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Grapple   Listen
verb
Grapple  v. i.  To use a grapple; to contend in close fight; to attach one's self as if by a grapple, as in wrestling; to close; to seize one another.
To grapple with, to enter into contest with, resolutely and courageously. "And in my standard bear the arms of York, To grapple with the house of Lancaster."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Grapple" Quotes from Famous Books



... domestic slavery was one of the first with which the Company had to grapple, the Royal Charter having ordained that "the Company shall to the best of its power discourage and, as far as may be practicable, abolish by degrees, any system of domestic servitude existing among the tribes of the Coast or interior of Borneo; and no ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher

... to the window, breathing heavy draughts of the fresh morning air. The man would not die, he thought. Grey would never be free. No. Yet, since he was a child, before he began to grapple his way through the world, he had never known such a cheerful quiet as that which filled his eyes with tears now; for, if the fight had been hard, Paul ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... Austrian army, awfully arrayed, Boldly by battery besieged Belgrade. Cossack commanders, cannonading, come, Dealing destruction's devastating doom; Every endeavor engineers essay For fame, for fortune, forming furious fray. Gaunt gunners grapple, giving gashes good; Heaves high his head heroic hardihood. Ibraham, Islam, Ismael, imps in ill, Jostle John, Jarovlitz, Jem, Joe, Jack, Jill; Kick kindling Kutusoff, kings' kinsmen kill; Labor low levels ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... of branches, lo! The cancers of the orchid grow. Silent as in the listed ring Two chartered wrestlers strain and cling, Dumb as by yellow Hooghly's side The suffocating captives died: So hushed the woodland warfare goes Unceasing; and the silent foes Grapple and smother, strain and clasp Without a cry, without a gasp. Here also sound Thy fans, O God, Here too Thy banners move abroad: Forest and city, sea and shore, And the whole earth, Thy threshing-floor! ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... that the way to heaven is not strewn with roses. He is Christ's freeman; but it is with spiritual freedom as with civil, "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." Neither is it an artillery duel, or firing at long range; it is ofttimes a grapple in the fosse for ...
— The Doctrines of Predestination, Reprobation, and Election • Robert Wallace

... fierce fight. The maniac tossed them aside as if they were mere infants, but they returned to the attack. They sought to hold his arms to prevent him from doing any further damage with the hammer. Fortunately for the lads, the man was forced to drop the weapon, to enable him to grapple with ...
— Through Space to Mars • Roy Rockwood

... dividing his spoils on the Sardinian coast (1540). Incensed to find his vast empire perpetually harassed by foes so lawless and in numbers so puny, Charles the Emperor resolved to put down the Corsairs' trade once and for ever. He had subdued Tunis in 1535, but piracy still went on. Now he would grapple the head and front of the offence, ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole

... could be heard loud above the others calling to the troops to come to his aid. The soldiers began to crowd about the house, when, at a signal from Captain Wadsworth, the train-bands came on the scene and prepared to grapple with the soldiers. A bloody fight seemed inevitable; but Governor Andros, who was a coward as well as tyrant, at sign ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick

... corrupted the Athenian youth by his teachings. Socrates does not have recourse to the ordinary methods adopted by orators on similar occasions. He prefers to stand upon his own integrity and innocence, uninfluenced by the fear of that imaginary evil, death. He, therefore, does not firmly grapple with either of the charges preferred against him. He neither denies nor confesses the first accusation, but shows that in several instances he conformed to the religious customs of his country, and ...
— Apology, Crito, and Phaedo of Socrates • Plato

... related the poor woman's trouble to her husband just before the entrance of Gaudissart, and at the first words of the famous traveller Vernier determined that he should be made to grapple with Margaritis. ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac

... stand out above the others, as evincing vitality of thought, and boldly attempting to grapple with the philosophical problems;—Dorner(842) and Rothe,(843) both very original, but bearing traces of the influence of their predecessors. The former, moulded by the Hegelian school, investigates the Christological problem which ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar

... water was too deep—a good five fathom he said there was over 'em—and then there was sharks about too. So he unlaid a bit o' rope from the wreckage, knocked some nails out o' some o' the timber that had druv ashore, and fixed up a sorter small grapple, with which he went gropin' out on this here oyster bed. But the thing wasn't of much account, accordin' to what Abe himself said. First he'd got to git it just so over a oyster afore it'd take holt; and then, when he'd hooked one, ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood

... safer than real thrones," he answered, watching the swaying bonnet, or perhaps, contrasting the muscular, bronzed hand he had placed on the chair with the smooth, white one which held the blue ribbons; a small, though firm, hand to grapple with ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... accustomed to say that women were incapable of business, and yet here are the ladies of his own household compelled to grapple with the most perplexing forms of business or suffer aggravated losses. Though all of his family were of mature years, and thousands had been spent on their education, they were as helpless as four children in dealing with the practical questions that ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe

... that of a playful sneer or ferocious snarl, is one of the most curious which occurs in man. It reveals his animal descent; for no one, even if rolling on the ground in a deadly grapple with an enemy, and attempting to bite him, would try to use his canine teeth more than his other teeth. We may readily believe from our affinity to the anthropomorphous apes that our male semi-human progenitors possessed great canine ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin

... "Ouida" (Louise de La Ramee). All the three last writers mentioned, however, especially the last two, made sport only an ingredient in their novel composition ("Ouida," in fact, knew nothing about it) and at least endeavoured, according to their own ideas and ideals, to grapple with larger parts of life. The danger of the kind showed less in them than in some imitators of a lower class, of whom Captain Hawley Smart was the chief, and a chief sometimes better than his own followers. Some even of his books are quite interesting: but ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury

... or whether it was deemed requisite to detach the mind of Naomi, by repeated afflictions, from a soil in which her affections were becoming too deeply rooted, her two sons also died in a few years, and the three females were left to grapple with adversity alone. The original state and character of the young women is uncertain, but they became proselytes to the Jewish religion. They might have become so previously to their union with their ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox

... spoke about such-and-such a succession to such-and-such a throne, the Foreign Office were silent, and Heads of Departments repeated the last two or three words of Wressley's sentences, and tacked "yes, yes," on to them, and knew that they were assisting the Empire to grapple with serious political contingencies. In most big undertakings, one or two men do the work while the rest sit near and talk till the ripe ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling

... and guide. Far better that the task should be entrusted to one who had no diffidence, no hesitation, but a sincere confidence in his power of dealing with the difficulties of the situation, and an ardent desire to grapple ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson

... the other had broken an arm in his fall, and was groaning over it piteously. We sprang over the fence and followed the trail through the grain, each step leading us away from the city and assistance, but I thought not of that. My whole desire was to grapple with the villains, and either capture them or end their career. I encouraged my companion to keep up with me in the pursuit; but I was either fleeter of foot, or else he sadly lagged behind, for after ten minutes running I was ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes

... cause the delay? Minute after minute passes, and the dead silence is only broken by the throbbing of our own hearts. We stand with the board ready, and our spirits eager for the coming contest, which shall lead us to grapple, with naked arms, the shining bayonets of the guards. We do not doubt the issue, for the hope of ...
— Daring and Suffering: - A History of the Great Railroad Adventure • William Pittenger

... Boufflers, and camped at Gembloux, so that his left was only half a league distant from the right of M. de Luxembourg. The Prince of Orange was encamped at the Abbey of Pure, was unable to receive supplies, and could not leave his position without having the two armies of the King to grapple with: he entrenched himself in haste, and bitterly repented having allowed himself to be thus driven into a corner. We knew afterwards that he wrote several times to his intimate friend the Prince de Vaudemont, saying that he was ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... exploded, sending every particle of her which remained high into the air, and as the wreck came down, the fragments very nearly swamped the boat and killed all in her. No one was hurt, however, and he and his brave crew instantly pulled back to grapple with another foe. All the other fire-ships had been seized hold of and were very nearly towed ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston

... few precepts in thy memory See thou character—Give thy thoughts no tongue, Nor any unproportioned thought his act. Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar. The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel; But do not dull thy palm with entertainment Of each new-hatch'd, unfledged comrade. Beware Of entrance to a quarrel: but, being in, Bear't that the opposed may beware ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks

... prevailed upon the warders to let her speak with him; and having told him how he must answer the Stadic if he would get off, she succeeded in obtaining preaudience of the Stadic; who, seeing that the baggage was lusty and mettlesome, was minded before he heard her to grapple her with the hook, to which she was by no means averse, knowing that such a preliminary would secure her a better hearing. When she had undergone the operation and was risen:—"Sir," said she, "you have here Ruggieri da Jeroli, apprehended on a charge of theft; which charge is false." ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio

... the clouds of care will fly, Pale want will pass away; Work, and the leprosy of crime And tyrants must decay. Leave the dead ages in their urns; The present time be ours, To grapple bravely with our lot, And strew our path ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... some teaching work was offered him at Merton, and by Mr. Grey's advice he accepted it, thus postponing for a while that London curacy and that stout grapple with human need at its sorest for which his soul was pining. 'Stay here a year or two,' Grey said bluntly; 'you are at the beginning of your best learning time, and you are not one of the natures who can do without books. You will be all the better worth having afterwards, ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Forsyth had recovered sufficiently from the first shock of her grief to grapple with the cares of every-day life, she showed him that it was not so bad as ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough

... they were grappling for the hook that held the entrance door open. They were doing it from one of the crevices in the ceiling. They had evidently made no preparations for lifting the hook. I suppose they never thought that anyone would make use of it, and so they had to improvise a grapple. The wire was too fine to be seen by the amount of light we had in the hall; but the flashlight 'picked ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson

... general nature or to the unlimited indulgence of his own fancy. What he has added to the history, is upon a par with it. His genius was, as it were, a match for history as well as nature, and could grapple at will with either. This play is full of that pervading comprehensive power by which the poet could always make himself master of time and circumstances. It presents a fine picture of Roman pride and Eastern magnificence: and in the struggle between the two, the empire ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt

... over virtue, at least our conscience is beyond her jurisdiction. My poor share in the support of that great measure no man shall ravish from me. It shall be safely lodged in the sanctuary of my heart,—never, never to be torn from thence, but with those holds that grapple it to life. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... appeared strangely, astonishingly calm;—Hodder, with all his faculties acute, apprehended that he was dangerously calm. The man who had formerly been his friend was now completely obliterated, and he had the feeling almost of being about to grapple, in mortal combat, with some unknown monster whose tactics and resources were infinite, whose victims had never escaped. The monster was in Eldon Parr—that is how it came to him. The waxy, relentless demon was aroused. It behooved him, Hodder, to step carefully ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... violent altercations, and equally spasmodic renewals of friendship, which took place between him and his best friends. His courage was extraordinary. Thus we find him writing: "Though at times I shall be the most miserable of God's creatures, I will grapple with Fate, it shall never pull me down." On the artistic side this affliction had its compensations in that it isolated the composer from outer distractions, and allowed him to lay entire stress on the spiritual inner side of his ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding

... and had found madness and strife; he had desired to do knightly deeds and had killed men for nothing; he loved a maiden with a maiden heart, and at the touch of a faithless woman his blood rose in his throat, and for a look of hers and a tone of her voice he had put forth his hands to grapple with sudden death, forgetting the other, the better, ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford

... will outwit him, father! How I shall cheat the tyrant! Love is more crafty than malice, and bolder—he knew not that, the man of the unlucky star! Oh! they are cunning so long as they have but to do with the head; but when they have to grapple with the heart the villains are at fault. He thought to seal his treachery with an oath! Oaths, father, may bind the living, but death dissolves even the iron bonds of the sacrament! Ferdinand will learn to know his Louisa. Father, will you deliver ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... through, or fall sword in hand. Standing up in full view, for a second the observed of all observers, armed to the teeth, he calmly jumped into the jaws of those baying wolves. The shock of the fall was unwillingly broken by the astonished forms of those on whom he fell, and before they could grapple with him he was pushing boldly through the crowd. But the odds and press were too great for him, and after a brief close scuffle he was for want of elbow-room overpowered and disarmed. Many shouted "Kill him! Kill him! he is a Cavignari-ite!" ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband

... will grapple with it in vain. One's interest must be serious and sincere. One must ...
— Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers • Don Marquis

... we see the Piazza di Colonna and the theatre, in which the pantomime of King Midas is acted. Balducci who is there with his daughter among the spectators recognizes in the snoring King a portrait of himself and furiously advances to grapple with him. Cellini profits by the ensuing tumult to approach Teresa, but at the same time Fieramosca comes up with Pompeo, and Teresa cannot discern which is the true lover, owing to the masks.—A fight ensues, ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley

... zeal might not revolve as a matter of course in the event of his resigning the place. I hide from myself no part of the honorable motives which might (and probably did) exclusively govern him in adhering to the place. But not by one atom the less did the grievous results of his inability to grapple with his duties weigh upon all within his sphere, and upon myself, by cutting up the time available for exercise, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... glow is ever before our eyes, colouring our vision, colouring our thoughts, colouring our emotions for good or for ill. We cannot escape it. Our personal destinies are inextricably interwoven with the fate directing the death grapple of the thousand miles or so of battle line, and arbitrating on the ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke

... lubber!" he cries, flinging himself on Vetch; "I thought we should grapple one day: now I'll bring you up by the ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang

... suggesting that his rearing hitherto had been too secluded for his age and rank, and that a year at Paris, even if he failed in the object which took him there, would not be thrown away in the knowledge of men and things that would fit him better to grapple with his difficulties ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... that last death-grapple along the front of the plateau came to an end, and Bawr, leaving nearly a third of his followers slain with the slain Bow-legs, led the exultant survivors back to the cave. It had been a costly victory for the ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts

... in which all of us here had the honor to bear arms—that death grapple of tyranny against freedom—it did not hold back the cause of humanity, of democracy, that war. Else thousands upon thousands of good ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews

... remember the writer you mean, my dear young lady," returned Mr. Truck, quite innocently; "but he was a sensible fellow, for I believe Vattel has never yet dared to grapple with the winds. There are people who fancy the weather is foretold in the almanack; but, according to my opinion, it is safer to trust a rheumatis' of two or three years' standing. A good, well-established, ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... so precious? We must believe and declare, then, that if, in this our age, there were a due meed of remuneration, there would be without a doubt works greater and much better than were ever wrought by the ancients. But the fact that they have to grapple more with famine than with fame, keeps our hapless intellects submerged, and, to the shame and disgrace of those who could raise them up but give no thought to it, ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari

... tact and courage as it seemed most fit to give a clear impression. If you take even those English authors whom we know Burns to have most admired and studied, you will see at once that he owed them nothing but a warning. Take Shenstone, for instance, and watch that elegant author as he tries to grapple with the facts of life. He has a description, I remember, of a gentleman engaged in sliding or walking on thin ice, which is a little miracle of incompetence. You see my memory fails me, and I positively cannot recollect ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Nearer to her or further off? Or was it rushing resistlessly into infinity on the wings of that pitchy night? Who could tell, know, calculate—who could even guess, amid the horror of this gloomy blackness? Questions, like these, left Barbican no rest; in vain he tried to grapple with them; he felt like a child before ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne

... guilty of no crime, must give up their hamlets and shielings, the inheritance of their fathers, at the order of any trader who has coined the sweat of his fellow men successfully into guineas, or any idle lord who has money. If "a death grapple of the nations" should ever come to England will she miss the Connaught Rangers, the glorious 88th who won from stern Picton the cheer, "Well done 88th," or the Enniskillen dragoons so famed in song and story, or the North Cork that moved to battle as to ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall

... sessions of 1833 and 1834, the Duke was the leader of the opposition in the House of Lords; always at his post, and always ready to grapple with the different questions brought before the peers. On the 9th of June, 1834, took place his installation as Chancellor of the University of Oxford;—a brilliant scene, at which some of the most distinguished men of ...
— Maxims And Opinions Of Field-Marshal His Grace The Duke Of Wellington, Selected From His Writings And Speeches During A Public Life Of More Than Half A Century • Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington

... forth against the enemy. Lord Christ, Thou hast said, "I am with thee in the hour of need; I will pull thee out, and place thee in an honourable place." Bethink Thee, Lord, of Thy word, and remember Thy promise. Come to our aid when we are sore pressed, when the close grapple is imminent, when the enemy overmatches us, and we have been surrounded by them. Stand by us in need, for the aid of man is of no avail. Through Thee we will vanquish our enemies, and in Thy name we will tread under the foot those who have set themselves in array against us. They trust in their ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes

... these, as a whole, while at large, no doubt the police had found their own shrewdness, at times, keenly taxed, and been made to feel that they were called to grapple with mind worthy of a ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby

... thy thoughts no tongue, Nor any unproportioned thought his act Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar. The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried Grapple them to thy soul with hooks of steel; But do not dull thy palm with entertainment Of each new-hatched, unfledged comrade. Beware Of entrance to a quarrel: but, being in, Bear it, that the opposer may beware of thee. ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit

... shoal: next our turn came, and then the whole line was gliding down the river, the rising roar of the angry waters with which we were soon to grapple coming to us with an added grimness. And now but a faint rim of light saved us from utter darkness. Big Bill Cowan, undaunted in war, stared at me with fright written ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... are needed, not one, but many of them, in the cities, churches that help men to grapple with the stern actualities of everyday life, churches that preach by works as well as by word, churches in which the man in fustian is as welcome as the one in broadcloth, churches whose influence reaches into the highways ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr

... him, and his inability to deal with her perplexities deepened his realization of the ignorance and superficiality he had so long masked even from himself beneath the tricks and pretensions of a gay scepticism. He went away fully resolved to grapple with the entire Hostel question, and he put the patched and tortured manuscript of the new novel aside with a certain satisfaction to ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... mainly in the classics and in languages; yet he confesses that he could never learn German, which was then hardly worth learning, and in his correspondence with Languet is very distrustful of the Latin, in which language they wrote. But in urging him to grapple with the German, Languet says to him, and it is a striking proof of the exquisite finish of Sidney's accomplishment, "I have watched you closely when speaking my own language (he was a Burgundian), but I hardly ever detected you ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis

... came up, who was vice-admiral and was to leeward, on which Sir John asked his opinion what was best to be done. Sir Robert said, if she were not boarded she would reach the shore and be set on fire, as had been done with the other. Wherefore Sir John Burrough concluded to grapple her, and Sir Robert Cross engaged to do so likewise at the same moment, which was done accordingly. After some time in this situation, Sir John Burroughs ship received a shot of a cannon perier[389] under water; and, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr

... literary effect, I would not for one moment deceive them. It was not Charlotte; Charlotte had nothing to do with it, and did not even know of it. And yet—I will give them for a while this small problem to grapple with—Charlotte was quite well, was in possession of all her senses, was thoroughly enjoying herself, and was not outside the land of her inheritance. Most emphatically she ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman

... separated as though they had been torn apart. But the instant of contact had told Andy a hundred things. He was much smaller than the other, but he knew that he was far and away stronger after that grapple. It cleared his brain, and his nerves ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand

... face of his I do remember well, Yet when I saw it last, it was besmear'd As blacke as Vulcan, in the smoake of warre: A bawbling Vessell was he Captaine of, For shallow draught and bulke vnprizable, With which such scathfull grapple did he make, With the most noble bottome of our Fleete, That very enuy, and the tongue of losse Cride fame and honor on him: What's the matter? 1.Offi. Orsino, this is that Anthonio That tooke the Phoenix, and her fraught from Candy, And this is he that did the Tiger boord, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... to their quality. Nor was his Reverence's own voice the first to subside into that gravity which became the solemnity of the occasion; or even whilst he continued the interrogatories, his eye was laughing at the conceit with which it was evident the inner man was not competent to grapple. "Well, Kelly, I can't say but you've answered very well, as far as the repealing of them goes; but do you perfectly understand all the commandments ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton

... mind, grief, like all other emotions, was tempestuous. Home had been to him the only verdant spot in the desert of life. In his wife and children he had centered all affection, and now they were torn from him. The remembrance of their love clung to him like the death grapple of a drowning man, sinking him down into darkness and death. This was followed by a calm a thousand times more terrible, the creeping agony of despair, that brings with it ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand

... those of Rousseau, are, if anything, indecent and nauseating. The case of a man in such situations is bad enough, but the remedy for it is perforce committed to his own hands. Let him put his hand to the plough and not turn back, let him grapple with the evil in his nature and subdue and transform it, let him accomplish his inner redemption, let him make himself what he ought to be—what others perhaps think he is. What aid can the spiritual view of life extend to him in this ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler

... books, and time and space "to nothingness do sink." There looms up before you—like a bare mountain in its majesty—the great elemental world-fact, the death-grapple of the will with circumstance. You may build yourself any philosophy or any creed you please, but you will never get away from the world-fact—the death-grapple of the soul with circumstance. schylus has one creed, and Milton has another, and Shelley has a ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair

... boy; then came up straight at close quarters. Benson's sudden grapple deprived the driver of a chance to use the butt of his whip in the ...
— The Submarine Boys' Lightning Cruise - The Young Kings of the Deep • Victor G. Durham

... whole ground two and three deep in one dreadful tangle of slaughter. Above them lay the Englishmen in their lines, even as they had stood, and higher yet upon the plateau a wild medley of the dead of all nations, where the last deadly grapple had left them. In the further corner, under the shadow of a great rock, there crouched seven bowmen, with great John in the centre of them—all wounded, weary, and in sorry case, but still unconquered, ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle

... Teucrians; why this quarrel in face of my injunction? What terror hath bidden one or another run after arms and tempt the sword? The due time of battle will arrive, call it not forth, when furious Carthage shall one day sunder the Alps to hurl ruin full on the towers of Rome. Then hatred may grapple with hatred, then hostilities be opened; now let them be, and cheerfully join ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil

... England which had already lasted some ten years, but no Province was in so dreadful a condition as this unhappy land of Brittany. In Normandy or Picardy the inroads of the English were periodical with intervals of rest between; but Brittany was torn asunder by constant civil war apart from the grapple of the two great combatants, so that there was no surcease of her sufferings. The struggle had begun in 1341 through the rival claims of Montfort and of Blois to the vacant dukedom. England had taken the part of Montfort, ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle

... gainers or losers by thus adhering to the rules which guided their ancestors, is another question, too difficult for discussion to grapple with here. As far as worldly happiness and simple contentment are concerned, I believe they would lose by the change, which, however, must take place. The restless and enterprising American is too close a neighbour to let them ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle

... from those inundations of Goths, Vandals, Huns, and Lombards that overwhelmed the Roman Empire. But as there is no appearance in the bulk or constitution of modern prudence, that it should ever have been able to come up and grapple with the ancient, so something of necessity must have interposed whereby this came to be enervated, and that to receive strength and encouragement. And this was the execrable reign of the Roman emperors taking rise from (that felix scelus) the arms of Caesar, in which storm the ship ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington

... credit of having been the real organizer of the Paris Observatory. His work there was not dissimilar to that of Airy at Greenwich; but he had a much more difficult task before him, and was less fitted to grapple with it. When founded by Louis XIV. the establishment was simply a place where astronomers of the Academy of Sciences could go to make their observations. There was no titular director, every man working on his own account and in his own way. Cassini, an Italian by birth, was the best ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb

... planted himself for the grapple, Dave suddenly dropped through that opponent's grip and ...
— Dave Darrin's Third Year at Annapolis - Leaders of the Second Class Midshipmen • H. Irving Hancock

... Thyrsis, from earliest childhood to maturity. His father's was a heritage of gentle breeding and high traditions—his forefathers were cavaliers, and had served the State. And now it had come to this—to hall bedrooms in lodging-houses, and a life-and-death grapple with destruction! And when Thyrsis came to study the problem, he found that it was a struggle without hope; his father was ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair

... cavalry. He was always wanting to move forward, to charge, to get at the enemy with cold steel. His favorite step was the double-quick; his choice of distance two paces; and his preferred mode of fighting, the hand-to-hand grapple. This meant business, was decisive, ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard

... pungent sarcasms. Like Juvenal, Lucian paints the vices and follies of his time, and exposes the hypocrisy that reigns in the high places of fashion and power. His dialogues have been imitated by Fontanelle and Lord Lyttleton, but these authors do not possess his humor or pungency. Lucian does not grapple with great truths, but contents himself with ridiculing those who have proclaimed them, and in his cold cynicism depreciates human knowledge and all the great moral teachers of mankind. He is even ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord

... sands are whirled about the wintering beach When storms have swoln the rivers, and their blasts Have breached the broad sea-banks with stress of sea, That waves of inland and the main make war As men that mix and grapple; though his ranks Were more to number than all wildwood leaves The wind waves on the hills of all the world, Yet should the heart not faint, the head not fall, The breath not fail of Athens. Say, the Gods 740 From lips that have no more on earth to say Have told thee this ...
— Erechtheus - A Tragedy (New Edition) • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... of the business world is a reality even when the views which produce it are wrong. To face a panic one must first of all realise the intrinsic facts, and then allow for the misreading of others. It is the plastic and ingenious mind which will best grapple with these unusual circumstances. It will invent weapons and expedients with which to face each new phase of the position. "Whenever you meet an abnormal situation," said the sage, "deal with it in an abnormal manner." ...
— Success (Second Edition) • Max Aitken Beaverbrook

... near Boston, in the State of Massachusetts. He was now entering his eighteenth year, and had enlisted in the great army of the Union as a private, with an earnest and patriotic desire to serve his imperiled country in her death-grapple with treason and traitors. He had won his warrant as a sergeant by bravery and address, and had subsequently been commissioned as a second lieutenant for good conduct on the bloody field of Williamsburg, where he had been wounded. The injury he had received, and the exhaustion ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic

... be, That could not with him grapple; And at one sup he eat them up, As a man would eat ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... were close up to the trenches, and some even leaping over the redoubt, to grapple hand to hand with those who ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow

... indignation, followed him with anxious eyes, and their hands for an instant touched in innocent and generous sympathy. And then—he knew not how or why—a still more wild and terrible idea sprang up in his fancy. He knew it was madness, yet for a moment he could only stand and grapple with it silently and breathlessly. It was to seize this young and innocent girl, this witness of his disappointment, this complacent and beautiful type of all they valued here, and bear her away—a prisoner, a hostage—he knew not why—on a galloping horse in the ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte

... is—conflict. Voltaire in one of his letters said that every scene in a play should represent a combat. In "Memories and Portraits," Stevenson says: "A good serious play must be founded on one of the passionate cruces of life, where duty and inclination come nobly to the grapple." Goethe, in his "William Meister" says: "All events oppose him [the hero] and he either clears and removes every obstacle out of his path, or else becomes their victim." But it was the French critic, Ferdinand Brunetiere, ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page

... I think you are wrong,' said Pierston. 'As flesh she dies daily, like the Apostle's corporeal self; because when I grapple with the reality she's no longer in it, so that I cannot stick to one ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy

... children, if I go and sell matches. I won eight pounds odd yesterday. I squandered one pound, I keep two to make a fresh start, and you have the rest. While this heart shall beat—yes, while memory holds her seat, as the poet says, you are dear to me. Once more, in the poet's words, I grapple you to my soul with hoops of steel. What has come over me I do not know, and when I wake to the fact of my degradation I go madly to the drink again. But I will try, and I implore your forgiveness. I cannot ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman

... a dead cinch to haul off to the smelters. All a space tug had to do was latch on to one of them with a magnetic grapple and start hauling. There was no such simple answer for the ...
— Anchorite • Randall Garrett

... had bound him as Hetty's servant without hope of reward, decided on what he felt was right. He was merely one of the many quiet, steadfast men whom the ostentatious sometimes mistake for fools, until the nation they form the backbone of rises to grapple with disaster or emergency. They are not confined to any one country; for his comrade, Muller, the placid, unemphatic Teuton, had ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss

... perceived, as I think, that the overthrow of the western world would speedily be accomplished, he has already taken in hand to assail you of the East, since the Persian power alone has been left for him to grapple with. The peace, therefore, as far as concerns him, has already been broken for thee, and he himself has set an end to the endless peace. For they break the peace, not who may be first in arms, but they who may be caught ...
— History of the Wars, Books I and II (of 8) - The Persian War • Procopius

... free and as unstrained of impurities as city water; but if we wish to read anything or study anything we resort to a club. We gather together a number of persons of like capacity with ourselves. A subject which we might grapple with and run down by a few hours of vigorous, absorbed attention in a library, gaining strength of mind by resolute encountering of difficulties, by personal effort, we sit around for a month or a season in a club, expecting somehow ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... two ships of the enemy, efforts shall be made to grapple and board their flagship, where their force is carried. This same effort shall be made by the flagship of this fleet; but in case the flagship of the enemy cannot be overtaken, and their almiranta is in such a condition that ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume XI, 1599-1602 • Various

... into the eyes of his unit-mate. There he saw a determination that would not be defeated. He nodded his head and stooped over to grapple with Roger's legs. He got one leg under each arm and then tried to straighten up. He fell to the sand and rolled to one side. Astro watched him get up slowly, wearily, his space-cloth covering remaining on the ground, and then, with gritted teeth, try once ...
— Stand by for Mars! • Carey Rockwell

... hope to get at the mass of heathens at home, the need of a different education in some respects for the clergy, &c. But I have already by the time I begin to write taken too much out of myself in other ways to grapple with such subjects, and so I merely spin out a yarn about my own special difficulties ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge

... this gloomy shadow came something that whirred by my ear and was gone. But in that moment I had swept my companion behind a rock and with sword advanced leapt straight for the tree; and there, in the half-light, came on a fantastic shape and closed with it in deadly grapple. My rusty sword had snapped short at the first onset, yet twice I smote with the broken blade, while arm locked with arm we writhed and twisted. To and fro we staggered and so out into the moonlight, ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol

... be run in," he said, generously to Hugh. "You're not up to it. It takes a strong man to grapple with this sort of thing. Kills off the weakly ones like flies. You lie low in the ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley

... a mighty pretty, innocent, plump little thing, and we'd rather have had most anything than that she should stand there cryin'. But we were all hung by the feet and wandering in our minds. The simple life of the cow-puncher doesn't fit him to grapple ...
— Mr. Scraggs • Henry Wallace Phillips

... with themselves will be bad, however good it is for their guests. Besides, they dread the influence which a number of people, invested with the charm of strangeness, may have with the young men and especially the young girls of the neighborhood. The hardest thing the Altrurians have to grapple with is feminine curiosity, and the play of this about the strangers is what they seek the most anxiously to control. Of course, you will think it funny, and I must say that it seemed so to me at first, but I have come to think it is serious. The Altrurian girls ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells

... man like him to make such a mistake, because being what he is he can't grapple with it as a stronger or a coarser ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King

... to grapple with the following problem whenever it is clearly put before him:—Here are the Faunae of the same area during successive epochs. Show good cause for believing either that these Faunae have been derived ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... not very easy to grapple in public with the man whose name all smart London happens to be coupling ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... instant of surprise. With a cry which was indeed like the bellow of an old range bull, he rushed into grapple, sure of his superior strength against a younger ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton

... you be dining, sir?" said Anthony desperately. He was trying instinctively to grapple with a situation which had ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates

... together, these three chapters, final but first written, contain the main argument of the book. The naval occurrences, brilliant and interesting as they were, are logically but the prelude to the death grapple. Pitt's policy stood justified, because naval supremacy, established by war, secured control of the seas and of maritime commerce, and so exhausted Napoleon. Not till this demonstration had been accomplished to my ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan

... it was for an instant only; then, without uttering a word, he aimed a blow full at Rokoa's head. The latter caught it in his open palm, wrenched the weapon from him, and, adroitly foiling a furious attempt which he made to grapple with him, once more stood upon the defensive with an unruffled aspect and not the slightest appearance of excitement ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer

... are everywhere, in one form or another. These daggers are concealed under kindness, charity, benevolence, morality, law, and are, therefore, difficult to deal with. The blades are thrust into the back; you can feel them, but you cannot grapple ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various

... names, from kindred blood, from similar privileges, and equal protection. These are ties, which, though light as air, are as strong as links of iron. Let the colonies always keep the idea of their civil rights associated with your government;—they will cling and grapple to you; and no force under heaven will be of power to tear them from their allegiance. But let it be once understood that your government may be one thing, and their privileges another; that these two ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke

... what we are actually doing, and adopt a measure which would at once conciliate and harmonize the whole North, we are to suffer a tremendous disorder to spring up and make mischief without end! Can we never get over this silly dread of worn-out political abuse and grapple fairly with the truth? Are we really so much afraid of being falsely called abolitionists and negro-lovers that we can not act and think like men! Here we are frightened at names, dilly-dallying ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... loop-holes; in the front, three doors were contrived for the alternate sally and retreat of the soldiers and workmen. They ascended by a staircase to the upper platform, and, as high as the level of that platform, a scaling-ladder could be raised by pulleys to form a bridge, and grapple with the adverse rampart. By these various arts of annoyance, some as new as they were pernicious to the Greeks, the tower of St. Romanus was at length overturned: after a severe struggle, the Turks ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... in a frame of mind that baffles description. He was a modest man; he had never conceived an overweening notion of his own powers; he knew himself unfit to write a book, turn a table napkin-ring, entertain a Christmas party with legerdemain—grapple (in short) any of those conspicuous accomplishments that are usually classed under the head of genius. He knew—he admitted—his parts to be pedestrian, but he had considered them (until quite lately) fully equal to the demands of life. And to-day he owned himself ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... servant had gone he sat down in the armchair, and still continued to talk about his affairs, while I thought of something else. When we are not able to defend ourselves from a great misfortune, there is one safety-valve,—we may be able to grapple with some of its details. I was now mainly busy with the thought whether Kromitzki would go with us to Gastein or not. Therefore after some time ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... to the ladies of Cullerne, and a proper dread of such miscreants had been instilled into Anastasia Joliffe by her aunt. It was, moreover, a standing rule of the house that no strange men were to be admitted on any pretence, unless there was some man-lodger at home, to grapple with them if occasion arose. But the glance was sufficient to confirm her first verdict—he was a gentleman; there surely could not be such things as gentlemen-tramps. So she answered "Oh, certainly," and showed ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner

... prior to the Franco-Prussian War. It was the creation of a central company that should link all local companies together, and itself own and operate the means by which these companies are united. This central company was to grapple with all national problems, to own all telephones and long-distance lines, to protect all patents, and to be the headquarters of invention, information, capital, and legal protection for the entire ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson

... spirit of dogged fatalism, he sat still and waited. To his disordered mind it seemed that footsteps were moving about the house, but they had no terrors for him. To grapple with a man for life and death would be play; to kill him, joy unspeakable. He sat still, listening. He heard rats in the walls and a babel of jeering voices on the stair-case. The whole blackness of the room ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs

... farther the unthinkable vastness of the visible Universe; as for the invisible it is equally useless for even imagination to try to grapple with its never-ending immensity, to endeavor to penetrate its awful clouded mystery forever veiled ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing

... rapture the boundary of their toils. I did not weep, but I knelt down and with a full heart thanked my guiding spirit for conducting me in safety to the place where I hoped, notwithstanding my adversary's gibe, to meet and grapple with him. ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley

... grapple, by our vote, We'll loosen from our brother's throat, With Washington we here agree, The vote's ...
— The Liberty Minstrel • George W. Clark

... of an eye the man had seized the wrist of the great ape, and before the other could grapple with him had whirled him about and ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... "cover" the latter is "infamous" conduct. Travancore gives grants-in-aid to 72 Vaidyashalas, at which 143,505 patients—22,000 more than in allopathic institutions—were treated in 1914-15 (the Report issued in 1917). Our Government cannot grapple with the medical needs of the people, yet will not allow the people's money to be spent on the systems they prefer. Under Home Rule the indigenous and the foreign systems will be treated with impartiality. I grant that the allopathic doctors do their utmost to supply the need, and show great ...
— The Case For India • Annie Besant

... "dejection and tears." We must, nevertheless, not forget the weakness when we reflect upon his abject submission to royalty during his days of dependence, and as we approach the more stormy times when the spirit of vengeance incited him to grapple with royalty in the temper of a rebel. Magnanimity ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various

... got hold of me at last, Harry, but I'll grapple with him pretty tightly before I let him get the victory, do you see," he observed, when I told him that the captain had sent me to see him. "I'm obliged to him, but if he wishes to give me a longer spell of life, and to save the others on board, he will put to sea without ...
— The African Trader - The Adventures of Harry Bayford • W. H. G. Kingston

... was swinging the ax as though to hurl it. So close was he that Barney guessed it would be difficult for him to miss his mark. The least he could expect would be a frightful wound. To have attempted to escape would have necessitated turning his back to his adversary, inviting instant death. To grapple with a man thus armed appeared an equally ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... effect, it comes to this:—The story of Tess, in which attention is so urgently directed to the hand of Destiny, is not felt to be inevitable, but freakish. The story of Esther Waters, in which a poor servant-girl is allowed to grapple with her destiny and, after a fashion, to defeat it, is felt (or has been felt by one reader, at any rate) to be absolutely inevitable. To reconcile us to the black flag above Wintoncester prison ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... Strangways said hastily; "I mean, my dear, that would be more difficult perhaps for you to grapple with. Really, I have no choice in the matter; ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler

... for which Germany has been preparing for twenty years will be over in a few weeks?" said Walter passionately. "This isn't a paltry struggle in a Balkan corner, Harvey. It is a death grapple. Germany comes to conquer or to die. And do you know what will happen if she conquers? Canada ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... illness, the voyager, of course, has a ravenous appetite; such being the case, what can be more exasperating than having to grapple with a sort of dioramic dinner, where the dishes represent a series of dissolving views—mutton and beef of mature age, leaping about with a playfulness only becoming living lambs and calves—while the proverb ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence

... we may say, like coin; and the speakers imply without effort the most obscure and intricate thoughts. Strangers who have a large common ground of reading will, for this reason, come the sooner to the grapple of genuine converse. If they know Othello and Napoleon, Consuelo and Clarissa Harlowe, Vautrin and Steenie Steenson,[9] they can leave generalities and begin at once to speak ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson

... a crime, in the process of any war, but especially during the present, to gamble with the safety of the nation by neglecting to have at the head of a great department a man who has not only a genius for administrative initiative in this particular sphere but an unerring instinct to guide and grapple with its everyday perplexities. It is colossal aptitude, ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman

... a Herculean task to perform—a double task—viz., to amalgamate two nations, and also to fuse and merge two languages into one. He was absolutely compelled, by the circumstances under which he was placed, to grapple with both these vast undertakings. If, at the time when, in his park at Rouen, he first heard of Harold's accession, he had supposed that there was a party in England in his favor strong enough to allow of his proceeding ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... me many a man was staggered by kick or buffet aimed at me; moreover these passed their days cooped up on shipboard whiles I was a man hardened by constant exercise. Scarce conscious of the hurts I took as we reeled to and fro, locked in furious grapple, I fought them very joyously, making right good play with my fists; but ever as I smote one down, another leapt to smite, so that presently my breath began to labour. How long I endured, I know not. Only I remember marvelling to find myself so strong and the keen ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol

... capabilities of the soil, on which, for the most part, they have done little more than squat. But then the introduction of the right type of agricultural settlers, though it will not come about of itself, would not seem to be a task beyond the powers of statesmanship to grapple with. ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold

... for my presence of mind, that would have been the end of me. Now it was all that saved me. As the bear, on his hind legs, came toward me with his arms outstretched, to grapple, I ducked and came up between them, and so close to his body that he was unable to sink ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart

... troops, said the Czar, were not trustworthy; and there was a party in France which might take advantage of the war to proclaim the second Napoleon or the Republic. King Louis XVIII. could not therefore be allowed to grapple with Spain alone. It was necessary that the principal force employed by the alliance should be one whose loyalty and military qualities were above suspicion: the generals who had marched from Moscow to Paris were not likely to fail beyond the Pyrenees: and a campaign of the Russian ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... thy God, he said and stood. But Satan smitten with amazement fell As when Earths Son Antaeus (to compare Small things with greatest) in Irassa strove With Joves Alcides and oft foil'd still rose, Receiving from his mother Earth new strength, Fresh from his fall, and fiercer grapple joyn'd, Throttl'd at length in the Air, expir'd and fell; So after many a foil the Tempter proud, Renewing fresh assaults, amidst his pride 570 Fell whence he stood to see his Victor fall. And as that Theban Monster that propos'd Her riddle, and him, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton



Words linked to "Grapple" :   make out, squeeze by, get by, dredging bucket, make do, clutch, scrape along, tool, crampon, hook, match, manage, cut, clamshell, crampoon, rub along, grappling iron, act, squeak by, cope with, seize, deal, hand-to-hand struggle, cope, scratch along, grip, grapnel, move, grappler, meet, scrape by, wrestle, claw, grappling hook, improvise, struggle, extemporize, hack, prehend, contend



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