self that knows and is known. Here is the growing point of reality, the fons emanationis of truth and worth and being, ...
— Progress and History • Various
... always ready to criticise, and it was so much the easier for him that he had not the least bent towards self-criticism. For the latter supposes some degree of truth in the inward parts, and that is obstructive to the indulgence of the former tendency. As to himself, he would be hand and glove at a moment's notice with any man who looked a gentleman, and made himself agreeable; nor whatever he might find him to be, ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... was still pressing his forehead, the new law quietly flowed into his consciousness, like a smooth-running stream of clean water which had hitherto been dammed by his obstructive ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... all these oaths are obstructive and useless superstitions. No recruit will hesitate to pledge his word of honour to fight to the death for his country or for a cause with which he sympathizes; and that is all we require. There is no need to drag in Almighty God ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... this journey to let Hamlet reveal himself in the play, to observe him as he assumes individuality by the concretion of characteristics. I warn him that any popular notion concerning him which he may bring with him, will be only obstructive to a perception of the true idea of the grandest ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... I imagine that when I occur to Camilla's mind, it is as the obstructive old hag, who once stood in her way; and so, without any formed designs, whatever she says of me is coloured by ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... moods, brightly companionable to Silverton and Dacey, the latter of whom met her on an evident footing of old admiration, while young Silverton, portentously self-absorbed, seemed conscious of her only as of something vaguely obstructive. And suddenly, as Selden noted the fine shades of manner by which she harmonized herself with her surroundings, it flashed on him that, to need such adroit handling, the situation must indeed be desperate. She was on the edge of something—that ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... this mysterious element as any other space of equal size. The varying vibrations of this ether, or universal akasa, make the world and all that is in it; and these vibrations are interpenetrable and non-obstructive. Even on the material plane we see how the vibrations of light and heat penetrate those of visible and tangible substance, and how, in your more recent discoveries, light rays penetrate solid metals ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... said to the old nurses, "arises from external sources, and internal obstructive influences, caused by the unhealthiness of the season of late. Yet it's only a slight chill, after all. Fortunately, the young lady has ever been moderate in her drinking and eating. The cold she has is nothing much. ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... Presidency, for the fulfillment of pledges of appointment based thereon, and who were still importunate for impeachment, the business element of the country at large was tiring of it and its depressing effect upon the commercial activities. Even Senators and Congressmen were being moved to a sense of the obstructive and somewhat ridiculous phases the impeachment movement was beginning to take on—and not a few of those who in its earlier stages had honestly favored the movement, inside as well as outside the membership ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross
... beginning of his career with all the eloquence and buoyancy at his command for freedom and tolerance, it remained a fact that he regarded liberalism as nothing more than a newspaper term, a means of keeping men busy who were too indolent to think for themselves, and a source of obstructive annoyance to the openly hated but secretly ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... of lip-services; he insisted that the matter of most consequence was the grip with which they held their convictions and their willingness to sacrifice the interests on which they could lay their hands, in loyalty to some nobler faith. He taught that beliefs by hearsay are not only barren but obstructive; that ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... Legislature passed two very discreditable bills which would have been made positively infamous if it had not been for the active opposition of a few friends of liberty. One of these bills was designed to add to the stringency of the present obstructive medical law; the other was designed to assist the labors of Anthony Comstock in interrupting the circulation of popular physiological literature, under pretence ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... about Mr. Chown, who was haranguing on the Woman question. What he wanted was to emancipate the female mind from the yoke of superstition and of priestcraft. Time enough to talk about giving women votes when they were no longer the slaves of an obstructive religion. There were good things in the lecture, but, on the whole, it was flabby—flabby. A man who would discourse on this topic must be courageous; he must dare to shock and give offence. Now, if he ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... answer to that is that the belief in God is not of so detached a character as this advice assumes. In the course of ages the belief in God has acquired associations that give it the character of a highly obstructive force. It has become so entangled with inculcated notions of right and wrong that it is everywhere used as a buttress for institutions which have either outgrown their utility, or are in need of serious ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... of hydrogen-lines imprinted themselves on the plate.[611] Meanwhile M. Deslandres was enabled, by fitting quartz lenses to his spectroscope, and substituting a reflecting for a refracting telescope, to get rid of the obstructive action of glass upon the shorter light-waves, and thus to widen the scope of his inquiry into the peculiarities of those derived from prominences.[612] As the result, not only all the nine white-star lines were photographed from a brilliant sun-flame, but five additional ones were found to continue ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... fight of a generation began to take form in the House of Commons. The Conservatives, led by Mr. Balfour, put up an obstructive fight to every line and almost every word of the finance bill which was founded on the Budget. Departmental duties all day, the onward fight with his finance measure throughout the night and often the early hours of the morning, became the routine of ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... Jesuits, and lend an apparent justification to the officious pastorals of the great prelates. Some even thought that the aim of the government was to forestall severer proceedings on the part of the parliament of lawyers;[133] for corporations of lawyers have seldom been less bigoted or obstructive than corporations of churchmen. Nor were lawyers and priests the only foes. Even the base and despicable jealousies of booksellers counted for something ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... and proposing a name for what they call 'a new species,' use that term to signify what was meant by it twenty or thirty years ago; that is, an originally distinct creation, maintaining its primitive distinction by obstructive generative peculiarities. The proposer of the new species now intends to state no more than he actually knows; as, for example, that the differences on which he founds the specific character are constant in individuals of both sexes, so far as observation has reached; ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... an incongruous and obstructive term to describe the substance of the world (which, if it subtends the changes in the world and causes them, must evidently change with them), but even mathematical space and time, in their ideal infinity, may be very far from describing truly the medium and groundwork of the universe. That ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... been able to gather from the butler, who had immediately repaired to Daphne's room for instructions, and was labouring under great excitement, my sister's orders had been but grudgingly obeyed. Mrs. Chapel had been ill-tempered and obstructive, and had made no attempt to disguise her suspicion of the chef. The latter had consequently determined to be as nasty as the circumstances allowed, had eyed her preparations for dinner with a marked contempt, and had communed visibly and audibly with himself in a manner which ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... but mile after mile they kept to the track, just in front of our engine, which whistled piercingly and let off steam as though in frantic anger. Presently we slowed down almost to a walking pace, for we had no wish to spill the blood or crush the bones of even obstructive horses. But as we slowed our pace they provokingly slackened theirs, and when once more we put on steam they did the same. So in sheer desperation our guard dismounted and ran himself completely out of breath, ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... gloomy close of Eighteen Thirty Nine, MELBOURNE and PEEL began to melt, the P.O. "sticks" to pine, For vainly the Official ranks and the Obstructive host Had formed and squared 'gainst ROWLAND HILL'S plan, of the Penny Post. Still poor men paid their Ninepences for sending one thin sheet From Bethnal Green to Birmingham by service far from fleet; ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, January 18, 1890 • Various
... they were on that the red lines were exclusively traced, and Barry noticed with a seaman's eye that the marked soundings showed the river survey to have been very complete, while less frequent soundings on the ocean side gave a condition of bottom utterly obstructive to navigation. He caught instantly the significance of the map from a naval viewpoint but was puzzled at its significance for him or his ship. He glanced up to find ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... confused and immaterial, became more and more like the universal shimmer that dissolves the world to failing eyes, Mr. Royall's presence began to detach itself with rocky firmness from this elusive background. She had always thought of him—when she thought of him at all—as of someone hateful and obstructive, but whom she could outwit and dominate when she chose to make the effort. Only once, on the day of the Old Home Week celebration, while the stray fragments of his address drifted across her troubled mind, ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... on with our constructive work in face of all this overwhelming frustration. No doubt he means well, but we are not foolish enough to take his advice. We tell Dr. Coit that he does not understand the obstructive power of theology, and that he is thus unable to appreciate the work of the ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... a few feet of garden-mould and a few yards of gravel enable them to do that refreshing violence to their tiny understandings. Moreover, it is one of those nooks which are legal nooks; and it contains a little Hall, with a little lantern in its roof: to what obstructive purposes devoted, and at whose expense, this history ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... nature's provisions against peritoneal inflammation were not as great as they are, few people with intestinal putrefactive diseases, from cholera infantum in babyhood to proctitis in old age, would get well, for most of the treatment for one and all of these diseases is obstructive ...
— Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment • John H. Tilden, M.D.
... Mrs Bray says, 'I have ventured to name the Valley of Waterfalls, on account of the vast number of small but exquisitely beautiful falls seen there.' A narrow lane with high hedges leads round the shoulder of the hill to the steep little valley, where the Tavy jostles against obstructive boulders, and a high, narrow, unstable-looking bridge of tarred timber (sometimes called a 'clam' bridge) crosses the stream. Climbing up on the farther side, the road soon reaches the village of Mary Tavy. In reference ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... by inflation of the Eustachian tube and tympanum, while that of the sound-perceiving apparatus is ascertained partly by testing the hearing, and partly by excluding affections of the outer and middle ear. When the sound-conducting apparatus is at fault, the resulting deafness is spoken of as "obstructive"; when the sound-perceiving apparatus is affected, the term "nerve deafness" is used. The semicircular canals, which are peripheral organs concerned in the maintenance of equilibration, form part of the inner ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... to ride 150 miles. He knew that there were suspicions abroad in the Transvaal concerning him, but he expected to get through to Johannesburg before they should become general and obstructive. But a telegraph wire had been overlooked and not cut. It spread the news of his invasion far and wide, and a few hours after his start the Boer farmers were riding hard from every direction ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... body of seventy-six, who wisely argue against the annihilation of one evil, because another will remain; had also powers to borrow a thousand pounds, to purchase and remove some obstructive buildings; and to defray the expence by a rate on the inhabitants, which, after deducting about one hundred and twenty pounds per ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... truth in the charge, for Andros was self-willed, imperious, and impatient of discussion. On the other hand the Puritan leaders inordinately loved controversy and debate. If Andros was peremptory, the Puritan councillors were obstructive. ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... of violence swept through her. She had given Roger everything—money, ease, amusement. Where would he have been without her? And his mother, too?—tiresome, obstructive woman! For the first time that veil of the unspoken, that mist of loving illusion which preserves all human relations, broke down between Daphne and her marriage. Her thoughts dwelt, in a vulgar detail, on the money she had settled upon Roger—on his ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... he proceeded, "that the sincere friendship with which you still regard him would prevent any encouragement to continue an attachment, unhappily now hopeless and obstructive ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... wished to go outside it took him half an hour to dig his way out. On account of this periodic influx, the vestibule doorway to the workroom was moved to the other end of the wall, where the invading snow had farther to travel and was consequently less obstructive. ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... half-educated is more obstructive to science than the obtuseness of the ignorant," said he. "If Lord ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle
... communication in British interests, available for commercial, and requisite for other and even more serious, purposes. That the works would be begun at once, and that the Hudson's Bay Company, so long obstructive, would now set an example of despatch, and that that which had long been hoped for and promised by others, would now be accomplished by them as the pioneer works of an early settlement of the cultivatable ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... of money in their establishments; that the Treasury had not risen to the occasion during the War, and the Committee had regretfully come to the conclusion that the War Office had been adopting a deliberately obstructive attitude." Mr. Runciman on the same occasion stated that "lax expenditure and loose control over distribution of public money went far beyond the immediate departments concerned. It went down into every factory, and the general ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson
... chief difficulty. There were few of this literal interpretation and heroic texture. The real difficulty was created by men of a very different character and in much greater numbers, sincere in varying degrees, but deliberately, passionately and unscrupulously obstructive, bent on baulking the national will and making anything like reasonable treatment of them impossible. It would require saints, not men, to deal without occasional lapses from strict equity with such infuriating folk. Mr. BEGBIE'S book is unfair in its emphasis, but it ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 28, 1919. • Various
... we merely reply: There are unwritten revelations which are nevertheless true. Besides, we are not sure that at least an intimation of other races than those of the earth is not already on record. Not to prove any position, but to check obstructive criticism, we refer to the divine who is said to have witnessed in magnificent apocalypse some closing scenes of the human drama. If he also heard in sublime oratorio a prelude of this widely extended glory, our vision may not be a "baseless fabric." After the quartettes ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... downfall. Such seems to be the probable fate of Japan, and its consummation is little more than a question of time. When all is accomplished, whether the civilising process will make them as a people wiser, better, or happier, is a problem of more doubtful solution. One thing is quite certain, that the obstructive principle which tends to the rejection of all Western innovations and proselytism as abominations, is much too active and vigorous in the Japanese mind to leave a hope that there will not be violent and obstinate resistance; ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... Majesty, introductive of persons more favourable to the interests of Portugal than to furtherance of the judicious measures contemplated by His Majesty for the consolidation of the newly-constituted empire. To the obstructive aspirations of these persons—in ill-concealed concert with the designs of the parent state—my annexation of the Northern provinces necessarily proved fatal; and they ever afterwards regarded me with an animosity which ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 2 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... hand, and with like hand REBUILD, is no darling of your political Repairer. Call the party and the men by their right names: and give me for utility in legislation or administrative action an Old Tory and Obstructive party rather than this ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... and leave behind him 25 quarto volumes; it is known the German Bible in use is his work, executed by him in the Castle of Wartburg; it was begun by him with his back to the wall, as it were, and under the protestation, as it seemed to him, of the prince of darkness himself, and finished in this obstructive element pretty much throughout, the New Testament in 1522, the Pentateuch in 1523, and the whole, the Apocrypha included, in 1534; he was fond of music, and uttered many an otherwise unutterable thing in the tones of his flute; "the devils fled from his flute," he says; "death-defiance ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... along I improved on my obstructive tactics. When the Elsinore was up in the eye of the wind, and making sternway, I found that by putting the wheel sharply over, one way or the other, I could swing her bow off. Then, when she had paid off till the wind was ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... is the spirit of justified reason. You may say that those people were honestly mistaken;—such honesty is the brand of a brainless obstructive. They would have persecuted, but too gladly! There were, and are, men who would have committed Darwin to penal servitude, if they had had the power. Men like Lyell, who were able to develop a new convolution in their brains, I respect ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... start as though intending to sweep past the log on which the three scouts were perched, Felix, waiting for some such move, paddled vigorously to head them off. This series of obstructive tactics, coupled with the demonstration made by the other boys, served to keep the hounds in check for a certain ...
— The Boy Scouts of Lenox - Or The Hike Over Big Bear Mountain • Frank V. Webster
... believe what it is on other grounds convenient to us to believe. Nobody attributes to pure malevolence the heartiness with which the great corporation of lawyers, for example, resist the removal of superfluous and obstructive forms in their practice; they have come to look on such forms as indispensable safeguards. Hence powerful teachers and preachers of all kinds have been spontaneously inclined to suppose a necessity, which had no ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... for the transfer of freight from Greenville to Bay Ridge will relieve the inner waters of the harbor of a large volume of obstructive car-float traffic. There appears to be no reason why this traffic should not be eventually conducted through tunnels under the outer harbor, should future transportation conditions justify the enormous cost ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 • Charles W. Raymond
... make larger demands upon the understanding, the same man may be simply mischievous. We see this in the case of Andrew Jackson, who at New Orleans was glorious; at Washington almost wholly pernicious; and in the case of Andrew Johnson, who was eminently useful to his country in 1861, but obstructive and perilous to it in 1866. For these Scotch-Irishmen, though they are usually very honest men, and often right in their opinions, are an uninstructable race, who stick to a prejudice as tenaciously as to a principle, and really suppose they are battling for right and ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... usually apt to excuse the slower rate of liberal progress in our Old World by contrasting the obstructive barriers of prejudice, survival, solecism, anachronism, convention, institution, all so obstinately rooted, even when the branches seem bare and broken, in an old world, with the open and disengaged ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... must the mechanism of the body be cleansed and freed from obstructive and destructive materials, but the injured parts must be repaired, morbid growths and abnormal formations dissolved and eliminated and lesions in the bony structures corrected by ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... defend, and avenge, as a man of actual life would do—was obvious enough, through its harmonious fulfilment; yet the realism was shorn of all triteness, all animal excess, all of those ordinary attributes which are right in nature, and wrong because obstructive in the art ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... case of the apprehension of a species or of one's own face, causes connexion between the organ of sight and an individual of the species, or a looking-glass. Or it would be such as to remove some obstructive impurity in the mind of the knowing person; of this kind is the action of calmness and self- restraint with reference to scripture which is the means of apprehending the highest reality. Moreover, even if it were admitted that consciousness may ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... electoral methods by which they clambered to power, conspired to keep them contemptuous of facts, conscientiously unimaginative, alert to claim and seize advantages and suspicious of every generosity. Government was an obstructive business of energetic fractions, progress went on outside of and in spite of public activities, and legislation was the last crippling recognition of needs so clamorous and imperative and facts so aggressively established as to ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... was apparently irrespective of partners. He had been waiting long to hear her speak, and when at length her voice did reach his ears, it was the revelation of a strange matter to find how great a thing that small event had become to him. He knew the old utterance—rapid but not frequent, an obstructive thought causing sometimes a sudden halt in the midst of a stream of words. But the features by which a cool observer would have singled her out from others in his memory when asking himself what she was like, was a peculiar gaze into imaginary far-away distance ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... when my mother was either in good humour or out of the way. It was her certain belief that my brother William would have returned to his country, and my eldest brother would not have looked so high, if they had had a little less learning." Poor, purblind, well-meaning, obstructive old dame Herschel! what a boon to the world that children like yours are sometimes seized with this incomprehensible fancy for ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... THE WILL TO POWER, as I conceive of it. The power of moral prejudices has penetrated deeply into the most intellectual world, the world apparently most indifferent and unprejudiced, and has obviously operated in an injurious, obstructive, blinding, and distorting manner. A proper physio-psychology has to contend with unconscious antagonism in the heart of the investigator, it has "the heart" against it even a doctrine of the reciprocal conditionalness of the "good" and the "bad" impulses, causes (as ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... pronounced absolutely deadly by one set of partisans, and absolutely harmless by another. Somewhere between lies the truth. If any human being has actually been bitten by a heloderma, the event has either escaped notice or has been so hedged about with obstructive legend as to have forfeited scientific credence. But the saurian itself has been studied and dissected, and its venom has been analyzed. The venom is related to snake poison, but is neither crotaline nor elapine. From ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... the plans at the parsonage. The reality struck Helga. She was much interested, and Hardy saw that she understood and entered into everything. There was nothing to suggest or to alter in Macdonald's plans, and Hardy at once arranged for their execution. The Danish bailiff was at first obstructive, but Hardy's quiet, decisive manner changed the position, and gradually it dawned upon him that the place would be greatly improved, and that the residence of an English family for part of the year at Rosendal would ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary
... at that moment? In other words, how was a young lady in Magdalen's critical position likely to while away the hours until Mr. Huxtable 's return? If there was an obstructive gentleman in the background, it would be mere waste of time to pursue the question. But if the inference which the handbill suggested was correct—if she was really alone at that moment in the city of York—where was ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... seem neat: 1. To Lord Noodle, or Lord Doodle, which was it? objecting haughtily, "And suppose a cow should get in the way of your engine, sir?" he replied, "Why, then it would be bad—for the coow." The objector had overrated the obstructive power of his ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... opposition offered by Great Britain, and to some extent by France, to the proposed restoration of the old order of things in Eastern Roumelia, the Conference came to an end at the close of November, the three Imperial Powers blaming Sir William White for his obstructive tactics. The charges will not bear examination, but they show the irritation of those Governments at England's championship of the Bulgarian cause[203]. The Bulgarians always remember the names of Lord Salisbury and Sir William White as those of ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... to the difficulty of rising, and usually disagreeable, owing to the manner in which snow stuffs itself into neck, ears, nose, eyes, mouth—if open—and any convenient crevice of person or garments. The snow-shoes, too, which are so serviceable when you are above them, become exasperatingly obstructive when you are below them. After a struggle of two minutes I got my head clear, winked the snow out of my eyes, blew it from my mouth and nostrils, and looked up. Lumley was standing there with a bland smile on his amiable face; he seldom laughed, ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... is first urged for specialized work, there always is opposition. The outgoing generation remembers the opposition to specialized training for law, medicine, and engineering, to say nothing of farming, school teaching and business. But in spite of obstructive and retarding objections, specialized types of training for specialized types of work have grown in number and favor, and today we are being shown convincingly that nations which have declined to set up the fundamental types of special training find themselves able to make effective ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... the Court of Common Council may fairly be supposed to be the best judges as to the nature of the amendments to be made, and the right time of making them. Persons engaged in commercial pursuits are not usually obstructive, or opposed to useful innovations. On the contrary, being wedded to no theories, they are constantly impelled to change, and to act upon each emergency as it arises. The past history of the City of London is one long illustration of this position,—it is an uninterrupted ...
