"Overmatch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thy sisters, nor thy brothers' wives, Nor to the temple where the fair-hair'd dames Of Troy invoke Minerva's awful name, But to the height of Ilium's topmost tow'r Andromache is gone; since tidings came The Trojan force was overmatch'd, and great The Grecian strength; whereat, like one distract, She hurried to the walls, and with her took, Borne in the ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... proposed. For your question was concerning a wise man, with whom nothing can have the appearance of evil that is not dishonorable; or at least, anything else would seem so small an evil that by his wisdom he would so overmatch it as to make it wholly disappear; and such a man makes no addition to his grief through opinion, and never conceives it right to torment himself above measure, nor to wear himself out with grief, ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... for the courage and spirit with which he battled with the villainous witchfinder, Hopkins, who wanted sorely to make an example of him, to the terror of all gainsayers of the sovereign power of this examiner-general of witches. Gaule proved himself to be an overmatch for the itinerating inquisitor, and so effectually attacked, battled with, and exposed him, as to render him quite harmless in future. The minister of Great Haughton was made of different metal to the "old reading parson Lewis," or Lowes, to whose fate Baxter refers with ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... their exertions, they would have effected little against a power which was an overmatch for any single adversary, however powerful. At this period of imperfect policy, accidental circumstances alone could determine distant states to afford one another a mutual support. The differences of government, of laws, of language, of manners, and of character, which hitherto had kept whole ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... bruised, so battered, so spent with this overmatch, that I could hardly stir, or raise myself, but lay palpitating, till the ferment of my senses subsiding by degrees, and the hour striking at which I was obliged to dispatch my young man, I tenderly advised him of the necessity there was for parting; at which ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... unwarlike inhabitants. The Britons, accustomed to have recourse to the emperors for defence as well as government, made supplications to Rome; and one legion was sent over for their protection. This force was an overmatch for the barbarians, repelled their invasion, routed them in every engagement, and having chased them into their ancient limits, returned in triumph to the defence of the southern provinces of the empire [q]. Their retreat brought on a new invasion of the enemy. The Britons made again an ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... a ladder, would he run so nimbly up a tree? Had he a horse, would he with such swiftness shoot along the plain? Give civilized man but time to gather about him all his machines, and no doubt he will be an overmatch for the savage: but if you have a mind to see a contest still more unequal, place them naked and unarmed one opposite to the other; and you will soon discover the advantage there is in perpetually having all our forces at our disposal, in being constantly prepared against all events, ...
— A Discourse Upon The Origin And The Foundation Of - The Inequality Among Mankind • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... to live at peace with their neighbours, if only they were allowed. Circumstanced as they are, however, they are likely to suffer hostile aggression for a long time. Even a coward, with a musket in his hand, is generally an overmatch for a brave man with only a bow or a sling; but once possessed of fire-arms, they will teach their enemies to respect them, for they will undoubtedly have the advantage of superior courage ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... victorious army; we should not have been at Valley Forge with less than half the force of the enemy, destitute of everything, in a situation neither to resist or to retire; we should not have seen New York left with a handful of men, yet an overmatch for the main army of these States, while the principal part of their force was detached for the reduction of two of them; we should not have found ourselves this spring so weak as to be insulted by 5000 men, unable to protect our baggage and magazines, their security depending on a good countenance ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... was dead beyond resuscitation, and our friends could see no hope, Lincoln never for a moment despaired. Collecting his colleagues in his room for consultation, his practical common-sense, his thorough knowledge of human nature, made him an overmatch for his compeers, and for any man I have ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... of followers!" the earl said with scorn. "You allow one Scot to overmatch five of you! I shall not return to seek for your adversary; for were I to find him I should respect him too much to do ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... be considered which side exceeds in contending they are in the fault, 1 Tim. vi. 4. Now, our opposites do far overmatch us and overstride us in contention; for, 1. They harbour an inveterate dislike of every course and custom which we like well of, and they carp at many deeds, words, writings, opinions, fashions, &c. in us, which they let pass in others of their ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... the children are more peaceable than any other children. I never heard an angry word among them, nor any quarrelling; although there were, at least, five hundred of them together, and continually at play. With all this quietness of spirit, they are brave when put to the test; and are an overmatch for ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... the third, we advance farther and farther into the experience of motherhood. At the same time there is an increase in the dignity of the Madonna and in her importance as an individual. In the Mater Amabilis she is subordinate to her child, absorbed in him, so to speak; his infantine charms often overmatch her own beauty. When she rises to the responsibilities of her high calling, she is, for the time being, of equal interest and importance. AEsthetically, she is now even more attractive than her child, whose seriousness, in such pictures, takes something from his childlikeness. ...
— The Madonna in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... out at Calla, we were under some concern for our safety, being in so wretched and enfeebled a condition that, notwithstanding the rank of our ship and the sixty guns she carried on board, which would only have aggravated our dishonour, there was scarcely a privateer sent to sea that was not an overmatch for us. However, our fears on this head proved imaginary, and we were not exposed to the disgrace which might have been expected to have befallen us had we been necessitated to fight our sixty-gun ship with no more ...
— Anson's Voyage Round the World - The Text Reduced • Richard Walter
... servant, and he that is greatest of all, servant of all. And it is surely time to notice the threepenny braggadocio of caste which makes the languid Captain Vemon de Vere (or words to that effect) an overmatch for half-a-dozen hard-muscled white savages, any one of whom would take his lordship by the ankles, and wipe the battlefield with his patrician visage; which makes the pale, elegant aristocrat punch Beelzebub out of Big Mick, the hod-man, ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... offend before Christ but once, thou hast offended twice herein: for now thou goest about to give Christ a mock, if be would take it of thee. Thou thinkest to blind thy master Christ's commandment. Beware, do not so, for at length he will overmatch thee, and take thee tardy whatsoever thou be; and so, as I said, it should be better for thee not to do his message on this fashion, for it will stand thee in no purpose. "What?" some will say, "I am sure he loveth ...
— Sermons on the Card and Other Discourses • Hugh Latimer
... Until man shall have become infinite in wisdom, as well as immaculate in purity, he will continue to indulge, to a greater or less extent, in excesses of some sort, and those excesses will always be an overmatch, when superadded to the natural law of decay, for the recuperative efforts of science. You must create a radical reform in every department of life; in business, in social habits, in the fashions, in the mode of living, in everything, before you can hope to reach the ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... to roll down on a marching army, the place well defies storm and assault; and a hundred on the height would overmatch ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... meaning whatever. But when the pleasure becomes a business, and a matter of mere gain, there is more innocence, perhaps, in a perfect equality of antagonists—which games of chance, fairly played, always secure—than where one party is likely to be an overmatch for the other by his ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... vigor for its new instincts, and it is hard to lead men without a good deal of animal vigor. The scholar who comes by Nature's special grace from an unworn stock of broad-chested sires and deep-bosomed mothers must always overmatch an equal intelligence with a compromised and lowered vitality. A man's breathing and digestive apparatus (one is tempted to add muscular) are just as important to him on the floor of the Senate as his thinking organs. You broke down in your great speech, did you? Yes, your grandfather had ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... chased the Revenue cutter! In fact during the year 1777 one of the Customs officials wrote sadly to the Board that there was a large lugger off the coast, and so well armed that she was "greatly an overmatch" for even two of the Revenue cruisers. It seems almost ludicrous to notice a genuine and unquestionable report of a smuggling vessel coming into a bay, finding a Revenue cruiser lying quietly at anchor, and ordering the cruiser, with a fine flow of oaths, immediately to cut his cable and clear out; ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton
... wrong. The poems were, he was told, very good poems. He knew good judges that thought so; and unprovoked remarks on them, such as those of the lecturer, ought not to be permitted." The lecturer replied, and in glibness and fluency would have been greatly an overmatch for the worthy captain; but a storm of hisses backed the old veteran, and the critic gave way. As his remarks were, he said, not to the taste of the audience—though he was taking only the ordinary critical liberty—he would go on to the readings. And with a few extracts, read without note ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... cogent example. The spirit of clanship which was, at an early day, introduced into that kingdom, uniting the nobles and their dependants by ties equivalent to those of kindred, rendered the aristocracy a constant overmatch for the power of the monarch, till the incorporation with England subdued its fierce and ungovernable spirit, and reduced it within those rules of subordination which a more rational and more energetic system of civil polity had previously established ...
— The Federalist Papers
... bias, weight; shortcoming; casting weight, make- weight; superiority &c. 33; inferiority &c. 34; inequation[obs3]. V. be unequal &c. adj.; countervail; have the advantage, give the advantage; turn the scale; kick the beam; topple,topple over; overmatch &c. 33; not come up to &c. 34. Adj. unequal, uneven, disparate, partial; unbalanced, overbalanced; top-heavy, lopsided, biased, skewed; disquiparant[obs3]. Adv. haud ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... produce a higher type of humanity. To make up the arrears of past neglect, therefore, is a matter of absolute necessity, if we wish this experiment of national temperament to have any chance; since rude health, however obtuse, will in the end overmatch disease, however finely strung. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... it was the consciousness of having won permission to marry the woman whom he adored and who loved him with a passion that would fain overmatch his own, were that possible, that so quickly restored him to strength. With the realization of what he had gained there came to him such an access of vigor as amazed those who a few moments before had thought ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... thou art. Damosel, as for to tell thee my name I take no great force; truly my name is Sir Launcelot du Lake. Sir, thou beseemest well, here be adventures by that fall for thee, for hereby dwelleth a knight that will not be overmatched for no man I know but ye overmatch him, and his name is Sir Turquine. And, as I understand, he hath in his prison, of Arthur's court, good knights three score and four, that he hath won with his own hands. But when ye have done that journey ye shall promise ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... [The Fox and the Raven] it is shown how much ingenuity avails, and how wisdom is always an overmatch for strength. ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... attack, so numerous that they could not be counted. The foremost vessel was a Dutch pink, and many of the other vessels were commanded by Hollanders. All that could be seen appeared full of men well armed and equipped, and seemed a prodigious overmatch for the small number the Portuguese had to oppose them, as besides the galliot sent to Sundiva another had been dispatched in search of the pink, so that only 12 galliots remained and the fliboat. The Dutch pink fired the first ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... to discuss the question of the colored man's capacity to improve, were it not for considerations that now make it necessary, under national calamity, to take it into truthful account. The white man's cultivation of barbarity under the teachings of slaveholders has hitherto proved an overmatch for the colored man's claims in the abstract. Things and conditions are now changed. The slaveholders' rebellion has softened the obduracy of manufactured prejudice, and necessity has become allied with humanity. Tho pro-slavery spirit in politics ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... out at Calao, we were under considerable apprehensions for our safety, being in so wretched and enfeebled a condition, as, notwithstanding the rank of our ship, and the sixty guns with which she was armed, there was hardly a privateer sent to sea that was not an overmatch for us. Our fears on this head, however, fortunately proved imaginary, and we were not exposed to the disgrace which must unavoidably have befallen us, had we been reduced to the necessity, by the appearance of an enemy, of fighting our sixty-gun ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... motion is in the compound ratio or proportion of its solid contents and its velocity; and consequently, that a small force may remove the greatest obstacle or raise the greatest weight, if, by any contrivance or machinery, we can increase the velocity of that force, so as to make it an overmatch for its antagonist. Geometry assists us in the application of this law, by giving us the just dimensions of all the parts and figures which can enter into any species of machine; but still the discovery of the law itself is owing merely to experience, and all the abstract ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... privy to his loss, He bade him, in a cautious mood, To come as soon as well he could, For still some other coins he had, Which to the rest he wish'd to add. Expecting thus to get the whole, The friend put back the sum he stole, Then came with all despatch. The other proved an overmatch: Resolved at length to save by spending, His practice thus most wisely mending, The total treasure home he carried— No longer hoarded it or buried. Chapfallen was the thief, when gone He saw his prospects ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... Laurentum's lofty tow'rs again? What will they say of their deserting chief The war was mine: I fly from their relief; I led to slaughter, and in slaughter leave; And ev'n from hence their dying groans receive. Here, overmatch'd in fight, in heaps they lie; There, scatter'd o'er the fields, ignobly fly. Gape wide, O earth, and draw me down alive! Or, O ye pitying winds, a wretch relieve! On sands or shelves the splitting vessel drive; Or set me shipwrack'd on some desart shore, Where no ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... Monsieur Fletcher. You were but a stripling then, though you gave wonderful promise of size and strength. Now you are a man, and have won the honour of knighthood; and methinks that, in thew and sinew, there are not many in our army who would overmatch you." ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... orders.... With this preliminary, I state my general idea of this war to be that we have the greater numbers and the enemy has the greater facility of concentrating forces upon points of collision; that we must fail unless we can find some way of making our advantage an overmatch for his; and that this can only be done by menacing him with superior forces at different points at the same time, so that we can safely attack one or both if he makes no change; and if he weakens one to strengthen the other, forbear to attack the ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... anxious prince had heard the cannon long, And from that length of time dire omens drew Of English overmatch'd, and Dutch too strong, Who never fought three ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... disparagement, something of the loftiness of asserted superiority, which does not allow me to pass it over without notice. It was put as a question for me to answer, and so put as if it were difficult for me to answer, whether I deemed the member from Missouri an overmatch for myself in debate here. It seems to me, sir, that this is extraordinary language and an extraordinary tone for the ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... forward to a federal state, favoured the latter views, and so did those who dreaded the final separation of Brazil from the mother country; for they argued that the separate provinces might be easily controlled, but that Brazil united would overmatch any force that Portugal could send against it, should a hostile struggle between them ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... that their political existence had been dependent on the will of a victorious foe. Attempts were made to destroy these trophies of national degradation; but, in some instances, the skill of the architect and the fidelity of the builder were an overmatch for the hasty ire of an incensed soldiery, and withstood the attacks until admiration for the work brought shame on their efforts to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various |
