"Grasp" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... like the fingers of one's hand. But what a hand was this hand of the ant-eater! When it has got hold of anything you have to cut it off to make it let go! It is of this hand that the traveler, Emile Carrey, has so justly observed: "The tiger himself would perish in its grasp." ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... his judgment had been grievously at fault in the whole Russian campaign. They said that he had sat idle during a long day when the fortunes of his empire might have been settled at Bautzen. They said that, overcome by physical weariness, he had failed to grasp his great opportunity after the victory at Dresden. They said that Leipsic and the battles that preceded it showed that he had lost the ability to see things with a soldier's eye. They declared that he made pictures and ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... large a part in the history of his own country and of which he talks so often and with so little restraint. The ignorance of Englishmen of America is another matter which will be referred to in its place. For the present, what is to be desired is that the American should get some elementary grasp of the character of Great Britain and ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... to destroy our enemies. The shouts continued long after the general had gone, and even I was satisfied. I saw that it was the truth, that the Prussians, Austrians, and Russians, who had talked so much of the deliverance of the people, had profited by the first opportunity to grasp everything, that those grand words about liberty, which had served to excite their young men against us in 1813, and all the promises of constitutions which they had made, had been set aside and broken. I looked ...
— Waterloo - A sequel to The Conscript of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... and grumble like other people; if he would not take things so quietly; if he would resist and struggle, I believe he might fight the battle and win it yet. I think he will get over the crisis, but what of that if there is no rallying? He is letting life go because he will not grasp it hard, I suppose for the reason that he has no strong ties to bind him to it. He has either such a poor opinion of his deserts, or such a trust in Providence, that he considers whatever is is best, and does not exert himself to alter the course of events ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... not struck with the Novelty or Beauty of the Sight, but with that rude kind of Magnificence which appears in many of these stupendous Works of Nature. Our Imagination loves to be filled with an Object, or to grasp at any thing that is too big for its Capacity. We are flung into a pleasing Astonishment at such unbounded Views, and feel a delightful Stillness and Amazement in the Soul at the Apprehension[s] of them. The Mind of Man naturally ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... autocratic Hohenzollern cast upon the shoulders of others the burden of his own failure to grasp the evolution in political thinking [25] which had taken place in Europe, since 1789. Unfortunately for the future of the German people he was able to ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... had she, not even a teapot, but she ran bravely in, knelt behind one of the ruffians, and when an opportunity came, seized him by the foot, bringing him down to the floor with a thud. Quickly another foot was in Betty's deadly grasp, and another man fell, leaving only one assailant standing, whom Hamilton soon routed. The two men on the floor attempted to rise, but Betty clung to their feet, and George's ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... shuddered. Her lips moved,—she seemed to be praying; in fact, she thought she was about to die, for she felt the bush beginning to give way. With the agility which danger gives to youth, Calyste slid down to the ledge below the bush, where he was able to grasp the marquise and hold her, although at the risk of their both sliding down into the sea. As he held her, he saw that she had fainted; but in that aerial spot he could fancy her all his, and his first emotion was ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... forget them so soon again, he had been searching for them too long not to prize them now. He had thought he was anchoring at despair, and now that a star broke through the clouded heavens, beckoning him on, was he mad to scorn the hope that lay within his grasp? No, indeed, and that very night, under the immediate impulse of his new-born emotions, Guy Elersley ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... politely and moved a step or two away. But Zora, struck by a solution of the mystery which had not occurred to her, as one cannot grasp all the ways and customs of gaming establishments in ten minutes, rushed back to the other table. She arrived just in time to hear the croupier asking whom the louis on seventeen belonged to. The number ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... deprived her of the last vestige of dignity and self-assertion. She relapsed into the mental condition of a juvenile culprit undergoing correction. Now that she was caught, she no longer thought of her offense as venial. The grasp of her captor seemed to put an end to all possible hairsplitting on that point, and prove that it was nothing more nor less than stealing, and a sense of guilt left her without any moral support against her fright. She was only conscious of utter humiliation, and ...
— Hooking Watermelons - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... much!" she burst out furiously, springing from her seat, and being dragged back by his iron grasp of her hands. "Let me go, sir! I have had insults enough—and in my own house—with no ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... warmly returned the archdeacon's grasp, but he said little. His heart was too full for speaking, and he could not express the gratitude which he felt. Dr. Grantly understood him as well as though he ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... we do this we shall find that in the last resort it is because we do not believe in the Spirit as a FORMING power. We have, indeed, advanced to the conception of it as executive power, which will work to a prescribed pattern, but we have yet to grasp the conception of it as versed in the art of design, and capable of elaborating schemes of construction, which will not only be complete in themselves, but also in perfect harmony with one another. When we advance to the conception of the Spirit as containing in itself the ...
— The Dore Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... from her grasp when she opened it, and flung it against the wall with a jarring crash, while a fine powder that stung the skin unbearably drove into her face. For a few moments she could see nothing but a whirling haze, and then, as her ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... attention and study of the most godly and profound. Here, for the first time, it was being read by a company of poor Indians just emerging from paganism. But they were sharp and keen, and able to grasp a new truth; and so when the verse first opened before them with its wondrous meaning, great ...
— On the Indian Trail - Stories of Missionary Work among Cree and Salteaux Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... His confidence, moreover, communicated itself to her. She saw that he did not jerk or saw on the reins at first, but, bracing his large powerful frame, drew steadily back, and that the horses yielded somewhat to his masterful grasp. ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... souls, that strangers are nearest to us. Why must we pass them in silence? We know not, but must resign ourselves to it. When two trains are rushing by upon the iron rails and thou seest a well-known eye that would recognize thee, stretch out thy hand and try to grasp the hand of a friend, and perhaps thou wilt understand why man passes man in ...
— Memories • Max Muller
... at him with feelings of repulsion, the apparition changes. We are on the lake, and I am remonstrating with Paul, who pays no heed to my words. I speak more plainly and grasp his arm! Paul rises and pushes ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... presence of mind, but he sought in vain to urge the Shawnees in pursuit. Superstition held them in a firm grasp. It was true that Early had been slain by a bullet, but a mystic power was taking the boat away. The hand of Manitou was against them and they would return to the country north of the Ohio. They started at once, and Wyatt, raging, was compelled to go with them, since he did ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... crimson lips. There was so much magnetism in her beauty, such a heaven in the unconquered warmth of her impetuous being, that Selwyn gripped the arms of his chair to help to restrain the mad impulse to grasp her in his arms and smother those lips and the flushed, satin cheeks in a ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... frenzy of the lust of blood upon me, I seized some one and drove my revolver heavily into his skull. I threw another man to the floor from behind, and was then seized as in a grasp of a vice. I turned about and struggled fiercely, and together my assailant and I rocked and rolled from point to point. Neither of us had any weapon, it appeared, and all that we could do was to struggle in that ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... that he is, to eat young birds when he has still a bushel of corn and nuts in his old wall—cannot find a footing on those delicate branches. Neither can the crow find a resting place from which to steal the young; and the hawk's legs are not long enough to reach down and grasp them, should he perchance venture near the house and hover an instant ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... a sudden jerk and pulled himself from his uncle's grasp. Then he started to run from the ...
— From Farm to Fortune - or Nat Nason's Strange Experience • Horatio Alger Jr.
... some time, visit all; how by the weakness which precluded them from assuming those independent shapes which require the plastic force of higher powers, they became associated with the scenes among which they were cherished, and clove to them with earnest grasp; and how the fervid expressions which that combination prompted, were accepted by generous friends as indicating faculties 'beyond the reaches of my soul,' and induced them to encourage me by genial prophecies which, with unwearied ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. I, No. 6 - Of Literature, Art, And Science, New York, August 5, 1850 • Various
... should only have been met with a similar or lesser weapon, seemed to have no effect upon the moral sense of my enemy, for he whipped out his revolver ere I scarce had touched the floor by his side, but an uppercut from my long-sword sent it flying from his grasp before ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... it," said Bond. "I admire some of your things so much. Your instinct for realities, your sturdy central grasp—" ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... their mother see her elder son Come a fair bridegroom to his Cretan home. For Idas wrenched from off the dead man's tomb A jutting slab, to hurl it at the man Who had slain his brother. Then did Zeus bring aid, And struck the marble fabric from his grasp, And with red lightning burned his frame to dust. So doth he fight with odds who dares provoke The Tyndarids, mighty sons of mighty sire. Now farewell, Leda's children: prosper aye The songs I sing. What minstrel loves not well The Tyndarids, and Helen, ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... faith—strikingly anticipates the last conclusions of science. Further, a fervent belief in the end proposed, a conviction of success, is by no means essential. Far more important is a humble willingness to try the method, give it a chance. That which reason may not grasp, the deeper mind may seize upon and realize; always provided that the intellect does not set up resistances. This is found to be true in medical practice, and religious teachers have always declared ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... boy had learned his lesson of discontent from Trampas with a thoroughness past all unteaching. This petty triumph of evil seemed scarce of the size to count as any victory over the Virginian. But all men grasp at straws. Since that first moment, when in the Medicine Bow saloon the Virginian had shut the mouth of Trampas by a word, the man had been trying to get even without risk; and at each successive clash of his weapon with the Virginian's, he had ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... dollars, flowed into the treasury of the United States Sanitary Commission. The chief women who inaugurated the several great Fairs at New York, Philadelphia, Brooklyn, Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and administered these vast movements, were not behind the ablest men in the land in their grasp and comprehension of the business in hand, and often in comparison with the men associated with them, exhibited a finer scope, a better spirit and a more victorious faith. But for the women of America, ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... cliffs in the most amazing way, and not an opening in the rocky wall to be seen. "You mustn't be afraid," said my sweet little guide, assuringly: "it won't hurt;" and she gave me her hand, that—perhaps I shouldn't tell—trembled a little, and directly its mate stole into my grasp. ...
— Harper's Young People, April 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... entrances, the other being from the top of the platform where the cannon rested. Koku had seen him about to throw something into one of the ammunition cases, and had grappled with him. There was a fight, and, in spite of the giant's strength, the man had slipped away, leaving part of his garments in the grasp ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton
... the railway track below, and finally back to the lower platform. Then Mr. Smith got possession of the weapon which his assailant had been wielding, and the last hope of his enemy seemed to vanish with the loss of that, for, freeing himself from the grasp of the man whom he had thought a few minutes before was entirely in his power, he disappeared in the darkness, and fled up the track in such haste that he did not even stop for his hat, which was found by some one upon the platform next ...
— The Story of a Dark Plot - or Tyranny on the Frontier • A.L.O. C. and W.W. Smith
... until the captain comes in; and you had best tell me your name. 'Twill do you no good to sulk," he said, taking the coat from her reluctant grasp. But Betty only set her lips more firmly. She resolved not to speak, no ...
— A Little Maid of Old Philadelphia • Alice Turner Curtis
... of such great happiness. Her breast heaved tumultuously, her face was very pale, at each step her knees threatened to give way under her, and when her father drew her fondly to his side she was forced to grasp the arm of his chair tightly, ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... the Sabines, too! the white marble glistening in the obscurity, until the rounded shape of the maiden seems to elude the strong grasp of the Roman! ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... we recognised the reed-covered habitations of our Kabomba friends, the whole population apparently turning out to welcome us. The chief men, and those who had accompanied Stanley to the camp, hurried forward to grasp his hands, while the rest stood at a distance, gazing at the strange animals which our horses appeared to them; indeed, those only who had been to the camp had ever seen a horse before. Our first inquiries were, ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... it seems G.W. Smith did not press to the front, as was expected, but understood his orders to remain and guard the crossing of the river. Huger lost his way and did not come up until the opportunity to grasp the key to the situation was lost, and then it was discovered there was a mistake or misunderstanding in regard to his and Longstreet's seniority. Still Huger waived his rank reluctantly and allowed Longstreet and Hill to still ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... coalition; the majority voted against a coalition with the Cadets. But with the Cadets left out, there proved to be, among the bourgeoisie, no serious counter-agencies for the coalition. Tseretelli explained this in detail to the conference. If the conference did not grasp it, so much the worse for the conference. Behind the backs of the conference, negotiations were carried on without concealment with the Cadets, whom they had repudiated, and it was decided that the Cadets should not appear as Cadets, but as "Social workers." Pressed hard on both right and left, ...
— From October to Brest-Litovsk • Leon Trotzky
... the Grinder's real name. He and his mother were Queery and Drolly, contemptuously so called, and they answered to these names. I remember Cree best as a battered old weaver, who bent forward as he walked, with his arms hanging limp as if ready to grasp the shafts of the barrow behind which it was his life to totter uphill and downhill, a rope of yarn suspended round his shaking neck, and fastened to the shafts, assisting him to bear the yoke and slowly strangling him. By and by there came a time when the ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... apparent that only immediate victory could save Philadelphia from the grasp of the British general whose situation gave him the option of either taking possession of that place or endeavoring to bring on another engagement. If, therefore, a battle must certainly be risked to save the capital it would be ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... Nadia staggered to their feet as the private car lunged ahead in the grasp of the big engine, increasing speed with every wheel-turn. Mechanically, and as one man, they rushed to the rear platform. The mock cannon stood where it had been thrust; but in the camp street a handful of men were wrestling madly with the pipe fuse-carrier, breaking it, wrenching ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... senses assembled and righted at the first conscious grasp of this argument, as a laboring, buffeted ship rights when its shifted cargo is flung back to place by the shock of a mighty surge. Nature was on guard again in a moment, straining and tense in its sentry over the habitation of a soul so nearly deserted but a minute ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... filled with pure radioactives. It hovered over the leech until, rising to the bait, it had followed. Antaeus had left his mother, the Earth, and was losing his strength in the air. The operator was allowing the spaceship to run fast enough to keep out of the leech's grasp, but close ...
— The Leech • Phillips Barbee
... blows. Affairs in Jugo-Slavia, in Hungary, in Greece, in Albania, in Czecho-Slovakia, in Poland, and in Russia, were not quiet. Greece and Turkey were hideously at war. Nor were the South and Central American republics free from unrest. Russia was reaching out its evil White hands to grasp and weld again into a vast unhappy whole its former constituent republics of Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, Esthonia, Tauride, and White Russia. There seemed every chance that it would shortly succeed in doing so. The nations growled everywhere like sullen dogs on fragile ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... and springing suddenly to his feet, "some day you shall know all,—yes, some day, if I live, when that name shall be high in the world; yes, when the world is at my feet!" He stretched his right hand as if to grasp the space, and his whole face was lighted with a fierce enthusiasm. The glow died away, and with a slight return of his scornful smile he said: "Dreams yet; dreams! And now, look at this paper." And he drew out a memorandum, scrawled over ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... were quite enough to distinguish me from the regular salt who, with a sunburnt cheek, wide step, and rolling gait, swings his bronzed and toughened hands athwart-ships, half opened, as though just ready to grasp a rope. ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... of a desperate struggle. A bush had been rolled upon and crushed by heavy bodies. On the ground was blood as on the stones and leaves. The blade Legget still clutched was red, and the wrist of the hand which held it showed a dark, discolored band, where it had felt the relentless grasp of Wetzel's steel grip. The dead man's buckskin coat was cut into ribbons. On his broad face a demoniacal expression had set in eternal rigidity; the animal terror of death was frozen in his wide staring eyes. The outlaw chief had died as he had ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... fine clothes. A true nobleman is not forever boasting of his nobility for fear that his rank may not be recognized. The loudest boasts of patriotism do not come from the true possessors of the genuine spirit. Patriotism is not sectional nor local, it comprehends in its grasp ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... sun, tried in vain to force into it; the eye, too, that flashed and leapt as never is seen in our country of humid fogs, stifling the inborn heat and blearing the vision; and those arms that entwined him so as the vine holds the olive in its grasp, as if it would give the juice which fires and inebriates, for the oil that calms, and fattens, and sustains? All over that lithe body which enabled her, when he saw her first in the land of her fathers, to bound and flee as if she had wings, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... Rose, where have you been?" demanded an eager chorus. The tears had rushed to Miss Thorley's eyes also and when she discovered that, she discovered also that the hand with which she would have wiped them away was held fast in the firm grasp of Jerry Longworthy. How it had found its way there she never knew. She snatched it from him, her face aflame, and there were no longer ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... and the three sisters who take care of me are grim, hard-visaged, harder-hearted spinsters, not to be mollified by propitiation, or by the smooth tongue of the flatterer. The cup is very sweet, and it seems almost within my grasp; but between that chalice of delight and the lips that thirst for ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... exemplifiable natures; so that any experience whatsoever must tap the realm of essence, and throw the light of attention on one of its constituent forms. This is, if you will, a trivial achievement; what would be really a surprising feat, and hardly to be credited, would be that the human mind should grasp the constitution of nature; that is, should discover which is the particular essence, or the particular system of essences, which actual existence illustrates. In the matter of physics, truly, we are reduced to skimming the surface, since ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... quite simple, but it will serve to show you how you may with practice learn to take the thought in the Latin order, and to grasp the writer's meaning. All that now remains for you to do is to write out a translation in good English, using short coordinate sentences, each complete in itself, in place of the more involved structure of the original. The following version by the late Professor ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... and EQUAL LAWS, of endless progression in glory and happiness; shall they be arrested in their high career, and from the freeborn sons of God, be degraded into the slaves of man? Maddening at the accursed thought, they grasp their avenging firelocks, and drawing their sights along the death-charged tubes, they long for the coming up of the British thousands. Three times the British thousands came up; and three times the dauntless yeomen, waiting their near approach, received them in storms ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... mine, you know," he said, his fingers closing round my wrist with a grasp as weak as a very young child's.—"She is my wife, ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... no doubt at all that, had he made me duke, I should have contributed a daring and courage to his service that would have made his power far weightier than it is. The man who would make his way to vast dominions and a kingdom ought to trample under foot all the obstacles in his path, and boldly grasp the very sharpest thorns, whatever reluctance his weak flesh may feel; such a man, if he would open out his path to fortune, should seize his dagger or his sword and strike out with his eyes shut; he should not shrink from bathing his hands in the blood of ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... with a crescendo intensity. A forcible tug by the other player resulted in the abrupt loss of his kite. It headed toward me, dancing in the wind. My helpful assistant, the cactus plant, again secured the kite string in the necessary loop by which I could grasp it. I presented my second trophy ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... ideal inspector is, of course, a help and not a hindrance to the teacher, acting as a propagator of new ideas and bringing into touch with one another, workers who are widely separated. But the reach of most inspectors far exceeds their grasp.] ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... Tom Fillot, blowing a whistle with all his might, as he drew his cutlass, and made a cut at a dark shadow which leaped on deck; and before Mark could grasp what it all meant, other shadowy figures rushed up from below, made a desperate charge, and a moment later he, Tom Fillot, and Dick Bannock, with Stepney, were driven down into the cabin, while the body of the big black was hurled upon them, and the ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... mythic elements that surrounded her like a white fog from the northern seas out of which she loomed like a portent, are rapidly disappearing, and are replaced by the outlines of ordinary humanity, with more than the ordinary human measure of firmness, resolution, and energetic grasp of the facts of her position ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... ugly nauseous elf, Who judging only from its wretched self, Feebly attempted, petulant and vain, The "Origin of Evil" to explain. A mighty Genius at this elf displeas'd, With a strong critick grasp the urchin squeez'd. For thirty years its coward spleen it kept, Till in the duat the mighty Genius slept; Then stunk and fretted in expiring snuff, And blink'd at JOHNSON with ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... future. It may seem that, for an American statesman, he had an unusual grasp of European politics. This is easily explained by the fact that he had been talking with the bootblack at ...
— The Agony Column • Earl Derr Biggers
... seldom yet been dressed to her satisfaction: she was now brooding over a certain idea for her wedding-dress, which she had altogether failed in the attempt to convey to her London couturiere; and it had come into her head to try whether Mary might not grasp her idea, and help her to make it intelligible. Mary listened and thought, questioned, and desired explanations—at length, begged she would allow her to ponder the thing a little: she could hardly at once venture to say anything. Hesper laughed, and said she was taking a small matter ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... privation of daily living, strenuous enough to overcome and rectify the impulses which make for greed and self-indulgence, should be able, even under untoward conditions, to lift up and transfigure those who are really within its grasp and set them in marked contrast to those who are merely playing a game with it or using it for gain. But what has happened to these wretched girls? Why has this beneficent current cast them upon the shores of death and destruction when it should have carried them into the ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams
... our publishers would grasp the great truth that praise of their own wares needs (to say the least of it) most careful handling. What they, or some anonymous admirer, say on the cover of The Worn Doorstep (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) is that they should ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 2, 1917 • Various
... music thou comest, like moonlight; and far,— Resonant bar upon bar,— The vibrating lyre Of the spirit responds with melodious fire, As thy fluttering fingers now grasp it and ardently shake, With laughter and ache, The chords of existence, the instrument star-sprung, Whose frame is of clay, so ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... thoughts. It will always be, however, an additional delight to the greater part of the human race to see how here and there the greatest of all heavenly tools is found unawares by the happy hand that can wield it, no one knowing who has put it there ready for his triumphant grasp when the ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... thrilled him to the core. He had felt a touch of the same sensation when the good old lady let him look at the pictures in her family album, and pointed to one of her baby boy; although at the time he could not fully grasp the idea that appealed so dimly to ...
— The Chums of Scranton High at Ice Hockey • Donald Ferguson
... with Colston's line, still pressed on, and between Hooker's headquarters and his elated foe there was scarce an organized regiment. Hooker's fatal inability to grasp the situation, and his ordering an advance of all troops on Howard's left as far as the Second Corps, had made him almost defenceless. The troops which should have been available to stem this adverse tide were blindly groping in the woods, two miles ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... quaint half-breed girl of yesterday. There was nothing of the native about her now, for her lithe young figure was drawn up to its height, and her head, upon which the long, black braids were coiled, was tipped back in a haughty poise. She had flung her hands out to grasp the table edge behind her, forgetful of her shawl, which drooped traitorously and showed such rounded lines as her ordinary dress scarce hinted at. This was no Indian maid, the soldier vowed; no ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... all secrets of the river, he today only saw one, this one touched his soul. He saw: this water ran and ran, incessantly it ran, and was nevertheless always there, was always at all times the same and yet new in every moment! Great be he who would grasp this, understand this! He understood and grasped it not, only felt some idea of it stirring, a ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... considerably in a century or so; but at its swiftest it still takes generations to change. The gentlemen who used to sit in conferences and diets, and divide up the world ever and again before the nineteenth century, never realised this. It is only within the last hundred years that mankind has begun to grasp the fact that one of the first laws of political stability is to draw your political boundaries along the lines of the ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... moreover, that this is done intentionally, and not left to a mere accident, as in the case of the apples. And in science, as in common life, our confidence in a law is in exact proportion to the absence of variation in the result of our experimental verifications. For instance, if you let go your grasp of an article you may have in your hand, it will immediately fall to the ground. That is a very common verification of one of the best established laws of nature—that of gravitation. The method by which men of science establish the existence of that law is exactly ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... second officer, purser, and steward, who were hardly able to move him, so powerfully was he made. One of his sandals suddenly fell into the bay. He had seized hold of the rail of the gangway, and the leather sandal dropped into the water with a slight splash. His grasp of the rail being broken, he was gradually being pushed, limping, to the dock. His one bare foot and his half-exposed and shapely body caused a gale of laughter from the ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... than a moment at a time the terrible fatigue which a new hand like myself is obliged to endure day after day; the disgust at foul smells, the revulsion at miserable food soaked in grease, the misery of a straw mattress, a sheetless bed with blankets whose acrid odour is stifling. The mind cannot grasp what it means to be frantic with pain in the shoulders and back before nine in the morning, and to watch the clock creep around to six before one has a right to drop into the chair that has stood near one all day long. Yet it is not until the system ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... contours of her face, and that her legs were more like yellow satin than white. Her foot would have given Du Maurier inspiration for a brown Trilby. It was long, high-arched, perfect; the toes, never having known shoes, natural and capable of grasp, and the ankle delicate, yet strong. Her father she believed to have been a French official who had stayed only a brief period in Bora-Bora, her mother's island, and whose very name was forgotten by her. She had not seen her mother since her first ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... she is a very remarkable person. Her face is pretty, but they do not say of her, "Ah, what a pretty woman!" They say: "Madame de K.? Ah! to be sure, a fine woman!" Do you perceive the difference? it is easy to grasp it. That which charms in her is less what one sees than what one guesses at. Ah! to be sure, a fine woman! That is what is said after dinner when we have dined at her house, and when her husband, who unfortunately is in bad health and does not smoke, has gone to fetch cigars from his desk. ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... deliberately put a pistol to the old man's head. "Now, if this is not butchery, I don't know what is!" I heard John exclaim; and without a moment's hesitation, he snatched at the pistol and tried to wrest it from Basil's grasp. I could not see exactly what passed, but there was a moment's struggle, then a report, and the ball lodged in John's breast. Oh, the agony of that moment! words cannot paint, nor thought realise ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... learn how to stand, how to rest on her left foot with the right partly in front, then how to hold her violin, how it should rest on her shoulder and how to grasp and support it. Hold it perfectly still for ten minutes. Then lay it down for a few moments' rest. Take it up again and hold it firm. With demure patience she bent her small fingers over the strings as if to ...
— Camilla: A Tale of a Violin - Being the Artist Life of Camilla Urso • Charles Barnard
... over, the other men in the car came crowding to the assistance of the chief actors in the scrimmage. But the danger was past. The leader was unconscious, and the other, badly beaten and cursing horribly, was helpless in the grasp of the victors. Train men, rushing in, took charge of the prisoners and trussed them ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... stories of a kind so poetic, so delicate, or so potentially valuable that the material is in danger of losing future beauty to the pupils through its present crude handling. Mother Goose is a hardy old lady, and will not suffer from the grasp of the seven-year-old; and the familiar fables and tales of the "Goldilocks" variety have a firmness of surface which does not let the glamour rub off; but stories in which there is a hint of the beauty just beyond the palpable—or of a dignity suggestive of developed literature—are ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... spot, a singular picture presented itself to their eyes. Jan lay upon the ground, close in by the roots of some bushes which he was holding tightly in his grasp. From one of his wrists extended a stout thong, or rheim, which passed through among the bushes to the distance of several feet; and, fast to its other end, was the ourebi fawn, dead, and terribly ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... wetting it, which accounted for her always what we youths used to call mopping it, after she had piddled. The cunt looked twice as big as Charlotte's, but the prick-hole seemed to me smaller; and whether my finger or my prick was in it, seemed to grasp it tightly. My prepuce used to give me then at times pain just before, or when I spent in Charlotte; in Mary I scarcely seemed to feel it, and afterwards a quiet sort of grinding of her cunt, prolonged my pleasure until my penis left it. I was so new to the work, that all ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... he could pull himself together and get a firmer grasp of things than he had at present! The commercial instinct was strong within him, and he had a genius for figures, but insomnia and the state of his nerves seemed to have deprived him of half his powers. He envied his wife her gentle breathing and her deep sleep; and ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... speaking Rebecca had relinquished her grasp on his arm and ran toward the cupboard, and neither her father nor mother gave much thought to her anxious question. The venison was just ready to serve, and Mrs. Weston hurried from the fireplace to the table, on which Rebecca had now placed the dishes, while Mr. Weston and Anna talked happily ...
— A Little Maid of Old Maine • Alice Turner Curtis
... wished to bring it about that we should understand an infinite number of other entities, it would be necessary for him to give us a greater understanding, but not a more universal idea of entity than that which we have already, in order to grasp such infinite entities. We have shown that will is a universal entity or idea, whereby we explain all particular volitions—in other words, that which is ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... stoutest fighters were drawn from the Chitawan Brahmans, who had never forgiven us for snatching the cup of power from their lips just when they saw the inheritance of the Moghul Empire within their grasp. First and foremost of them all was the late Mr. Tilak, a pillar of Hindu orthodoxy, who knew both in his speeches and in his Mahratta organ, the Kesari, i.e. "The Lion," how to play on religious as well as on racial sentiment. He first took the field ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... people. This is merely the beginning of the development of the sixth sense, and probably with the majority of clairvoyants it goes no further than etheric and lower astral sight. In other words, they are able to raise the consciousness only to a grade of matter a little beyond the grasp of ordinary vision, while the properly developed, trained clairvoyant raises his ...
— Self-Development and the Way to Power • L. W. Rogers
... of you to come. Do you remember me, Berkeley?' said the invalid, feebly stretching out a thin hand, which Jack instinctively took and held gently in his own strong grasp. ...
— Grandmother Dear - A Book for Boys and Girls • Mrs. Molesworth
... of order in the parts gives the whole its significance. This quick grasp of the whole is like the click of the kaleidoscope which throws the tumbling, distorted bits into a design. The conduct of practical life on the mental plane is the process also of art on the plane of ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... can ever recapture a crowd once it has escaped your grasp? And all assemblies are crowds alike. No, eloquence is a bit; and if the bit breaks, the audience runs away, and rushes on till it has thrown the orator. Hearers naturally dislike the speaker, which is a fact not as clearly understood as it ought to be. Instinctively he pulls ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... 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
... peculiar manner. Also, he was talking that way. Consequently, and what with the distress of being dismissed from the McKaye service in such cavalier fashion, the general manager decided to twist out from under that terrible grasp ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... was wonderfully agile and like an eel she squirmed out of his grasp, and wielding her ungainly weapon with her left hand, she again sprayed the water on ...
— Marjorie at Seacote • Carolyn Wells
... she must grasp the nation's prize— A pure, proud home, earth's paradise. The joints must go, but, never till Woman exerts her potent will And ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... towards his prey; and as Concini, absorbed in his occupation, still read on, he felt the grasp of a strong hand upon his arm, and on looking up he saw the Captain of the Guard standing at his side. Before he had time to inquire the meaning of this affront, De Vitry had already uttered the ominous words, "I arrest you ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... had been thrown over his head, and this now trailed in the dust Several of the cowboys, clapping spurs to their ponies, set off either to throw more ropes about the escaping beast, or else to grasp the ...
— Cowboy Dave • Frank V. Webster
... by the cord and reached his home. This help had come from a friendly spider who saw his plight from her perch at the top of the spire, and, weaving a web of extra thickness, she made one end fast to a jag of rock while the other fell within his grasp—for she, like all other of the brute tribe, liked the gentle cave-dwellers better than the remorseless hunters. Hence the name of ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... too subtle for Hamilton to grasp while yet his brain was fogged by the intricacies of his business affairs. He gazed on his wife in puzzled fashion for a few seconds, then abandoned the problem as one altogether beyond his solving. To clear up a vague suspicion ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... were a sorrow!—" she said, quickly withdrawing her left hand from Sulpice's warm grasp. "But it is worse: it is a financial worry, yes, financial," she said brusquely, on observing that Vaudrey's face ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... always known the favorite of the duke, And, as I know, our lady's treacherous lord! Oh, Holy Mother, that to villain hawks Our dove should fall a prey! poor gentle dear! Now if I had their throats within my grasp— No matter—if my master be himself, Nor time nor place shall bind up his revenge. He's not a man to spend his wrath in noise, But when his mind is made, with even pace He walks up to the deed and does his will. In fancy I can see him to the end— The duke, perchance, already ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... other States, are seen both the product and the monument of his labors, less conspicuous, but not less real, than if embodied in codes and institutes bearing his name; yet that, bred as he was to the common law, his great powers, opened and liberalized by its study and practice, enabled him to grasp readily, and wield with entire ease, those systems of equity, applicable to the transactions of the land or the sea, which, in recent times, have so much meliorated and improved the administration of justice in ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... to the protection of the interior of the Confederacy and the security of Chattanooga, rather than indulge in schemes of conquest north of the Cumberland River. While he still held on in Middle Tennessee his grasp was so much loosened that only slight effort would be necessary to push him back into Georgia, and thus give to the mountain region of East Tennessee an opportunity to prove its loyalty ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... truly, that from the very first I did not so delude myself. Some of my Baltimore friends would fain have persuaded me that, in the utter absence of criminating evidence, I should not be detained long; I forbore to argue, but my opinion remained always the same. I had heard how tenacious was the grasp of Federal officials, unless loosened by more golden oil than I could then command. I had heard, too, how slowly aid or intercession from the free outer world could penetrate these mock-bastilles, and how reluctantly the authorities would grant the supreme favor of a hearing, or trial, to ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... with a natural perspicacity that enabled him, as soon as he heard these remarks, to grasp their spirit. ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... citizens for indemnification and submissive acquiescence in national indignity. It would have encouraged in these lawless men a spirit of insolence and rapine most dangerous to the lives and property of our citizens at Punta Arenas, and probably emboldened them to grasp at the treasures and valuable merchandise continually passing over the Nicaragua route. It certainly would have been most satisfactory to me if the objects of the Cyane's mission could have been consummated without any act of public force, but the arrogant contumacy of the offenders ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin Pierce • Franklin Pierce
... Arabs; from a sedate and proud bearing, they had become the wildest examples of the most savage disciples of Nimrod. Excited by enthusiasm, they shook their naked blades aloft till the steel trembled in their grasp, and away they dashed over rocks, through thorny bush, across ravines, up and down steep inclinations, engaging in a mimic hunt, and going through the various acts supposed to occur in the attack of a furious elephant. ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... fierce blaze at the rate of three hundred and sixty-six miles per second! Three hundred and sixty-six miles per second! When a railroad-train moves at the rate of a mile per minute, we regard it as extraordinary speed; but three hundred and sixty-six miles per second! The mind fails to grasp it. ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... to London. Richard consulted his friends apart. He expressed his approbation of the articles, but bade them secretly be assured that no consideration should induce him to abandon them on their trial, and that he would grasp the first opportunity of being revenged on his and their enemies—"for there were some among them whom he would flay alive; whom he would never spare for all the gold in the land." Northumberland was then sworn to the observance of the conditions. He took his oath on the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... legs are cut free, peel around back of pelvis, loosening skin to base of tail. Set the specimen upon its head end and, with thumb and finger nails of left hand, grasp skin about the base of tail while with right hand strip ...
— Taxidermy • Leon Luther Pray
... letter to Dean Swift, in which he says, "The Earl of Oxford was removed on Tuesday; the Queen died on Sunday. What a world this is, and how does fortune banter us!" In other {48} words, Bolingbroke tells Swift that full success seemed within his grasp on Tuesday, and was suddenly torn away from him on Sunday. But the most characteristic part of the letter is a passage which throws a very blaze of light over the unconquerable levity of the man. "I have lost all by the death of the Queen but my spirit; and, I protest to you, I feel that increase ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... to the entrance, and called up an order to have the gun lowered by a shore-line; which was done, the coast guardsmen on the cliffs fending the line clear of the bushes, and so passing it from one to another until it dangled over the ledge within grasp. The Commandant, as the taller, reached up for the gun, took it, and examined it by the light of the lantern which ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... surprised. This grasp of technical lore on the part of a total outsider was as unexpected as ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... influence her more than my words. She made an effort to grasp the new idea. Her hands shifted the damp cloth hesitatingly from one to the other, exactly as they had shifted the little travelling-bag on the night when I first saw her. Slowly the purpose of my words ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... hostages, and he at once said that it was an excellent idea. The English and French were very cruel—if now they chose to bombard. ... "If a man throws a penny into the sea," he said, "he loses the penny. It isn't the pocket-book that's hurt." I did not quite grasp this proverb, but remarked that after all they were civilians and had done nothing. "That is true," he said, "but the English and French have been very unjust to our civilians. They force us to ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... back, but the hot steed Furiously reared, and flung them to the plain In dust and shame; only Ardjuna held His seat awhile, and, bidding loose the chains, Lashed the black flank, and shook the bit, and held The proud jaws fast with grasp of master-hand, So that in storms of wrath and rage and fear The savage stallion circled once the plain Half-tamed; but sudden turned with naked teeth, Gripped by the foot Ardjuna, tore him down, And would have slain him, but the grooms ran in, Fettering the maddened beast. Then all men ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold
... the Boston Post has said of Mrs. Burnett: "She has a beauty of imagination and a spiritual insight into the meditations of childhood which are within the grasp of no other writer for children,"—and these five volumes would indeed be difficult to match in child literature. The new edition is from new plates, with all the original illustrations by Reginald B. Birch, is ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... fearfully at this unexpected plan of Sam Brewster's, and her grasp on the soup ladle relaxed so that it fell to the floor with a ringing echo. But she paid no attention to it: she stood with mouth open staring at the master of ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... Greatness of Soul as we said just now Liberality does to Munificence, with the difference that is of being about a small amount of the same thing: this state having reference to small honour, as Greatness of Soul to great honour; a man may, of course, grasp at honour either more than he should or less; now he that exceeds in his grasping at it is called ambitious, he that falls short unambitious, he that is just as he should be has no proper name: nor in fact have the states, except that the disposition of the ambitious ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... State. He said: "Mr. Speaker, Georgia wants peace, but she would not for the sake of peace yield any of her own or the nation's rights. A new career of prosperity is now before her; new prospects, bright and fair, open to her vision and lie ready for her grasp, and she fully appreciates her position. She has at length begun to avail herself of her advantages by forming a great commercial line between the Atlantic and the West. She is embarking in enterprises of intense importance, and is beginning to provide manufactures for her ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... for the seizure of the Chinese treasure; he had attacked the train in the plains of Gobi; the car is assaulted, pillaged, ransacked; the gold and precious stones, to the value of fifteen millions, are torn from the grasp of the Celestials, who yield after a courageous defence. As to the passengers, another two minutes of sleep would have settled ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... pointers have been operated automatically, from the running parts of the press allowed to remain in an elevated or nearly upright position, and through the sheet until the fingers or nippers of the cylinder arrive in proper position to grasp the sheet, at which time the pointers are drawn down and the sheet released, so that it may be connected with the cylinder, and related with the same in order to receive the impression. This improvement ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... ballets of the Alhambra, and the fireworks of the Crystal Palace, and Mr. Chesterton's Daily News articles, have their place in life. But how a serious social student can think of curing the thoughtlessness of our generation by strained paradoxes; of giving people a sane grasp of social problems by literary sleight-of-hand; of settling important questions by a reckless shower of rocket-metaphors and inaccurate 'facts,' and the substitution of imagination for judgment, I ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... the pulse. Grasp the wrist of a friend, pressing with three fingers over the radius. Press three fingers over the radius in your own wrist, ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... to welcome Sperry with a warm grasp of the hand and an outburst of—"Oh! I'm glad you are here; it seems like a special Providence," was so strange and unusual a performance that it is no wonder Alice, moving toward the buckboard to add her own greeting to her husband's, was lost in ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... be all the information you get—not that they would not tell, but they cannot grasp the idea that you wish to know—until, possibly, just as you are turning to depart, your informant, in a single word and with the most evident non-appreciation of its value, drops the simple key ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... or three minutes, Edith stood as motionless as the statue of a saint which receives the adoration of a worshipper; and when she recovered herself sufficiently to withdraw her hands from Henry's grasp, she could at first only faintly articulate, "I have taken a strange step, Mr Morton—a step," she continued with more coherence, as her ideas arranged themselves in consequence of a strong effort, "that perhaps may expose me to censure in your eyes—But I have long permitted you to use ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... if such considerations as these were laid before any American soldier who still smarted under that taunt in London streets, his good American sense, which is our best possession, would grasp and accept the thing in its true proportions. He wouldn't want to blot an Empire out because a handful of muckers called him names. Of this I am perfectly sure, because in Paris streets it was my happy lot four months after the Armistice ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister
... does not leave me with a sense of artistic satisfaction. It lacks structure. It is not a roundly conceived whole: it is but a row of fragments. Were it otherwise, Whistler could never have written so perfectly the little letters. For no man who can finely grasp a big theme can play exquisitely round ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... very usefully just then, but somehow she could not turn the passion on. And a horrid sense of incompetency and failure began to steal over her—an awful foreboding of defeat. What could she do to seize the slippery opportunity and grasp the doubtful prize? How could she land the big golden fish which she foolishly fancied she had at the end of her line? Never had she felt so ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... madness by his jealousy, the Count rushed to the apartment of the Countess. "False and faithless, false and faithless!" he cried in hoarse rage, and clutching her in his iron grasp, lifted her in the air and hurled her through the casement ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... nature of Art and the artist's life Milly had no better conception than when she first fell in love with Jack Bragdon. She knew nothing of the artist's despairs and triumphs, his tireless labor to grasp the unseen, his rare and exalted joys, his strange valuation of life,—in short the blind, unconscious purpose of Art in the terrestrial scheme of things. Nor perhaps did John Bragdon at twenty-eight. The crust of bourgeois standards is so thick in American life that it takes a rare ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... of his hands, the one that was not bandaged, and she laid her soft cheek against it, and held her breath to listen. Perhaps even now behind that quiet face the spirit had departed beyond her grasp. ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... said I, "if you will have it, you shall!" and with that I wrenched the pistol from his grasp and struck him a blow over the head that sent him down without ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... quite grasp this idea, but hoped that we would not find the pension too dear at a dollar and fifty-seven and a half cents a day each, with a little extra for the salon and the balcony. "The English people all please themselves ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke |
