"Sinew" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the sacrilegious custom of swearing at Constantinople, as he had done at Antioch, he strained every sinew, and in several sermons he exerted his zeal with uncommon energy, mingled with the most tender charity. In Hom. 8, in Act t. 9, pp. 66, 67, he complains that some who had begun to correct their criminal habit, after having fallen through surprise, or by a sudden fit of passion, had lost courage. ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... with madame, your mother, Monsieur Fletcher. You were but a stripling then, though you gave wonderful promise of size and strength. Now you are a man, and have won the honour of knighthood; and methinks that, in thew and sinew, there are not many in our ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... and plans are only the skeleton of our defense structure. The sinew and muscle of defense are the forces and equipment which must ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... certain hot day more than a year before when he and Everard Monck had wrestled together in the Club gymnasium for the benefit of a little crowd of subalterns who had eagerly betted upon the result. It had been sinew versus weight, and after a tough struggle sinew had prevailed. He remembered the unpleasant sensation of defeat even now though he had had the grit to take it like a man and get up laughing. It was one of the very few occasions he could remember upon which he ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... those wild animals walk their cages in a menagerie, with the fierce instincts of suppressed action rolling in the vexed eye and vibrating in every sinew, even so we behold this hero of the flashing glance and sable locks treading, in high excitement, the floor of the cedar parlour. Every five minutes a new hope—a new conjecture, and another scrutiny of the baronet's letter, or of the certificate of Archer's death, and hour ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... think, if I were you,' said Darnell, as he went out, 'I should step over to the stores and complain of their meat. That last piece of beef was very far from being up to the mark—full of sinew.' ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... the camera fortunately failed to record the language that he used. Now and then he turned and yanked savagely at the lead rope; whereupon the burro would sit down upon its haunches and allow Applehead to stretch its neck as far as bone and tough hide and tougher sinew would permit Someone among the group roosting in the shade across the defile and well out of camera range would laugh, and Luck, standing on a ledge just behind and above the camera, would shout directions or criticism of ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... fringed down the sleeves and leggings with numberless ermine tails. At one side of the tepee lay piled quite a score of blankets in mixed colors, a heap of thick furs, pyramids of buffalo horns, and coils and coils of the famous "grass and sinew" lariats for ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... opposed by a terrible giant who guarded the island against all intruders. This giant, whose name was Talus, was the last of the Brazen race, and being formed of brass, was invulnerable, except in his right ankle, where there was a sinew of flesh and a vein of blood. As he saw the Argo {230} nearing the coast, he hurled huge rocks at her, which would inevitably have sunk the vessel had not the crew beat a hasty retreat. Although sadly in want of food and water, the Argonauts ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... of sinew from the back of a cow, split from the long, broad sheath that lies on each side the spine, and the bow strung for trial. Now, on drawing it (flat or white side in front), it was found that one arm bent more than the other, so a little more scraping was done on the ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... a rich inheritance. Through the vicissitudes of history her laws and ordered government have stood a majestic object-lesson for the ages. But when the stern, frugal character of her people ceased to be the bone and sinew of her ...
— Optimism - An Essay • Helen Keller
... tenth, the ships, crowded with troops, set sail. Ribaut was gone, and with him the pith and sinew of the colony. The miserable remnant watched his receding sails with dreary foreboding, a foreboding which seemed but too just, when, on the next day, a storm, more violent than the Indians had ever known, howled through the forest and lashed the ocean into fury, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... mental suffocation now. For they were the fingers of her brother,—the flesh and sinew of the woman he loved! And it was this love that was being cruelly crushed ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... feet at the base, converging to a point at least 30 feet high, covered with buffalo-hides dressed without hair except a part of the tail switch, which floats outside like, and mingled with human scalps. The different skins are neatly fitted and sewed together with sinew, and all painted in seven alternate horizontal stripes of brown and yellow, decorated with various life-like war scenes. Over the small entrance is a large bright cross, the upright being a large stuffed white wolf- skin upon his war lance, and the cross-bar of bright scarlet flannel, ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... harmonised with the iron temper of the age, and it answered well for the government of a fierce and powerful people, in whose hearts lay an intense hatred of rascality, and among whom no one could have lapsed into evil courses except by deliberate preference for them. The moral sinew of the English must have been strong indeed when it admitted of such stringent bracing; but, on the whole, they were ruled as they preferred to be ruled; and if wisdom can be tested by success, the manner in which they passed the great crisis of the Reformation is the best justification ...
— Froude's History of England • Charles Kingsley
... Signals Bearings by Compass, Sun, etc. Marks by the wayside Way, to find Caches and Depots Savages, Management of Hostilities Mechanical Appliances Knots Writing Materials Timber Metals Leather Cords, String, and Thread Membrane, Sinew, and Horn Pottery Candles and Lamps Conclusion of ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... aspect promise the display of vigour and elasticity which the Emir had lately exhibited. But on looking more closely, his limbs, where exposed to view, seemed divested of all that was fleshy or cumbersome; so that nothing being left but bone, brawn, and sinew, it was a frame fitted for exertion and fatigue, far beyond that of a bulky champion, whose strength and size are counterbalanced by weight, and who is exhausted by his own exertions. The countenance of the Saracen naturally bore a general national resemblance to the Eastern tribe from ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... away without a word, the monument remains intact, and generations have had bequeathed to them an example of what presence of mind may effect, not with nerve, sinew, or bodily prowess, but with the tongue. The Convent of the Visitation, to which Montmorency's widow retired, and in the chapel of which she raised this memorial, is now converted into a Lycee. It is a handsome building and was built by Madame de Chantal, foundress of the Order of Visitadines, ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... from ash-trees, the last left among the sons of the gods; and the son of Cronos gave him to Europa to be the warder of Crete and to stride round the island thrice a day with his feet of bronze. Now in all the rest of his body and limbs was he fashioned of bronze and invulnerable; but beneath the sinew by his ankle was a blood-red vein; and this, with its issues of life and death, was covered by a thin skin. So the heroes, though outworn with toil, quickly backed their ship from the land in sore dismay. And now far from Crete would they have been borne ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... of the cottage. The noble horse put its ears forward as it came up, took two or three short strides, and went over with the light bound of a deer, showing that the strength of bone, muscle, and sinew was in proportion to the colossal size of the animal. The gravel inside the paling flew like splashing water as they alighted with a crash, and widow Marston, uttering a faint cry, shrank within the ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... despair? Is that the tribute to a father due? Blood is his due, Melanthon; yes, the blood, The vile, black blood, that fills the tyrant's veins, Would graceful look upon my dagger's point. Come, vengeance, come, shake off the feeble sex, Sinew my arm, and guide it to his heart. And thou, O filial piety, that rul'st My woman's breast, turn to vindictive rage; Assume the port of justice; show mankind Tyrannic guilt hath never dar'd in Syracuse, ...
— The Grecian Daughter • Arthur Murphy
... when at last he went off to Edinburgh to study his father's profession. Five years after that did I tide at Birtwhistle's, and when I left had become cock myself, for I was wiry and as tough as whalebone, though I never ran to weight and sinew like my great predecessor. It was in Jubilee Year that I left Birtwhistle's, and then for three years I stayed at home learning the ways of the cattle; but still the ships and the armies were wrestling, and still the great shadow of Bonaparte lay across the country. How could I guess that I too ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... distinguished, but the art is essentially the same everywhere. "Probably no discovery is older than the fact that friction would wear away wood or bone, or even stone."[200] It was also learned that rawhide and sinew shrank in drying, and this fact was very ingeniously used to attach handles, the sinew or membrane being put on while fresh and wet. American stone axes are grooved to receive a handle made by an ingenious adaptation ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... quarter-rail, the great negro uttered a shrill cry of triumph and leapt at me; but as he came I sprang to meet his rush and stooping swiftly, caught him below the knees and in that same moment, straining every nerve, every muscle and sinew to the uttermost, I rose up and hove him whirling over ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... practically certain that no one of them was infallibly in the right, and that the truth probably lay in certain wide religious ideas which underlay all forms of Christian faith. Maitland rejected this with scorn as a dangerous and nebulous kind of religion—"nerveless and flabby, without bone or sinew." They then diverged on to a wider ground, and Hugh tried to defend his theory that God called souls to Himself by an infinite variety of appeal, and that the contest was not between orthodoxy on the one hand and heterodoxy ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... was going on. His father had promised him that, when the time did come, he should ride by his side, and with that promise he was content to wait, knowing that, at present, his strength would be of but little avail, and that every week added somewhat to his weight and sinew. ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... of them could do, in the rolling, high seas in which the "Restless" pitched like a chip of wood, to get that sail on top of the cabin deck-house. Bit by bit they rigged it in place, working fast, straining muscle and sinew to hold the sail against the gale that strove to carry the canvas overboard. At last, they had it in ...
— The Motor Boat Club and The Wireless - The Dot, Dash and Dare Cruise • H. Irving Hancock
... charging—heaven beholding; thou hast but an hour to fight; Now the blazoned cross unfolding, on, right onward for the right! On! let all the soul within you for the truth's sake go abroad! Strike! let every nerve and sinew tell ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... mind, so to speak, is more developed in winter; the fleshy, in summer. I should say winter had given the bone and sinew to Literature, summer ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... the arrogance of the German officials, and the way in which they boasted of Their Army, and Their Kaiser, and Their Beer, and Their Sauerkraut, and, in short, of every product of their whole blamed Fatherland, exasperated Dick to a degree. Though not very big, he was a bundle of muscle and sinew, and already he had been fined heavily for making a mess of one or two spread-eagled Teutons who had been unwise enough to mistake his quiet manner ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... enterprise, heroism, and success derived? Who have given it its place in the respect and the fear of the world? Who, annually, recruit its energies, confirm its progress, and secure its triumph? Who are its characteristic children, the pith, the sinew, the bone, of its prosperity? Who found, and direct, and continue its manifold institutions of mercy and education? Who are, essentially, Americans? Indignant friend, these classes, whoever they ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... waist, a hunting shirt, leggings, moccasins on the feet, and sometimes a deerskin over the shoulders. Very often they wore nothing but the strip about the waist and the moccasins. These garments of deerskin were cut with much care, sewed with fish-bone needles and sinew thread, and ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... was praised. On the other hand he was the victim of uproarious laughter for wearing a sword whenever he walked on the street, since he was so old and weak of sinew. ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... Iron in sinew, steel persuasion Now of the weak and sobbing will; Scorn that beats on the old evasion; Limbs that move for ...
— Perpetual Light • William Rose Benet
... sigh now to think of the cheer which burst from that tatterdemalion crew. Who were they to fight the bone and sinew of the King's navy in a rotten ship of an age gone by? And who was he, that stood so straight upon the quarter-deck, to instil this scum with love and worship and fervour to blind them to such odds? But the bo'suns piped and sang out the command ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... in the garden, occupied in weaving the belt of dragon-sinew. The stupefaction of Li Ching may be imagined. "You have brought most awful misfortunes upon us," he exclaimed. "Come and give an account of your conduct." "Have no fear," replied No-cha superciliously; "his son's sinews are still intact; I will give ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... with each succeeding line of weft advances one warp giving the surface a twilled effect. It is interesting that the small blocks of design are woven separately something as a tapestry, and later the blocks are sewed together with a thread of sinew from ...
— Aboriginal American Weaving • Mary Lois Kissell
... hurt and even of destruction, his predatory and protective faculties were unduly developed. He became quicker of movement than the other dogs, swifter of foot, craftier, deadlier, more lithe, more lean with ironlike muscle and sinew, more enduring, more cruel, more ferocious, and more intelligent. He had to become all these things, else he would not have held his own nor survive the hostile environment in which he ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... was ashore sitting beneath a hemlock eating his dinner of venison—and as the tidings were told him, after the first start he kept on eating, but slowly and deliberately, chewing the wild news with the wild meat, as if both together, turned to chyle, together should sinew him to his intent. From that meal he rose an Indian-hater. He rose; got his arms, prevailed upon some comrades to join him, and without delay started to discover who were the actual transgressors. They proved to belong to a band of twenty renegades from various tribes, outlaws even ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... women wore mantles and conical caps of hide, and gold ornaments in their ears. The men also wore a sort of skin cloak, which hung down to their knees, over a close tunic: the legs and feet were bare in both. Their sheep-skin mantles, sewed together with threads of sinew, and rendered soft and pliable by friction, sufficed for a garment by day and a blanket by night. These Bosjesmans exhibited a variety of the customs of their native country. Their whoops were sometimes so loud as to be startling, ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... cowpuncher, all sinew and bone and muscle. His smile was so warm and friendly, his manner so boyish and yet so competent. To look into his kind, steady eyes was to know that ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... buried with him, in order that it might follow him to the happy hunting-grounds. Clearly, you can't hunt without your arrows and your tomahawk; so the flint weapons and the trusty bow accompanied their owner in his new dwelling-place. The wooden haft, the deer-sinew bow-string, the perishable articles of food and drink have long since decayed within the damp tumulus: but the harder stone and earthenware articles have survived till now, to tell the story of that crude and simple early ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... could not stay: Her tearing nails snatching at all she saw; With gaping jaws, that by no means ymay Be satisfied from hunger of her maw, But eats herself as she that hath no law; Gnawing, alas! her carcase all in vain, Where you may count each sinew, bone, and vein. ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... were to stop now, it might be hours before he could go on again, and then he would be already weakened by hunger. There was nothing to be done but to keep at it, to strike and strike, with such half- frantic energy as was left in him. Every bone and sinew ached, and his breath came short, while the sweat ran down into his short beard, and fell in rain on ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... would be something more Than they who feast, and laugh and die, will hear The voice of Duty, as the note of war, Nerving their spirits to great enterprise, And knitting every sinew ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... count; they do count. Their influence counts for a very great deal. Theoretically, women in India are nothing where religion is concerned; practically, they are the heart of the Hindu religion, as the men are its sinew and brain. There has never been a convert in that town since that young man was banished from it, ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... for a politician, however statesmanlike his qualities, to realize that politics cannot be even divorced from morality, much less to comprehend that morality is the very sinew of politics, being in truth nothing more than the conscience of a nation striving to express itself in State action. Because of this politics become degraded and sink to the lowest levels of a mere factional ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... days of the Spanish Inquisition. It was then termed the 'Ordeal of Fire;' and the infernal vengeance of hell itself could not have produced torment more intense or protracted; for though it racked every nerve and sinew in the body, filling the veins with a flood like molten lead, it was comparatively slow in producing death, and kept the sufferer for several hours writhing in all ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... weekly bills appeal, Let those express my fervent zeal; On every slight occasion near, With violence I persevere.' Next Gout appears with limping pace, Pleads how he shifts from place to place, From head to foot how swift he flies, 19 And every joint and sinew plies; 20 Still working when he seems suppress'd, A most tenacious stubborn guest. A haggard spectre from the crew Crawls forth, and thus asserts his due: 'Tis I who taint the sweetest joy, And in the shape of love destroy: My shanks, sunk eyes, and noseless ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... self-persuasion. The title of his first book after returning, "Our Old Home," was a concise confession. He would have considered it a base resource to live abroad during the war, bringing up his son in an alien land, however dear and related it might be to our bone and sinew; and if his children did not enjoy the American phase of the universe in its crude stage, he, at any rate, had done his best to make them love it. His loyalty was always something flawless. A friend ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... seen him in five years before; it was torn and stained, threadbare, and it hung upon him loosely, as though it had been made for someone else. I noticed his hands, dirty, with long nails; they were merely bone and sinew, large and strong; but I had forgotten that they were so shapely. He gave me an extraordinary impression as he sat there, his attention riveted on his game — an impression of great strength; and I could not understand why it was that his emaciation ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... a tug at the rail. There was an ominous grind and quiver as the others interlocked. He made a tremendous lift, one which strained every sinew and started ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... path when we were suddenly attacked. A horsekeeper was wounded by a spear, which passed through his leg, behind the knee, and cut the sinew, thus rendering him helpless. He was immediately placed upon a donkey. The unfortunate lad who led the horse a few paces before me now uttered a wild shriek, as a spear passed completely through his body. The poor boy crept to me on his hands ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... May I give you an instance, and you will see if I perceive your thought. The good Vicar here, my cousin Frank, Jack's father—you will meet him to-night—is a man who holds a rigid belief, or thinks he holds it. He preaches what he calls the sinew and bone of doctrine, and he is very stern in the pulpit. He likes lecturing people in rows! But in reality he is one of the kindest and vaguest of men. He preached a stiff sermon about conversion the other day—I am pretty ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... than stoups of wine to trowl, One draught of vengeance deep and gory, Yea, than to drain the thousandth bowl! Show ye, prove ye, ye are true all, Join ye to your clans your cheer! Nor heed though wife and child pursue all, Bidding you to fight, forbear. Sinew-lusty, spirit-trusty, Gallant in your loyal pride, By your hacking, low as bracken Stretch the foe the turf beside. Our stinging kerne of aspect stern That love the fatal game, That revel rife till drunk with strife, And dye their cheeks with flame, Are strange ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... cupidity of the Indians to dispose of these gems, and gratitude alone causes them to part with any of these treasures, which, like the mountaineers of Thibet, they regard with mystical reverence. The Navajos wear them as ear-drops, by boring them and attaching them to the ear by means of a deer sinew. Lesser stones are pierced, then strung on sinews and worn as neck-laces. Even the nobler Ute Indians, when stripping the ornaments of turquoise from the ears of the conquered Navajos, value them as sacred treasures, and refuse ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... and to deafen our ears to crying evils, are very similar to the clumsy attempts made by Louis XVI. and his partisans to botch up a terribly bad business. Oh, the people, the people! ... They are unquestionably the flesh, blood, bone, and sinew of the country,—and the English people, say what sneerers will to the contrary, are a GOOD people,—patient, plodding, forbearing, strong, and, on the whole, most equable-tempered,—but their teachers teach them wrongly, and confuse their brains instead of clearing ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breathe a word about your loss; If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone. And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... the muscles of his neck towards his head. All these symptoms the climber knew. The buzzing in his ears would never cease until he could lie down and breathe freely with every muscle relaxed, every sinew slack. The dull ache would creep up until it reached his brain, and then nothing could save him—no strength of will could prevent his fingers from ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... you look back upon the dreams of the years that are past: they glide to the vision in pompous procession; they seem bloated with infancy. They are without sinew or bone. They do not bear the hard touches of the ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... the six feet of bone and sinew and muscle of the young rancher, made as if to answer, paused a moment, changed his mind, and said ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... over an ancient battle-field, silent and grass-grown, but ridged with graves, and showing still by its conformation the disposition of the troops which once struggled there in deadly contest,—and while we linger, lo! the graves are graves no more. The dry bones come together,—sinew and flesh form upon them,—the skin covers them about,—the breath enters into them,—they live and stand upon their feet, an exceeding great and mighty army. Drums beat, swords flash, and the war of the Titans ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... campaign, Lincoln once replied to Colonel Richard Taylor, a self-conceited, dandified man, who wore a gold chain and ruffled shirt. His party at that time was posing as the hard-working bone and sinew of the land, while the Whigs were stigmatized as aristocrats, ruffled-shirt gentry. Taylor making a sweeping gesture, his overcoat became torn open, displaying his finery. Lincoln in reply said, laying his hand on his ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... the body is an obstacle to delight. Now contemplation causes a lesion of the body; wherefore it is stated (Gen. 32) that after Jacob had said (Gen. 32:30), "'I have seen God face to face' . . . he halted on his foot (Gen. 32:31) . . . because he touched the sinew of his thigh and it shrank" (Gen. 32:32). Therefore seemingly there ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... life and spirits and health, have been tried for bush-ranging—robbery under arms they call it—and though the blood runs through my veins like the water in the mountain creeks, and every bit of bone and sinew is as sound as the day I was born, I must die on the gallows this ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... of communities of their own, and the practical realization of their own ideas of social progress. Comparatively few years will pass after the restoration of peace before the West will be peopled by the very bone and sinew of all civilized nations. And these men will come to our shores imbued with the bitterest hatred of monarchical institutions, and an unbounded admiration and love of our own. Hence the new country will be intensely ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... For a little while, the blooming semblance of beauty may flourish round weakness; but it cannot bear a blast: it soon fades, even in serenest sunshine. Graham would have started had any suggestive spirit whispered of the sinew and the stamina sustaining that delicate nature; but I who had known her as a child, knew or guessed by what a good and strong root her graces held to the firm soil ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... disgusted to the verge of nausea. shakers, pit the shakers on me, set me trembling with fear. shauchle, shamble, walk in a shuffling manner. shoon, shoes. shouther, shoulder. sib, related, like. sic, such. siccar, sure. sicht, sight. sichtit, sighted. siller, money. sin, since. sinon, sinew; wi' a gey teuch sinon in your neck, possessed of good stamina. skaith, harm. skeely, skilful. sklimmin', climbing. slocken, quench, allay. smeddum, spirit, mettle. smiddy, smithy. smirr, slight fall (of rain or snow). smoor, smoort, smother, smothered. ...
— The Auld Doctor and other Poems and Songs in Scots • David Rorie
... He was dressed in the clothes of a citizen, and over these a blue surtout of the finest cloth. His weight must have been two hundred and thirty pounds, with no superfluous flesh; all was bone and sinew; and he walked like a soldier. Whoever has seen, in the patent-office at Washington, the dress he wore when resigning his commission as commander-in-chief, in December, 1783, at once perceives how large and magnificent was his frame. During the parade, ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... familiar with the lavish praise bestowed—especially when votes are to be secured—upon the "bone and sinew of the country;" but the farmers themselves are very far from accepting as true, even if sincere, the estimate of their qualities which the editor and the ...
— Village Improvements and Farm Villages • George E. Waring
... foot in the middle of a large feather bed, but my blood preserved its natural warmth even after sitting for hours in an open pulk. The boellinger, fastened around the thighs by drawing-strings of reindeer sinew, are so covered by the poesk that one becomes, for all practical purposes, a biped reindeer, and may wallow in the snow as much as he likes without the possibility of a particle getting ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... treats of what is clean and unclean, of not eating the sinew that shrank, and not killing the dam and her young in one ...
— Hebrew Literature
... tut, a breath: There's no such thing, in nature: a mere term Invented to awe fools. What is my gold The worse, for touching, clothes for being look'd on? Why, this is no more. An old decrepit wretch, That has no sense, no sinew; takes his meat With others' fingers; only knows to gape, When you do scald his gums; a voice; a shadow; And, what can ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... would be almost consumed by the means of protecting them. The power of regulating and calling forth the militia has been already sufficiently vindicated and explained. The power of levying and borrowing money, being the sinew of that which is to be exerted in the national defense, is properly thrown into the same class with it. This power, also, has been examined already with much attention, and has, I trust, been clearly shown to ...
— The Federalist Papers
... wore mocassins, made of the same pliant material with his leggings, and differing in shape from the foot-gear of his companion in this particular only, that they had no tongue introduced into the front: they were puckered together by a strong sinew of the deer, until they met along the instep in a seam concealed by the same ornamental quill-work that decorated the garters: a sort of flap, fringed like the leggings, was folded back from the ankle, upon the sides of the foot, and the whole was confined by ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... poet and the dreamer, and even the artist must choose his bits with care. Hyde Park and Piccadilly have come up to the Thames; and what does Hyde Park care for the poetry of dreaming nature, or what the river-madmen for aught else than glorious expansion of muscle and strengthening of sinew and the godlike sense of largeness and lightness which comes with that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... so oppressed with the sight of suffering I see around me that I am almost unfitted for usefulness; such sights are new to me. I feel the need of some resource, where I may apply for delicacies and comforts, which are positively necessary. The Sanitary Commission is rapidly becoming the sinew of strength for the sick and wounded, and I will go to their store-rooms." Application was made to the Commission, and readily and promptly responded to. She was authorized to draw from their stores, and was promised aid and protection ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... not one of them. They are all eloquent, diffusive, rich, lavish, generous, prodigal of their words. But so are they all deficient in sense, muscle, sinew, thews, ribs, spine. Pope, as an artist, beats them ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... defeated by the fleet and sagacious hound, and the hunted animal at length took to the open waste, where the run became so rapid, that Richard had enough to do to keep up with it, though Merlin, almost as furiously excited as his master, strained every sinew to the task. ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... on his face. Sanin too mounted his horse; Maria Nikolaevna saluted Polozov with her whip, then gave her mare a lash with it on her arched and flat neck. The mare reared on her hind legs, made a dash forward, moving with a smart and shortened step, quivering in every sinew, biting the air and snorting abruptly. Sanin rode behind, and looked at Maria Nikolaevna; her slender supple figure, moulded by close-fitting but easy stays, swayed to and fro with self-confident grace and skill. She turned ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... almost intolerable just now, and all his trembling efforts "to work like a man" seemed utterly useless, for he was crippled by fear as well as weakness. He could not take things like the other Green Highland lads of his age, who were tough of nerve and sinew, and thought nothing of cuffs on the head and abuse. It was all dreadful to him, and he suffered as much in apprehension as in the actual punishment when it came. Mingled with it all was a hot sense of injustice, for he tried to do his best, ...
— Our Frank - and other stories • Amy Walton
... to the reader. In the first place, the Shawanoe was the owner of at least two bows, nearly as long as himself and possessing tremendous power. That which the Sauk held in charge was of mountain ash, made in the usual fashion, the cord being composed of deer sinew, woven as fine and almost as strong as steel wire. The center-piece was round and had been polished hard and smooth by the friction of the Shawanoe's right hand, which had grasped it so many times. The entire bow had been stained a dark cherry color, its proportions ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... assortment of fruit and vegetables. Where are the buyers of these products of the earth? Here they come! Night is approaching. The entire population begins to return at once from their labour in the fields; a stalwart and sturdy population; the thew and sinew of some fine regiments. Every one of these half-clad men, armed with pickaxe and shovel, rose two hours before the sun this morning, and went forth to weed a little field, or to dig round a few olive-trees. Many of them have their little domains ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... senses and staggered up to have his arms thonged behind his back. The thongs on my arms they tightened with a stick through the loop to extort cry of pain as the sinew cut into the shattered wrist. An the smile had cost my last breath, I would have defied their tortures with a laugh. They got no cry from me. Godefroy, the trader, cursed us in one breath and in the next threatened that the Indians would keep ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... "Our only chance is to keep her moving; if once the wound stiffens, there's an end. The sinew cannot have been severed, or it would have come ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... circled to the joyous music of organs which played the same tune automatically for any number of hours, whilst raucous voices invited all and sundry to take their turn. Should this delight pall, behold on every hand such sports as are dearest to the Briton, those which call for strength of sinew and exactitude of aim. The philosophic mind would have noted with interest how ingeniously these games were made to appeal to the patriotism of the throng. Did you choose to 'shy' sticks in the contest for cocoa-nuts, behold your object was a wooden model of the ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... is made of fine babiche, sinew, cord, or wire, and the loop is hung over a rabbit runway just high enough to catch it round the neck. In its struggles it sets off the spring or tossing-pole, thus usually ending its sufferings. ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... —firearms being unknown,—to charge and "chivy." The rider directs his course along, and close to, some bush, where a comrade is concealed; and the latter, as the animal passes at speed, cuts the back sinew of the hind leg, where in the human subject the tendon Achilles would be, with a sharp, broad and heavy knife. [31] This wound at first occasions little inconvenience: presently the elephant, fancying, it is supposed, ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... times of danger, are at least entitled to justice in the matter of receiving due recognition for their services. Emigrants have been assisted into Canada from all parts of Europe and given slices of our public domain, while the bone and sinew of our own people have been "passed by on the other side." This is not right—it is not patriotic, neither is it good public policy. Let justice prevail in all things, and our country will prosper and flourish. One by one the old Veterans of 1866 and 1870 are being ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald
... artist spare neither time nor labor, but exert himself beyond his natural energies, seeking to enter into the character of each actor, studying them one after the other, limb for limb, hand for hand, finger for finger, noting each inflection of joint, or tension of sinew, searching for dramatic truth internally in himself, and in all external nature, shunning affectation and exaggeration, and striving after pathos, and purity of feeling, with patient endeavor and utter simplicity of heart. For on this labor must ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... to draw a handkerchief from his hip pocket, the New Englander, thinking a revolver was on its way, scrambled to his feet, wildly seized the heavy spirit-bottle, and let fly at Garrison's head. There was whisky, muscle, sinew, and fear behind ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... wings, dear lady, but it has a fine ridge of fur, that covers a strong sinew or muscle between the fore and hinder legs; and it is by the help of this muscle that it is able to spring so far, and so fast; and its claws are so sharp that it can cling to a wall, or any flat surface. The black and red squirrels, and the common ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill
... untold in any official reports or books or journals. These, indeed, are the things that are genuine and precious. The man was there, has been out two years, has been through a dozen fights, the superfluous flesh of talking is long work'd off him, and he gives me little but the hard meat and sinew. I find it refreshing, these hardy, bright, intuitive, American young men, (experienc'd soldiers with all their youth.) The vocal play and significance moves one more than books. Then there hangs something majestic about a man who has borne his part in battles, especially if he is very quiet ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... M'Gregor off the football stage, so to speak, they would never for a moment have taken him for a brilliant and accomplished player at all points. He was all nerve and sinew, and always in grand form. His disadvantages in appearance and weight, however, were kind of blessings in disguise to his club, for the opposing backs sometimes treated him with indifference, and even contempt. This was M'Gregor's opportunity, and never ...
— Scottish Football Reminiscences and Sketches • David Drummond Bone
... out of the stuff of his dream, a hope flimsy enough, to be sure, a hope that was cracked and dissipated a dozen times a day, a hope mothered by mockery, but, nevertheless, a hope that would be brawn and sinew ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... always bronze. The iron arrow-tip of Pandarus was of an early type, the shaft did not run into the socket of the arrow-head; the tang of the arrow-head, on the other hand, entered the shaft, and was whipped on with sinew. [Iliad, IV. 151.] Pretty primitive this method, still the iron is an advance on the uniform bronze of Homer. The line about Pandarus and the iron arrow-head may really be early enough, for the arrow-head is of a primitive kind—socketless—and ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... throughout, and who formed himself in the manner Hawthorne describes. It is true that in a search after rare and exceptional virtues we are apt to lose sight of the more homely kind which form the bone and sinew of human-life. But is not this effort a virtue in itself? Is not all progress in this world accomplished as the frog escaped from the well, by jumping up three feet and falling back two? Is not the very crown of character that ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... those who take out the sinew," the Chinese refer to the Jews and their peculiar method of preparing meat in order to make it kosher. Wild stories have been told of their arrival in China seven centuries before the Christian era, after one of the numerous upheavals mentioned in ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... together; we used to walk with our arms round each other's necks like school-girls, and he was young and full of vitality—physically stronger, too, than I am. He must have battled for life with every nerve and sinew stretched to almost breaking." He stopped and shuddered. "By Heaven! death should be made easier for us! It is a ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... the present aspects of what is called by distinction society, he will see the need of these ethics. The sinew and heart of man seem to be drawn out, and we are become timorous, desponding whimperers. We are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death and afraid of each other. Our age yields no great and perfect persons. We want men and women who shall renovate life ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... not satisfied with what his father had done to the king, and he took Nuada's own hand that had been struck off, and brought it to him and set it in its place, and he said: "Joint to joint, and sinew to sinew." Three days and three nights he was with the king; the first day he put the hand against his side, and the second day against his breast, till it was covered with skin, and the third day he put bulrushes that were blackened in the fire ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... the wiry mass of bone and sinew which went to make the police dog every inch a warrior, and doubted it. The child had finished her task, and started the stew to heating again over the fire, and now she turned, swept back the mass of curls from her heated face with a graceful motion ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... stood upon the deck of the boat, and the boy shot at it, and hit it in the leg between the sinew and the bone. Then she smiled. "Verily," said she, "with a steady hand did the lion aim at it." "Heaven reward thee not, but now has he got a name. And a good enough name it is. Llew Llaw Gyffes be ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... who makes me undergo His cold-bath treatment, spite of frost and snow. Good sooth, the town is filled with spleen, to see Its myrtle-groves attract no company; To find its sulphur-wells, which forced out pain From joint and sinew, treated with disdain By tender chests and heads, now grown so bold, They brave cold water in the depth of cold, And, finding down at Clusium what they want, Or Gabii, say, make that their winter haunt. Yes, I must change my quarters; ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... which the national dances of those names are the expression or vehicle. And let it be noted, in Poland so-called civilisation did not do its work so fast and effectually as in Western Europe; there dancing had not yet become in Chopin's days a merely formal and conventional affair, a matter of sinew ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... that neither of these ceremonies is universal, but nearly so. Why there should exist exemptions I cannot resolve. The manner of executing them is as follows. The finger is taken off by means of a ligature (generally a sinew of a kangaroo) tied so tight as to stop the circulation of the blood, which induces mortification and the part drops off. I remember to have seen Colbee's child, when about a month old, on whom this operation had been just performed by her ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... in the Vale of Years beneath A griesly troop are seen, The painful family of Death, More hideous than their Queen: This racks the joints, this fires the veins, That every labouring sinew strains, Those in the deeper vitals rage: Lo, Poverty, to fill the band, That numbs the soul with icy hand, And ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... B.C. 63.] Both Cicero and the Senate were evidently in the greatest alarm that Catiline would succeed constitutionally in being chosen consul, and they strained every sinew to prevent so terrible a catastrophe. When the Comitia came on, Cicero admits that he occupied the voting place in the Campus Martius with a guard of men who could be depended on. He was violating the law, which forbade the presence ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... western America. Danger made no difference. All that was needed was a boat; and the boat was usually rough-hewn out of the green timbers of Kamchatka. If iron bolts were lacking so far from Europe as the width of two continents, the boat builders used deer sinew, or thongs of walrus hide. Tallow took the place of tar, deerskin the place of hemp, and courage the place of caution. A Siberian merchant then chanced an outfit of supplies for half what the returns might be. The commander—officer or exile—then ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... probation," answered Santoris, slowly, with the far-away, musing look still in his eyes— "In another it was, as you put it, 'merely' a course of study. Merely! It was a course of study in which every nerve, every muscle, every sinew was tested to its utmost strength—and in which a combat between the spiritual and material was fiercely fought till the one could master the other so absolutely as to hold it in perfect subjection. Well! I came out of the ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... had erewhile besought me, and their looks Mark'd eagerness to listen. I, who twice Their will had noted, spake: "O spirits secure, Whene'er the time may be, of peaceful end! My limbs, nor crude, nor in mature old age, Have I left yonder: here they bear me, fed With blood, and sinew-strung. That I no more May live in blindness, hence I tend aloft. There is a dame on high, who wind for us This grace, by which my mortal through your realm I bear. But may your utmost wish soon meet Such full fruition, that the orb of heaven, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... this was the skin, was as strange as the wearer, being neither mule, horse, nor camel, but partaking of all three, having the ears of a mule, the tail of a horse, and the body shaped like a camel. The arms of this savage consisted of a stout bow, having for a string the gut or sinew of that strange beast; and the arrows were tipped with sharp stones, instead ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr |
