Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Force   /fɔrs/   Listen
Force

verb
(past & past part. forced; pres. part. forcing)
1.
To cause to do through pressure or necessity, by physical, moral or intellectual means :.  Synonyms: coerce, hale, pressure, squeeze.  "He squeezed her for information"
2.
Urge or force (a person) to an action; constrain or motivate.  Synonym: impel.
3.
Move with force,.  Synonym: push.
4.
Impose urgently, importunately, or inexorably.  Synonym: thrust.
5.
Squeeze like a wedge into a tight space.  Synonyms: squeeze, wedge.
6.
Force into or from an action or state, either physically or metaphorically.  Synonyms: drive, ram.  "He drives me mad"
7.
Cause to move by pulling.  Synonyms: draw, pull.  "Pull a sled"
8.
Do forcibly; exert force.
9.
Take by force.  Synonym: storm.



Related searches:



WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Force" Quotes from Famous Books



... state of things was a universal rejection of domestic service in all classes of American-born society. For a generation or two, there was, indeed, a sort of interchange of family strength,—sons and daughters engaging in the service of neighboring families, in default of a sufficient working force of their own, but always on conditions of strict equality. The assistant was to share the table, the family sitting-room, and every honor and attention that might be claimed by son or daughter. When families increased in refinement and education so ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... preparation. I knew that something of a gigantic nature had been planned and that the time was close at hand. I also knew that whatever it was it would surely succeed, for nothing could resist the combined force of all that preparation when the final word was given. I cannot but admit that enormous quantity of ammunition, the vast number of light and heavy guns, the thousands of men ready for the fray, caused me ...
— In the Flash Ranging Service - Observations of an American Soldier During His Service - With the A.E.F. in France • Edward Alva Trueblood

... compared with the right, full, finished setting of such a talent; but the essence of them was now, irremovably, in our young man's eyes, the vision of how the uplifted stage and the listening house transformed her. That idea of her having no character of her own came back to him with a force that made him laugh in the empty street: this was a disadvantage she reduced so to nothing that obviously he hadn't known her till to-night. Her character was simply to hold you by the particular spell; any other—the good nature of home, ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... other human beings, as phenomena, under the same generalizations which I know by experience to be the true theory of my own existence. And in doing so I conform to the legitimate rules of experimental inquiry. The process is exactly parallel to that by which Newton proved that the force which keeps the planets in their orbits is identical with that by which an apple falls to the ground. It was not incumbent on Newton to prove the impossibility of its being any other force; he was thought to have made out his point when he had simply shown that no other force need ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton

... extraordinary head of hair. The hair, though not very long, is very bushy, so that it takes the capillary artist no less than a day to succeed in reducing this forest into a small bulk. As it requires some force to draw the comb through the hair, the operation is painful, and this is why the Abyssinian women have it performed every forty or fifty days only. The Abyssinian women of rank pass their life in almost complete ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 664, September 22,1888 • Various

... traits which show themselves in individuals that vary from the prevailing predatory style of temperament, the ante-predatory variant seems to have a greater stability and greater symmetry in the distribution or relative force of its ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen

... shall no more undertake to explain than the other finance operations. Everybody was mad upon Mississippi Stock. Immense fortunes were made, almost in a breath; Law, besieged in his house by eager applicants, saw people force open his door, enter by the windows from the garden, drop into his cabinet down the chimney! ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... staff, and stopping within a few paces of me, said, 'They're coming up; steady, boys; steady now: we shall have something to do soon.' And then, turning sharply round, he looked in the direction of the French battery, that was thundering away again in full force, 'Ah, that must be silenced,' said he, 'Where's Beamish?'—"Says Picton!" interrupted Feargus, his eyes starting from their sockets, and his mouth growing wider every moment, as he listed with the most intense interest. "Yes," said I, slowly; and then, with all the provoking nonchalance of an ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever

... We must not force ourselves upon your father's confidence, but we must endeavour to save him from this misery. Do you go in to him with this card. Do not show it to him too suddenly; and then find out whether he ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope

... would fail to give. They select in imagination certain aspects or portions, throw others into the shade, intensify or attenuate impressions, transform and beautify the reality of things. The power of filling their existence with happy day-dreams is their most precious luxury. They feel the full force of the pathetic lines ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... brows, they were chilled into submission and civility. He had a dignity which made his Puritanical plainness more patrician than Rochester's finery, more impressive than Buckingham's graceful splendour. The force and vigour of his countenance were more striking than Sedley's beauty. The eyes of strangers singled him out in that gay throng, and people wanted to know who he was and what he ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... humble of them all was Mr. Gale, and, with a pertinacity which was almost proof against insult, he strove to force his company upon the indignant Mr. Wragg. Debarred from that, he took to haunting the road, on one occasion passing the house no fewer than fifty-seven times in one afternoon. His infatuation was plain to be ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs

... Witmore, thou hast the faculty opposite to that of a witch, and canst lay a tempest. I should as soon have imagined one man could have stopt a cannon-ball in its full force as her tongue. ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding

... the slender cable that held the boat on its course, and the unwieldy craft was trembling and jerking as uprooted trees and masses of flotsam caught on the line, strained it almost to the point of snapping and then rolled under by the force of the current, allowed the line to spring into place again. Slowly, the boat, swept by the force of the flood, worked out into the stream, adding its own weight to the strain on the line. The craft shuddered as a tree-trunk struck her side, and seizing a pole, the man shoved her free. The ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx

... equally descriptive of that dreadful medio-Victorian murderess who in the dock of the Old Bailey wore a black satin gown, and thereby created against black satin a prejudice which has but lately died. In itself black satin is a beautiful thing. Yet for many years, by force of association, it was accounted loathsome. Conversely, one knows that many quite hideous fashions in costume have been set by beautiful women. Such instances of the subtle power of association will ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm

... of the Finish of the War. With Allenby in Palestine: A Story of the latest Crusade. Under Foch's Command: A Tale of the Americans in France. The Armoured-Car Scouts: The Campaign in the Caucasus. On the Road to Bagdad: A Story of the British Expeditionary Force in Mesopotamia. From the Nile to the Tigris: Campaigning from Western Egypt to Mesopotamia. Under Haig in Flanders: A Story of Vimy, Messines, and Ypres. With Joffre at Verdun: A Story of the Western Front. On the Field ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton

... with the Tenasas that decided us. That was a year of great scarcity and the Tenasas took to sending their young men, two or three at a time, creeping into our hunting-grounds to start the game, and turn it in the direction of their own country. When our young men were sure of this, they went in force and killed inside the borders of the Tenasas. They had surprised a herd of buffaloes at Two Kettle Licks and were cutting up the meat when the Tenasas fell upon them. Waits-by-the-Fire lost her last son by ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al

... ticket has a deeper significance than has generally been admitted. It reveals the fact that the sentiment of Union, in distinction from the belief in the Union, had become a real force in American life. There could be no clearer testimony to the strength of this feeling than this spectacle of a great congregation of moderate people, unable to agree upon anything except this sentiment, stepping between the sectional parties ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson

... the youth's bold course Clouds gather—tempests spend their force— When his soul darkens with his sky, Again the Love-God hovers nigh; And on some gentle maiden's breast Lulls him, once more, to ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh

... mines of coal, the great element of modern progress. New York has none. It is coal that has made Great Britain a mighty empire, giving her power, by land and sea, equal to the manual force of all mankind. It is stated by the Commissioner of the General Land Office, in his report before referred to, of November, 1860, 'that an acre of coal, three feet thick, is equal to the product of 1,940 acres of ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... remembered that he had turned westward, which was in the direction of his ranch. The sounds were rapidly approaching up the track toward him. His eyes grew cold and almost vicious as he thought. Was this another of the police force? The force to ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum

... hot and passionate. His hand gripped hers with unconscious force. She made no attempt to free herself. Neither did she contradict him, for she knew that he ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell

... skipped a beat. A sudden thought came to her with stunning, blinding force. JIMMY! Could John Pendleton be meaning that Jimmy cared THAT WAY—for ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter

... He advised me to poison Fanfaro, so that I could force you to give up the legacy. I acceded to his proposition, and he committed ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere

... of it that, which the latter did not wish to give him; and he gave to the same victim that, which he in vain attempted to show was an equivalent to the thing he took,—it being a thing for which there was no equivalent; and which, if he had not obtained by force, he would not have possessed at all. Nor could there be any answer to this reasoning, unless it could be proved, that it had pleased God to give to the inhabitants of Britain a property in the liberty and life of the natives of Africa. But he would go further on this subject. The injustice ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson

... turned, dropping down wild mountain gorges from the height of land of the interior valleys. So fearful was the road, that, on one stretch of seven miles, they passed ten broken-down automobiles. Billy would not force the mares and promptly camped beside a brawling stream from which he whipped two trout at a time. Here, Saxon caught her first big trout. She had been accustomed to landing them up to nine and ten inches, and the screech of the reel when the big one was hooked caused ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London

... and Master Matabele could exchange compliments. "Sleep well to-night," the grinning savages would shout from the hills; "to-morrow we will have your livers fried for breakfast!" And the compliments became sterner whenever the Matabele recognised in the little force of whites the dread "Wolf that never Sleeps." "Wolf! Wolf!" they shrieked with savage ferocity, and if Baden-Powell had the nerves of some of us he must have had many a bad night after hearing that yell, and marking the gleaming eyes ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie

... burst in Matt Lincoln indignantly. "Don't you pay a cent. Miss Bartlett. It was not your fault, and he cannot force ...
— Young Auctioneers - The Polishing of a Rolling Stone • Edward Stratemeyer

... a couple of West India beetles; a humming-bird in a glass case, which I lost; and then these dozen bodkins with silver eyes—so that altogether I have made a pretty good night's work of it. Kitey Graves wasn't in great force, so after I had sung Bid me Discourse, and I'd be a Butterfly, I cut my stick and went to the hopposition shop, where they used me much more genteelly; giving me three tickets for a song, and introducing me in more flattering terms to the company—don't like being considered one ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees

... like to mix with one when he's vexed," continued the lady judicially; "but why vex 'em? They never look for trouble; then why force it on their notice? Take one summer, years ago, when Lysander John and I had a camp up above Dry Forks. My lands! Every night after supper the prettiest gang of skunks would frolic down off the hillside and romp round us. Here would come Pa and Ma in the lead, and mebbe a couple of ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson

... said, as he destroyed Miss Brewer's note; "just clever enough to be useful, just shrewd enough to understand the precise force and weight of an argument, but not clever enough, or shrewd enough, to find out that she is used for any purpose but the one for which she ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... successive development, starting from a central heat; but can the term "life" be applied to this kind of movement? Limestone does not generate sandstone. I do not know that there exists what physiologists call a vital force, different from, or opposed to, the physical forces which we recognize in all matter; I think the vital process is only a particular mode of action, of limitation of those physical forces; action, the nature of which we have not yet fully sounded. I believe there are ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz

... to force the second move," and before she could guess what he was going to do, he leaned over, caught her two hands in his and pulled her to her feet. "Now, you are going to take a little walk with me, young lady. If the rest of this lazy crowd don't want to ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope

... a sinking heart growing less and less to my sight, till she was lost among the foaming seas in the distance. I then for the first time felt with full force my lonely position; I wrung my hands like a child; I burst into tears; I bemoaned my hard fate, and thought that I was forsaken of God and man. Not only was my companion taken from me, but the only ...
— Washed Ashore - The Tower of Stormount Bay • W.H.G. Kingston

... the world is up in arms. All mankind takes sides. The same faith that made him surrender himself to the impulses of normal living and of love, forces him now to make himself the instrument through which a greater force works out its inscrutable ends through the impulses of terror and repulsion. And with no less a sense of moving in harmony with a universe where masses are in continual conflict and new combinations are engendered out of eternal collisions, he shoulders ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger

... stage of development; but there is another form of development, which has been called by Professor Owen metagenesis. In this case "the new parts are not moulded upon the inner surface of the old ones. The plastic force has changed its course of operation. The outer case, and all that gave form and character to the precedent individual, perish and are cast off; they are not changed into the corresponding parts of the ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin

... the third under the Grand Equerry M. de Bellegarde. The troops were not, however, destined on this occasion to cross the frontier, the friends of the Duke of Savoy having soon succeeded in convincing Marie de Medicis of the danger of investing three great nobles with the command of an armed force of such importance during the minority of the sovereign; while Ubaldini, the Papal Nuncio, jealous of the presence of the French soldiery in Italy, and apprehensive that Lesdiguieres would be accompanied ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe

... Prince and States." "I would be," he said, "the sorriest man that lives, if by my negligence the place should be lost. Therefore I thought good to seize the great tower and ports. If I meant evil, I needed no keys, for here is force enough." ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... chicanery in mercantile transactions, an evil reputation, their ancestors in the bad old times were goaded into the practice of over-reaching by cunning those Christian sovereigns and nobles who robbed them of their property by force and cruel tortures. Moreover, where are the people to be found whose daily actions are in accordance with the religion they profess? At least, the Rabbis, unlike the spiritual teachers of mediaeval Europe, did not openly ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston

... years, whose story is filled with romance and interest. In 1798 the island of Malta, after having been for nearly three centuries in the possession of the Knights of St. John, was captured by an invading French force, and two years later it became, by conquest, an ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob

... the old-fashioned formula, "The Chairman will be pleased to drink wine with the gentlemen on his right," and then on his left, the Toastmaster had to announce that the Chairman would be pleased to "spill salt" with those on his right, etc.; but force of habit was too strong, and "drink wine" came out, and although this was corrected, it was strange that in some cases the guests held up their glasses and did not spill salt. Of course, throwing salt over the shoulder was prohibited; that ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss

... I, on further reflection, "after all there is a great deal of force in what Mr. Somerville has said. Somehow or other, these men of the world do now and then hit upon remarks that would do credit to a philosopher. Some of his general observations came so home that I almost thought they were meant for myself. His advice about adopting a ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving

... dearly for the courage of its citizens. When the war broke out again, Magdeburg was besieged by Tilly with his whole force. After a most valiant defence it was taken by storm, and a scene of massacre and ruin followed without a parallel in modern wars. When it ended, Magdeburg was no more. Of its buildings all were gone, except the cathedral ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris

... death of her mother in May 1794, and the publication of her first purely political work, 'Reflections on Peace, addressed to Mr. Pitt and to the French,' were the chief events of her life during the next few months. In this work she dwelt with much force on the absurdity of supposing that any foreign intervention could restore what the Revolution had destroyed, and she predicted that the inevitable effect of the prolongation or extension of the war would be to strengthen that militant Jacobinism which ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... in this world that is of any practical good whose vital force is not to be found in example rather than in precept? Who has more need to go into the room of the sick with the purest breath, the cleanest tongue, the brightest eyes, the purest complexion, the most radiant countenance, ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey

... her once more to my bosom: but, considering the delicacy of her frame, her force was amazing, and showed how much in earnest she was in her resentment; for it was with the utmost difficulty that I was able to hold her: nor could I prevent her sliding through my arms, to fall upon her knees: which she did at my feet: and there in the ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... very charming, to me, however she looks to you. But I won't force her to stare long at such a stranger. It might make it difficult for her to forget the stranger afterward, which is what I ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond

... mother heard his cry and reached him just in time to break the force of the fall, but not in time to prevent his answering the ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs

... consumed in her meditations over the box and its contents, had been employed by the captain in preparations for his enterprise. Joyce, young Blodget, Jamie and Mike, led by their commander in person, were to compose the whole force on the occasion; and every man had been busy in getting his arms, ammunition and provisions ready, for the last half-hour. When captain Willoughby, therefore, had taken leave of his family, he found the party ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper

... conceived between the Laws of Athens and Sparta: the one was the creation of a civilized state, and did not differ in principle from our modern legislation, the other of an age in which the people were held together and also kept down by force of arms, and which afterwards retained many traces of its barbaric origin 'surviving ...
— Laws • Plato

... of appreciation depended partly upon Hilda's physical organization, which was at once healthful and exquisitely delicate; and, connected with this advantage, she had a command of hand, a nicety and force of touch, which is an endowment separate from pictorial genius, though indispensable ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... service, my lord," he said, turning to Lord Fairholm, "by holding me back when I would have taken my proper place. I shall never hold up my head again. But it will not be for long, for when he has killed Rupert I will seek him wherever he may go, and force him to kill ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty

... force at the station of Wilkesbarre would be on guard against the approach of all enemies, especially during the darkness of the night, it would be a matter of difficulty, as well as one of extreme danger, to secure ...
— The Wilderness Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis

... with ten or twelve squares of this commodity, about one foot by eighteen inches, which squares she had commenced upon as soon as she came on board, and had never ceased to swallow, notwithstanding various interruptions. The more did her stomach reject it the more did she force it down, until, what with deglutition, et vice versa, she had been reduced to a state of extreme weakness, ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat

... not include the fact that she had accepted Grandcourt solely as a man whom it was convenient for her to marry, not in the least as one to whom she would be binding herself in duty. Gwendolen's ideas were pitiably crude; but many grand difficulties of life are apt to force themselves on us in our crudity. And to judge wisely, I suppose we must know how things appear to the unwise; that kind of appearance making the larger ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... story of an actual attempt made by the Confederates of Virginia, just prior to the outbreak of the Civil War, to seize the city of Washington by force of arms, and make prisoners of President Lincoln and other high ...
— John and Betty's History Visit • Margaret Williamson

... ridges; and the inference early in the season is, that the ridged ground will give the best crop, but as soon as the roots of the corn on the flat ground get hold of the manure (say about the 20th of July), the corn will shoot rapidly ahead, and the full force of the manure will be given to the stalk just at the time of forming the grain. Corn cultivated in this way, if the soil is deeply tilled, will often keep green, while that on ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... in these remote countries. The Khedive had resolved therefore to form them into a separate government, and to claim as a monopoly of the State, the whole of the trade with the outside world. There was no other way of putting an end to the slave trade which at present was carried on by force of arms in defiance of law. When once brigandage had become a thing of the past, and when once a breach had been made in the lawless customs of long ages, then trade might be made free to all. If the men who had been in the pay of adventurers were willing ...
— General Gordon - Saint and Soldier • J. Wardle

... and not so smooth as a girl's; and her eyes were brown and bright. Notwithstanding the weeks of watching she had gone through, the strain of everything that had passed, she made little show of her trouble. Her eye was not dim, nor her natural force abated. The girls were dull in complexion and aspect, but their mother was not so. As she came into the room there came with her a brightness, a sense of living, which was inappropriate to the hour and ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

... to prohibit the playing of nine pins, (a very foolish act, as the Americans have so few amusements): as soon as the law was put in force, it was notified every where, "Ten pins played here," and they have been played ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... Divine universe, and you are a part of that Will. In your Will sleep the oracles of prophecy. You were made master over this world. In your Will is enthroned Sovereignty, Dominion, Kingship. With force of Will, Pygmalion carved his soul dream into the marble until its loveliness of form and grace became so real as to take on life and motion. With force of Will Dante created his Hell, and with force of Will Milton created his Paradise Regained. Put ...
— Supreme Personality • Delmer Eugene Croft

... Continent. Essentially a tale of incident and adventure, it is one of the best novels of that inexhaustible type with which I am acquainted. It possesses in an eminent degree the quality of vividness which R. L. Stevenson prized so highly, and the ingenuity of its plot, the dramatic force of its episodes, and the startling unexpectedness of its denouement are all in the Hungarian master's most characteristic style. I know of no more stirring incident in contemporary fiction than the terrible wrestling match between strong Juon the goatherd and the supple bandit Fatia ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai

... bear, Nor thy gulfs, crook'd Malea, would I fear. No flowing waves with drowned ships forth-poured By cloyed Charybdis, and again devoured. But if stern Neptune's windy power prevail, And waters' force force helping Gods to fail, With thy white arms upon my shoulders seize; So sweet a burden I will bear with ease. 30 The youth oft swimming to his Hero kind, Had then swum over, but the way was blind. ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe

... order to apply lashes with the hangman's strap [penca]. What tyranny will the cura practice on them, such as they are wont to practice if they have any power and authority! How well the wedge of the same wood will force its way, without there being any one to say to him, curita facis? [i.e., "Dost ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin

... I see you have another lady-love in mind. You can keep your Lucy or your Sophy. I certainly shall not force my daughter on you. ...
— Comedies • Ludvig Holberg

... the face of bodily conditions, but that in the management of character it has certain very definite predispositions to encounter. In reasonings on life, even more than on other things, a good reasoner will consider not only the force of the opposing arguments, but also the bias to which his own mind is subject. To raise the level of national health is one of the surest ways of raising the level of national happiness, and in estimating the value of ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... person who devoted himself to the cause of Abolition in England. His object was to convince the people of England that they were guilty of a great impolicy, and great sin, in permitting the slave-trade. He was to meet the force of public sentiment, and power, and selfishness, and wealth, which sustained this traffic, in that nation. What were his measures? He did not go to Sweden, or Russia, or France, to awaken public sentiment against the sins of the English.—He ...
— An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism - With reference to the duty of American females • Catharine E. Beecher

... vote—clannish, credulous, impulsive and passionate—tempting every art of the demagogue, but insensible to the appeal of the statesman. Wrongly started, in that it was led into alienation from its neighbor and taught to rely on the protection of an outside force, it cannot be merged and lost in the two great parties through logical currents, for it lacks political conviction and even that information on which conviction must be based. It must remain a faction—strong enough ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various

... week and then another wore themselves away somehow. The fever did not break on the fourteenth day, as had been hoped, and must run for another period, the doctor said; but its force was lessened, and he considered that a favorable sign. Amy was quieter now and did not rave so constantly, but she was very weak. All her pretty hair had been shorn away, which made her little face look tiny and sharp. Mabel's golden wig was sacrificed at the same time. Amy had insisted ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge

... likely to be put to the test. He'll hardly force his way into the house, and she isn't ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells

... which assured the liberation of the Colonies from the thraldom of Great Britain, Commodore Barry was constantly engaged on shore and afloat. Though he actually participated in upwards of twenty sea fights, always against a force superior to his own, he never once struck his flag to the enemy. The field of his operations ranged all the way from the capes of the Delaware to the West Indies, and as far east as the coast of Maine and Newfoundland. His victories were ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools

... look at Madelon. "I will stand here," she said with a strange meekness, almost as if her heart were broken; but when the jailer prepared to follow Dorothy into Burr's cell she caught him by the arm and tried to force him back, and cried out sharply that he should let her see him alone. "She is the girl he is going to marry, I tell you!" she said. "Let them see each other alone. You cannot come between two like that when they are ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... of God's goodness and holiness, were never weary of inculcating. Thus Micah says: "He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" And at a later time much of the force by which Christianity conquered the world was drawn from the same high conception of God's moral nature and the duty laid on men of conforming themselves to it. "Pure religion and undefiled," says St. James, "before God and the Father is this, To ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... explanation seems to me doubtful; his plants were in a less fertile condition than mine, as shown by the difference in the number of seeds produced, and it is highly probable that their lessened fertility would have interfered with especial force with their capacity for producing ...
— The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species • Charles Darwin

... the corner of the table in leaving the sofa and spilt cocoa over her skirt; she knocked her head with painful force against the sharp lintel of the doorway, and stumbled on the steps of the ladder. I was close behind, but when I reached the deck she was already on the counter hauling up the dinghy. She had even jumped in and laid hands on the sculls before any check came ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers

... Foscolo, Essay on Petrarch, p. 35.) high Altar and burning tapers looking down on it; the Virgin quite tearless, and of the natural stone-colour!—L'Escuyer's friend or two rush off, like Job's Messengers, for Jourdan and the National Force. But heavy Jourdan will seize the Town-Gates first; does not run treble-fast, as he might: on arriving at the Cordeliers Church, the Church is silent, vacant; L'Escuyer, all alone, lies there, swimming in his blood, at the foot of the high Altar; pricked with scissors; ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... provision a fleet, to assemble a flotilla, to enroll your maritime force, would take an admiral a year. Raoul is a cavalry officer, and you allow ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... speciously strong and beautiful effects - that disinterested love of dulness which has set so many Peter Bells to paint the river- side primrose. It was then chosen for its proximity to Paris. And for the same cause, and by the force of tradition, the painter of to-day continues to inhabit and to paint it. There is in France scenery incomparable for romance and harmony. Provence, and the valley of the Rhone from Vienne to Tarascon, are one succession of masterpieces waiting for the brush. ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson

... England and America is a matter of a few years only, and when it comes the progress of Germany is set back for a generation. The one absolute necessity before me was to cut the bonds between England and France and to settle with England alone and quickly—diplomatically, if possible; by force of arms as a last resource. We don't seek war, Henriette. We are not really a bloodthirsty nation. We seek territory. We need new lands—fruitful lands, trade, the command of the seas. If we cannot get what we want by peaceful means, then it must be ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... from the roof, all most dimly glimpsed in the torch-light against an infinitude of blackness. The men who had brought him hither, and others whom he had not heretofore seen, were busied about a dismantled stone furnace, gathering up such poor belongings as had escaped the wreckings of the revenue force. Now and then a glitter from the fragments of the copper still and the sections of the coils of the worm marked the course their ravages had taken, and all the chill, cavernous air was filled with the sickly odor of singlings and the fermenting mash adhering to the broken staves of the great ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock

... German, no Frenchman to agree with me, but I ask them to leave me alone with my dead, to leave me in peace with my living problems, to force no artificial friendships upon me, and thus to let our respect for one another ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier

... was never found—I expect Mrs. Blake had burnt it,—so the farm came to John, and what else there was to Harry, according to the terms of the will the old man had made when his wife was alive, afore John had joined the force. And Harry and John was that pleased to be together again that they couldn't make up their minds to part; so they farm the place together ...
— In Homespun • Edith Nesbit

... found acquaintance easy. The whole "Enterprise" force was like one family; proprietors, editor, and printers were social equals. Samuel Clemens immediately became "Sam" to his associates, just as De Quille was "Dan," and Goodman "Joe." Clemens was supposed to report city items, and did, in fact, do such ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine

... at home in the evening—and at night—I have had to play the part of boon companion in his secret drinking-bouts in his room up there. I have had to sit there alone with him, have had to hobnob and drink with him, have had to listen to his ribald senseless talk, have had to fight with brute force ...
— Ghosts - A Domestic Tragedy in Three Acts • Henrik Ibsen

... Mrs. Lathrop, when the full force of her friend's affliction effected its complete entrance ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Neighbors' Affairs • Anne Warner

... he was cutting rice with a score or two of his fellow-disciples, when some hungry thieves came upon them to take away their grain by force. The other Sramaneras all fled, but our young hero stood his ground, and said to the thieves, "If you must have the grain, take what you please. But, sirs, it was your former neglect of charity which brought you to your ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous

... value of their diggings, had obtained from the Crown a licence to adventure in search of minerals, by payment of a heavy fine and a yearly royalty. Therefore they had now no longer any cause for secrecy, neither for dread of the outlaws; having so added to their force as to be a match for them. And although Uncle Ben was not the man to keep his miners idle an hour more than might be helped, he promised that when we had fixed the moment for an assault on the valley, a score of them should come to aid us, headed by Simon Carfax, and armed with ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... hour with feet to spurn, Hands to crush, fires to burn The state whereto no latter foot of man shall climb. Yea, come what grief, now may By ruinous night or day, One grief there cannot, one the first and last grief, shame. Come force to break thee and bow Down, shame can come not now, Nor, though hands wound thee, tongues make mockery of thy name: Come swords and scar thy brow, No brand there burns it now, No spot but of thy blood marks thy white-fronted fame. Now, though the mad blind morrow With shafts of iron sorrow Should ...
— Two Nations • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... to be merely a ruse of the strong to oppress the weak, of the wicked to fool the confiding. There remains only religion. In the organisation of religion lies the natural and suitable arrangement for the happiness of man. The Church will govern not through physical force but ...
— One Man's Initiation—1917 • John Dos Passos

... shards of men. Sheltered fast; Housed at length; Clothed and fed, no matter how!— Where the householders, aghast, Measure in his broken strength Nought but power for evil, now. Beast-of-burden drudgeries Could not earn him what was his: He who heard the world applaud Glories seized by force and fraud, He must break,—he must take!— Both for hate and hunger's sake. He must seize by fraud and force; He must strike, without remorse! Seize he might; but never keep. Strike, his once!—Behold him here. (Human ...
— The Singing Man • Josephine Preston Peabody

... throngs in the streets increased. Belated business men hurried along, and clerks and saleswomen with flushed faces and anxious eyes, tried impatiently to force their way through the crowds to get ...
— The Bishop's Shadow • I. T. Thurston

... of a Rubens; and now a certain discoloration and the deep tension of the wrinkles betrayed the efforts of a passion at odds with natural decay. Hulot was now one of those stalwart ruins in which virile force asserts itself by tufts of hair in the ears and nostrils and on the fingers, as moss grows on the almost eternal monuments of ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... More than ever she was not the Miss Plinlimmon I remembered, but a strange woman, coming forth and revealing herself with the stars. She actually confessed that she loathed porridge!— "though for example's sake, you know, I force myself to eat it. I think it unfair to compel children to a discipline you cannot ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... my good Pauncefort,' said Lady Annabel, 'that I have an odd fancy to-day to force an entrance into the old abbey. It is strange, fond as I am of this walk, that we have never yet entered it. Do you recollect our last vain efforts? Shall we be more fortunate this time, ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli

... Boulogne, and were understood to have declared that if M. Ledru Rollin was excluded from the government, they would take arms. Extraordinary precautions had accordingly been adopted around the hall. A large force was stationed in the adjoining garden, and invitations had been sent to the national guards to hold themselves in readiness to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... decades of Spanish occupation in the Philippines, the native population is decimated, and the Spanish colonists are poor, heavily burdened with taxation, and largely non-producing. The islands are but nominally defended by a small, irregular, demoralized force of unpaid soldiers, whose lawlessness and arrogance render them dangerous to their own countrymen, and tyrants over the helpless natives. The Audiencia is a costly institution, a burden of which all the people complain. They have ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume VI, 1583-1588 • Emma Helen Blair

... near which the mule was feeding. Provoked at being disturbed, the soldiers were ready enough to think ill of me; and they took it for granted that I was a thief, who had stolen the ring I pretended to have just found. The ring was taken from me by force; and the next day I was bastinadoed for having found it: the officer persisting in the belief that stripes would make me confess where I had concealed certain other articles of value, which had lately been missed in the camp. All this was the consequence of my being in a hurry ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth

... skill. In the classics Roger Ascham was her tutor. She wrote various short poems, some of which were called by her contemporaries "sonnets," though not in the true sonnet form. Her original letters and despatches show an idiomatic force of expression beyond that of ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin

... was stung by the injustice and cowardly cruelty of the outrages perpetrated on us by the men who earned their bread in our works; and hence it was, that, instead of feeling any compunction in doing what I proposed, I was delighted with the idea, and longed for an opportunity to put it in force. ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn

... along with a story advocating euthanasia, showing with all the force of the art of fiction the slow, hideous suffering of some helpless cancer patient or the like, the blessed release that might be humanly given; showing it so as to make an indelible impression—this story is refused as "controversial," as ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... together, and do not scatter your band. Then let the sons of Sigfus go to see their wives on the way. I too will ride to the Thing, and Ljot my son with all our Thingmen, and stand by thee with such force as I can ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous

... the coast, and to organize there an army of observation, destined to succour Holland in case of an invasion, or to invade England should a favourable occasion present itself. The fact is, he was charged to intrigue rather than to fight; and were Napoleon able to force upon Austria another Peace of Luneville, Brune would probably be the plenipotentiary that would ask your acceptance of another Peace of Amiens. It is here a general belief that his present command signifies another pacific overture ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... which their inventors did. Pliny and Suetonius describe the almost incredible magnitude of the vessels in which these gigantic masses of stone were conveyed to Ostia, the harbour town, and from thence up the Tiber to Rome. The huge triremes were propelled by the force of hundreds of rowers across the waters of the Mediterranean. From the quay at Rome they were dragged and pushed, by the brute force of thousands in the old Egyptian manner, on low carts supported on rollers instead of wheels, to their destination, ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan

... blank fell upon my hopes at these cruel words! The people looked so savage and unpitying, and I thought that after all we must stay at home—there seemed no crevice of space into which we could force ourselves; and in silent consternation I surveyed Aunt Henshaw's substantial proportions. But she was an experienced traveller; and making her adieus with a degree of composure and certainty that quite reassured me, she took me by the hand and advanced to the stage as smilingly as though ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman

... of character a great deal more. The people possessed by hereditary right the quality of reverence, which, in their descendants, if it survive at all, exists in smaller proportion, and with a vastly diminished force in the selection and estimate of public men. The change may be for good or ill, and is partly, perhaps, for both. In that old day the English settler on these rude shores—having left king, nobles, and all degrees of awful rank behind, while still the faculty and necessity ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... the emotions set up by artistic presentment, as compared with those resulting from concrete observation has, however, to be studied in its relation to another fact—that impulses vary, in their driving force and in the depth of the nervous disturbance which they cause, in proportion, not to their importance in our present life, but to the point at which they appeared in our evolutionary past. We are quite ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas

... of political corruption may be more insistent when a large force of men is constantly employed, and when large supplies are constantly purchased, by public officials, but the temptation is not so strong or so centralized as it is in the granting of franchises to wealthy corporations. Public industry is weakened by the absence ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter

... we were walled in, we were deep in the lock, and as the water poured down in two falls, for there was a platform half way to break its tremendous force, our boat bobbed up and down like a cockle-shell. We felt an upset meant death, for no one could possibly have climbed up those steep black walls, still less swum or even kept his head above ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie

... carried his work from bookseller to bookseller, and was every where refused. His performance was not seasoned to the times, he was a person that nobody knew, and he had no man of rank, by his importunities and eloquence, to force him into the ranks of fashion. At length he found a bookseller foolish enough to undertake it. But he presently perceived that the gentlemen at the head of that profession were wiser than he. All the motives they ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin

... looked a lovely face enough, and when compared with the real head in chalk, the contrast was as great as self- control could desire. I derived benefit from the task: it had kept my head and hands employed, and had given force and fixedness to the new impressions I wished to stamp indelibly ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte

... little tale, is it not? but that is why men wondered at Peter's survival, marvelled at the recuperative force that made possible his fourth attempt, speculated with a certain awe over that cheerful disposition which had earned him, even in his adversity, ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White



Words linked to "Force" :   tumble, military service, penetrate, vigour, paramilitary organization, causal agency, service, trip wire, moment, mujahadein, baseball, validity, armour, yank, abduct, armed service, push up, lifeblood, adduct, organization, affinity, troops, impetus, compact, social group, social unit, riot, stick, military machine, serviceman, push away, vigor, plunk, tip, forcible, topple, pull back, patrol, attract, steamroller, guard, turn up the heat, heartbeat, manpower, contingent, tug, compress, armor, energy, toe, draw in, jurisprudence, impulsion, war machine, propulsion, mujahedeen, intensiveness, act, oblige, torsion, aggression, paramilitary unit, impact, thrust out, railroad, cohesion, momentum, make, soldiery, chemical attraction, domestic violence, zip, natural philosophy, sting, Republican Guard, pluck, police, rank and file, shove, commando, pick off, pack together, road rage, echelon, physics, juggernaut, drag, legion, stuff, baseball game, army unit, security force, nose, mujahidin, command, IDF, haul, vitality, push out, beat back, bludgeon, attraction, hostility, tweak, jerk, drift, reserves, unit, bring oneself, elan vital, paramilitary, squeeze for, pull in, push aside, air unit, militia, line personnel, organisation, military police, obligate, men, nudge, intensity, pick, sandbag, steamroll, mujahideen, pull off, terrorise, wheel, headquarters, press, constabulary, validness, do, mujahadeen, displace, push back, moloch, mujahedin, stretch, jam, enemy, paramilitary organisation, brunt, spearhead, turn up the pressure, military, hands, physical phenomenon, reaction, repulsion, toenail, duress, influence, perforate, MP, armed services, repulse, putout, stress, mujahadin, military man, cart, cause, poke at, causal agent, prod, winch, military personnel, detail, compel, muscle into, rank, dragoon, jostle, twitch, public violence, torque, flick, law, terrorize, obtrude, Haganah, repel, naval unit, man, staff, impulse, move, management personnel, phalanx



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com