Antagonist

“ Dozens fought together—heads, legs, and bodies intertwining in an indistinguishable mass, each held in a savage grip that only loosened in death. A dozen devoted themselves to certain death for the chance of killing a single antagonist. ”

“ Here you are master of the situation, and can present the objection in a shape most accessible to your own knife. By anticipating an antagonist you break his sword and render your own position unassailable. ”

“ He made one great and master spirit of evil, to whom he also gave assimilated and subordinate evil spirits, to execute his will. Two antagonist powers, they believe, were thus placed in the world who are continually striving for the mastery, and who have power to affect the fortunes and lives of men. ”

“ The stoutest antagonist, if he remits his watch a moment, is oppressed; and many, through cowardice and folly, open the gates to the enemies, and willingly receive them with reverence and submission as their legal sovereigns. ”

“ In like manner our antagonist in a law-suit, and our competitor for any office, are commonly regarded as our enemies, tho' we must acknowledge, if we wou'd but reflect a moment, that their motive is entirely as justifiable as our own. ”

“ My antagonist, naturally a man of vindictive disposition, is incensed against me beyond all power of forgiveness, and his skill is fully equal to his malice: should I fall, I leave my father to your care; be a son to him in the place of the one he will have lost. ”

“ If the combatant who was down happened to draw his antagonist along with him, either by accident or art, the contest still continued, and they kept tumbling and twining with each other till one of them got uppermost and compelled the other to own himself vanquished. ”

“ Or one knows not what is done, as he who has let off his antagonist, and slain his domestic instead of his enemy; or that by which it is done, as he who, in exercising with spears having buttons on them, has killed some one in consequence of the spear throwing off the button ”

“ He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper. ”

“ One of that ancient race, finding that an antagonist, with whom he had fixed a friendly meeting, was determined to take the opportunity of assassinating him, prevented the hazard by dashing out his brains with a battle-axe. ”

“ If you succeed in capturing an antagonist who has made a murderous assault upon you, common sense, and a regard for your own safety and the peace of society, require at least that his weapons, or the power of using them, should be taken from him. ”

“ Our ground of approval is this, that it presents to the mind an antagonist idea most fit to encounter the temptation to the crime. As this temptation must generally be great, and often sudden, that antagonist idea should be something capable of seizing upon the apprehension at once—of exercising at once all its restraining efficacy. ”

“ If, among antagonist groups of primitive men, some tolerated more than others the killing of their members—if, while some always retaliated, others did not—those which did not retaliate, continually aggressed on with impunity, would either gradually disappear or have to take refuge in undesirable habitats. ”

“ Sir LUCIUS I shall be very proud of instructing you.—Well for the present—but remember now, when you meet your antagonist, do every thing in a mild and agreeable manner.—Let your courage be as keen, but at the same time as polished, as your sword. ”

“ To some it may include whatever is terrible, terrifying; to others it may symbolize a worthy antagonist, one who throws down the gauntlet and asks no questions, but who will make a good and fair fight wherein advantage is neither taken nor given. ”

“ And next, that if the antagonist were taken away he who overcomes is thereby injured. For if thou lettest the adversary remain, the more slothful are injured, not on account of the more diligent, but by their own slothfulness; whereas if thou takest away the antagonist, the more diligent are betrayed on account of the slothful, and neither exhibit their own power, nor win crowns. ”

“ He was a dangerous antagonist to meet at a joust, and though he could use the keen edge of steel, he oftener despatched his antagonist with a heavy mace of facts or figures, which those who had neither his industry nor his powers of memory could neither refute nor set aside. ”

“ I said, "who was one night attacked in a quiet spot by a man who sought his life, say, for the purpose of robbery. Your friend was the stronger and easily defended himself. Then he saw that his antagonist was a man of ill repute, an evildoer, a man whose presence upon the earth did good to no one. ”

“ He must address Himself to the mighty undertaking of destroying the works of the devil. The great adversary, therefore, wisely endeavours to mar it at the outset, by a deliberately planned series of assaults, directed against all the vulnerable points of that human nature his great antagonist must wear. ”

“ We have seen in III. that it stands in antagonism to all mere particulars; but here it stands in antagonism to all mere individual interests as so many {347} selves, to the personal will as seeking its objects in the manifestation of itself for itself—sit pro ratione voluntas;—whether this be realized with adjuncts, as in the lust of the flesh, and in the lust of the eye; or without adjuncts, as in the thirst and pride of power, despotism, egoistic ambition. The fourth antagonist, then, of reason, is the lust of the will. ”

“ An antagonist starts up and presses me hard. I enter the field, and retain these three persons to defend my cause. My cause, which two farmers from the plough could have decided in half an hour, takes the court twenty years. ”

“ To charge against carbines that made each man as sixteen were uncanny, too much like challenging the Unknown. But a thousand men who fired only every two or three minutes–an antagonist like that was quite well known to their philosophy. ”

“ He dashes strongly in, wheels while his antagonist is braced, and makes off. The enemy pursues. Then, apparently, the chase is on for the rest of the day. The victor is not content merely to drive his rival out of the country ”

“ But their antagonists—the dark or evil beings whom the hero attacks and eventually destroys, or whom the heroine overcomes by her virtues, her subtlety, or her skill—vary to a considerable extent with the region they occupy, or rather with the people in whose memories they dwell. ”

“ An antagonist's gun may be out of action, and you may have a score of men coming up to it and within six inches of it, but it is not yet captured; and you may have brought up a dozen men all round the hostile gun, but if there is still one enemy just out of their reach and within six inches of the end of the trail of the gun, that gun is not captured: it is still in dispute and out of action, and you may not fire it or move it at the next move. But once a gun is fully captured, it follows all the rules of your own guns. ”

“ They are like ivy about an oak, which adorns the tree at the same time that it eats into it; or like a great man's equipage, that do honour to the person on whom they feed. For my part, when I see myself thus attacked, I do not consider my antagonists as malicious, but hungry, and therefore am resolved never to take any notice of them. ”

“ And again she felt alone in the presence of her old antagonist, life. ”

“ Wherefore, I deem that an enemy hath cast the shadow of me on the air of that land.”
“Yea, my Lady,” said Walter; “and what enemy mightest thou have to have done this?”
She was slow of answer, but spake at last from a quivering mouth of anger: “Knowest thou not the saw, that a man’s foes are they of his own house? If I find out for a truth who hath done this, the said enemy shall have an evil hour with me.” ”

“ The enemy were in battle array, advancing over the plain, their king with them confident and cheerful, when suddenly from the front came a desperate rider at a furious gallop.
‘Sire!’ he cried, ‘save yourself! the enemy are coming!’
‘What do you mean?’ said the king.
‘Oh, sire!’ panted the messenger, ‘fly at once, there is no time to lose. Foremost of the enemy rides a mad giant at a furious gallop. He flourishes a tree for a club and is wild with anger, for as he goes he cries, “You wait till I get hold of you! I’ll skin you alive! ”

“ Anglesea to meet you in the duel, were inspired by the spirit of wrath and revenge. In your fierce anger you were not alone. Many shared that madness with you. Neither you nor they could help feeling a frenzy of indignation against the perpetrator of outrageous wrongs. But, though you could not help feeling this frenzy of anger, you could help sinning. You should have remembered the Word of God, ‘Be ye angry, but sin not.’ ‘Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,’ and, above all, the awful command, ‘Thou shalt do no murder.’ What! shall a man break these laws, and call it honor? ”

“ Your worst enemy is yourself. When you are counting your resources and saying, 'I have this, that, and the other thing,' do not forget to say, 'I have a part of me, that takes all the rest of me all its time to keep it down and prevent it from becoming master.' You have traitors in the fortress who are in communication with the enemy outside, and may go over to him openly in the very crisis of the fight. You have to take that fact into account, and it ought to suppress boasting whilst you are putting on the harness. ”

“ Therefore the clever combatant imposes his will on the enemy, but does not allow the enemy’s will to be imposed on him.
3. By holding out advantages to him, he can cause the enemy to approach of his own accord; or, by inflicting damage, he can make it impossible for the enemy to draw near.
4. If the enemy is taking his ease, he can harass him; if well supplied with food, he can starve him out; if quietly encamped, he can force him to move. ”

“ O God, thou hast crushed thine enemies. The sea has swallowed them up; they have fallen into the depths like a stone. Thou hast sent thine anger upon them; it has consumed them like straw. The enemy hath said, I will pursue them, I will fall upon them, I will share their spoils, I will slay them with my sword, and I will be master. ”

“ He judged that enemy by himself, and he knew that he would not stop in the search after vengeance, that nothing short of the fullest and direst ruin—nothing, in fact, short of death itself would satisfy him. ”

“ If we die, let the enemy kill us, let our blood fill up their cup, that the day of vengance that is coming on them may be hastened." Then he began and said, "Lord, it is thy enemies' day, hour and power; they may not be idle, but hast thou no other work for them, but to send them after us? ”

“ That, as Alex and Case well knew, is an old, old trick in the underworld. Whenever an enemy is to be attacked, it is common practice for the assailants to start a fight among themselves, being certain that their enemies are dealt most of the blows. ”

“ Know therefore that I have determined to fight a duel to the death with this traitor, who cannot refuse to fight with me, since I have designedly assaulted and insulted him in the person of his servant, and since I do at this moment insult and challenge him in his own person, branding him before God, before you and before the honest fellows who attend us, as a cowardly and despicable murderer! ”

“ The old enemy, gentlemen, which your fathers hunted about these hills and dales, was visible to the eye, and could be reached with powder and ball; but the enemy whom you assault is, like the foe of human bliss which entered the garden of Eden, invisible, and therefore not to be described, and not to be destroyed by force of arms. ”

“ Surely it is not surrender when the wound is mortal and the enemy is—that one. But enemy! What shallow, stuffy nonsense that is! We have handed down our restless memories, the old forlorn absurdities, father to son and son again, and now I am, well, just the last echo of the refrain before the end. ”

“ Every kind of evil treatment such as no one can endure.”
When these words I heard him utter I was filled with bitter rage,
And forthwith made preparation with the warrior to engage.
“Hearken, Master Love,” I shouted, “from this spot stir not away,
You and I must have a battle, must engage in deadly fray;
p. 28That it may be known for certain which is strongest of us two.”
Then into the arena bounding there I stood in all men’s view,
In the midst of it expecting firm the onset of the foe,
Doubting not should he attack me him at once to overthrow. ”

“ They narrate the mode of approaching the enemy, the onset, the battle, all the little particulars of which are detailed: but they seem to dwell with particular pleasure on the conduct of individuals of the enemy, as it appeared immediately before they received the death blow; if there was any movement of the body, or emotion exhibited upon the countenance of the victim, that betrayed a want of firmness, or fear of death, at that awful juncture, the account excites much laughter in the audience. ”

“ Fighting the devil with fire is evidence of a true militant spirit, yet one may doubt the wisdom of meeting an adversary in that adversary’s own element, of arming oneself for the battle with that adversary’s favorite weapon. ”

“ It is a pleasant thing to say to one's enemy, 'Sir, you are a scoundrel.' But when your enemy says the same thing to you, you kill him without hesitation or regret—which proves, I suppose, that you are not pleased with his definition of you. ”

“ They came crowding round her, mocking and snatching and beating; shrieking with rage and spite, and swearing and snarling, for they knew her for their old enemy, that drove them back into the corners, and kept them from working their wicked wills. ”