But do not indulge in the besetting sin of your sex, or, like the mother of the race, you may find your apple choke you in the chewing.

As it is the besetting weakness of all provincial habits to mistake graces for grace, flourishes for elegance, and exaggeration for merit, Annette soon acquired a reputation in her circle, as a woman of more than usual claims to distinction.

But, at all events, the colonel's besetting infirmity was always to shrink from making changes; instinctively he balked against commission of any action which would alter his relations with accustomed circumstances or persons.

They will be personally dealt with, and placed as far as possible in circumstances that shall put them beyond the reach of their besetting temptation.

Words heard in an unexpected quarter, but applying marvellously well to the besetting difficulty of the moment.

The besetting hindrance to their progress was the low scrub of brushwood that greatly delayed the pack-horses.

It has ever been my besetting sinmy companion in prosperity and adversity; and I have slept upon it, like Samson on the lap of Delilah, till it has shorn my locks and deprived me of my strength.

Man has a duty to conceal his besetting impurities of thought and inclinations to sin; to conceal such of his doubts and fears as would dishearten others and weaken himself by their expression; to conceal his unkindnesses of spirit and his unjust prejudices of feeling; to conceal, in fact, whatever of his innermost personality is liable to work harm by its disclosure, and to a knowledge of which his fellows have no just claim.

If any among men having good fortune and dwelling amid prizes of renown or the power of wealth restraineth in his heart besetting insolence, this man is worthy to have part in his citizens' good words.

To say the truth, not the smallest of the besetting vices of Mr. Dodge had their foundation in a provincial education, and in provincial notions; the invariable tendency of both being to persuade their subject that he is always right, while all opposed to him in opinion are wrong.

"All night I lay in agony, From weary chime to chime, With one besetting horrid hint, That rack'd me all the time, A mighty yearning, like the first Fierce impulse unto crime!

In them Valour is the servant of Honour; in an age of which violence is the besetting danger, the protection of the weak is elevated into a first principle of action; and they betoken an order of things in which Force should be only known as allied with Virtue, while they historically foreshadow the magnificent aristocracy of mediaeval Europe.

Such are the materials, and the style of this expanded nightmare: And as we can plainly perceive, among a certain class of writers, a disposition to haunt us with similar apparitions, and to describe them with a corresponding tumor of words, we conceive it high time to step forward and abate a nuisance which threatens to become a besetting evil, unless checked in its outset.

"This tendency to delay, Spiller," he said, "is your besetting fault.

In the besetting fear that he was leaving Di to face something alone, Bobby had arrived.