"Grasp" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... amused myself with looking upon them, and as often as I laid hold upon a piece of stuff, it powdered in my hands like dust dispread. Presently I saw some chests and opening one of them, found it full of gold in bags; so I laid hold upon the bags, but they crumbled away in my grasp, whilst the gold abode unchanged. I carried off of it what I could carry and said to myself, 'Were my brothers with me, they might take of this gold their fill and possess themselves of these hoards which have ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... bent and kissed her, and his cheek felt the tears upon hers. He reached for her hand, with an instinct to strengthen her. But when he had it within his its firm and vital grasp sent a thrill of ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... many sad and lonely people in the world that no one need ever feel any lack of a purpose in life, and she advised me not to look at charity from a general standpoint, but to narrow it down till it came within my own grasp. ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... to me. This is Bet. I'm right here beside you!" Bet repeated the sentence over and over until at last the sick brain seemed to grasp the idea and the girl quieted down, and even ...
— The Merriweather Girls and the Mystery of the Queen's Fan • Lizette M. Edholm
... I so tall to reach the pole, Or grasp the ocean with my span, I must be measur'd by my soul: The mind's the standard ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... the schools, the philosophy of the profoundest theorists, been overthrown by the simple demonstrations of practical facts? For a thousand years the world was in pursuit of the giant power that lay hidden in heated vapor, the steam that came floating up from boiling water. That power eluded the grasp and baffled the research of human genius, which was looking so earnestly after it, until ingenuity gave it up, and philosophy pronounced it a delusion. Not far from the beginning of the present century, practical experiment began to develop the mysterious ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... is black, and full of blood; His eye-balls farther out than when he lived, Staring full ghastly, like a strangled man; His hair uprear'd—his nostrils stretch'd with struggling, His hands abroad display'd, as one who grasp'd And tugg'd for life, and was by strength subdued. HENRY ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... increasing interest in the gallantry with which Pitt almost alone fought the ablest Opposition that had ever been ranged within the walls of Westminster, and inflamed by the sight of power almost within their grasp. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... culture; that is, her mind was passively rather than actively engaged in such directions, until later. At the normal school she led a class which has had a proud intellectual record as teachers and workers. She was the easy victor in every contest; with an inclusive grasp, an incisive analysis, instant generalization, a very tenacious and ready memory, and unusual talent for every effort of study, she took and held the first place as a matter of course until she graduated, when she gave the valedictory address. This valedictory ...
— The Seven Little Sisters Who Live on the Round Ball - That Floats in the Air • Jane Andrews
... the violet robe of the Counsellor seemed almost austere. His lineless face was so fresh in color that it looked youthful, though of singular gravity and refined asceticism. Yet men of force were drawn to him because of his strength, his broad grasp of duty, and ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... and classic verse, especially, are his delights. He has no affectation. His tastes are all his own—his opinions all genuine. He is, indeed, a man of very varied attainment, as well as great grasp of intellect. Yet, as you see, he likes his opposites sometimes. Miss Harz," and he laid his hand proudly on ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... I take all back about your nice appreciation of character. I now grasp the whole truth—your attention wandered sufficiently from your dinner to observe that she wore a brown dress, and the one fact about the thrush that has impressed you is that it is brown. 'Here be truths' which leave nothing more ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... as a whole, there breaks from it such lightness of fancy, such richness of invention, such variety and vividness of color, nay, even the ripple of mirthfulness,—for Nature has its humorous side also,—that we lose our grasp of its completeness in wonder at its details, and our sense of its unity is clouded by its marvellous fertility. There may seem to be an irreverence in thus characterizing the Creative Thought by epithets which we derive from the exercise of our own mental faculties; but it is nevertheless ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... ourselves at this point what the Incarnation means, because our estimate of Blessed Mary as the chosen instrument of God's grace will be influenced by our estimate of that which she was chosen to do. One feels the failure to grasp her position in the work of our redemption often displays a weak hold upon that which is the very heart of God's work—the fact of God made man. The moment of the Annunciation is the moment of the Incarnation: God in His ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... was recognized by me as being a decided victory, though not so complete as I had hoped for, nor nearly so complete as I now think was within the easy grasp of the commanding officer at Corinth. Since the war it is known that the result, as it was, was a crushing blow to the enemy, and felt by him much more than it was appreciated at the North. The battle relieved me from any further ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... said the Sub-Prior, gently extricating his garment from the anxious grasp of Dame Elspeth, "the Refectioner has with him the Abbot's plate and drinking cups; and I pray you to believe that whatever is short in your entertainment will be deemed amply made up in ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... has some charms for me," he replied smilingly, as though to indicate that sainthood was not yet quite within his grasp. ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... narrative, had recognised the psychological truth of the plain story of his wavering conviction and had learned its lessons of self-distrust. There is only one Man with whom it was always high-water; all others have ebbs and flows in their religious life, and variations in their grasp of truth. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... now little cultivated; once the scene of high civilisation when Nineveh ruled it; it passed from Assyrian hands successively to Babylonian, Persian, Greek, Roman, and Arab; now, after many vicissitudes, it is in the deathly grasp of Turkish rule. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... seized you, not knowing whose life I was striving to save at the risk of losing my own. Isn't that worth some sort of return? Isn't it worth even the sacrifice of a whim? Louise, don't look at me that way. Is it possible that you don't grasp—" He hesitated and turned his face toward the parlor whence came again the cough, hollow and distressing. The sound died away, echoing down the hall, and a hen clucked on the porch ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... greatest come to congratulate Hector on the speech. Everybody in the county was talking about him that night, they said. Hector received these people in his old-fashioned-statesman manner, though I noticed that already he shook hands like a candidate. He would grasp the caller's hand quickly and decidedly, instead of letting the other do the gripping. And I could see that all those who came in, even hard-headed men twice his age, treated him deferentially, with the ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... what the chain? In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? What dread grasp Dare ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... a stir and a cry from two floors below. Sylvia Graham had broken from the grasp of her terrified aunt, and now came up the sharp ascent like a deer, her eyes ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... "representative men of the denominations" to rally the strength of their denominations to sustain this work at their call? We utter no prophecy of the future; it is not needed. Events transpire in these days faster than our minds are prepared to grasp them. Let us heed the admonition to "watch!" and, with reliance upon God, prepare for "those things which are coming on ...
— The United States in the Light of Prophecy • Uriah Smith
... the instant to grasp the meaning of this piece of eloquent information, invited the urchin to repeat it, which he did with the sly unction of one proud of his secret. Mary laughed to herself. Some girls would have ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... to sit there all day, you young folk?" he called out hastily.—"Oh, here you are, little ones;—glad to see you, my lad;" and he gave Tom's hand a warm grasp, and touched Lucy's white face ...
— Thankful Rest • Annie S. Swan
... from his long sleep, confused and bewildered. So vivid had been his dream that it was some time before he could grasp his surroundings and come back to ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... left, while the summit soars up out of our sight into the sky. "The effect is gained by majesty and simplicity of form, in the contrast and disproportion between the stature of man and the immensity of his handiwork: the eye fails to take it in; it is even difficult for the mind to grasp it. We see, we may touch hundreds of courses formed of blocks, two hundred cubic feet in size,... and thousands of others scarcely less in bulk, and wo are at a loss to know what force has moved, transported, and raised so great a number of colossal stones, how many men were needed for the work, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... without the least indication on my part, in his hard lean grasp, and shook it kindly, but familiarly, peering with a stern sort of curiosity into my face as he continued to hold it. His ill-fitting, glossy black cloth, ungainly presence, and sharp, dark, vulpine features had in them, as I said before, the vulgarity of a Glasgow artisan in his ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... beautiful, like flights of birds, O monarch, flying away from trees. Then Dhananjaya, having afflicted them thus, with great speed struck hundreds and thousands of them with sharp shafts. And he cut off their heads and also hands with weapons in their grasp, by means of his broad-headed arrows. And he felled on the ground, with his shafts, their thighs, resembling the trunks of elephants. And some were wounded on their backs, arms and eyes. And thus Dhananjaya deprived his foes of diverse limbs, and ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... have caught their cry in time. The world had narrowed down to a pin prick, but if only she had come a scant two days ago, she would have bent his eye to this tiny aperture as to the small end of a telescope as she did now and made him see big enough to grasp the ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... who threw half naked. Fair hope had he who held the dice, after his fellow had cried his number. Then the quarrel rose suddenly from the silence. One called across the table to his companion, "You cheat, and throw not fairly. Grasp not the dice so tightly in your hand, but shake them forth upon the board. My count is yet before yours. If you still have pennies in your pouch bring them out, for I will meet you to your wish." Thus the dicers wrangled, and ...
— Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut • Wace
... of paper—or is it a ghostly communication from the world of spirits? You look startled enough for me to suppose anything, and it spun away from your grasp very suddenly. Oh," he added, as he glanced it through, "rather ghostly, I must confess, or would be if one were inclined that way; but I imagined your nerves were stronger. Did the pronoun ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... not be forgotten that for twenty years she had been the personal friend and favourite of Anne of Austria, and for ten years she had suffered persecution and privation on that account. Exiled, proscribed, and threatened with imprisonment, she had narrowly escaped Richelieu's grasp by disguising herself in male attire, and in that garb traversing France and Spain on horseback, had succeeded in eluding his pursuit, and after many adventures in safely reaching Madrid. Philip IV. not only heaped every ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... instant Boldwood sprang upon him, and held him by the neck. Troy felt Boldwood's grasp slowly tightening. The move ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... said; however, at last they began to pat their stomachs, and then we knew that all was right. Accordingly we advanced to meet them, patting our stomachs with one hand, and holding out the other to grasp theirs. They were of a brownish copper colour, well formed and athletic, with long shaggy hair—their only clothing being a piece of skin thrown over one shoulder. In such a climate as that of Terra del Fuego, their ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... and horrible. If any one is afraid of ghosts he ought to be afraid, too, of me, and of those lights and of the sky, seeing that, if you come to reflect, all that is no less fantastic and beyond our grasp than apparitions from the other world. Prince Hamlet did not kill himself because he was afraid of the visions that might haunt his dreams after death. I like that famous soliloquy of his, but, to be candid, it never touched my soul. I will confess to you as a ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Faith is different from, and superior to, reason. Faith is a spiritual extension of the vision—a moral sense that reaches out toward the throne of God and takes hold of verities that the mind cannot grasp. It is like "the blind leading the blind" for a higher critic, however honest, to rely on purely intellectual methods to convey truths that are ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... feeling as if I was looking into kind eyes that I had seen close to me forever in the old convent in France, and as I spoke I could not help it that I raised my arm in its covering of a man's tweed and let my woman's fingers grasp one of the long fingers on my shoulder and cling to it as I had done other long fingers just like them that had guided my first footsteps down the sunny garden paths of the old Chateau ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... persisted in; but the broad facts are already before the public mind. After three years of war the air offensive, the only possible decisive blow, is still merely talked of. Not once nor twice only have the Western Allies had victory within their grasp—and failed to grip it. The British cavalry generals wasted the great invention of the tanks as a careless child breaks a toy. At least equally remarkable is the dragging inadaptability of European statecraft. Everywhere the failure of ministers and statesmen to rise to the urgent definite necessities ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells
... solving the problems of old Exham. How was he to do this if he was not big enough to cope with his own circumstance? And was he going to miss the continuation of the Manning line because he had failed to grasp opportunity in ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... to a certain extent the victim of his occupation; and the formalities of the Senate were ever tightening their grasp on Sumner's mode of life. One afternoon, as he was leaving Dr. Howe's garden at South Boston, the doctor's youngest daughter ran out from the house, and called to him, "Good-bye, Mr. Sumner." His back was ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... little doubt as to the correctness of this latter surmise, as he threw the door open and stepped into the room, his first action being to grasp the electric switch ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... marvellous, truly, was her aspect, that I forgot all else but it, and stood entranced, marvelling, forgetful of myself and purpose. The flash of a knife in the air and a fearful oath brought me to my senses to know that I was in the grasp of the man ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... rate at Paris—I can introduce her to such society as she will like—and thus, securing for her all the chance for happiness, which depends on me, I shall die in peace, persuaded that the felicity which has hitherto cheated my expectation, will not always elude my grasp. No poor tempest-tossed mariner ever more earnestly longed ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... photoplay company. If he can be interested in your story, the script is half sold. This being true, it follows that your synopsis must be clear, interesting, and as brief as you can possibly make it, while still giving all the important points of the story. He must grasp your plot, if not in a nutshell, at least in just as few words as it can be compressed into in order to make its development perfectly clear. You must therefore outline it, so that he may be able to see plainly the possibilities ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... pearls. The ocean, not to be behindhand with the earth, yielded up her mighty whales, that Mr. Gathergold might sell their oil, and make a profit on it. Be the original commodity what it might, it was gold within his grasp. It might be said of him, as of Midas in the fable, that whatever he touched with his finger immediately glistened, and grew yellow, and was changed at once into sterling metal, or, which suited him still better, into piles of coin. And, when Mr. Gathergold had become so very rich ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... at one end of this leafy domicile and the next instant catching the evicted caterpillar "on a fly" at the other. Grasping her prey with her legs and jaws, in another moment the wriggling body is passive in her grasp, subdued by the potent anaesthetic of her sting—a hypodermic injection which instantly produces the semblance of death in its insect victim, reducing all the vital functions to the point of dissolution, and then holds them suspended—literally prolongs life, it would sometimes seem, even ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... slow necessity of death: The tranquil spirit fails beneath its grasp, Without a groan, almost without a fear, 470 Resigned in peace to the necessity, Calm as a voyager to some distant land, And full of wonder, full of hope as he. The deadly germs of languor and disease Waste in the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... something had so terrified her, that it would be cruelty to force her out into the streets. Every now and then she let drop another word or two on the subject of her fright; her poor disconnected brain seemed unable to grasp anything as a whole; something would float across it and be lost. Marie had grown apt at gathering together these cobweb strands, and disentangling them, but now even her ingenuity was at fault, and the number was the only point which ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... two men's hands parted, after this perfunctory grasp, and the Commander passed on, she ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... though not exactly dignified carriage. His complexion remained as pale and his eyes as blue as before. The pallor flushed and the blue sparkled as he made a few final and long strides towards me. The grasp of the hand he gave me was powerful, but broken into sudden almost quivering relaxations and compressions. I could not help fancying also that he was using some little effort to keep his eyes steady upon ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... said Vaninka, holding her back with a grasp of almost masculine strength. "Let us stay until the house falls in on them, so that we may be certain that not one of ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - VANINKA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... Jacques—how he must suffer! Hark to that low, sickening thud! 'Tis the accursed soap dropping from his nerveless grasp. Hist to that sound—like unto a death rattle! It is the water gurgling in the tub. And what means that low, poignant, smothered gasp? It is the last convulsive cry of Jacques descending into the depths. All is ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... declare Jack Rover duly elected captain of Company C for the ensuing term," said Captain Dale. "Captain Rover, if you will come forward, I shall be glad to shake hands with you," he added. And then, as Jack walked to the platform to grasp the instructor's hand, there was a great ...
— The Rover Boys Under Canvas - or The Mystery of the Wrecked Submarine • Arthur M. Winfield
... make him less anxious for the completion of the marriage between Catherine and Prince Henry. Henry VII. was equally averse from the consummation of the match. Now that he was scheming with Charles's other grandfather, the Emperor Maximilian, to wrest the government of Castile from Ferdinand's grasp, the alliance of the King of Aragon had lost its attraction, and it was possible that the Prince of Wales might find elsewhere a more desirable bride. Henry's marriage with Catherine was to have been accomplished when he completed the age of fourteen; but ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... at first to understand. She looked puzzled and bewildered, and did not seem to grasp the full import ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon
... has reduced law and order to a somewhat low ebb. I at first thought of coming here to await my chance of shooting this man—his name, by the way, is Frederick Conyngham; but circumstances placed a better vengeance within my grasp—one that will last longer.' ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... exceeded all my previous experience; fingers were dismembered as readily as twigs, and blood was poured out like water. Many of the warriors would cut two gashes nearly the entire length of their arm; then, separating the skin from the flesh at one end, would grasp it in their other hand, and rip it asunder to the shoulder. Others would carve various devices upon their breasts and shoulders, and raise the skin in the same manner to make the scars show to advantage after the wound was ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... present. Among his more important works are two complete services, a scene for barytone solo, male chorus, and orchestra, called "Ticonderoga," and a powerful Christmas anthem. Warren has written also various operettas, in which he shows a particular grasp of instrumentation, and an ability to give new turns of expression to his songs, while keeping them smooth and singable. An unpublished short song of his, "When the Birds Go North," is a remarkably beautiful work, showing an aptitude ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... their own food. He has almost entirely reorganized the life of our valley, along these lines, and I daresay he cannot at all realize himself the prodigious change from hopelessness and slow death to energy and forward-looking activity which his intelligent grasp of the situation has brought to this ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... a long way round, however, for my word about my dim first move toward "The Portrait," which was exactly my grasp of a single character—an acquisition I had made, moreover, after a fashion not here to be retraced. Enough that I was, as seemed to me, in complete possession of it, that I had been so for a long time, that this had made it familiar ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... upon the man who had destroyed her brother's peace? Faithful to Lilian should she go, or faithless stay? He took the guitar himself and fingered the strings, making fewer chords than discords; her own fingers wandered to correct him; their hands met; the guitar slipped down unheeded; the grasp grew closer, grew warmer—ah, Helen, was it Lilian of whom you thought, whom you would save?—and then an arm was around her; shining eyes, only half guessed in the glimmer that the phosphorescent swells ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... basic principles of our Nation, for we know that if we despise our own government we have no future. We recall in special times when we have stood briefly, but magnificently, united. In those times no prize was beyond our grasp. ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... said, "that I was a shipowner and a merchant. That is true. But these are troubled times. A revolution has had the land in its grasp. Times are bad, and this vast land is now convulsed with the birth throes of democracy. Money is hard to come by, and much needed, for General Washington's troops were farmers called away from their harvesting or sowing. The period of healing, for them and for the land, ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... above all, when it must be conceded that the increase of the cost of living caused by such tariff becomes a burden upon those with moderate means and the poor, the employed and unemployed, the sick and well, and the young and old, and that it constitutes a tax which with relentless grasp is fastened upon the clothing of every man, woman, and child in the land, reasons are suggested why the removal or reduction of this duty should be included in a revision ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... faithful. What other people had done, she, by following the old copybook rules of the honest policy, the early rising, the power of knowledge, the infinite capacity of taking pains that was genius, could do, too. She had been the toy of chance too long. She would grasp chance, now, and make it serve her. The perseverance that Anna brought to her hospital work, that Josephine exercised in her studies, Susan, lacking a gift, lacking special training, would seriously devote to the business of ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... swing across one side of his cage. He caught the long line in his teeth at a point not far from the rail; then, wriggling with great effort to an upright position, his back braced against the rail, he put his chin over the swing and worked toward one end. He tightened the grasp of his chin on the swing, and with tremendous exertion, working the lower end of his spine against the railing, he began gradually to ascend the side of his cage. The labor was so great that he was compelled to pause at intervals, and his breathing was hard and painful; ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... been discovered by the Federal cavalry, and in such circumstances the more officers that understood the intention of the general-in-chief the better. Men who have been honoured with their leader's confidence, and who grasp the purpose of the efforts they are called upon to make, will co-operate, if not more cordially, at least more intelligently, than those who are impelled by the ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... poop, and, bending over, attempted to seize some of the half-drowned people who were floating about. Once he caught a little child by the clothes; but before he could secure it a wave carried it out of his grasp, and its shrieks were hushed in the roar of the waters. At nine o'clock, on the second morning of the wreck the tide had so far ebbed that the deck was clear, and, coming down from the rigging, the battered and shivering survivors began to think of getting breakfast. A provident sailor ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... terror clinging to spars and shrouds, unable to move. Over heeled the stout ship. The masts like willow-wands bent, and then, snapping in two, were carried away to leeward. The lower yards dipped in the water, and most of those upon them were torn away from their grasp, while others were hurled to a distance from the ship. For a few minutes she lay helplessly on her beam-ends, then happily feeling the power of her helm, which was put up, the canvas at the same time being ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... the fresh blood, the giver of the wound comes up, and provokes his adversary to fury, and buries his shining hunting spear in his opposite shoulder. His companions attest their delight in an encouraging shout, and in their right hands endeavour to grasp the conquering right hand; and with wonder they behold the huge beast as he lies upon a large space of ground, and they do not deem it safe as yet to touch him; but yet they, each of them, stain their weapons with his blood. ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... still more essential factor in its economic welfare. Whether we have a farseeing and wise diplomacy and are not recklessly plunged into unnecessary wars, and whether our foreign policies are based upon an intelligent grasp of present-day world conditions and a clear view of the potentialities of the future, or are governed by a temporary and timid expediency or by narrow views befitting an infant nation, are questions in the alternative consideration ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... you!" he exclaimed, in a low voice, which seemed struggling in the grasp of something which might or might not be stronger than itself. "You don't know how glad I am to stand by you, and ...
— The Associate Hermits • Frank R. Stockton
... remaining passengers sought shelter from the encroaching dangers, by retreating to the passage, on the lee side of the boat, that leads from the after to the forward deck, as if to be as far as possible from the grasp of death. It may not be improper here to remark, that the destruction of the boat, and loss of life, was, doubtless, much more rapid than it otherwise would have been, from the circumstance of the boat heeling to windward, and the deck, which was nearly ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... filled with listeners. People came thirty, forty and fifty miles in buggies and wagons to shake hands with the pioneer suffragist. Grizzly-headed opposers succumbed to Miss Anthony's logic and came up to grasp her hand and say God bless her, and proved the depth of their fervor by generous financial aid to the cause she so ably represents. It is seldom that the beginner of a great reform lives to see such fruitage of her labors as does she. People often descant upon the indifference of women ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... has simply disappeared like the crocodile from the Lower Nile. Finally, to conclude this rapidly outlined sketch, all at the present moment happily share the same fate; they are being robbed of their last mysteries; the veil of Isis is fast yielding to the white man's grasp. ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... his hand and was gratified to encounter a man's grasp. "So you're Edward Courtlandt? Now, what do you think of that! Why, your father was the best sportsman I ever met. Square as they make 'em. Not a kink anywhere in his make-up. He used to come to the bouts in his plug hat and ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... thirsted for more of Christ, and now have no longing for Him—awake to the danger in which you stand of letting all your spiritual wealth slip through your fingers; behold the treasures, yet unreached, within your grasp, and seek to garner and realise them. Gather up the broken pieces which remain over, lest everything ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... world, in which entire races come and go, some of them leaving a ruin or two, and perhaps an odd indecipherable inscription here and there! The world was fortunate indeed to grasp, from the obliterated and forgotten past, Hebraism and Hellenism—the moral and the beautiful; from which man's craving for goodness has resulted in Christianity; and from which his impulses of sweetness and brightness and loveliness have developed the Renascence! ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... Have ye seen when Spring's arrowy summons goes right to the aim, And some mountain, the last to withstand her, that held (he alone, While the vale laughed in freedom and flowers) on a broad bust of stone A year's snow bound about for a breastplate,—leaves grasp of the sheet? Fold on fold all at once it crowds thunderously down to his feet, And there fronts you, stark, black, but alive yet, your mountain of old, {110} With his rents, the successive bequeathings of ages untold— Yea, each harm got in fighting your battles, each furrow ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... the position of the German troops in Courland placed them advantageously for taking the Russian line of defenses, of which the fortress of Kovno represented the northern end in the flank in this carrying out of an important part of the vast encircling movement which took all Poland in its grasp. They were a constant threat to the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... Kingdom" in her hand, felt that some source of power and happiness which she had not realized had slipped from her grasp, yet might still be hers. So many disconnected, half-childish thoughts came with the words—historic names of women whom men had loved devotedly, who had kept them as their friends and lovers even when they themselves ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... in their places when wanted. There is another side to this quaint custom, which is often of inestimable advantage to a busy man. A host, who feels that everything necessary has been said, and wishes to free himself from further attendance, may grasp his own cup and invite his guest to drink. The same results follow, and the guest has no alternative but to rise and take his leave. In ancient days visitors left their shoes outside the front door, a custom which is still practised by the ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... the actors of these events themselves understood them but ill, we shall not be far from the truth in saying that our Revolution was a phenomenon equally misunderstood by those who caused it and by those who have described it. At no period of history did men so little grasp the present, so greatly ignore the past, and so poorly divine ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... the sick man. Loosening the grasp of his hand, he carried him to a little mound at the foot ...
— The Story of the Other Wise Man • Henry Van Dyke
... utterly destroy his army. He proved too slow, however, and Lee and his beaten Confederate soldiers escaped. President Lincoln was inexpressibly grieved at this, and in the first bitterness of his disappointment sat down and wrote General Meade a letter. Lee "was within your easy grasp," he told him, "and to have closed upon him would, in connection with our other late successes, have ended the war. As it is, the war will be prolonged indefinitely. ... Your golden opportunity is gone and I am ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay
... silken skirts, trod out the red heart of it neatly with her daintily shod foot. Just then the other lady, she of the gray-green gown, came from within the shelter of the Temple, and stood between the white pillars of the colonnade. Dick's grasp tightened on the handle of the hunting-crop lying ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... His grasp squeezed hers in fond response. "Why, it won't do me any harm," he agreed. His tone was light. He released his hand and took up a cup of tea, and his tone went deep. "Mind you, I'm glad about it," he said, and stirred the spoon ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... connected therewith. There is scarcely an act in the Indian's life that does not involve some ceremonial performance or is not in itself a religious act, sometimes so complicated that much time and study are required to grasp even a part of its real meaning, for his myriad deities must all be propitiated lest some dire ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... and began what promised to be a long shrill wawl, if it had not been stopped. How it was stopped, the trembling, sickening mother herself did not know. She only knew that a strong hand wrenched the child from her grasp in the black darkness, and that all was still, unless, as she then and ever after had a shuddering apprehension, there was something of a slight gurgle which reached her strained ear. Her own involuntary moan was stopped almost ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... hand. The clammy coldness of his grasp startled her. "Do you still wonder why I followed you?" he asked. The words were so faintly uttered that she could barely hear them. Heavy drops of perspiration stood on his forehead; his face faded to a gray and ghastly whiteness—he ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... roam—the more possible the idea seemed. Ham had said my father was not a money-making man. He was in financial difficulties, too. Grandfather had died and there was a heap of money just beyond my mother's grasp. My father had become a stumbling-block in her path—in my path. He it was who ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... Child! Forbear! As if goaded by invisible spirits, the sun-steeds of time bear onward the light car of our destiny; and nothing remains for us but, with calm self-possession, firmly to grasp the reins, and now right, now left, to steer the wheels here from the precipice and there from the rock. Whither he is hasting, who knows? Does any one consider ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... a butterfly and, catching her, held her in his hands and feasted his eyes upon her prettiness. But as he held her so, the pollen rubbed off her wings and she fluttered, a pitiable thing, weakly from his grasp. ...
— A Book Without A Title • George Jean Nathan
... the Christian inhabitants of Spain and Portugal against the Moors, who had formerly expelled their ancestors from the greatest part of the peninsula, and with whom they had waged an incessant war of several centuries in recovering the country from their grasp. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... shine with a silver thread of humor, worked too intimately into the whole warp and woof to be extracted without injuring both the solid material and the tinsel. To appreciate the point and delicacy of their finest wit, you must read the whole story and grasp the entire ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... and, taking the reins, swung himself into the saddle with the ease of the cavalry mount, though with the old-fashioned grasp at the cantle, with the ends of the reins ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... little fellow, who might easily have stood under my arm stretched level with my shoulder, could he be the hero of Marengo! the Dictator of France who held all Europe trembling in his grasp! I think that I had heretofore had an unconscious feeling that greatness of stature meant greatness of heart and mind and courage, and I had gloried in my inches. Now I was almost ashamed of them, for this little man coming rapidly ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... become justified, provided they show that, in regard to a philosophy as "unhealthy and unprofitable" as Schopenhauer's, not proofs but quips and sallies alone are suitable. While perusing such passages, the reader will grasp the full meaning of Schopenhauer's solemn utterance to the effect that, where optimism is not merely the idle prattle of those beneath whose flat brows words and only words are stored, it seemed to him not merely an absurd but a vicious attitude of mind, and one full ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... throbbed hard; but the muscles of his arms and chest held firm as the crowbar they guided, and slowly, reluctantly, sullenly, the rock went over on its side. He dropped the crowbar from his stiffening grasp and drew himself up, flinging his shoulders back and panting ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... the snortingest supper of the season to-night. It isn't every day your shack is honoured by a bride. Mr. Bailey, this is my wife, since ten o'clock A. M." He introduced a blushing, happy girl, evidently in the grasp of many emotions. "We'll stay ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... crowded houses of Gravesend and the monstrous red-brick pile on the Essex shore the ship is surrendered fairly to the grasp of the river. That hint of loneliness, that soul of the sea which had accompanied her as far as the Lower Hope Reach, abandons her at the turn of the first bend above. The salt, acrid flavour is gone out of the air, together with a sense of unlimited ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... whole law. What are we without it?—poor, vile, selfish animals; our very virtues themselves, so exclusively virtues on our own behalf as to be well nigh as hateful as our vices. Nothing so opens and improves the heart, nothing so widens the grasp of the affections, nothing half so effectually brings us out of our crust of self, as a happy, well-regulated love for ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... this one hour Shall grasp the world with clearer power Than in a year's monotony. The songs the tender spirits sing thee, The lovely images they bring thee Are not an idle magic play. Thou shalt enjoy the daintiest savor, Then feast thy taste ...
— Faust • Goethe
... to one still higher. But the quantity of the universe is not thereby determined, and we cannot affirm that this regress proceeds in infinitum. Such an affirmation would anticipate the members of the series which have not yet been reached, and represent the number of them as beyond the grasp of any empirical synthesis; it would consequently determine the cosmical quantity prior to the regress (although only in a negative manner)—which is impossible. For the world is not given in its totality in any intuition: consequently, its quantity cannot ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... love to hear their stern deeds sung by innocent lips; and right well, to listen to the strain that tells how the heart of "lady-bright" is won by noble daring. But what means that sudden break in the song, and the confused sweep of the strings, as though the lute had slipped from its owner's grasp; while the masculine paraphernalia which we had just discovered disappears altogether behind that most impervious and curiosity-mocking screen? No great harm done, or that light laugh had not escaped the lips so suddenly ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various |
