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Striving   /strˈaɪvɪŋ/   Listen
Striving

noun
1.
An effortful attempt to attain a goal.  Synonyms: nisus, pains, strain.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Striving" Quotes from Famous Books



... scattering, of a rough and stunted appearance, interspersed with patches of hazle and brushwood, and where the contest between the fire and timber is kept up, each striving ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck

... mystery to all men, and the more profound the deeper the striving spirit is immersed in its own selfish instincts. How earnestly do we all fix our eyes upon the slowly-advancing future, impatiently waiting that good time coming which never comes! How fast the years glide by, beginning in hope and ending in disappointment! ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur

... main kindly, he does not spare the French colonial administration of the time. His treatment of the subject is acidly satirical. It may be said that Daudet seems to know little about firearms, less about lions and nothing about camels, but he is not striving for verisimilitude. After all, the adventures of James Bond do not mirror the reality of international espionage, nor do the exploits of Bertie Wooster and Jeeves truely reflect life in the upper echelons of ...
— Tartarin de Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet

... to me a true one. But the case is widely different for you. The husks have fallen off, as a matter of fact, and the discomfort and sense of something wrong arose from your knowing that you were only striving desperately to clutch on to them, when the fine, strong bud was there, able and ready to take its proper share of sunshine and rain, and even to bear the cold winds of misrepresentation and misunderstanding if ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates

... beauty. But, alas, upon almost everything in the world his opinion was unknown to me. I had no doubt that it would differ entirely from my own, since his came down from an unknown sphere towards which I was striving to raise myself; convinced that my thoughts would have seemed pure foolishness to that perfected spirit, I had so completely obliterated them all that, if I happened to find in one of his books something which ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... are, when they sit down on the green grass and confide to each other how many times they have remembered that they lived once before. If these childish tales are the stirring of inherited impressions, just so surely is the other the striving of inherited powers. ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams

... a boy. His eyes were brown and very like a dog's, and that was perhaps because he could not speak and tried to tell you things with them. At times, when he could not make you understand, they were full of a straining anxiety, the painful striving of a dumb soul for utterance, ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham

... experienced in his presence the same kind of a feeling of some great unseen influence at work as that which the disciples must have experienced in the presence of Christ after He, apart and alone, had watched through the night with God in prayer. For many an hour of his life did Forbes spend like that, striving with God for those he loved. He believed—he knew (this was his own testimony)—that he could in this way bring to bear upon a man's life more real effective influence than by any word of direct personal teaching or advice. So did he prove once ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson

... which many devout persons have sincerely believed could be bought by them for money. The whole development of civilization may be followed in the oscillation of any given society between these two extremes, the many always striving to so restrain the judiciary that it shall be unable to work the will of the favored few. On the whole, success in attaining to ideal justice has not been quite commensurate with the time and effort devoted to solving the problem, but, until our constitutional ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams

... Hetty, striving valiantly to keep back her tears; "she knew her mother would not approve of my performing; and besides, I told her I was afraid. If I had done it she would have complained to Mrs. Enderby ...
— Hetty Gray - Nobody's Bairn • Rosa Mulholland

... and doing their work so silently and quickly that they escaped without being noticed, and were some distance on their way before the colored watchman at the hotel where Crook was quartered could compose himself enough to give the alarm. A troop of cavalry gave hot chase from Cumberland, striving to intercept the party at Moorefield and other points, but all efforts were fruitless, the prisoners soon being ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan

... unwelcome visitors was never to be feared, as, by common consent, the various classes in Hanover kept by themselves, thus enjoying life much better than in a country where everybody is striving after the pleasures and luxuries enjoyed by those whom circumstances have ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes

... opera of this period is one of perpetual striving for the unattainable. In Chicago the first performance of grand opera was given in 1850. Chicago is now a rival of New ...
— Annals of Music in America - A Chronological Record of Significant Musical Events • Henry Charles Lahee

... head. "No. The same thing applies over there. Even in countries such as Sweden and Switzerland, where institutions are as free as anywhere in the world, the people are continually striving for more. Governments and socio-economic systems seem continually to whittle away at individual liberty. But always man fights back and tries to achieve ...
— Freedom • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... foreseeing, for very little of the fruit of this tree had been eaten at the time the text was written. All through the Middle Ages the clerics strove to keep men from it with tortures and burnings at the stake, and they were so anxiously striving for success in protecting their flocks from this tree that they allowed the sheep to wander, the rams to follow the ewes, and to gambol as they pleased. But the efforts of the clerics were vain. There were rams who renounced the ewes, and the succulent herbage that grows about the tree of life, ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore

... light-source. Of course, statistics are unavailable concerning the casualties in coal-mines throughout the past centuries, but with the accidents not uncommon in this scientific age, with its elaborate organizations striving to stamp out such casualties, there is good reason to believe that previous to a century or two ago the risks of coal-mining must have been great. Open flames have been widely used in this industry, but there ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh

... the mourners from Kenmuir: the Master, tall, grim, and gaunt; and beside him Maggie, striving to be calm, and little Andrew, ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant

... Many years beyond this period, (Well I ken the oft told story,) On a sunny day in autumn, When the leaves were "sere and yellow," When the woods were melancholy, There were little children clustered In this notable old school-room; There were little children striving, For the prize-book and the medal, Children conning words in triumph, Down the line of b-a-baker, Children frowning o'er the problems Of the higher rules and text-books, When a shadow crossed the doorway, And there followed it, a stranger. Then ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts

... electric light and all. It was there for a purpose. In front of it was a great barbed-wire barricade. Strategically it commanded the main road over which the German Army must pass to reach the point it has been striving for. Only seven miles away along that road it was straining even then for the onward spring movement. Any day now, and that luxurious trench may be the scene ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... the outer door of the tavern. Morok and Ninny Moulin, striving to open a passage through the crowd in the direction of the Hospital, preceded the litter. A violent reflux of the multitude soon forced them to stop, whilst a new storm of savage outcries burst from the other extremity of the square, near the ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... not suspect me of wanting to preach any cant to you, or of joining in the pretence that everything is in a fine way, and need not be made better. What I am striving to keep in our minds is the care, the precaution, with which we should go about making things better, so that the public order may not be destroyed, so that no fatal shock may be given to this society of ours, this living body in which ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot

... the huge, thick fingers reached up and around his throat, fumbling to get at the windpipe. Pete Reeve made his last effort; it was like striving to free himself from a ton's weight. Hysteria of fear and horror seized him, and his voice gave utterance to his terror. As he screamed, the big fingers joined around his throat. Any ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand

... reverence, of that divine Being; but now they are wholly immersed and sunk into the flesh, and into the earth by sin, till grace come down and renew them, and extract them out of that dunghill, and purify them. And then they are, as in a state of violence, always striving to mount upwards, till they be embodied, or rather inspirited, so to speak, in that original Spirit, till they be wholly united to their own element, the divine nature. You know Christ's prayer, John xvii. "That they may be one, as we are one; I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... from what the senses offer him in every-day perception. He seeks for the spirit in the sense-world. Is not this a fact which may be compared with dying? "For," according to Socrates, "those who occupy themselves with philosophy in the right way are really striving after nothing else than to die and to be dead, without this being perceived by others. If this is true, it would be strange if, after having aimed at this all through life, when death itself comes they should be indignant ...
— Christianity As A Mystical Fact - And The Mysteries of Antiquity • Rudolf Steiner

... had the luck to have in their veins a few drops of the blood of the people bragged about it: they dipped their pens into it, wrote with it.—They were all malcontents of the burgess class, and were striving to recapture the authority which that class had irreparably lost through its selfishness. Only in rare instances were these apostles known to keep up their apostolic zeal for any length of time. In the beginning ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland

... flatten it with countless tons of concentration, but it held its shape. The one man had his way about it. So don't be discouraged by an adverse majority on this plum-pudding project. One lady has shown us a sample of concentrated hair, and it looks good to me. Why all this striving, all this trouble about the problems of life and death, when the straight, broad way of concentration is open to us? Why shouldn't we have concentrated bread and meat and ...
— 'Charge It' - Keeping Up With Harry • Irving Bacheller

... time the monuments of Athens were recalled to the European world by Stuart and Revett in their architectural designs, and by the end of the century the study of the antique had done its transforming work, and artists were striving for more worthy ends than the favor of kings and powerful patrons. This new study of classic art did not show its full and best results until the Danish sculptor Thorwaldsen executed his works; but before his time others ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement

... had now killed four of his brothers and caused the death of a fifth. He had made himself the king of all Norway, even as his father had been. Yet the people misliked him sorely, they were for ever striving to displace him and to set up Triggvi Olafson in his stead. Then Queen Gunnhild swore that, if Erik would not make his rule a certainty, she at least would not rest until she had exterminated all the race of Harald Fairhair outside of ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton

... so well known as Louville, who descends at the house of the ambassador of France, says he has letters of trust from the King and the Regent, and an important mission which he can only confide to the King of Spain, the self-same ambassador striving to obtain an audience for him. Nothing was so easy as to cover Louville with confusion, if he had spoken falsely, by making him show his letters; if he had none he would have been struck dumb, and having no official character, Alberoni would have been free to punish him. Even if with confidential ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon

... old, 'When common needs are satisfied, man turns himself to that which is more universal and exalted.' Thus when the great week of the world is past, the Sabbath will commence, in which a people of quiet worshippers will spread themselves over the earth, no more striving after decaying treasures, but seeking after those which are eternal; a people whose life will be to observe, to comprehend, and to adore, revering their Creator in spirit and in truth. Then comes the day of which the ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer

... may love God will never make us love Him; but the longing to be better and holier—expressed in daily watchfulness, and in striving to assimilate more of the divine character—this will mould and fashion us anew, until we awake in His likeness. We reach the Science of Christianity through demonstration of the divine nature; but in this wicked world goodness will ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... Captain Crawley, who had seldom thought about anything but himself, until the last few months of his life, when Love had obtained the mastery over the dragoon, went through the various items of his little catalogue of effects, striving to see how they might be turned into money for his wife's benefit, in case any accident should befall him. He pleased himself by noting down with a pencil, in his big schoolboy handwriting, the various items of his portable property which might ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... broke out into little hard dry sobs, which had in them none of the softness of tears. "Nobody is to blame for anything," she repeated, still striving, in a dazed way, to be ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

... the war over and that that made no difference, Burnham, with a clouded face replied, 'Well, mebbe it don't—to you.' Whereupon the major fired up and told him that if he chose to be an unreconstructed reb, when Union officers and gentlemen were only striving to be civil to him, he might 'go ahead and be d—d,' and came away in high dudgeon." And so matters stood up to the last we had heard from Fort Phoenix, except for one letter which Mrs. Frazer wrote to Mrs. Turner at Sandy, perhaps purely out of feminine mischief, because ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King

... drove her to daring. She reached out a timid hand, and laid it upon the breast of the still, rigid, immovable figure beside her. Ah, what a leaping, striving, throbbing prisoner was caged there! A faint sob of surprise broke from her. Ah! what was it? what could ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... business, and on the date as now seen, then the envelope had not passed regularly through the Sydney office. So far it was all clear to the mind of Bagwax, and almost clear that the postmark could not have been made on the date it bore. The result for which he was striving with true faith had taken such a hold of his mind, he was so adverse to the Smith-Crinkett interest, and so generously anxious for John Caldigate and the poor lady at Folking, that he could not see obstacles;—he could not even clearly ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope

... on the Bowery, near Pearl street, and is in charge of the Rev. Mr. Van Meter. It is also called the "Howard Mission." While striving to relieve all who call upon it for aid, its care is chiefly given to children. Its object is to rescue the little ones from want and suffering, and make them comfortable. They are educated, and taught their duty as ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin

... her, and if it had not been for Phyllis, she would have been very miserable. On Phyllis, however, she repaid herself for all the mortifications that she received, while the sweet-tempered little girl took all her fretfulness and exactions as results of her illness, and went on pitying her, and striving to please her. ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge

... our friends," said they. "They are striving to obtain redress for grievances which we suffer as well as they. Their cause is our cause. So let us open the gates and ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... you? Are you striving to be a prophet without possessing the spirit of the prophets? Are you trying to be a priest without the priestly baptism? Are you labouring to be a king without ...
— Our Master • Bramwell Booth

... manifests with us in the groaning and travailing which look for the sonship. Because of our need and aspiration, the snowdrop gives birth in our hearts to a loftier spiritual and poetic feeling, than the rose most complete in form, colour, and odour. The rose is of Paradise—the snowdrop is of the striving, hoping, longing Earth. Perhaps our highest poetry is the expression of our aspirations in the sympathetic forms of visible nature. Nor is this merely a longing for a restored Paradise; for even in the ordinary history of men, no man or woman that has fallen, can be restored to the position ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald

... "you have been striving for unconcern all the evening, my poor dear, but surely you know, Ailie, that nothing is so bad while ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge

... magician may strive for power. But when he is striving for power, he seeks it that he may serve humanity and become more useful to mankind, a more effective servant in the helping of the world. But not so the brother of the dark side. When he strives for power, he seeks if for himself, so that he may use it against ...
— An Introduction to Yoga • Annie Besant

... Tom Brice looked amused again, swung his head a little on one side, grinning sheepishly over his shoulder on the roots of the trees beside him, as if he were striving to keep himself from an ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu

... and struck home with an undeniable truth. He and she were the sort of people to live in that sort of world, and to stand as its representatives. A feeling came over me that it was a fair fine world, where life need not be a struggle, where a man need not live alone, where he would not be striving always after what he could never achieve, waging always a war in which he should never conquer, staking all his joys against most uncertain shadowy prizes, which to win would bring no satisfaction. I cried out suddenly, ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope

... three volumes by another poet, John Keats, who, she was told, was the subject of an elegy by Shelley. Browning never forgot the May evening when he first read these new books, to the accompaniment, he said, of two nightingales, one in a copper-beech, one in a laburnum, each striving to outdo the other in melody. A new imaginative world was opened to the boy. In Memorabilia he afterwards recorded the strong intellectual and emotional excitement, the thrill and ecstasy of this poetical experience. To Shelley especially did he give immediate and fervid personal ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... mind and body, his character partook of much of the enthusiasm and impulsiveness commonly restricted to younger men, and now in his frank, free way be plainly showed his light-heartedness and gratification at success. That which for years his genius had been planning and striving for—permanent unification of the German States, had been accomplished by the war. It had welded them together in a compact Empire which no power in Europe could disrupt, and as such a union was the aim of Bismarck's life, he surely had a ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan

... meet De Courtenay's messenger, and again it was that scene at the factory steps that haunted her,—McElroy with his arms about Francette Moline, the grey husky crouching in the twilight. Throughout the whole sick tangle there went a twisting thread of wonder, of striving for understanding. What was this thing which had come clutching sweetly at her heart, which had stilled the very life in her with holy mystery, and whose swift passing had left her benumbed within ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe

... August, through his teeth, striving to still the storm of sobs that shook him from head to foot. "Let me alone. In the morning!—how can ...
— The Nuernberg Stove • Louisa de la Rame (AKA Ouida)

... the eternal Tao flowing like a great green river of souls, smooth and mighty and resistless; and she willed that she too might become a part of that desirable self-effacement, safe in surrender. Men striving to create a Tao for personal ends beat out their lives in vain. It was the figure of the river developing, like floating on a deliberate all-powerful tide or struggling impotently ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer

... about geography and exploration, there was no more vital spot in Europe than Lisbon in the fifteenth century. Why it was so is such an interesting story that it must be told. We have read how zealously the Spaniards had been striving for centuries to drive out the Moors, whom they considered the arch enemies of Christian Europe. Portugal, being equally near to Africa, was also overrun by Moors, and for ages the Portuguese had been at war with them, finally vanquishing ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley

... Striving to forget the false one, dwelling 'neath her sunny skies, Who had left the arrow rankling in his heart ...
— The Old Hanging Fork and Other Poems • George W. Doneghy

... said, we have been having something of a contest. For the last ten days we have been divided into Sherman men and Foraker men, and we have been striving against each other. There has been possibly some rasping and some friction, but at this hour it is our highest duty to remember that from now on henceforth, in the language again of the Senator, we must remember that we are no longer Sherman men nor ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... he cried; and in obedience to his orders a little column of a score of men dashed forward and tried to enter, thrusting in their pikes; and as many as could get to the door striving desperately, but only to be beaten back, and their discomfiture increased by ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn

... of that man, so ready at need, who wandered far and wide, after he had sacked the sacred citadel of Troy, and many were the men whose towns he saw and whose mind he learnt, yea, and many the woes he suffered in his heart upon the deep, striving to win his own life and the return of his company. Nay, but even so he saved not his company, though he desired it sore. For through the blindness of their own hearts they perished, fools, who devoured the oxen of Helios Hyperion: but the god took from them their day ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.

... that may supplant the loss of Jesus as an ideal are the thrill at being a pioneer in striving for the welfare of the human race rather than for individual salvation; the satisfaction at having a consistent creed that can be maintained against all criticism without hypocrisy or evasion; emancipation from inhibitions required by a supposedly divine teacher. Every pleasure is ...
— The Mistakes of Jesus • William Floyd

... be extended to rescue them from the degradation into which they have fallen. The National Citizen will endeavor to keep its readers informed of the progress of women in foreign countries, and will, as far as possible, revolutionize this country, striving to make it live up to its own fundamental principles and become in reality what it is but ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... sieve{10} hath turned; thy death decree is spoken! There's sulphur fume in bridal room, and by the same dread token, Enter it not; for if thou liv'st thou'rt lost," she sadly said; "And what were life to me, my son, if thou wert dead?" Then Pascal felt his eyes were wet, And turned away, striving to hide his face, where on The mother shrieked, "Ingrate! but I ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles

... statesmen, of naval and military heroes, on every side. Huge monstrosities of monuments surround us and grow in bulk as we pass up the musicians' aisle and reach the north transept, called the Statesmen's Corner. If we pause and glance around, striving to forget the outer shell, and to think only of the noble men commemorated, we shall remember much to make us proud of England's heroes and worthies. Above the west door stands young William Pitt pointing with outstretched arm towards the north transept, where we shall find his venerable father, ...
— Westminster - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant

... modern feeling was achieved by Donatello in "S. George" and "David." The former is a marble statue placed upon the north wall of Orsammichele; the latter is a bronze, cast for Cosimo de' Medici, and now exhibited in the Bargello.[89] Without striving to idealise his models, the sculptor has expressed in both the Christian conception of heroism, fearless in the face of danger, and sustained by faith. The naked beauty of the boy David and the mailed manhood of S. George are raised to a spiritual ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds

... another sound reached him; his own horse went steadily on, feeling his way, until he was nose against the bank, with water merely rippling about his ankles. Keith driving feet again into the stirrups headed him down stream, wading close in toward the shore, leaning forward over the pommel striving ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish

... the reverse side of the contrast. In Fableland there is one continued striving of the human soul, a chafing against all limits, a moving forward from one stage to another; the spirit of man is shown transcending its bounds everywhere. In Phaeacia, however, there is no striving apparently, it is contented with itself and stays with itself, seeking no neighbors; ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider

... her business. Now the laundry-maid had sharp ears and had paused behind a door to listen; so when she heard this she knew she must do something to stop it. So she out with her three feathers and said, "By virtue of the three feathers from over my true love's heart may there be striving as to who suffered most between the men so that they get into ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel

... me real? On the vast white sheet of snow Kachi and the doctor lay motionless, like statues of ice, as if frozen to death. In my nightmare I tried to raise them. They were rigid. I knelt beside them, calling them, and striving with all my might to bring them back to life. Half dazed, I turned to look for Bijesing, and, as I did so, all sense of vitality seemed to freeze within me. I saw myself enclosed in a quickly contracting tomb of transparent ice. I felt that I, too, would shortly be frozen to death like my companions. ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor

... to describe the feelings of the two brothers, or with what different eyes they severally regarded Leocadia; Teodosia wishing for her death, and Don Rafael for her life; Teodosia striving to find faults in her, in order that she might not despair of her own hopes; and Don Rafael finding out new perfections, that more and more obliged him to love her. All these thoughts, however, did not ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... every thrust seemed to tell; but where one enemy went down there seemed to be three or four more to take his place, and in the darkness there was a melee of writhing, struggling men hanging on to the panting, snorting horses and regardless of the keen steel, striving to drag ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn

... overprized her excellence, a saner man could scarce have failed to be delighted with the girl's beauty, a wiser to have denied her visible promises of merit. If better-balanced minds than the mind of Hercules Halfman, striving to conjure up the image of their dreams, had looked upon the face, upon the form, of Brilliana Harby, they might well have been willing to let imagination rest and be contented with the living flesh. Twenty sweet years of healthy ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... so much on his mind, that man—so many things to fight against. Thank God, he is now striving to lead a ...
— Ghosts • Henrik Ibsen

... what of him?" inquired the pallid woman, clasping her tremulous hands and striving to hold them still in her lap. "What of Mr. Harrington, Lina?" Her voice was low and hoarse; the very atmosphere around her froze poor Lina ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens

... for some moments before she answered him, thinking,—striving to think, how best she might do him pleasure. "What ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope

... told walked the room, vainly striving to control the sobs that shook her frame, while she sought to draw from the servant that last message of her husband which she was never to hear, was not thought worthy even of the rights of ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... was there, her devotee-like expression striving with an exceedingly low-cut dress to sound the distinguishing note of her personality. Giddings was at the punch-bowl as on their arrival she swept past with the General. When he saw the nun-like glance over the swelling bosom, ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick

... he sat with the letter in his hand, smiling to think that the father and son had come to grief among themselves; smiling also at the dodge by which, as he thought most probable, Aby Mollett was striving to injure the man who had kicked him, and raise a little money for his own private needs. There was too much earnestness in that prayer for cash to leave Mr. Prendergast in any doubt as to Aby's trust that money would be forthcoming. There must be something ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope

... change we have been striving after is not to be produced by any more striving after. It is to be wrought upon us by the moulding of hands beyond our own. As the branch ascends, and the bud bursts, and the fruit reddens under the cooperation of influences from the outside air, so man rises to the higher stature ...
— Beautiful Thoughts • Henry Drummond

... striving hard to regain his self-possession; "years have changed us both; but I trust it has still left in you, as it has in me, the ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book III • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... By striving all to gain, I need no witness call But him whose thrifty hen, As by the fable we are told, Laid every day an egg of gold. 'She hath a treasure in her body,' Bethinks the avaricious noddy. He kills and ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine

... through the medium of the stage can literary art find its true expression. The successful playwright is indeed a man to be envied. Leaving aside for the moment the question of super-tax, the prizes which fall to his lot are worth striving for. He sees his name (correctly spelt) on 'buses which go to such different spots as Hammersmith and West Norwood, and his name (spelt incorrectly) beneath the photograph of somebody else in The ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 3, 1914 • Various

... fellowship, of common effort on an equal plane for a common end, it will be difficult to keep the relations wholesome and natural. To be patronized is as offensive as to be insulted. No one of us cares permanently to have some one else conscientiously striving to do him good; what we want is to work with that some one else for the good of both of us—any man will speedily find that other people can benefit him just as much as he ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... there is a joyous spontaneity in human beings; and thus Nature, by means of the sporting world, by means of a great number of very imperfect, undignified, and sometimes quite disreputable mouthpieces, is perpetually striving to say something deserving of far nobler and clearer utterance; something which statesmen, lawgivers, preachers, and educators would do well to lay to heart. My children, she would say, are not intended to be made working machines; ...
— A Lecture on Physical Development, and its Relations to Mental and Spiritual Development, delivered before the American Institute of Instruction, at their Twenty-Ninth Annual Meeting, in Norwich, Conn • S.R. Calthrop

... this hush, and while I lay striving, poor little fellow, to dispel my alarm by fixing my thoughts resolutely on a rabbit-trap I had set under some running hemlock out on the side hill, that there rose the noise of a horse being ridden swiftly down the frosty highway ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic

... the wars; and when he returned it was as a swashbuckler and roisterer, such as my father and mother cannot abide sight of. When he came to Figeon's to ask me in marriage, he was turned from the door with cold looks and short words; but he would ever be striving to see me alone, and swear that he loved me and would wed me in spite of all. I had liked him when I was but a child, but I grew first to fear and then to hate him; and at last I spoke to Will Ives, the smith's son, of how he troubled me and gave me no peace of my life. And forthwith there was a ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green

... demands and emphasizes, which will co-ordinate the data at present in the foreground of consciousness. Thus they conceive of the facts of Christian Theology as the goal towards which philosophy is (often unconsciously) striving, but at which it can never arrive without the "leap of faith." Once this leap is taken, however, these theological verities become the major factors in the data to be co-ordinated, and philosophy and theology come into that union and ...
— The Basis of Early Christian Theism • Lawrence Thomas Cole

... One has put trouble on their heads," said a woman who was dressing a goose to roast for dinner and her helper answered, "And there is no use striving against it. What must be, is sure to happen. ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... aspiring soul, Great deeds on earth remain undone, But, sharpened by the sight of one, Many shall press toward the goal. Thou running foremost of the throng, The fire of striving in thy breast, Shalt win, although the race be long, And ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray

... most delightful companion, and peculiarly endowed with the talent of satirical playfulness and vivacity of humour.[127] But what was the true life of Collins, separated from its adventitious circumstances? It was a life of want, never chequered by hope, that was striving to elude its own observation by hurrying into some temporary dissipation. But the hours of melancholy and solitude were sure to return; these were marked on the dial of his life, and, when they struck, the gay and lively Collins, like one of his own ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... pitiful to witness the struggle that ensued!—to see a woman, forgetful of sex and everything else, striving with all her might to bite, scratch, and kick, while her hair tumbled down, and her bonnet and shawl falling off made more apparent the insufficiency of the rags ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne

... rascally Flemings!" he thought for a moment. "Up and at them, Joyeuse!" Then suddenly he rubbed his head like one striving to recall wandering wits. His chair came down with a crash. He took out his watch. It marked three. Again the gun! He threw up the window. The fog was breaking fast, and lights were visible too far out for the the land, too near ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin

... and to be aimed directly at Mrs. Henry. And his art went further yet; for all was so delicately touched, it seemed impossible to suspect him of the least design; and so far from making a parade of emotion, you would have sworn he was striving to be calm. When it came to an end, we all sat silent for a time; he had chosen the dusk of the afternoon, so that none could see his neighbour's face; but it seemed as if we held our breathing; only my old lord cleared his throat. The first to move ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson

... which was the chapel, on the other, the door that led into the convent. Here Jacqueline presented herself, accompanied by her old nurse, Modeste. She had not yet resumed her German lessons, and was striving to put off as long as possible any intercourse with Fraulein Schult, who had known of her foolish fancy, and who might perhaps renew the odious subject. Walking with Modeste, on the contrary, seemed like ...
— Jacqueline, v1 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)

... first, and with long intervals—as though all its music lay dark and tangled in chaos, and he were exploring and picking out a note here and a note there to fit his song. There was trouble in his voice, and restlessness, and a low, eager striving, and a hope which grew as the notes came oftener, and lingered and thrilled on them. Then his fingers caught the strings together, and pulled the first chord: it came out of the depths with a great sob—a soul set free. Other souls behind it rose to his fingers, ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... Bairstow, Esq., and the income is now equal to about 300 pounds per annum. Mr. Thompson is not a brilliant man, and never will be. He is close-shaven, full-featured, heavily-set, slow is his mental processes, but earnest, pushing, and enduring. He is an industrious parson, a striving, persevering, roughly-hewn, hard-working man—a good visitor, a willing worker, free and kindly disposed towards poor people, and the exact man for such a district as that in which he is located. If a smart, highly- drawn, ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus

... him one look, full of things inscrutable, and lowered her lashes in silence. She was evidently striving to overcome some indecision. ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele

... side are striving to be true to that divine heritage. We are fighting, as our fathers have fought, to uphold the doctrine that all men are equal in the sight of God. Those on the other side are striving to destroy this deep belief and to create ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt • Franklin D. Roosevelt

... such luster on the times of Elizabeth; and, if only for his overpowering curiosity, and his intense and unfailing ardor to get at the truth of all things, natural or supernatural, he merits respect as a forerunner of the scientific spirit which in his day was but feebly striving to loose itself from the bondage of bigotry ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce

... one, it will be well. If people, however, understand by the word 'saint' a Pietist, one of those who lay their hands on their laps and expect that Providence will do their work for them, and who, instead of striving in their vocation to press on towards perfection, talk of a heavenly calling being incompatible with an earthly one, and are incapable of loving with their whole hearts any human being, or anything on earth,—then ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes

... is a noise of feet— Rattle and clatter and patter and beat! Old Puss makes a flying leap from her chair, With a half-awake and startled stare, Striving to see What it ...
— On the Tree Top • Clara Doty Bates

... in Newgate was the precursor of similar work undertaken in other prisons, not in London only, but all over the country. With prisons now so much better managed, and with multitudes of workers, single or associated, striving for the welfare of prisoners, the record of Mrs. Fry's early labours may have lost much of its interest. But it is well to state clearly the nature of her work, and the spirit in which it was undertaken. Nor was it only in the ...
— Excellent Women • Various

... after a brief silence, during which she was striving for the mastery over her weakness. As she spoke, she leaned over the sick man, and looked at him lovingly, and with the smile of an ...
— True Riches - Or, Wealth Without Wings • T.S. Arthur

... your name in my prayers," she assured him, watching him doubtfully and hopefully as he wheeled his horse, striving to keep ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter

... human being upon my neck. I sprang aside, barely in time to escape a blow obviously aimed at me with some weapon or other, which cut through the air with the soft, nervous swish of an elastic life-preserver. I knew that some one who sought my life was within a few feet of me, striving to make sure before the second blow was aimed. In my stockinged feet I crept along by the wall. I could hear no sound of movement anywhere near me, and yet I knew quite well that my hidden assailant was close ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... you enjoy. Now the time has come when your minds must be disabused of this notion. No amount of torture which you can possibly inflict upon solitary, helpless Englishmen will deter their fellow countrymen from striving, by fair means or foul, to secure a share of what they are as much entitled to as yourselves; and they will never rest until they have obtained it! Mark you that. And, further, remember this—that henceforward, for every Englishman who is lost on these shores, and ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... to fall asleep under such solemn circumstances was a sure evidence of total depravity, and of the machinations of the devil striving to turn one's heart from God and his ordinances. As I was guilty of these shortcomings and many more, I early believed myself a veritable child of the Evil One, and suffered endless fears lest he should come some night and claim me as his own. To me he was a personal, ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... stand calmly and firmly without being instigated and supported by a man. Roger, therefore, in his eyes, was the obstacle in the way of Alice's submission. He did not in the least realise that the real obstacle against which he was striving was ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt

... in essentials, they were alike in the great qualities which made each able to do service to his nation and to all mankind such as no other man of his generation could or did render. Each had lofty ideals, but each in striving to attain these lofty ideals was guided by the soundest common sense. Each possessed inflexible courage in adversity, and a soul wholly unspoiled by prosperity. Each possessed all the gentler virtues commonly exhibited by good men who lack rugged strength of character. Each possessed ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various

... bridle, and halted a little beyond Frasne with the scanty remnant of keen hunters who had kept up the chace with him to the last, the French were scattered through Gosselies, Marchiennes, and Charleroi; and were striving to regain the left bank of the river Sambre, which they had crossed in such pomp and pride not a ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.

... stock, because but little benefit will come to the Steel Corporation from the purchase; that they are aware that the purchase will be used as a handle for attack upon them on the ground that they are striving to secure a monopoly of the business and prevent competition—not that this would represent what could honestly be said, but what might recklessly ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... down the oxen toiled before the plow, licking out their tongues, as they went along, for wisps of the sweet, new grass which the mold-board was turning under. After them came the biggest brother, striving with all his might to keep the beam level and the handles from dancing as the steel share cut the sod into wide, thick ribbons, damp and black on one side, on the other green and decked with flowers. And, following the biggest brother, trotted the little ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates

... coats, the crowd being mostly composed of soldiers bent upon frolic. In the occupied stands, however, were loyalists in plenty, with a considerable sprinkling of ladies, gaily attired. I saw all this while striving to spur my horse forward toward where a band played "God save the King," but should have failed to make it, had not Major O'Hara caught glimpse of my face above the press. A moment he stared at me in perplexity, and then with a dab of his spur forced the black horse he ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish

... the Christians at Rome, whom he had never seen, he said that he had made it his aim or had been ambitious to preach the Gospel where nobody had yet gone. The literal meaning of the word he uses is something like this, striving from a love of honor. And we may find a fine meaning in that which ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon

... the monastery there was not a sign of life; neither beast nor bird, nor blade of grass, nor any green thing; only the perfect immemorial blue, and in the east a misty moon, striving in vain to offer light which the earth as yet rejected for the brooding radiance of the descending sun. But at the great door of the monastery there grew a stately palm, and near by an ancient acacia-tree; and beyond the stone chapel there was ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... eyes—heading for the Amerindians with utter disregard for any personal safety. Menlik in the lead, his shaman's robe flapping wide below his belt like the wings of some oversized predatory bird. Hulagur ... Jagatai ... men from the outlaws' camp. And they were not striving to destroy their disabled overlord in the vale below, but ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton

... wants as she, Barbara Franklin, arrived at mature age, with all the will, had neither the skill nor the courage to minister, much as she owed him, so long as he had other service. She was a captious, vindictive wretch to pick holes in Miss Millar's armour, when she was striving so hard to atone to him for any injury she had ever done him by delivering him from the jaws of death, or at least smoothing ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler

... write and speak English well should mould his style after the models furnished by classical antiquity. For my part, I venture to doubt the wisdom of attempting to mould one's style by any other process for that of striving after the clear and forcible expression of definite conceptions; in which process the Glassian precept, "first catch your definite conceptions," is probably the most difficult to obey. But still I mark among distinguished contemporary speakers and writers of English, saturated ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley

... kegs were visible. There was the mule that should have borne them, though, with the rough pack-saddle upon which they had been lashed one on each side, twisting its head round and striving to reach a fly that was busy at work depositing its eggs in the animal's coat, the teeth being not long enough ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn

... sun beat fiercely on their heads, many of them, especially those cased in heavy armor, sunk down on the road, fainting with exhaustion and fatigue. Gonsalvo was seen in every quarter, administering to the necessities of his men, and striving to reanimate their drooping spirits. At length, to relieve them, he commanded that each trooper should take one of the infantry on his crupper, setting the example himself by mounting a German ensign behind him on ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott

... whether he took such matter from a Saxon Chronicle now lost. He is grandiloquent and turgid to an extent which often obscures his meaning. In him we perceive all the word-eloquence of Saxon poetry, striving to utter itself through the medium of a Latinity at once crude ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle

... with anger and odorous of saltpetre. Its very pavements must burn. Sulpice was in haste, however, to see it once more, to pass with head aloft beneath the garrets where he had once dreamed as a student, fagging and striving to get knowledge. How often he would regret that convent garden, those familiar flower-beds, the deep silence that enveloped him as he sat working by the open window, the passage of a bird near him, as if to fan him with ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie

... his lips: "The one great point for which I am striving—possession of Whitestone Hall;" but he was too diplomatic to utter the words. She saw a lurid light ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey

... truths, feels that his bunkered stroke must be compensated for by the next one or never. What is the result? Recklessly, unscientifically, even ludicrously, he fires away at the ball in the bunker with a cleek or an iron or a mashie, striving his utmost to get length, when, with the frowning cliff of the bunker high in front of him and possibly even overhanging him, no length is possible. At the first attempt he fails to get out. His second ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon

... said no more, but sent a servant in Tom's place. But he could not help thinking that the outward prosperity for which he was striving was not without its drawbacks, since it compelled him to look to servants for ...
— Try and Trust • Horatio Alger

... men. Vain and joyous, the host would have deemed himself wanting in courtesy to his guests, had he not evinced to them, which he did sometimes with a piquant naivete, the pride he felt in seeing himself surrounded by persons so illustrious, and partisans so noble, all striving through the splendor of the attire chosen to visit him, to show their high sense of the honor in which they ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt

... Freedmen's Board have been selected, because of their manifest interest in the educational and spiritual welfare of the colored people; and they are conscientiously striving, to the best of their ability, to promote the interests of the Freedmen, in behalf of the great body of generous hearted christian people ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger

... him tomorrow," he resolved. As he started to put the bill into his pocket the thought came to him that Kate and the baby were suffering. All the way home he battled with his conscience, striving to convince himself that Delapere had not dropped the note, that it belonged to him by virtue of discovery, and that he deserved it if any one in the world did. At last there came a solution. He would ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon

... people, doth confound. I'll wash her wound with tears, and at her death, My lips from hers shall draw her parting breath.' Then with her vest the wound she wipes and dries; Thrice with her arm the Queen attempts to rise, But her strength failing, falls into a swound, Life's last efforts yet striving with her wound; Thrice on her bed she turns, with wand'ring sight Seeking, she groans when she beholds the light. 250 Then Juno, pitying her disastrous fate, Sends Iris down, her pangs to mitigate. (Since if we fall before th'appointed ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham

... Presidential contest between Clay and Polk, Lincoln devoted himself assiduously to his law practice. But in 1846 he was again active in politics, this time striving for a seat in the National Congress. His chief opponent among the Whig candidates was his old friend John J. Hardin, who soon withdrew from the contest, leaving Mr. Lincoln alone in the field. The candidate on the Democratic ticket was Peter Cartwright, the famous Methodist preacher. It was supposed ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne

... is not?" Barton asked, striving to maintain his calm, though his suspicions were growing. Badger confidently thrust in his fingers and—drew out a slip of paper like the others, which was also scribbled over ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish

... and immediately from a secret cavity in the knob a curious little golden key was shot forth. This the shepherd boy seized, flew down the steps, and scaled over the town wall. He ran to the great well and stooped over the lid. He could hear the Seven Sisters twisting and worming and striving beneath it, little cries of pain breaking from them. Overhead the moon was shining down on ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly

... issue?" "With the whole of my kingdom," answered Er Reshid: and Ibn es Semmak said, "O Commander of the Faithful, verily, a kingdom that weigheth not in the balance against a draught [of water] or a voiding of urine is not worth the striving for." And Haroun wept. ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne



Words linked to "Striving" :   endeavour, effort, strain, pains, strive, endeavor, jehad, jihad, attempt, nisus, try



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