Obstruction

“ I will only remark on the law of the case, that committing an obstruction is a peculiar offence, since it is committed by everyone who, being in a public thoroughfare, does not walk briskly through the streets from his starting-place to his goal. p. 20There is no need to show that some other person is hindered by him in his loitering, since obviously that might be the case; and besides, his loitering might hinder another from forming in his mind a legitimate wish to be there, and so might do him a very special and peculiar injury. ”

“ Antonyms:
[257]
OBSTRUCT. Synonyms:
To obstruct is literally to build up against; the road is obstructed by fallen trees; the passage of liquid through a tube is obstructed by solid deposits. We may hinder one's advance by following and clinging to him; we obstruct his course by standing in his way or putting a barrier across his path. Anything that makes one's progress slower, whether from within or from without, impedes; an obstruction is always from without. To arrest is to cause to stop suddenly; obstructing the way may have the effect of arresting progress. Compare HINDER ”

“ Have you got the will to surmount mountain-high obstructions? If the whole world stands against you sword in hand, would you still dare to do what you think is right? ”

“ Despots and fanatics have exerted their ingenuity to invent torments for their victims—how useless!—the rack, the boot, fire,—all that they have imagined are not to be compared to the torture of extreme thirst. ”

“ May the roar of Faction, thirsting for evil, never in this place be heard, nor the dust that drinks the dark blood of fellow-citizens bring to the State, from passion for revenge, the doom of retaliation. ”

“ Crafty, dishonest arts, oppression, extortion, and, above all, fire and sword. They dared to ape the thunder and lightning of Heaven, and, assisted by the machinations of the grand adversary of man, rendered their imitative contrivances for destruction more terrible and deadly than the original. ”

“ Where pain of unextinguishable fire Must exercise us without hope of end The vassals of his anger, when the scourge Inexorably, and the torturing hour, Calls us to penance? More destroyed than thus, We should be quite abolished, and expire. ”

“ As all our hope depends on brutal force on quick destruction, misery and death; soon may we see dark ruin stalk around, with murder, rapine, and inflicted pains, estates confiscate, slav'ry and despair, wrecks, halters, axes, gibbeting and chains, all the dread ills that wait on civil war;---how I could glut my vengeful eyes to see the weeping maid thrown helpless on the world. Her sire cut off.---Her orphan brothers stand while the big tear rools down the manly cheek. ”

“ No more fitting retribution could have reached this man-monster—who had so recklessly spilled the blood of the subjects, violated all the laws at the will of a tyrant, and terrified every one who came before him by the diabolical fury of his looks and language—than that he should perish in his cell, of terror and shame, which he did soon after. ”

“ While they see vanity unto thee, while they divine a lie unto thee, to bring thee upon the necks of them that are slain, of the wicked, whose day is come, when their iniquity shall have an end.—Destruction will come even when the worldly-wise are mistakenly asserting that it will not come nigh them. ”

“ Where death's the prize of conquest, and defeat Seals its own safety, yet remains unblest! But indignation at their fond deceit, And rage, the more inflames the tyrant's breast, The more this constant pair the palm of guilt contest. ”

“ Let us not even talk of `exterminating war'! that unnatural crime which would harrow up our souls with the pangs of remorse, and haunt our repose with the dread of retaliation — which would draw down upon our cause the curse of heaven, and make our very name the odium of all generations. ”

“ A word of contempt against the King or the government, a joke, a detached phrase, was enough. It is incredible how many people, justly or unjustly, were more or less ruined, always without resource, without trial, and without knowing why. ”

“ What, if she could think how fearful is my interest in these outrages, that in all probability, if their authors are detected, there is one who will drag me into their ruin; that I am given over, bound and blinded, into the hands of another; and that other, a man steeled to mercy, and withheld from my destruction by a thread—a thread that a blow on himself would snap. ”

“ But suppose one pass, as is permissible in philology, from the word itself to its softened synonym, then, instead of committing an ignoble assassination you make an ‘elimination;’ you merely and simply remove from your path the individual who is in your way, and that without shock or violence, without the display of the sufferings which, in the case of becoming a punishment, make a martyr of the victim, and a butcher, in every sense of the word, of him who inflicts them. ”

“ Unfit art thou, O my gentle one, to do battle with the wickedness of wicked men, and with the cunning arts of the adversary. Verily thou wilt be led as a lamb to the slaughter. Hast thou fathomed the depth of the pit of destruction? ”

“ Views of incendiarism, burning, wrecking, and the destruction of property, which may put like action into the minds of those of evil instincts, or may degrade the morals of the young, will be disapproved. ”

“ Now a scene of persecution and cruelty began which far exceeds in atrocity anything which history has related. Every tie of nature and society was broken, every duty and every relation violated, and torture forced from all alike false accusations, betrayal of friends, confession of impossible crimes ”

“ Crimes of worse than brutal violence, savage cruelty, crimes of treachery and cowardly cunning and conspiracy, breach of trust, tyrannical extortion, groveling intemperance, sensuality gross and shameless—the heart sickens at the record of a week's crime! ”

“ Four years ago, when you had power over me and over mine, you brutalised us. To-day we—the people—are your masters and we make you suffer, not for all—that were impossible—but for part of what you made us suffer. ”

“ A stream of filthy language followed—abuse of the Commanding Officer, abuse of the army, abuse of the war, and abuse of the Government. The man could find no other way of expressing himself with adequate force and crudity. ”

“ Destroyers, are they who lay snares for many, and call it the state: they hang a sword and a hundred cravings over them.
Where there is still a people, there the state is not understood, but hated as the evil eye, and as sin against laws and customs. ”

“ Aroused in Thunder, awful they appear, With proud Deliverance stalking in their rear: While Tyrant Foes their pallid Fears betray, Shrink from their Arms, and give their Vengeance way; Sec, in the unequal War, OPPRESSORS fall, The Hate, Contempt, and endless Curse of all. ”

“ Corruption in civic or national government, inhumanity in the treatment of the criminal and the unfortunate, the oppression of the poor, the brutal disregard of the rights of the weak and the defenceless, any one of these will draw out our souls in the hot and aggressive indignation which is the imparted fire of the Holy Ghost. ”

“ Nevertheless, when it is just, when the offense received is very atrocious, when the persons and the circumstances are such that no human law can indemnify the aggrieved and punish the aggressor, then revenge, under the names of war, invasion, conspiracy, the duel, and the like, ennobles itself, and so works upon our minds as not only to be endured but to be admirable and sublime. ”

“ They kept the sufferer standing, and relieved each other in their cruel work of pinching, pricking, twitching, pulling with ropes, burning, suffocating with offensive fumes, until after successive days and nights of torture the victim was driven to madness, and to promise any thing to escape from his tormentors. ”

“ The wicked tyrant's tongue is torn out, his murdered son's body is thrown down before him, and then the conspirators, standing round, gibe, curse, and rant at him for a couple of pages before they plunge their swords into his body. ”

“ With this impression, and believing that it is their actual duty to destroy, as far as lies in their power, every source of unhappiness, it has been a custom among them from time immemorial, to destroy every one that they could convict of so heinous a crime ”

“ We are destructive, or rather, accurately speaking, we should like to be destructive--only we aren't. That was a bad miss of mine. But if we like to destroy, you women love to annex. Witness that pile of seaweed and shells beside you. ”

“ And daily, hourly, the hideous instrument of torture claimed its many victims—old men, young women, tiny children until the day when it would finally demand the head of a King and of a beautiful young Queen. ”

“ It was a palpable tyrannous murderous injustice, which no man, let him paint an inch thick, could make out to be other. It burnt deep into the hearts of men, it and the like of it; suppressed fire flashed in the eyes of men, as they thought of it,—waiting their day! ”

“ The angry heavens speak in thunder to thee,
O, hear their awful voice, tho' deaf to mine,
'Tis an offended God that bids thee hold!
Whose vengeance falls on those, who vengeance seek.
Count. My wrongs cry louder than the storm, away! ”

“ But in negation, as in fire, there is a destructive power, and how to keep it in bounds, how to tell it where to stop, when that which it must destroy, and that which it must spare are often inseparably welded together? ”

“ In furtherance of this unholy violence we cultivated a sense of honor, a chivalrous fortitude, a sterling adherence to truth, an abhorrence of falsehood, and above all of treachery, virtues which filled us with an enthusiasm that blended an unrighteous cause with exalted feelings, and blinded us to the coarse criminality of our proceedings. ”

“ What is even worse, traitorous and evil-disposed persons lie concealed in the midst, organizing brotherhoods and swearing oaths, meeting at night and dispersing at dawn, breaking the law and failing in duty, disturbing society and imposing on the people. ”

“ Under this head we comprehend not only assassinations, and robberies committed by the populace, but by grandees and magistrates; whose example acts with more force, and at a greater distance, destroying the ideas of justice and duty among the subjects, and substituting that of the right of the strongest, equally dangerous to those who exercise it, and to those who suffer. ”

“ We listen to the clank of chains, and overhear the whispers of assassins. We mark the barbarous dissonance of mingled rage and triumph in the yell of an infuriated mob; we see the dismal glare of their burnings, and scent the loathsome steam of human victims offered in sacrifice. ”

“ If it is not said that any considerable number wantonly abuse and outrage him, it must be said that they manifest a barbarous indifference to his fate, which just as surely drives him on to destruction as open cruelty would. ”

“ There falleth so continually before the eyes of our heart a fearful imagination of this terrible thing: his mighty strength and power, his high malice and hatred, and his incomparable cruelty, with robbing, spoiling, burning, and laying waste all the way that his army cometh; then, killing or carrying away the people thence, far from home, and there severing the couples and the kindred asunder, every one far from the other, some kept in thraldom and some kept in prison and some for a triumph tormented and killed in his presence ”

“ I know that, in revolutions, law as well as justice is often forgotten, and the proof of it is that I am here. I owe my trial to nothing but the prejudices and violent animosities which arise in times of great agitation, and which are generally directed against those who have been placed in conspicuous situations, or are known to possess any energy or spirit. ”

“ It is plain, that were all things in perpetual tumult and confusion,—disturbance and contention on all sides—deeds of violence and wrong committed in open day, and no power to check them,—robbers breaking into houses, and murderers running through the streets with naked swords in their hands,—in such a state of things, what could the peaceable and well-disposed do? ”

“ And if acts, savouring of sheer revenge, were done by them, they should be regarded as but the ebullitions of men, under the excitement of great and damning wrongs, and which, in their dispassionate moments, they would condemn, even in themselves. ”

“ Destruction is upon them already; all will be destroyed, as the circumstances stand, before the master acts to avert peril. Something must be destroyed at all events. The only volition to be exercised is, Shall the destruction be anticipated as to part, to procure the rescue of the rest? ”

“ Then came martial law, militia campaigns, loyal leagues, murders, arsons, burglaries, rapes, and a reign of terror and intimidation to make the way for the easy perpetration of the most monstrous and unparallelled wrongs, frauds and outrages that ever cursed the earth. ”