"Sheer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... call of "Smugglers!" This is the signal for the Ins to start on the chase. The object of the Ins is to catch the one player among the Outs who is custodian of the geg. The identity of this player may be a sheer matter of surmise on their part, when they will have to challenge any player whom they may catch. If the player holding the geg can return to the den without being caught, his party wins, and again goes ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... balanced on the balls of his small feet like a boxer, hands hanging loosely at his sides. A bulldog chin jutted out of his rough-hewn face as if it were going to snap off the head of the nearest cadet. He towered over Tom and Roger, and though shorter than Astro, he made up for this by sheer force of personality. When he spoke, his voice was like a deep foghorn that had suddenly learned the use ...
— Danger in Deep Space • Carey Rockwell
... pressed on up the ascent, at length coming into open light upon a small plateau marked by huge, rugged, weather-chipped stones. On the eastern side was a rocky promontory, and close to the edge of this cliff, an hundred feet in sheer descent, rose a gnarled, time and tempest-twisted chestnut tree. Here the borderman laid down his rifle and knapsack, and, half-reclining against the tree, settled himself to ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... soon as we make all those symbols of the historic community, all the ideals of honour and devotion, righteousness and beauty, glory and faithfulness, mere matters of scientific calculation, they stare us in the face as sheer absurdities; and yet we might again misname that as truth. Then it is the untruth which makes us free, it is the non-scientific, humanistic aspect which liberates us from the ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... mountains rose in two tiers before them literally into the clouds, for several of the lower clouds floated far below the highest peaks, and from the summit of the highest range a river, equal to the Thames at Richmond, dropt sheer down a fall of above two thousand feet. Here it met the summit of the lower mountain-range, on which it burst with a deep-toned, sullen, never-ceasing roar, comparable only to eternal thunder. A white cloud of spray received the falling river in its soft embrace, and sent it forth again—turbulent ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... dreams are made of, in more senses than one; and after that flimsiness is over, there ought to be something substantial left. Just as many attractive girls who have something as that haven't. It's sheer perversity when a poor young man sets his heart on additional poverty. Let the Cophetuas have a corner on the beggar maids; but let poor men, and especially young ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... as has been stated, had for twenty years never ceased to hope that her prayers would procure for her the grace of bearing a son to her husband. Out of sheer weariness she had given herself up to all kinds of charlatans, who at that period were well received by people of rank. On one occasion she brought from Italy a sort of astrologer, who as nearly as possible poisoned her with a horrible nostrum, and was sent ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... had fallen early in the morning, and when the sun rose and cast its slanting beams across the forest of grass, there was such a sparkling and glistening and gleaming that you didn't know what to say or do for sheer ecstasy, it was ...
— The Adventures of Maya the Bee • Waldemar Bonsels
... a time, and allowed himself to be hauled, by the united efforts of the crew, some three or four fathoms towards the brig, when, annoyed by the restraint imposed upon him, or disliking the wild and motley appearance of the ship's company, he took a broad sheer to starboard, the hook snapped like a pipestem, and the hated monster swam off in another direction, wagging his tail in the happy consciousness that he ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... a hoarse yell and dashed once more upon the two knights, hurling themselves madly upon their sword-points; clutching, scrambling, biting, tearing, careless of wounds if they could but drag the two soldiers to earth. Sir Nigel was thrown down by the sheer weight of them, and Sir Bertrand with his thunderous war-cry was swinging round his heavy sword to clear a space for him to rise, when the whistle of two long English arrows, and the rush of the squire and the two English archers ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... comes the ship to port, Howe'er the breeze may be; Just when she nears the waiting shore She drifts again to sea. No tack of sail, nor turn of helm, Nor sheer of veering side; Stern-fore she drives to sea and night, Against the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... silently up the midnight river—of those rocks scaled by the intrepid leader and his troops—of that miraculous security of the enemy, of his present acceptance of our challenge to battle, and of his defeat on the open plain by the sheer valour of his conqueror—we were all intoxicated in England by the news. The whole nation rose up and felt itself the stronger for Wolfe's victory. Not merely all men engaged in the battle, but those at home who had condemned its rashness, felt themselves ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... tyrant has the scantiest share. (3) Seeing his life is such, he cannot even trust his meats and drinks, but he must bid his serving-men before the feast begins, or ever the libation to the gods is poured, (4) to taste the viands, out of sheer mistrust there may be mischief lurking in the cup ...
— Hiero • Xenophon
... drunk with blood, and found waiting intolerable; but it had no leader and foamed aimlessly about the causeway. There were women in it with flying hair like Maenads, who shrilled obscenities, and drunken butchers and watermen and grooms who had started out for loot and ended in sheer lust of slaying, and dozens of broken desperadoes and led-captains who looked on the day as their carnival. But to the mob had come one of those moments of indecision when it halted and eddied like ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... it off. That was the Devil in a, wolf's form. The like writes William of Paris,—that a wolf will kill and devour children, and do the greatest mischief. There was a man who had the phantasy that he himself was a wolf. And afterwards he was found lying in the wood, and he was dead out of sheer hunger. ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... the old loves were all dead, and I could almost be thankful for them. They had kept him for me, I thought,—tamed and exhausted him, so that I—so colourless and weak compared to those others!—might just slip into his heart and find the way open—that he might just take me in, and be glad, for sheer weariness.' ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... that nothing could serve his purpose but an exercise of sheer weight and brute force, and he pressed on and on with such fury that Tom almost cried aloud in his fear. But Lord Claud was wary and watchful; he gave way for a while, only parrying the thrusts, and that with not so much force as before; then ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... who looked rather purple in the face and spoke in an odd voice. 'I don't think you have ever tried it, or you wouldn't have let me go up first. Why, it is the pleasantest thing, I have ever done. I was shaking my legs from sheer delight, and if you had been there you would ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... realization overtake anticipation. His reins hung loose. He hummed snatches of Spanish, French, and English songs. Their cosmopolitan freedom of variety was as out of keeping with the scene as their lilt, which had the tripping, self-carrying impetus of the sheer ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... Lady, I deem they have done him no hurt, though I wot not for sure. There hath been none headed or hanged in the base-court to-day. I heard talk amongst the men-at-arms of one whom they took; they said he was a wonder of sheer strength, and how that he cast their men about as though he were playing at ball. Sooth to say, they seemed to bear him no grudge therefor. But now I would counsel thee to arise; and I am bidden to tire and array ...
— Child Christopher • William Morris
... right, and a little later splashed through the water for a few minutes and came out into a spreading valley beyond the sheer walls of the retreat they had left. Taking the road again, they traveled faster than they had been ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... hands, and by sheer force of will seemed to pull herself together. These nervous women have often an ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... his horse beside Forrest. Also, Graham realized that the turning of her head and the waving of her arm was only partly in bravado, was more in aesthetic wisdom of the picture she composed, and was, most of all, sheer joy of daring and emprise of the blood and the flesh and the life ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... in five minutes came back in a soft, gray silken gown, narrow and quite short in the skirt, a kerchief of sheer mull muslin crossed on her bosom, and all her hair gathered under a plain cap. Madam Wetherill was hardly through explaining that she had always been a Church of England woman, and one thing she had admired in Mr. Penn more than ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... last sentence gravely and his reply was as grave though his voice was still hoarse. "You were sublime goodness and wisdom. When a woman through the sheer quality of her silence saves a man from slipping over the verge of madness he does not forget. While I was sane I dared scarcely utter her name. If I had gone mad I should have raved as madmen do. For that reason ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... which one has never seen everything. Some of them so entirely forgot their own countries, that death overtook them between the Piazza del Popolo and the Piazza de Venizia. If any exiled themselves to their native land, they did it in sheer self-defence, when their pockets were empty. Rome bade them a tender adieu, piously keeping their likeness in its memory and their money ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... plain that in the person of Ruloff one of the most marvelous of intellects that any age has produced is about to be sacrificed, and that, too, while half the mystery of its strange powers is yet a secret. Here is a man who has never entered the doors of a college or a university, and yet by the sheer might of his innate gifts has made himself such a colossus in abstruse learning that the ablest of our scholars are but pigmies in his presence. By the evidence of Professor Mather, Mr. Surbridge, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... it succeeded, at any rate for a time, in arresting these disorders. This was all that could be done at that period, and the Church accomplished it, by taking the high hand; and with as much unselfishness as energy and courage, she regulated society, which had been abandoned by the civil power from sheer impotence and want ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... we glided along, enjoying, not entranced, comfortable, but not sublime, content to drink in the sunny sweetness of the summer day, happy only from the pleasant sense of being, tangling each other in silly talk out of mere wantonness, purling up bubbles of airy nothings in sheer effervescence of animal delight; falling into periodic fits of useful knowledge, under the influence of which we consulted our maps and our watches in a conjoint and clamorous endeavor to locate ourselves, which would no sooner be satisfactorily accomplished than something would ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... if possible, stand and watch the Master Workman doing the work that is to make this region our source of present day joy. We will make the ascent and stand on the summit of Pyramid Peak. This is now 10,020 feet above sea level, rising almost sheer above Desolation Valley ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... the only successful way so far as I know, is by MAKING time for the hour of reading and meditation and silence. She must take the time, by sheer force of will—take it until it grows into a habit which takes her. Out of this hour will come first peace and self-control; and gradually she will find unfolding out of this peace and control, the wisdom ...
— Happiness and Marriage • Elizabeth (Jones) Towne
... Estelle had been almost a recluse since she was seventeen. The rest of the Wilmots went into Saint X's newly developed but flourishing fashionable society. They had no money to give return entertainments or even to pay their share of the joint, dances and card parties Arthur decided to sheer off. "I came to ask you to the house for sup—dinner to-night," said he. "It's lonely—just mother and Del and me. Come and cheer us up. Come along ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... have hitherto considered, relating to the supernatural lapse of time in fairyland, have attributed the mortal's detention there to various motives. Compulsion on the part of the superhuman powers, and pleasure, curiosity, greed, sheer folly, as also the performance of just and willing service on the part of the mortal, have been among the causes of his entrance thither and his sojourn amid its enchantments. Human nature could hardly have been what it is if the supreme passion of love had ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... she pirouetted, out of sheer youthful joy. She had forgotten care and forgotten promiscuity; good fortune had washed her pure. She looked at herself in the massive bevelled mirror, and saw that she was fresh and young and lithe and graceful. And she felt triumphant. Gilbert ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... entered a strip of woods, through which ran the little stream beside which I had observed the clay. We stopped at the creek, the road by which we had come crossing it and continuing over the land of my neighbor, Colonel Pemberton. By the roadside, on my own land, a bank of clay rose in almost a sheer perpendicular for about ten feet, evidently extending back some distance into the low, pine-clad hill behind it, and having also frontage upon the creek. There were marks of bare feet on the ground along the base of the bank, and the face of it seemed freshly disturbed and scored ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt
... whereas John the Baptist says (John 1:31): 'That He may be made manifest in Israel; therefore am I come baptizing with water.' Moreover, it was fitting that He should not begin to work miracles at an early age. For people would have thought the Incarnation to be unreal, and, out of sheer spite, would have crucified Him before the ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... feats helped me to the subjugation of Nelly. Yet, after all, in sheer physical prowess, I could not really rival Fred, who stood a full head taller than I did. But I had a deal more of finesse than he had, made very much better use of my opportunities, and was a far more practised poseur. Fred was well supplied with self-esteem—a ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... and deep valleys and gorges there they could always take refuge, while sometimes the more daring chiefs converted these detached peaks and masses of rock, numbers of which you can see as you come up the Ghaut by railway, into almost impregnable fortresses. Many of these masses of rock rise as sheer up from the hillside as walls of masonry, and look at a short distance like ruined castles. Some are absolutely inaccessible; others can only be scaled by experienced climbers; and, although possible for the natives with ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... the church of St. Sophia, and were therein, besought their lord and the emperor to come to their relief; for if they received no help they could not hold out, especially as they had no provisions. Through sheer distress and sore need, the Emperor Henry and his people agreed that they must once more abandon thought of going to Adrianople, and cross the straits of St. George, to the Turkish side, with as many people as they could collect, ...
— Memoirs or Chronicle of The Fourth Crusade and The Conquest of Constantinople • Geoffrey de Villehardouin
... had gained three hundred pounds by different services about the house, desired to live quietly without opening the front door again; but his good master begged him to marry to please him, assuring him that he need not trouble about his wife. So the good steward wandered out of sheer good nature into this marriage. The day of the wedding, bereft of all her reasons, and not able to find objections to her pursuer, she made him give her a fat settlement and dowry as the price of her ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... Maxwell would read them slowly over to her sister. And in the evening, when Isabel generally came up for an hour or two, the girl would be asked to read them slowly all over again to the two ladies who sat over their embroidery on either side of her, and who interrupted for the sheer joy of prolonging it. And they would discuss together the exact significance of all his marks of emphasis and irony; and the girl would have all she could do sometimes not to feel a disloyal amusement at the transparency of the devices and the simplicity of the loving hearts that marvelled at the ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... she had the presence of mind to turn over on her back and rest, and went on again when she had her breath back. Nyoda noted this manoeuver approvingly. It indicated good sense. Gladys covered the last twenty-five yards by sheer grit. Every breath was a gasp, the shore line wavered dizzily before her, and it seemed that she was pushing against an immovable wall. Nyoda watched her closely, and saw her rear up her head and set her teeth and battle on against wind and wave. "She'll do," she said to herself joyfully, ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... intended invasion of India. Doubtless they thought that news would please us greatly. But, having heard so many lies already, I set that down for another one, and the others became all the more determined in their loyalty from sheer disgust at Ranjoor Singh's unfaithfulness. They believed and I disbelieved, yet ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... tolerance for those people with incoherent personalities, who gather in the chapels and meeting-places of certain obscure sects, because I also have felt fixed habits and principles dissolving before a power, which was hysterica passio or sheer madness, if you will, but was so powerful in its melancholy exultation that I tremble lest it wake again and drive me ...
— Rosa Alchemica • W. B. Yeats
... Her beauty is sadly wasting now," said Meliora. "She seems to be slowly dying, and I shouldn't wonder if it were of sheer starvation; those models earn so little. Yesterday she fainted as she stood—Michael is so thoughtless. He had to call me to give her some wine, and then we sent the maid home with her. She lives in a poor place, Hannah says, but quite decent and respectable. I shall ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... the formality of going to bed, and seemed bent on doing what he could to keep other people awake. He sat monologuing under the seal lamp till the Boy longed to throw the dish of smouldering oil at his head. But strangely enough, when, through sheer fatigue, his voice failed and his chin fell on his broad chest, a lad of fourteen or so, who had also had difficulty to keep awake, would jog Yagorsha's arm, repeating interrogatively the last phrase used, whereon the old Story-Teller would rouse himself and begin afresh, with an iteration ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... that you have been thinking, all the while, that these stories about the wonderful Guy are a sheer fabrication, or, to use a convenient modern term, a myth. Know, then, that the identical armor belonging to him is still preserved here; to wit, the sword, about seven feet long, a shield, helmet, breastplate, ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... left the most striking marks of their habits and mighty power, for there thorny brakes of the most impenetrable character had been trodden flat by them, and trees had been overturned. In traversing such places the great bull-elephant always marches in the van, bursting through everything by sheer force and weight, breaking off huge limbs of the larger trees with his proboscis when these obstruct his path, and overturning the smaller ones bodily, while the females and younger members of the family follow in ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... mistake, for during this same period the development of the older man had been far greater than his own. Covington to-day was, perhaps, as able a business man as Gorham had been when the Consolidated Companies was born, but Gorham in the mean time, by sheer display of extraordinary genius, had become an international figure. The business relations between the two men were closer than ever, but never once was there any question as to which was the master. Covington would not have ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... was I recover'd that, waking early next morning, and finding my sweet nurse asleep from sheer weariness, in a corner of the hut, I stagger'd up from my bed of dried bracken, and out into the pure air. Rare it was to stand and drink it in like wine. A footstep arous'd me. 'Twas Mistress Delia: and turning, I held ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... Sligo—Town of the River of Shells—a tongue of land runs toward the sea between two long bays. Where the two bays join their waters, a mountain rises precipitous, its gray limestone rocks soaring sheer upwards, rugged and formidable. Within the shadow of the mountain is hidden a wonderful glen—a long tunnel between cliffs, densely arched over with trees and fringed with ferns; even at midday full of a green gloom. It is a fitting gateway ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... awning, Asad looked on approvingly, Rosamund drew back, shuddering, choking, and near to fainting from sheer horror. ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... a second. She knows perfectly well that I can go on the stage the day I am twenty-one, yet through sheer obstinacy she refuses to advance me a penny to do as I like with before ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... I found altogether different. Where Sevcik taught his pupils the technic of their art by means of a system elaborately worked out, Auer demonstrated his ideas through sheer personality, mainly from the interpretative point of view. Any ambitious student could learn much of value from either; yet in a general way one might express the difference between them by saying that Sevcik could take a pupil of medium talent and—at least from the mechanical standpoint—make ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... disorder seemed at its highest pitch, the allied army, with commendable good sense, and without paying the slightest heed to the quarrels of its generals, proclaimed General Roger Sherman Potter ruler over all Kalorama; and this was out of sheer respect to his humor, for the army held it good to be ruled over by a gentleman who could afford soldiers so ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... rose hastily with a cry of dismay, and stripping to the skin climbed up to the brambles above his cave, and flung himself on them, and rolled on them writhing with the pain: then he came into his den a mass of gore, and lay moaning for hours; till, out of sheer exhaustion, he fell into a ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... bow, or culverin could not reach, and consequently light and comfort, impossible to a position which had to be guarded, were secured. To the west was a great valley, and then, rising far away, great jagged mountain fastnesses, rising peak on peak, the sheer rock studded with mountain ash and thorn, whose roots clung in cracks and crevices and crannies of the stone. This was evidently the portion of the castle occupied by the ladies in bygone days, for the furniture had more an air of comfort than any I ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... wives to "overwork," it is not from indifference, but from sheer ignorance. They don't know, they don't begin to conceive, of the labor there is in "woman's work." It is true that neither are merchant-princes aware of what it costs their wives to superintend the complicated arrangements of their establishments; to ...
— A Domestic Problem • Abby Morton Diaz
... the right moment——before taking the trouble to read Vol. I. This, I say, is just permissible with a novel, where Vol. III has a meaning, even for those who have not read the earlier part of the story; but, with a scientific book, it is sheer insanity: you will find the latter part hopelessly unintelligible, if you read it before reaching it in regular course. pg-xii (2) Don't begin any fresh Chapter, or Section, until you are certain that you thoroughly understand the whole book up to that point, and that you have ...
— Symbolic Logic • Lewis Carroll
... sentinel over a typical moorland homestead of the smaller sort—a one-storied house of rough stone, the roof of which was secured from storm and tempest by great boulders slung on stout ropes, and having built on to it an equally rough shelter for some small stock of cows and sheep. Out of a sheer habit of reflection on things newly seen, Brereton could not avoid wondering what life was like, lived in this solitude, and in such a perfect hermitage—but his speculations were cut short by the opening of the door ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... he received a full explanation of the marriage through mistake, piously folded his hands and exclaimed, with uplifted eyes: "Wonderful are the dispensations of Providence!" Colin and Marietta kissed his hands; Mother Manon, through sheer veneration of heaven, gave the young couple her blessing, but remarked incidentally that her ...
— The Broken Cup - 1891 • Johann Heinrich Daniel Zschokke
... though only in March, glowing with warmth, as the sun beat against the cliffs behind, of a dark red brown, in many places absolutely black, in especial where a cascade, swelled by the rains into imposing size, came roaring, leaping, and sparkling down a sheer precipice. On either side the cove or chine was closely shut in by treeless, iron-coloured masses of rock, behind one of which the few inhabited hovels were clustered, and the boat which had brought ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... movements, wearily moving an incandescent light hither and thither, observing the surgeon with languid interest. Another nurse, much younger, without the "black band," watched the surgeon from the foot of the cot. Beads of perspiration chased themselves down her pale face, caused less by sympathy than by sheer weariness and heat. The small receiving room of St. Isidore's was close and stuffy, surcharged with odors of iodoform and ether. The Chicago spring, so long delayed, had blazed with a sudden fury the last week in March, and now ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... "is the ultimate physical effect of worry? Why, the same as that of a fatal bullet-wound or sword-thrust. Worry kills as surely, though not so quickly, as ever gun or dagger did, and more people have died in the last century from sheer worry than have ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden
... together by their own ends, the peculiar convincing force of these brief representations. They take so little a while to read, and yet in that little while the subject is so repeatedly introduced in the same light and with the same expression, that, by sheer force of repetition, that view is imposed upon the reader. The two English masters of the style, Macaulay and Carlyle, largely exemplify its dangers. Carlyle, indeed, had so much more depth and knowledge of the heart, his portraits of mankind are felt and rendered ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... be observed that in thus allowing the wife the possession of her own person, we are giving her only what her husband possesses, and that her possession of herself is of vastly more moment to her than his own liberty to him. Nothing more than sheer equality is being claimed for her, and the claim in her case has a double strength, since it is made valid not only by her own interests but by those of the future. The future must be protected, and therefore she who is its ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... been at the threshing machine all day. It had covered her with dirt and chaff; and the process of changing was only half through when she heard the rattle of Ellesborough's cycle outside. She stood now before the glass, a radiant daughter of air and earth; her veins, as it were, still full of the sheer pleasure of her long day among the stubbles and the young stock. She was tired, of course; and she knew very well that the winter, when it came, would make a great difference, and that much of the work before her would be hard and disagreeable. ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... me, and I am not swayed by resentment, these speeches so justly poized, this silent deference, when the animal spirits of other young people were throwing off youthful ebullitions, were not the effect of thought or humility, but sheer barrenness of mind, and want of imagination. A colt of mettle will curvet and shew his paces. Yes; my dear girl, these prudent young men want all the fire necessary to ferment their faculties, and are characterized as wise, only because they ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... the reason for the mulct. It also tried those who conspired for the overthrow of the state, Solon having enacted a process of impeachment to deal with such offenders. Further, since he saw the state often engaged in internal disputes, while many of the citizens from sheer indifference accepted whatever might turn up, he made a law with express reference to such persons, enacting that any one who, in a time [Transcriber's note: of?] civil factions, did not take up arms with either party, ...
— The Athenian Constitution • Aristotle
... the way. He had never told any one of these, not even the girl he loved, but they existed all the same. For many years he had been assisting needy relatives, and thus had hampered himself, in spite of his income. By sheer force of will, so as to force Braddock into giving him Lucy, he had contrived to secure the necessary thousand pounds, without confusing the arrangements he had made to pay off certain debts connected with his domestic philanthropy; but this brought ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... soon as he did, he fell into a paroxysm half hysterical, half frantic. I had completed his ruin, he exclaimed, and his unhappy family would have to curse me as the cause of his destruction. He was ready to sink on the floor in sheer terror, and with difficulty could he utter a request that I should instantly leave his house. This was a command, however harsh and heartless, which I dared not resist, for I was forced to admit to myself that under his terrified exterior might lurk ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... she had yielded to no fears, in carrying out the stratagem by which she had gained admission to St. Crux; and now, when the long array of difficulties at the outset had been patiently conquered, now, when by sheer force of resolution the starting-point was gained, she hesitated to advance. "I shrank from nothing to get here," she said to herself. "What madness possesses me that ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... the boat a sheer in for the beach, to a little bight that made up in the land,—across the mouth of which we had to pull, in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... a cheerful Christmas Day for the one whose heedlessness had brought it all about. But Genevieve mourned so bitterly, and blamed herself so strongly, that at last, out of sheer pity, Mrs. Kennedy, and even Miss Jane Chick, had to turn comforter; for—as Mrs. Kennedy reminded her sister—it was, after all, aside from her thoughtless lack of haste, only Genevieve's unselfish forgetfulness ...
— The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch • Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter
... free to continue to write and e-mail us. When submitting corrections or updates to the Factbook, please include your source(s) of information. At least two Factbook staffers review every submitted item. The sheer volume of correspondence precludes detailed personal replies, but we sincerely appreciate your time and interest in the Factbook. If you include your e-mail address we will at least acknowledge your ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... can hardly tell how. Now appealing to the charity of old Rachael Strong, the laundress—a dog-lover by profession; now winning a meal from the light-footed and open-hearted lasses at the Rose; now standing on his hind-legs to extort, by sheer beggary, a scanty morsel from some pair of "drowthy cronies," or solitary drover, discussing his dinner or supper on the alehouse-bench; now catching a mouthful, flung to him in pure contempt by some scornful gentleman of the shoulder-knot, mounted on his throne, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 336 Saturday, October 18, 1828 • Various
... often chose to call himself, an antiquary; he felt the appeal of all that was old and curious. But he was much more than that. The typical antiquary has his mind so thoroughly devoted to the past that the present seems remote to him. The sheer intellectual capacity of such a man as Scott might be enough to save him from such a limitation, for he could give to the past as much attention as an ordinary man could muster, and still have interest for contemporary affairs; but his capacity was not all that saved Scott. He viewed the ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... signal for a tremendous cheer from those who knew our hero; and those who did not know him, but knew that there was something peculiar and romantic in his case, and in the manner of his arrival, began to cheer from sheer sympathy; while the little boys, who were numerous, and who love to cheer for cheering's sake alone, yelled at the full pitch of their lungs, and waved their ragged caps as joyfully as if the King of England were about to ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... shortened sail, and formed a line of battle; while the rest, under the protection of the six frigates, proceeded on their voyage with all the sail they could carry. The British squadron was likewise drawn up in line of battle; but Mr. Warren, perceiving that the enemy began to sheer off, now their convoy was at a considerable distance, advised admiral Anson to haul in the signal for the line, and hoist another for giving chase and engaging, otherwise the French would, in all probability, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... extend. He heard th' approaching tempest's hollow sigh, And cold despondence trembled in his eye— And lo, it bursts! the boundless whirlwinds sweep, Toss the light clouds, and tear the staggering deep Sheer from its lowest caves—the smoking rain Bursts in white torrents o'er the echoing main: The fiery bolts uninterrupted roll From sky to sky, and shake the stedfast pole: Red volleying o'er the heavens with curving beam The fitful lightnings ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... sort is to be more admired than the rare view of the choir buttresses of Notre Dame at Paris, likened unto "kneeling angels with half-spread wings;" the delicate and symmetrical choir buttresses of Amiens; the sheer fall of Beauvais; or the triply effective termination of the one-time cathedral of Noyon, which falls away in three gracefully gentle slopes to the ground. Again Stevenson's power as a descriptive writer lingers in our memory. He says, of no cathedral in particular, "where ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... curious. It was just wide enough to admit the passage of a sleigh perhaps; the crumbling and dilapidated old houses, which seemed deserted, were connected overhead by a succession of wooden bridges, and those on my left were built into the solid rock, which rose sheer overhead. ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... like you,' said the lawyer. He stopped from sheer inability to express what he meant and felt, which was that such an exceptionally pretty girl as Stella Wharton ought not to start life alone in London and be thrown on her own resources, even though she was a thoroughly trustworthy girl and had a younger sister to live with her. ...
— A City Schoolgirl - And Her Friends • May Baldwin
... or Constitutionalists. But all were driven by desperate circumstances into this terrible form of revolt. And when we turn from parties to individuals who have acted in like manner, we stand appalled by the number of human beings goaded and driven by sheer desperation into conduct obviously violently opposed ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... for a space. Mr. Wason is a very tall gentleman, but in Foulah he met his peers in point of stature. The islanders are a fine set of men, hardy and godly. They are adroit fowlers and nimble cragsmen. It gives one a queer sensation to hear that the face of their sheer precipices used to be (like level land elsewhere) apportioned equitably among the various families. If A did not wish to catch birds on his aerial lot, he could let it to B and claim a certain percentage of the spoil. The population of the island is about 250: ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... friend that happens to be with them, and get him to read or to initialize them instead. As to ourselves (for reasons also to be presently given), we shall write the words at full length, out of sheer sense of their nothingness; only premising, that such was not the opinion entertained of them by this tremendous Lord Chancellor, or by the age in which he lived; otherwise he would not have resorted to them as clenches for his ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... I answered with almost Teutonic ruthlessness. Confound it! I couldn't sit here forever bullying her; sheer desperation lent me strength. "The Espagne sails from Bordeaux on Saturday, I see by the Herald, and if I were you, I should most certainly be on board. In fact, if you lose the chance, I am sure you'll regret it later. The French police authorities are—er—very inquisitive about foreigners; ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... down, and softened with woods, amid which are seen villas, cottages, castles; and beyond the river is a line of crags, perhaps three hundred feet high, clothed with shrubbery in some parts from top to bottom, but in other places presenting a sheer precipice of rock, over which tumbles, as it were, a cascade of ivy and creeping plants. It is very beautiful, and, I might almost say, very wild; but it has those characteristics of finish, and of being redeemed from nature, and converted into a portion of the adornment of a great ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... connection, or rather in connection with the other case of Froude, it is worth while to take another figure from Dickens's history, which illustrates the other and better side of the facile and popular method. Sheer ignorance of the environment made him wrong about Dunstan. But sheer instinct and good moral tradition made him right, for instance, about Henry VIII.; right where Froude is wildly wrong. Dickens's imagination could not re-picture an age where learning and liberty were dying ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... ladder flat, and crept along it till he reached the still sinking man: he caught him by the arm at once, and started to haul him out. Anstey's strength was well known in the regiment, and perhaps he was the only man who could have dragged out the General by sheer force of arm, but he did it somehow, and the cheers of the men simply rent the air as they saw their loved commander ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... him as the Philistines upon Samson; and the question was, what the devil to do with it? He could not raffle it over again; nobody would take tickets. He had half a mind to trundle it over the khud (Anglice, precipice) and be done with it; but then, again, he reflected that this would be sheer waste and might seem to indicate soreness on his part. It cost him a good many pegs before he thought the matter out in all its bearings, for, as has been said, he was a gunner, but as he sauntered away from the ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... more nervous than a bishop among curates. Nevertheless they are wrong; and your humble servant entirely right. B.-P., like the other members of his family, suffers from nervousness, and when he goes on the stage to act, and sits down at the piano to "vamp," it is a sheer triumph of will over nerves. He is not nervous under the wide and starry sky, not bashful when he pricks his horse into the long grass of the veldt and bears down upon a bunch of bloodthirsty savages, not nervous when he gets a child on his knee all by himself and tells her delightful stories,—but ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... sent for on the preceding day had succeeded, though with much difficulty and after a long time, in allaying the girl's excitement, and that she had then dropped into a deep sleep, apparently from sheer exhaustion. She had awoke that morning calm and quiet, and the doctor, who was with her at the time, had gradually, and to his extreme astonishment, discovered that her reason, which had in fact given way two or three years previously amid the horrors of an Indian raid, had partially if not ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... home, as he called it, to be with Mrs Willis at nights. On no other condition would he agree to enter the doctor's service; and I found, on talking over the subject with Mrs Willis herself, that she had become so fond of the boy that it would have been sheer cruelty to part them. In short, it was a case of mutual love at first sight! No two individuals seemed more unlikely to draw together than the meek, gentle old lady and the dashing, harum-scarum boy. ...
— My Doggie and I • R.M. Ballantyne
... her guide, hearing, even in the midst of his triumph song, that faint and distant cry; and he took her hand and drew her back, for she was upon the edge of the precipice, gazing into the black depths, which revealed nothing save the needles of the awful rocks and sheer descents below. 'The moment will come,' he said, 'when we can help; but ...
— The Little Pilgrim: Further Experiences. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... for a long period thus intricately intertangled. It is hard to believe that the practice of human and animal sacrifice (with whatever revolting details) should have been cultivated by nine-tenths of the human race over the globe out of sheer perversity and without some reason which at any rate to the perpetrators themselves appeared commanding and convincing. To-day (1918) we are witnessing in the Great European War a carnival of human slaughter which in magnitude and barbarity eclipses in one stroke all the ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... have lived so utterly in vain. One by one the struggles of the past came up to him; each had seemed a triumph when he was in the glory of strength and hope. The splendid aims of a higher and nobler government, built by sheer truth and nobility of purpose upon the ashes and dust of present corruption, the magnificent purity of the ideal State of which he had loved to dream—all that he had thought of and striven after as most worthy of a true man to follow, dwindled now away into a ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... when the sky was clear, Ineffably translucent in its blue; The tide was falling, and the sea withdrew In hushed and happy music from the sheer Shadowy granite of the cliffs; and fear Of what life may be, and what death can do, Fell from us like steel armor, and we knew The beauty of the ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... gazed at the moon awhile a thrill of sheer madness set him to tumbling, head over heels, upon the fresh hay. Life was full of gladness for him, and his throat cramped with a delicious longing for he knew not what. He wondered vaguely if it were not something new and unimaginably good ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... Rowe myself very busy in the bar of the White Lion, with a sheet of paper and an old steel pen, which looked as if the point had been attenuated to that hair-like fineness by sheer age. He started at the sight of me, which caused him to drop a very large blot of ink from the very sharp point of the pen on to his paper. I left him wiping it up with his handkerchief. But it never struck me that he was writing a letter ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... with a sorry heart that I bade farewell to my Vienna friends, my musical comrades, the Legation hospitalities, and my faithful little Israelite. But the colt frisks over the pasture from sheer superfluity of energy; and between one's second and third decades instinctive restlessness - spontaneous movement - is the law of one's being. 'Tis then that 'Hope builds as fast as knowledge can destroy.' The enjoyment we abandon is never so sweet as ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... months at Bombay, and almost six months at Calcutta. There were so many gorgeous things,—silks, and bright stuffs with threads of gold, jackets all embroidery, and queer Eastern dresses, two made of pineapple cloth,—a sheer, beautiful fabric,—and one had delicate ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... demanded Berkeley, argumentatively. "She'll never do any better; Jim's a handsome fellow, as men go, brave, honorable and sweet-tempered. What more does she want? It looks to me like sheer perversity." ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... had to stop through sheer exhaustion, but Mr Bunker, merely letting her go, pursued his solitary way, double-shuffling and ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston
... But this is folly, sheer folly. How could she look like Mrs. Urquhart? Imagination carries me too far. Equal innocence and a like gentle temper have produced a like result in sweetening the expression. That is all, and yet I remember the one woman when I look ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... very loudly, like a cock of spirit, and declared that old Mrs. Scratchard was envious, because she had lost all her own tail-feathers, and looked more like a worn- out old feather-duster than a respectable hen, and that therefore she was filled with sheer envy of anybody that was young and pretty. So young Mrs. Feathertop cackled gay defiance at her busy rubbishy neighbour, as she sunned herself under the bushes on ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... ballad poetry (Spectators 70, 74, 85) was not a sheer novelty. He had a ringing English precedent in Sidney, whom he quotes. And he may have had one in Jonson; at least he thought he had. He cited Dryden and Dorset as collectors and readers of ballads; and he ...
— Parodies of Ballad Criticism (1711-1787) • William Wagstaffe
... triumphantly through a heavy morning's work and have everything ready for the evening. Later there had been the stroll down to the field in the shade of the waning afternoon, to find out what time the men would be in for supper; and the sheer delight of breathing in the pungent smell of the straw as it came flying from the funnel, looking, with the sinking sun shining through it, like a million bees swarming from a hive, while the red-brown grain gushed, a lush ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... limp head, and we saw that the sword had passed just over his shoulder, piercing the linen, not the flesh. He had swooned from sheer terror, being in truth ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... discernible outlines on the walls. Nor did any thought enter his mind of the exactness of the reflected color in the stereo cube. Hands clenched into aching fists, he stood leaning forward; striving by sheer will-power to span the void of space and force the scanner lens closer to the truncated pyramid of steps atop which, on a block of plain black stone, a dessicated mummy sat erect, hands folded in its reedy lap and on its head a blazing, ...
— Zero Data • Charles Saphro |
