"Grasp" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... land; but not a foot of the land was remitted to private hands for the purposes of selfish pleasure or the exclusion of any other from the landscape. As all business had been gathered into the grasp of the Accumulation, and the manufacture of everything they used and the production of everything that they ate was in the control of the Accumulation, its transfer to the government was the work of a single clause ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... tumult in the court and lane. In the midst of a close-packed ring of excited people, chiefly foreigners, shouting in half the languages of Europe, a tall young Cockney, with bloated face and eyes aflame with drink, was writhing and wrestling and cursing. Sometimes he escaped from the grasp of the man who held him, and then he flung himself against the closed door of a shop which stood opposite, with the three balls of the pawnbroker suspended above it. Somebody within the shop was howling for help. It was a woman's voice, and ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... many vessels of this class is a not inconsiderable of itself. The romance of the armed merchantmen affords material for many a vivid page, and when in its proper place in this volume it is set forth somewhat in detail the reader will grasp—if he has not already done so through perusal of the daily press—the fact that all the glory of naval service in this war has not resided within the turrets of the dreadnought nor on the deck ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry
... condemn ourselves to grope in the maze of cultivated opinion, itself the confused result of these past systems of thought which we will not trouble ourselves to think out.' The aim of all philosophy, as Plato said, is just to correct the assumptions of the ordinary mind, and to grasp in their unity and cohesion the ultimate principles which the mind feels must be at the root of all reality. We have an ethical interest in determining whether there be any moral reality beneath the appearances of ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... of freedom had grown strong in Martha as the days passed, and when her lover went to see her she had strange things to say. Was he going to stay? Was he going to be a slave when freedom and a livelihood lay right within his grasp? Would he keep her a slave? Yes, he would do ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... of my intention to Melannie she failed to grasp my meaning. She had no notion of fire except in connexion with the smoke on the mountain, and when I told her I could make fire like that and convert it to my use, ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... the belief that I have your pardon. Your gentle nature would not permit you to hate your greatest enemy and though I be he, although I have rent happiness from your grasp;[38] though I have passed over your young love and hopes as the angel of destruction, finding beauty and joy, and leaving blight and despair, yet you will forgive me, and with eyes overflowing with tears I thank you; my beloved one, I accept your pardon with a gratitude that will never die, and ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... too, with huge, bulbous heads and all manner of such easy monstrosities and exaggerations.. It is strange how the whole humor of the thing, and the separate humor of each individual character, vanishes the moment I try to grasp it and describe it; and yet there really was fun in the spectacle as it flitted by—for instance, in the long line of carriages a company of young men in flesh-colored tights and chemises, representing a party of girls surprised in the midst of dressing themselves, while ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... to the protonotary, as he spoke, to command him to show Ernst Ortlieb's accusation to the duchess, but she seemed to have practised the art of reading admirably; for, more quickly than it would otherwise have appeared possible to grasp the meaning of even the first sentences, she exclaimed, drawing herself up to her full height and gazing at Cordula with haughty superiority: "There is but one decision here, if the morality of this noble city is to be preserved and the maiden daughters of her patrician families secured henceforward ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... communion with God is as direct and constant, in this whirl and roar, and marvellous achievement, as they were in times bearing less evidently the signs of material progress. For, that which merely gives us a stronger grasp of the world around us, and sends us along the level of nature, is not the most genuine element of progress; but that which elevates our moral plane and enriches the great deep of our spiritual being. The steamship ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... tickled your fancy or moved your pathos, will hurry to tell it to the first person you meet. But when that first novel has been received graciously by the public and has made for itself a success, then the writer naturally feeling that the writing of novels is within his grasp, looks about for something to tell in another. He cudgels his brains, not always successfully, and sits down to write, not because he has something which he burns to tell, but because be feels it to be incumbent on him to be telling something. As you, my friend, if you are very ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... rejoiced!" He paused again, shaking the apothecary's hand with great ceremony. "I do assure you, sir, I dislike to relinquish your grasp. Do me the honor to allow me to become your friend! I congratulate my downtrodden country on the acquisition of such a citizen! I hope, sir,—at least I might have hoped, had not Louisiana just passed into the hands ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... remarks on my notes on the subject, published in the Athenaeum, in which he denies that the stereographic projection is a case of perspective, the reason being that the whole hemisphere makes too large a picture for the eye conveniently to grasp at once. That is to say, it is no perspective because there is too much ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... hatred— By danger—the two hands that tightest grasp Each other—the two cords that soonest knit A fast and stubborn tie; your true love knot Is nothing to it. Faugh! the supple touch Of pliant interest, or the dust of time, Or the pin-point of temper, loose or rot Or snap love's silken band. ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... is the genius of Sophism which paralyzes this resistance. The sword which the spirit of evil places in the hands of the aggressor, would fall powerless, if the shield of him who is attacked were not shattered in his grasp by the spirit of Sophism. Malbranche has, with great truth, inscribed upon the frontispiece of his book this sentence: Error is the cause ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... beef: We live chiefly on muscles, limpitts, and clams, with saragraza and thromba; one is a green broad weed, common on the rocks in England; the other is a round sea-weed, so large, that a man can scarce grasp it; it grows in the sea, with broad leaves; this last we boil, the saragraza we fry in tallow; in this manner we support life: Even these shell-fish and weeds we get with great difficulty; for the wind, the rain, and coldness of the climate in this season, are so extremely ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... have been within such a hair's breadth of it, that I cannot conceive how it is that I have not got it in my pocket. Thus I suffer a torment like that of Tantalus, who starves with fruits all round him, and burns with thirst with water at his lip. At one moment I seem to grasp the truth, at another it is far away from me; and, like another Sisyphus, I begin again to climb the hill which I have just rolled down, along with all the ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... military gentleman may have been, Ned had no idea, but he determined to find out some day, and just now he was glad to grasp the golden hilt, and remember all that he had ever heard about the Moors. He had not at all expected to hear of them again, just after escaping from a norther in the Gulf of Mexico, but, without being aware of it, he was learning a great deal about ...
— Ahead of the Army • W. O. Stoddard
... door with a feeble gesture of the hands. She knew that, worn as he was with his journey, if she gave him the chance he would grasp it and pause, even while his mother panted her last, to wrestle for and win a soul—not because she, Hetty, was his sister; simply because hers was a soul to be saved. Yes, and she foresaw that sooner or later he would win: that she would be swept into the flame of his conquest: yet ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... in Man.—First, let us consider what this wonderful instrument, the brain, is capable of in its higher developments. In Mr. Galton's interesting work on "Hereditary Genius," he remarks on the enormous difference between the intellectual power and grasp of the well-trained mathematician or man of science, and the average Englishman. The number of marks obtained by high wranglers, is often more than thirty times as great as that of the men at the bottom of the honour list, who are still of fair mathematical ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... it?" She drew back from the window, her figure tense. "When it comes within my grasp, I will do everything, everything, and nothing ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... have accomplished great things for Indian Territory and for the Confederacy. Almost simultaneously with the forwarding of Scott's first report to Holmes, he personally made reports[856] and issued appeals,[857] some of which, because of their grasp, because of their earnestness, and because of their spirit of noble self-reliance, call for very special mention. Watie's purpose in making and in issuing them was evidently nothing more and nothing less than to dispel despondency and ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... Ourselves we profit not. Our labour has no object but one, That is, to feed this lazy glutton. We'll learn the resting trade By his example's aid.' So said, so done; all labour ceased; The hands refused to grasp, the arms to strike; All other members did the like. Their boss might labour if he pleased! It was an error which they soon repented, With pain of languid poverty acquainted. The heart no more the blood renew'd, And hence repair no more accrued To ever-wasting strength; Whereby ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... who attempted to prejudice him against such a treasure, such a model of every virtue, such an angel, as she "always appeared to him to be"! He would have cheerfully "accepted the hand" of the poor "Irish" orphan when that hand had some thousands of gold dollars in its beauteous grasp. The Yankee is not remarkable for having an eye for the beautiful in nature or art; but when dimes and dollars are in prospective, none is more penetrating or sharpsighted than he. Beautiful paintings, cathedrals, the noblest ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... not have ventured out had he not, before going down below for the first time, stretched a rope across the deck in front of the companion, so that before going out he obtained a firm grasp of it, and was by its assistance able to reach the side safely. Each time he went out four of the crew from below followed him and relieved those lashed ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty
... the time, do not disturb themselves uselessly, and never abandon their present position until they have a firm grasp ...
— Common Sense - - Subtitle: How To Exercise It • Yoritomo-Tashi
... means. The perching birds grasp a twig firmly with their very limber toes and sharp claws, and put their head under their wing; but many others, like tame Geese and Ducks, sleep standing on the ground on one foot or sometimes floating ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... braced my intelligence to an understanding of the game, which, thanks to its classical simplicity, and to some training in the finesse of cricket and football, I did soon grasp in its main outlines. A beautiful game, superbly played. We reckon to know something of ball games in Europe; we reckon to be connoisseurs; and the old footballer and cricketer in me came away from that immense inclosure convinced that ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... rescue. When the distracted mother asked him in agony why he had waited so long, he sensibly replied: "I knew that if I went in before he would clutch and drag me down. I waited until his struggles were over, and then I was able to help him when he did not grasp ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... blots, sitting upright in his chair, leaves off when he comes to the bottom of the page, and changes the subject for another, as opposite as the Antipodes. His mind is after all rather the recipient and transmitter of knowledge, than the originator of it. He has hardly grasp of thought enough to arrive at any great leading truth. His passions do not amount to more than irritability. With some gall in his pen, and coldness in his manner, he has a great deal of kindness in his heart. Rash ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... still held Juan's, by degrees Gently, but palpably confirm'd its grasp, As if it said, 'Detain me, if you please;' Yet there 's no doubt she only meant to clasp His fingers with a pure Platonic squeeze: She would have shrunk as from a toad, or asp, Had she imagined such a thing could rouse A feeling ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... I was holding on to a ring-bolt in the deck, and that the risk I ran when thus lying down was not so great as she had supposed. As I was speaking, I saw a sea rising high above the bows of the vessel. I had just time to grasp her in my arms, and to spring under shelter of the companion-hatch, before it broke on board, and rushed as others had done along our deck. Not without difficulty I saved her from injury, and, descending the ladder, placed ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... with states of thought and feeling, remote from common experience, and which no language could make entirely clear; and unfortunately the style is sometimes in itself so obscure that we cannot judge whether it is the expression or the idea which we fail to grasp. The poem was written under the dread of diffuseness which had just then taken possession of Mr. Browning's mind, and we have sometimes to struggle through a group of sentences out of which he has so laboured to squeeze every unnecessary word, that their grammatical connection ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... grant thou that Thoth may come to me at [the sound of] my voice, and behold, let him turn back from me Netater. Osiris is on the water, the Eye of Horus is with him. A great Beetle spreadeth himself over him, great by reason of his grasp, produced by the gods from a child. He who is over the water appeareth in a healthy form. If he who is over the water shall be approached (or, attacked), the Eye of Horus, which ...
— Legends Of The Gods - The Egyptian Texts, edited with Translations • E. A. Wallis Budge
... must be allowed to say that you do not in the least grasp the vastness of this wonderful law of 'Natural Selection,' of the 'Survival of the Fittest,' which ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... actual society. No one is so affected by the virtues and happiness of the society of the future. This accounts for his having two holds on the public mind, one through satire and the other through the idyll.—These two holds are undoubtedly slighter at the present day; the substance of their grasp has disappeared; we are not the auditors to which it appealed. The famous discourse on the influence of literature and on the origin of inequality seems to us a collegiate exaggeration; an effort of the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... and gave me a hearty grasp of the hand. He was so agitated that he could not speak—choking with joyful emotion, as if he had been Jeanne's ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... things did seem to grow a little fuller and busier, for he naturally wanted Katy to himself, and she was too preoccupied to keep her calm grasp on events; still all went smoothly, and Rose declared that there never was such a wedding since the world was made,—no tears, no worries, ...
— Clover • Susan Coolidge
... bed that night thinking, thinking, and without any desire for sleep. Strive as she would to search the position out logically, to estimate the true meaning of it all, to fathom the chances of this war, and to grasp the necessity for it, all these efforts only resulted in a tangle of thought revolving about the picture of a youthful man of vast stature, with eyes that were always clear-searching or smiling, and with a head of hair that reminded her of a lion's mane. And as she gazed upon this ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... the Lechford Hospitals. Emerging from it he looked along the table. Quite half the members were dreaming too, and he wondered what thoughts were moving secretly within them. But the chairman was not dreaming. He never loosed his grasp of the matter in hand. Nor did the earnest young blonde by the chairman's side who took down in stenography ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... industry upon a new footing, and multiplied beyond the limits of calculation the activities and achievements of mankind, this extraordinary person turned his back upon the colossal fortune which he had but to stretch forth his hand and grasp, refused to seize the unlimited power which his genius had laid at his feet, and used his unparalleled discovery for a purpose so eccentric, so wildly unpractical, so utterly beyond the pale of waking life, that to any ordinary man he ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... qualities, and no doubt she would have been as successful in her administration had she had the same opportunities and the same freedom of action as her predecessors. Philip, however, though henceforth he passed the whole of his life in Spain, had no intention of loosening in any way his grasp of the reins of power or of delegating any share of his sovereign authority. On his return to Madrid he showed plainly that he meant to treat the Netherland provinces as if they were dependencies of the Spanish crown, and he required from Margaret and her advisers that all the details ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... discontent. George took no pains to conceal the fact that he held his bishopric by the favour of the emperor and the power of the army against the wishes of his flock. To support his authority, he opened his doors to informers of the worst description; anybody who stood in the way of his grasp at power was accused of being an enemy to the emperor. He proposed to the emperor to lay a house-tax on Alexandria, thereby to repay the expense incurred by Alexander the Great in building the city; and he made the imperial government more unpopular than it had ever been since Augustus landed in ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... back upon the ground, and he spoke not again. Cunningham, disengaging himself from the dead man's grasp, went towards the bodies of his children, and throwing himself upon the earth by their side, he kissed their lifeless eyeballs, and mourned over them. His grief was too intense, and his wounds too ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... hardest blow of his life. He knew at last what he wanted, but in finding it out it seemed that he had put it forever beyond his grasp. He reached home in misery, dropped into an armchair without even removing his overcoat, and sat there for over an hour, his mind racing the paths of fruitless and wretched self-absorption. She had sent him away! That was the reiterated burden ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... only able to resist the invasion of the Goths so long as Stilicho, his minister, lived, for after the murder of the latter by treachery matters with him went from bad to worse, and he saw some of his finest provinces snatched from his grasp (384-423). ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... flowing back on him, had been brought about by himself alone. He experienced at the same time the dishonour of a crushing humiliation and the regret caused by the loss of his new-found happiness. Just when, at last, he had it in his grasp, it had for ever more become impossible, and that through the fault of this girl of the town, this harlot. He would have liked to strangle her. He was choking with rage. When they had got into the house he flung his hat on a piece of furniture ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... left hand took up the lamp as he was ordered; and with Rienzi's grasp on his shoulder, while the wound from his right arm dropped gore as he passed, he moved noiselessly along the church—gained the altar—to the left of which was a small room for the use or retirement of the ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the anniversary of that one a year ago, was in many ways the most remarkable day that the First Church ever knew. It was more important than the disciples in the First Church realized. The year had made history so fast and so serious that the people were not yet able to grasp its significance. And the day itself which marked the completion of a whole year of such discipleship was characterized by such revelations and confessions that the immediate actors in the events themselves could not understand the ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon
... the crime of murder. So accustomed were the inhabitants to the appearance of fugitives from justice, that whenever a stranger came among them, they took it for granted that he had committed some crime which rendered it necessary for him to take refuge beyond the grasp of his ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... still, and stared at it stupidly. Some vague recollection floated elusively through his brain. He tried to grasp and fix it clearly in his mind. It was a recollection of something which had happened a long while ago, in England, when he was at school. Suddenly, he remembered. It was not something which had happened, but something he had read under the great elm ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... have been given to obviate any such sneering remarks as: "What could be, pray, the size of the mouth of a child in his mother's womb, and how could it grasp such a large and ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... cottages. She was very tired, she had never felt quite so tired before, and her knees trembled as they had done that day when the fever came on at the convent; she was so dizzy too, that she had to stop now and then, to grasp the one fact of her being where she was and not somewhere else altogether; her single idea was to go on walking until—until when? That was a question she could not have answered, only somewhere she must go, where she would be out of ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... and Maude set to work at the pans. When they were sufficiently scrubbed, she pulled off the dirty apron in which she had been working, and went towards the dry herb closet. But she had not reached it, when her wrist was caught and held in a grasp ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... first period of childhood, exhibit differences between the sexes; in general, the measurements show that the girl's head is smaller than the boy's in respect both of length and breadth. Further, dynamometric records, taken from children six years of age, have shown that the grasp in girls is less powerful than in boys. But if we except such differences as these, which relate rather to averages than to individuals, and which, moreover, are for the most part demonstrable only ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... Bunker shaking off Drusilla's grasp, "we acknowledge we made a slight mistake. We tried to run a whizzer and you called us good and plenty—all right then, now let's have a talk. If you can show title to this ground you're holding, we'll leave you in peaceful possession; and if you ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... because his hands wouldn't support his weight so he crept along on his knees and elbows. It didn't hurt. Nothing hurt except the fire in his bones. He reached the door and straightened up on his knees. He raised his hand to the handle, but couldn't grasp it. After several trials, he abandoned the attempt and hooked his chin on the handle, pulling it down. The door opened and he was in the next room. The animal was whining louder now that he ...
— Bolden's Pets • F. L. Wallace
... set on a rainbow, and eat honey, why, then, a yaller tarleton dress with red trimmin's would be jest the thing to wear. But," says I, "you will find yourself in the same old world, with the same old dishcloths and wipin'-towels and mops a waitin' for you to grasp, with the same pair of hands. You will have to konfront brooms and wash-tubs and darnin'-needles and socks, and etcetery, etcetery. And you must ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... my youth! for my spirit is steel'd, And I know there is strength in the grasp of my hand; Yea, as firm as thyself would I move to the field, And as proudly would die for my ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... He sought to grasp the steel plate that closed the emergency opening. His fingers slipped over the smooth, polished surface. He was hermetically sealed up—a captive! Blankly he set his lantern down and leaned hopelessly against the wall ...
— Tom Swift and his Submarine Boat - or, Under the Ocean for Sunken Treasure • Victor Appleton
... instant Alan stared at her, dazed, unable to grasp the force of what she was saying, the significance of her tone. As a matter of fact the artist in him had leaped to the surface, banished all other considerations. He had never seen Tony Holiday really angry before. ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... the man. We would have sworn by him; in fact, we did swear by him, for ten long years he was our oracle. Never shall we forget the first, the only time our faith was shaken. We gazed upon and loved his honest face; we reciprocated the firm pressure of his manly grasp; our eyes descended in admiration even unto the ground on which he stood, and there, upon that very ground—the ground whose upward growth of five feet eight seemed Heaven's boast, an "honest man"—we saw what struck us sightless to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 24, 1841 • Various
... his cacography. He thinks a final tion should be spelt chon—and why not? "proposichon," "satisfackchon," "oblegachon," "persekuchon," "dereckchon," "himelyachon"—thus he spells such words. And his plurals are plain when once you grasp his laws: "poseschouse" and "considderachonse," "facktse," and "respecktse." And his ly is alwajs li, "exacktli," "thorroli," "fidelliti," "charriti," "falsciti." And why is not "indiered," as good as 'endeared,' "pregedic," as 'prejudice,' ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... old Fashion, Practise still by those are wise, Throughly try my Lover's Passion, E're I let him grasp the Prize. Spite of Oaths you wou'd forsake me, Shou'd I let you once embrace: If I kiss, the Devil take me, Till ...
— The City Bride (1696) - Or The Merry Cuckold • Joseph Harris
... Michael, who is bravely confronting the Dragon, setting his teeth and knitting his brows, truly seems to have descended from Heaven in order to effect the vengeance of God against the pride of Lucifer, and it is indeed a marvellous work. He had a more modern grasp of the nude than the masters before his day, and he dissected many bodies in order to study their anatomy. He was the first to demonstrate the method of searching out the muscles, in order that they might have their due form ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari
... of the capacity of the pan. Had that capacity been equal to the weight of two men, it would have been a simple matter for him to run out, grasp Sandy Rowl by the collar, and drag him from the water. In the circumstances, however, what help he could give Sandy Rowl must be applied in the moment through which he would remain on the ice before it sank; and enough of the brief interval must be saved wherein to escape ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... was patent. Ah! If he could but win the head of this scurvy cleric. His mind now was totally removed from thoughts of himself. For two days and two nights he never closed his eyes, which were fastened on the infernal ideographs—palpably so full of a meaning he could not grasp. Then he was worn out. He went to sleep, and slept for a full twenty-four hours. On awaking he was a different being. The cobwebs of the mind were clean swept. Its vague shiftings had been brought to concentration—to thought. Now it was the household which ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... addicted to walking in his sleep went to bed all right one night, but when he awoke he found himself on the street in the grasp of a policeman. "Hold on," he cried, "you mustn't arrest me. I'm a somnambulist." To which the policeman replied: "I don't care what your religion is—yer can't walk the streets ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... is positive, where that of science is negative; ethical, where it is material; human, where it is cosmogonic; ending in personal immortality, where this ends in extinction and death. The eschatology of Christianity springs from its character as a teleological religion—it seeks to grasp the unity of the world through the conception of ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans
... to this second point in particular Luther now gives his explanation. Those words of Christ were unquestionably commands for all Christians. They demand of every Christian that he should never on his own account grasp the sword and employ force; and if only the world were full of good Christians there would be no need of the, sword of secular authority. But it is necessary to wield it against evil for the general ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... British tradition! There are times when, in spite of science and book-lore, the best plan is the boldest plan, and it is well to fly straight at your enemy's throat, facing the chance that your strength may fail before you can grasp it. The cavalry moved off round the enemy's left flank. The guns dashed to the front, unlimbered, and opened fire. The infantry were moved round in the direction of Sandspruit, passing through the little ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... gifted with a natural perspicacity that enabled him, as soon as he heard these remarks, to grasp their spirit. ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... he'd left it to her, she's that honorable." Now that the lover had fairly launched himself upon the engrossing life story of his sweetheart he was in deep earnest, and his listener's quick understanding, his sympathy, his grasp of the situation, was a spur to further confidences. It was a blessing to have a friend so old, ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... grasp of things in general soon showed Totski that he now had to deal with a being who was outside the pale of the ordinary rules of traditional behaviour, and who would not only threaten mischief but would undoubtedly carry it out, ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... same efforts have been attended with the same results elsewhere. In despotic countries, where the will of the monarch has been strongly expressed and vigorously supported, a diminution of the evil has for a time resulted, but only to be increased again, when death relaxed the iron grasp, and a successor appeared of less decided opinions on the subject. This was the case in Prussia, under the great Frederick, of whose aversion to duelling a popular anecdote is recorded. It is stated of him that he permitted ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... right to the French crown when he accepted that of Spain; and, between her husband and the throne there was now but one frail life, that of the three-year-old Duc d'Anjou, a child so delicate that he might easily not survive his great-grandfather, Louis, whose hand was already relaxing its grasp of the sceptre he had held ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... no noise, the party descended. Now and then one of the lads slipped, but there was always a rock or a sapling at hand which they could grasp to steady themselves and ...
— Comrades of the Saddle - The Young Rough Riders of the Plains • Frank V. Webster
... and insisted on my getting up and paying him for his trouble, and even went so far as to try to accomplish by force what he wanted. This roused me; and in an unguarded moment, with very improper feeling, I seized his arm with such a grasp as he little expected I was capable of, and dared him to lay a finger upon me again or to annoy me further. This quite changed his manner; he let me quietly remain till the guns announced the opening of the gates ...
— A Retrospect • James Hudson Taylor
... was marching to his fate, and that the only way of escape was by flight, and that immediate; for they were very near the station-house. Just as Ben pronounced the last words, the thief gathered all his strength, and broke from the grasp of the officer, whose hold was momentarily relaxed. Once free he ...
— Ben, the Luggage Boy; - or, Among the Wharves • Horatio Alger
... arms as he spoke, ready to catch the girl as she came across the room, and was on the very point of taking her into his arms as he had suggested, when she broke from his grasp with a sudden turn and, furious with rage, dealt him a tremendous blow right on the temple. With a stifled groan, Henri Verbier ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... we can't grasp it," said the doctor. "What were the scraps of a few Homeric handfuls compared to this? The whole Trojan war might be fought around a Verdun fort and a newspaper correspondent would give it no more than a sentence. I am not in the confidence of the occult powers"—the doctor threw Gertrude a ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the nice degrees of poverty which we have achieved, and they could not have understood that a man with a hundred thousand dollars would have seemed poor to that multi-millionaire. In fact, they do not grasp the idea of money at all. I heard afterwards that in the usual version the millionaire commits suicide in despair, but the piece had been given a happy ending out of kindness to me. I must say that in spite of the monstrous misconception the acting was extremely ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... WHO BELIEVE. Faith is the hand with which we grasp and hold fast the treasures of God's grace offered in this sacrament. The benefits are offered to every one who is baptized, but they are accepted and possessed ...
— An Explanation of Luther's Small Catechism • Joseph Stump
... education of the squadron, this must from the very beginning be rooted in modern conditions, which in the first place demand the development in the man of the greatest possible individuality. War requires this, as well as the gift of grasp and resolution even in difficult situations, from every Cavalry soldier, from the highest to the lowest. The exercise, however, of such qualities can only be demanded from men who bring with them at least a certain degree of comprehension for ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi
... Long Branch. This place is peopled by the foolish men of whom we have heard, who built their houses on the sand. The chief amusement of visitors is thus: you put on some old clothes, which have evidently just retired from the coal-heaving business, stand in the water up to your ankles, and grasp manfully, with both hands, a rope; then a watery creature, named Surf, climbs upon you and gets down on the other side; you rush to a neighboring shanty, put on your store clothes, and feel twice as warm as you would have felt if you ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870 • Various
... lately rightly denounced the use of this word as a vulgarism. Like many other monosyllables used by our working classes, it may plead antiquity in extenuation of its vulgarity. It has been derived from the Welsh word grabiaw, to grasp, and in ancient times was one of our "household words." The retention by a tailor of a portion of the cloth delivered to him, although it had been a usage from time immemorial, might have been considered by our forefathers as a grabbage: ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 211, November 12, 1853 • Various
... not follow that we may not believe, or even know, that which we cannot explain to ourselves, or that which is beyond the reach of our comprehension. If we believed only that which our intellect can grasp, measure, comprehend, and have distinct and clear ideas of, we sh ould believe scarce anything. The senses are not the witnesses that bear testimony to us ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... afraid of his own power of speech. A misplaced word might send her away as oblivious of him as a globule of mercury rolling free from the grasp. Here was a Mary unfathomed of all his hazards of study, undreamed of in ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... to feel that it was not one with which they as legislators were called upon immediately to deal. The Secretary himself, and Mr. Olmsted, then connected with the Sanitary Commission, alone seemed to grasp it, and to see the necessity of immediate action. It is doubtful if any member of the Cabinet, except Mr. Chase, took then any interest in the enterprise, though it has since been fostered by the Secretary of War. At the suggestion of the Secretary, the President appointed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... expression is often dark and mysterious. There is scarcely any other volume in the great Book of Nature, which the student is so likely to misread as this one. It is very needful, therefore, to hold the conclusions of geologists with a light grasp, guarding each with a "perhaps" or a "may be." Many an imposing edifice has been built, in geology, upon a rickety foundation which has ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... hands the papers to SCHULZE. The officers clash their sabres, grasp GUSTAV more firmly and prepare to lead him out. RAUCHHAUPT glares about in helpless ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... privileged to fashion a future which they might not enter and possess. Complain indeed! Why, their progeny had a good ten, twenty, or fifty years' life of it, as the case might be,—and here about us are men of greater enterprise and grasp doomed to work off paragraphs that perish on the day of printing. Well, no earnest soul can fail to modify the character of his age, and thus of all ages. So, if our generation demands ministry in newspapers instead of folios, a man may still win an honest immortality without the biography ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... interest in T. A. Buck's Featherloom Petticoats. And then she knew that something was seriously wrong. On the seventh day, when the blonde and nasal waitress approached her in the dining-room of the little hotel at Glen Rock, Minnesota, Emma McChesney's mind somehow failed to grasp the meaning of the all too obvious string of questions which were put to her—questions ending in the inevitable "Tea, coffee 'r milk?" At that juncture Emma McChesney had looked up into the girl's face in a puzzled, uncomprehending way, had passed one hand dazedly ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... just then. But she disengaged one hand and laid it upon the dear brown head, and waited in silence until the violence of the young man's emotion had spent itself, until the broad, muscular shoulders had ceased to heave and the strong, young hands to grasp her wrist. Suddenly Richard recovered himself, sat up, rubbing his hands across his eyes, laughing, but with a queer catch ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... of arctic America, and was now feeding contentedly in its winter home in the shallow salt-ponds; which the gentle shur-r-r- of the waves softly broke on the strand. Above, the star-lit heavens, whose tender beauty seemed almost within my grasp. Perched thus upon a single shaft, on a narrow strip of sand far out in the great water, the many thoughts born of solitude crowded my mind, when my reverie was abruptly broken by an exclamation from Captain Hatzel, who threw open the door, and exclaimed, with ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... meteoric matter, nor even the smallest particle of cosmic dust—absolutely empty space. Absolute vacuum and absolute zero. Absolute nothingness—a concept intrinsically impossible for the most highly trained human mind to grasp. ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... in the diplomat's hands. He tried to thrust it into his pocket, but Harry was upon him. They clinched, broke from each other's grasp ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... an interesting mystery. He mused in silence over his thoughts, occasionally stopping the paddle and passing his hand over his brow, as if to recall some circumstance or idea that constantly eluded his grasp. In this manner they proceeded until, on turning a high point of land, the little village ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... (2) Inhale a complete breath and retain. (3) Bend forward slightly and grasp a stick or cane steadily and firmly, and gradually exerting your entire strength upon the grasp. (4) Relax the grasp, return to first position, and slowly exhale. (5) Repeat several times. (6) Finish with the cleansing breath. (N. B.—The above ...
— The Doctrine and Practice of Yoga • A. P. Mukerji
... exclaimed Polly, thrusting a hand mirror into her sister's grasp. "I don't believe you ever look at your profile or the back of your head! You are so busy enacting the part of your own mother-in-law that I only wonder you don't insist upon wearing widow's caps. Oh! I beg your pardon—I forgot that could only be done by forfeiting Simeon! Where ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... estimate the measure of a tree very well by his eye; he could estimate the weight of a calf or a pig, like a dealer. From a box containing a bushel or more of loose pencils, he could take up with his hands fast enough just a dozen pencils at every grasp. He was a good swimmer, runner, skater, boatman, and would probably outwalk most countrymen in a day's journey. And the relation of body to mind was still finer than we have indicated. He said he wanted every ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... the boy, wrenching himself free from Guy's grasp, and starting off to follow his uncle into the house. "I can't explain it now, but I'll tell ...
— Under Padlock and Seal • Charles Harold Avery
... and Ireland. Chatham now made another speech, in which he expressed great alarm as to the actual state of those two important fortresses, Gibraltar and Minorca; contending that they were not secure from the grasp of France and Spain. He also took occasion again to extol the Americans, and to plead their cause, still justifying their opposition to the mother country. The ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... true that republics only occasionally, and as it were accidentally, select their wisest, or even the less incapable among the incapables, to govern them and legislate for them. If genius, armed with learning and knowledge, will grasp the reins, the people will reverence it; if it only modestly offers itself for office, it will be smitten on the face, even when, in the straits of distress and the agonies of calamity, it is indispensable to the salvation ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... the neighbouring youths to get at this eyry: the difficulty whetted their inclinations, and each was ambitious of surmounting the arduous task. But when they arrived at the swelling, it jutted out so in their way, and was so far beyond their grasp, that the most daring lads were awed, and acknowledged the undertaking to be too hazardous: so the ravens built on, nest upon nest, in perfect security, till the fatal day arrived in which the wood was to be levelled. It was in the month of ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... the parental warmth, while the roses of pleasure crowned our love and embellished our dual solitude. One morning, when I was even happier than usual, I began to muse over my lot, and suddenly Renee and her prosaic marriage flashed into my mind. It seemed to me that now I could grasp the inner meaning in your life. Oh! my sweet, why do we speak a different tongue? Your marriage of convenience and my love match are two worlds, as widely separated as the finite from infinity. You still walk the earth, whilst I range the ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... case at the bar, not of any stray set of judges, but of the sovereign People itself, such being the law and custom at Athens. He is compelled to behave as a suppliant (49) in the courts of justice, and when some juryman comes into court, to grasp his hand. For this reason, therefore, the allies find themselves more and more in the position of slaves ...
— The Polity of the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians • Xenophon
... to draw any other inference either from her words or actions. In her famous soliloquy, after reading her husband's letter, she does not once refer to herself. It is of him she thinks: she wishes to see her husband on the throne, and to place the sceptre within his grasp. The strength of her affections adds strength to her ambition. Although in the old story of Boethius we are told that the wife of Macbeth "burned with unquenchable desire to bear the name of queen," yet in the aspect under which Shakspeare has represented the character to us, the selfish ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... inexplicable. The motorcycles chugged away; then three automobiles started. Their engines roared for a moment before they subsided to the ordered, steady hum of a smooth running motor. On the first car that got away there was a horn that made Boris start convulsively as he heard its bugle note, and grasp ...
— The Boy Scouts In Russia • John Blaine
... the man. Frank came in yesterday afternoon, and after he had glanced at the paper, he said: "By the way, Crettell's dead." I did not grasp it at first. He repeated: "Crettell—he's dead." I burst into tears. I couldn't help it. And, besides, I forgot. Frank asked me very roughly what I was crying for. You know, Frank has much changed these ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... Tendilla. He found abundant occupation in schemes for improving the condition of his tenantry, and of the neighboring districts. He took great interest in the fate of the unfortunate Moriscoes, numerous in this quarter, whom he shielded as far as possible from the merciless grasp of the Inquisition, while he supplied teachers and other enlightened means for converting them, or confirming them in a pure faith. He displayed the same magnificence and profuse hospitality in his living that he had always done. His house was ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... narrow hallway connecting the four rooms on which the social regeneration of her village depended, she caught the sweet low thrum of a guitar and a too familiarly seductive voice burst forth into a chant, whose literal significance she was unable to grasp, owing to lack of familiarity with the language in which it was couched, but whose general tenor no one could mistake, so tender ...
— A Philanthropist • Josephine Daskam
... if I would reach the town before dark. I had just finished it and was stooping to pick up by air-gun, when I heard a sudden rush, and before I had time to look up I was thrown violently forward on my face, and found myself struggling in the embrace of a powerful grasp, from which I had nearly succeeded in freeing myself, when the arms which were clasping me were reinforced by several more pairs, and I felt a rope being ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... Hayti, acting through their local Assemblies, had the right to will away their land to England. Spain, at least, could not say them nay; but none the less she longed to see her flag float once more over the western districts which had slipped from her grasp. ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... man or devil, he dreaded to encounter.) Had not Mr. Sidney been thus potently armed, he must, without doubt or question, have become almost a monomaniac; for, secondly, he was for years enraged almost to madness that his entire estate had been swept from his grasp, as he believed, by the torch of the incendiary; and he was to the last degree exasperated, and with a just indignation, that the merchant-princes who he supposed had occasioned his impoverishment yet ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... also jarred upon the picture, and Harry the teamster, bronzed by frost and sun, with the stain of the soil upon him, alone a part of its harmonies. They seemed no longer harsh and barbaric, but vast and subtle, and she felt she must go back to the simplicity she had laid aside before she could grasp their meaning. ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... saying that nothing is too good for me and my departure is a public loss, and why won't I remain and be a credit to the town and a lot more like that, good and strong. Then when I do consent to remain, why, what do they do? Do they grasp my hand and say, 'Ah, good old Potts—stanch Potts, loyal Potts—good for you—you won't desert the town!' Do they talk that way? No, they do not. Instead of talking like a body would think they'd talk after all those letters and things, why, they turn and fling abuse at me—and now—now ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... you trull!' cried she, in an accent which made me start, and at the same time, springing forward, she seized me in her grasp, and shook me violently, repeating, 'It's a lie—it's a lie!' with a rapidity and vehemence which swelled every vein of her face. The violence of her action, and the fury which convulsed her face, effectually terrified me, and disengaging ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... interested in opposing the work set up a cry. They saw place, power, everything, about to fly from their grasp, if the counsels of Vauban were acted upon. What wonder, then, that the King, who was surrounded by these people, listened to their reasons, and received with a very ill grace Marechal Vauban when he presented ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... brave young chevalier what I want," replied Vavel, turning toward the youthful leader. "First, let me restore your sword, monsieur. You handle it admirably, only you need to grasp it more firmly. Then, let me beg of you to mount your horse—a beautiful animal! And third, I beg you to ride as quickly as possible to Raab, and give General Guillaume this message: 'I, Count Vavel de Versay, have this day taken captive ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... her, and his cheek felt the tears upon hers. He reached for her hand, with an instinct to strengthen her. But when he had it within his its firm and vital grasp sent a thrill ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... the marble house, Justine Delande had been welcomed by the anxious-eyed apparition of Nadine Johnstone, who burst into her room in a storm of tears. "I have been so frightened," she cried as she clasped her returning governess in her trembling grasp. ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... Catholicism, combined with the strong reflective powers bestowed upon him by nature, to produce a personality that was unlike other people, and infinitely more curious and salient than many who had a firmer grasp of the art of right living. In an age of effusion to be reserved, and in days of universal professions of sympathy to show a saturnine front, was to be an original. There was nobody in whose company one felt so much of the ineffable comfort of being quite safe against an attack of platitude. ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 5: On Pattison's Memoirs • John Morley
... interest myself in the new. Nor did Marshall himself interest me as he had once done. To my eager taste, he had grown just a little trite. My affection for him was as deep and sincere as ever; were I to meet him now I would grasp his hand and hail him with firm, loyal friendship; but I had made friends in the Nouvelle Athenes who interested me passionately, and my thoughts were absorbed by and set on new ideals, which Marshall had failed to find sympathy for, or even to understand. I had introduced ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... whether on land or on sea, on ship or on ski, on sea or on horseback, on bench or on thwart; and if need be, divide between you oar and scoop, knife and piece of meat; shall be at one with each other as is father with son, or son with father. Join hands now (they grasp each the other's hand) and stand by your truce according to the will of Christ and all those men who now have heard your pledge of faith. May he have the grace of God who keeps the truce, but his wrath he who breaks it. Let this be a full reconciliation between you, and let us be witnesses ...
— Poet Lore, Volume XXIV, Number IV, 1912 • Various
... stretched himself to his full height, he looked gravely down into the bleared eyes of his captor, and held out his strong right hand. Chivers took it. Whether there was some occult power in Collinson's honest grasp, I know not; but there sprang up in Chivers's agile mind the idea that a good way to get rid of Mrs. Collinson was to put her in the way of her husband's finding her, and for an instant, in the contemplation of that idea, this supreme rascal absolutely felt ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... were a Papist, father, and this the Inquisition,' said Netta, growing learned under the torture of her father's grasp, ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... eldest son to the favour of his suzerain. Only a very few steps, a distance that might be bridged by a single resolute advance, had separated Partab Singh from the dignity of a full-blown independent prince, when the nerveless hands of the Ranjitgarh ruler were suddenly reinforced by the strong grasp of a British Resident upon the reins. For a short time it was doubtful whether the stiff-necked old Rajah would not put his fate to the touch, and come to death-grips with British power acting in the name of the Durbar, but wiser counsels prevailed. Partab Singh paid his ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... from the island, a new danger assailed her. It was the wind, of which she now felt the full force. It bent and swayed her about till she felt like a plaything in its grasp. Once it caught her skirts and blew her over toward the deeper water. This was the most dangerous moment of all; but she struggled back, and the gust relaxed its grasp. More than once the fury of the blast was so great that she dared not stand upright, but crouched ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge
... observed with its head raised about ten or twelve inches above the branch round which its body and tail are entwined, with its mouth open and its neck inflated, as if anxiously endeavoring to increase the terror which it would almost appear it was aware would sooner or later bring within its grasp some one ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... punished for his fidelity to Napoleon; but the States that were unrepresented in the reigning families—Poland, Venice, and Genoa—were not revived, and even the Pope had great difficulty in recovering the Legations from the grasp of Austria. Nationality, which the old regime had ignored, which had been outraged by the revolution and the empire, received, after its first open demonstration, the hardest blow at the Congress of Vienna. The principle which the first partition had generated, to which the revolution ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... When the mother spoke of her feeling when she saw the brave man struggling up and down the giant waves, and now and again losing sight of him in the trough of the sea, she put out one hand and held the mother's with a grasp which vibrated in sympathy, whilst the great tears welled over in her eyes and ran down her cheeks. Pearl, watching her keenly, said nothing, but taking her tiny cambric handkerchief from her pocket silently wiped the tears ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... understand and sympathize with the society of the colony. Some were prejudiced against the Virginians even before they set foot upon the soil of the Old Dominion, and their dislike is reflected in their writings, while few tarried long enough to grasp fully the meaning of the institutions and customs of the people. They dwelt long on those things that they found displeasing, and passed over in silence those distinctive virtues with which they were not in harmony. It is not surprising then that they failed to grasp the dignity and importance ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... till it made one's heart ache to hear her. She did not suffer so much from her throat as Maudie had done, though otherwise so much more ill. The fever seemed to have seized her in its strong, cruel arms with so hard a grasp, that often and often it appeared to those about her as if it never again would let her go, but would carry her away out of their sight, without her even being able to bid them good-bye—murmuring ever those sad words which seemed to be burnt into her childish ...
— Hoodie • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... four feet long, into which a pointed piece of the hard, heavy, casuarina wood, is firmly and neatly fitted; and some of them were barbed. Their clubs are made of the casuarina, and are powerful weapons. The hand part is indented, and has a small knob, by which the firmness of the grasp is much assisted; and the heavy end is usually carved with some device: One had the form of a parrot's head, with a ruff round the neck; and ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... tone proved unavailing. Enfeebled by his hardships and his prison life, he had little reserve force upon which to draw in fighting such an enemy. He sank soon after this little speech into a coma which continued to hold him in its unbroken grasp as night fell. ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... his grasp like a frightened bird, her eyes dilating with terror. She knew, only too well, what this big primitive-souled man could be like when the devil in him was roused, and his white, furious face and blazing ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... have no doubt it derives its source. It was most providential that Mr. Evans and his companions crossed the river when they did; a single day might have proved fatal to them. We would fain lessen to our own imagination the dangers which surround us, and eagerly grasp at every circumstance that tends in any way to enliven our future prospects. That Providence, whose protection has hitherto been so beneficently extended to us, will, we confidently hope, continue that protection, and lead us in safety to ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley
... hand and this have been acquainted well: [Looks on it. It should have come before into my grasp, To kill ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... roared in despair, and with the iron strength of frenzy he tore himself loose from the grasp of the corporal who fell prone into the fireplace ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... not demonstrated that Utah is an abnormal State? Our problem is vast and complex. I have endeavored to simplify it so that the Senate and the country may readily grasp the ...
— Conditions in Utah - Speech of Hon. Thomas Kearns of Utah, in the Senate of the United States • Thomas Kearns
... takes pleasure in announcing to his troops that victory and success are now within their grasp; and the commanding general feels proud and gratified that in every attack and assault the enemy have been repulsed; and the commanding general will further say to his noble and gallant troops, 'Be of good cheer—all is well.' "GENERAL JOHN ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... hearers like a velvety hand, yet had in it some deadly quality. To John Ozanne, unimaginative man though he was, it was like hearing the click of a revolver in the hand of an enemy who is a dead shot. His grasp slackened round the child, and his wife took her from him and set her back in the box. They went out alone. Never again was an attempt made to ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... not be delivered in vain, within six days after, queen Mary died, detested by all good men and accursed of God! Though acquainted with these circumstances, the archdeacon's implacability exceeded that of his great exemplary, Bonner, who, though he had several persons at that time under his fiery grasp, did not urge their deaths hastily, by which delay he certainly afforded them an opportunity of escape. Father Lining and his wife, with several others, thus saved their lives, who, had they been under the barbarous archdeacon, must inevitably have perished. ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... gone before Drew could catch him. Then Hannibal gave a wild bray of pain and terror. He reared and Drew lost grasp of the bay's reins. The riderless horse drove ahead while Drew tried to control the ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... they were struck with the gloomy magnificence of the sight. As far as the eye could reach, nothing was to be seen but reeds which rose five or six feet above the waters in which they bathed their roots. They waved mournfully under the blast of the sharp wind of the north, shivering in its icy grasp, as it tumbled, rolled, and gambolled on the pliant surface. Multitudes of birds of strange appearance, with their elongated shapes so lean that they looked like metamorphosed ghosts, clothed in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... the stake for which he ardently desired to play away all that he had in life; that the objects he had lately pursued turned worthless beside her; the success that was almost within his grasp he flung away from him, like the dirt ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... was lost to him, her loveliness and that indescribable quality which made her lovable, floated before him, the very torture-flowers of a beauty never to be grasped—yet, that he could grasp, 'if he only would! That was the heart and fervour of his suffering. To be grasped if he only would! He was suffering, too, physically from a kind of slow fever, the result of his wetting on the day when he last saw her. And through that latent fever, things and feelings, like his ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... experiments of Dr. Louis Robinson showed that an infant three weeks old could support its own weight for over two minutes, holding on to a horizontal bar. "In many cases no sign of distress is evinced and no cry uttered, until the grasp begins to give way." This persistent grasp probably points back to the time when the baby had to cling to its arboreal mother. The human tail is represented in the adult by a fusion of four or five vertebrae forming the "coccyx" ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... Universe of God! How can we with our limited mental vision expect to grasp and comprehend them! Infinite SPACE, stretching out from us every way, without limit: infinite TIME, without beginning or end; and WE, HERE, and NOW, in the centre of each! An infinity of suns, the nearest of which ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... obey who have been well trained in habits; they should impose chastisement and penalties on those who disobey and are of less promising nature; and the incurable expel entirely: because the good man and he who lives under a sense of honour will be obedient to reason; and the baser sort, who grasp at pleasure, will be kept in check, like beasts of burthen by pain. Therefore also they say that the pains should be such as are most contrary to the pleasures ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... realizing the eternal principle of rhythm and the universality of tone, he caught the keynote of everything related to him in the outer world, with its corresponding relation in the inner or unseen realms, producing compositions that are complete in form, accurate in intellectual grasp and spiritually prophetic. ...
— Edward MacDowell • Elizabeth Fry Page
... you didn't," I told her. I dropped to my knees and took another pair of gloves. Hendrix's head rolled under my grasp. The skull was smashed over the left eye, as if someone had taken a sideswipe at Hendrix with a hammer. No fall had produced that. "You should have warned him about his friends. Must have been killed, ...
— Let'em Breathe Space • Lester del Rey
... we had left the house. Then he stopped short, took both my hands in his, with a grasp that both hurt ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... on, resigned to a continuance of the morning struggle, unable to see far enough ahead to distinguish the country beyond. One moment they were in the grasp of the jungle, the next they had broken through and stood panting and wide-eyed on the edge of a realized paradise of dreams. It was a tiny lake bordered by a small, grass-grown prairie dotted with small clean clumps of palmetto, ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... obvious, that such a line of railroad as this—peculiar in its resources, vast in its comprehensions, and embracing in its grasp all the products of tropic or of temperate climes—must, of itself, rear, at its termini, commercial towns of great importance. But, this is not all. The road from Grand Haven to Port Huron will intersect the Amboy and Lansing line about midway, and then a railroad will at once be made ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... gun to bear on him. Having greatly the advantage of ground, he thrust him back with his hand. The uplifted tomahawk descended to the earth with force; and before the Indian could so far regain his footing as to hurl the fatal weapon from his grasp, or rush forward to close in deadly struggle with his antagonist, the ball from Captain Mason's gun had done its errand, and the savage fell lifeless to the earth. Captain Mason was able to proceed only a few paces farther; but concealing himself by the ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... he changed his grasp upon the lantern, and, behold I as he drew his finger from the ring, the finger stuck and the ring was burst, and his hand was grown to be of the bigness ...
— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson
... for understand how it had come to pass that he should have acceded to the desire of the villain in the purple, now that his father, by showing himself to the people in the 'toga pretexta', had set the seal to their basest suspicions. The thought that henceforth he could never hope to feel the grasp of an honest man's hand gnawed at ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... to step out into an immense darkness which palls heaven and earth. Going forward into the embrace of the great gloom, you are as a babe swaddled by the hands of night into helpless quiescence. Your feet tread an unseen path, your hands grasp at a void, or shrink from the contact they cannot realise; your eyes are holden; your voice would die in your throat did you seek to rend the ...
— The Roadmender • Michael Fairless
... a haggard, wild-eyed man, whom he scarcely recognised as his old friend. Djama did not speak; he simply caught hold of the sleeve of his coat with a nervous, trembling grasp, drew him in, shut the door, and led him to a corner of the room where there was a little camp bed, curtained all round with thin, transparent muslin, through which he could see the shape of a ...
— The Romance of Golden Star ... • George Chetwynd Griffith
... said Mrs. Avenel firmly. "Be honest and good, and beware of the first false step." She pressed his hand with a convulsive grasp, and led him ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... told this story, nor shall mortal man see this manuscript until after I have passed over for eternity. I know that the average human mind will not believe what it cannot grasp, and so I do not purpose being pilloried by the public, the pulpit, and the press, and held up as a colossal liar when I am but telling the simple truths which some day science will substantiate. Possibly the ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs |
