"Sheer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The gaunt gray piles, the metallic surfaces, the homelinesses of Moussorgsky, are more virile, stronger, more resisting than Wagner's music. Only folk aristocratically sure of themselves can be as gay and light at will. If there is anything in modern music to be compared with the sheer, blunt, powerful volumes of primitive art it is the work of Moussorgsky. And as the years pass, the man's stature and mind become more immense, more prodigious. One has but to hearken to the accent of the greater part of modern music to gauge in whose ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... mere ball-room coquette; he had forgotten her as soon as if it had been a mere holiday fancy of a boy of fifteen. He had been completely infatuated, dazzled, blinded by a beautiful face. That it was sheer infatuation was now evident; for, absent from both Elinor and Jane, all feeling for the latter seemed to have vanished like a dream. It is said that love without hope cannot live: the question must be settled by those who have suffered most frequently from the wounds ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... answer to the Government, that England is now using in answer to Germany. I was distrustful of the quotations that were given to me and looked the volume up, and found that England was governed by much the same idea that Germany was—just sheer necessity. Of course, your answer is that we have traveled ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... quoit together!" Lazy Kwasind made no answer, To their challenge made no answer, Only rose, and slowly turning, Seized the huge rock in his fingers, Tore it from its deep foundation, Poised it in the air a moment, Pitched it sheer into the river, Sheer into the swift Pauwating, Where it still is seen in Summer. Once as down that foaming river, Down the rapids of Pauwating, Kwasind sailed with his companions, In the stream he saw a beaver, Saw Ahmeek, the King of Beavers, Struggling with the rushing currents, Rising, sinking ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... the morning we went to bed, and dropped asleep from sheer fatigue. At about four Kitty and I woke up and discussed the situation dispassionately. We got out of our beds and looked out of the windows. Rain was falling in sheets, and the world seemed a cold, cheerless, ...
— An Account of Our Arresting Experiences • Conway Evans
... constitution in which the reflective part is weak. There are the men who live on sensation, but who do so lustily, with a certain fulness of blood and active energy of muscle. There are others who do so passively, not searching for excitement, but acquiescing. The former by their sheer force and plenitude of vitality may, even in a world where reflection is a first condition, still go far. The latter succumb, and as reflection does nothing for them, and as their sensations in such a world bring them few blandishments, they are tolerably early surrounded ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... was a trying moment for Tad Butler, down there alone in the branches of the pinyon tree, with fifty feet of nothingness beneath him and a sheer wall that extended an equal distance ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Rockies • Frank Gee Patchin
... and men aft gang aglee," from sheer stupidity and pig-headed obstinacy. General Kirby Smith had publicly announced that Banks's army was too strong to be fought, and that the proper policy was either to defend the works protecting Shreveport, or retreat into Texas. ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... Dr. James declared, "it's just what I expected—sheer exhaustion, and nothing else. But she'd better be got out of this atmosphere ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... dress is not made of the finest of handkerchief linen, French nainsook or a very fine batiste is usually chosen. These are the soft materials, soft as well as sheer. They are the materials on which embroidery is done most successfully and the baby dress de luxe is always hand embroidered. It may have on it the merest touch of hand work—scarcely more than a few eyelets and a tiny ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... these cases obtain publicity through the columns of the daily press, although occasionally, in part from sensationalism, and in part from sheer ignorance, a case may be allotted to the category of sadism, which really has nothing to do with this perversion, or whose sadistic character is doubtful. This applies, for example, to the well-known Dippold case. Here, the sons of a wealthy Berlin family were mishandled ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... whose husband had been the Under Secretary, wrote and said she was longing to see the last Duggleton, and hinted that a Duggleton the more was sheer gain to This England which Our Fathers Made. His father put his name down that very day for the Club and met there Baron Urscher, who promised every support "if God should spare him to the time when he might welcome another Duggleton to these old rooms." The baron then recalled ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... platform in front of the tomb, the procession of mourners ranged themselves about it in a semi-circle. They stood with their backs to the edge of a cliff that rose sheer for sixty feet or more from the plain beneath, across which, but at a little distance from the foot of the precipice ran the road followed by the caravans of merchants in their journeys to and from the coast. Then, a ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard
... experienced such open ridicule as when she came smiling up to the table, drawing back the sleeve of her gown from her delicate dimpled wrist. She wore a white dress, such as one never sees save in that Southern country, so softly sheer, falling in such graceful, floating lines, with a deep, plain hem and no touch of garniture save, perhaps, an edge of old lace on the surplice neck. The cut of the dress showed a triangular section of her soft white chest and all the firm modelling of her throat ...
— The Phantom Of Bogue Holauba - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... absence Stephen lived under alternate conditions. Whenever his emotions were active, he was in agony. Whenever he was not in agony, the business in hand had driven out of his mind by sheer force all deep reflection on the subject ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... strove. Twice I thought I had him, when my footing failed; and once he held me fairly uplifted from the ground, yet could not make the toss. 'T was a wild grapple, for when we had exhausted all the tricks we knew, it came to be a sheer test of physical endurance. Then, for the first time, I felt myself the master,—though he was a man, that gay French dandy, and never did my ribs crack under the pressure of a stronger hand. But I slowly pressed him back, inch by inch, struggling like a demon to the last, ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... licked sheer out of go an' grit, From the times of Pharaoh down to the Khe-dive; Till you 'ardly feel yerself one bloomin' bit, And I almost wonder you are left alive. But we've got you out of a good deal of that, Sir EVELYN and the rest of us. You foller; ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 14, 1893 • Various
... Simmons turned away in sheer horror of his wicked self, and for a moment thought of washing the tea-things over again by way of discipline. Then he made for the back room, but saw from the landing that the front door was standing open, probably the fault of the child downstairs. ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... house. A gust of rain blew swirling after him, and he turned, swearing, and shut the great door with a bang. It had not been a good day for sport. The ground had been sodden, and the scent had washed away. He had followed the hounds for miles to no purpose and had galloped home at last in sheer disgust. To add to his grievances he had called upon Lady Emberdale on his way back, and had not found her in. "Gone to tea with her precious Admiral, I suppose!" he had growled, as he rode away, which, as it chanced, was the case. The suspicion ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... came to the point, it was found that Dare could not go. Nothing short of force would have turned the unwelcome guest out of the bed in the blue bedroom, from which he made no attempt to rise, and on which he lay worn-out and feverish, in a stupor of sheer mental and ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... Tornado was running of falling on board the vessel was very great, and Jack was about reluctantly to give the order to sheer off from her, when he saw the remainder of those on deck prepare to make the desperate leap which would either terminate in their destruction or place them in comparative safety. Just at that moment, as his eye was fixed on the naval ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... incuriously, he was swiftly recognized for what he was by all who came in touch with the magazine. In the first place, interested in his progress, I had seen to it that he was properly introduced wherever that was possible and of benefit to him, and later on, by sheer force of his mental capacity and integrity, his dreams and his critical skill, he managed to center about him an entire band of seeking young writers, artists, poets, playwrights, aspiring musicians; ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... day, 1887, he laid down his pen to resume it again no more. He was forced to this by sheer exhaustion; his body was wasted to a skeleton, and it was clear to all that the end was near. Having suffered much for several days, but without a murmur, on the evening of Jan. 5 he requested all his family to come to his bedside, and while ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... naturally as though it really had been yesterday that we went fishing in the meadow. My heart beat quicker. I laughed aloud for the sheer joy of living in the same world with her. I vowed that I should be very nice indeed to Mrs. Bannister. Had Penelope asked me to be very nice to her friend Medusa I should have given her my pledge. Subtly, by her admonition, she had conveyed to me the promise that this walk was to be ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... I said, "that the heavy sea which, you told me, came aboard just then might have killed the man? I have seen the sheer weight of a sea kill a man very neatly, by simply breaking ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... From heaven, they fabled, thrown by angry Jove Sheer o'er the crystal battlements; from morn To noon, from noon to dewy eve, A Summer's day, he fell; and with the setting sun Dropped from the zenith like a falling ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... tyrant. He also gave them many cruel beatings, cudgellings, blows and other kinds of cruelty every day and every hour. 16. It is told of him that he destroyed and burnt eight hundred towns in that kingdom of Xalisco: he goaded the Indians to rebellion out of sheer desperation, and after they saw such numbers perish so cruelly, they killed some Spaniards, in which they were perfectly justified, and then retreated to the mountains. 17. Afterwards, the injustice and oppression of other recent tyrants who passed that ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... surprise party for Bosambo, and took so much trouble with the details, that, because of his sheer thoroughness, he deserved to have succeeded. Lokali men concealed in the bush were waiting to announce the coming of the rescue party, when N'gori sent his cry for help crashing across the world. Six ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... done with theological refinements. There is an excuse for the Fathers, because the heretics forced them to define particular points; but every definition is a misfortune, and for us to persevere in the same way is sheer folly. Is no man to be admitted to grace who does not know how the Father differs from the Son, and both from the Spirit? or how the nativity of the Son differs from the procession of the Spirit? Unless I forgive my brother his ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... bargain of Dr. Cutler with Congress, the Associators prepared to migrate en masse to their purchase. What the hardy spirits among the country people of the South Atlantic States had been able to accomplish by individual initiative and sheer endurance, the town-dwellers of the North Atlantic States did more systematically and rapidly by concerted action. Organisation and government protection saved the Ohio Associators from such experiments of colonisation as had frequently led to Indian captivities and abandoned ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... for half an hour, when about a dozen of the Cavaliers raised a shout, and made a dash at where General Hedley was slowly retreating, their object being evidently to take him prisoner before, from sheer exhaustion, the ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... "It would be sheer madness," he said to himself, "and yet I have no doubt it will end in his doing so, but as he must know it is a piece of stupendous folly, I can understand his reluctance to risk my speaking to him on the subject. I am awfully sorry for him, but ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... trade my furs off regularly at the settlements on the islands and even along the mainland,—a month's work for a little flour or sugar. Ah, how I have labored! I have felt my muscles crack, I have dropped like a log from sheer weariness. Talk of tortures; which of them have I not felt, with the pains and faintness of exposure and hunger racking me from head to foot? Have I stopped for snow and ice? Have I stopped for anguish? ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... undecipherable. They are the same times which gave rise to every character of significance during the period before the war. Emerson is indeed the easiest to understand of all the men of his time, because his life is freest from the tangles and qualifications of circumstance. He is a sheer and pure type and creature of destiny, and the unconsciousness that marks his development allies him to the deepest phenomena. It is convenient, in describing him, to use language which implies consciousness on his ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... russet, speckled, grey, black-flecked, striped and spotted pigeons, doves, pouters—some cocks, the rest hens—a motley crowd all mixed up together. There were some that sat murmuring one to the other, softly—oh, so softly—and nodding their heads for sheer kindliness. Others cooed loudly, angrily or indifferently and tripped round one another. Others sat huddled, meditating, lonely and forlorn, blinking their bright little ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... expression changed slightly as he stood there, the sound of the clock conveying to him (it may be) a sense of old buildings and time; and himself the inheritor; and then to-morrow; and friends; at the thought of whom, in sheer confidence and pleasure, it seemed, he yawned and ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... of sunshine at the break of day! A stream of light in an obscured sky! Hope ever causes chords long forgotten to resound, and existence becomes once again pleasant as of yore. Such were the feelings which animated me during that night of happiness when, thanks to you alone, everything was sheer joy. Thy spirit lifted up mine out of sadness; never did an intoxication equal the one I ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... sermon. The fact is, I am. My mood is a severely moral mood. For when I reflect upon the difference between what books have to offer and what even relatively earnest readers take the trouble to accept from them, I am appalled (or should be appalled, did I not know that the world is moving) by the sheer inefficiency, the bland, complacent failure of the earnest reader. I am like yourself, the spectacle of ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... that can be read, my dear fellow. The last page looks like sheer delirium. She may well have told you that ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... dwelling, upstairs and down, from the roof to the cellar, there was a stunning tapping of hammers: coffins were being nailed down, and so many, so very many were nailed, that sometimes those who worked stopped from sheer fatigue. Then broke forth laments, heart-rending moans, despairing imprecations. They were uttered by those from whom the men in black and gray had taken some one to ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... with inimitable carelessness and, rubbing his eyes, somewhat noticeably in the manner of one who has snatched an hour of much needed sleep, took his place as if nothing in particular had happened. This, at first supposed to be a superhuman exhibition of sheer audacity, became but the more dumfounding when Miss Spence—looking up from her desk—greeted him with a pleasant little nod. Even after school, Penrod gave numerous maddened investigators no relief. All he would consent ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... hither and thither, observing the surgeon with languid interest. Another nurse, much younger, without the "black band," watched the surgeon from the foot of the cot. Beads of perspiration chased themselves down her pale face, caused less by sympathy than by sheer weariness and heat. The small receiving room of St. Isidore's was close and stuffy, surcharged with odors of iodoform and ether. The Chicago spring, so long delayed, had blazed with a sudden fury ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... man Jesus obedience to God was an act of humiliation? Surely there is but one explanation of such a statement. For all men but this one to be God's slaves is their highest honour, and to speak of obedience as humiliation is a sheer absurdity. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... easy and simple; but rouse it, and its exuberant strength rises in a paroxysm of rage, though its clumsy awkward blows, guided by mere cunning, fail to strike the slight and lissom foe who waits for and eludes the stroke, until his reason gives him the mastery over sheer brute force which has wearied itself ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... himself and enforce upon others as the first postulate of order, the prerequisite for all happiness in this life. In regard to the Visible Church he was a reformer, but no revolutionist; it is sheer ignorance to speak of him as if there were anything new or exceptional in his denunciation of the corruptions of the clergy. They were the commonplaces of the age, nor were they confined to laymen.[229] ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... strength, may, it seems to me, avail ourselves of the truth in Nietzsche, which, after all, is very much the same as my own theory of the selection of the fit for rule. The difference is, that we wish to use our power for the common good, whilst Nietzsche's teaching results in a return to sheer barbarism, the weak trampled because ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... liberal line of policy in colonial affairs on principles which, it appeared to the government, would be adverse to the interests and subversive of the authority of the parent country. Mr. Gladstone was actuated by sheer party opposition. Only forty-two votes were found in ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... part of those dark hours he spent in bitter reviling of Wilding, of himself, and even of his sister, whom he blamed for this awful situation into which he had tumbled; at other times he wept from self-pity and sheer fright. ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... may, reduce phrases and even clauses to a word. Thus the clause at the beginning and the phrase at the close of the following sentence constitute sheer verbiage: "Men who have let their temper get the better of them are often in a mood to do harm to somebody." The sentence tells us nothing that may not be told in five words: "Angry men are ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... Bumppo, cried Benjamin, your top-light frightens the fish, who see the net and sheer off soundings. A fish knows as much as a horse, or, for that matter, more, seeing that its brought up on the water. Haul oil, Master Bumppo, haul off, I say, and give a wide ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... He was as much merrier than you, for instance, as you are merrier than your father. Sometimes he fell, like a spinning-top, from sheer merriment. Have you seen a greyhound leaping the fences of the Gardens? That is how Peter ...
— Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... his own indirectness, he was conscious at once of the slight sign of reservation, and said: 'Tell me . . .' and swerved sheer away from his ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... she had awakened from her delusion; but what direction would her pride now take? Would she continue in the course she had chosen in sheer perversity, in sheer fidelity to herself? There was also the attraction of extreme opposites to be reckoned with, the fascination which a man of simple psychology, of strength and wholesome good looks, might possess for a woman of great subtlety ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... of her impelling presence, let come what might come. He could love her then; he could dare what he had never dared; he could surrender himself to the furious, insistent sweetness of a passion that was sheer bliss in its expression. He could imagine kisses on the red lips that ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... amorous, so toying and fine! and all for sheer Love, ye Rogue! Oh how she lookt and kiss'd! and sooth'd my Heart from my Bosom. I cannot think I was awake, and yet methinks I see and feel her Charms still— Fred.— Try if she have not left the Taste of her balmy Kisses upon my Lips— ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... further on, an Indian hunter drew near on horseback, but Nakpa did not pause or slacken her pace. On she fled through the long dry grass of the river bottoms, while her babies slept again from sheer exhaustion. Toward sunset, she entered the Sioux camp amid great excitement, for some one had spied her afar off, and the boys and the dogs announced ...
— Indian Child Life • Charles A. Eastman
... maze of these rooms the two boys wandered. Sometimes the floor under their feet would flame in brilliant patterns from lighting below, patterns of barbaric clashing colours, of pastel delicacy, of sheer whiteness, or of subtle and intricate mosaic, surely from some mosque on the Adriatic Sea. Sometimes beneath layers of thick crystal he would see blue or green water swirling, inhabited by vivid fish and growths of rainbow foliage. Then they would be treading on furs of every texture ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... doubt as to how to make his fight. The British regulars dwelt in a small fort at one end of the town, where they had two light guns; but Clark feared lest, if he made a sudden night attack, the townspeople and Indians would from sheer fright turn against him. He accordingly arranged, just before he himself marched in, to send in the captured duck-hunter, conveying a warning to the Indians and the Creoles that he was about to attack the town, but that his only quarrel was with the British, and that if the other ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... broke into a hoarse yell and dashed once more upon the two knights, hurling themselves madly upon their sword-points; clutching, scrambling, biting, tearing, careless of wounds if they could but drag the two soldiers to earth. Sir Nigel was thrown down by the sheer weight of them, and Sir Bertrand with his thunderous war-cry was swinging round his heavy sword to clear a space for him to rise, when the whistle of two long English arrows, and the rush of the squire and the two English archers down the stairs, turned the tide of ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... could hear voices over to the right as they silently slipped down. It was no easy thing to negotiate that stiff mountainside in the darkness, where a slip would have sent one of them rolling down into the sharp rock-slide beneath. Presently they came to a rockrim, a sheer descent of twenty-five feet down the ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... even wink at it," replied his foe. "Still further," continued the warlike mountaineer in sheer desperation, "you must ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... on "The Results of the Science of Language;" but you will easily understand that to sum up in one course of lectures the results of researches which have been carried on with unflagging industry by three generations of scholars, would be a sheer impossibility. Besides, amere detailing of results, though it is possible, is hardly calculated to subserve the real objects of academic teaching. You would not be satisfied with mere results: you ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... Berkeley, argumentatively. "She'll never do any better; Jim's a handsome fellow, as men go, brave, honorable and sweet-tempered. What more does she want? It looks to me like sheer perversity." ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... she answered, with withering scorn. 'But, then, I thought you were trying to catch him. He tells me now you won't have him, and you won't tell him where you are going. I call it sheer insolence. Where do you hail from, girl, that you should refuse my nephew? A man that any woman in England would be proud to marry! Forty thousand a year, and an earl's grandson! That's what comes, I suppose, of ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... the thoughts maturing in Rabourdin's mind ever since his promised place had been given to Monsieur de la Billardiere, a man of sheer incapacity. This plan, so vast apparently yet so simple in point of fact, which did away with so many large staffs and so many little offices all equally useless, required for its presentation to ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... or sat on the dead leaves which carpeted the ground. Cal suddenly realized he was glad to take the strain from his legs, as if he had been maintaining stance through sheer will. ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... sky before them as they silently trudged to the rock and from the top of the sheer cliff contemplated the smooth and steely-gray Hudson below. Nelly squeaked her fear at the drop and clutched his arm, but suddenly let go and ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... had only been there!" Walter exclaimed, when Stephen ceased speaking from sheer lack ...
— Neal, the Miller - A Son of Liberty • James Otis
... then, prior, who from sheer goodness of heart are undertaking to alter this fatal resolution? I admire your zeal, and I thank you for it; but I do not think there will be any need of all these negotiations. M. Jean de Mauprat claims his share of the inheritance; ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... better care of her—Oh! quaint injustice! as though Soames could possibly take more care!)—should be drawing to herself June's lover, was intolerably humiliating. And seeing the danger, he did not, like James, hide it away in sheer nervousness, but owned with the dispassion of his broader outlook, that it was not unlikely; there was ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... would begin to emit sparks. He was short in stature, much shorter than the hulking fellows who stood and surveyed him through the smoke of their pipes, but he had such a cocky little way with him that he overawed them much more than a big man would have done. Out of sheer dulness he ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... is but two stories high, and its spruce walls of Portland stone and ashlar work rise sheer out of the green sward; in front, Doric columns support a heavy entablature, and there are urns at the corners of the building. The six windows on the ground floor are topped with round arches, and coming up the drive ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... per se. All cases where beauty can be pointed to in organic nature are seemingly due—either to natural selection, acting without reference to beauty, but to utility; to sexual selection, acting with reference to the taste of animals; or else to sheer accident. And if this general conclusion should be held to need any special verification, is it not to be found in the numberless cases where organic nature not only fails to be beautiful, but reveals itself as the reverse. Not again to refer to the case of parasites, what can be more unshapely ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... one might have regarded as the most unlikely classes. Indian merchants whose interests would seem to be bound up with the maintenance of order and public tranquillity, Bombay Banias and Calcutta Marwaris, have thrown themselves into the "Non-co-operation" movement out of sheer bitterness and loss of confidence in British good faith, boycotting British imported goods and supplying a large part of the funds without which even a Mahatma cannot carry on ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... escape when the other is stormed by the fisher; whereas the crab is usually content, like the "rat devoid of soul," with a hole of only one opening; and, besides, gets so angry in most cases with his assailant, as to become more bent on assault than escape, and so loses himself through sheer loss of temper. And yet the crab has, he used to add, some points of intelligence about him too. When, as sometimes happened, he got hold, in his dark narrow recess in the rock, of some luckless digit, my uncle showed me how that, after the first tremendous squeeze, he ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... tired. Max walked with drooping tail, and Brenda was whining softly to herself from sheer weariness and weak-mindedness. The parrot alone was happy—or at least ...
— The Magic City • Edith Nesbit
... on terms of distant iciness, Valentine and Katherine constantly sparring over trifles, Fauvette preserving an attitude of martyred dignity, and Aveline, out of sheer perversity, striking up a friendship with Maudie Heywood, matters were not ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... treacherous, in league with her foe. It was endless. She prayed for dawn—yet with a blank hopelessness for what the day might bring. Could she hold out through more interminable hours? Would she not break from sheer strain? There were moments when she wavered and shook like a leaf in the wind, when the beating of her heart was audible, when a child could have seen her distress. There were other moments when all was ugly, unreal, impossible like things in a nightmare. But when ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... conditions as they are. The first of these conditions is that the United States is a world power neither because of its virtue nor because of its intelligence in the delicacies of the world politics, but because of the sheer might of ...
— The American Empire • Scott Nearing
... clear day, and, although of course in that latitude and at that season the heat was intense later on, it was cool and pleasant in the early morning. We sat on the forward deck, admiring the trees on the brink of the sheer river banks, the lush, rank grass of the marshes, and the many water-birds. The two pilots, one black and one white, stood at the wheel. Colonel Rondon read Thomas a Kempis. Kermit, Cherrie, and Miller squatted outside the railing on the deck ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... laughs and tells Frank that he is a good soldier spoiled, and that it is a pity a man should settle down as a doctor who had made his way in life "by sheer pluck." ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... The sheer impudence of the thing had astounded everybody. Young Kerry's treatment of his leading persecutor had produced a salutary change of opinion. Of such kidney was Daniel Kerry, junior; and when, some hours after his father's ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... of women who know just enough to appreciate their compliments—women who deprecate their "strong-minded" sisters, and are ready to agree implicitly with every statement that the lords of creation may make; but this readiness is due to sheer inability to produce a thought ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... more about him and his methods, succeeding by sheer brute force and shouting all opposition down. Don't you wish, Mamma, we had some like him at home to deal with the socialists? These men are the real autocrats of the world, even though America is a republic. But wouldn't it be frightful ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... I were just a sheer Machiavelli and didn't have any heart but had brains, I would say: "If you mean what you say and are fighting for permanent peace, then there is only one way to get it, whether you like justice or not." ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... pay 1s per head. Now, I think I could provide you with a sumptuous dinner at 3d per head, and I should want that allowance for a little tobacco. It is not, I can assure you, gentlemen, a question of wages, but one of sheer honour that prompts me to apply for the situation of master of the Keighley Workhouse. If this suits your notice, you can reply by return of post.—Your humble servant, Bill o' th' Hoylus End." But I was not appointed; and it is perhaps unnecessary to say that I did not intend to be appointed. ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... Kirk. To begin with, the very word 'free' has a fascination for the citizen of a republic; and then my theological training was begun this morning by a gifted young minister of Edinburgh whom we call the Friar, because the first time we saw him in his gown and bands (the little spot of sheer whiteness beneath the chin, that lends such added spirituality to a spiritual face) we fancied that he looked like some pale brother of the Church in the olden time. His pallor, in a land of rosy redness and milky whiteness; his smooth, fair ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... believe in myself, Lady Lawless. I have had to take my measure a good many times in this world. I never was defeated through my own stupidity. It has been the sheer ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... perched upon a log that spanned it ten or twelve feet above the water. The situation was all the more interesting because I saw no possible way to land my fish. I could not lead him ashore, and my frail tackle could not be trusted to lift him sheer from that pit to my precarious perch. What should I do? call for help? but no help was near. I had a revolver in my pocket and might have shot him through and through, but that novel proceeding did not occur to me until it was too late. ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... McQuarters of the Royal Artillery, Captain Barnsfair, a merchant skipper, with fifteen mates and skippers like himself, and thirty French Canadians under Captain Chabot and Lieutenant Picard. These fifty men had to guard a front of only as many feet. On their right Cape Diamond rose almost sheer. On their left raged the stormy St Lawrence. They had a tiny block-house next to the cliff and four small guns on the barricade, all double-charged with canister and grape. They had heard the dropping shots on the top of the Cape for nearly an hour and had been quick to notice the ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... death, all along of your cursed rump. Alas! how frightened I am! oh! I have no heart for jests. Ah! machinist, take great care of me. There is already a wind whirling round my navel; take great care or, from sheer fright, I shall form food for my beetle.... But I think I am no longer far from the gods; aye, that is the dwelling of Zeus, I perceive. Hullo! Hi! where is the ...
— Peace • Aristophanes
... is sadly wasting now," said Meliora. "She seems to be slowly dying, and I shouldn't wonder if it were of sheer starvation; those models earn so little. Yesterday she fainted as she stood—Michael is so thoughtless. He had to call me to give her some wine, and then we sent the maid home with her. She lives in a poor place, Hannah ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... waiter, and referred to successive tankards of bitter, with the superfluous rider that the man who said we couldn't drink beer was a liar. But indeed I never could myself, and only achieved the impossible in this case out of sheer sympathy with Raffles. And eventually I had my reward, in such a recital of malignant privation as I cannot trust myself to set down ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... application, evil may still result from the shoe itself being made too narrow. As a result of this, the branch of each side is set too far under the foot, with consequent injury to the sole. This is, of course, sheer carelessness on the part of the smith. When practised, however, it is not easy of detection, as in all cases the foot is rasped down to cover what has been done. In other words, the foot is made to fit the shoe and not the ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... remarkably picturesque. The maze of islands, hundreds in number, of the Alexander Archipelago (area about 13,000 sq. m.) are remnants of a submerged mountain system; the islands rise 3000 to 5000 ft. above the sea, with luxuriantly wooded tops and bald, sheer sides scarred with marks of glacial action; the beachless coast is only a narrow ledge between the mountains and the sea, and unlike the coast of Norway, to which in outline it is not dissimilar, is bold, steep and craggy. Through the inner channels, sheltered ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... from the trammels of etiquette was very complete. In theory—and he abounded in theory—his manners were purely democratic. It was by sheer habit and inadvertency that he permitted Firmin, who had discovered a rucksack in a small shop in the town below, to carry both bottles of beer. The king had never, as a matter of fact, carried anything for himself in his life, ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... precisely the kernel and the only touch-point of the whole question. No nation ever had the power of conquest that did not use it, or abuse it, at the very first favourable opportunity. All that is said of the magnanimity and forbearance of mighty nations can be explained on the principle of sheer inexpediency, as the world knows. The whole face of Europe has been changed, and the dynasties of many hundred years have been swept away within our own time, on the principle of might alone—the oldest, ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... though the roof still stretched above him; and before him lay the two abysses full of stars, for they cut their way through the whole Earth and revealed the under sky; and threading its course between them went the way, and it sloped upward and its sides were sheer. And beyond the abysses, where the way led up to the farther chambers of the fortress, Leothric heard the musicians playing their magical tune. So he stepped on to the way, which was scarcely a stride in width, and moved along it holding Sacnoth naked. And to and fro beneath him ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... plenty, and they afforded good sport to a First of September shooting party, provided with a setter. At length the poor quail had their quarters so thoroughly beaten up, that several, in attempting to escape from the island, were observed to fall into the water from sheer exhaustion. Nor did the birds receive all the benefit of the shot, for Captain Stanley, while observing with the theodolite, became unwittingly a target for a juvenile shooter; but, fortunately, no damage was done. ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... Rutowsky; who met it with creditable vigor, till relieved by the others. Comte Maurice, too, did a shifty thing. Circling round by the outside of the Wischerad, by rural roads in the bright moonshine, he had got to the Wall at last, hollow slope and sheer wall; and was putting-to his scaling-ladders,—when, by ill luck, they proved too short! Ten feet or so; hopelessly too short. Casting his head round, Maurice notices the Gallows hard by: "There, see you, are a few short ladders: ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... many Americans, both at home and abroad, that they want to be taken nationally, and not personally, by foreigners. Beyond any other people we wish to be loved by other peoples, even by others whom we do not love, and we wish to be loved in the lump. We would like to believe that somehow our sheer Americanism rouses the honor and evokes the veneration of the alien, and as we have long had a grudge against the English, we would be particularly glad to forget it in a sense of English respect and affection. ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... ever turned his heels to Salt Water, or run a moose down with sheer grit," supplemented Bettles; "but he's the prove-the-rule exception. Look at his woman, Unga,—tip the scales at a hundred an' ten, clean meat an' nary ounce to spare. She'd bank grit 'gainst his for all there was in him, an' see him, an' go him better if it was ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... to the barn with Duke. January as usual was idling. He had his fiddle and was playing "Dixie." Beth sat down on the hay near him, while the dog family frolicked around her. She was happy, so happy that from sheer light-heartedness she ...
— A Little Florida Lady • Dorothy C. Paine
... supreme, and Vrisha is said to mean righteousness. The illustrious God of gods, therefore, is called Vrishakapi. And since Maheswara by means of his two eyes closed (in meditation), created through sheer force of will a third eye on his forehead, he is for that reason called the Three-eyed. Whatever of unsoundness there is in the bodies of living creatures, and whatever of soundness there is in them, represent that God. He is the wind, the vital airs ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... fearing a visit from the police, the owner of the den, a strong, coarse Irishman, interfered, and dragging the women apart, pushed Mother Hewitt out, giving her so violent an impetus that she fell forward into the middle of the narrow street, where she lay unable to rise, not from any hurt, but from sheer intoxication. ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... Barney and shouted it into his ear: "Say, Barney, Barney Thayer, be you deaf? Thomas Payne has got—your—girl!" But Barney planted on; his nerves were quivering, the impetus to strike out was so strong in his arms that it seemed as if it must by sheer mental force affect his teasing brother, but he made no sign, ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... with ghost stories than true tales. Indeed we may say that four gloated over it, for Liffie Lee, unable to restrain her curiosity, put her head in at the door—at first with the more or less honest intention of asking if "hany think was wanted," and afterwards let her head remain from sheer ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... be? you will exclaim. A fall of sheer twenty feet, and upon loose rocks, too! How could he escape being killed, or, at the very least, badly bruised ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... allow himself to forget his skill in the use of the hammer, and to the last he took pleasure in handling it, sometimes in the way of business, and often through sheer love of his art. Mr Nasmyth says, "It was one of my duties, while acting as assistant in his beautiful little workshop, to keep up a stock of handy bars of lead which he had placed on a shelf under his work-bench, which was ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... had commissioned to "see as she went." Not that Joanna could really bring herself to believe that Ellen was truthful in saying she did not care about the show, but she thought it possible that sheer contrariness might ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... was better to conciliate than provoke those who even for an hour had felt their strength. The red rain made Wexford's harvest grow. Theirs was no treacherous assassination—theirs no stupid riot—theirs no pale mutiny. They rose in mass and swept the country by sheer force. ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... sink to the depths in which John B. Gough found himself at the age of twenty-five years. By sheer force of will he raised himself from the slough in which he wallowed, till he attained a position honored among men, and performed a service of exceptional usefulness ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... back against the steep side of the mountain as though half terrified at the hollow immensity of the welkin above, or the almost sheer drop to the valley five hundred feet beneath. A sidling mountain trail passed the front of its rail fence, and stones continually rolled from the upper to the ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... we all meekly acquiesce. In Europe we kill and maim people by the hundred thousand, not seriously and deliberately for any sacred ends that make Life more precious to us or the Mystery of Nature more intelligible, but out of sheer stupidity. We spend the half, and sometimes more than the half, of our national incomes in sharpening to the finest point our implements of bloodshed, not to the accompaniment of any Bacchic Evoe, but incongruously mumbling the Sermon on the Mount. ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... except Marlanx. The Iron Count was white with anger. He took the examination out of Lorry's hands, and plied the stranger with insulting questions, each calm answer making him more furious than before. At last, in sheer impotence, he relapsed into silence, waving his hand to Lorry to indicate that ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... cool enough to note him on his horse beside Forrest. Also, Graham realized that the turning of her head and the waving of her arm was only partly in bravado, was more in aesthetic wisdom of the picture she composed, and was, most of all, sheer joy of daring and emprise of the blood and the flesh and ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... laughed Ingred, "and if I drop down for sheer lack of breath, I shall expect you and Verity to carry me ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... far-away notes of a reed blown by a boy in the shadow by the sea, you land, and, following the path by the hillside, come suddenly on the little port with its few fishing-boats and litter of ropes and nets, above which rises the little town, house piled on house, from the ruined church rising high, sheer out of the sea to the church of marble that crowns the hill. Before you stands the gate of Porto Venere, a little Eastern in its dilapidation, its colour of faded gold, its tower, and broken battlement. Passing under the ancient arch past a shrine of Madonna, you enter the long ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... and she liked the Cowperwoods. Now she began to realize that there was something more than mere friendship here. This erstwhile boy was a man, and he was calling on her. It was almost ridiculous in the face of things—her seniority, her widowhood, her placid, retiring disposition—but the sheer, quiet, determined force of this young man made it plain that he was not to be balked by her ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... harbour people generally, she was so much the object of awe, that whenever the whistle sounded, it would darkly suggest the thought that another flogging was going to take place, and any boats that were near at the moment would sheer off to a more comfortable distance. There was just so much truth in all this that there was one very hot-tempered officer on board who was very much hated by the crew, and who had been unfortunate enough to single out for flogging just the man whom, if he had ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... lingerie; boys and servants, le pere et la mere Jaurion, Mlle. Marceline and the rest, looking towards Paris—all feeling bound to each other by a common danger, like wild beasts in a flood. Dear me! I'm out of breath from sheer ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... ceaselessly for good, he followed what was known as the path of dharma or righteousness. This ensured that at each succeeding birth he would start a stage more favourably off than in his previous existence till, by sheer goodness of character, he qualified for admission to Indra's heaven and might even be accounted a god. The achievement of this status, however, did not complete his cycle, for the ultimate goal still remained. This was the same as in earlier centuries—release from living by union ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... slight, and the gunners of the German cavalry divisions were sorry marksmen. Their projectiles always burst either too far or too near, too high or too low. And as soon as a hundred men had got across, and the first sharpshooters had clambered up the heights that rise sheer from the river and begun to debouch upon the plateau, there was a sudden silence. The enemy's cavalry had given way, and our corps d'armee was free to pass the Marne by the ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... peculiar as being the only fresh-water lake in the world where seals are found, about two thousand being killed annually. The shores are in most places extremely steep, precipices rising a thousand feet sheer up from the edge of the water, with soundings of a hundred and fifty fathoms a few yards from their feet. Fish abound in the lake, and sturgeon of large size ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... was perched on the seat of a bright red pedlar's wagon, above and behind a dusty, ambling, red pony of that peculiar gait and appearance pertaining to the ponies of country pedlars—a certain placid, unhasting leanness, as of a nag that has encountered troubles of his own and has lived them down by sheer patience and staying power. From the bright red wagon proceeded a certain metallic rumbling and clinking as it bowled along, and two or three nests of tin pans on its flat rope-encircled top flashed back the light so dazzlingly that Jedediah ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the schooner, without firing or showing any unfriendly disposition. As she drew near, I felt more and more convinced that she must be the Foam. She had a peculiarly long cutwater and a very straight sheer, which, as she came up to the windward of us, and presented nearly her broadside, was discernible. As she heeled over to the now freshening breeze, I fancied that I could even discern, through the glass, Captain Hawk walking the quarter-deck. When she got about a quarter ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... pinned on that narrow shelf of rock. Watching that holocaust below, Shann Lantee could not force himself to move. The sheer ruthlessness of the Throg move-in left him momentarily weak. To listen to a tale of Throgs in action, and to be an eye-witness to such action, were two vastly different things. He shivered in spite of the warmth of the ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... can be of no use to you: I swear that it will cost you nothing to give it to me. It has been sent to you out of sheer malice—solely to injure the ...
— The Man of Destiny • George Bernard Shaw
... either be the superior in civilization, or the inferior. Supposing it to be superior, it may either, through that superiority, be able to acquire ascendancy over the other, or it may be overcome by brute strength and reduced to subjection. This last is a sheer mischief to the human race, and one which civilized humanity with one accord should rise in arms to prevent. The absorption of Greece by Macedonia was one of the greatest misfortunes which ever happened to the world; that of any of the principal countries of Europe by Russia ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... arrayed his boys in two bodies: the diligent under the victorious standard of Rome, the idle as vanquished Carthaginians. Napoleon of right belonged to the latter, but he was transferred, not because of merit, by the sheer force ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... Louis, before the Supreme Court of the United States in the now celebrated Snowden case is universally acknowledged by lawyers to have been masterly, and reminiscent of the great names of the profession in the past. Mr. Erwin is not dramatic. He appears to carry all before him by the sheer force of intellect, and by a kind of Lincolnian ability to expose a fallacy: He is still a young man, self-made, and studied law under Judge Brice of St. Louis, once President of the National Bar Association, whose partner ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the critic. He stood at the end of the piano and morosely fumbled his beard. Again a wave of anxious hatred, followed by forebodings, crowded her alert brain. She desperately clutched her husband's shoulder; he finished in a burst of sheer pounding and brutal roaring. Then she threw her arms about him in an ecstasy of pride—her confidence ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... in sheer misery. "I dunno, I'm sure, whatever made me take and do it. I've stood so much more from all of 'ee and never so much as opened my lips. I reckon 'twas the weather made me ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... now beginning to tell upon the camels, which, weakened by fatigue and short allowance of forage, fell down in large numbers through sheer exhaustion, throwing the transport into ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... of the shortest," he said genially, when the maid, the witnesses, and I had reached the foot of the hillock, "but I have taken a liking to you and would fain do you a service. Moreover, I lack employment. The maids take me for a hedge parson, and sheer off to my brethren, who truly are of a more clerical appearance. Whereas if they could only look upon the inner man! You have been long in choosing, but have doubtless chosen"—He glanced from me to the woman beside me, and broke off with open mouth and staring eyes. There was ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... boy has once spoken so disrespectfully as this about his mother's conscience it is practically all over between him and her. Ernest through sheer force of habit, of the sofa, and of the return of the associated ideas, was still so moved by the siren's voice as to yearn to sail towards her, and fling himself into her arms, but it would not do; there were other associated ideas that ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... young man, of about Collingwood's own age, gave him the instant impression of being bored to death; the lack-lustre eye, the aimless lounge, the hands thrust into the pockets of his Norfolk jacket as if they took refuge there from sheer idleness—all these things told their tale. Here, thought Collingwood, was a fine example of how riches can be a curse—relieved of the necessity of having to earn his daily bread by labour, Harper Mallathorpe was finding life ...
— The Talleyrand Maxim • J. S. Fletcher
... proposition of the same kind to the Russian Commander at Trieste which had been rejected. There is not a syllable of truth in it. I have had no correspondence with Russia, nor anything happened that could have given rise to such a conjecture. It must therefore be sheer mischief. There are such diabolical spirits, who, incapable of good, cannot rest inactive but fester the world with their ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... from one to the other of the bystanders, doubtful at first whether or not they were all in a conspiracy to mock her. Her good sense told her that this was wellnigh impossible, and she finally came to the conclusion that sheer ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... boys this time had tackled a task that was beyond them. They struck out rapidly, as did the man to whose aid they had rushed, but the sheer weight of ...
— The boy Allies at Liege • Clair W. Hayes
... circumstances in which Gay himself and the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry, on his account, stood with the Queen. If it were not for the introduction of Lady Suffolk's name, I should have thought Pope's advice sheer irony, and a hint for a libel on the Court. The Duchess and Gay were offended at the proposition." It may be, however, that Pope thought it possible that such a poetical effusion as he had in mind might restore Gay to favour at Court. Gay, who received Pope's letter while he was on a visit ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... occurred to you what will happen when she is back in Haddo's hands?' cried Arthur. 'You know as well as I do how revengeful he is and how hatefully cruel. My heart bleeds when I think of the tortures, sheer physical tortures, which she ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... both boys had gone to New York in order to look the world over. By dint of sheer push, three-quarters of which Tom had supplied, the boys had secured their first chance in the New York offices of the S.B. & L. Not much of a chance, to be sure, but it meant forty dollars a month and board in the field, with the added promise ...
— The Young Engineers in Colorado • H. Irving Hancock
... for a moment believe that they fancied themselves understood, still, from a mixture of pride and perverseness peculiarly British, they continued their valuable discourse as if every word told, or, if not apprehended, was a striking proof of the sheer stupidity of their new companions. The noise became louder and louder, and at length Freeman ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli |
