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Cleave   Listen
verb
Cleave  v. t.  (past clove; past part. cloven or cleaved; pres. part. cleaving)  
1.
To part or divide by force; to split or rive; to cut. "O Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain."
2.
To part or open naturally; to divide. "Every beast that parteth the hoof, and cleaveth the cleft into two claws."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Cleave" Quotes from Famous Books



... were no naiads of celestial beauty ready to cleave the crystal waters with their alabaster arms, and no gracious undines with fair hair to come forth at night and play upon ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds

... mate, 'a short life it may be to all of us, but not a merry one; the meaning of which I understand very well. Sorry I shall be to have your blood, or that of others, on my hands; but as sure as there's a heaven, I'll cleave to the shoulder the first man who attempts to break into the spirit-room. You know I never joke. Shame upon you! Do you call yourselves men, when, for the sake of a little liquor now, you would lose your only chance of getting drunk every day ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat

... it is pieced up, upon a direct admission of contraries, in fundamental points. For truth and falsehood, in such things, are like the iron and clay, in the toes of Nebuchadnezzar's image; they may cleave, but they will ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon

... Cleave to your country, home, and friends, Die in a sordid strife — You can count your friends on your finger ends In the critical hours of life. Sacrifice all for the family's sake, Bow to their selfish rule! Slave till your ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens

... low a temperature is very exhausting. A man can perform hardly more than a quarter of his usual work; iron utensils cannot be touched; if the hand seizes them, it feels as if it were burned, and shreds of skin cleave to the object which had been ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne

... was altogether extremely unbecoming in a sensible man to behave as he did—falling in love with a girl who really had nothing more than her beauty to recommend her, attributing imaginary virtues to her, and even condescending to cleave to her after she had fallen in love with another man, waiting for her kind looks as a patient trembling dog waits for his master's eye to be turned upon him. But in so complex a thing as human nature, we must consider, it ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot

... "And marked you not the words of the traitor, as they met? 'My Lord,' quoth he, 'you are my shield and defence.' {6} Would that I could cleave his treason-hatching skull with ...
— The Little Duke - Richard the Fearless • Charlotte M. Yonge

... to do. It is our lives or his. When he rides up tomorrow, we will meet him at the door as if nothing had happened, and, with my axe, I will cleave his head asunder as he comes in. If he sees me in time to retreat, you shall stab him in the back. Then we will dig a big hole in the wood, and throw him in, and we will kill his horse ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty

... and he the slave at my bidding. Yea, he told it over so sweetly, that I believed him faithfully, nor thought in any wise that his heart would bear wrath and malice against me, whether for Duchess or for Queen. How good was this love, since the heart in my breast must always cleave to his! I counted him to be my friend, in age as in youth, our lives together; for well I knew that if he died first I should not dare to endure long without him, because of the greatness of my love. ...
— French Mediaeval Romances from the Lays of Marie de France • Marie de France

... door, and enter he that dare! Virga, be gone, thy twigs I'll turn to steel; These fingers, that were expert in the jerk; Instead of lashing of the trembling podex, Must learn pash and knock, and beat and mall, Cleave pates and caputs; he that enters here, Comes on to his death! mors mortis he shall taste. [He ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various

... bell, and, in broken accents, for I could yet scarcely speak, told him to ring again; but he did not seem to understand; giving me wild looks, showering broken oaths upon me, and holding up the mattock in a threatening attitude, as if he would cleave my ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various

... not a drop of their blood will I give you, and if you dare to come for them ye shall see that the sword of Mohammed has still an edge upon it. Unfurl the banner of the Prophet in front of the gate of the Seraglio. Let all true believers cleave to me. Send criers into all the streets to announce that the Seraglio is in danger, and let all to whom the countenance of Allah is dear hasten to the defence of the Banner! I will collect the bostanjis and defend the gates ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai

... that he which made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife; and the twain shall become ...
— The Lights of the Church and the Light of Science - Essay #6 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley

... my heart's assur'd. See here, the mark as of three stars impress'd On his right hand, which on his natal day Were by the priest declar'd to indicate Some dreadful deed by him to be perform'd. And then this scar, which doth his eyebrow cleave, Redoubles my conviction. When a child, Electra, rash and inconsiderate, Such was her nature, loos'd him from her arms. He fell against a tripos. Oh, 'tis he!— Shall I adduce the likeness to his sire, Or the deep rapture of my inmost heart, In ...
— Iphigenia in Tauris • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... Christ. He dismisses no people out of His hospital as incurable, because anybody, everybody, the blackest, the most rooted in evil, those who have longest indulged in any given form of transgression, may all come to Him; with the certainty that if they will cleave to Him, He will read all their character and all its weaknesses, and then with a glad smile of welcome and assured confidence on His face, will ensure to them a new nature and new dignities. 'Thou art Simon—thou shalt ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren

... remembered that sins by which passion and externals overbear my better self are mine in responsibility and in consequences. Thus guarded, we may be wholly right in thinking of all the evils which still cleave to the renewed Christian soul as not being part of it, but destined to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren

... must not give it up. The years of civil war which will succeed dismemberment of the Union will cause true men to seek refuge and security, from military despotism, in some other country. Some Caesar or Napoleon will spring from the vortex of revolution and war, and with his sword cleave his way to supreme command. If all history is not a failure, and if mankind are now what they have always been, such will be the fate of free government in the United States, in the event of war. Shall we ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden

... another man with all the lack of it? What kind of a God is this who looks down out of the heaven of day and the heavens of night, and sees all the sorrow, the anguish, the pain, the unspeakable tragedies, and sends no wing of angel to cleave the pitiless sky, no voice out of the silence to console, ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman

... Possess'd with th' Devil, worms, and claps; The Trojan mare, in foal with Greeks, Not half so full of jadish tricks; Though squeamish in her outward woman, 475 As loose and rampant as Dol Common; He still resolv'd to mend the matter, T' adhere and cleave the obstinater; And still the skittisher and looser Her freaks appear'd, to sit the closer. 480 For fools are stubborn in their way, As coins are harden'd by th' allay: And obstinacy's ne'er so stiff As when 'tis ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... far off to use the occasion for rising on his ruin. But although this mean course, could we only follow it, were certainly the best, yet, since I believe it to be impracticable, we must resort to the methods above indicated, and either keep altogether aloof, or else cleave closely to the prince. Whosoever does otherwise, if he be of great station, lives in constant peril; nor will it avail him to say, "I concern myself with nothing; I covet neither honours nor preferment; ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli

... make us forget, the great services that slavery rendered in early ages. There is a wonderful presumption in its favour; it is one of the institutions which, at a certain stage of growth, all nations in all countries choose and cleave to. 'Slavery,' says Aristotle, 'exists by the law of nature,' meaning that it was everywhere to be found—was a rudimentary universal point of polity. 'There are very many English colonies,' said Edward Gibbon Wakefield, as late as 1848, 'who would keep slaves at once if ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot

... dates must be coming to an end," said Zelinda one evening as she presented the youth with a flask of rich wine and some costly fruits. He, however, gently put aside the gift and said, "Noble lady, I would accept your gift gladly, but I fear some of your magic arts may perhaps cleave to it. Or could you assure me to the contrary by Him whom you are now beginning to know?" Zelinda cast down her eyes in silent confusion and took her presents back. On the following evening, however, she brought ...
— The Two Captains • Friedrich de La Motte-Fouque

... stone or cleave the wood to make a path more fair or flat, Lo, it is black already with blood some Son of Martha spilled for that. Not as a ladder from Earth to Heaven, not as an altar to any creed, But simple Service, simply given, to their own ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow

... dragged him to shore at the island of Oenoe, formerly Oenoe, but afterwards called Sicinus from Sicinus, whom the water-nymph Oenoe bore to Thoas. Now for all the women to tend kine, to don armour of bronze, and to cleave with the plough-share the wheat-bearing fields, was easier than the works of Athena, with which they were busied aforetime. Yet for all that did they often gaze over the broad sea, in grievous fear against the Thracians' coming. ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius

... the stone or cleave the wood, to make a path more fair or flat, Not as a ladder from earth to heaven, not as an altar to any creed, But simple service, simply given, to his own kind ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas

... be absurd to suppose that the preference will not be given to the native of England, who has so many advantages over his rival. — First and foremost, he has in his favour that laudable partiality, which, Mr Addison says, never fails to cleave to the heart of an Englishman; secondly, he has more powerful connexions, and a greater share of parliamentary interest, by which those contests are generally decided; and lastly, he has a greater command of money to smooth the way to his success. For my own part (said ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett

... families, and did not; but gave them for ever as an absolute right and sacrifice to God: and with these immunities and lands they have entailed a curse upon the alienators of them: God prevent your Majesty and your successors from being liable to that Curse, which will cleave unto Church-lands as the leprosy to ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton

... battle were surveying the dead, and looking at the dreadful wounds made by their swords and spears, an Indian started up from among the dead, on which Juan de Caranza ran to attack him. But the Indian gave him such a stroke with a Spanish battle-axe he had laid hold of, as to cleave his target and wound him in the arm. On this Diego de Godoy came up to assail him, but was soon disabled. Francisco de Salazar came on next, and made several thrusts at the Indian who skulked behind a ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr

... the bows when the arrows are shot, out spring the great swords, as the English fly on the French, not one laggard in the company; straight from their shoulders spring the blows that cleave the heads of the French peasants and drop them in the dust ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester

... breast. "Extinguish that light. I to my room. Seek Fletcher. He patrols the garden for malefactors. In the morning I will see you. Before this disaster my chill is sped. You are of my flesh. Cleave unto me. In our bosoms let this abhorrent ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson

... Crinoline and avow my devotion and allegiance, but at that moment I caught the eye of my wife, who had followed me to the Park, and I hastily turned my back on the centre of attraction. I saw, however, that Pendriver was using his spade to cleave his way to the Wenuses; and Swears was standing on the brink of the pit transfixed with adoration; while a young shopman from Woking, in town for the day, completely lost his head. It came bobbing over the grass to my very feet; but I remembered ...
— The War of the Wenuses • C. L. Graves and E. V. Lucas

... approval in his eyes, a shadow of apprehension dimming them before he withdrew his gaze—for of such tender stuff had martyrs been made. "The story of those early days is for our guidance. If trials should come," he added, "cleave but to thy faith and Heaven ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull

... sheer joy of living; it is ever in extremes; it lacks imagination, with the result that it is ruthless. All these characteristics may go with a delightful personality—as in your case, Raymond—but let youth cleave to youth. Youth understands youth. You will in fact be ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts

... of an inn, above the fair sign, or fair lodgings. She is the loadstone that attracts men of iron, gallants and roarers, where they cleave sometimes long, and are not easily got off. Her lips are your welcome, and your entertainment her company, which is put into the reckoning too, and is the dearest parcel in it. No citizen's wife is demurer than she at the first greeting, nor draws in her mouth ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... was intended to deliver man from sin by the Passion and Resurrection, since man had no foreknowledge of his future sin. He does, however, seem to have had foreknowledge of the Incarnation of Christ, from the fact that he said (Gen. 2:24): "Wherefore a man shall leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife," of which the Apostle says (Eph. 5:32) that "this is a great sacrament . . . in Christ and the Church," and it is incredible that the first man was ignorant about ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... wish I could feel as they must feel, these players brave and fair, Who nonchalantly juggle death before a staring throng. It must be fine to walk a line of silver in the air And to cleave a hundred feet of space with a gesture ...
— Main Street and Other Poems • Alfred Joyce Kilmer

... orders are not being carried out, is because they who now guide the Condor's course, do not intend that her keel shall ever cleave ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid

... like fire, And shook his very frame for ire, And—"This to me?" he said; "And 't were not for thy hoary beard, Such hand as Marmion's had not spared To cleave the Douglas' head! ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... sinking or rising of a strong swimmer, exhausted at last, the prey at last of a shoreless sea. At times he came head and shoulders out of the sea. In such a moment he opened his grey-blue eyes full on one of his staff. All the staff was gathered in grief about the bed. "When Richard Cleave," he said, "asks for a court of enquiry let him have it. Tell General Lee—" The sea drew him ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston

... I," I agreed. "If ever I get away with unaddled wits from this mad land, I'll cleave through whatever man dares mention to me what may happen after ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London

... from the forest Firmly held by the sinews which bind them, So cleave to these others, your sisters, Whoever, ...
— A Campfire Girl's First Council Fire - The Camp Fire Girls In the Woods • Jane L. Stewart

... if the truth were known, I'd like to join the boys, But then a Benedick must learn To cleave to other joys. So, here's my answer: "Fred, old chum, I much regret—oh, pshaw! To tell the truth, I've got to dine ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn

... And the watersprings that spake are quenched and dead. Not a cell is left the God, no roof, no cover In his hand the prophet laurel flowers no more. And the great king's high sad heart, thy true last lover, Felt thine answer pierce and cleave it to the core. And he bowed down his hopeless head In the drift of the wild world's tide, And dying, Thou hast conquered, he said, Galilean; he said it, and died. And the world that was thine and was ours When the Graces took hands with the Hours Grew ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... to deliver them is on purpose to try their love, whether they will cleave to him to the end; and as for the ill end thou sayest they come to, that is most glorious in their account; for, for the present deliverance, they do not much expect it, for they stay for their glory, and then they shall have it, when their Prince ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester

... French are the sons of newspapers, and the Greeks they are weavers of lies, but the English and the Osmanlees are brothers together in righteousness; for the Osmanlees believe in one only God, and cleave to the Koran, and destroy idols, so do the English worship one God, and abominate graven images, and tell the truth, and believe in a book, and though they drink the juice of the grape, yet to say that they worship their prophet ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake

... to the dressing-room on a piece of board, and when the woman driver saw him, she got an ax, and wanted to cleave him from head to foot, but the bearded woman stepped in front of her and said: "Not on your life," and she shielded pa from death with her manly form, which pa says he shall never forget. Pa's old friends in Scranton gave him ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck

... similar parts, that is of membranes, veins, arteries and nerves. Its membranes are two and they compose the principal parts of the body, the outermost of which ariseth from the peritoneum or caul, and is very thin, without it is smooth, but within equal, that it may the better cleave to the womb, as it is fleshier and thicker than anything else we meet with within the body, when the woman is not pregnant, and is interwoven with all sorts of fibres or small strings that it may the better suffer the extension of the child, and the water caused during pregnancy, ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous

... I cannot sleep; I dreamt That a strange fury enter'd, now, my house, And, with the dreadful tempest of her breath, Did cleave my roof asunder. ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson

... the blame lies, there can be no doubt about it, that what this hilarious scoffer calls the tediousness of the way is but a too common experience among many of those who, tediousness and all, will still cleave fast to it and will ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte

... can glean is from Intemese, who points out the different localities as we pass along, and among the rest "Mokala a Mama", his "mamma's home". It was interesting to hear this tall gray-headed man recall the memories of boyhood. All the Makalaka children cleave to the mother in cases of separation, or removal from one part of the country to another. This love for mothers does not argue superior morality in other respects, or else Intemese has forgotten any injunctions ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... and strange speech migrated southward to the Land of the Five Rivers and the fat plains of the Ganges. Aryan even as we, the Brahman entered India, singing hymns to the sun and the dawn, bringing with him the stately Sanskrit speech, new lore of priest and shrine, new pride of race that was to cleave society into those horizontal strata that persist to-day in the caste system. Thus through successions of Stone-Age men, Dravidian tribes, and Aryan invaders, India stretches her roots deep into the past. But while there were ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren

... not fall to slumber. Old passages of Testament lore haunted her soul, such as: "Thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee;" "A man shall leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife." She began to see that marriage was not merely the solution of a family trouble, and the giving of her body as a hostage for a pecuniary debt, but that it was a rendition of all her liberty, even the liberty of sympathy ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend

... Christ and to be known by Him, will excite our deep pity for those who endure the like temptations, and prepare us for effectually ministering to the good of others. And if the struggle in our own hearts be long, and there be moments when we seem to have our Gethsemane; let us cleave the closer, with the more simple trust, to our heavenly Father; still imploring Him to grant us in this world knowledge of his truth, and in the world to come life everlasting; assured that the clouds shall one day disperse, and the vision of truth be unveiled to ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar

... sufficient to make the heart of the boy cleave to his new master. For one thing Mr. Simon always, in anything done, took note first of the things that pleased him, and only after that proceeded to remark on the faults—most of which he treated as imperfections, ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... we come across a poet like Theophile Gautier,[373] we have a poet who has taken up his abode at an inn, and never got farther. There may be inducements to this or that one of us, at this or that moment, to find delight in him, to cleave to him; but after all, we do not change the truth about him,—we only stay ourselves in his inn along with him. And when we come across a poet ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... downward go, Thy essence rolls on high; Thus, when my body lieth low, My soul shall cleave ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various

... a noble thing to see an honest man cleave his own heart in twain to fling away the baser part ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott

... wrapped in night, the scudding bark, (That seemed, self-poised amid the dark, Through upper air to leap,) Beheld, from thy most fearful height, The rapid dolphin's azure light Cleave, like a living meteor bright, The darkness ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... leave his father and his mother and shall cleave unto his wife," said Caesar. "You're time enough yet, ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine

... would have lent him, this misery in its greatest share had never been upon him. He would have come hither with riches about him, and the loveliness he had worshipped would have been his own beyond the touch of any rival's hand. Choosing to cleave to the old creeds of his race, and passing, without a backward glance, into the paths of honour and of justice, it was thus with him now. Verily, virtue must be her own reward, as in the Socratic creed; for she will bring no other dower than peace of conscience ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... to save me from destruction, to make me what I ought to be, to cleave to your husband as if he were yourself, in spite of parents or relations! I am sure, Netta, that you are taught to do all this; besides, you cannot help it, if you love me. You know that I would have married you when I ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale

... mother, whom I loved beyond all created things. She was the joy of my soul—the pride of my boyish dreams. I was happy then, I tell thee. I called myself by another name. No matter what it was. Black Claus is the avenger's name, and he will cleave to it. One day there came an aged beggar-woman to our cottage, and begged. My mother heeded her not. I know not why; for she was ever kind. My father drove her from the door; and, as she turned away, she cursed us all. I never can forget that moment, nor the terror ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various

... variations of the seasons. People talk, and encourage mobs to think, that Parliaments cause, and that Parliaments could heal if they pleased, the evil of fluctuation in grain. Alas! the evil is as ancient as the weather, and, like the disease of poverty, will cleave to society for ever. And the way in which a corn-law—that is, a restraint upon the free importation of corn—affects the case, is this:—Relieving the domestic farmer from that part of his anxiety which points to the competition ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various

... to blood-vengeance rests apparently on the maternal kindred;[111] Samson's Philistine wife remained among her people;[112] and the injunction in Gen. 2:24, "Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife," refers to the primitive Hebraic form of marriage.[113] Where the matriarchate prevails we naturally find no prejudice against marriage with a half-sister on the father's side, while union with a uterine sister is incestuous. ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas

... any such purpose—then that he had—and then Peter patted her hand and told her she was the prettiest thing he had ever seen in all his life, and that he was going to throw overboard all his other sweethearts at once and cleave to her alone; and Miss Felicia vowed that she was the life of the party; and Jack devoured her with his eyes, his heart thumping away at high pressure; and so the moments fled until the blithesome young girl, saying she had not a minute to spare, as she had to meet her father, ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith

... answered and said, "Have ye not read, that he who made them from the beginning made them, male and female, and said, 'For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and the two shall become one flesh?' So that they are no more two, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let ...
— His Life - A Complete Story in the Words of the Four Gospels • William E. Barton, Theodore G. Soares, Sydney Strong

... might I cleave, with raptured wing, the waste Of the wide air, then, where in splendour lie Thy ruins, would my sorrowing spirit haste, Forth to outpour its flood of misery!— There, where thy grandeur owns a dire eclipse, Down to the dust as sank each trembling knee, Unto thy dear soil should I lay my face, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various

... a white-clad body with their pointed things glittering in the light of torches. He sprang behind the great table against the window and seized the heavy-leaden sandarach. The French scullions knew, tho' he had no French, that he would cleave one of their skulls, and they stood, a knot of seven—four men and three maids—in blue hoods, in the centre ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford

... in wrath. "Methought," he cried, "that I dealt with men of honourable mind, not with cheating tricksters. See now! it is little wonder that I slipped, for grease has been set upon my shoes—and, by Thor! I will cleave the man who did it to the chin," and as he said it his eyes blazed so dreadfully that folk fell back from him. Asmund took the shoes and looked at them. ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard

... birds that cleave the air Is not discovered, nor yet the path of fish That skim the water, so the course of those Who do good actions is ...
— Book of Wise Sayings - Selected Largely from Eastern Sources • W. A. Clouston

... free to determine for themselves the character, extent, and duration of their intercourse, as two friends should be. If they wish to live together under the same roof, let them. If they wish to retain their separate domiciles, let them. If they wish to cleave to each other till death severs them—if they wish to part on the morrow of their union—let them, by heaven. But the couple who go before a priest or a magistrate, and bind themselves in ceremonial marriage, are serving to perpetuate tyranny, are insulting the dignity of human nature.' Such was ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland

... Barbara ran madly over the ground, back and forth, not certain where to hide. Eleanor stood shivering and Anne rushed over to ask Polly what had happened. Polly explained in a whisper, and Eleanor, as in a trance, watched her sister running about with something that seemed to cleave to her foot closer than a porous- plaster. Finally, Eleanor came to her senses and ran over to keep Barbara from rolling under the burros ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... too much this fever-heat Which two long weeks I have, While with Etrurian nymphs ye sweetly meet, And cleave the yielding wave. ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus

... child would be thankful if he was old enough to understand.' Still lightly beating the little hand upon her own. 'I wouldn't stand in the dear child's light, not if I had all my life before me instead of a very little of it. But I hope you won't take it ill that I cleave to the child closer than words can tell, for he's the last living ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... and ultimately an irreverent as well as a fatal misconception. It was Jesus who said, "He which made them at the beginning made them male and female and said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh." There is a place in the holy life for the free, happy, and full expression of the instincts and desires that are rooted in our sex natures. The assumed inevitable opposition ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray

... This Loess is a brownish-yellow loam, highly porous, spreading over low and high ground alike, smoothing over irregularities of surface, and often more than 1000 feet in thickness. It has no stratification, but tends to cleave vertically, and is traversed in every direction by sudden crevices, almost glacier-like, narrow, with vertical walls of great depth, and infinite ramification. Smooth as the loess basin looks in a bird's-eye view, it is thus one of the most impracticable countries conceivable for military ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... the other man, "we often use the word sin when we mean only a weakness. And a weakness in an individual should make us cleave fast to him, so that he may not be wholly lost. I can't think of anything so cruel as to desert one who has stumbled through weakness. The desertion would be the real sin. Weaknesses are a sort of illness—and ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge

... bird of the wilderness, has found its sky in your eyes. They are the cradle of the morning, they are the kingdom of the stars. My songs are lost in their depths. Let me but soar in that sky, in its lonely immensity. Let me but cleave its clouds and ...
— The Gardener • Rabindranath Tagore

... she could not enter into the sudden and direful shock the discovery had been to her nephew. An antagonism had risen in her mind about it, not only against Mr. Warden, but against some faint, suppressed reproaches of conscience, which made her secretly cleave to the idea that this vice was hereditary, and consequently incurable. She was afraid also of David reproaching her. But he did not. He was too crushed to reason yet about his wife's fall, or what measures might have been taken to ...
— Brought Home • Hesba Stretton

... beside him who only is the way and the truth, be false ways and by-ways, leading us away from the true resting-place, and from that way which is the truth; yet we are prone and ready to cleave to those false and erroneous ways, and grip to shadows, and to lean to them, as if they were the ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)

... custom, as subjecting them to much inconvenience. In the course of their HUMANE experiments, they ascertained that, owing to the thickening of the back part of the cranium caused by this process, the broadsword of the strongest cavalier could not cleave the skull at a single blow, but would often snap off in the middle without serious damage to ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper

... uninjured. John himself now attempted to deal with Arthur in another way. Being at Falaise at the end of January, 1203, he caused his nephew to be brought before him, and "addressed him with fair words, promising him great honors if he would forsake the King of France and cleave faithfully to his uncle and rightful lord." Arthur, however, rejected these overtures with scorn, vowing that there should be no peace unless the whole Angevin dominions, including England, were surrendered to him as Richard's lawful ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various

... paused. He would ask me some questions, of course. Let him get them over. There was silence for a moment. And then I heard myself asked—'Is that all thou hast to confess?'—in the voice I had loved best of all the world. My tongue seemed to cleave to the roof of my mouth. I only whispered, 'Roland!' in tones which I could not ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt

... to grieve, For she found her heart to that land did cleave; She saw the corn wave on the vale, She saw the deer run down the dale; She saw the plaid and the broad claymore, And the brows that the badge of freedom bore; And she thought she had seen the ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... wife, and a wife to have more than one husband. "Have you not read," says our Savior, "that He who made man in the beginning made them male and female? And He said, for this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they two shall be in one flesh. Wherefore they are no more two, but one flesh."(538) Our Lord recalls marriage to its primitive institution as it was ordained by Almighty God. (Gen. ii.) Now, marriage in its primitive ordinance ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons

... and (unskilful rider that he was!) he had much ado to maintain his seat; sometimes slipping on one side, sometimes on another, and sometimes jolted on the high ridge of his horse's backbone, with a violence that he verily feared would cleave him asunder. ...
— The Legend of Sleepy Hollow • Washington Irving

... universal competition: the barrier has changed its shape rather than its position. When men are nearly alike, and all follow the same track, it is very difficult for any one individual to walk quick and cleave a way through the dense throng which surrounds and presses him. This constant strife between the propensities springing from the equality of conditions and the means it supplies to satisfy them, ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... or he that teacheth, on teaching; or he that exhorteth, on exhortation: he that giveth, let him do it with simplicity; he that ruleth, with diligence; he that sheweth mercy, with cheerfulness. Let love be without dissimulation. Abhor that which is evil, cleave to that which is good. Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love, in honour preferring one another: not slothful in business; fervent in spirit; serving the Lord; rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation; continuing instant in prayer; distributing to the necessity of saints; ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England

... is extinguished. What, in like case, will happen to the conscience? The conscience is a reality. I will say willingly in the style of the prophets: Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, ere I deny conscience, and disparage the sacred name of duty! Yes, conscience is a reality; but God is in it: He it is who gives to it its necessary basis and its indispensable support. The conscience is the august voice of the Master of the universe. God has given ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville

... dangerous in appearance, the less it will be suspected. Now hearken to me. Ride by my side. Thou seest this purse of gold and this scimetar. Take us, by the route thou hast mentioned, safe to the pass of the Serrania, and this purse shall be thy reward; betray us, and this scimetar shall cleave thee to ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving

... D. O'Cleave of New York—with a flourish under it on the register. He and his wife take it out in diamonds. You would never see one of the O'Cleave family at a roadside camp fire such as that where Maw fries the trout and Rowena toasts the bread on a fork. The original ...
— Maw's Vacation - The Story of a Human Being in the Yellowstone • Emerson Hough

... Commemoration, and planned when Term was over to find Mildred constantly at the Fletchers' and to be able to arrange quiet days on the river. But if he found her there, she was always in company, and though she made herself as charming to him as usual, she showed no disposition to forsake all others and cleave only to him. He was not a dancing man, and suffered cruelly on the evenings when he knew her to be at balls, and fancied all her partners in ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods

... indeed! I tell you what, young man, you have no talent for poetry; if you had, you would not want my help. No, no; cleave to your own profession and you will be an honour to it, but leave poetry to me. I counsel you as a ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... the heaven we should not share! Image and glory of the man, As he of God, is woman. Can This holy, sweet proportion die Into a dull equality? Are we not one flesh, yea, so far More than the babe and mother are, That sons are bid mothers to leave And to their wives alone to cleave, 'For they two are one flesh!' But 'tis In the flesh we rise. Our union is, You know 'tis said, 'great mystery.' Great mockery, it appears to me; Poor image of the spousal bond Of Christ and Church, if loosed beyond This ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore

... the prophet: "The Lord my God shall come, and all the saints with Thee." "And His feet shall stand in that day upon the Mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east, and the Mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst thereof, ... and there shall be a very great valley." "And the Lord shall be king over all the earth: in that day shall there be one Lord, and His name one."(1157) As the New Jerusalem, in its dazzling splendor, comes down out ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White

... hung perilously over the edge of slopes that eventually dropped a thousand feet sheer to the tops of the sugar-pines below, but we knew that Bill knew it also. The half visible heads of the horses, drawn wedge-wise together by the tightened reins, appeared to cleave the darkness like a ploughshare, held between his rigid hands. Even the hoof-beats of the six horses had fallen into a vague, monotonous, distant roll. Then the ridge was crossed, and we plunged into the still blacker obscurity of ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... shall be well pleased, provided you can do what I impose upon you; if not you will lose your head. Now, listen; out there on the ground, there lies a thick log, which measures more than two fathoms; if you can cleave it in two with one stroke of your sword, I will give you my daughter to wife. If you fail, then it will ...
— The Grey Fairy Book • Various

... leathern wings of fear, Of baffled pride and harrowing distrust; And Godhead with its crown of many stars, Its pinnacles of flaming holiness, And voice of leaves in the green summer-time, Has seemed the shadowed image of a self. Then my soul blackened; and I rose to find And grasp my doom, and cleave the arching deeps ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald

... echoed Sir Geoffrey, starting from the sullen state of dejection, and swearing a deep oath—"thou art come in the right time, Julian. Strike me one good blow—cleave me that traitorous thief from the crown to the brisket! and that done, I care ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... bones in the flesh, and the heart in the whole, so are we, soul and body, clad in the Goodness of God, and enclosed. Yea, and more homely; for all these may waste and wear away, but the Goodness of God is ever whole; and more near to us without any likeness; for truly our Lover desireth that our soul cleave to Him with all its might, and that we be evermore cleaving to His goodness. For of all things that heart may think, this most pleaseth God, and soonest speedeth us. For our soul is so specially loved of Him that is highest, that it overpasseth ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson

... and the hands being well chafed [rubbed together]; he shrinks up his shoulders, and stretches forth himself as if he were going to cleave a bullock's head, or rive ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe

... Albert, waves his brown derby under the very vizor of the departing guest, rests easily on his right leg, bends the left knee slightly, folds his arms and speaks. "Burned Marmion's swarthy cheek like fire." Little wonder! If Perry Thomas spoke to me like that I'd cleave his head. But Marmion spares proud Angus. He beards the Doogulus in his hall. He dashes the rowels in his steed, dodges the portcullis, and gallops over the draw. And Perry Thomas is left standing with folded arms, gazing through the chalk-dust haze into the solemn, ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd

... Master said, The highest minds cleave to the Centre, the Common. They have long been ...
— The Sayings Of Confucius • Confucius

... it is that we insensibly regard death as threatening to the continuance of the ego, in spite of the theories of a future life which we have so elaborately developed. Indeed, the psychical shrinking is really the quintessence of the physical fear. We cleave to the abstract idea closer even than to its concrete embodiment. Sooner would we forego this earthly existence than surrender that something we know as self. For sufficient cause we can imagine courting death; ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell

... was not especially struck, and did not at all become overjoyed when he triumphantly showed her the passport. She was only glad to see Lichonin again. Perhaps, this primitive, naive soul had already contrived to cleave to its protector? She did throw herself upon his neck, but he stopped her, and quietly, almost in ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin

... and leave her—die and leave The heaven so lately won!—And then, to know What misery will be hers—what lonely woe!— To see the bright eyes weep, to see her grieve Will make me a coward as I sink, and cleave To life though Destiny has bid me go. How shall I bear the pictures that will glow Above the ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton

... shall soon be gathered in bundles and cast into the fire unquenchable. And I beg every member of my sect, i. e. of the Maronite church, who loves truth, if he sees me in an error to point it out to me, that I may leave it, and cleave to the truth. But I must request those who would rectify my views, not to do as did a priest at Beyroot, who after a considerable discussion, denied the inspiration of the New Testament. Men like him I do not wish to attempt to ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox

... will no mosse stick to the stone of Sisiphus, no grasse hang on the heels of Mercury, no butter cleave on the bread of a traveller. For as the eagle at every flight loseth a feather, which maketh her bauld in her age, so the traveller in every country loseth some fleece, which maketh him a beggar in his youth, by buying ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving

... knows a heap of time is saved 'twixt 'lectricity an' coal, an' she's goin' to cleave to the bestes' way ever foun' yit—an' she knows what dem old rheumaticks is a-doin' to your temper," soliloquized ...
— The Blue Birds' Winter Nest • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... how and whom can he slay or cause to be slain? As a man, casting off robes that are worn out, putteth on others that are new, so the Embodied (soul), casting off bodies that are worn out, entereth other bodies that are new. Weapons cleave it not, fire consumeth it not; the waters do not drench it, nor doth the wind waste it. It is incapable of being cut, burnt, drenched, or dried up. It is unchangeable, all-pervading, stable, firm, and eternal. It is said ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... horizontal, and from left to right, with such surprising strength and velocity, that it required all the address of the young Englishman, by parrying, shifting, eluding, or retreating, to evade a storm, of which every individual blow seemed sufficient to cleave a solid rock. The Englishman was compelled to give ground, now backwards, now swerving to the one side or the other, now availing himself of the fragments of the ruins, but watching all the while, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 373, Supplementary Number • Various

... thus cleave to things of earth? Daily experience proves their little worth— Or waste those noble qualities of mind, For wise and better purposes designed, In the pursuit of trifles, which confer No solid pleasure on their worshipper; Or in the search of causes that are ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie

... he cried when she threatened to leave him, and left, "How could you deceive me, as you have deceft?" And she answered, "I promised to cleave, and I've cleft!" ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 27, October 1, 1870 • Various

... and washing the head clean, take out the eyes, cut off the ears, and let it boil half an hour, when cold, cleave the upper from the lower jaw, take out the tongue, strike off the nose, score the part which has the skin on, rub it over with beaten egg, sprinkle it over with salt, parsley, cayenne and black pepper, lay pieces of butter over it, and put it in a dutch-oven to brown, basting it often, ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea

... to me the wings were given Which bear the turtle to her nest! Then would I cleave the vault of Heaven To flee away, and be ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... Agathon resolves to cleave to him, but at this point Anteros, corresponding to Plato's Venus Pandemos, enters into rivalry with Eros for Agathon's love. He shows the poet a beautiful phantom, who describes the folly of one who devotes himself to ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins

... of them. Clasp me quite round till your lips cleave on mine, False mine, that did you wrong. Forgive them dearly As you are sweet to them; for by love's love I am not that evil woman in my heart That laughs at a rent faith. O Chastelard, Since this was broken to me of your new love I have not ...
— Chastelard, a Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... Who a like path have trod, and see a fate Wretched with fears, changing like leaves at noon, When the new wind sings in the white birch wood. Learn from the simple child the rule of life, And from the movements of the unconscious tribes Of animal nature, those that bend the wing Or cleave the azure tide, content to be, What the great frame provides,—freedom and grace. Thee, simple child, do the swift winds obey, And the white waterfalls with their bold leaps Follow thy movements. Tenderly the light Thee watches, girding ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... he tried to cry out, but his tongue seemed to cleave to the roof of his mouth. Still he kept the tiller in his hand, striving steadily. He made one more effort. "David! help! help!" he shouted. David's mind was far away in his father's garden, with ...
— Adrift in a Boat • W.H.G. Kingston

... defence of a pure Theism, to reexamine those ancient forms of error which have reaeppeared on the scene after it might have been supposed that they had vanished for ever. For the very tenacity with which they cleave to the human mind, and their perpetual recurrence at intervals along the whole course of the world's history, show that there must be something in the wants, or at least in the weaknesses of our nature, which induces men to tolerate and even to embrace them. But the chief danger, as ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan

... thee think that Bartlemy will aid them; and so he would but for thy mole. I be an old man, and never yet hath fortune come my way, and all because I did not before meet thee. For it hath been foretold me that a man having a mole near the end of his nose would bring me fortune. Wherefore I cleave to thee, and will protect thee with my life, if need be." So saying, he threw another fagot on the fire and, from a hidden cupboard, brought out a substantial meal of venison and bread. When the meal was ...
— A Boy's Ride • Gulielma Zollinger

... as well as look; no matter if his tongue did show a decided inclination to cleave to the roof of his mouth with horror, he managed to find a way ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy

... congregation? I will save them if only for the sake of the merits of Abraham, who stood ready to sacrifice his son Isaac unto Me, and for the sake of My promise to Jacob. The sun and the moon are witnesses that I will cleave the sea for the seed of the children of Israel, who deserve My help for going after Me in the wilderness unquestioningly. Do thou but see to it that they abandon their evil thought of returning to Egypt, ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... about, though she was happy, and the least troubled of us all. Her sole concern was at leaving her husband and children. But the will of God was a better thing to her than to live with them. My sorrow at least was soon over, for God makes children so that grief cannot cleave to them. They must not begin life with a burden of loss. He knows it is only for a time. When I see my mother again, she will not reproach me that my tears were so soon dried. "Little one," I think I hear her saying, "how could you go on crying for your poor mother when God ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald

... right," said Jack; "right as this leg. Virgil, you are a trump; you are a jewel, my boy. The public and the people! Ay, ay, my lads, let us hate the one and cleave to ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... By the Maker of Things are portioned and disposed; But a cup of wine levels life and death And a thousand things obstinately hard to prove. When I am drunk, I lose Heaven and Earth. Motionless—I cleave to my lonely bed. At last I forget that I exist at all, And at that moment ...
— More Translations from the Chinese • Various

... it. It was as though some fierce spirit were imprisoned behind the deep black veil that hung over the western heavens, to whom freedom and power were granted for a little season; for suddenly one vivid, tremendous flash of lightning seemed to cleave asunder that dark wall, and then the wild, liberated storm came thundering forth, shrieking and raging through the sky, and tearing up the breast of the sea with its cruel footsteps. It was the grandest sight ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various

... Charybdis,"—has survived these wrong choices, these under-values with their prizes, Bohemias and heroes, is not such a one in a better position, is he not abler and freer to "declare himself and so to love his cause so singly that he will cleave to it, and forsake all else? What is this cause for the American composer but the utmost musical beauty that he, as an individual man, with his own qualities and defects, is capable of understanding and striving towards?—forsaking ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives

... reach. They lie just on the edge of the ice, and follow all the bends and sinuosities of the shore. It is a mystery how they are formed. All that is known, or rather all that can be here explained, is, that they are composed of the rocks which cleave off from the sides of the precipices and mountains that border the glacier, and that, when they have fallen down, the gradual movement of the ice draws them out into the long, ridge-like lines in which they now appear. Some of these ...
— Rollo in Switzerland • Jacob Abbott



Words linked to "Cleave" :   conglutinate, cohere, adjoin, cleaver, create, bind, contact, cleavage, make, cling, hold fast, split, cut, stick, laminate, maul, touch, cleft, agglutinate, meet, mold, stick to, rive, attach, tear, bond, adhere



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