"Gripe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Mother had the gripe and clutch of poverty upon her face, upon her figure, and not least of all upon her voice. Her sharp and high- pitched words were squeezed out of her, as by the compression of bony fingers on a leathern bag; and she had a way ...
— George Silverman's Explanation • Charles Dickens
... might ask her if she wanted the groceries charged before she got the money out to pay for them. And good-by then to Jerry's secret charge account. "You said running errands was my chore," he reminded his mother. "You haven't heard me gripe about having to go to the ...
— Jerry's Charge Account • Hazel Hutchins Wilson
... propitiate the offended Dwarf by every argument he could think of, he heard him with his eyes bent on the ground, as if in the deepest meditation, and at length broke forth—"Nature?—yes! it is indeed in the usual beaten path of Nature. The strong gripe and throttle the weak; the rich depress and despoil the needy; the happy (those who are idiots enough to think themselves happy) insult the misery and diminish the consolation of the wretched.—Go hence, thou who hast contrived to give an additional pang to the most miserable of ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... earnestly; the flap, Against the obdurate pane, of thy small wing;— He hears thee not—he heeds not—but, at morn, The ice-enamoured schoolboy, early afoot, Finds thy small bulk beneath the alder stump, Thy bright eyes closed, and tiny talons clench'd, Stiff in the gripe of death. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... the tavern they frequent; With thieves and perjured fellows they associate; At courts they inquire after feasts; Every senseless word they bring forward; Every deadly sin they praise; Every vile course of life they lead; Through every village, town, and country they stroll; Concerning the gripe of death they think not; Neither lodging nor charity do they give; Indulging in victuals to excess. Psalms or prayers they do not use, Tithes or offerings to God they do not pay, On holidays or Sundays they do not worship; Vigils or festivals ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 3 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... disrespectful or insulting. This apology was just made in time, as the irritable Celt had begun to entertain the idea of challenging the Spaniard to mortal combat. As it was, however, his good nature at once gave way to the pacific overture that was made him. Seizing the apologist by the hand, with a gripe that produced some dismal contortions of countenance on the part of him on whom it ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... mistaken interest kept England and Scotland at variance, and when the latter kingdom was in the habit of adopting the politics of France, and [end of page 261] embracing its interests, there seems to have been some repelling principle that kept the little nation out of the gripe ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... I beheld her running, Wringing her hands with, 'Bethlen! O poor Bethlen!' I almost fear, the sudden noise I made, Rushing impetuous through the brake, alarmed her. 130 She stopt, then mad with fear, turned round and ran Into the monster's gripe. One piteous scream I ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... I should be less irritated: but he has rescued the poor being of a brother, Edward St. Ives, who had neither courage nor capacity to rescue himself, from the gripe of a gambler. This Edward, who is one of the king's captains, God bless him, and who has spent his fortune in learning the trade, not of a man of war, but of a man of fashion, having lost what ready money he had, staked his honour against a cogger of dice, and was presently ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... the roots, and dexterously wielded it in his hand like a spear. Tilting onwards, he flung it down before the wondering enemy, and one of the chiefs then thought it incumbent upon him to display his own prowess. He advanced, and offered to grasp hands with Rustem: they met; but the gripe of the champion was so excruciating that the sinews of his adversary cracked, and in agony he fell from his horse. Intelligence of this discomfiture was instantly conveyed to the king, who then summoned ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... when a man feels himself powerless in the gripe of some unseen and inevitable power, and knows not whether it be chance, or necessity, or a devouring fiend? To wrap himself sternly in himself, and cry, "I will endure, though all the universe be ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... opinion of James the First—"Ken ye a John Ape? If I have Jacko by the collar, I can make him bite you; but, if you have Jacko, you can make him bite me." Just such a creature was Barere. In the hands of the Girondists he would have been eager to proscribe the Jacobins; he was just as ready, in the gripe of the Jacobins, to proscribe the Girondists. On the fidelity of such a man the heads of the Mountain could not, of course, reckon; but they valued their conquest as the very easy and not very delicate ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... while it scourged us, cut off the sources of resuscitation! No! This damp of death is the mere effusion of British amity! We sink under the pressure of their support! We writhe under their perfidious gripe! They have embraced us with their protecting arms, and lo! these are the fruits of ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... to the Vatican, go see Laocooen's[526] torture dignifying pain— A Father's love and Mortal's agony With an Immortal's patience blending:—Vain The struggle—vain, against the coiling strain And gripe, and deepening of the dragon's grasp, The Old Man's clench; the long envenomed chain[pv] Rivets the living links,—the enormous Asp Enforces pang on pang, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... the fatal flaw of humanity which Nature, in one shape or another, stamps ineffaceably on all her productions, either to imply that they are temporary and finite, or that their perfection must be wrought by toil and pain. The crimson hand expressed the ineludible gripe in which mortality clutches the highest and purest of earthly mould, degrading them into kindred with the lowest, and even with the very brutes, like whom their visible frames return to dust. In this manner, selecting it as the symbol of his wife's ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... parley, The sack of an old city in its time, The bursting in of mercenaries and bigots tumultuously and disorderly, Roar, flames, blood, drunkenness, madness, Goods freely rifled from houses and temples, screams of women in the gripe of brigands, Craft and thievery of camp-followers, men running, old persons despairing, The hell of war, the cruelties of creeds, The list of all executive deeds and words just or unjust, The power of ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... full-swelling muscles, no wide-spreading shoulders, no clean-limbed straightness, no generous symmetry of outline. It represented strength, that body of my father's, strength without beauty; ferocious, primordial strength, made to clutch and gripe ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... no abundant thews and wide-spreading shoulders. They exhibited, rather, an elemental economy of nature, such as the cave-men must have exhibited. But there was strength in those meagre bodies, the ferocious, primordial strength to clutch and gripe and tear and rend. When they spring upon their human prey they are known even to bend the victim backward and double its body till the back is broken. They possess neither conscience nor sentiment, and they will kill for a half-sovereign, ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... earth, and before the by-standers could interfere to separate us, I had buried a knife, which I snatched from a table near me, up to the handle in his heart! He screamed—convulsively grappled me by the throat—-and expired! His death-gripe was so fierce and powerful, that I believe had we been alone, his murderer would have been found strangled by his side. It was with difficulty that the horror-struck witnesses of this bloody scene could force open his clenched hands time enough ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, No. - 361, Supplementary Issue (1829) • Various
... cockatrice's dead-killing eye He rouseth up himself and makes a pause; While she, the picture of pure piety, Like a white hind under the gripe's sharp claws, Pleads, in a wilderness where are no laws, To the rough beast that knows no gentle right, Nor aught ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... something to each other; I concluded that these were Nakir and Munkir, [302] who were come to question me; and I likewise heard the rustling of a rope, as if some one had let it down there. I was wondering, and began to feel about me on the ground, when some bones came into my gripe. ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... for nearly half a minute without uttering a syllable; at length he seized Dandy by the arm, which he pressed with the gripe of Hercules, for he was a man of huge ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... depart in the ships of the stranger, I in the midst of them bound; and, my child, thou go with them also, Doom'd for the far-off shore and the tarnishing toil of the bondman, Slaving for lord unkind. Or perchance some remorseless Achaian Hurl from the gripe of his hand, from the battlement down to perdition, Raging revenge for some brother perchance that was slaughter'd of Hector, Father, it may be, or son; for not few of the race of Achaia Seiz'd broad earth with their teeth, when they sank from the handling of ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... in her eyes, "What! not frightened for our Hieland hills, my leddy? Come, cheer up-trust me, ye'll find as warm hearts among them as ony ye ha'e left in your fine English policies"—shaking her delicate fingers in his hard muscular gripe as he spoke. ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... cheating at cards, composed of the following associates: bankers, those who play booty; the gripe, he that betteth; and the person cheated, who is styled the vincent; the ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... he the manuscript he cherished) To Rat-land home his commentary, Which was, 'At the first shrill notes of the pipe, I heard a sound as of scraping tripe, And putting apples wondrous ripe Into a cider press's gripe; And a moving away of pickle-tub boards, And a leaving ajar of conserve cupboards, And a drawing the corks of train-oil-flasks, And a breaking the hoops of butter casks; And it seemed as if a voice (Sweeter far than by harp or by psaltery Is breathed) called out, Oh rats, rejoice! ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... Why, it was only last week that Gripe, the attorney, recovered two cottages for him by law, worth ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... Miss Helstone; he could scarcely bring himself to bend to her. He glared on both the ladies. He looked as if, had either of them been his wife, he would have made a glorious husband at the moment. In each hand he seemed as if he would have liked to clutch one and gripe her ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... nephew George(430) is arrived with the fleet: my door opened t'other morning; I looked towards the common horizon of heads, but was a foot and a half below any face. The handsomest giant in the world made but one step across my room, and seizing my hand, gave it such a robust gripe that I squalled; for he crushed my poor chalk-stones to powder. When I had recovered from the pain of his friendly salute, I said, "It must be George Conway! and yet, is it possible? Why, it is not fifteen months ago since ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... omnibus carried Richard from the railway-station some five miles to the smithy. When the old man heard it stop, he threw down his hammer, strode hastily to the door, met his grandson with a gripe that left a black mark and an ache, and catching up his ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... A child, and canst not know us, what we are! The hand she feels upon her is the gods', That reacheth her e'en here, with bloody gripe! Then strive not thou to balk the gods' just doom. O, hadst thou seen her in the dragon's cave, Seen how she leaped to meet that serpent grim, Shot forth the poisonous arrows of her tongue, And darted hate and death from blazing eyes, Then were thy bosom steeled against her tears!— Take thou ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... not conquer Margaret Mackenzie. The poor creature lying there, racked, in truth, with pain and sorrow, altogether incapable of any escape from her aunt's gripe, would not say a word that might tend to ease Lady Ball's mind. If she had told all that she knew, all that she surmised, how would her aunt have rejoiced? That the money should come without the wife would indeed have been a triumph! ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... I have briefly overronne to direct your understanding to the wel-head of the History; that from thence gathering the whole intention of the conceit, ye may as in a handfull gripe al the discourse, which otherwise may happily seeme ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... I tell you there is no escape. Afloat or wrecked the Martial Law relaxes not its gripe. And though, by that self-same warrant, for some offence therein set down, you were indeed to "suffer death," even then the Martial Law might hunt you straight through the other world, and out again at its other end, following you through all eternity, like an endless thread on the inevitable ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... lamentations of the villagers, who surrounded their departing pastor with tears and blessings, added to the distress of Isabel, soon informed Colonel Evellin that his revered protector was seized by the strong gripe of power. He insisted on accompanying him to London as a fellow-prisoner, protesting he was ready to defy Cromwell, accuse Bellingham, and die. Isabel had sufficient strength to prevent the immediate execution of this ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... nor apply himself to them without applause. In times past, when those of Crete would curse any one, they prayed the gods to engage him in some ill custom. But the principal effect of its power is, so to seize and ensnare us, that it is hardly in us to disengage ourselves from its gripe, or so to come to ourselves, as to consider of and to weigh the things it enjoins. To say the truth, by reason that we suck it in with our milk, and that the face of the world presents itself in this posture ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... every rod and rivet and timber seems to lend its support; you almost expect to see the wooden walls of your room grow rigid with muscular contraction; she trembles from stem to stern, she recovers, she breaks the gripe of her antagonist, and, rising up, shakes the sea from her with a kind of gleeful wrath; I hear the torrents of water rush along the lower decks, and, finding a means of escape, pour back into the sea, glad to get away ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... officious senate, I shall straight Delude thy fury. Silius hath not placed His guards within him, against fortune's spite, So weakly, but he can escape your gripe That are but hands of fortune: she herself, When virtue doth oppose, must lose her threats! All that can happen in humanity, The frown of Caesar, proud Sejanus' hatred, Base Varro's spleen, and Afer's ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... there. See if you can't haul His backward progress to this spar of a ship Thrown up and sunk into the sand here. Clip His clipping feelers hard, and give him all Your hand to gripe at: he'll take care not fall: So,—but with heed, for you are like to slip In stepping on the plank's sea-slime. Your lip— No wonder—curves in mirth at the slow drawl Of the squat creature's legs. We've quite a shine Of waves round us, and here there comes a wind So fresh it must bode us good ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... knees knocked together, an exclamation for mercy burst from his lips; but when, recovering the mere shock of his dastard nerves, he perceived it was not the gripe of some hireling of the law, but a father's hand that had clutched his arm, the vile audacity which knows fear only from a bodily cause, none from the awe of ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... own! No maiden's hand is round thee thrown! That desperate grasp thy frame might feel, Through bars of brass and triple steel!— They tug, they strain! down, down they go, The Gael above, Fitz-James below. The Chieftain's gripe his throat compressed, His knee was planted on his breast; His clotted locks he backward threw, Across his brow his hand he drew, From blood and mist to clear his sight, Then gleamed aloft his dagger bright!— —But hate and fury ill supplied The stream of life's exhausted tide, And ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... continued their strife, uttering the most horrible blasphemies and execrations. Judith, being the stronger of the two, had the advantage, and she had seized her opponent by the throat with the intention of strangling him, when a most terrific crash was heard causing her to loose her gripe. The air instantly became as hot as the breath of a furnace, and both started to their feet. "What has ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... willing lad, with large, dark, inquisitive eyes, lit up with much clearer intelligence than frequently falls to the share of persons of his age and opportunities. The father and son were greatly attached to each other; and it was chiefly the hope of bequeathing Les Pres, free from the usurious gripe of Destouches, to his boy, that encouraged the elder Delessert to persevere in his well-nigh hopeless husbandry. Two years thus passed, and matters were beginning to assume a less dreary aspect, thanks chiefly ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... damage to him, and that is something to a poor man.[54] So he goeth to one of his masters or dames for what he wanteth, and asks them to help him with such a thing; yes, say they, you may have it; but withal they will give him a gripe, perhaps make him pay as much or more for it at home, as they can get when they have carried it five miles to a market, yea, and that too for the refuse of their commodity. But in this the women are especially faulty, in the sale of their butter and cheese, &c. Now this is a kind of extortion, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... blankets between its feet, and placed the hatchets within our reach. The night was stormy, and apprehension kept me long awake; but finding my companion in so deep a sleep, that nothing could have roused him, except the actual gripe of a wolf, I thought it advisable to imitate his example, as much as was in my power, rather than bear the burthen of anxiety alone. At day-light we shook off the snow, which was heaped upon us, and endeavoured to kindle a fire; but the violence of the storm defeated all our attempts. At length ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... old gentleman's eyes, when, having first shaken Edward heartily by the hand in the English fashion, he embraced him a la mode Francoise, and kissed him on both sides of his face; while the hardness of his gripe, and the quantity of Scotch snuff which his accolade communicated, called corresponding drops of moisture to the eyes ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... teach you to keep a taughter gripe of the beef for the future, you spalpeen," exclaimed O'Grady, recovering himself, and about to hurl back the joint at the head of the unfortunate boy, when his arm was grasped by Devereux, who cried out, laughing,—"Preserve the beef and your temper, Paddy, and if ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... light-brain'd king Have done their homage to the lofty gallows, And he himself lies in captivity. Be rul'd by me, and we will rule the realm: In any case take heed of childish fear, For now we hold an old wolf by the ears, That, if he slip, will seize upon us both, And gripe the sorer, being grip'd himself. Think therefore, madam, that imports us much To erect your son with all the speed we may, And that I be protector over him: For our behoof, 'twill bear the greater sway Whenas a king's name shall be under-writ. Q. Isab. ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe
... days of the kingdoms which grew up out of the ruins; whereas Jesus Christ was born in the time of Augustus, i. e. when the Roman empire itself was in the height of its splendour and vigour. Mr. Everett in p. 201, endeavours to escape the strong gripe of the prophet Daniel, by maintaining that these strong and weak parts, into which the Roman empire was to be divided, meant that it should be divided into "strong and weak institutions." Now to turn this sensible interpretation head over heels, [fn75] it appears to ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... poles lashed together, and to let one or two at most at a time dive for fish, which are taken from them the moment they bring them to the surface. These birds, not much larger than the common duck, will seize and gripe fast fishes that are not less than their own weight. When the proprietor judges the first pair to be pretty well fatigued, they are suffered to feed by way of encouragement on some of the fish they have taken, and a second pair are dispatched upon ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... of love and comfort. She could not catch every word, but there was a sense of promised peace and comfort, which began to soothe the fluttering heart, for the first time enjoying a respite from the immediate gripe of deadly terror. ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... handful of the herb Basil to the duke. The duke, somewhat surprised, asked what that meant? 'Sir,' replied the ambassador, 'this herb is of that nature, that if you handle it gently without squeezing, it will emit a pleasant and grateful scent; but if you squeeze and gripe it, 'twill not only lose its colour, but it will become productive of scorpions in a little time."—The Entertainer: ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 193, July 9, 1853 • Various
... of visiters, her house was deserted; and, at the expiration of the year, the proud fair, awakened from her golden dream by the clamours of her importunate creditors, found herself without one friend to rescue her valuables from their rapacious gripe. ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... the foeman's gripe Your country's banner it was yours to wrest,— Ah, many a forehead shows the banner-stripe, And stars, once crimson, hallow many ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... don't draw back; come, a cordial gripe. We are friends; we have both suffered from the same cause. There, that's right—honest palm to palm. Now, how say you—have ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... into a dispute with a man with whom he had previously been on friendly terms, they proceeded to blows; in the scuffle, the boy, the son of Ian's adversary, observing the two combatants locked in a close and firm gripe of eager contention, and being doubtful of the event, ran into the house and brought out the iron pot-crook, with which he saluted the head of the unfortunate Ian so severely, that he not only relinquished his combat, but departed this life ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... often tried our manhood together, when youngsters, and I was the better chap until my friend reached his eighteenth year, when the heavy metal of the young Dutch giant told in our struggles. After that period was past, I found Dirck too much for me, in a close gripe, though my extraordinary activity rendered the inequality less apparent than it might otherwise have proved. I ought not to apply the term of "extraordinary" to anything about myself, but the word escaped me unconsciously, and I shall let it stand. One thing I will say, notwithstanding, ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... proclaim And my strong obligation to you voice. Our noble functions must be so performed, That happy impress graves the rabble mind But thus to meet these vultures with a smile Doth like a colic make mine honor gripe, Machiavelian methods were in sooth The better physic for the patients' needs And I like good physician must the probe Thrust in and sound the ugly, gaping wound. Quezox: Most noble sire, if I may caution speak It were to all this ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... utmost ground you can occupy is but half a step from the veriest poverty; but still it is half a step from it. If all that I can urge be ineffectual, let her who seldom calls to you in vain, let the call of pride prevail with you. You know how you feel at the iron gripe of ruthless oppression: you know how you bear the galling sneer of contumelious greatness. I hold you out the conveniences, the comforts of life, independence, and character, on the one hand; I tender you civility, dependence, and wretchedness, on the other. I will not insult your understanding ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... months ago, he has the insolence to insult Hungary in the person of one of her sons. He makes his great braggart, Coeur de Lion, fling a Magyar over his head. Ha! it was well for Richard that he never felt the gripe of a Hungarian. I wish the braggart could have felt the gripe of me, who am 'a' Magyarok kozt legkissebb,' the least among the Magyars. I do hate that Scott, and all his vile gang of Lowlanders and Highlanders. The black corps, the fekete regiment of Matyjas Hunyadi, was worth ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... poor soldiers of the Temple will not alone place their foot upon the necks of kings—a hemp-sandall'd monk can do that. Our mailed step shall ascend their throne—our gauntlet shall wrench the sceptre from their gripe. Not the reign of your vainly-expected Messiah offers such power to your dispersed tribes as my ambition may aim at. I have sought but a kindred spirit to share it, and I have found such ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... when a gloomy band Of vile excisemen threatened all the land, Help'd to deliver from their harpy gripe The cheerful bottle and the social pipe. O rare Ben Bradley! may for this the bowl, Still unexcised, rejoice thy honest soul! May still the best in Christendom for this Cleave to thy stopper, and ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... Vultures gripe thy guts: for gourd, and Fullam holds: & high and low beguiles the rich & poore, Tester ile haue in pouch when thou ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... great speed, like a courier with important news, and as if its course underground had been a direct and an easy one for a long distance. Springs that issue in this way have a sort of vertebra, a ridgy and spine-like centre that suggests the gripe and push there ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... land-speculator was ready to take his oath, were worth every cent of two thousand dollars. In short, I concluded my blind bargain, and in the month of June, prepared to start to visit my estate. I was at New Orleans, which city was just then held fast in the gripe of its annual scourge and visitor, the yellow fever. I was in a manner left alone; all my friends had gone up or down stream, or across the Pont Chartrain. There was nothing to be seen in the whole place but meagre hollow-eyed negresses, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... strove fiercely, mighty arms straining and tight-clenched, writhing, swaying, reeling, in fast-locked, desperate grapple. Now to Roger's strength and quickness Beltane opposed craft and cunning, but wily Roger met guile with guile nor was to be allured to slack or change his gripe. Therefore of a sudden Beltane put forth his strength, and wrestled mightily, seeking to break or weaken Roger's deadly hold. But Roger's iron arms gripped and held him ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... FIDELISSIMUS VASSALLUS, and most obsequient Servant, Georgius Ludovicus; meek, modest, and unspeakably in the right: Was ever Member of the Holy Roman Empire so snubbed, and grasped by the windpipe, before? Oh, help him, great Kaiser, bid the iron gripe loosen itself!" [Helden-Geschichte, ii, 86-116.] The Kaiser does so, in heavy Latin rescripts, in German DEHORTATORIUMS more than one, of a sulky, imperative, and indeed very lofty tenor; "Let Georgius Ludovicus go, foolish rash young Dilection (LIEBDEN, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... place. A person coming into the room where he lay, the pedlar's dog growled and woke his master, who called out, "Stir, bitch"; when the dog seized the man by the throat, which proved to be the master of the inn, who, to get released from the gripe of the dog, confessed his intention was, with the aid of the ferryman who rowed him over from Chesterton, to rob the pedlar; from which circumstance the fair ever after obtained the name of Stirbitch. But a more reasonable derivation ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 333 - Vol. 12, Issue 333, September 27, 1828 • Various
... progress; but it instantly recovered the shock and burst away again as madly as ever. But no effort that it was capable of making could relieve the poor creature from its deadly burden, or cause the leopard in the slightest degree to relax its fatal gripe. ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... make it appear the cat had eat me. He took me home, and called his dog into the garden, where he let me go, and sent the dog after me. The dog presently caught me, and lucky it was, he did not kill me the first gripe; for his master (seeing he caught me so soon, as he wanted to have had some fun, as he termed it) threw a stone at him, which hit him on the head, and laid him flat on the ground. I seized the opportunity, and ran up the garden wall, from whence I jumped, ...
— The Adventures of a Squirrel, Supposed to be Related by Himself • Anonymous
... viperous twistings bound; and threatening shakes Her tresses: loud the serpents noise, disturb'd; Sprawl o'er her shoulders some; some, lower fall'n, Twine hissing round her breasts, with brandish'd tongue, Black poison vomiting. With furious gripe, Two from her locks she tore;—her deadly hand Hurl'd them straight on; the breasts of Athamas, And Ino, hungry, with their fangs they seiz'd; Fierce pains infixing, but external wounds Their limbs betray'd not: mental was the blow, So direly struck. Venoms most mortal, too, From Tartarus she ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... when they talk of him they shake their heads, And whisper one another in the ear; And he that speaks doth gripe the hearer's wrist, Whilst he that hears makes fearful action With wrinkled brows, with nods, ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... towards the platform on which I knelt. I only tightened my grasp of the brute's throat. His eyes were already starting from his head, and his tongue was hanging out. My anxious hope was, that, even after they had killed me, they would be unable to undo my gripe of his throat, before the monster was past breathing. I therefore threw all my will, and force, and purpose, into the grasping hand. I remember no blow. A faintness came over me, and ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... The guaco, using its wings, succeeded in striking its antagonist upon the upraised head, and quickly following up the blow, planted his talons so as to encircle the throat of his victim. The effect of his gripe was instantly apparent. The reptile unfolded itself, and the slender coral body was seen writhing and twisting along the ground. But it did not remain long upon the ground, for in a few moments the guaco rose into the air, and carried the struggling ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... time are the details of that stately apologue. Apollo kept the flocks of Admetus, said the poets. When the gods come among men, they are not known. Jesus was not; Socrates and Shakspeare were not. Antaeus was suffocated by the gripe of Hercules, but every time he touched his mother earth his strength was renewed. Man is the broken giant, and in all his weakness both his body and his mind are invigorated by habits of conversation with nature. The power of music, the power of poetry, to unfix and as ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... off so many last winter at Lyons, was called the Gripe. In a large hotel only one person escaped it, an English Lady. They called it the Gripe, from the fast hold it took of the person it seized; nor did it let them go ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, Volume II (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... from below is better than one from above—whether it will be more eligible that the Muses should have several more stories to descend, when their nine ladyships are invoked so to do—and that the pen should be taken out of the scraggy hand of a gentleman in rags, and be placed in the plump gripe of a gentleman ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 479, March 5, 1831 • Various
... All the pomp and splendor of naval warfare are gone by. Henceforth there must come up a race of enginemen and smoke-blackened cannoneers, who will hammer away at their enemies under the direction of a single pair of eyes; and even heroism—so deadly a gripe is Science laying on our noble possibilities—will become a quality of very minor importance, when its possessor cannot break through the iron crust of his own armament and give the world ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... who, stout as Julius Caesar, Swam across and lived to carry To rat-land home his commentary: Which was, "At the first shrill notes of the pipe, I heard a sound as of scraping tripe, And putting apples, wondrous ripe, Into a cider-press's gripe: And a moving away of pickle-tub-boards, And a leaving ajar of conserve-cupboards, And a drawing the corks of train-oil-flasks, And a breaking the hoops of butter-casks: And it seemed as if a voice (Sweeter far than by harp or by psaltery Is breathed) ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... of myself forsaken, And thee, dear Loiterer, in the wood o'ertaken With passion for those bold and wanton ones, Who knit thine arms as poison-plants gripe trees With twining cords—their flowers the braveries That flash in the green gloom, sparkling ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... rogue, mon jolie garcon!" exclaimed the man (the captain of a French lugger), whom Charley had seized. "You have no fear, it seems, for ghosts nor for men; but you give me von terrible gripe of my neck. Ah, not you tink ...
— Washed Ashore - The Tower of Stormount Bay • W.H.G. Kingston
... ye know the accursed thing And know it accurst, for the Gift is yours Of Sight where the prophets of blindness sing By the brink of death. And the Gift endures; Ye shall see the last of the sharpened lies That rivet privilege's gripe. Be still, then, ye with the opened eyes, Come away from the thing till the time ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... her in savage gripe. "What," cried I, shaking her to and fro despite my weakness, "what ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... enemy!" Stooping, he raised the red-cloaked figure by its collar and held it up in the firelight. As a murmur of laughter went around, he lowered it again and spoke more gravely. "A hand needs not be large to get a hilt under its gripe, however. The young wolf is of northern breed,—how he penetrated to the heart of an English camp, I cannot tell,—and there grows in his spirit a bloodthirsty disposition. He seeks my life because in a skirmish, a few days gone by, I had the good luck to kill ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... all. I should be glad to see our suppliant negotiator in the act of putting his feather to the ear of the directory, to make it unclinch the fist; and, by his tickling, to charm that rich prize out of the iron gripe of robbery and ambition! It does not require much sagacity to discern that no power wholly baffled and defeated in Europe can flatter itself with conquests in the West Indies. In that state of things it can neither keep ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... ever flung its weight of mortality in thither, and if it thus escaped the burden, or only made it heavier. And perhaps the skeleton of the drowned wretch still lay beneath the inscrutable depth, clinging to some sunken log at the bottom with the gripe of its old despair. So slight, however, was the track of these gloomy ideas, that I soon forgot them in the contemplation of a brood of wild ducks, which were floating on the river, and anon took flight, leaving ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... or an Hare, after he had feasted very plentifully upon it himself, would now and then throw me a Bone that was but half picked for my Encouragement; but upon my Being unsuccessful in two or three Chaces, he gave me such a confounded Gripe in his Anger, that I ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... "gen'l'men" turn as white As a head o' hair in a single night! Cleaned their army completely out, (We're going to give that another wipe!) On the double-quick, by the shortest route,— Wrung their stronghold from their gripe,— Brought their garrison right to taw, And made 'em get down to the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... altars with loaded platters. Then the Salii stand round the lit altar-fires to sing, their brows bound with poplar boughs, one chorus of young men, one of elders, and extol in song the praises and deeds of Hercules; how first he strangled in his gripe the twin terrors, the snakes of his stepmother; how he likewise shattered in war famous cities, Troy and Oechalia; how under Eurystheus the King he bore the toil of a thousand labours by Juno's malign decrees. Thine hand, unconquered, slays the cloud-born double-bodied ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... of them. Women shouted their neighborhood jargon from windows flung momentarily open. Poverty scuttled along close to the scant shelter of these houses. An old man, with a beard to his chest, paused in a doorway to cough, and it was like the gripe-gripe of a saw with its teeth in hard wood. A woman sold apples from a stoop, the form of a child showing through her shawl. Yet Mrs. Meyerburg smiled ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... trembling, but eager gripe, he seized the paper, as a miser would seize the deeds of an estate on which he has a mortgage. He smoothed the folds, looked complacently at the well-known hand, smiled—a ghastly smile! and then placed the letter under his pillow, ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... which are too apt to pass upon the common reader as the certain and authentic characters of truth. The success of this book was prodigious; it was read universally and with the utmost avidity. All who envied Leicester's power and grandeur; all who had smarted under his insolence, or felt the gripe of his rapacity; all who had been scandalized, or wounded in family honor, by his unbridled licentiousness; all who still cherished in their hearts the image of the unfortunate duke of Norfolk, whom he was believed to have entangled in a deadly snare; all who ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... and it has only been when hope had entirely forsaken her, or when her capture was inevitable, that she has reluctantly thrown out the fawn. Their method of warfare has often reminded me of the style of two practiced pugilists, the aim of each being to firmly gripe his opponent by the shoulder, upon accomplishing which, the long hind leg, with its horny blade projecting from its toe, comes into formidable play. It is lifted and drawn downward with a rapid movement, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various
... confounded. His eye rolled rapidly from one to the other of the officers at the boldness and determination of this language. Singly, he could hare crushed Henry Grantham in his gripe, even as one of the bears of the forest, near the outskirt of which they stood; but there were two, and while attacking the one, he was sure of being assailed by the other; nay, what was worse, the neighborhood might be alarmed. Moreover, although they had kept their cloaks ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... was going on below. Gibbs found the mate and seized him, while Atwell and Church came down and struck him with a pump break and a club; he was then dragged upon deck; they called for Dawes to come to them, and as he came up the mate seized his hand, and gave him a death gripe! three of them then hove him overboard, but which three Dawes does not know; the mate when cast overboard was not dead, but called after them twice while in the water! Dawes says he was so frightened that he hardly ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... afterwards joined the party at the place where they had landed to dine. They were then armed, two of them with shields and swords, the rest with lances only. The swords were made of wood, small in the gripe, and apparently less formidable than a good stick. One of these men had a kind of white clay rubbed upon the upper part of his face, so as to have the appearance of a mask. This ornament, if it can be called such, is not common among them, and ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip
... heart bounded within me as my wrists were released from the iron gripe of the shackles! The first step toward freedom was made—my self-reliance returned, and I felt ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu |
