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Enchain   Listen
verb
Enchain  v. t.  
1.
To bind with a chain; to hold in chains.
2.
To hold fast; to confine; as, to enchain attention.
3.
To link together; to connect.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Enchain" Quotes from Famous Books



... Freedom rear'd! Hail, sacred Freedom, when by law restrain'd! Without you, what were man? A grovelling herd, In darkness, wretchedness, and want enchain'd. Sublimed by you, the Greek and Roman reign'd In arts unrivall'd! O, to latest days, In Albion may your influence unprofaned To godlike worth the generous bosom raise, And prompt the sage's lore, and fire ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]

... un-English; and as the passions which gave rise to it were at once the strongest and the most general—though rarely prevailing, at least among us Anglo-Normans, to so fearful an extent—I am led to hope that others may find in it something that may enchain their attention for a time, though it may not affect them as it has me with an influence, unchanged by change of scene, unaltered by the lapse of time, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various

... her face sae fair be, As nane could ever mair be; And though her wit sae rare be, As seenil do we see; Her beauty ne'er had gain'd me, Her wit had ne'er enchain'd me, Nor baith sae lang retain'd me, But for her ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... then, ye crowned array, Whose feast of spoil, whose plundering holiday Was thus broke up, in all its greedy mirth, By one bold chieftain's stamp on Gallic earth! Fierce was the cry, and fulminant the ban,— "Assassinate, who will—enchain, who can, "The vile, the faithless, outlawed, lowborn man!" "Faithless!"—and this from you—from you, forsooth, Ye pious Kings, pure paragons of truth, Whose honesty all knew, for all had tried; Whose true Swiss zeal had served ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... this place, is the close relationship existing in the popular forms of the Babylonian religion between the gods and the spirits. The latter belong to the pantheon as much as the former. Primitive animism continues to enchain the minds of the people, despite the differentiation established between the higher and the secondary powers, and despite the high point of development reached by the schoolmen in their attempts to systematize and, in a measure, ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow

... sitting beside the altar. Dr. Johannes placed his left hand on my head and raising toward heaven his right he besought the Archangel Michael to assist him, and adjured the glorious legions of the invincible seraphim to dominate, to enchain, the ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans

... much more must it wander here. In running over many words, the intellect might be arrested by chance. But here the series consisting of two words only and all attempt to occupy or engage the intellect being purposely avoided, and nothing being done to enchain the attention to the consideration of the meaning or sounds of the two words, or the relation between them, the intellect wanders away from want of occupation. If when we wish to retain in our memories ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)

... are not only written in a manner well calculated to enchain the attention of young readers, but teach at the same time such important lessons of sobriety, industry and cheerfulness, that we should like to see them in the hands of every boy ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic

... oratorical power or professional erudition. He was not a logician, he was not brilliant, and his deliverances were spiced with neither humor nor wit. And yet, says one of his biographers, in ability to enchain the students' attention, to impress them with the value of his instructions and his greatness as a teacher, he bore off the palm from all the gifted men who, at various periods, taught by his side. A friend and ...
— Pioneer Surgery in Kentucky - A Sketch • David W. Yandell

... young man sought in vain to enchain his incoherent thoughts. He could think of nothing vividly. He could ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie

... his countrymen as the watchword of their liberties. Even to this day, as history tells us, the Swiss peasant cherishes the belief that "Tell and the three men of Rutli are asleep in the mountains, but will awake to the rescue of their land should tyranny ever again enchain it." ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden

... magnitude, those objects which cause the heart of man to beat, so long as he is not self-degraded: truth, goodness, beauty. Now we feel that we are made for this higher world. Material enjoyments may enchain our will; we may, in the indulgence of unworthy passions, pursue what in its essence is only evil, error, and deformity; but, if all the rays of our true nature are not extinguished, a voice issues from the depth ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville

... him. She had neither seen nor heard his approach, and he stopped in perplexity. He had framed a dozen speeches for her ears, yet now he could do no more than stand and gaze, his heart in his eyes. And it was a vision to enchain, to hold lips speechless. She was seated with unstudied grace on the edge of the bank, her hands clasped about one knee, her sweet face sobered by thought, her eyes downcast, the long lashes plainly outlined against the clear cheeks. He marked the graceful sweep of ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish

... youth and loveliness; and he, he said to himself in his humility with regard to her, he had so little to offer her—nothing but his love. He knew himself to be grave and quiet; there was nothing about him to enchain her to him. He lacked brilliancy in manner and conversation; he was dull; he was, perhaps, even prosy. He knew it very well himself; but suppose Vera should find it out, and find that she had made a mistake! The bare thought of it was enough to make ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron

... perfume of his existence. She may intoxicate him for a while, may inspire him to poetical effusions, to great deeds, even; but he should hesitate to let her become his mistress, to let her be the tyrant of his existence. If she would enchain him, he must tear himself away, even if he tear out his own heart. Man possesses that which is more ennobling than ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach

... directs her choice; Yet, timely provident, she hastes away To snatch the blessings of a plenteous day; When fruitful Summer loads the teeming plain, She crops the harvest, and she stores the grain. How long shall sloth usurp thy useless hours, Unnerve thy vigour, and enchain thy powers? While artful shades thy downy couch enclose, And soft solicitation courts repose, Amidst the drowsy charms of dull delight, Year chases year with unremitted flight, Till Want now following, fraudulent and slow, Shall spring to seize ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... of quixotic pursuit of the lost loved one, Pleasure. In the mean time, his heart was dead to all the better and nobler feelings. But, at one time, it seemed as if a higher and more serious inclination promised permanently to enchain this dreaded rival of ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach

... went to Berlin. There he passed for a prodigy. The Elector, wishing to become the patron of so rare a genius, manifested a disposition to attach him to himself, and to send him to Italy to complete his musical education. But when the father was consulted, he did not think it wise to enchain the future of his son to the Court of Berlin, and he excused himself, saying that he was now an old man, and that he wished to keep near him the only son who remained to him; and, as in those days it was not prudent to oppose a prince on his own land, Handel was brought back somewhat hastily to ...
— Sketch of Handel and Beethoven • Thomas Hanly Ball

... raised, which both astonished and irritated Conde. Since he broke with the Fronde, it was apparently to unite himself with the Queen, and the higher his ambition soared, the more necessary it was to cover it with respect and deference, in order to hasten and secure the treaty on foot, and to enchain the monarchy with his own fate. But the fiery Conde was incapable of such a line of conduct. Finding unexpected obstacles where previously he had met with facilities and hopeful anticipations, he lost his temper, and resumed the imperious tone which already, in 1649, had embroiled him ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies

... countries, the vast wilderness and romantic caverns, the quarries, the rocks and mountains whose heads are in the clouds; of the savage nations, the cannibals who are man-eaters, and a race of people in Africa whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders. These travelers' stories would so enchain the attention of Desdemona that if she were called off at any time by household affairs she would despatch with all haste that business, and return, and with a greedy ear devour Othello's discourse. And once he took advantage ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb

... for the Christian Cross and for the Freedom of the smaller nations. It means in other words: for God's cause. For who created the small nations if not He that created all great and small things in this wonderful world? Or who has the divine right and sad duty to exterminate, to suffocate, to enchain, the small creations of the Highest if the Highest wants them to exist? Great Britain justified her greatness by entering this war so as to protest against the violation of right, even by those who agreed to this right, and to protect ...
— Serbia in Light and Darkness - With Preface by the Archbishop of Canterbury, (1916) • Nikolaj Velimirovic

... Browning's word that he did not spend much time in remorse or regret, while there was the composition of the pretty little tender epigrams of this last period to amuse him and Italian politics to enchain his sympathy. His impulsive generosity led him to give his old and trusted watch to the funds for Garibaldi's Sicilian expedition; but Browning persuaded him to take it again. For Garibaldi's wounded prisoners he wrote an Italian dialogue between ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas

... soul and temper and character, by which he was able at once to charm without tiring the most refined and fastidious society, to draw to him the hearts of hard-working and anxious clergymen, and to enchain the attention of the dullest and most ignorant of rustic congregations. All these are, as it seems to us, the subordinate, and not the most interesting, parts of what he was; they were on the surface and attracted notice, and the parts were ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church



Words linked to "Enchain" :   hold, restrain



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