— The Corporation of London: Its Rights and Privileges • William Ferneley Allen
... the close air and cramped posture must have benumbed my faculties, for I opened the port-side locker, reached down, and grasped a sticky body, which turned out to be a pot of varnish. Recoiling wretchedly, I tried the opposite one, combating the embarrassing heel of the boat and the obstructive edges of the centre-board case. A medley of damp tins of varied sizes showed in the gloom, exuding a mouldy odour. Faded legends on dissolving paper, like the remnants of old posters on a disused hoarding, spoke of soups, curries, beefs, ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... day. Proposed reforms and solicitations for permission to introduce modern improvements were by no means welcomed. In the provinces clerical opposition was often cast against liberal innovations, and in the Government bureaux they were encompassed with obstructive formalities, objections, ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... the granting of the Magna Charta, thus firmly of the liberties of England has been accomplished by bitter and fierce struggles; the obstructive forces were strong, but yielded in the end to the onward sweep of liberty directed by the aggressive spirit of intelligence, manhood, and humanity. At the end of the sixteenth century this much had been gained for freedom. The ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... being discredited on all hands, by the abandonment of the obvious meaning of its writer. It is a poem, not a scientific treatise. In the former aspect it is for ever beautiful: in the latter aspect it has been, and it will continue to be, purely obstructive and hurtful. To knowledge its value has been negative, leading, in rougher ages than ours, to physical, and even in our own' free' age to ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... mistakes are too old to be rectified in a single generation. A little more knowledge, we say, and a little less zeal would save the Socialist from being considered by the advanced thinker—who, studying the present by the light of the past, sees that all civilization is provisional—as the most serious obstructive whom he ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... of torture and punishment, of social ranks, of the relation of the individual to the state, of the state to the family, and of religion to the family, were more or less defective and unsuited to the new civilization. Before this new movement all obstructive ideas, however, sanctioned by antiquity, have had to give way. The Japanese of to-day look, as it were, upon a new earth and a new heaven. Those of forty years ago would be amazed, not only at the enormous ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... Vale of Evesham is exceedingly hard, and in the town and some villages was formerly much contaminated. After great opposition from obstructive ratepayers, a splendid supply was obtained from the Cotswolds above Broadway, about six miles away, of much softer and really pure spring water. It comes in pipes by gravitation, so there is no expense of pumping; but it was difficult to get recalcitrant ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... utility, when it is of the greatest importance that Englishmen and Irishmen, Conservatives and Radicals, should be agreed as to the meaning of the new Fundamental Law. When, in short, a constitution for the country is being drawn up, no discussion which is rational can be obstructive. If a week or a fortnight of parliamentary time is expended in defining the meaning of the supreme authority of Parliament, or in deciding whether the Irish delegacy is or is not to be retained at Westminster, not a moment too much is devoted to points of such transcendent importance. 'But ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... whether or no it be the slow process of evolution it is generally supposed to be, can and does look after itself. Society is certainly a nuisance and a heavy drag upon human energy, but so long as that energy can express itself in art, society cannot be altogether obstructive. That, says the intellectual, is well enough for the artist, but what of the individuals to whom art can only be at best a keen stimulus, at worst a drugging pleasure? Is the dead weight of society altogether ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... of the two tendencies is curiously exhibited in the popular movements of the Reformation-time. As enemies of the decaying and obstructive forms of Feudalism and Church organization, the peasant and handicraftsman were necessarily on the side of the new Individualism. So far as negation and destruction were concerned, they were working apparently for the new order of things—that new order of things which longo intervallo ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... misfortune to come under his sweeping denunciations, because they are inconsistent with his ideal of a peasant Empire, but he recognises amongst them degrees of depravity. Some are simply obstructive, whilst others are actively prejudicial to the public welfare. Among these latter a special object of aversion is Prince S——, because he not only possesses very large estates, but at the same time has aristocratic pretensions, and ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... display of harshness to her niece. Mr. Gibson had been at the house that very morning, and Dorothy had given herself airs. At least, so Miss Stanbury thought. And during the last three or four days, whenever Mr. Gibson's name had been mentioned, Dorothy had become silent, glum, and almost obstructive. Miss Stanbury had been at the trouble of explaining that she was specially anxious to have that little matter of the engagement settled at once. She knew that she was going to behave with great generosity;—that she was going to sacrifice, not her money only, ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... with his skill in legislation and intimate knowledge of the rules he was the leader whenever he chose to lead. This he always did when the policy he desired or the measure he was promoting had a majority, and the opposition resorted to obstructive tactics. As there is no restriction on debate in the Senate, or was none at my time, the only way the minority could defeat the majority was by talking the bill to death. I never knew this method to be used successfully but once, because in the trial of ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... all the mischiefs established by a throne of iniquity since the unhappy restoration of Charles II. to this day. Yet few have ever zealously contended and fewer have constantly continued in contending, against these obstructions, so obstructive to the cause, many have kept secret the first motions and appearances of these things, while they might have been suppressed and overcome, and the generality have passed them over in silence, and not made known, nor advertised unto evil of these things when declared, by witnessing ...
— The Auchensaugh Renovation of the National Covenant and • The Reformed Presbytery
... cloud before the sun; Space hath no record where the mist hath been. Boots it to us if Shakspeare erred like man? Why idly question that most mystic life? Eno' the giver in his gifts to scan; To bless the sheaves with which thy fields are rife, Nor, blundering, guess through what obstructive clay The glorious ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... still liberal in helping forward the clever and industrious; but in his active superintendence of commercial undertakings he has contracted more and more of the bitterness which capitalists and employers often feel to be a reasonable mood towards obstructive proletaries. Hence many who this is an idea not spoken of in the sort of fashionable society that Scintilla collects round her husband's table, and Mixtus now philosophically reflects that the cause must come before the effect, and that the thing ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... will admit, there were in that world a great many abuses as they are called, that is to say, a great many things which, once useful and excellent, had either decayed into positive nuisances, or dried up into neutral and harmless but obstructive rubbish. There were also many silly and some mischievous people, as well as some wise and useful ones, who defended the abuses. Sydney Smith was an ideal soldier of reform for his time, and in his way. He ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... that this motive operated very powerfully; but when the new departure in scientific doctrine which is associated with the name of the great naturalist Charles Darwin began, it was not only a reaction against a barbarous pseudo-evangelical teleology intolerably obstructive to all scientific progress, but was accompanied, as it happened, by discoveries of extraordinary interest in physics, chemistry, and that lifeless method of evolution which its investigators called Natural Selection. Howbeit, there was only one result possible in the ethical sphere, and that was ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... ship of the pressure of the whole of the canvas upon her mizenmast, the craft accordingly swerved away from the wind with almost the alacrity of a living thing, and the next moment she was swirling round, as though upon a pivot, shaving the obstructive angle of the reef by a hairbreadth, and coming to with the wind over the starboard quarter, when the rounding of her port bow was actually dashing aside the white water, while I clung to my masthead in fear and trembling, waiting for the shock which should tell me that ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... out of a storm-cloud seems instantly to transform the whole passive universe into a terrible living power. This slow, opaque, indifferent matter about us and above us, going its silent or noisy round of mechanical and chemical change, ponderable, insensate, obstructive, slumbering in the rocks, quietly active in the soil, gently rustling in the trees, sweetly purling in the brooks, slowly, invisibly building and shaping our bodies—how could we ever dream that it held in leash such ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... to judge by the criticisms levelled against its exceptions and safeguards, will be about as effective as its predecessor, was read a third time. So was the Health Insurance Bill, but not until a few Independent Liberals, led by Captain WEDGWOOD BENN, had been rebuked for their obstructive tactics by Mr. MYERS and Mr. NEIL MACLEAN of the Labour Party. As the small hours grew larger this split in the Progressive ranks developed into a yawning chasm, and the Government got a third Bill passed before the weary ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 19, 1920 • Various
... began, after they had sat down, "I made up my mind some time ago to do with as little of it as possible. That was why I determined not to try anything in London, for a good many years at least. I didn't like what I saw when I was studying there—so much empty bigwiggism, and obstructive trickery. In the country, people have less pretension to knowledge, and are less of companions, but for that reason they affect one's amour-propre less: one makes less bad blood, and can follow one's own course ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... a false move, and so tried to recover my lost ground. She would not permit me. The conversation which had run in pleasant channels for two happy hours was ended. Thenceforth, in spite of my obstructive efforts, subjects were introduced which could not be conversed on but must be discussed. On every one Miss Brande took the part of the weak against the strong, oblivious of every consideration of policy and even ethics, careful only that she championed the weak because of their weakness. Miss Metford ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... beach below the Caves the Men of the Tribe worked furiously, dragging the trunks of trees together at the water's edge, lashing them with ropes of vine and cords of hide, and laboriously lopping some of the more obstructive branches by the combined use of fire and split stones. The women, and the lame slave Ook-ootsk—with the old men, who, though their hearts were still high, were too frail of their hands for such a heavy task as raft-building—remained ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... power of an eminent orator lays hold of them and crushes them, and they can not even squeak. Or even as a still more eminent 'bus driver, when the street is blocked, and there seems to be no room for his own thumb, yet (with a gentle whistle and a wink) solves the jostling stir and balk, makes obstructive traffic slide, like an eddy obsequious, beside him and behind, and comes forth as the first of an orderly procession toward the public-house of ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... before, although a decided improvement on the old state of affairs, did not produce universal satisfaction.[3] The constitution of the legislative council was complained of, and it was described as an obstructive body which disregarded the wishes of the people. Bills of the utmost importance, which had been passed by large majorities in the House of Assembly, and which were demanded by the people, were frequently rejected by the council ...
— Wilmot and Tilley • James Hannay
... responsible for preventing Southern progress. They are three: "The Ghost of the Confederate dead, the Ghost of religious orthodoxy, the Ghost of Negro domination." Everywhere the hero finds his progress blocked by these obstructive wraiths of the past. He seeks a livelihood in educational work—becomes a local superintendent of Public Instruction, and loses his place because his religious views are unorthodox, because he refuses to accept the popular estimate of Confederate statesmen, and ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... indeed but plains, beautifully grassed, but heavy to ride over and yielding under the horses' feet. Beyond these plains, the country changed for the worse, and became sandy and scrubby. On the 16th of May he encountered a new description of scrub that grew in a very obstructive manner, and is now ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... I dare say, by any of the old romantic methods of a convent or disinheritance; but she is an invalid; she wants to keep her daughter with her, and she avails with the girl's conscience by being simply dependent and obstructive. The young people have carried their engagement through, and now such hope as they have is fixed upon her finally yielding in the matter of their marriage, though Glendenning was obliged to confess that there was no sign of her doing so. They agree—Miss Bentley and he—that they cannot ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells |
