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Obstruction   Listen
noun
Obstruction  n.  
1.
The act of obstructing, or state of being obstructed.
2.
That which obstructs or impedes; an obstacle; an impediment; a hindrance. "A popular assembly free from obstruction."
3.
The condition of having the natural powers obstructed in their usual course; the arrest of the vital functions; death. (Poetic) "To die, and go we know not where, To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot."
Synonyms: Obstacle; bar; barrier; impediment; clog; check; hindrance. Obstruction, Obstacle. The difference between these words is that indicated by their etymology; an obstacle is something standing in the way; an obstruction is something put in the way. Obstacle implies more fixedness and is the stronger word. We remove obstructions; we surmount obstacles. "Disparity in age seems a greater obstacle to an intimate friendship than inequality of fortune." "The king expected to meet with all the obstructions and difficulties his enraged enemies could lay in his way."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Obstruction" Quotes from Famous Books



... near the horizon's rim, he spied a yeasty tumult of the sea, marking some obstruction at which the waves were tussling. In the midst of this white welter there was a shape that was almost spectral under the gray skies. The little schooner pitched so ferociously that only occasionally could he bring this object into the range ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day

... of the country and the home of the strike, was naturally the seat of the most serious complications. There was much rioting and destruction of property, and the railway service was completely disorganized. President Cleveland, on the ground of preventing obstruction of the mail service, and of protecting other federal interests, ordered a small number of federal troops to Chicago. Those interests were, he contended, menaced by "domestic violence" evidently beyond the control ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various

... knowledge; it will be sufficient that he is acquainted with common words and common things; he is neither required to mount elevations, nor to explore profundities; his passage is always on a level, along solid ground, without asperities, without obstruction. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson

... and touched the hearts of the bystanders. The grand western entrance presents you with the most perfect view of the choir—a magical circle, or rather oval—flanked by lofty and clustered pillars, and free from the surrounding obstruction of screens, &c. Nothing more airy and more captivating of the kind can be imagined. The finish and delicacy of these pillars are quite surprising. Above, below, around—every thing is in the purest style of the XIVth and XVth centuries. The central ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... respects superior to their own—a civilization that had been accomplished without iron and gunpowder—a civilization resting on an agriculture that had neither horse, nor ox, nor plough. The Spaniards had a clear base to start from, and no obstruction whatever in their advance. They ruined all that the aboriginal children of America had accomplished. Millions of those unfortunates were destroyed by their cruelty. Nations that for many centuries had ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper

... party, impelled by the apprehension that German ascendancy might be lost forever, drew together again and entered upon a policy of opposition which was dictated purely and frankly by racial aspirations. (p. 478) Attempts to embarrass the Government by obstruction proved, however, only indifferently successful. In 1888 the ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg

... bodies are opaque only to certain rays; the X-ray sees through this too too solid flesh. Bodies are ponderable only to our dull senses; to a finer hand than this the door or the wall might offer no obstruction; a finer eye than this might see the emanations from the living body; a finer ear might hear the clash of electrons in the air. Who can doubt, in view of what we already know, that forces and influences from out the heavens above, and from the earth beneath, ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs

... all events, has never been a faineant ruler. It has done wrong as well as right, but it has always done something. After the various false starts before referred to, it has, since getting fairly to work in 1856, completed forty-three years of talk, toil, legislation and obstruction. It may fairly be claimed that its life has been interesting, laborious and not dishonourable. It has exactly doubled in size since Governor Wynyard's day. Old settlers say that it has not doubled in ability. But old settlers, with all their virtues, are incorrigible laudatores ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves

... revolving and going to pieces. The power had to be snatched from the hands of the elements which were directly or indirectly serving the bourgeoisie and making use of the state apparatus as a tool of obstruction against the revolutionary demands ...
— From October to Brest-Litovsk • Leon Trotzky

... clerks of the British tribal system two thousand years ago, and no doubt an historian could spin delightful consequences; this does not alter the fact that these quaint complications in English affairs mean in the aggregate enormous obstruction and waste of human energy. It does not alter the much graver fact, the fact that darkens all my outlook upon the future, that we have never yet produced evidence of any general disposition at any time to straighten out or even suspend these fumbling intricacies and ineptitudes. ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells

... serve to extend and protract the vogue of those habits of thought on which an anthropomorphic cult rests. That is to say, they further the habits of thought characteristic of the regime of status. They are in so far an obstruction to the most effective organization of industry under modern circumstances; and are, in the first instance, antagonistic to the development of economic institutions in the direction required by the situation of ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen

... labor, without which production would be almost nothing, is subject to a thousand inconveniences, the worst of which is the demoralization of the laborer; machinery causes, not only cheapness, but obstruction of the market and stoppage of business; competition ends in oppression; taxation, the material bond of society, is generally a scourge dreaded equally with fire and hail; credit is necessarily accompanied ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon

... the box, and caught the reins. He attempted to pull in, but the screams of some of the passengers were enough of themselves to terrify any horses, and the young man's strength began to fail before they relaxed their speed at all. Still there was a wide road before them, with no apparent obstruction, and Charles, who tried to keep himself calm, hoped that the horses would soon be tired, and slacken their pace. He saw his companion's strength failing, and he leaned over and said, "Keep on one minute ...
— Principle and Practice - The Orphan Family • Harriet Martineau

... bluntly demanded the young fellow, his temper a little ruffled by what appeared an impertinent obstruction on the part ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid

... favourites less jealous of me, and unsuspicious of my object. I do not allude so much to the natives as to a European who is about the rajah, a certain Andre Cochut by name, originally a barber, who was my father's great enemy, and is now in high favour at court. I must be prepared for every obstruction he can throw in my way; but as he is not acquainted with the name I bear, he will not suspect who I am. You must appear as the person of chief importance, while you represent me as a friend whom you have brought for ...
— The Young Rajah • W.H.G. Kingston

... mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon." "The Spirit and the bride say come, and let him that is athirst come, and whosoever will let him take of the waters of life freely." Yes, freely. There is no obstruction. All are ...
— The Christian Foundation, June, 1880

... three-quarters of Wagner's life. The resistance which he met with among us Germans cannot be too highly valued or too highly honoured. People guarded themselves against him as against an illness,—not with arguments—it is impossible to refute an illness,—but with obstruction, with mistrust, with repugnance, with loathing, with sombre earnestness, as though he were a great rampant danger. The aesthetes gave themselves away when out of three schools of German philosophy they waged an absurd war against Wagner's principles ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.

... the honour, I would be content with my share of the reward offered. Two of them with four of the guards will enter the house and carry off the prince. The rest will wait outside and follow closely on the way down to the port ready to give aid if the others should meet with any obstruction. The whole will embark and sail ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty

... wonder if they'll have any obstruction. I should like to see some of that. I believe it's no ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, March 18, 1893 • Various

... Dallas, as he paused for a few moments to rest and gain his breath, before shooting into collar again, when the trace tightened, the sledge creaked and ground over the blocks of ice, and glided over the obstruction which had checked him for the moment, and the runners of the heavily loaded frame rushed down the slope, nearly knocking him off his feet. The young man growled savagely, for the blow was a ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn

... of the Sparling outfit. They were running two abreast in the road. But the drivers saw the obstruction in time, slowed down and dodged it. They were off at a tremendous speed, and a few moments later branched off on different roads, quickly disappearing in a cloud ...
— The Circus Boys on the Plains • Edgar B. P. Darlington

... hymen in a virgin is the great obstacle to be overcome. He is apt to conclude that this is all, that some force will be needed to break it down, and that therefore an amount of urgency even to the degree of inflicting considerable pain is justifiable. This is usually wrong. It rarely constitutes any obstruction, and, even when its rupturing may be necessary, it alone seldom ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis

... followed was a thing to live in memory. From the nature of the land, gently rolling to the horizon without an obstruction the height of a man's hand, there was no possibility of escape for the quarry. The outcome was as mathematically certain as a problem in arithmetic; the only uncertain element was that of time. At first the jack seemed to be gaining, but gradually ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge

... admiral now swung his ship around and started hastily back. Just as she had fairly started in the reverse course an 8-inch shell from the Olympia struck her fairly in the stern and drove inward through every obstruction, wrecking the aft-boiler and blowing up the deck in its explosion. It was a fatal shot. Clouds of white smoke were soon followed by the red glare of flames. For half an hour longer the crew continued to work ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris

... of prickly wire entwined around stakes driven in front of the trenches. This obstruction is supposed to prevent the Germans from taking lodgings in your dugouts. It also affords the enemy artillery rare sport ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey

... parochial parasites gave us so much trouble that we twice returned into Court to beg to have certain extracts from the Judge's notes re-read. Nine of us had not the smallest doubt about those passages, neither, I believe, had any one in the Court; the dunder-headed triumvirate, having no idea but obstruction, disputed them for that very reason. At length we prevailed, and finally the Jury returned into Court at ten minutes ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens

... the time when my father hired a teacher into his house, it was for what is termed the winter quarter, and I was then somewhat too young to be tied down to the regular routine of school discipline; and if older when boarded away, the other obstruction to salutary progress began to operate grievously against me. I acquired bit by bit the common education—reading, writing, and arithmetic. So far as I remember, grammar was not much taught at any of these schools, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... Wessels—certainly one of the most intrepid and fearless officers of the whole Boer Army—made direct for the two railway gates, near which a blockhouse had been erected. These gates he opened, so that the burghers could proceed without any obstruction. Then in the face of blockhouses on every side, guards and armoured trains, we passed over the line. We were exposed to a shower of bullets, and to a terrific pom-pom fire, from the armoured train, but, to our amazement, ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald

... be placed on a satisfactory basis until it is regulated by law. For the good of the service itself, for the protection of those who are intrusted with the appointing power against the waste of time and obstruction to the public business caused by the inordinate pressure for place, and for the protection of incumbents against intrigue and wrong, I shall at the proper time ask Congress to fix the tenure of the minor offices of the several Executive Departments and ...
— Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Vol. VIII.: James A. Garfield • James D. Richardson

... may prescribe the terms and conditions for licensing taverns, peddlers, and public vehicles. They have control of streets, bridges and public grounds; and have authority to construct bridges and pavements, and to regulate the use and prevent the obstruction of the highways. They may establish and maintain sewers and drains. They may construct and control public wharves, and regulate and license ferries. They may establish and regulate markets. They may provide a police force and a fire department. They may ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn

... obliterate; that when the members assemble the, will be proposing to do something, and what that something may be, will depend on actual circumstances; that being an organized body, under habits of subordination, the first obstruction to enterprise will be already surmounted; that the moderation and virtue of a single character have probably prevented this Revolution from being closed as most others have been, by a subversion of that liberty ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... hole. Of course, they were quickly stopped and again fastened to the sleds, which on account of the narrowness of the tunnel had to be backed in. Cautiously they worked, and soon were only within four or five feet of the obstruction, whatever it was, that prevented the pole being pushed along ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young

... had stretched one hand towards Nellie; the other he had laid on his heart, where it seemed to encounter some sort of hard obstruction. This he vaguely fingered, wondering what it might be, while he gave his order to Barrett. With a sudden cry he dipped his hand into his breast-pocket and drew forth the bottle he had borne away from Mr. Druce's. ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm

... he was excited, that his language was extravagant. But after he had walked off and left me I told Dickinson that he ought to be given a chance, and one of our younger financiers, Murphree, went to Perry and pointed out that he had nothing to gain by obstruction; if he were only reasonable, he might come into the new corporation on the same terms with ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... his youthful ken No cold obstruction fetters; He quickly learns the "types" of men, And ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson

... crews had made considerable progress in weakening the heavy supports. As soon as these should be cut out and the backing removed, the mere sawing through of the massive sill should carry away the whole obstruction. ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White

... resented this lordly obstruction, he did not discover it by word or feature. He went on humming a tune without words as he worked, handing out biscuits and ham to the hungry crew. Jim had eaten his breakfast already, and was ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden

... continue up the Rue St. Honore. I got into the rear of this guard by turning through the next opening. The court of the Louvre was unguarded and empty, and passing through it, I got a glimpse of a picturesque bivouac of troops in the Carrousel. Seeing no obstruction, I went in that direction, and penetrated to the very rear of a squadron of cuirassiers, who were dismounted, forming the outer line of the whole body. There may have been three or four thousand men of all arms assembled in this spot, chiefly, ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper

... the rope, my fear diminished, and I went cautiously down to the bottom. Here I waited for Dunne, and we both of us silently stole along in the dark, for the moon had gone in, and we did not meet with the least obstruction. Our out of door's assistants had the prudence to get entirely out of sight. Dunne led me to a hiding-place in a safe part of the town, and committed me to the care of a seafaring man, who promised to get me ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth

... survival of the last idea in the "Selections," and in Clause X. of the conditions under which, in 1873, the first leave to mine was granted by the Government of Mysore, it is declared that, "In the event of the grantee causing annoyance or obstruction to any class of the people, or to the officers of Government, the chief commissioner reserves the power of annulling the mining right thus granted." But such apprehensions, I need hardly say, have long since passed away, and ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot

... skeleton, no colourless thing, no lichened tree, was she. Not Death, my friends, but Life, is the bride of this doomed fortieth year! Was animation ever vivider in contrast with obstruction? Her hair would kindle the frosty shades to a throb of vitality: it would be sunshine in the subterranean sphere. The very thinking of her dispersed that realm of the poison hue, and the eternally inviting phosphorescent, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... them down to 7/8 I was not seriously alarmed, but felt that it was due to some little local trouble (as that the manager had fallen down the main shaft and was preventing the gold being shot out properly), and that, when the obstruction had been removed, Jaguars would ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne

... light was by no means perfect. The doorway, for obvious reasons, was narrow and there was a huge rock, long ago rolled inside with much travail, which could on occasion be utilized in blocking the narrow passage. Barely room to squeeze by this obstruction existed at the doorway. The sneaking but dangerous hyena had a keen scent and was full of curiosity. The monster bear of the time was ever hungry and the great cave tiger, though rarer, was, as has been shown, a haunting dread. Great attention was paid to doorways in ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo

... at present," said the doctor quietly to his assistants. "There are various methods of removing an obstruction. I ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor

... summer here. So equable and moderate is the temperature, that, we were assured, a person might, without inconvenience, wear either thick or thin clothing, all the year round. With such a climate, and with a fertile soil, it would seem that this must be almost a Paradise. There is a great obstruction, however, to the welfare of the inhabitants, in the want of water. It rains so seldom that the ground is almost burnt up, and many cattle actually perish from thirst. It is said that no less than thirty thousand persons have ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge

... you know, I was away from my place for six years, but in the meantime my nut trees grew and yielded. The past season has been most severe on nut trees and plants. Last winter the winds came straight across the land without any apparent obstruction, and it blew all winter long and we had no snow. Then a dry summer with a little moisture in the fall has created a situation that was never known before. Last year I gathered nine large baskets of filberts but this year I secured ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fifth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... enumeration of particular losses [174] might lead us to suppose; the Renaissance, in its most ambitious mood and with amplest resources, having resumed the ancient classical tradition there, with no break or obstruction, as it had happened, in any very considerable work of the middle age. Immediately before him, on the square, steep height, where the earliest little old Rome had huddled itself together, arose the palace of the Caesars. Half-veiling the vast substruction of rough, brown ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater

... exercise of cleverness, even where most successful; clever attempted reproduction of what was conceived by another faculty, and foolishly let pass away. If I go on, even hurry the more to get on, with the printing,—it is to throw out and away from me the irritating obstruction once and forever. I have corrected it, cut it down, and it may stand and pledge me to doing better hereafter. I say, too, in excuse to myself, unlike the woman at her spinning-wheel, 'He thought of his flax on the ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett

... ground had evidently been recently cleared, and there was no obstruction, but as we crept closer to the house—for our curiosity had now become irresistible—we found ourselves crawling through grass so tall that if we had stood erect it would have risen ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss

... and I don't know that it need. Ye're an obstruction—the like of you—ye're in my path. And anyone in my path doesn't stay there long; or, if he does, he stays there on my terms. And my terms are chimneys in the Centry where I need 'em. It'll do ye a power of good, too, to know that ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... laborious plunges, and broad scatterings of obstruction, the willing horse ploughed out his way, himself the while wrapped up in white, and caked in all his tufty places with a crust that flopped up and down. The rider, himself piled up with snow, and bearded with a berg of it, from ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... for the slightest noise would betray them. After a while the officer got into his boat again, saying he would send some men off to warp the vessel into the castle dock, as the fuel was required by the garrison there. As the barge was making its way towards the watergate, it struck upon a hidden obstruction in the river and began to leak rapidly. The situation of those in the hold was now terrible, for in a few minutes the water rose to their knees, and the choice seemed to be presented to them of being drowned like rats there, or leaping overboard, in which ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty

... of the government, or as a man, until he is obliged to consider whether he will treat me, his neighbor, for whom he has respect, as a neighbor and well-disposed man, or as a maniac and disturber of the peace, and see if he can get over this obstruction to his neighborliness without a ruder and more impetuous thought or speech corresponding with his action. I know this well, that if one thousand, if one hundred, if ten men whom I could name—if ten honest ...
— On the Duty of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau

... fair way of proceeding. Your Lordships will then judge whether Mr. Hastings's conduct at the time, his resisting an inquiry, preventing his servant appearing as an evidence, discountenancing and discouraging his colleagues, raising every obstruction to the prosecution, dissolving the Council, preventing evidence and destroying it as far as lay in his power by collateral means, be not also such presumptive proofs as give double force to all the positive proof we produce ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... hardest to get along with. Paying for the privilege of travelling over any road was something they were totally unused to, and they did not take to it kindly. They were pleased with my road and liked to travel over it, until they came to the toll-gate. This they seemed to look upon as an obstruction that no man had a right to place in the way of a free-born native of the mountain region. They appeared to regard the toll-gate as a new scheme for holding up travellers for the purpose of robbery, and many of them evidently thought me a kind of freebooter, ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman

... ungainly lope which was their best effort at speed were half a dozen Throgs emerging from the river section. Their attitude suggested panic-stricken flight, and when one tripped on some unseen obstruction and went down—to fall beneath a descending tongue of phosphorescence—he uttered a strange high-pitched squeal, thin and faint, but still a note of ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton

... occlusion, blockade; shutting up &c v.; obstruction &c (hindrance) 706; embolus; contraction &c 195; infarction; constipation, obstipation^; blind alley, blind corner; keddah^; cul-de-sac, caecum; imperforation^, imperviousness &c adj.; impermeability; stopper &c 263. V. close, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... is supposed. If we suppose activities to go on outside of our experience, it is in forms like these that we must suppose them, or else give them some other name; for the word 'activity' has no imaginable content whatever save these experiences of process, obstruction, striving, strain, or release, ultimate qualia as they are of the life ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James

... Richards', the colonel in command. The scow had departed in charge of the captain, who had orders to do nothing to the barrier till he heard a signal shot; then he was to respond with the unmistakable blunderbuss, and batter down the obstruction. Squire Walker, Mr. Perrowne, and Maguffin had patrolled, without meeting even a passing team or wayfarer; but the colonel judged it best to get off the road without delay. Accordingly the waggons were left in Richards' shed, and the infantry doubled forward after the ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell

... of London, and only saved from rougher handling by two old soldiers who walked at his stirrups and held back the ruffians until the police came to the rescue. The Reform Bill had already become a law, Wellington and his irreconcilable friends, perceiving the futility of further obstruction, absenting themselves from the chamber rather than vote contrary to their consciences. Even after the reformed Parliament had come into existence this arch aristocrat could see nothing but evil in the outlook. He complained that the House of Commons "had swallowed ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy

... arms, happily unconscious. Breathing an agonized prayer to heaven, he looked around for any possibility of escape. Just then an express-wagon was driven furiously toward them, its driver seeking his way out by the same path that Dennis had chosen. As he reached them the man saw the hopeless obstruction, and wheeled his horses. As he did so, quick as thought, Dennis threw Christine into the bottom of the wagon, and, clinging to it, climbed into it himself. He turned her face downward from the fire, and, covering his own, he crouched beside ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe

... needed. When the period of political readjustment, not yet surely begun, is over, the Republican party will have been supplanted by a party inheriting many distinguishing articles of its creed; but the Democratic party will remain as the party of obstruction, claiming descent from Jefferson but not the true representative of the eternal truths with which his name is associated. Around the anti-national idea the ultra-conservatives, the cormorants of society, the panderers to vice, the white-liners of ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various

... Curzon's complaint about "crawling" taxi-cabs was ostensibly based upon the obstruction thus caused to more rapidly moving traffic. But I fancy that it was really due to an inherent belief that the motor-car is a noble creature, only happy when exceeding the speed-limit and dashing through police-controls, and that to compel the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 21, 1920 • Various

... N. prevention, preclusion, obstruction, stoppage; embolus, embolism [medical]; infarct [medical]; interruption, interception, interclusion|; hindrance, impedition|; retardment[obs3], retardation; embarrassment, oppilation|!; coarctation[obs3], stricture, restriction; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... was comforted by a five-bar gate that appeared before him, as he never doubted that there the career of his hunter must necessarily end. But alas! he reckoned without his host. Far from halting at this obstruction, the horse sprang over with amazing agility, to the utter confusion and disorder of his owner, who lost his hat and periwig in the leap, and now began to think in good earnest that he was actually mounted on the back of the devil. He recommended ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... railways of the country, whether they be managers or operative employees, let me say that the railways are the arteries of the nation's life and that upon them rests the immense responsibility of seeing to it that those arteries suffer no obstruction of any kind, no inefficiency or slackened power. To the merchant let me suggest the motto, "Small profits and quick service," and to the shipbuilder the thought that the life of the war depends upon him. The food and the war supplies must be carried across the seas, no matter ...
— In Our First Year of the War - Messages and Addresses to the Congress and the People, - March 5, 1917 to January 6, 1918 • Woodrow Wilson

... in this table is perfectly transparent to light, that is to say, all waves within the limits of the visible spectrum pass through it without obstruction; but for the waves of slower period, emanating from our heated plate of copper, enormous differences of absorptive power are manifested. These differences illustrate in the most unexpected manner the influence of chemical combination. Thus the elementary gases, oxygen, hydrogen, ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... strove, by rigid examination, to elicit political secrets; the agents and officials maintained an unmitigated reserve; what transpired in the world, how it fared with their country and their loved ones, was unknown; existence so near to death itself, in passivity, "cold obstruction," alienation from all the interests, the hopes, and the very impressions of human life, it is impossible to imagine. Subsequently reforms were introduced, and the rigors of this system somewhat modified; but the era of Foresti's confinement at Spielberg ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various

... a little volume entitled "Dyets Dry Dinner," (1599) says that "Tobacco was translated out of India in the seede or roote; native or sative in our own fruitfullest soils. It cureth any griefe, dolour, imposture, or obstruction proceeding of colde or winde, especially in the head or breast. The fume taken in a pipe is good against Rumes, ache in the head, stomacke, lungs, breast; also in want of meate, drinke, ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings

... however, was bent on trying the experiment; and Vernon consented to go on what he considered as a forlorn hope. He made his speech and his motion; but the reception which he met with was such that he did not venture to demand a division. This feeble attempt at obstruction only made the impetuous current chafe the more. Howe immediately moved two resolutions; one attributing the load of debts and taxes which lay on the nation to the Irish grants; the other censuring all who had been concerned in advising or passing those grants. Nobody ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... something to make you feel as you do on a hunting morning, when there are half-a-dozen riding-habits speckling the field—a whole glorious day your own among them! This view appeared to me very captivating, save for an obstruction in my mind, which was, that Goddesses were always conceived by me as statues. They talked and they moved, it was true, but the touch of them was marble; and they smiled and frowned, but they had no variety ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... Dashall, "the best reparation you can now make for your intrusion is a speedy retreat. Time is escaping, so come along;" and taking him by the arm, they walked down the stairs together, and then proceeded to re-fit without further obstruction, in order to be ready for Sparkle, who was expected ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... "will" is used to designate the response to external obstruction as well as the response to internal conflict. In fact, nothing is so characteristically "will" as the overcoming of resistance that checks progress towards a desired result. As "decision" is the response to internal conflict of tendencies, so "effort" is the response to ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth

... father and saw his arms stretched out a little with nervous excitement to seize the volume, her hazel eyes filled with pity; she hastened to lay the book on his lap, and kneeled down by him, looking up at him as if she believed that the love in her face must surely make its way through the dark obstruction that shut out everything else. At that moment the doubtful attractiveness of Romola's face, in which pride and passion seemed to be quivering in the balance with native refinement and intelligence, was transfigured to the most lovable womanliness by mingled ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... companions to flight and compelled him to arise. He rose by the help of two slaves, but immediately fell down dead. His death no doubt arose from suffocation by the dense vapour, as well as from an obstruction of his stomach, apart which had been always weak and liable to inflammation and other discomforts. When daylight returned, i.e. after three days, his body was found entire, just as it was, covered with the clothes in which ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell

... not only as a floating anchor, but as a breakwater, and the white crested waves, which came on as if they would break upon the boat, seemed robbed of half their violence by the obstruction to their course, and passed under the felucca without breaking. For forty-eight hours the gale continued; at the end of that time it ceased almost as suddenly as it had begun. The sun shone brightly out, the clouds ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty

... with such a tone of demon-hate, with such language!—no professed harlot ever had a fouler vocabulary than she: though two rooms off, I heard every word—the thin partitions of the West India house opposing but slight obstruction to her wolfish cries. ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte

... an open glade, which the keen sunlight lit without obstruction. Obviously arranged, was his first appraisal of the tableau there presented. A woman in blue half-knelt, half-lay, upon the young grass, while a man, bending over, fettered her hands behind her back. A swarthy ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell

... and fine—Nature's lavish generosities to her creatures. At least to all of them except man. For those that fly she has provided a home that is nobly spacious—a home which is forty miles deep and envelops the whole globe, and has not an obstruction in it. For those that swim she has provided a more than imperial domain—a domain which is miles deep and covers four-fifths of the globe. But as for man, she has cut him off with the mere odds and ends of the creation. She has given him the thin skin, the meagre skin which ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... command where I adore.' Why, she may command me: I serve her, she is my lady. Why, this is evident to any formal capacity; there is no obstruction in this;—And the end,—What should that alphabetical position portend? If I could make that resemble something in me.—Softly!—M, O, ...
— Twelfth Night; or, What You Will • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... force that enthusiasm can give to enable a man to succeed in any great enterprise of life. Without it, the obstruction and difficulty he has to encounter on every side might compel him to succumb; but with courage and perseverance, inspired by enthusiasm, a man feels strong enough to face any danger, to grapple with any difficulty. What an enthusiasm was that ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles

... the senator's son saw the obstruction. He set both the hand-brake and the foot-brake, and all heard the wheels and the chains scrape over the stones and dirt. But the car could not be stopped, and two seconds later crashed into the tree limb, a branch of which came up, ...
— Dave Porter in the Gold Fields - The Search for the Landslide Mine • Edward Stratemeyer

... in regard to Negro labor point to the fact that the Negroes are gradually approaching their due place in industry, and that they are likely in time to obtain it, provided they do not perpetually encounter effective obstruction by the prejudice of labor unions, by the force of foreign labor and by the failure of peace-time industry to utilize his labor to its ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various

... four persons, alone and totally unarmed, travelled at midnight through the wildest and most dangerous regions. Fortunately the bright moon looked smilingly down upon us, and illuminated our path so brightly, that the horses carried us with firm step over every obstruction. I was, I must confess, grievously frightened by the shadows! I saw living things moving to and fro— forms gigantic and forms dwarfish seemed sometimes approaching us, sometimes hiding behind masses of rock, or sinking back into nothingness. Lights and shadows, fears and anxiety, thus took ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer

... Macon, that we first received official news of what was going on at Paris. It was brought us by M. ***. The unskilful manner in which the royalist party superintended the police of the roads, was truly astonishing. Not one of its emissaries escaped us, while ours went and came without any obstruction. Rage or fear must have turned the brains of all the royalists. M. *** assured the Emperor, that the national guard appeared determined to defend the king, and that the king had declared, he would not quit the Tuileries. "If he choose ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon

... all day with the lining of his hat turned down over his forehead; for the thousandth time those girls are screaming with laughter at the sight of him. Ha, ha! He has slipped and fallen upon the floor, and makes an obstruction; his companions treat him like a horse that is 'down' in the street. 'Look out for his 'eels!' cries one; and another, 'Sit on his 'ed!' If this doesn't come to an end we shall die of laughter. Lot one of the funniest of the party ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing

... see him fly. To my astonishment he held his ground. Down the hillside I went, nearer and nearer, till I came to a barbed-wire fence, which bounded the cranberry field close by the heron's pool. As I worried my way through this abominable obstruction, he stepped into a narrow, shallow ditch and started slowly away. I made rapidly after him, whereupon he got out of the ditch and strode on ahead of me. By this time I was probably within twenty yards ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey

... contested. And in this conflict in support of the integrity of the self, anger, hate, fear, submissiveness, all the nuances of emotion may be aroused. The themes of great tragedy are built largely on this theme of insistent selfhood. Any obstruction of the self-integrity one has set one's self may provoke a violent reaction. It may be interference with one's love, as in the case of Medea or Othello, the pain of ingratitude as in Lear, the conflict between "the lower and ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... way; the breadth of the river here being about a hundred yards, very deep, and running with some velocity, the water quite fresh. He having returned with this information, I sent him, King, and Frew, mounted on the strongest horses, to follow the banks of the river till noon, to see if there is any obstruction to prevent my travelling by its banks. In two hours they returned with the sad tidings that the banks were broken down by watercourses, deep, broad, and boggy; this is a great disappointment, for it will take me a day or two longer than I expected in reaching the sea-coast, in consequence of having ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart

... Gambia. To his great surprise and mortification, however, he received an answer from Mr. Willy, that no vessels of that kind were to be had, indeed, instead of using every exertion to promote the cause for which Stibbs had been sent out by the company, Willy appeared to throw every possible obstruction in his way, as if he were actuated by a mean and petty spirit of jealousy of the success, which was likely to await him. A few days, however, after the answer of Willy had been received, a boat brought down his dead body, he having fallen a victim to the fever of the climate, which had previously ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish

... rarely constructed. Instead, apartment houses are hollowed out from the banks. But in the ease of a town-site on shallow, narrow waters, dams are absolutely necessary to insure sufficient depth to conceal the beavers, and to prevent obstruction by ice. The entrance to the beaver's home is almost always under the water. This arrangement safeguards the home ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon

... took note of every obstruction or vehicle that might block her, Cora drove her car on. Around corners, and through busy streets she piloted it. They were but a block from the center of ...
— The Motor Girls • Margaret Penrose

... began to travel more leisurely and indulge in conversation and frolic. Sometimes they stopped to exchange a word with the guards who were stationed at certain distances along the canal. These men, in winter, attend to keeping the surface free from obstruction and garbage. After a snowstorm they are expected to sweep the feathery covering away before it hardens into a marble pretty to look at but very unwelcome to skaters. Now and then the boys so far forgot their ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge

... generation of educational administrators has been steadily at work developing what is called the elective system in the institutions of education which deal with the ages above twelve. It has been a slow, step-by-step process, carried on against much active opposition and more sluggish obstruction. The system is a method of educational organization which recognizes the immense expansion of knowledge during the nineteenth century, and takes account of the needs and capacities of the individual child and youth. Now, Emerson laid down in ...
— Four American Leaders • Charles William Eliot

... The big sailor was very wary about stepping near the five prisoners, but he forced Drew, time and again, against the body of the prone and unconscious man on the deck. Three times his naked antagonist all but sprawled over this obstruction. ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes

... quite right about the House of Commons. They will pass the Land Bill, I suppose, but scarcely anything else. Most of the obstruction is unintended; loquacity, vanity, and fear of constituents do more mischief than faction. I am not sure that it is an unmixed evil that the legislative coach should be compelled ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton

... were heard, and Anderson proved true to his bargain. He immediately reversed his engines, and, when he had backed in as close as he thought safe, sent a boat ashore for us. We got into it without any obstruction from the cowering natives, who only shrank from us in horror, now that their prayers had failed to move us. The moment our boat was made fast to the steamer's davit ropes and we were pulled out of the water, "full speed ahead" was rung from the bridge. We were raised ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie

... neighbourhood of Mullinahone I witnessed the daily painful sight of the perversion of the labour of this country to the most profitless ends. Roads, which are now more than ever necessary to be kept in order, are in the course of obstruction, whilst waterlogged lands, reclaimable bottoms, and mountain slopes stand out in damning evidence of the indolence, neglect, and folly of man."—Letter of Lieut.-Colonel Douglas to Sir S. Routh, dated Clonmel, 28th January, 1847. ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke

... precaution, leaving them to this barbarous usage. I don't want to be hard upon you, but you are accountable for all this; you have made yourself so, and unless you wish to be regarded as a sharer in the iniquity, the least you can do by way of compensation, is not to make yourself an obstruction to the ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge

... girl's breast rose and fell tumultuously as she spoke, and her voice labored, as if some obstruction were ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... matters, deeply interested to find the microscopic obstruction which had so abruptly stopped the machinery of destiny for him, he was modest enough and sufficiently liberal-minded to admit to himself that Alma Hind-Willet was the exception that proved this rule. There ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers

... them did indeed seem a wide one. In the colonies there was universal wrath, oftentimes swelling into fury; in some places mobs, much sacking of houses, hangings and burnings in effigy; compulsion put upon king's officers publicly to resign their offices; wild threats and violence; obstruction to the distribution of the stamped paper; open menaces of forcible resistance, even of secession and rebellion; a careful estimating of the available armed forces among the colonies; the proposal for a congress of colonies to promote community of action, ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.

... body, and has a large range of movement at command; is now able to control the source of movement and to relax opposing muscles so that the movement may follow through; that is, may continue from its initiative in any part of the body to the desired climax, without muscular obstruction. The entire body is now ready and responsive to any call upon it, and the act of dancing becomes a pleasure and a joy it never was before, and never would have been but for the preliminary work as I have arranged it for the making of beautiful and ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn

... waves on the obstruction drawn across their path drowned his voice, and he shouted the mark once more. Then after ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer

... succession. The plenty and cheapness of good land, it has already been observed, are the principal causes of the rapid prosperity of new colonies. The engrossing of land, in effect, destroys this plenty and cheapness. The engrossing of uncultivated land, besides, is the greatest obstruction to its improvement; but the labour that is employed in the improvement and cultivation of land affords the greatest and most valuable produce to the society. The produce of labour, in this case, pays not only ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith

... boat full of the real stuff, not to mention that stocking crammed with silver duros that sometimes stuck into his ribs as he lay down on the bed in the stateroom! To make sleeping more comfortable he removed that annoying obstruction, and sina Tona said not a word. Was he not to be her husband? The money was all hers, and so long as the tavern paid as well as it was paying, there ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... opening is made. Streams rush down from the mountain to join the river; even raindrops lend their individually insignificant aid. All the forces of nature are subtly arrayed against the obstruction in the river channel. Suddenly, with the thunder of pent-up waters at last unleashed, the dam breaks, and the structures placed in the path by complacent and self-satisfied man are swept on to the sea like so much ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed

... travelers succeeded in escaping from Geo. C. Davis, of Harford county, Md. In order to carry out their plans, they took advantage of Whitsuntide, a holiday, and with marked ingenuity and perseverance, they managed to escape and reach Quakertown Underground Rail Road Station without obstruction, where protection and assistance were rendered by the friends of the cause. After abiding there for a short time, they were forwarded to the Committee in Philadelphia. Their ages ranged from nineteen to twenty-one, and they were apparently "servants" of a very superior order. The pleasure it ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... the Danube River, central Europe's connection to the Black Sea, runs through Serbia; since early 2000, a pontoon bridge, replacing a destroyed conventional bridge, has obstructed river traffic at Novi Sad; the obstruction is bypassed by a canal system, but the inadequate lock size limits the size of vessels which may pass; the pontoon bridge can be opened for large ships but has ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... who ever came. Thy BERTHO, from a thousand shades of men Who roam the prisons of our underworld, Pray, how can we distinguish? Would'st thou search? Thou hast the liberty. We will not lay The slightest new obstruction in thy way; And this is mercy which we did not deem We should extend towards an enemy. We do not comprehend that strange excess Of passion which hath made thee venture here. But love, at least, is harmless. Go thy ways." The innocent maidens, gathered round their Queen, Looked ...
— The Arctic Queen • Unknown

... of the ground is now varied by the mound raised over those who fell in the battle, but it was an unbroken plain when the Persians encamped on it. There are marshes at each end, which are dry in spring and summer and then offer no obstruction to the horseman, but are commonly flooded with rain and so rendered impracticable for cavalry in the autumn, the time of year at which the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various

... and all the truths of earth and of heaven that would instruct, enlighten, convict or correct them. Some men's minds, again, are not so much shut up as they are crooked, and warped, and narrow, and full of obstruction and opposition. Whereas here and there, sometimes on horseback and sometimes on foot; sometimes a learned man walking out of the city to take the air, and sometimes an unlettered countryman coming into the city to make his market, will have his ear hospitably open to every good man ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte

... Territory. Riot, violence, intimidation, destruction of ballot-boxes, expulsion and substitution of judges, neglect or refusal to administer the prescribed oaths, viva voce voting, repeated voting on one side, and obstruction and dispersion of voters on the other, were common incidents; no one dared to resist the acts of the invaders, since they were armed and commanded in frontier if not in military fashion, in many cases by men whose names then or after-wards were prominent or ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay

... ureter, and kidney as on the other localities. Physicians who have taken the pains to observe must have noticed, more than once, how the child afflicted with a phimosis has not only at times to wait for the stream of urine to appear, there seemingly being some obstruction to its starting, but how often such a case is afflicted with a stammering, halting urination. A child thus started out into life, with a defective kidney or kidneys, is sadly handicapped in his usefulness, comfort, ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino

... force which was exercised to great advantage by my people. This force eliminates both distance and obstruction and exposes to view the object sought even if it is located on the opposite side of the globe. Any mind, if sufficiently strong, can contract distance and bring any mundane scene within its range while penetrating solid matter as if it did ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson

... need to concern himself about any bloodthirsty beast that may be lurking in the jungle is not more obvious than that his ears are the biggest in the world. Now there are two ways of getting rid of an obstruction of this kind. One is to betake yourself to your thinking chair and pipe and to rake up the possibilities of the Pleiocene and Meiocene ages, and prove that when the immense ear of the elephant was evolved there must have been some carnivorous monster, ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)

... generally wore something when they bathed in public, but beyond the limits of the regular bath-houses, at the end of the Botanical Gardens, they seldom troubled themselves about matters of that kind; in fact, they preferred going in without any obstruction, because "they could swim ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne

... through the opposition made in that quarter, trying always to reach higher ground than the obstructing enemy; 26. and when they assailed the rear, Cheirisophus, quitting his place, and striving also to get above the enemy, removed the obstruction that was offered to the passage of that part of the army. Thus they relieved and supported each other with effect. 27. Sometimes, too, when the Greeks had ascended eminences, the Barbarians gave ...
— The First Four Books of Xenophon's Anabasis • Xenophon

... to the rue d'Assas. He found that while he sat still in the comfortable tonneau of the motor his head was fairly normal, and the world did not swing and whirl about in that sickening fashion. But when the car lurched or bumped over an obstruction it made him giddy, and he would have fallen ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman

... charging lines of the brigade, driving the advance force of the enemy pell-mell into a locust abatis where many were captured and sent to the rear; others were wounded by the fire of their own men. This abatis was a formidable and fearful obstruction. The entire brigade was arrested by it. But Gist's and Gordon's brigade charged on and reached the ditch, mounted the works and met the enemy in close combat. The colors of the Twenty-fourth were planted and defended on the parapet, and the enemy retired in our front some distance, ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore

... issue between Great Britain and the Neutrals were such as arise between a great naval Power intent upon ruining its adversary and that larger part of the world which remains at peace and desires to carry on its trade with as little obstruction as possible. It was admitted on all sides that a belligerent may search a neutral vessel in order to ascertain that it is not conveying contraband of war, and that a neutral vessel, attempting to enter a blockaded port, renders itself liable to forfeiture; but beyond these two points ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... that there is no progress justifying the ways of God to man, and that the mere consolidation of liberty is like the motion of creatures whose advance is in the direction of their tails. They deem that anxious precaution against bad government is an obstruction to good, and degrades morality and mind by placing the capable at the mercy of the incapable, dethroning enlightened virtue for the benefit of the average man. They hold that great and salutary things ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton

... the direction is pretty well indicated. The length of each step depends mainly upon whether it is made with the goodwill of both Houses at a time when there is no urgent demand for reform; or whether it is affected by obstruction on the part of the Upper House; or whether, as seems likely to be the case in New Zealand, it is brought about by the apathy of the Second Chamber. I doubt, however, whether even Victoria has reached finality in its Constitution, and it is difficult to prophesy what form the ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny

... slowing down reminds us of the obstruction of light as it enters the atmosphere of the earth, of the further impediment which the rays encounter if they pass from the air into the sea. In the main the causes which hinder a pulse committed to a cable are two: induction, and the electrostatic capacity of the wire, that is, the ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various

... where the street is most crowded, where it narrows, and losing the name of Cheapside, takes that of the Poultry, that the last of a series of stoppages occurred; a stoppage which, at the end of ten minutes, lost its inert character of mere obstruction, and developed into the livelier qualities of the row. There were oaths, contradictions, menaces: 'No, you sha'n't; Yes, I will; No, I didn't; Yes, you did; No, you haven't; Yes, I have;' the lashing of a whip, the interference ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli

... wearily by her side along the much-decorated streets that marked the grand Gasche of Tarn and Tarascon. The Hotel de Quinet stretched out its broad stone steps, covered with vaultings, absolutely across the street, affording a welcome shade, and no obstruction where wheeled carriages ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... in which we gained so much honour, and so little advantage, know that the privateers of France injured us more than its navies or its armies; and that a thousand victories on the continent, where we were only contending for the rights of others, were a very small recompense for the obstruction of our commerce; nor can he feel much tenderness for mankind, who would purchase by the ruin and distress of a thousand families, industrious and innocent, the momentary festivity of a triumph, or the idle glare of ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson

... heavy fish," reflected Arthur, and, even as he thought it, he saw a five-pound carp rise nearly to the surface, in order to clear the obstruction of the wall, and sink silently into ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard

... escaped the risk of an operation which is always a very dangerous one. I can say more: you have saved my life, for your method of autosuggestion has done alone what all the medicines and treatments ordered for the terrible intestinal obstruction from which I suffered for 19 days, had failed to do. From the moment when I followed your instructions and applied your excellent principles, my functions have ...
— Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion • Emile Coue

... being caught, and he bent all his energies toward overtaking him. The gloom of the night, that had now fairly descended, and the peculiar topography of the ground, made it an exceedingly difficult matter for both to keep their feet. The fugitive, catching in some obstruction, was thrown flat upon his face, but quickly recovered himself. Teddy, with a shout of exultation, sprung forward, confident that he had secured their persecutor at last, but the Irishman was caught ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis

... domestic spies, by whom, perhaps, she was even yet surrounded! The Cardinal, conceiving, from the impunity of his conduct, that he still held the Queen in check, through the influence of her fears of his disclosing her weakness upon the subject of the obstruction she threw in the way of her sister's marriage, did not resign the hope of converting that ascendency to ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 3 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe

... the evening tints we kept on and ever on, swiftly but smoothly, looking up at the sky and at the splendid walls. The sun went down. The chasm grew hazy with the soft light of evening and the mystery of the bends deepened. There was no obstruction and in about three miles from Alcove Brook we rather abruptly emerged into a beautiful small opening, where the immediate walls were no more than six hundred feet high. A river of considerable size flowed in on the left, through a ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

... brothers, and indeed all classes of inferiors, nothing is so efficacious as to let them know at the outset that you are going to have your own way. They may fret a little at first, and interpose a few puny obstacles, but it will be only a temporary obstruction; whereas, if you parley and hesitate and suggest, they will but gather courage and strength for a formidable resistance. It is the first step that costs. Halicarnassus understood at once from my one small shot that I was in a mood to be let ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various

... plains, along mountain-sides, through groves of trees, and over the smooth surface of frozen lakes and rivers, millions of misshapen and broken crystals are driven by the wind, piled up in heaps, or accumulated in confused masses under the lee of every obstruction, having been subjected on the way to such violence of agitation and collision that the characteristic beauty and symmetry of the material is ...
— Harper's Young People, February 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... said to have surprised Jugurtha.[925] Perhaps earlier messages of a more cheerful import had reached him from Rome during the days when successful obstruction seemed to be achieving its end, and had dulled the fears which the massacre of Cirta most have aroused even in a mind so familiar with the acquiescent policy of the senate. Yet even now he did not lose heart, nor did ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge

... wise would be more effectual than the foolish. I do not think any one whom I met took the matter up so passionately as I did; and I had a feeling that in our new colonies the reform would meet with less obstruction than in old countries bound by precedent and prejudiced by vested interests. Parliament was the preserve of the wealthy in the United Kingdom. There was no property qualification for the candidate in South Australia, ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence

... the direction of a little stream. The lower end of this cave became solidly filled with sand, and the water found an outlet farther back. All the limestone which formed the roof and walls of the middle portion of the cave is gone, a narrow ravine marking its course. The sandstone obstruction held its place, and now extends directly across the ridge between the two ravines. Its surface is an exact cast of the interior of the cave which it filled, and nodules of chert, remaining when the limestone dissolved, are still imbedded in its surface. The line of ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke

... have realized, a half-million dollars. Says this modern goddess: "The word Adam is from the Hebrew Adamah, signifying the red color of the ground, dust, nothingness. Divide the name Adam into two syllables, and it reads a dam or obstruction. This suggests the thought of something fluid, ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss

... had descended twenty steps, the upper panel was closed by some one in the bedroom, and the stairway became inky dark. Ten steps further, I stumbled and almost fell over a soft obstruction on the stairs. I stooped and examined it. Fearing that the duchess might fall when she reached it, I took it up. It was a lady's head-dress and veil. A few steps farther I picked up a lady's bodice and ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major

... defenseless on a modern battle-field. Solid balls of iron, flying through the air with a velocity which makes them invisible, would tear their way through the pikes and the shields, and the bodies of the men who bore them, without even feeling the obstruction. ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... the Lumini River entering 43 leagues above the Yellala, and he gives no professional opinion touching the navigability of the total of six greater rapids which, to judge from what I saw, can hardly offer any serious obstruction to the development ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... taught Washington that his present lack of money would be an obstruction, though possibly not a bar, to his hopes, and straightway his poverty became a torture to him which cast all his former sufferings under that held into the shade. He longed for riches now as he had ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 1. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner

... soldiers. He gratified Crassus by giving the desired relief to the farmers of the taxes. He confirmed Pompey's arrangements for the government of Asia, which the Senate had left in suspense. The Senate was now itself suspended. The consul acted directly with the assembly, without obstruction and without remonstrance, Bibulus only from time to time sending out monotonous admonitions from within doors that the season was consecrated, and that Caesar's acts had no validity. Still more remarkably, ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude

... at these bending and twisting Narrows the idea arose that it might be possible, by a little cutting, to do away with the worst bits and open up a straight channel. For there were two main places of obstruction, called the Devil's Elbow and Pear Drop Reach. But it is necessary to say this with caution, for tampering with great rivers like the Tigris may cause unthought-of trouble. It upsets the ...
— In Mesopotamia • Martin Swayne

... flux, by many other discharges, and by chronic diseases. Secondly, the matter may be vitiated in quality, and if it be sanguineous, sluggish, bilious or melancholy, and any of these will cause an obstruction in ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous

... renominated, and General George B. McClellan was nominated to run against him. And quite fittingly, Horatio Seymour, who was to have been leader of secession in the North (according to my information), who had lent his whole influence towards obstruction, was made chairman of the convention that ...
— Between the Lines - Secret Service Stories Told Fifty Years After • Henry Bascom Smith

... will inevitably descend to a vastly lower level. By cultivating a sensibility in touch and employing the technical means which will bring the interpreter's message to the world with the least possible obstruction, we reach the highest in the art. Those who would strain at gnats might contend that with the machinery of the instrument itself, intervening between the touch at the keyboard and the sounding wires, would make the influence of the emotions though ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke

... your distance. Whenever the men in front checked at some obstruction or paused to listen, all those behind closed up; and by the time those behind had run their noses against iron-shod heels the men in front were on their way again. You couldn't see a thing until you rammed your head into it, and then the sense of touch gave you a sort of sight suggestion, as ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy

... bring him before the magistrate of the county, city, or town corporate in which the arrest was made, and prove his ownership by testimony or by affidavit; and the certificate of such magistrate that this had been done was a sufficient warrant for the return of the poor wretch into bondage. Obstruction, rescue, or aid toward escape was fined in the sum of five hundred dollars. This is the pith of the fugitive slave act of 1793. It might have been far more mischievous but for the interpretation put upon it in the celebrated case of Prigg ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... should always be kept free from obstruction and extremes of heat and cold avoided as much as possible. In health, the care of the skin is a simple matter, massage being a great factor, assisted always by the use of pure creams. A good cleansing ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens

... was instantaneous on men whose minds were already half made up to the purpose which they now accomplished. There was a general shout of "Vive Napoleon!" The last army of the Bourbons passed from their side, and no further obstruction existed betwixt Napoleon and the capital, which he was once more—but for a brief space—to inhabit as ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... globus hystericus was long afterward attributed to obstruction of respiration by the womb. The interesting case has been recorded by E. Bloch (Wiener Klinische Wochenschrift, 1907, p. 1649) of a lady who had the feeling of a ball rising from her stomach to her throat, and then sinking. This feeling ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... This obstruction soon caused the main body to swerve. Their solid front had been broken at last, yet they continued on as wildly as before, bellowing and horning one another ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Texas - Or, The Veiled Riddle of the Plains • Frank Gee Patchin

... The most violent and unruly passions may be the material of art, but once they are put into artistic form they are mastered and refined. "There is an art of passion, but no passionate art" (Schiller). Through expression, the repression, the obstruction of feeling is broken down; the mere effort to find and elaborate a fitting artistic form for the material diverts the attention and provides other occupation for the mind; an opportunity is given ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker

... or boat when fishing becomes stationary in consequence of her gear getting fast to a rock or other obstruction, she shall show the light and make the fog signal prescribed for a vessel at anchor, respectively. (See article 15 (d), ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland

... let's get away out of this fearful place," sobbed the wretched obstruction. "Do what I ask you this once, and I'll be like a slave the rest ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... construction when entered upon without its consent, though when such consent is asked and granted upon condition the authority to insist upon such condition is clear. Thus it is represented that while the officers of the Government are with great care guarding against the obstruction of navigation by a bridge across the Mississippi River at St. Paul a large pier for a bridge has been built just below this place directly in the navigable channel of the river. If such things are to be permitted, a strong argument is presented against the appropriation ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... sanguine over the result of her diplomatic tact. There lay no obstruction in the path which she had marked out for Gerald Bereford. No rivals had given cause for offence. Lady Rosamond had readily encouraged the advances made by her suitor. It was now a settled conclusion. The fact had been communicated throughout ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour

... arms, and increased his forces. He then ravaged the coasts of the Adriatic; and, following the Flaminian way, crossed the passes of the Apennines, ravaged the fertile plains of Umbria, and reached without obstruction the city which for six hundred years had not been violated by the presence of a foreign enemy. But Rome was not what she was when Hannibal led his Africans to her gates. She was surrounded with more extensive fortifications, indeed, and ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... obstruction, and Burns was obliged to begin slowing down. When the car was again at its ordinary by no means slow pace, ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond

... snapped the supports of a house at some distance from the river's bank, but which the swollen stream had now reached, and carried away at least half the building. By some curious chance, the broken timbers had become fixed for the moment in the boiling water, which, angry at the obstruction, was rushing round or flying completely over them; and it was easy to see that in a very short time the mass would be swept away. Upon the timbers thus exposed were three little pups scarce two months old, yelping most dismally as they crouched together, or crawled to the ...
— The Adventures of a Dog, and a Good Dog Too • Alfred Elwes

... sooner or later."[745] "We have abolished the turnpike gate and the toll-collector, and our highways are free in the sense that they are maintained by general assessment. And if the turnpike gate was an odious obstruction to the traveller, how much more obnoxious to him, or her, is the ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker

... and Agamemnon continued: "Impediment is something that entangles the feet; obstacle something that stands in the way; obstruction, something that blocks up the passage; hinderance, something ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale

... of one and tons of the other. I feel I shall have a difficulty to make myself believed; and certainly the scene must have been exceptional, for it was too dangerous for daily repetition. It was a tight jam; there was no fair way through the mingled mass of brute and living obstruction. Into the upper skirts of the crowd porters, infuriated by hurry and overwork, clove their way with shouts. I may say that we stood like sheep, and that the porters charged among us like so many maddened sheep- dogs; and I believe these men were no longer ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson

... his lordship took his leave, and her ladyship retired to rest, highly pleased with a project, of which she had no reason to doubt the success, and which promised so effectually to remove Sophia from being any further obstruction to her amour with Jones, by a means of which she should never appear to be guilty, even if the fact appeared to the world; but this she made no doubt of preventing by huddling up a marriage, to which she thought the ravished Sophia would easily be brought to consent, and at which all the ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... one hand, so large an array of respectably educated individuals, embarrassed for want of a proper calling, and, on the other, so ponderous a multitude of untrained, neglected poor, who cannot, without help, rise out of their misery and degradation? What an obstruction to usefulness and all eminence of character is that of being too rich, or too genteelly ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles

... direct and the reflected rays are received in coming from the unsilvered glass, (and after passing through the field-glass of the telescope) on a mirror placed at an angle of 45, which reflects them to the eye. By this ingenious contrivance, the obstruction is removed, and the opposite points of the horizon may be both seen ...
— Account of a Voyage of Discovery - to the West Coast of Corea, and the Great Loo-Choo Island • Captain Basil Hall

... Parliament is not only diagnostic of the present but fatefully prophetic of the future. Well, we all know what Parliament is, and we are all ashamed of it. We may pardon it some faults, indeed, on the ground of Irish obstruction—a bitter trial, which it supports with notable good humour. But the excuse is merely local; it cannot apply to similar bodies in America and France; and what are we to say of these? President Cleveland's letter may serve as a picture of the one; ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson



Words linked to "Obstruction" :   baulk, handicap, obstructer, hinderance, hitch, deterrent, tumbler, occlusion, rub, play, physical condition, impedimenta, tamponade, obstructor, barrier, obstruct, ileus, maneuver, snag, stymy, physiological condition, roadblock, balk, blockade, construction, hindrance, incumbrance, interference, hang-up, closure, impediment, obstruction of justice, preventive, blockage, structure, blocking



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