"Delve" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and this fact possibly rendered him all the more interesting to one whose business it had always been to solve mysteries. I do not mean by that that I had ever made any effort to delve into the secrets of Saberevski's past, or to read without his knowledge and consent, any portion of that history which he kept so carefully veiled; but the mere fact that an air of mystery did pervade his presence, imparted to him a certain fascinating quality which might not ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... be practicable, should have a small plot of ground to cultivate, that he may dig and delve in, and make dirt-pies if he choose. Children now-a-days, unfortunately, are not allowed to soil their hands and their fine clothes. For my own part, I dislike such model children; let a child be natural—let him, as far as is possible, choose his own sports. Do not be ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... grave. At times the honest fellow would speak hopefully of a good day to come; but I poured cold water on that, and, pointing to my lute and my copy of "Plutarch's Lives," was wont to say that there was enough happiness there for my life without seeking to reopen the past or delve into the future. ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... like every individual; anation must be able to give to itself an account of the moral justification of a war in which it is to sacrifice everything that is most dear to man. And that is the greatest blessing of the late war, that every German, however deep he may delve in his heart, can say without a qualm or a quiver, "The German people did not wish for war, nor for conquest. We wanted peace and freedom in our internal development. Another nation or rather its ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... lest thou come back to me and say, 'Sooth thou hast spoken in thy speech, O my mother!" However Zayn al-Asnam took up a pickaxe and, descending to that part of the palace where his sire lay entombed, began to dig and to delve; nor had he worked a long while[FN19] ere, lo and behold! there appeared to him a ring bedded in a marble slab. He removed the stone and saw a ladder-like flight of steps whereby he descended until he found a huge souterrain all pillar'd and propped with columns of marble ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... the impulse which brought Miss Mary Davis to Bainbridge at this particular time would be to delve too deeply into the complex psychology of that lady. But we shall not be far wrong if we sum up the ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... idea years ago. Alfred had no idea of who Claudius was, or how long ago he lived. However, when he located him four hundred years back, the old professor said "Huh, four hundred years ago? H-ll! Four thousand years." Alfred did not delve ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... a man "at last, through murmuring and despair, to thoughts of Atheism." But was there no remedy? Ah! in the very power of putting this question lay the advantage of the strong man over the weak Oxfordshire girl. He could reason, he could delve into the subject, he could revolve it intellectually. What if the plight in which he found himself were no necessary and irremediable evil? What if the permanence of marriage once contracted between two persons utterly unsuitable ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... straw chair with a pipe between his teeth, the memories of good evenings at Yale curling up in his smoke. And Tootles, thinking and thinking, sat, Puck-like, at his feet, with her warm shoulders against his knees. Not in her memory could she delve for pleasant things, not yet. Eh, but some day she might be among the lucky ones, if—if her ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... snuff-box of Mr. L. has not a less imposing air; and when a high-priced book is balancing between 15l. and 20l. it is a fearful signal of its reaching an additional sum, if Mr. L. should lay down his hammer, and delve into ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... Behind or on the right bank of Elbe, it is mere intrenchment for five-and-twenty miles. With bogs, with thickets full of Croats; and such an amount of artillery,—I believe they have in battery no fewer than 1,500 cannon. A position very considerable indeed:—must have taken time to deliberate, delve and invest; but it is done. Near fifty miles of it: here, clear to your glass, has the head of Lacy visibly emerged on us, as if for survey of phenomena:—head of Lacy sure enough (body of him lying invisible ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... from that point you cannot find any gold. Your breath comes short and quick, you are feverish with excitement; the dinner-bell may ring its clapper off, you pay no attention; friends may die, weddings transpire, houses burn down, they are nothing to you; you sweat and dig and delve with a frantic interest—and all at once you strike it! Up comes a spadeful of earth and quartz that is all lovely with soiled lumps and leaves and sprays of gold. Sometimes that one spadeful is all—$500. Sometimes the nest contains $10,000, and it takes ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... treadmill existence. Multitudes of necessity toil in the stithy and deep mine. Multitudes must accustom themselves to odors offensive to the nostril. Men toil from morning till night midst the din of machinery from which the ear revolts. Myriads dig and delve, and scorn their toil. He who spends all his years sliding pins into a paper, finds his growth in manhood threatened. Others are stranded midway in life. Recently the test exhibition of a machine was successful, and those present gave the inventor heartiest congratulations. But one man was present ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... dyke and delve, For Cristes sake, for every poure wight, Withouten hire, if it lay ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... cares, children here are millionaires, Laughter take for baggage and give your laugh a song; We must sail the seas of grass, round the isles of clover pass, And delve in leagues of shadowland, when clouds ...
— Ballads of Peace in War • Michael Earls
... contents will be nearly invisible for dust? No. Much of what is going through the press on the subject of pottery will have its use as promoting the advancement and clearing up the history of fictile art, and will therefore be preserved, while a larger portion will interest only the few who delve into the records of human caprice and whim. Even these will not particularly care to know or remember what factory-brand was borne by the teapots and saucers of our grandmothers, and what Staffordshire modeller or woodcutter was responsible for ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... exist as desires for ends, but in a subconscious part of the mind, which the patient refuses to admit into consciousness for fear of having to think ill of himself. There are no doubt many cases to which such a supposition is applicable without obvious artificiality. But the deeper the Freudians delve into the underground regions of instinct, the further they travel from anything resembling conscious desire, and the less possible it becomes to believe that only positive self-deception conceals from us ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... the capital on hand? There sits our 'admiral,' with money enough in that basket to start the whole business. Set Wolfgang to manage, and the rest of us to dig and delve. More'n one here has tried mining for a yellower metal than this"—holding up the bit of copper—"'twould do us proud to give the first pick to ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... Dilettanti crew Now delegate the task to digging Gell? That mighty limner of a bird's-eye view, How like to Nature let his volumes tell; Who can with him the folio's limits swell With all the Author saw, or said he saw? Who can topographise or delve so well? No boaster he, nor impudent and raw, His pencil, pen, and shade, alike without ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... findes Mammon in a delve{1} Sunning his threasure hore{2}; Is by him tempted, and led downe To see his ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... began to trace it back and found that it began in the door of a pioneer log cabin; and oh, what do you think, Claribel, the two ancestors we are proudest of, the ones we all quote the oftenest, and plume ourselves the most on being their descendants, had to dig and delve for everything they got. Old Mrs. Carter told me so this morning." She pointed to the two portraits that headed the long line. "Now if sister makes any objections to our plans, I'll just refer her to the first of the grandmammas who made our hospitality proverbial, ...
— Cicely and Other Stories • Annie Fellows Johnston
... for that. Electricity and subways and motor cars do not restore the soul; and to know that there are millions upon millions of solar systems, like our own, scattered through space does not restore the soul; and to delve in the sea or to fly in the air or to fling our words through the ether does not restore the soul. The need of religion is perennial and would be though our scientific control over life were extended infinitely beyond ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... Ah me! how is that rugged heart forlorn! Is there, who ne'er those mystic transports felt, Of solitude and melancholy born? He needs not woo the Muse; he is her scorn. The sophist's rope of cobweb he shall twine; Mope o'er the schoolman's peevish page; or mourn, And delve for life, in Mammon's dirty mine; Sneak with the scoundrel fox, or grunt ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... be done for those braw fellows. They canna ditch and delve like an Irish peasant. It would be like harnessing stags in ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... Railroad, is back in town again. Somehow, I haven't much confidence in that fellow. I think I'll wire the San Francisco office to look him up in Dun's and Bradstreet's. Folks up this way are taking too much for granted on that fellow's mere say— so, but I for one intend to delve for facts—particularly with regard to the N.C.O. bank-roll and Ogilvy's associates. I'd sleep a whole lot more soundly to-night if I knew the answer to ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... discourse of their choicest, hear Lincoln at Gettysburg and Pericles at Athens, storm the Bastile with Hugo, and wander through Paradise with Dante. You may explore darkest Africa with Stanley, penetrate the human heart with Shakespeare, chat with Carlyle about heroes, and delve with the Apostle Paul into the mysteries of faith. The general knowledge and the inspiring ideas that men have collected through ages of toil and experiment are yours for the asking. The Sage of Chelsea was right: "The ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... give notice. After I had helped her clean the kitchen and the pantry I noticed an expression of deepest pity overspreading her lumpy features. The expression became almost one of agony as she watched me roll out some noodles for soup, and delve into the sticky mysteries of a ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... that he narrowly escaped drowning. This was probably the same miraculous power love employs in youth to laugh at locksmiths; it is the inherent wisdom of the passion deeper than our philosophy can delve; it warns at times, and then again it will save without warning, strangely leading us to the post ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... we are here, are you going to stretch me on the rack and delve for my opinions on all sorts of subjects? is Miss Susan there going to take them down in shorthand on her cuff and you make a report to Dartrey when he ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... necessary to delve deeply into the characters of these citizens of Forks. It is not good to rake bad soil, the process is always offensive. A mere outline is alone necessary. Ike Carney purveyed liquor. A little man with quick, cunning eyes, and a mouth that shut tight under a close-cut fringe ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... most precious of all metals, for which men delve and starve and toil and die, still lies hidden in immeasurable masses, in unsuspected places, screened perhaps by a thin sheeting of earth, over which thousands have tramped, never dreaming of the boundless ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... one-sided aspect of life and human nature, to which his own individual personal experience, however varied, must necessarily limit him. He would see it under greater varieties, under all varieties of conditions. He would know the history of it; he would 'delve it to the root.' He would know how that particular form of it, which he found on the surface in his time, had come to be the thing he found it. He would know what it had been in other times, in the beginning, or in that stage of its development in which the historic ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... live, is suddenly thrown back into its old position by the exhumation of some 'decision' from the dust of ages, made by some judge away back in the olden times, resurrected by the research of some antiquarian lawyer, who loves to delve among the rubbish of past generations. The learning, the wisdom, the philosophy of the present is discarded, and the spirits of a lower civilization are conjured from the darkness of vanished centuries, to settle rules for the government of commerce, personal conduct, ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... there was something more than mere casual speculation in Stubby's words. But he did not attempt to delve into motives. ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... called upon to labor from morning to night, to dig and delve, and to stand up to their hips in water washing the river sands. They were forced to change their habits and their food, and from free and, in their own way, happy masters of the soil they became the slaves of a handful of ruthless ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... eternally. The change from a toiling body and idle mind to an idle body and toiling mind requires time to make the latter condition unirksome. Happily there was small need to delve at learning. His brain was like that of a healthy wild animal freshly captured from nature. And as such an animal learns to snap at flung bits of food, springing to meet them and sinking back on his haunches keen-eyed for more; so mentally he caught at the lessons prepared for ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... in fact, it would be well nowadays if the split eagle were as firm as Mrs. Primmins! As for the canary, it never failed to respond, by an astonished chirp, to every "Gracious me!" and "Lord save us!" which the delve into a rut, or the bump out of it, sent forth from Mrs. Primmins's lips, with all the emphatic dolor of the "Ai, ai!" ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... blacksmith, will appear to you in glory like the blessed spirits in paradise. What radiance surrounds the forge! To guide the plough, to bind the sheaves, is joy. The bark at liberty in the wind, what delight! Do you, lazy idler, delve, drag on, roll, march! Drag your halter. You are a beast of burden in the team of hell! Ah! To do nothing is your object. Well, not a week, not a day, not an hour shall you have free from oppression. You will be able to lift nothing without anguish. Every minute that passes ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... spoke up, "I hadn't said a word about makin' 'em fight. Hawes, these women folks don't want a man to have no fun at all. As long as a man is at work it's all right with the women; they can stand to see him delve till he drops, but the minit he wants to have a little fun, why, they begin to mowl about it. Of course, I'm not goin' to let 'em fight on Sunday. But a preacher would eat one of 'em on Sunday. All days belong to 'em. It's die dog or eat the hatchet ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... have happened as the law of triumphs enjoins, about which Dio Cocceianus writes. And if it seems to you an irksome thing to delve into books of ancient writers, at all events I will explain cursorily, as best I may, the entertainments pertaining to the triumph. They cause the celebrator of the triumph to ascend a car, smear his face with earth of Sinope or cinnabar (representing blood) to screen his blushes, fasten ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... sayers! sing on, singers! Delve! mould! pile the words of the earth! Work on, age after age, nothing is to be lost, It may have to wait long, but it will certainly come in use, When the materials are all prepared and ready, the architects ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... at least boast of a bold art and literature which delve deeply into the social and sexual problems of our time, exercising a severe critique of all our shams. As with a surgeon's knife every Puritanic carcass is dissected, and the way thus cleared for man's liberation from the dead weights of the past. But with Puritanism ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... and we talk of woe - We delve in books, and waste our forces so; We cling to creeds that were not meant to stay, And close our ears to Truth's immortal lay. Oh wouldst thou see, and understand, and know? 'Only be still, and ...
— Poems of Experience • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... sketch it in the rough. When I sit down to write upon any theme, like that of my "Cosmopolitan" article last April ("What Life Means to Me," 1906), or of my various papers on animal intelligence, I do not know what I have to say on the subject till I delve into my mind and see what I find there. The writing is like fishing or hunting, or sifting the sand for gold—I am never sure of what I shall find. All I want is a certain feeling, a bit of leaven, which I seem to refer to some place in my chest—not my heart, but to a point above that and ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... descendants, who are not historians and are not carried away by the process of research and can therefore regard the event with unclouded common sense, an incalculable number of causes present themselves. The deeper we delve in search of these causes the more of them we find; and each separate cause or whole series of causes appears to us equally valid in itself and equally false by its insignificance compared to the magnitude of the events, and by its impotence—apart from the cooperation of all the ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... from June to January, before onybody will say, 'Hae, puir man, there's a kirk.' And if no kirk casts up—which is more nor likely—what can a young probationer turn his hand to? He had learned no trade, so he can neither work nor want. He daurna dig nor delve, even, though he were able, or he would be hauled by the cuff of the neck before his betters in the General Assembly, for having the impudence to go for to be so bold as dishonour the cloth; and though he may get his bit orra half-a-guinea whiles, for holding forth ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... who delight to delve among pedigrees, genealogies and family connections, may perhaps be a little disappointed to learn that, in spite of the odorous nature of the herbs, there are none whose history reveals a skeleton in the closet. They are all harmless. Now ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains
... little school girls leaping out to delve; One leaped into Cole's Book Arcade, And then there were ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... and thought of the complications of the present amazed him with proof of how far he had drifted from his old life. He discovered that he hated to take up the broken threads, to delve into dark problems and difficulties. In this beautiful valley he had been living a beautiful dream. Tranquillity had come to him, and the joy of solitude, and interest in all the wild creatures and crannies of this incomparable valley—and love. ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... excavation, pit, perforation, rent, fissure, opening, aperture, delve, cache, concavity, mortise, puncture, orifice, eyelet, crevice, loophole, interstice, gap, spiracle, vent, bung, pothole, manhole, scuttle, scupper, muset, muse; cave, holt, den, lair, retreat, cover, hovel, burrow. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... day's work he heard the Troll Hammer and delve in the quarry's hole; Before him the church stood large and fair: "I have builded my tomb," ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... petrified blood of victims which stained a ledge of porphyry when it ran down the mountain side in torrents, an awful sacrifice to the ancient idols of lust and ignorance. A kindly warning to you, fellow-prospectors and miners, who delve in the vitals of Mother Earth! Beware Thumb Butte, beware the district of the Sphinx! Have a care, for you know not what you may encounter in this mystic neighborhood! Shun strange gods and set up no idols in your hearts, as you value the ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... said Efficiency. "I think I have now at any rate an idea of the Elementary Principles of Flight, and I don't know that I care to delve much deeper, for sums always give me a headache; but isn't there something about Stability and Control? Don't you think I ought to have a glimmering ...
— The Aeroplane Speaks - Fifth Edition • H. Barber
... industrious, thrifty, hard-working man should marry a woman tolerably saving and industrious. As the "almighty dollar" is now the great motor-wheel of humanity, and that to which most husbands devote their entire lives to delve alone is uphill work. ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... almost curtly, in a quick, incisive way, as the keen, alert brain began to delve and probe: "You say this man Clarke never returned to the house ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... time in beginning his operations. As he had said, the chief need was a fire extinguishing chemical solution or powder. Tom resolved to try the solution first, as it was easier to make. With this end in view he proceeded to delve into old and new chemistry books. He also sought the ...
— Tom Swift among the Fire Fighters - or, Battling with Flames from the Air • Victor Appleton
... must translate the bubbling fountain and the eruption of Vesuvius; must be able to interpret the whisper of the zephyr and the diapason of the forest; must be able to hear music in the chirp of the cricket as well as in the oratorios; must be able to delve into the recesses of the mine and scale the mountain tops; must know the heart throbs of Little Nell as well as of Cicero and Demosthenes; must be able to see the processions of history from the cradle of the ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... my shoe; Three, four, Shut the door; Five, six, Pick up sticks; Seven, eight, Lay them straight; Nine, ten, A good fat hen; Eleven, twelve, Who will delve? Thirteen, fourteen, Maids a courting; Fifteen, sixteen, Maids a kissing; Seventeen, eighteen, Maids a waiting; ...
— Phebe, The Blackberry Girl • Edward Livermore
... and soil, her mountains and streams, and her precious metals. They tell you that she is filled with the basis of all material prosperity, with gold, silver, lead and iron: but greatness can not come from material resources alone—it must come from the people who till and delve. Utah is great because her people are great. When she has centuries behind her she will make a splendid showing because she has started right. She has given to that part of the people who instinctively know what ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... in the mines of dark and silent thought Sometimes I delve and find strange fancies there, With heavy labour to the surface brought That lie and mock me in the brighter air, Poor ores from starved lodes of poverty, Unfit for working or to be refined, That in the darkness cheat the miner's eye, I turn away from ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... poor man, it might peradventure be conceded thee, to thy shame who hast so ill known to put a servant of thine and a man of worth in good case; yet poverty bereaveth not any of gentilesse; nay, rather, wealth it is that doth this. Many kings, many great princes were once poor and many who delve and tend ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... The farther we delve into this system of illusory compromises between monopoly and society,—that is, as we have explained in % 1 of this chapter, between capital and labor, between the patriciate and the proletariat,—the more we discover that it is all foreseen, regulated, and executed in accordance ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... will get into our cheeks and their rich subacid juices into our insipid lives, constituting a mental, moral, and physical alterative that will so change us that we shall believe in evolution and imagine ourselves fit for a higher state of existence. One may delve in the earth so long as to lose all dread at the thought of sleeping in it at last; and the luscious fruits and bright-hued flowers that come out of it, in a way no one can find out, may teach our own resurrection more effectually ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... public necessity or the tyranny of the old lords, it is all the same; we are condemned to dig the soil forever. There, where we are born, there we dig it, that earth! and spade it, and manure it, and delve in it, for you who are born rich just as we are born poor. The masses will always be what they are, and stay what they are. The number of us who manage to rise is nothing like the number of you who topple down! We know that well enough, if we have no education! You mustn't be after us with your ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... faithfully, as a friend that waited his return. He is stronger now, but no less delicate; he loves not Nature less, but the world more. He has learned to love his fellow-men. Knut Pedersen, vagabond, wanders about the country with his tramp-companions, Grindhusen, the painter who can ditch and delve at a pinch, or Falkenberg, farm-labourer in harvest-time, and piano-tuner where pianos are. Here is brave comradeship, the sharing of adventures, the ready wit of jovial vagrants. The book is a harmless picaresque, a geste of innocent rogue-errantry; ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... I don't want to delve into a lot of past history at this time, but I've got to talk ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... along the Sierra of the Andes from Chili to the Isthmus of Panama. As Cornish men we should adopt the specialty of our province, and become miners. The Andes mountains will give us that opportunity, where, instead of gray tin, we may delve for yellow gold. What ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... with rugged, meagre, rust-stained, weather-worried face, Where care-filled creatures tug and delve to keep a worthless race; And glean, begrudgedly, by all their unremitting toil, Sour, scanty bread and fevered water from the ungrateful soil; Made harder by their gloom than flints that gash their harried hands, And harder in the things they call their hearts than wolfish bands, Perpetuating ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... at last, although obliged to switch on the lights before this was accomplished. The reflection of himself in the pier glass quite met his deliberate approval, and he glanced inquiringly at his watch, rather eager to delve deeper into this adventure. It was a few moments of seven, and she would undoubtedly be waiting for him in the hall below. He descended the broad stairs, conscious of a thrill of expectancy; nor was he ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... humanity strives to feel in this contact of living Nations and sleeping hordes a thrill of new life in the world, crying, "If the contact of Life and Sleep be Death, shame on such Life." To be sure, behind this thought lurks the afterthought of force and dominion,—the making of brown men to delve when the temptation of beads and red ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... flag office store-room, which to get into he had only to lift a hatch in the deck under his revolving chair and let himself drop, he had a young library, which after-hours he, used to delve into for anybody's or everybody's benefit. He was particularly strong on folk-lore, and could dig up a few fat volumes any time on the folk-lore of any nation we had ever heard of. He liked to lie flat on the coffer-dam to ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly
... belief are giving way to a greater knowledge of law. The supernatural recedes into the background as we delve deeper into the supernormal. The unusual loses its miraculous element as we gain knowledge of the law whereby the thing is done. We are realising that no miracle has ever been performed in the world's history ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... two chairmen, with infinite satisfaction to the audience. When a high price book is balancing between L15 and L20, it is a fearful sign of its reaching an additional sum if Mr. Leigh should lay down his hammer and delve into this said crumple-horn-shaped snuff-box.' The style of the firm was for many years Leigh, Sotheby and Son. In 1803-4 a removal to 145, Strand, opposite Catherine Street, was made. John Sotheby died ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... thus from childhood's hour! My fondest hopes would not decay; I never loved a tree or flower Which was the first to fade away! The garden, where I used to delve Short-frock'd, still yields me pinks in plenty; The pear-tree that I climbed at twelve I ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... drink"; the sailor fresh from frays in the Channel; the buxom wife of Bath; the broad-shouldered miller; the haberdasher, carpenter, weaver, dyer, tapestry-maker, each in the livery of his craft; and last the honest ploughman who would dyke and delve for the poor without hire. It is the first time in English poetry that we are brought face to face not with characters or allegories or reminiscences of the past, but with living and breathing men, men distinct in temper ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... performance of that time was coarse, vulgar and destitute of humor. But your suggestion that you and your family found humor in it twenty-eight years ago moved me to look into the matter. So I commissioned a Boston typewriter to delve among the Boston papers of that bygone time and send ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... before Christ. Artists of the middle of the sixteenth century always depict Jeanne d'Arc in the armour and costume of their own time, wholly unlike those of 1430. This is the regular rule. Late rhapsodists would not delve in the archaeology of the Mycenaean prime. Indeed, one does not see how they could discover, in Asia, that corslets were not worn, five centuries earlier, on the ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... feede on carefulnesse, To ditche, to delve, and labour for my bread, Nay rather choose to begge from doore to doore, Then condiscend to offer violence To young Pertillo in his innocence. I know you speake, to sound what mightie share ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... to appear, and then boldly claim your rights. Arthur Ferris will probably be back in New York City in charge, and Worthington will yield rather than have the world, his beloved daughter, and all society know of his inward baseness. I shall delve further into the old records, under pretense of following up the title to our purchase. Perhaps we may even now unearth other ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... the lazy autumn days, the living creatures seem for a time to have taken themselves completely beyond our ken, it may be interesting to delve among old records and descriptions of animals and see how the names by which we know them first came to be given. Many of our English names have an unsuspected ancestry, which, through past centuries, has been handed down to us through many changes of ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... Laval University can testify. The edition of Champlain's works, by the Abbe Laverdiere for some years librarian of Laval, is a most creditable example of critical acumen and typographical skill. In the same field there is much yet to be explored by the zealous antiquarian who has the patience to delve among the accumulations of matter that are hidden in Canadian and European archives. This is a work, however, which can be best done by the State; and it is satisfactory to know that something has been attempted of late years in this direction by the Canadian Government—the collection ...
— The Intellectual Development of the Canadian People • John George Bourinot
... name "Wellfleet" has always been a source of lively interest to those who delight to delve to the roots of things historical. So many of our early towns in Massachusetts were named by the Englishmen who settled them for English towns familiar to them before they came oversea, that England is the natural source from whence such a Saxon-English ...
— Cape Cod and All the Pilgrim Land, June 1922, Volume 6, Number 4 • Various
... had feared and hated him and hoped for the day when he might sneer in his face and defy him. This was the time, and yet he felt Hicks had something to offer. He was in temporary charge of millions. There should be, there must be, some way to make this control permanent or else to delve into these millions while they were in his care. As Hicks hinted, this was an opportunity and he needed not brains, but rather experience and advice. Owen had been a rascal on a short time, why not take a partner like this man Hicks? ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... of Prudence's golden summer. She was not given to self-analysis. She did what seemed good to her always,—she did not delve down below the surface for reasons why and wherefore. She hadn't the time. She took things as they came. She could not bear the thought of sharing with the parsonage family even the least ardent and most ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... company, we have fresh confirmation of an old truth—that the boundary lines which mark off one field of science from another are purely artificial, are set up only for temporary convenience. The chemist has only to dig deep enough to find that the physicist and himself occupy common ground. "Delve from the surface of your sphere to its heart, and at once your radius joins every other." Even the briefest glance at electro-chemistry should pause to acknowledge its profound debt to the new theories as to the bonding of atoms to form molecules, and ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... you love me, delve a tomb, And lay me there the earth beneath; After a year, come see my bones, And make them dice to play therewith. But when you're tired of that game, Then throw those dice into the flame; But when you're tired of gaming free, Then throw those ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... solution. If to make a gentleman one must begin with his grandfather, surely to make a poet one must begin with the race, and in poems even of such bulk as the Prelude one does not find a complete analysis of the singer's forbears. In only one case do we delve far into a poet's heredity. He who will, may perchance hear Sordello's story told, even from his remote ancestry, but to the untutored reader the only clear point regarding heredity is the fusion in Sordello of the restless energy and acumen of his father, Taurello, ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... might have bread. The strong men said: "O Lords of the Bread, feel our thews and sinews, our arms and our legs; see how strong we are. Take us and use us. Let us dig for you. Let us hew for you. Let us go down in the mine and delve for you. Let us freeze and starve in the forecastles of your ships. Send us into the hells of your steamship stokeholes. Do what you will with us, but let us serve you, that we ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... hard. To love so much, to suffer so much. You see I am desponding; I am often desponding. You must write to me and cheer me up. I am disappointed in myself. Oh how different this monotonous life from the life I planned! I dig and delve and my joy comes in my work. If it did not, where would it come in, pray? I am a joyless fellow at best. There! I will not write another word until I can give you a word of cheer. Why don't you toss me overboard? Your life is full of cheer and hard work; but I cannot be like you. Marjorie and ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... knowledge; but to put his pupil through a course of mental calisthenics, miscalled education. But even this is by no means to be despised. With mind strengthened by exercise, even in a desert, and lungs developed by football, the youth may be able to delve the harder for knowledge when happily released from the "gerund-grinder," to pray the more lustily to the immortal gods for understanding, which transmutes what were else base metal into ingots of fine gold. There was a time ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... it," asserted Ferris. "It was no doubt organized for the sole purpose of bidding on this job. Probably when you delve into the matter you will discover the fine Italian ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... my own freshman days. I fell into the hands of such an instructor in Greek. We were reading that most charming of Greek stories—The Odyssey. Textual criticism was this man's hobby, and we were put to work trying to compare texts, to delve into the intricacies of form and structure—trying to improve upon Homer! Such information as we could not find he gave us, in the formal lecture, day after day. But when we got it, we did not want it because we ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... "I don't intend to delve, grub, shuck corn, split rails, and the like always," he told Mrs. Crawford after he had finished reading the "Life of Washington." "I'm going to fit myself ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... Times, of which I have just spoken, furnished by this same lawyer- poet's agricultural industry. We may even stop a moment longer to hear his stately appeal to France, which, heeded by her, would have made Lescarbot's a name familiar in the homes of America instead of one known only to those who delve in libraries: ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... two, buckle my shoe; Three, four, shut the door; Five, six, pick up sticks; Seven, eight, lay them straight; Nine, ten, a good fat hen; Eleven, twelve, who will delve? Thirteen, fourteen, maids a courting; Fifteen, sixteen, maids in the kitchen; Seventeen, eighteen, maids a waiting; Nineteen, twenty, I'm very empty; Please, Mamma, give me ...
— Traditional Nursery Songs of England - With Pictures by Eminent Modern Artists • Various
... Mason and Captain John Underhill over the Pequots on the hills of Mystic, in 1637, in its results was far greater than that of Wellington on the field of Waterloo. This fact will impress itself in indelible characters on the minds of those who delve into the historical truths connected with the genesis of our settlements, so wide spreading were the fruits of this victory. As the native inhabitants of the eastern part of Long Island and the adjacent islands were subjects of, and under tribute to, these dreaded Pequots,[1] ...
— John Eliot's First Indian Teacher and Interpreter Cockenoe-de-Long Island and The Story of His Career from the Early Records • William Wallace Tooker
... up his thoughts quickly. They can delve deeper than the surface of the mind. Or wasn't I keeping a leash ...
— Acid Bath • Vaseleos Garson
... Highnesses had been fatal—Lansing now perceived it—to Mrs. Hicks's principles. She had known a great many archaeologists, but never one as agreeable as the Prince, and above all never one who had left a throne to camp in the desert and delve in Libyan tombs. And it seemed to her infinitely pathetic that these two gifted beings, who grumbled when they had to go to "marry a cousin" at the Palace of St. James or of Madrid, and hastened back breathlessly to the far-off point where, metaphorically ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... wreath! My forehead wears A hundred leaves—a hundred years I never knew the words: "You must!" And shall my wreath return to dust? Freemen! The door is yet ajar; From northern star to southern star, O ye who count and ye who delve, Come in—before my clock ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... delve through the piles of shattered, reduced rock. The foreman held the lantern close, that the young engineer might have all the light he wanted, and called to miners to bring their ...
— The Young Engineers in Mexico • H. Irving Hancock
... selections; we shall prune away only the superfluous; we shall condense anecdotes only where we think we can make them pithier and racier. We will neglect no fact that is interesting, and blend together all that old Time can give us bearing upon London. Street by street we shall delve and rake for illustrative story, despising no book, however humble, no pamphlet, however obscure, if it only throws some light on the celebrities of London, its topographical history, its manners and customs. Such is a ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... peasant of his day marks a crisis in the conscience of Europe. It occurs in the chapter "De l'Homme": "We see certain wild animals, male and female, scattered over the fields, black, livid and scorched by the sun, fastened to the soil which they delve and stir with an invincible obstinacy; they have a sort of articulate speech, and when they stand up upon their feet, they show a countenance that is human: and in short they are human beings. ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... the similar book suggested by his father had made him more or less familiar with some of the original sources. He now had to plunge into various legal antiquities, and to study, for example, the six folio volumes called Rotuli Parliamentorum; to delve in year-books and old reports and the crabbed treatises of ancient lawyers, and to consider the precise meaning and effect of perplexed and obsolete statutes. He was not an antiquary by nature, for an antiquary, ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... will trust as I will adders fang'd,— They bear the mandate; they must sweep my way And marshal me to knavery. Let it work; For 'tis the sport to have the enginer Hoist with his own petard: and 't shall go hard But I will delve one yard below their mines And blow them at the moon: O, 'tis most sweet, When in one line two crafts directly meet.— This man shall set me packing: I'll lug the guts into the neighbour room.— Mother, good-night.—Indeed, ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... Where the men dig and delve, Lived a wise mother ant And her little anties twelve. "Toil!" said the mother; "We toil," said the twelve: So they toiled and were wise Where the men dig ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... in classes, to delve into the encyclopedia or the past-performances page, will not make us wise. As the poet says, "Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers." Wisdom is dew, which, while we know it not, soaks into us, refreshes us, and makes us grow. Knowledge is a strong stream of water turned ...
— Options • O. Henry
... upon very different ethics. I wonder if you have ever thought of the fact that when the barons at Runnymede laid the foundations of democratic government for the world they overlooked the almost equally important matter of creating a democratic system of finance. Well—let's not delve into that now. The point is that under our present system we do acquire wealth which we do not earn, and the only thing to be done for the time being is to treat that wealth as a trust to be managed for the benefit of humanity. That is what I call ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... the position of the Florentine Republic at this time would be too deeply to delve into history, but it may briefly be said that by means of humiliating surrenders and much crafty diplomacy, Clement VII was able to bring about in 1529 peace between the Emperor Charles V and Francis I of France, by which ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... word in the Max Muller translation is "meditation." But that is, I think, a somewhat misleading word. It suggests to most people the turning inward of the THINKING faculty to grope and delve in the interior of the mind. This is just what should NOT be done. Meditation in the proper sense should mean the inward deepening of FEELING and consciousness till the region of the universal self is reached; but THOUGHT should not interfere there. That should be turned ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... spotted, and most persons who delve into such matters and try to reconcile cause and effect, particularly from a distant point of view, would have said that this coloration was the means of rendering it, crouching among the ferns with head and neck flattened to the ground, invisible to its ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... was looking drawn, and, as she had told her that very morning, she looked like a woman who had gone through all the trials of rearing a young family on insufficient means. Now she was here she meant to have it out with Eve. She was going to abandon her role of sympathetic onlooker. She was going to delve below the surface, and learn the reason ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... boots thickly clayed From brown field or furrow, or lowered at last In our special six-feet by the sexton up-cast, We smack of the earth, till we earthy have grown, Like the mound that Death gives us—best friend—for our own. We tramp it, we delve it, we plough it, this soil, And a grave is the final reward of our toil. Attached? The attachment of love is one thing, The attachment of profit another. Gurth's ring Is our form of attachment at bottom, Sir, still, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 24, 1891 • Various
... is, where and how to hit the ball. If it is lying fairly well, it is only necessary to skim the top of the turf and take it cleanly. There is no necessity in such a case, as is too often imagined by inexperienced players, to delve down into the turf so that the ball may be lifted up. If the stroke is played naturally, in the way I have indicated, the loft on the face of the brassy is quite sufficient to give the necessary amount of rise to the ball as it leaves ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... ours is no plough or spade, You cannot delve or reap with the iron blade; For us there falls no seed, no corn-field grows, Neither home nor kindred the soldier knows: Wandering over the face of the earth, Warming his hands at another's hearth: From ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... of its ever having been introduced into their dwellings, I saw none. As I ascended the stairs, they surrounded me with shrieks and yells of joy, uttering exclamations of delight and amazement at my rowing. Considering that they dig, delve, carry burthens, and perform many more athletic exercises than pulling a light oar, I was rather amused at this; but it was the singular fact of seeing a white woman stretch her sinews in any toilsome exercise which astounded them, accustomed as they are to see ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... them," said Zell, almost fiercely. "I tell you there is no place for you here, unless you wish to go to perdition. Go home, where you are known. Scrub, delve, do anything rather than stay here. Your big brother can and will take care of you, though he does ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... wanted to take this manuscript and all the others, and run off to some profound retreat, and study it all over, and reproduce it again with my own faculties. Oh, that I could read them with you! I almost begin to love the pain with which I delve after the thoughts presented in such ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... best will grow I think is Tousell; grain of hardy fame; The imp rejoined, I never heard its name; What is it. Tousell, say'st thou?—I agree, If good return, 'twill be the same to me; Work fellow, work; make haste, the ground prepare; To dig and delve should be the rabble's care; Don't think that I will ever lend a hand, Or give the slightest aid to till the land; I've told thee I'm a gentleman by birth, Designed for ease: not doomed to turn the earth. Howe'er I'll now the diff'rent ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... And a grave does it delve For the strong; mars the beauty of beauty itself, Makes a fool of the sage with its magic, A clown of the courteous knight, And a king ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... in the dusk of the Cathedral listening to the organ; walk, their heads in air, their arms folded behind their backs, straight up Orange Street as though they were scaling Heaven itself; stop little children, pat their heads, and give them pennies; stand outside Poole's bookshop and delve in the 2d. box for thumb-marked sermons; stand gazing in learned fashion at the great West Door, investigating the saints and apostles portrayed thereon; hurry in their best hats and coats along the Close to some ladies' tea-party, ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... very likely to ask—Why does man till the fields? Why does man fell the forest trees? Why does he cultivate domestic animals? Why does he delve in the earth for minerals? These are all strenuous activities that require the outlay of time, talent and strength. We may say that they are sacrifices that he makes and, apparently, willingly. We have only to study ...
— The Biology, Physiology and Sociology of Reproduction - Also Sexual Hygiene with Special Reference to the Male • Winfield S. Hall
... the cover, flush with the soil, with a brick, which I sprinkle with a thin layer of sand. This will be the soil that cannot be dug. All around it, for some distance and on the same level, lies the loose soil, which is easy to delve. ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre |
