"Grapple" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... himself rightly when he declared that he was wholly unfit to be prime minister, and his administration was among the weakest of modern times. The firmness which had sustained him in so many campaigns, the political sagacity which had enabled him to grapple with the complications of Spanish affairs, and with the great settlement of Europe, equally failed him in party management and in the estimation of public opinion at home. He understood better than any man how to deal with the king, and overbore not only the king's own prejudices but ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... rest. Mamohela's camp had several times been set on fire at night by the tribes which suffered assault, but did not effect all that was intended. The Arabs say that the Manyuema now understand that every gunshot does not kill; the next thing they will learn will be to grapple in close quarters in the forest, where their spears will outmatch the guns in the hands of slaves, it will follow, too, that no one will be able to pass through this country; this is the usual course of Suaheli trading; it is murder and plunder, ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... tomorrow. You may trust me, Catherine, to make no mistakes. Mr. Presty's wonderful knowledge of figures has been of the greatest use to me in later life. Thanks to his instructions, I am the only person in the house who can grapple with the intricacies of our railway system. Your poor father, Mr. Norman, could never understand time-tables and never attempted to conceal his deficiencies. He had none of the vanity (harmless vanity, perhaps) which ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... it was impossible to row in such a sea. As soon as they approached each other, both fleets broke up, and the vessels each singling an opponent out, the combat began. It was a singular one, and differed widely from ordinary sea fights of the time, in which the combatants always tried to grapple with their enemies and carry them by boarding. This was almost impossible now, for it seemed that the vessels would be dashed in pieces like eggshells were they to strike each other. Clouds of missiles were poured from one to the other. ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... painful thoughts came upon her, and she drew her hand across her eyes; for she was whelmed with a sense of sorrow, of purely mental misery, which she could not understand, and which she had not strength to grapple with. She was, however, conscious of the fact that life was proving too strong for her, that she could make nothing of it, and she thought that she did not care much what happened. She had fought with adverse fate, ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... conscious of a dreadful inclination that stole upon me, as it thundered and lightened, to grapple with this man, or demon, and plunge him over the side. But, I constrained myself - I know not how - to speak to him, and in a pause of the storm, I ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... the case of religious enthusiasts, there is a slenderness of constitutional stamina, which renders the flesh no match for the spirit. His bending, flexible form appears to take no strong hold of things, does not grapple with the world about him, but slides from it like ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... William Lloyd Garrison are never tired of condemning Dr. Channing for what they call his timidity, his shunning any personal contact with the great abolitionist, his failure to grapple boldly with the evils of slavery, and his half-hearted espousal of the cause of abolition. The Unitarians generally are by these writers regarded in the ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... thou hast and their adoption tried Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel, But do not dull thy palm with entertainment ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... away the parents' care, he goes up-stairs with a shaded candle to look in upon the children sleeping. Good women unlock the jewel-caskets which are their souls; happy maidens are sisterly with him; strong men grapple him to their hearts and call him friend. He that was vagabond has now innumerable homes, and of the faces that fleet by him out of doors there are always some which seem ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... her jurisdiction. My poor share in the support of that great measure no man shall ravish from me. It shall be safely lodged in the sanctuary of my heart,—never, never to be torn from thence, but with those holds that grapple it to life. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... opponent of anything coming from Hamilton, a strong advocate of assumption. He told the House that "if the present question was lost, he was almost certain it would end in her bankruptcy, for she [South Carolina] was no more able to grapple with her enormous debt than a boy of twelve years of age is able to grapple with a giant." Livermore, representing a State never within the actual field of military operations, at once replied: "I conceive that the debt of South Carolina, or Massachusetts, or of an individual, has nothing ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... the wise, there needed no conjunction of planets to tell them that the day was near at hand, when the long desultory duel between Spain and England would end, once and for all, in some great death-grapple. The war, as yet, had been confined to the Netherlands, to the West Indies, and the coasts and isles of Africa; to the quarters, in fact, where Spain was held either to have no rights, or to have forfeited them by tyranny. But Spain itself had been respected by England, as England had by Spain; ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... earlier letters from the same hand—letters more familiar, intimate, and discursive—that ultimately held the Rector's thoughts as he kept his watch. For in those letters were contained almost all the objections that a sensitive mind and heart had had to grapple with before determining on the course to which the Rector of Upcote was now committed. They were the voice of the "adversary," the "accuser." Crude or conventional, as the form of the argument might be, it yet represented the "powers and principalities" to be reckoned with. If the Rector's ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... hurling bombs at the machine. They might as well have been throwing pebbles. Scornfully the tank slid over into the wide trench and landed with a crash in the bottom. For a moment she lay there without moving. The Germans thought she was stuck. They came running along thinking to grapple with her. But they never reached her, for at once the guns from both sides opened fire and the ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh
... grapple with her heart, Till, in the city's bound, She cries, to ease the joy-born smart, "I have the ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... Cross came up, who was vice-admiral and was to leeward, on which Sir John asked his opinion what was best to be done. Sir Robert said, if she were not boarded she would reach the shore and be set on fire, as had been done with the other. Wherefore Sir John Burrough concluded to grapple her, and Sir Robert Cross engaged to do so likewise at the same moment, which was done accordingly. After some time in this situation, Sir John Burroughs ship received a shot of a cannon perier[389] under water; and, being ready to sink, desired ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... "They don't run from the serpent Evil, that is wreathin' round their homes and loved ones, and a-tryin' to destroy 'em—they run towards that serpent, and hain't afraid to grapple with it, and overthrow it—by the help of ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... marked the conflict now transferred to the turnkey and the jester. The former held the fool at a decided disadvantage, as he had sprung upon the back of the jester and was also unweakened by previous efforts. But still the fool contended fiercely, striving to turn so as to grapple with his assailant, and wonderingly the free baron for a moment watched that exhibition of virility and endurance. During the wrestling the jester's doublet had been torn open and suddenly the gaze of the king's guest fell, as if fascinated, ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... as it is commonly called, went against us at this time. The Wompatuck was sent by Captain Goodrich into the mouth of the harbor at Guantanamo to attempt to grapple the cable there. The tug and the St. Louis were both forced to retire, not by the weight of fire from the coast, but by a petty Spanish gunboat, aided by "a small gun on shore." Could this fact have ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... on the subject. Viney, like most victuallers, was more given to games of skill—billiards, shuttlecock, skittles, dominoes, and so on—than to the rude out-of-door chances of flood and field, and at first he doubted his ability to grapple with the details; but on Mr. Watchorn's assurance that he would keep him straight, he gave Mrs. Viney a key, desiring her to go into the inner cellar, and bring out a bottle of the green seal. This was ninety-shilling sherry—very good ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... to say that women were incapable of business, and yet here are the ladies of his own household compelled to grapple with the most perplexing forms of business or suffer aggravated losses. Though all of his family were of mature years, and thousands had been spent on their education, they were as helpless as four children in dealing with ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... homes of our sires 'gainst the hosts of the foe, Send us help on the wings of thy angels descending, And shield from his terrors, and baffle his blow. Warm the faith of our sons, till they flame as the iron, Red-glowing from the fire-forge, kindled by zeal; Make them forward to grapple the hordes that environ, In the storm-rush of battle, ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... moderate size, assailed the enemy without being seen. Certain ships which came nearer to the walls in order to get within the range of the engines, he placed upon their sterns, raising up their prows by throwing upon them an iron grapple, attached to a strong chain, by means of a tolleno which projected from the wall, and overhung them, having a heavy counterpoise of lead which forced back the lever to the ground; then the grapple being suddenly disengaged, the ship falling as it were from ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... rise within him, as an angry wind comes rising in the night. The Stranger was beneath his outraged roof. Three steps would take him to his chamber door. One blow would beat it in. "You might do murder before you know it," Tackleton had said. How could it be murder, if he gave the villain time to grapple with him hand to hand? He was ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... Senator Butler) stepping in front of him and with hardly a word of warning, struck him on the head a succession of quick murderous blows with a stout walking-stick. Dazed and stunned, but impelled by the instinct of self-defense, Mr. Sumner tried to rise to grapple with his assailant, but the seat under which his long legs were thrust held him prisoner. Although fastened to the floor with iron clamps, it was finally wrenched up by the agonized struggles of Sumner. ...
— Charles Sumner Centenary - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 14 • Archibald H. Grimke
... from his contemplation— 'T is said (for I 'll not answer above ground For any sage's creed or calculation)— A mode of proving that the earth turn'd round In a most natural whirl, called 'gravitation;' And this is the sole mortal who could grapple, Since Adam, with a fall or ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... been put into place. Foreign investors remain attracted by the country's political stability and high education levels, and tourism continues to bring in foreign exchange. The government continues to grapple with its large internal and external deficits and sizable internal debt. The reduction of inflation remains a difficult problem because of rising import prices, labor market rigidities, and fiscal ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... last wave as soon as solved, and leaps with insistent eagerness to the next. You attain that superordinary condition when your faculties react instinctively, like a machine. It is a species of intoxication. After a time you personify each wave; you grapple with it as with a personal adversary; you exult as, beaten and broken, it hisses away to leeward. "Go it, you son of a gun!" you shout. "Ah, you would, would you! think you can, do you?" and in the roar and rush of wind and water you crouch like a boxer on the defence, parrying the ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... himself confronted by an athletic young man who held the muzzle of an ugly revolver within two inches of the bridge of his nose and in a remarkably firm and steady grip. Another glance showed him the figure of a second business-like looking young man at his side, whose attitude showed a desire to grapple ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... game is worth the candle. To-day Joel, one of a squad of unfortunates, was relearning the art of tackling. It was Joel's first experience with that marvelous contrivance, "the dummy." One after another the squad was sent at a sharp spurt to grapple the inanimate canvas-covered bag hanging inoffensively there, like a body from ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... to grapple with the following problem whenever it is clearly put before him:—Here are the Faunae of the same area during successive epochs. Show good cause for believing either that these Faunae have been derived from one another by gradual modification, or that the Faunae have ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... Grapple not now with such thoughts. To-morrow we will speak of this. Your mind wavers, and its agitation will find relief in the exercise of simple memories. Look not around, nor forward—but back. I am burning with anxiety to hear the details of that stupendous event which threw you among ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... his heart as well as her own, mingled with the sharp intake of their heavy breathing, but these sounds were soon overcome by that of the tumult below. Shots and yells, the dull crash of blows, the shouts of men engaged in a death grapple, the sharp crackling of innumerable rifles, the inarticulate moans of pain, the piercing scream of sudden torture, were borne upward to them from out the blackness. They did not venture to lift their heads from off the hard rock; the girl sobbed silently, her slender form trembling; the ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... detach the mind of Naomi, by repeated afflictions, from a soil in which her affections were becoming too deeply rooted, her two sons also died in a few years, and the three females were left to grapple with adversity alone. The original state and character of the young women is uncertain, but they became proselytes to the Jewish religion. They might have become so previously to their union with their now departed husbands, whom, if the sacred narrative had been more ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... army of young men and women being trained in the very best manner in every section of the South, to go forth to grapple with the great problems before them. He felt proud of being a member of so promising an army, and felt that they were to determine the future of the race. In fact, this thought was reiterated time and again by ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... From on high the torrent surges, to drive through the dyke as a spear, Eagled-eyed e'en in his blindness, our chief sets his double array, Making the fleet two spears, to thrust at the foe, any way, . . . 'Anyhow!—without orders, each captain his Frenchman may grapple perforce: Collingwood first' (yet the Victory ne'er a whit slacken'd her course) 'Signal for action! Farewell! we shall win, but we meet not again!' —Then a low thunder of readiness ran from the decks o'er the main, And on,—as ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... spread with a vengeance. Gage was a brave man, an able man, an {166} honorable man; but for Alexander he was a little over-parted. The difficulties he had to encounter were too great for him to grapple with; the work he was meant to do too vast for his hands or the hands of any man. He was sent out to sway a chastened and degraded province; he found himself opposed by a defiant people, exalted by injustice ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... sir. Just come back, after some delay. Her eye was smashed, and there are grapple marks on her. Must have been caught, and then slipped away. She was leaking badly. We got her through the lock just in time." Jim had evidently added a few touches of his own. "Comrade Pauloff seems ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... for him. He retreated before me. It was to save his jewels, but I, fool that I was, thought it pure fear of me. I dashed at him, all headlong confidence; the next I knew he had somehow twisted his foot between mine, and tripped me before I could grapple. Never was wight more confounded to find himself on ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... thy speed, young man," Fair Rosalind said she, As the two wrestlers in the ring Grapple right furiously; But Charles the Wrestler had no ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... bend. Such, too, was the feeling of that extraordinary man, who, with the solitary exception of England, exacted homage from every crowned head of Europe. This man, in the plenitude of his power, felt that something was still wanting to enable him to grapple with one little island, invulnerable by its maritime strength, the sinews of which he knew to be derived from its colonies: he felt that, deprived as he was of "ships, colonies, and commerce," England was able to stand alone among nations, and to bid defiance ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 372, Saturday, May 30, 1829 • Various
... and to concentrate his army. Hill and Longstreet were ordered up from Chambersburg; and by July 1st the opposing armies faced each other; each feeling its way cautiously and knowing that the result of this grapple of the giants must in a great measure decide the war. Meade's defeat would lose Washington, leave the heart of the North open, and demoralize the only army in that section. Lee's defeat, on the other hand, would jeopardy his very ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... personally aloof, passive and detached from it. The issues will be of too grim and strenuous a character for her to be brought into personal contact with them. She is too young, too inexperienced, too tender-hearted to grapple successfully with them; at a critical moment when perhaps her throne, her liberty, possibly even her very life, may be hanging in the balance, she might be tempted to yield, rather than fight for what ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... hopes on foreign interference, secretly corresponding with Austria and Prussia. The people of Paris, too, feel the impossibility, and are setting their hopes on something very different. The monarchy must go; jacobins' club(1) and men of the Gironde, afterwards at death- grapple with one another, are now united on this point; they, and not a constitutional government, are the true representatives of Paris ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... I looked before me, my very heart would sink within me at the inevitable approach of misery and want. Oh let none read this part without seriously reflecting on the circumstances of a desolate state, and how they would grapple with mere want of friends and want of bread; it will certainly make them think not of sparing what they have only, but of looking up to heaven for support, and of the wise man's prayer, 'Give me not poverty, lest ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... think a war for which Germany has been preparing for twenty years will be over in a few weeks?" said Walter passionately. "This isn't a paltry struggle in a Balkan corner, Harvey. It is a death grapple. Germany comes to conquer or to die. And do you know what will happen if she conquers? Canada ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... will you please examine that remark? When her guests assemble, can I go to bed and leave her to grapple with them? I have proposed it often, but of course it is impossible. And if I am to be there I must behave, I suppose, like a lady, not like the housemaid. Really, Lady Henry asks too much. In my mother's little flat in Bruges, with the two or three friends who frequented ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 1548 was an attempt of Charles V. and the Diet of Augsburg to grapple with this state of things, and was so far analogous to the English Act of Uniformity, ...
— The Acts of Uniformity - Their Scope and Effect • T.A. Lacey
... the channel, touching several times; but the fight was maintained for forty minutes, after which she withdrew, having been hulled eleven times, her spars and rigging seriously injured, and having lost two men killed and four wounded. The force was too small to grapple successfully with the work, so Lieutenant-Commander Hart ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... the Unconditioned is a criticism, partly of Schelling, partly of Cousin; and Schelling and Cousin only attempted in a new form, under the influence of the Kantian philosophy, to solve the problem with which philosophy in all ages has attempted to grapple,—the problem of the Unconditioned. ...
— The Philosophy of the Conditioned • H. L. Mansel
... reputation; but I should not trouble either of you so much above and beyond the petty scandal making and loving herd; but it is very wearying and wearing to me; I sometimes think I should leave you on account of it, and grapple with this difficulty at once and forever;" the moisture was in Vaura's eyes as he looked at her wearily with a ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... circumstance that one of the letters of Hastings to Dr. Johnson bears date a very few hours after the death of Nuncomar. While the whole settlement was in commotion, while a mighty and ancient priesthood were weeping over the remains of their chief, the conqueror in that deadly grapple sat down, with characteristic self-possession, to write about the Tour to the Hebrides, Jones's Persian Grammar, and the history, traditions, arts, and natural productions of India.' Macaulay's Essays, ed. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... labourer in the field, and had only come to this conclusion after mature consideration and repeated fruitless experiments. All the alchymists were in arms immediately, to refute this formidable antagonist. One Solomon de Blauenstein was the first to grapple with him, and attempted to convict him of wilful misrepresentation, by recalling to his memory the transmutations by Sendivogius, before the Emperor Frederic III. and the Elector of Mayence; all performed within a recent period. Zwelfer ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... allowed him but little time for other things. And in studying this, he sought to grapple with the highest problems of the human understanding. These problems occupied also the labours of the later Scholastics, however faulty were the forms in which they clothed their ideas. At the same time, these very forms attracted him, from the scope they gave ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... plans with the few people in England who were in the secret, and somewhere in the darkness the Black Stone would be working. I felt the sense of danger and impending calamity, and I had the curious feeling, too, that I alone could avert it, alone could grapple with it. But I was out of the game now. How could it be otherwise? It was not likely that Cabinet Ministers and Admiralty Lords and Generals would admit me to ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan
... with the Guardian shall grapple, And keep up the rural standard, and keep down the local rates; The haughty Church no longer there shall lord it o'er the Chapel, And the Voluntary School shall find the level it so hates. In short, with Local Government invested, the whole Village ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 19, 1891 • Various
... "Der Freischutz," beginning just as she was dragging her companion over a stile, which had been formidable enough by day, but was ten times worse in the confusing shadows. That brought them into a lane darkened by its high hedges, where there was nothing for it but to let Miss Ray tightly grapple her arm, while the songs came further and further on the wind, and Mary felt the conviction that middle-aged spinsters must reckon on being forgotten, and left behind alike by ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... virtue of a rare staying-power. Laughter becomes extreme only if it be consecutive. There must be no pauses for recovery. Touch-and-go humour, however happy, is not enough. The jester must be able to grapple his theme and hang on to it, twisting it this way and that, and making it yield magically all manner of strange and precious things, one after another, without pause. He must have invention keeping pace with utterance. He must be inexhaustible. Only ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... had a grapple with three iron spikes,— It's lowered, and, ha! on a something it strikes! They haul it aboard with a British "heave-ho!" And what it has fished ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... cry. She was a mighty pretty, innocent, plump little thing, and we'd rather have had most anything than that she should stand there cryin'. But we were all hung by the feet and wandering in our minds. The simple life of the cow-puncher doesn't fit him to grapple with problems ...
— Mr. Scraggs • Henry Wallace Phillips
... he replied, "there is no pain. I don't mean to be sententious, but this is the death-grapple that is coming. They will need me ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... with the Victory Throughout that earnest race— The Victory, whose Admiral, With orders nobly won, Shone in the globe of the battle glow— The angel in that sun. Parallel in story, Lo, the stately pair, As late in grapple ranging, The foe between them there— When four great hulls lay tiered, And the fiery tempest cleared, And your ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... generally very old ones, clouds of dust were flying around him. He had on a pair of large gloves such as hedgers use. His present appearance put me in mind of my uncle, Dr. Boswell's[24] description of him, 'A robust genius, born to grapple with whole libraries.' ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... great Avenger; history's pages but record One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems and the Word;[29] Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,— Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown, Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. What was it—I paused to think—what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher? It was a mystery all insoluble; nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I pondered. I was forced to fall back upon the unsatisfactory conclusion, that while, beyond doubt, there are combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus affecting us, still the analysis of this power lies among considerations ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... that never failed. But the spectacle of widespread popular demoralization, of selfish scrambles for plunder, and of feeble administration at the centre of government weighed upon him heavily. It was not the general's business to build up Congress and grapple with finance, but Washington addressed himself to the new task with his usual persistent courage. It was slow and painful work. He seemed to make no progress, and then it was that his spirits sank at the prospect ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... the distance of races! The meditation of this young French soldier, in face of the enemy who is to attack on the morrow, resumes the strange ecstasy in which was rapt the warrior of the Bhagavad Gita between two armies coming to the grapple. He, too, sees the turbulence of mankind as a dream that seems to veil the higher order and the Divine unity. He, too, puts his faith in that 'which knows neither birth nor death,' which is 'not born, is indestructible, is not slain ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... his impatience as the boats were building all too slowly for his hot hopes; nor of the strange and motley crew he had summoned there from all corners of Europe to cut the trees; to build and launch boats; to sail them, finally, across the strip of water to that England he was to meet at last, to grapple with, and overthrow, even as the English huscarles in their turn bore down on that gay Minstrel Taillefer, who rode so insolently forth to meet them, with a song in his throat, tossing his sword ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... courage as it seemed most fit to give a clear impression. If you take even those English authors whom we know Burns to have most admired and studied, you will see at once that he owed them nothing but a warning. Take Shenstone, for instance, and watch that elegant author as he tries to grapple with the facts of life. He has a description, I remember, of a gentleman engaged in sliding or walking on thin ice, which is a little miracle of incompetence. You see my memory fails me, and I positively cannot recollect ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... movement, Bryan Democracy, and Roosevelt Republicanism all found their greatest strength in the Mississippi Valley. They were Mississippi Valley ideals in action. Its people were learning by experiment and experience how to grapple with the fundamental problem of creating a just social order that shall sustain the free, progressive, individual in a real democracy. The Mississippi Valley is asking, "What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... characteristic of them as the sap dried and they died of their wounds. Sometimes, one side of a bush would shrivel first, causing it to double up like a creature agonizing. Some crouched like strange beasts watching to spring. Others thrust themselves ominously forward with projected arms, as if ready to grapple. Some brandished their flat leaves as the painter Wiertz, in his famous picture of Napoleon in Hell, made wives and mothers brandish their menacing fists at the man who had robbed them of their loved ones. All wore a ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... was too vague a dreamer to guide her, or so much as to realise that she stood in need of guidance. And Dot had gone her own independent way all her life. Her healthy young mind was not accustomed to grapple with problems, but she did not despair on that account. She only resolutely set herself to cope with this one as best she might, erecting out of her multifarious duties a barrier calculated to dishearten ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... Presbyterians of the north of Ireland, which was supported by a parliamentary grant, at the cost of L2100 per annum; and government proposed to continue this grant. There was another subject, he said, with which, although a difficult one, he was prepared to grapple. The bill only founded colleges in Ireland: the question was:—"Should these three colleges be incorporated into one great central university, or should parliament invest each of them with the power of granting degrees in the arts, sciences, and medicine?" He proposed that ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... into a mammoth institution, celebrated throughout Europe, and scattering the seeds of truth into all lands.[26] It became a living proof that Pietism was not only able to combat the religious errors of the times but also to grapple with the grave wants of common life. Is not that a good and safe theology, which, in addition to teaching truth, can also clothe the naked and feed the hungry? Francke's prayer, so often offered in some secluded corner of the field or the woods, was answered even before his departure ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... Jake answered impulsively. "However, you seem to suggest that I should leave my partner to grapple with this thing himself and I don't like that. If he's up against any danger, I want to butt in. Dick's no fool, but there are respects in which he's not very keen. His mind's fixed on concrete, and when he gets off it his imagination's sometimes ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... you may be able to hold me in check a little longer; but I am all the while gathering strength for an onset which you cannot withstand; and if you cannot bear these kind remonstrances now, how will you grapple with "the worm that ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... to Him? The context explains the figurative expression, in the very next verse or two, by another and simpler word, which strips away the figure and gives us the plain fact—'in Whom believing.' The act of the soul by which I, with all my weakness and sin, cast myself on Jesus Christ, and grapple Him to my heart, and bind myself with His strength and righteousness—that is what the Apostle means here. Or, to put it into other words, this 'coming,' which is here laid as the basis of everything, of all Christian prosperity ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... roofing thrown over the gulf. You can make up a crack in a wall with plaster after a fashion, and it will hide the solution of continuity that lies beneath. But let bad weather come, and soon the bricks gape apart as before. And so, as soon as we get down below the surface of things and grapple with the real, deep-lying, and formative principles of a life, we come to antagonism, just as they used to come to it long ago, though the form of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... the limits of human endeavor. It is comparatively easy to run a tilt against a fellow-mortal, or an external evil; but to set our lance in rest against a cherished sin, a habit that has become our second nature, and remorselessly ride it down—to grapple with a secret fault in the solitude of our own soul, with no applauding hands to spur us on, and fight and wrestle for weary months—years perhaps—this does require heroism of the highest order, and the man who can do it is ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... louping on his track two steps to his one; and with that frantic apprehension upon him, he gained the next street, flung himself around the corner with his back to the wall, and his arms convulsively drawn up for a grapple; and felt something rush whirring past his flank, striking him on the shoulder as it went by, with a buffet that made a shock break through his frame. That shock restored him to his senses. His delusion was suddenly shattered. The goblin was gone. ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... go; the seasons dawn And fade, and pass to swell the solemn ranks Of august ages in the march of Time. But changeless still, amid eternal change, Old Skidloe bears the furious brunt of all The warring elements that grapple mid The mighty insurrections of the sea! Gray desolation, ancient solitude, Brood o'er his wide, unrestful water world, While grim, unmoved, forbidding as of yore, He wraps his kingly altitudes about With the fierce blazon of the thunder cloud; And on his awful ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... in favor of the North, but in favor of the South. Men in Oregon wanting domestic slaves could not have them. Men in Utah and New Mexico wanting slaves could have them or not, as they pleased. One man in the nation was found able enough, and brave enough, and patriotic enough to grapple with this question and bring it to the test, and carry out to its logical results the doctrine of the compromise of 1850; and that he bore himself bravely and well through the trying ordeal, and against fearful odds, even his bitterest ...
— The Relations of the Federal Government to Slavery - Delivered at Fort Wayne, Ind., October 30th 1860 • Joseph Ketchum Edgerton
... have heard so Mrs. Rossitur told me; but I fear, pardon me, you do not look fit to grapple with such a ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... think of weapons, no time to think at all. They sprang at one another with a cry that was old when man invented the cleft-stick stone ax. There is a note of joy in that cry as well as that of rage. Roger leaped primitively to grapple and break his enemy with bare hands. Garman tossed his rifle away and came on intent ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... thine harp between thine hands, O mother! All my strong chords are strained with love of thee. We grapple in love and wrestle, as each with other Wrestle the ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... the community are never in the majority, that for one woman whose feet turn aside from the paths of rectitude that there are thousands of feet that never stray into forbidden paths, and today I believe there is virtue enough in society to confront its vice, and intelligence enough to grapple ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... their efficacy was counteracted by the eccentricity of his habits, the indolence of his mind, and his vacillating and uncertain disposition. He was, however, occasionally capable of intense application, and competent to make himself master of any subject he thought fit to grapple with; his mind was reflecting, combining, and argumentative, but he had no imagination, and to passion, 'the sanguine credulity of youth, and the fervent glow of enthusiasm' he was an entire stranger. He never ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... in life which are beyond one. The sensible man realises this, and slides out of such situations, admitting himself beaten. Others try to grapple with them, but it never does any good. When affairs get into a real tangle, it is best to sit still and let them straighten themselves out. Or, if one does not do that, simply to think no more about them. This is Philosophy. The true philosopher is the man who says "All right," and ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... yet how one of the dispatches began which brought so vividly to my mind the meaning of the great death-grapple here between the Japanese and Russian ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... was going out where she sat, and she would like a cup of tea or some refreshment. She did not look at Jack, but, completely ignoring him, addressed herself to Zuleika with what seemed to be a direct challenge; in that feminine eye-grapple there was a quick, instinctive, and final struggle between the two women. The stranger triumphed. Zuleika's vacant smile changed to one of submission, and then, equally ignoring her brother in this double defeat, she hastened ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... is singing to me With the white foam caught in her hair, With the seaweed swinging its long arms free, To grapple the blown sea air: The sea, my mother, with billowy swell, Is telling her tale to the ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... instantly swim up, with open mouth, and make a grab at my oar to keep me going straight ahead. I sung out to the people aboard the ships in mercy's name to take a shot at some of the bigger brutes, for I thought that I could grapple with the little ones; but either they didn't or wouldn't hear me; so away I pulled right out towards the Nab. Thinks I to myself, 'Perhaps the people in the lightship will lend a helping hand to an old seaman;' but not a bit of it. When they saw me coming ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... succession of large knobs, and another has its bark pinched up all round at intervals so as to present a great many cutting edges. One sort need scarcely be mentioned, in which all along its length are strong bent hooks, placed in a way that will hold one if it can but grapple with him, for that is very common and not like those mentioned, which the rather seem to be stragglers from the carboniferous period of geologists, when Pachydermata wriggled unscathed among tangled masses worse than these. We employed about ten jolly young Makonde to deal with these prehistoric ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... length can the universal spirit of a Nation penetrate the most isolated Body-corporate: say rather, with such weapons, homicidal and suicidal, in exasperated political duel, will Bodies-corporate fight! But, in any case, is not this the real death-grapple of war and internecine duel, Greek meeting Greek; whereon men, had they even no interest in it, might look with interest unspeakable? Crowds, as was said, inundate the outer courts: inundation of young eleutheromaniac Noblemen in English costume, uttering audacious speeches; ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... colours into the mouth of the pit, that you would die twice over sooner than let them be taken. Good! but remember, too, that those colours are a sign to you that Christ is with you, ready to give you courage, coolness, and right judgment, in the charge and in the death grapple, just as much as He is with those ministering angels who will nurse and tend your wounds in hospital. God's blessing is on them; but do you never forget that your colours are a sign to you that Christ's blessing is on you. If they do not mean that to you, what was the use of ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... was crooning behind him over the half-buried rocks. He stood again on the brink with his poor worn face turned to the sky. He had come to the end of his reasoning. The tired brain had ceased to grapple with the cruel problem that had so tortured it. He knew now what he would do to help Dicky. And somehow the doing did not seem hard to him, somehow ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... the approaching horseman, he immediately raised himself on his fore feet and uttered a wild prolonged roar. Martin, who wished to entice the beast on to solid ground, where he could grapple with him better than in the midst of this unknown morass, and also, by way of provocation, cracked his long whip loudly. Maddened still more by this exasperating sound, the wild beast arose from his resting-place ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... not drowned after all," said he, "and there's my money gone that I spent for a gross of stenlock hooks to grapple you." ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... to know fully aroused; with his mind fretting to grapple with the problem of Life; and his purpose fired to solve the riddle of time; the man succeeded in acquiring this: that he must dare to know little. He came to understand that, while all knowable things are for all mankind to know, no man can know them all; and that ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright
... firstly, because in this are enunciated those radical conceptions which he afterwards argues not to, but from; and secondly, because it has been the writer's desire, avoiding all vagrant and indecisive criticism, to have a fair grapple, and come to some clear result,—like that of a wrestler, who frankly proffers himself to throw or be thrown. It only remains to indicate, so far as may be, a comprehensive estimate of Mr. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... according to Hegel, sees, from any one piece of reality, what the whole of reality must be—at least in its large outlines. Every apparently separate piece of reality has, as it were, hooks which grapple it to the next piece; the next piece, in turn, has fresh hooks, and so on, until the whole universe is reconstructed. This essential incompleteness appears, according to Hegel, equally in the world ...
— The Problems of Philosophy • Bertrand Russell
... peasants. It was she who had mutilated the bodies they had passed on the road; it was she who had killed and half-eaten their driver; it was she—but he could think no more, it was all too horrible, and the revulsion of his feelings towards her clogged his brain. He longed to grapple with her, strangle her, and he could do nothing. The bare touch of those fingers—those cool, white, tapering fingers, with their long, shining filbert nails, all ready and eager to tear and rend his flesh to pieces—had taken all the life from his limbs, and he could ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... the monster he scanned it with a quick and hostile glance. For a moment he stopped short and felt disinclined to grapple with it. Then he approached with determination, gritting his teeth as if it were an enemy. After an hour he was familiar with all its secrets. He learned that it was a rather simple idol. Yet its gigantic proportions again and again impressed him, and he could not understand how Hoeflinger treated ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... a hand was laid upon his shoulder, and, with a bound and a choked cry, he turned to grapple his assailant. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... an intense desire that he might grapple with his young foe in the death struggle. Willingly would he have accepted such a decision between their rival claims; but he was alone, wounded, exhausted, a faithful dog his sole friend. He felt that the day of ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... awaited him which should try his strength. This called up all his resources, and we may infer that he possessed them in large degree, from his quiet forbearance and deliberation, even when he became fully sensible of the insolence of the person with whom he felt about to grapple. ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... Marblehead and the Nashville manned the boats that were sent into the shallow waters to grapple for the cable. Each ship furnished a cutter and a launch, under the command of a lieutenant. The men who were to do the work were in the cutters, and each of the launches carried a small rapid-fire gun to protect ...
— Young Peoples' History of the War with Spain • Prescott Holmes
... slumbering tenacities and vehemences of which he had been scarcely aware. So that, almost immediately—since there was no glamour of passion on his side—he began to resent her small tyrannies, to draw in, and draw back. A few quarrels—not ordinary lovers' quarrels, but representing a true grapple of personalities—sprang up behind a screen of trifles. Daphne was once more rude and provoking, Roger cool and apparently indifferent. This was the stage when Mrs. Verrier had become an admiring observer of what she supposed to be his "tactics." ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... so on! After all is said and done one can only give a few hints and suggestions on the servant question, with the wistful hope that they may help some one to "start right," for maids may come and maids may go, but the problem goes marching on. The only way to do when it overtakes one is to grapple with it womanfully, for it will happen, even ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... "Trunnion! turn out and be spliced, or lie still and be damned!" By this, and other stratagems, Trunnion's obstinacy was overcome. He wiped the sweat from his forehead, and heaving a piteous groan yielded to the remonstrances of Hatchway in these words: "Well, since it must be so, I think we must e'en grapple. But 'tis a hard case that a fellow of my years should be compelled, d'ye see, to beat up to windward all the rest of his life, against the current of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... the poor woman's trouble to her husband just before the entrance of Gaudissart, and at the first words of the famous traveller Vernier determined that he should be made to grapple with Margaritis. ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... opinions. They therefore declined the idea of sending her to a distant land. But oh! they dreamed not of the rapture that dazzled the fancy of Ambulinia, who would say, when alone, youth should not fly away on his rosy pinions, and leave her to grapple in the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... known to science, as hard to represent correctly as a boat or a fiddle—more so; and the delight of successful achievement is proportionately great. Linley Sambourne alone, who was originally trained as an engineer, has been able to grapple with the chimney-pot hat; Walker all but succeeded by the sheer ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... the rudiments of Wolf life: that the way to fight Dogs is to run, and to fight as you run, never grapple, but snap, snap, snap, and make for the rough country where ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... superfluously tall; his trousers got creased at the knees, and showed an excess of boot at a time when straps seemed necessary to any dignity of bearing; you heard him go in and out, and up and down, as if he had come to see after the roofing. In short, he had weight, and might be expected to grapple with a disease and throw it; while Dr. Minchin might be better able to detect it lurking and to circumvent it. They enjoyed about equally the mysterious privilege of medical reputation, and concealed with much etiquette ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... Such mockery now to me! She was the sole reality of this universe to my heart! I grapple with shadows unceasingly. There is not on the face of this globe a more desolate wretch. You understand this! You feel for me, you do not deride me! You know how perfect, how spiritual she was! You loved her well—I saw it in your eyes, your manner—and for that, if nothing else, ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... infinite labor and repeated failures, the brave men who undertook the work accomplished it. A year before, their third cable had broken in mid-ocean, and it was now proposed to "grapple" for it. The "Great Eastern" was fitted out with apparatus, which may be likened to an enormous fishing-hook and line, and was sent to the spot where the treasure had been lost. The line was of hemp interwoven with wire. Page 328 shows a section ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 5, March, 1878 • Various
... nations, even highly civilized, have differed widely in their marriage institutions; agreeing only in the propriety of adopting and enforcing some regulations. So essentially has this matter been bound up with the moral code of every society, that a proposed criterion of morality unable to grapple with it, would be discarded as worthless. Yet there is no intuitive sentiment that can be of any avail in the question of marriage with a deceased ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... to feel the ship being pulled toward the Platform by the magnetic grapple. It was a landing-line. It was the means by which the ship would be docked in the giant lock which had ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... to advance. In a storm of shrapnel, bullets and flame, the British host swept down again upon the foe. The Germans gave desperate and deadly resistance. They fought hand to hand, with bayonets and clubbed muskets and grenades. It was a death grapple, with decisive victory on neither side. In the wild onrush and terrific clash, Pen lost touch with his comrade. Only once he saw him after the charge was launched. Aleck waved to him and smiled and plunged into the thick of the carnage. Two hours later, staggering ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... got over one difficulty, as I have shown, that connected with the first visits, but I had others yet to grapple with. And first, there was my embarrassment at finding no letter for the Infanta. I confided this fact to Grimaldo, who burst out laughing, was to have my first audience with the Infanta the next day, and it was then that the letter ought to be produced. Grimaldo said he would arrange so that ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... patience and the skill to look for it. I can't tell you why; the laws of gold puzzle deeper heads than mine, but so it is. I seem to smell gold all round me here." And Robinson flushed all over, so powerfully did the great idea of gold seated here on his native throne grapple and agitate his mind. ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... error, into which it was possible for them to fall in regard to the rotundity of the earth and gravitation, in no wise retarded the development of their art; the solidity of their buildings and accuracy of their aim was not affected by it. But sooner or later they were forced to grapple with phenomena, which the supposed parallelism of all perpendiculars erected from the earth's surface rendered inexplicable: then also commenced a struggle between the prejudices, which for centuries had sufficed in daily practice, and the unprecedented ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon |
