"Compulsion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thus afforded at all effectual for the purposes of the Government of Oude, whether present or future, as is clear from the annual repetition of the same scenes of resistance and compulsion. As fast as disorders are suppressed in one quarter they spring up in another. Forts that are this year dismantled are restored again the next; the compulsion exercised upon particular individuals in one season has no effect in producing more regularity on their parts, or on that of ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... lay the sacrifice on the altar that sanctifies the gift, but it requires divine compulsion—the cords of love—to retain it there. So here the bride would be set and fixed on the heart and on the arm of Him who is henceforth to be her all in all, that she may evermore trust only in that love, be sustained only by ...
— Union And Communion - or Thoughts on the Song of Solomon • J. Hudson Taylor
... loyally by Henry over the question of his marriage with Edith (who claimed release from vows taken under compulsion in a convent at Romsey), and his fidelity at the critical time when Robert of Normandy and the discontented nobles threatened the safety of the Crown was invaluable. But Henry was an absolutist, anxious for all the threads of power to be in his own hands; and just when a great Church Council ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... for the injury that he had done it, nor had he offered any betterment in the future—he nevertheless insisted that it must be done. And as here there is no [opportunity for any] will, save that of a governor, since he is absolute, we all had to acquiesce, under compulsion and pressure, in the restitution of the archbishop—and not only that, but also in accepting the bishop of Troya as governor ad interim until his illustrious Lordship came back. As soon as the latter arrived, he began to unsheathe ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... looked at one another silently. It was not death that made them turn pale, but the horrible compulsion to which they ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... among the troops that the grease used was cow's fat and hog's lard, and that these substances were employed in pursuance of a deep-laid design to deprive every soldier of his caste by compelling him to taste these defiling things. Such compulsion would hardly have been less odious to a Mussulman than to a Hindoo; for swineflesh is abominable to the one, and the cow a sacred animal to the other. Whoever devised this falsehood intended to imply a subtle intention on the part ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... concealments, it was much more a realization that I had no power of lucidity to save the words and deeds I sought to make expressive from complete misunderstanding. But most of all it was the perception that I was under training and compulsion for ends that were all askew and irrelevant to the trend of my imaginations, the quality of my dreams. There was around me something unfriendly to this inner world—something very ready to pass from unfriendliness to acute hostility; ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... so act that whatever he does may rather seem voluntary and of his own free will than done by compulsion, however much he may ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... not so obviously controlled by necessity, the necessity is still present as effectually as when the man, though apparently free to walk to the gallows, is in reality bound to do so. For in respect of the small details of his manner of walking to the gallows, which compulsion does not so glaringly reach, what is it that the man is free to do? He is free to do as he likes, but he is not free to do as he does not like; and a man's likings are determined by outside things and by antecedents, pre-natal and post- natal, whose effect is ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... prominent characteristic. As a people, these mountaineers have ever been accessible to gentleness and truth, so far as I have known them; but excite suspicion or resentment, and they give emphatic and not impotent resistance. Compulsion ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... she had marked out for him in her former letter. The Constitution had been presented to him on the 3d of September. He had taken a few days to consider it, not with the idea of proposing the slightest alteration, but in order to avoid the appearance of acting under compulsion; and, on the same day on which she wrote to Mercy, he was drawing up a letter to the Assembly, to announce his intention of visiting the Assembly to give it his royal assent in due form. But, though she would not have had him act ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... conscionably, or cheerful and contentedly; yet is he neither with any man at all angry for it, nor diverted by it from the way that leadeth to the end of his life, through which a man must pass pure, ever ready to depart, and willing of himself without any compulsion to fit and accommodate himself to his proper lot ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... all till after conscription came in. The late introduction of conscription, the abominable substitution clause, and the prevalence of bounty-jumping combined to reduce both the quantity and quality of the recruits obtained by money or compulsion. The Northerners that did fight were generally fighting in the South, among a very hostile population, which, while it made the Southern lines of communication perfectly safe, threatened those of the North at every point and thus obliged the Northern armies ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... about him. It is as though he had experienced armies. The days of high winds are days of innumerable sounds, innumerable in variation of tone and of intensity, playing upon and awakening innumerable powers in man. And the days of high wind are days in which a physical compulsion has been about us and we have met pressure and blows, resisted and turned them; it enlivens us with the simulacrum of war by which nations live, and in the just pursuit of which men in companionship ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... freed negro would do "an infinity of work for wages."[186] Though he had been on the islands, and had had an opportunity to see for himself, he boasted that "the old notion that the negro is, by constitution, a lazy creature, who will do no work at all except by compulsion, is now forever exploded."[187] He even declared, that the free negro "understands his interest as well as a Yankee."[188] These confident statements, made by an eye-witness, were hailed by the abolitionists as conclusive proof that the experiment ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... tell me that what you did was due to the compulsion that was put upon you to denounce David Rossi, he must come forward, whatever the consequences, to defend you and plead for you. He must say to the world and to your judges: 'It is true that this poor ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... of Social Progress.—There are three distinct means of telic progress. Society may be lifted to a higher level by compulsion, as a huge crane lifts a heavy girder to the place it is to occupy in the construction of a great building. A prohibitory law that forbids the erection of unhealthy tenements throughout the cities of a state or nation ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... sanctity of oaths Lies not in lightning that avenges them, But in the injury wrought by broken bonds And in the garnered good of human trust. 'Tis a compulsion of the higher sort, Whose fetters are the net invisible That holds all life together. 'Tis faithfulness that makes the life we choose Breathe high and see a full-arched firmament. We may see ill But over all belief is faithfulness Which fulfils vision with obedience. No good is certain, ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... be misplaced," answered Paolo. "But, lady, I have longed to banish from your mind the prejudice you must naturally entertain against me, at seeing me in this island, with such company; but believe me that it is sorely against my will. I am here by compulsion, a prisoner like yourself, though with more apparent liberty. To comprehend it I must tell you my unhappy history, which I would long ago have done, had I had the opportunity; but I feared to do so in presence of your attendant, on ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... which included a visit from Dora, in order that the dog might come to his new home without compulsion, and which, as modified by Ralph, included a drive or a walk through the woods with the donor in order that the dog might learn to follow him, needed Miriam's cooeperation. And this cooeperation he could not induce her to give. She seemed to have all sorts ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... deny all motives as influencing moral action. Such a contention, however, clearly defeats its own object by reducing all action to chance. On the other hand, the scientific doctrine of evolution has gone far towards obliterating the distinction between external and internal compulsion, e.g. motives, character and the like. In so far as man can be shown to be the product of, and a link in, a long chain of causal development, so far does it become impossible to regard him as self-determined. Even in his motives and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... murder be The law by which not only conscience-blind Creatures, but man too prospers with his kind; Who leaving all his guilty fellows free, Under your fatal auspice and divine Compulsion, leagued in some mysterious ban Against one innocent and helpless man, Abuse their liberty to murder mine: And sworn to silence, like their masters mute In heaven, and like them twirling through the mask Of darkness, answering to all I ask, ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... forth, and getting no great clearness, when I came into the round-house and saw the Jacobite eating his supper under the lamp; and at that my mind was made up all in a moment. I have no credit by it; it was by no choice of mine, but as if by compulsion, that I walked right up to the table and put my hand ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... porter came into the car under compulsion of a revolver in the hand of a fourth outlaw, one in a black mask. His trembling finger pointed out the satchel and suit-case of Major Mackenzie, and under orders he carried out the baggage belonging to the irrigation engineer. Collin observed that the bandit in the black ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... so passionately craved, all she so piercingly regretted, and yet hold some peace, some satisfaction. True she was still desolate, robbed, despairing, yet with the children to tend there were hours when she almost lost sight of her own sorrow, in the sweet compulsion of ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... want of money, and nothing other, one might ask, "Why do not you too get up and speak; promulgate your system, found your sect?" "Truly," he will answer, "I am continent of my thought hitherto; happily I have yet had the ability to keep it in me, no compulsion strong enough to speak it. My 'system' is not for promulgation first of all; it is for serving myself to live by. That is the great purpose of it to me. And then the 'honour'? Alas, yes;—but as Cato said of the statue: So many statues in that Forum of yours, may it not be better if they ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... knowledge. Men, left wholly to their appetites and their instincts, with little sense of moral or religious obligation, and with very faint distinctions of right and wrong, can never be safely employed, or confidently trusted; they can be honest only by obstinacy, and diligent only by compulsion or caprice. Some instruction, therefore, is necessary, and much, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... head to foot, knew she had conquered, knew she had saved him for a time at least from the threatening evil. But there was that within her which shrank from the thought of the victory. She had acted almost under compulsion, yet she felt that she had used a weapon which would ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... reason, nor can he appreciate its warning. How is it possible to divert such a one from his course by argument? Speaking generally, we say that passion yields not to argument but to constraint.... The multitude obey on compulsion rather than on principle, and from fear of pains and penalties rather than from a sense of right. These are grounds for believing that legislators, while exhorting to virtue and putting certain courses of conduct forward as right and honourable, in ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... precipitation, that most of his companions thought he was either ruined or mad. But he answered all their expostulations with a string of prudent apophthegms, such as, "The shortest follies are the best"; "Better to retrench upon conviction than compulsion"; and divers other wise maxims, seemingly the result of experience and philosophic reflection. To such a degree of enthusiasm did his present economy prevail, that he was actually seized with the desire of amassing. ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... country the English service gave place immediately to the Mass. In an interview with the lord mayor of London, and afterwards in the public proclamation addressed to all her subjects, she announced that, though it was her intention to follow the Catholic religion, she had no desire of resorting to compulsion to force it on her people against their will, and she exhorted them to live together in Christian harmony, avoiding the "new found devilish terms of papist and heretic." As a sign that vengeance and cruelty were no part of her programme she exercised ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... I should have found much more pleasure in the pursuit of business, had I acted from the higher motive of use to my fellows, which was presented so clearly to my mind, than I do now, having entered its walks from something like compulsion." ...
— The Last Penny and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... the last two years shows that no feature of Canadian administration was more harassing and injurious than the compulsion upon our fishing vessels to make formal entry and clearance on every occasion of temporarily seeking shelter in Canadian ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... certain, however, that the Outlanders would never submit to be dependent on the policy of President Kruger, although the Dutch declared that they had only accepted the suzerainty of Great Britain under compulsion. ...
— Queen Victoria • E. Gordon Browne
... anonymous letter he received on guard—this argued a plot of some sort. He resolved to sift the matter thoroughly, and instead of forwarding so mysterious a request to his wife, repair to the indicated spot in person, and there by threats, bribery, compulsion, any or all means in his power, arrive at a true solution of ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... tending to reach a condition of stable equilibrium by the establishment of compulsory labour legally enforcible upon those who do not own the means of production for the advantage of those who do. With this principle of compulsion applied against the non-owners there must also come a difference in their status; and in the eyes of society and of its positive law men will be divided into two sets; the first economically free and politically free, ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... you, my young friend," said Lord Glenvarloch, withdrawing with a gentle degree of compulsion the hand with which the boy had again covered his eyes; "do not pain yourself with thinking on your situation just at present—your pulse is high, and your hand feverish—lay yourself on yonder pallet, and try to compose yourself to sleep. ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... inclination. So we told Commissioner Tate to bring you to the Hub and keep you there, to see what would happen. And on Maccadon, in just a few weeks, you'd begun working that moderate inclination to be back in the Manon System up to a dandy first-rate compulsion." ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... the motorman, who was bringing the car to a halt; the car went on. He stood in front of her. Her color was high, but she could not resist the steady compulsion of his eyes. "I told you I wanted to talk with you," said he. "Do you know why I was standing ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... never seen anything more painful than the deliberate discouragement, during a period extending over several years, of the boy's natural bent, and the application of absolute compulsion to force him, against every natural instinct, to prepare himself for a profession repugnant to his inclinations, and for which he was not in the ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... the Law of Armes, as in like case among all Nations at this day is vsed: and most especially to the ende they may with securitie holde their lawfull possession, lest happily after the departure of the Christians, such Sauages as haue bene conuerted should afterwards through compulsion and enforcement of their wicked Rulers, returne to their horrible idolatrie (as did the children of Israel, after the decease of Ioshua) and continue their wicked custome of most vnnaturall sacrificing of ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... artificial nature are made. No State really intends to hold by them any longer than she finds that they serve her own interests. If they are imposed upon a State and are injurious to her, that State never means to submit to them any longer than she is actually under compulsion. New means and impulses to break away from such bonds are given to those inclined that way, in the fact that the arrangements are usually made without the slightest concern for the populations of the ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... one so puffed up with pride and vain-glory. It would have been funny, only that he made us feel it so tragically. He tore Joyce away—the word is not an exaggeration for she fought him at every point and only yielded to positive compulsion. He put her into a fashionable school and bade her have nothing more to do with those 'down-at-the-heel Bonnivels.' It was a trifle hard after the love and care we had ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... were written; even Barbara, who never could be got to handle a pen except under strong compulsion, scribbled nearly four pages, and filled up the blank space at ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... standard of morality. I do not believe that it should seek to penalize those whose sex-relationships are not of this character, except so far as legislation for the protection of the immature or the helpless is concerned. And I do not think it should compel—or seek to compel, for compulsion is, in fact, impossible—the observance of a marriage which has lost or never had the ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden
... stepmother also had declared that she "must be made to help it,"—or in other words be made to marry Mr. Twentyman in opposition to her own wishes! She was quite sure that no human being could have such right of compulsion over her. Her father would not attempt it, and it was, after all, to her father alone, that she was bound by duty. At the moment she could make no reply, and then her father with the two girls came ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... terrible fear without object or meaning or reason (anxiety neuroses); or a definite fear of some harmless object (phobia); or a strange, persistent, recurrent idea, quite foreign to the personality and beyond the reach of reason (obsession); or an insistent desire to perform some absurd act (compulsion); or perhaps, a deadly and pall-like depression ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... to English ears to preach forbearance and generosity to the landowners. But it should be remembered that few of them have it in their power to be merciful or generous to their poor tenantry. They act under compulsion, usually of the severest kind. They are themselves engaged in a life and death struggle with their creditors. Moreover the greater number of the depopulators are mere agents for absent landlords or for ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... seeking his own good, or preserving his own being, unless he be overcome by causes external and foreign to his nature. No one, I say, from the necessity of his own nature, or otherwise than under compulsion from external causes, shrinks from food, or kills himself: which latter may be done in a variety of ways. A man, for instance, kills himself under the compulsion of another man, who twists round his right hand, wherewith he happened ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... compelled to believe; for compelled faith, such as is the faith which enters by means of miracles, does not inhere, and would also be hurtful to those with whom faith may be implanted by means of the Word in a state without compulsion. ...
— Earths In Our Solar System Which Are Called Planets, and Earths In The Starry Heaven Their Inhabitants, And The Spirits And Angels There • Emanuel Swedenborg
... herein I follow the practice of all scientific men, whether naturalists or metaphysicians, and the dictate of common sense, that one word ought to have but one meaning. Thus by Hobbes and others of the materialists, compulsion and obligation were used indiscriminately; but the distinction of the two senses is the condition of all moral responsibility. Now the effect of Mr. Birch's use of the words is to continue the confusion. Remember we could not reason at all, if our conceptions ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... time a keen taste for the summer joys of Millbrook, and the family obligation which, for several months of the year, kept him at his aunt's side (Mrs. Vance was a childless widow and he filled the onerous post of favorite nephew) gave a sense of compulsion to the light occupations that chequered his leisure. Mrs. Vance, who fancied herself lonely when he was away, was too much engaged with notes, telegrams and arriving and departing guests, to do more than breathlessly smile upon his ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... startling in its silence, annoyed the imperious ruler of Europe. Most of the cardinals had been brought to Paris, not without some threats of physical compulsion, several of them weakly hoping to obtain important concessions. Cardinal Consalvi energetically supported the courage of a large number, who were determined to take no part in the emperor's religious marriage, as being illegal. They told Cardinal Fesch of their intention, adding, ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... a somewhat wild flight of imagination, he might altogether escape the fatal sense of compulsion towards printers'-ink, under which the traveller of a few weeks' or months' experience commonly labours when once he has extricated himself from the blandishments of Toorak ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... greatly to talk, yet he had been exceedingly friendly with me from the very first night I had met him, and I thought shame of myself that I was losing trust in my fellow man here in this great city of London, because in Ireland we trust each other entirely; and indeed we are under some compulsion in that same matter, for there is so little money about that if you do not take a man's word now and then there's nothing else for you ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... sinful. That there would have been any sin on Queen Catherine's part if she had consented to a separation from the king, was never pretended; and although it is a difficult and delicate matter to decide how far unwilling persons may be compelled to do what they ought to have done without compulsion, yet the will of a single man or woman cannot be allowed to constitute itself an irremovable obstacle to a ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... to be; but I believe that wit and ready hand were alike Virginia's. I may have caught at the theory—hers was the practice. Virginia's opinion was that work for hire was either done by habit or on compulsion. An ox, said she, draws the plough, because his race have always drawn it; a peasant works afield, because he is part of the soil's economy. He comes from it, he manures it, tills it, feeds off it, returns to it again. It is his cradle, his ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... formally made the proposition. There is no doubt whatever that the whole population ardently desired to become her subjects. So far as the Netherlands were concerned, then, she would have been fully justified in extending her sceptre over a free people, who, under no compulsion and without any, diplomatic chicane, had selected her for their hereditary chief. So far as regarded England, the annexation to that country of a continental cluster of states, inhabited by a race closely allied to it by blood, religion, and the instinct for political ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... sufficient to throw the city into the utmost state of confusion. Some there were "fools and evil-minded persons," as our chronicler describes them—who favoured resisting force by force; but the "most discreet men" of the city, and those who had joined the Earl under compulsion, would have none of it, preferring to solicit the king's favour through the mediation of men of the religious orders. Henry still remained unmoved, and the fear of the citizens increased to such an extent that it was finally resolved that the citizens ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... of present civilization, to be the emblem and solid foundation of our religious institutions, without force or compulsion; that the native clergy of the country be that which direct and teach the natives in all the degrees ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... to the prejudice of a whole people, who had no part nor lot in the crime, in face of the often declared law that a State cannot commit treason? If we turn to the fact that many, if not most of the citizens of the rebel States, have done treasonable acts under compulsion of those who were the leaders in the rebellion, we are met, at the very threshold, by no less an authority than Sir William Blackstone, who says (Bl. Commentaries, book iv. p. 21): 'Another species of compulsion or necessity is what our law calls duress per minias, or threats and menaces which ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... writers make so much, although with many contradictions, while the English writers, with the most marked and careful unanimity, say nothing at all. It seems most likely that Harold did make some kind of oath to William, most probably under compulsion, when he had fallen into his hands after being shipwrecked on the coast of Ponthieu, and imprisoned by its Count Guy. Mr. Freeman thinks the most probable date to be 1064. It is at least certain that Harold helped William ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... You see, for one thing, that a monk never takes the vows for life. He takes them for six months, a year, two years, very often for five years; then, if he finds the life suit him, he continues. If he finds that he cannot live up to the standard required, he is free to go. There is no compulsion to stay, no stigma on going. As a matter of fact, very few monks there are but have left the monastery at one time or another. It is impossible to over-estimate the value of this safety-valve. What with the certainty of detection and punishment from his people, and the knowledge that ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... manifold social evils of the land. In pre-caste days in India such evils as child marriage, prohibition of widow remarriage, temple women, excessive marriage expenses, etc., did not exist. They are a part of the caste regime supported and perpetuated by its authority. Remove this mighty compulsion, and these institutions would soon become things of ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... door and was about to enter, when at a sudden thought she paused and let her eyes wander down the hall, till they settled on another door, the one she had closed behind her the night before, with the deep resolve never to open it again except under compulsion. ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... whom the brother and sister might go for all necessary information—Dubois would see to that. Sixty francs a month paid the appartement; a trifle for service if you desired it—there was, however, no compulsion—to the concierge would make you comfortable; and as for your food, the Quartier Montmartre abounded in cheap restaurants, and you might live as you pleased for one franc a day or twenty. He suggested that on the whole no better opening was likely to be found by two ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... their landing. Many were thrown back upon the ice which they broke in their fall, or which bruised them. By their account, this Russian river and its banks appeared only to have contributed with regret, by surprise, and as it were by compulsion, ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... he said, and beckoning Pete and the manager, went out. He locked the door on the other side and resumed: "Send up a comfortable chair, a blanket, and a packet of tobacco. If there's any trouble, you can state that you acted on compulsion and we'll support you, but I rather think you can seize and hold a criminal when you catch him in the act. Stop here until I relieve ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... proper motion we ascend Up to our native seat; descent and fall To us adverse. Who but felt of late, When the fierce foe hung on our broken rear Insulting, and pursued us through the deep, With what compulsion and laborious flight, We sunk thus low? The ascent is easy then; The event is feared. Should we again provoke Our stronger, some worse way his wrath may find To our destruction; if there be in hell, Fear to be worse destroyed. What can be worse Than to dwell ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... like to have my enemy take a view of my mind when I am going to ask protection of any man; for which reason I generally endeavour to protect myself; but this going to Monsieur le Duc de C- was an act of compulsion; had it been an act of choice, I should have done it, I ...
— A Sentimental Journey • Laurence Sterne
... will help to free our soldiers and sailors from the burden of compulsion, which they detest, which frequently causes serious illness, occasionally even ...
— The Healthy Life Cook Book, 2d ed. • Florence Daniel
... assurance of my purpose, because purpose I had none. Yet the stern necessity of choice was upon me, this most sombre enfranchisement of manhood, that we are compelled to choose, willing or unwilling. Saint and sinner, believer and infidel, are alike under this compulsion in matters moral—and in all matters. We speak of the stern pressure which demands that men shall make a living; but its dread feature is herein, that our living is a succession of pregnant choices on which our deepest livelihood depends—and ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... them in this world. Nor yet for their damned and doomed offspring—while the individual liberty shibboleths endure, while mere numbers rule, or while our degenerate fear of every form of compulsion lasts. And the present tendency is, not merely to stipulate for complete freedom of action for the poor wretches, but to invite them to govern, by count of heads. So marvellously enlightened are ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... perhaps 'The Trail of the Sword' bore witness, and particularly of the period of the Conquest, and I longed for a subject which would, in effect, compel me to write; for I have strong views upon this business of compulsion in the mind of the writer. Unless a thing has seized a man, has obsessed him, and he feels that it excludes all other temptations to his talent or his genius, his book will not convince. Before all else he must himself be ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... to fathom the cause of the knight's trouble, for then, perhaps, he would be able to help him, so he continued pitilessly: "Tell me just one word, which I will keep secret from all other men: were you driven by compulsion to take up knighthood, or urged to beg it by reason of the ownership of some small estate; or have you wasted your old inheritance with fines for brawling and strife, or in gambling and riotousness, or in borrowing at ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... Emperor. 75 Poor man! he hath a small estate in Crnthen, And fears it will be forfeited because He's in my service. Am I then so poor, That I no longer can indemnify My servants? Well! To no one I employ 80 Means of compulsion. If 'tis thy belief That fortune has fled from me, go! Forsake me. This night for the last time mayst thou unrobe me, And then go over to thy Emperor. Gordon, good night! I think to make a long 85 Sleep of it: for the struggle and the turmoil Of this last day or ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Irish race. But, in reality, the Irish undertook it at the beginning with reluctance; the intolerable state of existence which they were compelled to undergo in their own land acting upon them with a kind of moral compulsion amounting to an almost irresistible force. For it was either the famine or persecution of the century preceding which first ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... been rigorously investigated according to the fashion of that period, and when, after many persons had been put to the torture, nothing was found out, and the judges were in doubt and perplexity; at length truth, long suppressed, found a respite, and, under the compulsion of a rigorous examination, the woman confessed that Rufinus was the author of the whole plot, nor did she even conceal the fact of her adultery with him. Reference was immediately made to the law, and as order and justice required, the judges ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... the principles of the present government—it was the same before the revolution, (except that the agents of the ancient system were not so brutal and despotic as the soldiers of the republic,) and compulsion was always deemed necessary where there was no stimulant but ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... and of outer sense, pleadingly assured that she would at once be sent back under flag of truce, with compassion deepening to compulsion and with a vague inkling that, failing the white flag, this might be heaven's leading back to Callender House and the jewel treasure, to Mobile and to Hilary, she gave her aid. Beyond the thicket ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... irascible man's nervous, hurried and harried scrawl, written with sputtering pen that at several places tore clean through the paper, and written under the compulsion of his soul and his good sense, received from the best of women an answer in her calmest hand, deliberately calculated to give him pain, at the same time as to convey to him unambiguously that, as far as ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... extremely deep, and unusually precipitate. It was made through a clammy stone, that became oozier and wetter as I went down. For these reasons, I found the way long enough to give me time to recall a singular air of reluctance or compulsion with which he had ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens
... separation of the Union, and denying the right of a State to 'veto' an act of Congress; and in many other letters to be found in his memoirs, insisting upon the power even of the old confederacy to exercise 'COERCION over its delinquent members,' the States. 'Compulsion,' he says, 'was never so easy as in our case, where a single frigate would levy on the commerce of a State the deficiency of its contributions; nor more safe than in the hands of Congress, which has always shown that it would ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... I suppose, our old friend "compulsion" again. We hate Prussianism in the realm of thought as much as in the realm of action. If I tell you you've got to believe so-and-so, your disposition is to refuse to do anything of the sort. It was the voluntary instinct ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... [439] Multus instare is rather a poetical phrase for multum, 'greatly,' or 'repeatedly.' [440] Ambiundo cogere, 'to oblige a person by flattering words;' a very expressive phrase, signifying that kind of compulsion which is effected by flattery and intreaties. [441] For the expression aliquid mihi volenti est, 'a thing accords with my wishes,' see Zumpt, S 420, note. Neque corresponds with et: on the one hand, it was not believed that the service in the army was agreeable ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)
... and would be glad to see him replaced by an incumbent with private means and no failings to be apologised for with a shrug of the shoulders. Sir Harry, he knew, was aware of these hateful lapses, though too delicate to allude to them, and far too charitable to use them (unless under compulsion) as a lever for getting rid of him. And this knowledge was perhaps the worst of his shame. Yet what could he do? since to surrender Langona was to starve. "Your Parson might at least make a beginning," ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... that by possibility such an abuse may exist: but, prima fronte, there is no reason to presume it. The House of Commons is not, by its complexion, peculiarly subject to the distempers of an independent habit. Very little compulsion is necessary, on the part of the people, to render it abundantly complaisant to ministers and favorites of all descriptions. It required a great length of time, very considerable industry and perseverance, no vulgar policy, the union of many men and many tempers, and the concurrence of events ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... which, after long threatening on the Swedish side, had broken out into unwelcome actuality, in Anton Ulrich's time; and which could not, with all the Czarina's industry, be got rid of or staved off; Sweden being bent upon the thing, reason or no reason. War not to be spoken of, except on compulsion, in the most voluminous History! It was the unwisest of wars, we should say, and in practice probably the contemptiblest; if there were not one other Swedish War coming, which vies with it in these particulars, of which we shall be obliged ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... so that he was deprived of her congenial companionship; and, in spite of his fun and buoyancy, his letters to her show his extreme wretchedness. Years afterwards he told the Duchesse d'Abrantes that the cruel weight of compulsion under which he was crushed till 1822 made his struggles for existence, when once he was free, seem comparatively light. Continually worried by his nervous, irritable mother, deprived of independence, of leisure, of quiet, he saw his dreams of future fame vanish like smoke, and the hated lawyer's ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... yourself, you will be compelled to chastise many of the peers,—and this is not favorable,—and you will certainly be thought to be setting some of them right in anger rather than in justice. No one believes that those who have the power to use compulsion can execute judgment with justice, but everybody thinks that out of shame they spread out a mere phantom and rough picture of government in front of the truth, in order that under the legitimate name of court they may fulfill their desire. This ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... some compulsion, she was making an exposition of her small plans. Mrs. Bates was made to understand how some of the old Dearborn Seminary girls were trying to start a sort of clubroom in some convenient down-town building for typewriters and saleswomen and others employed in business. There was to be a room where ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... under no compulsion to choose his words. He met the detective's searching gaze unflinchingly. Fate, after terrifying him, had been kind. If Furneaux had expressed himself differently— if, for instance, he had said: "Had you ever before seen the man?" or "Have you now any reason for believing that you ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... then he caught himself trying to smother a yawn. His companions at the table could not understand a young man of twenty-eight years who drank nothing but water, scorned all enjoyment in eating, and only laughed forcedly under compulsion. At last, disturbed by the continued taciturnity of their host, they rose from the table sooner than their wont, and prepared to take leave. Before their departure, Arbillot the notary, passed his arm familiarly through that of Julien and led him into an adjoining ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... mission, if not one of more importance, was of still greater delicacy—it was to ask the hand of the Duke of Brunswick's daughter for the Prince of Wales. This was a marriage by compulsion, and the wrath of the prince fell upon the noble negotiator. He never forgave Lord Malmesbury, and he quickly alienated himself from the princess: the unfortunate result is fully known. In 1796, and 1797, Lord Malmesbury was engaged in the most important negotiation of his life. The ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... Peace was arrested and charged with being in possession of stolen property. She was taken to London and tried at the Old Bailey before Mr. Commissioner Kerr, but acquitted on the ground of her having acted under the compulsion ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... is the case generally, it was much more the case in the early world than it is now. The religion of a shrine in old times consisted of a certain story about the god, and certain acts done before or near the object which represented him. There was no compulsion, however, to believe the story if a man did the acts or took part in them. As to his private beliefs no one inquired; if he took part in the proper acts of worship he counted as a religious man, unless he went so far as openly to flout the current ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... St. Peter, without any scrupulous inquiry into the creed of the apostle. [78] His favorite Goths, and even his mother, were permitted to retain or embrace the Athanasian faith, and his long reign could not afford the example of an Italian Catholic, who, either from choice or compulsion, had deviated into the religion of the conqueror. [79] The people, and the Barbarians themselves, were edified by the pomp and order of religious worship; the magistrates were instructed to defend the just immunities of ecclesiastical persons ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... extravagance, neglected all rules and application, wore out the patience of the authorities, and the liberality of his uncle, and, after about a year's trial, was withdrawn from the University to save him from retiring by compulsion. He was then sent to travel for a year under the prudent care of his elder brother. It will be unnecessary to track them through their wanderings; suffice it to say, that they did what young gentlemen travelling ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... overemphasizes the delights opened by civilization to the humbler class of men. He gives large space in his discussion to the power of will; and, indeed, one of the main advantages he ascribed to government was the compulsion it puts upon us to allow the categories of time and space a part in our calculations. He does not, being in his own life entirely free from avarice, regard the appetite for riches as man's main motive to existence; though no one was more urgent in his insistence ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... is the daily life of every one who lives according to that truth. This leads to life eternal, because it leads to God. But the gate and the way will do no one any good unless it be entered and the way followed. And God compels no one to enter in opposition to one's own will. Entrance is not of compulsion, but of choice. Life and death are set before the sinner's eyes. The Bread of Life and the Water of Life are placed within his reach. The Lord calls, saying: "Why do ye spend your money for that which is not bread; and your labor for that which satisfieth ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... this proclamation in French: "To my great regret German troops have been compelled to enter Belgian territory. They are acting under the compulsion of unavoidable necessity, for French officers in disguise have already violated Belgian neutrality by trying to reach Germany, via ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... policy which is to prevail in victory.... It is frightful to me to hear President Lincoln avow that (against the morality of his heart) his official duty is to do nothing for the coloured race except under compulsion and to save the whole Republic from foundering. He knows they are subjects of the Union, and owe allegiance to it, to the point of laying down their lives for it; yet he does not know that those who owe allegiance have an indefeasible right to protection. ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... disgrace, and being a lusty youth, it had taken the best efforts of several guards to hold him under the spout long enough to wet him—and themselves into the bargain. Though this was the first time since infancy that I had bathed under compulsion, I complied very readily, and even said to my friend, "This isn't so bad!" It is not permitted, under the law, to give out any news about prisoners to the world without, after they have once passed the portals; nevertheless, this memorable remark ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... unworthy husband! She is as surely Countess of Leicester as I am belted Earl. Nor can you, sir, point out that manner of justice which I will not render her at my own free will. I need scarce say I fear not your compulsion." ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... centuries had been divergent paths. The dominant claiming and exercising, as an heirloom, every civil and political right; the subordinate, with knowledge the most meager of their application or limits, by compulsion was made to concede the claim. Neither is it singular that participation in the exercise of these rights by the freedman should have created a determined opposition in a majority of the former, who claimed their fitness to rule as the embodiment of the wealth and ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... by persuasion, partly by compulsion, I prevailed with her to let the child be taken out of her room. This morning, as soon as it was light, I heard her bell ring; the poor little thing was at that moment in convulsions; and knowing that Lady Leonora rang to inquire for it, I went to prepare her ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... says of this policy in his book called A Fool's Errand: "It was a magnificent sentiment that underlay it all,—an unfaltering determination, an invincible defiance to all that had the seeming of compulsion or tyranny. One cannot but regard with pride and sympathy the indomitable men, who, being conquered in war, yet resisted every effort of the conqueror to change their laws, their customs, or even the personnel of their ruling class; and this, ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... respect a vow, I think you must respect your own,' said the parson, acquiring some further firmness. 'Had it been wrung from you by compulsion, moral or physical, it would have been open to you to break it. But as you proposed a vow when your husband only required a good intention, I think you ought to adhere to it; or what is the pride worth that led you ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... quickly crossed over and joined the rest of the men, who in the meantime had worked their way along the south bank of the river parallel with us. I felt very grateful to the old squaws for the assistance they rendered. They worked well under compulsion, and manifested no disposition to strike for higher wages. Indeed, I was so much relieved when we had crossed over from the island and joined the rest of the party, that I mentally thanked the squaws ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 1 • Philip H. Sheridan
... though crude and rough-and-tumble from his haste, was vivid passionate, rousing. He told how Doctor West was the victim of a plot, a plot whose great victim was the city and people of Westville, and this plot he outlined in all its details. He told of Doctor Sherman's part, at Blake's compulsion. He told of the secret league between Blake and Peck. He declared the truth of the charges for which Bruce was then lying in the county jail. And finally—though this he did at the beginning of his story—he drove home in ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... that we all live in the midst of lies, and that salvation is attained only by sincerity and by confession of one's own free will, not under compulsion. This is an idea familiar to Ibsen and Tolstoy; the added element, that conditions fit for complete repentance can be found only after death, is perhaps original. Martinenche thinks the failure of Los condenados was due to the fact that the Spanish public was not accustomed to ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos
... to the clerk, his explanation sounded as extravagant as it was vague. His father's name would have helped him, but Stuart did not feel justified in using it. For all he knew, his father might have reasons for not wishing to be known as conducting any such investigations. This compulsion of reserve confused the lad, and it was not surprising that the clerk went into the ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... one department whatsoever, supposing only that it exists in excess, disposes a man to some degree of sympathy with all other grandeur, however alien in its quality or different in its form. And upon this ground we presume the great Dictator to have had an interest in religious themes by mere compulsion of his own extraordinary elevation of mind, after making the fullest allowance for the special quality of that mind, which did certainly, to the whole extent of its characteristics, tend entirely to estrange him from ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... forbade all fear. Tom followed him in silence, and they went to the Terrace. Mr. Furze was not at home, but Jim knew he would back directly, and they waited in the kitchen, Tom much wondering, but restrained by some strange compulsion—he could not say what—not only to remain, but to refrain from asking any questions. Directly Mr. Furze returned, Jim went upstairs, with Tom behind him, and to the amazement of Mr. and Mrs. Furze presented him ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... his head. The jailer fetched a heavy folio, and as he himself could not read, he called another prisoner, who was made to read aloud a passage of the law, according to which a person who was present by compulsion at the commission of a crime, and voluntarily confessed it, would get off with a year's imprisonment. The jailer held the lantern close to the tanned face of the reader and nodded encouragingly to Bousquier. The latter was mumbling the Lord's Prayer. Greatly ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... acted—MYTHOLOGICALLY. The "non-free will" is mythology; in real life it is only a question of STRONG and WEAK wills.—It is almost always a symptom of what is lacking in himself, when a thinker, in every "causal-connection" and "psychological necessity," manifests something of compulsion, indigence, obsequiousness, oppression, and non-freedom; it is suspicious to have such feelings—the person betrays himself. And in general, if I have observed correctly, the "non-freedom of the will" is regarded as a problem from two ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... moment,—not to owe her hand to the compulsion of gratitude," answered gentleman Frank. "Gratitude! And you do not know her heart, then? Do not know—" the count interrupted himself, and went on after a pause. "Mr. Hazeldean, I need not say that we rank ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "even in our day vaccination is in the utmost danger" (p. 98). The instance is for various reasons not a happy one. It is not even precisely stated. I have never understood that vaccination is in much danger. Compulsory vaccination is perhaps in danger. But compulsion, as a matter of fact, was strengthened as the franchise went lower. It is a comparative novelty in English legislation (1853), and as a piece of effectively enforced administration it is more novel still (1871). I admit, however, that it is not endured in the United States; ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... giddy with custom that sound might not hear, But it woke up the rest, like an earthquake near; And that same night of the letter, some strange Compulsion of soul brought a sense of change; And at midnight the sound grew into a roll As the sound of all gath'rings from pole to pole, From pole unto pole, and from clime to clime, Like the roll of the wheels of the coming of time;— A sound as of cities, and sound as of swords Sharpening, and solemn ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt
... The compulsion of life had denied Jessie the niceness given girls by the complexities of modern civilization. She had been brought up close to raw stark nature. The habits of animals were familiar to her and the ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... his extraordinary garb of the moment, he having been obliged to accept the loan of garments that neither fitted him nor harmonized with one another. I mean to say, I did not care to have the chap suspect we would don tan boots, a frock-coat, and bowler hat except under the most tremendous compulsion. ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... the jungle of vines and followed Antonio down the long, rustling aisle. There was a compulsion in the day's routine to which she felt the necessity of yielding. She had traversed half the length of the greenhouse before it came to her that it was precisely to the day's routine that she couldn't return. Anything was better than that. ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... the best of friendship needs must be Uttered no more; yet was he so endowed That Poetry because of him is proud And he more noble for his poetry, Wherefore infallibly I obey the strong compulsion which this verse Lays on my lips with strange austerity — Now that his voice is silent — to rehearse For my own heart how he was ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... had long since disappeared in the battle of Mursa, and the public tranquillity was confirmed by the execution of the surviving leaders of a guilty and unsuccessful faction. A severe inquisition was extended over all who, either from choice or from compulsion, had been involved in the cause of rebellion. Paul, surnamed Catena from his superior skill in the judicial exercise of tyranny, * was sent to explore the latent remains of the conspiracy in the remote province of Britain. The honest indignation expressed by Martin, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... crime in her eyes is that they love (for laws are things pure love cannot understand). Wotan cannot but be obdurate; he pronounces sentence on Siegmund and goes off in a storming rage. Sadly Bruennhilda, comprehending nothing of the compulsion Wotan is subject to—for how should love know aught of greed for power?—picks up her weapons ("How heavy they have grown!" she says) and prepares to warn Siegmund he must die. (No warrior could look upon a Valkyrie save in the hour of his death; ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... of this, he told himself. At first, he had been forced to fight an almost uncontrollable compulsion to float down normally, but now it seemed quite sensible to grab the heavy fiber strands and swing forward till his feet were solidly on the ...
— The Weakling • Everett B. Cole
... law-giver who, to make his subjects obey, should prefer holding out rewards for compliance with his commands rather than denounce punishments for disobedience. But nature is yet more kind; she is gratuitously kind; she not only prefers inducement to threat or compulsion, but she adds more gratification than was necessary to make us obey her calls. How well might all creation have existed and been continued, though the air had not been balmy in spring, or the shade and the spring refreshing in summer; had the ...
— The Fallen Star; and, A Dissertation on the Origin of Evil • E. L. Bulwer; and, Lord Brougham |
