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Wrestle   /rˈɛsəl/   Listen
Wrestle

verb
(past & past part. wrestled; pres. part. wrestling)
1.
Combat to overcome an opposing tendency or force.
2.
Engage in deep thought, consideration, or debate.
3.
To move in a twisting or contorted motion, (especially when struggling).  Synonyms: squirm, twist, worm, wriggle, writhe.  "The child tried to wriggle free from his aunt's embrace"
4.
Engage in a wrestling match.



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"Wrestle" Quotes from Famous Books



... I wrestle not with rage While fury's flame doth burn; It is in vain to stop the stream Until the tide ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various

... ever since he had been flogged about an unintelligible book when he was a boy. But to think that a young fellow like Dolph, of such wonderful abilities, who could shoot, fish, run, jump, ride, and wrestle, should be obliged, to roll pills and administer juleps for a living—'twas monstrous! He told Dolph never to despair, but to "throw physic to the dogs;" for a young fellow of his prodigious talents could never fail to make his way. "As you seem to have no acquaintance ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving

... of the most romantic kind. No boy will be able to withstand the magic of such scenes as the fight of Grettir with the twelve bearserks, the wrestle with Karr the Old in the chamber of the dead, the combat with the spirit of Glam the thrall, and the defence of the dying Grettir by his ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty

... colonel, who was feebly trying to rise, his wrestle with the black having crippled his wounded leg and arm, I helped him to his feet as quickly as I could, while others clustered round to ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson

... while they released themselves from their cords and arranged their instruments, seems to have been succeeded by an outburst of spirits; for in the journal of the youngest of the party, Francois de Pourtales, then a lad of seventeen, we read: "The guides began to wrestle and we to dance, when suddenly we saw a female chamois, followed by her young, ascending a neighboring slope, and presently four or five more stretched their necks over a rock, as if to see what was going on. Breathless ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz

... wrestle?" exclaimed Diamond, still more astonished. "Why, even if you were to throw him, it could ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish

... of King John. However, on June 27, 1375, a truce for a year was signed at Bruges, which was further extended until June, 1377, just long enough to allow the old king to end his days in peace. France had once more to wrestle with the companies set free by the truce, so that England could still enjoy possession of Calais, Bordeaux, Bayonne, Brest, and the other scanty remnants of the cessions of the treaty of Calais. Satisfied at putting an end to the war, Gregory XI betook himself ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout

... nevertheless in their own secret hearts whether it wasn't acting after all. Acting it was, no doubt, and not worth the doing; no acting is. But one must make allowances. No two men take a thing just alike, and very few can sit down quietly when they have lost a fall in life's wrestle, and say: "Well, here I am, beaten no doubt this time. But my own fault, too. Now, take a good look at me, my good friends, as I know you all want to do, and say your say out, for I mean getting up again directly and having ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... nothing for weather. The haymaker on the hilltop has a better chance to read the face of the sky, and starts up his wagon. The three trees seem to feel the impending danger. Their leafage is already darkening in the changed light, and they toss their branches in the wind, as if to wrestle with ...
— Rembrandt - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll

... recitation, and tugged away so manfully that no one could help respecting him for his efforts, and trying to make light of his failures. So the first hard week went by, and though the boy's heart had sunk many a time at the prospect of a protracted wrestle with his own ignorance, he made up his mind to win, and went at it again on the Monday with fresh zeal, all the better and braver for a good, cheery talk with Miss Celia in ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various

... penitent of fourteen standing, barefooted, in the coldest nights of winter, upon the hearthstones, almost utterly naked, and shivering like a leaf, beneath the mingled effect of frost and devotion. At first I attempted to wrestle with this exceeding holiness, but finding my admonitions received with great distaste and some horror, I suffered my brother to be happy in his own way. I only looked with a very evil and jealous eye upon the good Abbe, and examined, ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... with new force and longing; his mind worked continually on the reading matter they had gone over, and constantly he wanted to elaborate or discuss some subject left unfinished. It was the devil with which he had to wrestle. Also, she showed the strain of disappointment when he met her at meals, and he found himself struggling with Doctor Morgan's observations on her health, her husband, and her happiness. As far as John was concerned, he thought the old doctor was mistaken, and be it remembered, Hugh ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger

... the eyes he read those higher possibilities, which even to-day he could not regard without a positive pang. What he might have been seemed forever struggling in his look with what he was, like the Scriptural wrestle between the angel of the Lord and the brute. The soul, distorted, bruised, defeated, still lived within him, and it was this that brought upon him those hours of mortal anguish which he had so vainly tried to drown in his glass. From the mirror ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow

... orders strict For her best comfort; then walked out alone, To meet and wrestle with his passion, held So long in leash by honour, free at last With overmastering and giant strength. The subtle fragrance of her hands pervades His senses; in his veins he feels the flow Of her warm breath, which entered into them ...
— Under King Constantine • Katrina Trask

... and threw it down in the yard, where it was immediately adopted by the little negroes. It became a great favorite with them, sharing their corn-bread, and taking part in all their sports. "Billy"—that was the name given to him—thrived and grew large and stout, and learned to box and wrestle with the boys so well that visitors to the plantation were always entertained with ...
— Harper's Young People, December 2, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... wife's—for your own sake—for the love of Him in whose image you were made—wrestle with the devil that possesses you,' said John Jardine, when they had risen to leave the room, laying his hand affectionately upon Brian's shoulder. 'Believe me, victory ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon

... sharper than mine. Can you hear a robber's footstep when he's kneeling before murder? or can you listen to the snow falling on Midsummer's day? If so, your ears are finer than mine. Can you run with a chamois? can you wrestle with a bear? can you swim with an otter? If so, I'm your match. How many cities have you seen? how many knaves have you gulled? Which is dearest, bread or justice? Why do men pay more for the protection of life than life ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield

... Jem, slowly. "That was to be put on against the wiles of the devil. 'Ye wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers; against the rulers of the darkness of this world; against ...
— The Inglises - How the Way Opened • Margaret Murray Robertson

... condor past control,— O speak, Son of the West! if this be Sleep— Or Death that is our destiny and goal? Thick torpor clouds the climes; eternal snow Falling, falling, falling, throngs my realm. Shall nevermore my breath o'er Ocean blow? Nor wrestle with his seas that roar and whelm? No balsam to the woods can I restore, Nor render pure my breath for man to drain; I faint within his nostrils that implore My draught to rouse his drooping heart ...
— The Masque of the Elements • Herman Scheffauer

... through inculcation of these facts, by means of education. Schools and churches—and parents—must concentrate on the moral improvement of the rising generation, or we wrestle ineffectively." ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks

... practice was any better, and much of it a good deal worse, as Leibniz liked somewhat complacently to point out. And because he comes to theology through physical theology, that does not mean that all his theology was physical theology and as such to be written off. On the contrary, Leibniz is led to wrestle with many problems which beset any philosophical theism of the Christian type. This is particularly so[29] in the Theodicy, as its many citations of theologians suggest. His discussions never lack ingenuity, and the system of creation and providence in which they result has much of that luminous ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz

... feet Sugriva rose. Again in furious fight they met: With streams of blood their limbs were wet, Each grasping his opponent's waist. Thus with their branches interlaced, Which, crimson with the flowers of spring, From side to side the breezes swing, In furious wrestle you may see The Kinsuk and the Seemal tree.(948) They fought with fists and hands, alike Prepared to parry and to strike. Long time the doubtful combat, waged With matchless strength and fury, raged. Each fiercely struck, each guarded well, Till, closing, from ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... precincts I seek to explore, My wishes how vain, my attainments how poor! Tenacious of virtue, with caution I move; I correct, and I wrestle, but cannot approve; Till, bewilder'd and faint, I would yield up the rein, But I dare not in peace ...
— Poems • Matilda Betham

... great deal of interest was exhibited. This culminated when a little man rushed suddenly into the room, and, with a wild "hooroo!" seized Molloy round the waist—he wasn't tall enough to get him comfortably by the neck—and appeared to wrestle with him. ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne

... looks at me as you spouted your high-flown declamation to-day; ay, and I caught expressions in it which you may live to rue, and that very soon. Before you leave us, I must have my revenge. If you are worthy of your name let us fairly contend in more manly strife than that of the style and tables. Wrestle with me, or try the cestus against me. I burn to humble you as you deserve, before these witnesses ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools

... not so much the events of my almost colorless existence, as my incoherent impressions, the melancholy that I felt at twilight, my regret for past summers, and my dreams of distant countries. . . . I already had a longing to give my fugitive emotions a determinative quality, I needed to wrestle against my own weaknesses and frailties and to banish, if possible, the dream-like element that I seemed to discover in all the things about me, and for that reason I continued my journal until a few years ago. . . . But at that time the mere idea that a day might come when someone would ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti

... enforced by motives of honor, and Henry accordingly formed a chivalric institution, which gave rise to new manners and to an enthusiasm that imparted a new character to the age. The tournament— from the ancient verb turnen, to wrestle or fight, a public contest in every species of warfare, carried on by the knights in the presence of noble dames and maidens, whose favor they sought to gain by their prowess, and which chiefly consisted ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various

... the diocese. Ah, well! Anne, the housekeeper and only servant, knew how the money went—and didn't go, and she had passed on some of her grievances to Barron. They two knew—though Barron would never have dared to show his knowledge—what a wrestle it meant to get the Rector to spend what was decently necessary on his own food and clothes; and Anne spent hours of the night in indignantly guessing at what he spent on the clothes and food of other people—mostly, in her ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... with that fair pose Which melts from curve to curve, To stand, run, work with those Who wrestle and deserve, And ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning

... avail in this case, but a good, vigorous Irish-American wrestle did, in which the whip was broken and the discipline of the school so far impaired that he was compelled to take his clothes and leave. After that he looked his father in the eye and told him that he was not going ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser

... 12. Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual ...
— An Explanation of Luther's Small Catechism • Joseph Stump

... said, "it was not Dutocq who told you that. He is not a man to wrestle with an enemy of my strength without a strong interest in it. It was Cerizet; he's the infamous calumniator, from whose hands I wrenched the lease of your house near the Madeleine,—Cerizet, whom in kindness, I went to seek on his dunghill ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac

... man here who would not think it absurd to wrestle with you, but let some one call here the old woman, my nurse, Elli, and let Thor wrestle with her, if he will. She has cast to the ground many a man who seemed to me to be ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various

... so unaffected by the cold. To-night he remained outside a full hour after the rest of us had got into the tent. He was simply pottering about the camp doing small jobs to the sledges, &c. Cherry-Garrard is remarkable because of his eyes. He can only see through glasses and has to wrestle with all sorts of inconveniences in consequence. Yet one could never guess it—for he manages somehow to do more than his ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott

... Thor, in great wrath. "Let anyone you like come and wrestle with me and I will show you if my strength is as tiny as you ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton

... mule," he said. "You should see me wrestle with somebody. Clear over my head—I can carry a man in my hands. This is so you can walk fast. Three miles straight down we come to Thurman's ranch, where I get the horses. It's funny how hills make a road far around. Just three miles—that's all. ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower

... wrestle for it, though; but he prided himself on his wisdom, when, after breakfast the next morning, he led the old lady into the study, and, after bidding her prepare for a shock, informed her that Mrs. St. Clair's husband, Sir Hugh Redmond, would be ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... nor side with those that have burnt the causes of God's wrath. They have broken their covenant oftener than once or twice, but I believe the Lord will build Zion, and repair the waste places of Jacob. Oh! to obtain mercy to wrestle with God for their salvation. As for this presbytery, it hath stood in opposition to me these years past. I have my record in heaven I had no particular end in view, but was seeking the honour of God, the thriving of the gospel in this place, and the good of the new college, that society ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie

... look of heart-satisfaction with which Day's wife had told him that her child had returned. The beautiful face looking from out the waves had no doubt wrought happiness in her; and in him also it had wrought happiness, and that which was better. He ceased to wrestle with the difference that the adventure had made in his life, or to try to ignore it; he had learned to love someone far better than himself, and that someone seemed so wholly at one with the nature in which she ranged, and also with the best he could think concerning ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall

... began to be very merry, taking delight in company, in going to fairs and meetings, in seeing sports and pastimes. And at cudgels, wrestling, or throwing the hammer, not a man could stand against him, so that at last none durst go into the ring to wrestle with him, and his fame was spread more ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various

... this tall and huge body issued from the aperture. Judging by his bull-neck, the astonishing breadth of his chest and shoulders, and the vast bulk of his arms and legs, this giant need not have feared to wrestle single-handed with a bear. He wore an old pair of blue trousers with red stripes, faced with tanned sheep's-skin, and a vest, or rather cuirass, of thick leather, which was here and there slashed by the ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... passage of arms, affair of honor; triangular duel; hostile meeting, digladiation^; deeds of arms, feats of arms; appeal to arms &c (warfare) 722. pugnacity; combativeness &c adj.; bone of contention &c 713. V. contend; contest, strive, struggle, scramble, wrestle; spar, square; exchange blows, exchange fisticuffs; fib^, justle^, tussle, tilt, box, stave, fence; skirmish; pickeer^; fight &c (war) 722; wrangle &c (quarrel) 713. contend with &c, grapple with, engage with, close with, buckle with, bandy with, try ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... of obliquity or distortion, as wry, to wreathe, wrest, wrestle, wring, wrong, wrinch, wrench, wrangle, wrinkle, wrath, wreak, wrack, ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson

... for—but away! I will not profane her name; if it were for her that I was thus sacrificing myself. I could bear it, I could welcome it. I can imagine perfect and everlasting bliss in the sole society of one single being, but she is not that being. Let me not conceal it; let me wrestle with this bitter conviction! ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli

... on all this life; but it was the result of an intellectual perception, not of a sympathetic realisation and comprehension of this throbbing reality. As for Morgan, the scene made him remember he had once tried to wrestle with political economy and had disliked it tremendously, and the ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill

... love! See how glorious the sun is on the new snow. Now isn't that more beautiful than your dreams? And see the birdies! They can't find any breakfast. Let's hurry and have our morning wrestle and dress and give them some ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll

... a great deal of talk out of you about a wrestle with Jud at Roy's tavern. Now I'm going to see if there's any stomach ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post

... has not been able yet to get his own mind back again. It is a case, they would say, of mere imagination. Could you bring Mr Carlyle into contact with a live Puritan, the charm would be instantly dispelled. If one of Harrison's troopers would but ask him to step aside with him, under a hedge, to wrestle for a blessing, or would kindly undertake to catechise him on some point of divinity,—on that notion of his, for instance, of "Right and Wrong bodying themselves into Hell and Heaven,"—the alliance would be dissolved, not, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various

... Hercules was his victory over Antaeus. Antaeus, the son of Terra (the Earth) was a mighty giant and wrestler, whose strength was invincible so long as he remained in contact with his mother Earth. He compelled all strangers who came to his country to wrestle with him, on condition that if conquered (as they all were), they should be put to death. Hercules encountered him, and finding that it was of no avail to throw him, for he always rose with renewed strength ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR

... I thought for a minute that, after all, there was a little fair play in the game—that I had a decent, fair, blue-eyed man in front of me. He looked hard at me; I hard at him; it was as if we were going to wrestle for a belt. The young girl on the bench had her lips parted and leant forward, her head a little on ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer

... the fact, that we knew so great an every-day Plato as Davy Crockett. Had the old Colonel never uttered a better idea than that everlasting good motto—"Be sure you're right, then go ahead!" his wisdom would stand a pretty good wrestle with tide and time, before his standing, as a man of genius, would pass to oblivion—be washed out in Lethe's waters. We remember hearing Col. Crockett relate, during a "speech," a short time before he lost his life at the Alamo, in Texas—a little ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley

... heart that had failed, That sister fettered and blinded brother Should have sight by thy grace and delight of each other, 100 Behold now and see What profit is given them of thee; What wrath has enkindled with madness of mind Her limbs that were bounden, his face that was blind, To be locked as in wrestle together, and lighten With fire that shall darken thy fire in the sky, Body to body and eye against eye In a war against kind, Till the bloom of her fields and her high hills whiten With the foam of his waves more high. 110 For the sea-marks set to ...
— Erechtheus - A Tragedy (New Edition) • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... the doom of Camus? Shall I die disowned, dishonoured? Shall I live, and yet be famous? Backs as strong as oxen have we, legs Herculean and bare, Legs that in the ring with Titan wrestler might to wrestle dare. Arms we have long, straight, and sinewy, Shoulders broad, necks thick and strong, Necks that to the earth-supporting Atlas might full well belong. "But our strength un-scientific strives in vain thro' ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling

... but steadily from the ashes of disappointment; even his natural humility helped him, and he told himself he had no more than his desert. Presently, with efforts the very vigour of which served as tonic to character, he began to wrestle at the granite again and resume his archaeologic studies. Speaking in general terms, his mind was notably sweetened and widened by his experience; and, resulting from his own failure to reach happiness, ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts

... the question of your culpability for the present, Bert, and wrestle with the plain facts of the case," was the way he began on me. "From what you said this morning, I was led to infer that you had some notion of trying to shift the responsibility to Mr. Geddis. I won't say that something couldn't be done along ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde

... A wrestle with mental arithmetic showed me that the draught which I had encountered nearly an hour before had cost me exactly one and a ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates

... of our Fathers, as in times past thy children, fleeing from the oppressor, found refuge beneath the earth until once more the sun of righteousness rose, so are we met to-night. As we wrestle with the powers of darkness now strangling our life, give to our souls to endure as seeing the invisible, and to our right arms the strength of the martyred dead of our people. Have mercy on the poor, the weak, the innocent and defenceless, and deliver us from the body of the Black ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon

... child; it is my duty to wrestle with sorrow. I have come to direct your thoughts to that better world, where the distinctions of caste do ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton

... yell every time a limb knocks off your hat or catches you under the chin, yell when the horse stops suddenly to browse on the twigs, and stands you meekly on your head in the bottom of the rig. You can screech and howl and yell like the wild Indian that you are; you can dive and wrestle in the piles of leaves, and cut all the crazy capers you know; for this is a Saturday; these are the wild woods and the noisy leaves; and who is there looking on besides the mocking jays and ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp

... fired rapidly on the other side of the tepee. The same inarticulate, silently rustling wrestle ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey

... really find this party, when we get around Beaufort?" Herb remarked, as they sat there, watching Josh wrestle with the broken crackers which, with the large pan of oysters, were to form the mess which, cooked as best they could over the red coals of the fire, would form the main part ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel

... we'll try again some day. I could wrestle a bit once, and learned a new trick or two from a ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts

... with flashing eyes, And art thou Satan come to us surprise?" "Much less am I and yet much more. Oh, kings of crimes and plots! your day is o'er, But I your lives will only take to-day; Beneath the talons black your souls let stay To wrestle still." ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo

... groove he was in, the family groove. He did not like it, but he was not sure he wanted to be out of it. His father had talked of individuality; Bonbright did not know if he wanted to assert his individuality. He was at sea. Unrest grappled with him blindly, urging him nowhere, seeming merely to wrestle with him aimlessly and maliciously... What was it all about, anyhow? Why was he mixed up in the struggle? Why could not he be left alone in quiet? If he had owned a definite purpose, a definite ambition, ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland

... the harvest to send forth laborers! Can we bear, dear sisters, to see the deadly wings of Satan's kingdom spread out and destroy those bought by the precious blood of Christ? Ought we not rather to wrestle like Jacob till we see the loving wings of the kingdom of the Saviour spread out, and impart life to wounded souls on every side? We hope that your waiting eyes may see greater wonders among your own people than ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary

... "I'll play any game with him that I know, or I'll jump with him, or I'll ride with him, or I'll row with him, or I'll wrestle with him, or ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Whom still I hold, but cannot see! My company before is gone, And I am left alone with Thee; With Thee all night I mean to stay, And wrestle till ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... babes, He jocund whistles through the twilight groves. * * * * * * * * * * To the deep wood the clamorous rooks repair, Light skims the swallow o'er the watery scene, And from the sheep-cotes, and fresh-furrow'd field, Stout ploughmen meet to wrestle ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary

... resolved to fly—to forsake her—to seek some desert spot in the distant parts of the world, and never to be betrayed again into human emotions! But as the bird flutters in the net, as the hare doubles from its pursuers, I did but wrestle—I did but trifle—with an irresistible doom. Mark how strange are the coincidences of fate—fate that gives us warnings and takes away the power to obey them—the idle prophetess—the juggling fiend! On the same evening that brought ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... have new sports," said the chamberlain. "The fishers come from Stege with a full band, and on their shoulders a boat with all sorts of flags.... Then they lay a board between two boats, and on this two of the youngest and spryest wrestle till one falls into the water.... But all the fun's gone now. When I was young, there was different sport going. That was a sight! the corporation procession with the banners and the harlequin atop, and at Shrovetide, when the butchers ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... naughty night notch numb often palm pitcher pitch pledge ridge right rough scene scratch should sigh sketch snatch soften stitch switch sword talk though through thought thumb tough twitch thigh walk watch whole witch would write written wrapper wring wrong wrung wrote wrestle yacht ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody

... Whether the wisdom of the State should not wrestle with this hereditary disposition of our Tartars, and with a high hand ...
— The Querist • George Berkeley

... is man, and how darkly do his own petty interests overshadow the giant things of life. Thrones may totter and fall, monarchs pass to the limbo of memories, whilst we wrestle with an intractable collar-stud. Had another than Inspector Sheffield been driving to Buckingham Palace that day, he might have found his soul attuned to the martial tone about him; for "War! War!" glared from countless placards, and was cried aloud by countless newsboys. War was in the air. ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer

... culture physical energy. Let there be more gymnasiums in our colleges and theological seminaries. Let the student know how to wield oar and bat, and in good boyish wrestle see who is the strongest. The health of mental and spiritual work often depends on physical health. If I were not opposed to betting, I would lay a wager that I can tell from the book column in any of the newspapers or magazines ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage

... dealing with a subject of this incalculable difficulty, could but lay himself open to the censure of those who dislike the revelation of the truth on any disagreeable subject. This lion, however, stood in the middle of his path, and he had either to wrestle with it or to turn back. Lord Lytton says in his preface that it was necessary to tell all or nothing of the matrimonial adventures of his grandparents, but, in reality, this was not quite the alternative, which was to ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse

... apartment, and approaching with a cup of tea that the poor invalid has barely to reach out his hand to. Round our little camp I look, noting trifles with a keen enjoyment. Shall I ever submit to that varlet again? No, never! I will leap from my bed and wrestle with him on the floor. I will anoint him with my shaving soap and duck him in the bath he meant for me. Do you know the emancipated feeling yourself? Do you know the sensation when your glance is like a sword-thrust and your health like a devil's; when just to touch ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps

... philosophers do, by vigorous striving and learning; nor, as the priests of Baal did, by cutting themselves and crying; but by schooling their souls to harmony and awaiting the moment of apprehension with what one of them has called 'a wise passiveness.' For it is not their method to wrestle with God, like Jacob, or to hold Him up with a 'Stand and deliver.' It is enough for them to be receptacles of His passing breath, as the harps abandoned and hung on willow-trees by the waters of Babylon may have caught, ...
— Poetry • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... grate, for half burned sticks and cinders were scattered about; and immediately over head, a large hole in the roof admitted the rain and cold wind, while it might, and was intended to let out the smoke. Poverty and discomfort seemed to wrestle with each other which should torment these two girls the most. And yet they looked glad and contented, and said they were so, and laughed heartily at our discomposure when we went from pan to pan, and found the milk ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross

... To this wrestling-match therefore Celia and Rosalind went. They found that it was likely to prove a very tragical sight; for a large and powerful man, who had long been practised in the art of wrestling, and had slain many men in contests of this kind, was just going to wrestle with a very young man, who, from his extreme youth and inexperience in the art, the beholders all thought would ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... street stood from two to three hundred blithe and hearty labourers waiting upon Chance—all men of the stamp to whom labour suggests nothing worse than a wrestle with gravitation, and pleasure nothing better than a renunciation of the same. Among these, carters and waggoners were distinguished by having a piece of whip-cord twisted round their hats; thatchers wore a fragment of woven ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy

... beneath one like Margaret—one who was religious as she. It requires time for religion to avail anything when self-respect is utterly broken-down. A devout sufferer may surmount the pangs of persecution at the first onset, and wrestle with bodily pain, and calmly endure bereavement by death; but there is no power of faith by which a woman can attain resignation under the agony of unrequited passion otherwise than by ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau

... it recoil upon it! That is my prayer! Now, according to custom, it would be my duty to shoot myself; but I can't, so long as I have other duties. You see, I can't even die, and so I've lost my last treasure—what, with reason, I call my religion. I've heard that man can wrestle with God, and with success; but not even job could fight against Satan. (Pause.) ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg

... billows did struggle and wrestle, Pleasant to see! Pleasant to climb the tall cliffs where the sea birds nestle, When near to thee! Nought can I now behold but the track of thy vessel Over ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy

... officials and were not for defense expenditures. Had Townshend calculated a means for arousing the ire of the colonists, he could not have chosen a better device. It was an injustice that Townshend died suddenly before he had to wrestle with the consequence of ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education

... draws near. Sometime in the night will come the jingle of silver bells, and the patter of tiny hoofs. Old Santa will halloo: "Whoa!" and come sliding down the chimney. The drowsing heads, fuddled with weariness, wrestle clumsily with the problem, "How is he to get through the stove without burning himself?" Reason falters and Faith triumphs. It would be done somehow, and then the reindeer would fly to the next house, and the next, and so on, and so on. The mystic hour draws near. Like a tidal wave it rolls around ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood

... often came to the farmhouse to romp and wrestle with the bear-cub. Nothing pleased him more than a rough-and-tumble, and he was quite an expert wrestler, once he learned how ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes

... be the one to cool first," said Henchard grimly. "Now this is the case. Here be we, in this four-square loft, to finish out that little wrestle you began this morning. There's the door, forty foot above ground. One of us two puts the other out by that door—the master stays inside. If he likes he may go down afterwards and give the alarm that the other has fallen out by accident—or he may tell the truth—that's ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy

... could secure no diversion by plunging into the tunnel, giving up his mind to his work. He could not now take down his gun and tramp the ditch. Now he was supine, and the longing to break through the mesh, wrestle free from the complication, gripped him and racked him with ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris

... left to the caprice of individuals, was controlled and regulated by the state. The women, in the first place, were trained by physical exercise for the healthy performance of the duties of motherhood; they were taught to run and wrestle naked, like the youths, to dance and sing in public, and to associate freely with men. Marriage was permitted only in the prime of life; and a free intercourse, outside its limits, between healthy men and women, was encouraged and approved by public opinion. ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson

... pity that it should not be for ever. Well, sir, this Kuno was one day in fault, and Otto, who has a quick temper, up with his whip and thrashed him, they do say, soundly. Kuno took it as best he could, but at last he broke out, and dared the Prince to throw his whip away and wrestle like a man; for we are all great at wrestling in these parts, and it's so that we generally settle our disputes. Well, sir, the Prince did so; and, being a weakly creature, found the tables turned; for the man whom he had just been thrashing like a negro slave, lifted him with ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson

... he found his way to his room and began a wrestle with his "store" clothes. Before the fight was over he was being reminded through the door that he wasn't roping a steer, and everybody was waiting. At the last moment he discovered that he had neglected to buy shoes. There ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead

... memorable Crome passage: "A living master? Why, there he comes! thou hast had him long, he has long guided thy young hand towards the excellence which is yet far from thee, but which thou canst attain if thou shouldst persist and wrestle, even as he has done, midst gloom and despondency—ay, and even contempt; he who now comes up the creaking stair to thy little studio in the second floor to inspect thy last effort before thou ...
— Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration - Norwich, July 5th, 1913 • James Hooper

... drilled Grimly: by stern command and strength of sword He forced obedience where he fixed a law. For ages long against men's stubborn minds, With give and take, the bold Plantagenets Kept up the drill. At length the race, now grown By constant wrestle into thews of power, Moved calm with strength beneath the Tudor's sway. And then a Northern Stuart wore their crown, Whose son, unmindful he was over men Truth-lovers, lied to them and lost his head; For Puritans held no respect for lies. Next flared Charles Satyr's saturnalia ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner

... but there is a very frequent attitude suggestive of wrestling practice—perhaps because these would-be boomers have muddled things, and are thinking of the wrestling lion. Personally, I am not anxious either to box or to wrestle with a kangaroo; for the beast has a plaguey unpleasant hind foot, armed with a claw like a marline-spike, and a most respectable ability to kick a hole in a stranger with it. It is a kind of weapon that ordinary boxing and wrestling systems don't allow for, and not at all an ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... married life, and how, in spite of his words of almost impassioned tenderness and onwillingness for me to harm and strain myself by approachin' the political pole—still how he had let me wrestle with weighty hop-poles and draw water out of a deep well with a cistern ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley

... inquiringly at me, but I was serene. I thought that if I chanced to make any mistakes, he would not catch me by my countenance. He said he would rather have my custom than any man's in town. I said, "All right," and started off to wrestle with my great subject again, when he called me back and said it would be necessary to know exactly how many "points" I wanted put up, what parts of the house I wanted them on, and what quality of rod I preferred. It was close ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... you would say, 'wonderful.' How I should like to hear you say it! There are things which in all my years of practice, I have never met before. How could I meet them? It has taken this generation of doctors to wrestle with the problem of treating men tortured by gas, and with nerves shaken by sights and sounds without parallel in the history ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey

... who dwelt in the land of Hesperus, the Evening Star, and, together with a dragon, guarded the golden tree in a beautiful garden. Hercules made a long journey, apparently round by the north, and on his way had to wrestle with a dreadful giant named Antaeus. Though thrown down over and over again, Antaeus rose up twice as strong every time, till Hercules found out that he grew in force whenever he touched his mother earth, and therefore, lifting him up in those mightiest of arms, the hero squeezed the breath ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various

... is not always possible Still to preserve that infant purity Which the voice teaches in our inmost heart. Still in alarm, for ever on the watch Against the wiles of wicked men, e'en Virtue 210 Will sometimes bear away her outward robes Soiled in the wrestle with Iniquity. This is the curse of every evil deed, That, propagating still, it brings forth evil. I do not cheat my better soul with sophisms: 215 I but perform my orders; the Emperor Prescribes my conduct to me. Dearest ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... ministers, to which it is by no means easy to adjust the mind. Our message in modern times is addressed to the individual; but the message of the prophets was addressed to the nation. The unit in our minds is always the soul; we warn every man to flee from the wrath to come; we reason and wrestle with him in the name of Heaven; we watch over the growth of his character; and we estimate our success by the number of individuals brought into the kingdom. In the prophets there is a complete absence of all this. They are no less in earnest; their aim is equally ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker

... immediately to endless journeyings. The bulls, excited by so much company forced on their accustomed solitary habit, roared defiance at each other until the air fairly trembled. Occasionally two would clash foreheads. Then the powerful animals would push and wrestle, trying for a chance to gore. The decision of supremacy was a question of but a few minutes, and a bloody topknot the worst damage. The defeated one side-stepped hastily and clumsily out of reach, and ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White

... frolic like big boys. Benten plays the guitar, and Bishamon lies down on the floor resting with his elbows to hear it. Hotei drinks wine out of a shallow red cup as wide as a dinner plate. Daikoku and Fukuroku Jin begin to wrestle, and when Daikoku gets his man down, he pounds his big head with an empty gourd while Toshitoku and Ebisu begin to eat tai fish. When this fun is over, Benten and Fukuroku Jin play a game of checkers, while the others look on and bet; except Hotei the ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis

... than myself to me thy weal! My love would never wound, it seeks to heal. I see thee wrestle with thy deep distress Alone—unless Severus bring redress; His merit, that once gained thy maiden heart, Hath still that worth when I from thee must part, Once loved—and loving still—his ...
— Polyuecte • Pierre Corneille

... the tents disgorged their inmates, and the human hive began to hum; then came the fight, the maneuvering, the desperate wrestle with Nature, and the keen fencing with their fellows—in short, the battle—to which, that nothing might be wanting, out burst the tremendous artillery of ten thousand cradles louder than thunder, and roaring and crashing without ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade

... disperse, Though I be ashes,—a far hour shall wreak The deep prophetic fulness of this verse, And pile on human heads the mountain of my curse. That curse shall be forgiveness. Have I not,— Hear me, my Mother Earth! behold it, Heaven,— Have I not had to wrestle with my lot? Have I not suffered things to be forgiven? Have I not had my brain seared, my heart riven, Hopes sapped, name blighted, life's life lied away, And only not to desperation driven, Because not ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... made at a little distance from our post, and Tinah and several other chiefs came to meet me. When we were all seated the heiva began by women dancing; after which a present of cloth and a tawme or breastplate was laid before me. This ceremony being over the men began to wrestle and regularity was no longer preserved. Old Otow came to me and desired I would help to put a stop to the wrestling as the people came from different districts, some of which were ill disposed towards others. What ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh

... went to a great field outside the city gates where the games were to be held. There was a beautiful canopy for Ozma and her guests to sit under and watch the people run races and jump and wrestle. You may be sure the folks of Oz did their best with such a distinguished company watching them, and finally Zeb offered to wrestle with a little Munchkin who seemed to be the champion. In appearance he was twice as old as Zeb, for ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.

... lay two great loaves and a little breaker of water. Now I could not tell, and do not know even to this day, what kindly man hid these things for us, but I blessed him for his charity, for now our case was better than Lodbrok's in two ways, that we had no raging gale and sea to wrestle against, and the utmost pangs of hunger and thirst we were not to feel. Three days and two nights had he been on his voyage. We might be a day longer with this breeze, but the bread, at least, we need not touch till tomorrow. ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler

... was loaded and freshly primed, and I knew myself to be even now a match in strength for any two men of the size around our neighbourhood, except in the Glen Doone. "Girt Jan Ridd," I was called already, and folk grew feared to wrestle with me; though I was tired of hearing about it, and often longed to be smaller. And most of all upon Sundays, when I had to make way up our little church, and the maidens ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... when its efforts towards what is brave and generous and the honors and caresses that accrue therefrom are now in their consummate vigor this life's duration cannot limit them, but the desire of glory and the love of mankind grasp at whole eternity, and wrestle with such actions and charms as bring with them an ineffable pleasure, and such as good men, though never so fain, cannot decline, they meeting and accosting them on all sides and surrounding them about, while their being beneficial to ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... have lived a great deal among the people and observed them, and have often seen anger and quarrelling, but never fighting. Indeed, when their anger lasts long, they sit down together. The children never wrestle or pull each other about, either in sport or earnest. I only once saw two boys engaged in earnest quarrel, when one of them so far forgot himself as to give the other a box on the ear, but he did this as carefully as if he received the blow himself. The boy who was struck drew his sleeve over ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer

... uncivilized almost any envied possession is taken by brute force or superior strength. The same is true in obtaining a wife. The strong take precedence of the weak. It is said that among the North American Indians it was the custom for men to wrestle for the choice of women. A weak man could seldom retain a wife that a strong ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols

... by chance Freneli had brought food for the hogs and had seen Uli's victory. In the house she told her godmother that she had seen something that tickled her. They had wanted to give Uli a beating; he had had to wrestle with them, but he was a match for them all. He had thrown the hairy milker on his back as if he had never stood up. She was glad that he could manage them all; then they would be afraid of him and respect him. But Uli, interrupted in his examination ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various



Words linked to "Wrestle" :   contend, debate, grapple, struggle, moot, consider, battle, move, combat, wrench, mud-wrestle, fight, turn over, deliberate



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