"Spur" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... said the Captain, "to take in despair what was only meant to spur him on. I suppose now I shall find he has dawdled so much that he ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge
... support and encouragement of others, there is no saying how far she might have gone, for she had an active, creative imagination, and a discriminating, critical judgment of style. As it was, her writings were not extensive, and were almost all produced under the spur of some particular need. They ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... sowl!' he cried, 'hae ye the spurs on as weel? Stick ane o' them intil him again, and I'll cast ye frae the seddle. I' the thick o' a fecht, the lang blades playin aboot yer father's heid like lichts i' the north, he never stack spur intil 's ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... hand, red men as well as white men are sometimes given to romancing, and I have known of cases where "legends" would be manufactured on the spur of the moment by some young Indian to satisfy an importunate and credulous questioner, to the keen but suppressed ...
— Indians of the Yosemite Valley and Vicinity - Their History, Customs and Traditions • Galen Clark
... though, there was a rush and the clash of steel, and, with his heart throbbing, the lad signed to his nearest men to close up, and they advanced together, then set spur to their horses, and made a dash for a clump of bushes, where three horsemen were striving to get out through the tangle; and as they reached them Fred uttered an ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... unnecessary, if they are not suffered to wander far from home, which keeps them lean and poor.—When fat turkeys are to be purchased in the market, in order to judge of their quality it is necessary to observe, that the cock bird when young has a smooth black leg, and a short spur. If fresh and sweet, the eyes are full and bright, and the feet moist and supple. If stale, the eyes will be sunk, and the feet stiff and dry. The hen turkey is known by the same rules; but if old, the legs ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... their situation from external dangers. It may be observed in certain favored classes even in communities which, by long and strenuous effort, have conquered nature and raised themselves high in the scale of civilization. The idle sons of the rich, relieved from the spur of necessity, may undergo the degeneration appropriate to parasitic life. In the midst of a strenuous activity adapted to call out the best intellectual and moral powers of man, they may remain unaffected by it, ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... spur on heel, The same penalty he must feel. If an oath you chance to hear, You forfeit each two quarts of beer. These lines are old, they are not new. Therefore the ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... the deeper darkness of a small ravine below the hill spur, the hunted turned upon the hunter. Morse caught the gleam of a knife thrust as he plunged. It was too late to check his dive. A flame of fire scorched through his forearm. The two went down together, rolling over and over ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... its men and mounts. Perhaps they could hem in the desperado from the front and shoot him down there, as he skirted along the river. At the worst they would furnish the fresh horses and the fifteen hardy riders would spur at full speed south along the river. If again, by some miracle, the black stallion lasted out this run, Wilsonville lay due ahead, and that place would again give new horses ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... are of a very rude and unmeaning character, rarely consisting of more than one or two ideas, which are continually repeated over and over again. They are chiefly made on the spur of the moment, and refer to something that has struck the attention at the time. The measure of the song varies according to circumstances. It is gay and lively, for the dance; slow and solemn for the enchanter; ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... applied the spurs to my horse, who dashed madly down the declivity. Giving one look behind, I saw that Roche, or at least his horse, had entirely given up the chase. The prairie was comparatively smooth, and although I dared not to spur my horse to his full speed, I was soon alongside of the huge animal. It was a bull of the largest size, and his bright, glaring eyeballs, peering out from his shaggy frontlet of hair, shewed plainly that he was maddened by his wounds and the ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... And rings and jewels of the rarest kind. Then he departed with them o'er the sea Into the lovely land of Italy, Whose loveliness was more resplendent made By the mere passing of that cavalcade, With plumes, and cloaks, and housings, and the stir Of jewelled bridle and of golden spur. ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... little spur of warehouses which breaks out into mountainous stores and open valleys of streets around the corner, but which itself overlooks no fairer view than a narrow, muddy alley of a thoroughfare scarcely broad enough to admit two drays abreast, and, by actual measurement,—taken with persistent ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... rider that rests with the spur on his heel, As the guardsman that sleeps in his corselet of steel, As the archer that stands with his shaft on the string, He stoops from his toil to the garland ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... tell my darling how I had loved her all the time. So I forced myself from my lethargy of despair and grief; and this thought, the sweetest thought of all my life, may or may not have been my unrealized stimulus ere now; it was in very deed my most conscious and perpetual spur ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... Aramis; "at the cry 'Jesus Seigneur' we go out, upset all that stands in our way, run to our horses, jump into our saddles, spur them; is ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... haunches that almost sent me over the head. At another he would spring from side to side, writhing and twisting like a fish, till the saddle seemed actually slipping away from his lithe body. Not only did I resist all these attacks, but vigorously continued to punish with whip and spur the entire time—a proceeding, I could easily see, he was not prepared for. At last, actually maddened with his inability to throw me, and enraged by my continuing to spur him, he broke away, and dashing headlong forward, rushed into the very thickest of the grove. Fortunately for me, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... flings them empty before you on the ground, like a triumphant conjuror. It is my common practice when a piece of conduct puzzles me, to attack it in the presence of Jack with such grossness, such partiality and such wearing iteration, as at length shall spur him up in its defence. In a moment he transmigrates, dons the required character, and with moonstruck philosophy justifies the act in question. I can fancy nothing to compare with the VIM of these impersonations, the strange scale of language, flying from Shakespeare to Kant, and from Kant ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... same description. A third occurred at the Hopital de la Charite, in a woman, who, in consequence of a whitlow, had lost the whole of the 3d phalanx of one of the forefingers. The soft and fleshy cushion which here covered the 2d phalanx was terminated by a small, blackish nail, like a grain of spur rye. It is probable that in these cases the soft parts of the 3d phalanx, and especially the ungual matrix, had not been wholly destroyed. In his lectures Chevalier speaks of ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... Gautama next retired to the jungle of Uruvela, on the most northerly spur of the Viadhya range of mountains, near the present temple of Buddha Gaya. Here for six years he gave himself up to the severest penance until he was wasted away to a shadow by fasting and self-mortification. Such self-control spread his fame "like the sound of a great bell ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... good-naturedly as he still led his two comrades on toward the retired lane, where his father's big mill adjoined the storage place for lumber; convenient to the river, and at the same time near the railroad, so that a spur track ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... clear that he came out with these words quite spontaneously, on the spur of the moment. But his speech was productive of much—for it appeared that all. Gania's rage now overflowed upon the prince. He seized him by the shoulder and gazed with an intensity of loathing and revenge at him, but said nothing—as though his feelings ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... beyond the Jordan, in the tribe of Reuben. Although its precise site has not been discovered, we may infer that it was perched on one of the many rocky heights among the mountains of Abarim,—perhaps a spur of the great mount Nebo, from whose summit Moses was permitted, before death, to get a view of the Land of Promise. The northern portion of the waters of the Dead Sea would be seen from it, and the pastoral ...
— The Cities of Refuge: or, The Name of Jesus - A Sunday book for the young • John Ross Macduff
... record my testimony that he also possessed a power for off-hand speech. The tradition is that his utterances were all elaborately studied, down to the gestures and the play of the features. I have heard him talk on the spur of the moment, starting out from an incident close at hand and touching effectively upon circumstances that arose as ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... with Lieutenant Swinton, had volunteered to serve on foot, were to advance upon another face of the ridge, from the little village of Chulbarah, where they had been posted; this party, ascending a spur of the hill on its left, was to co-operate opportunely with the advance of the other detachments. Major Fisher, at the head of a body of regular native infantry and irregular cavalry, with guns mounted upon ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... self-pleasing and gay-living lay open to him if he chose to take it. She knew that, if he chose it, though he might still win a certain amount of fame, it would never be the well-grounded, staunch, reliable success that she could spur ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... went up from the lips about him. Fanatic and bloodthirsty as they were, the imminence of the ordeal that was to requite their wrongs startled them. Their preference was to curse their bosses and spur others to dangerous revenge. In moments of carefully developed hysteria they were reckless enough—when the hour came they would probably go forward blindly, with the foolhardiness of the ignorant—but Koppy's methods to-night ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... carried Pixie's thoughts irresistibly towards another speaker, whose memory war associated with her own first meeting with Stanor. On the spur of the moment ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... British gained the shelter of their works, when the Americans, led on by Arnold, stormed them with reckless bravery. Gates had held Arnold back from the field from motives of envy and dislike; but Arnold, to whom the sound of battle was like the spur to the mettled courser, at last broke through all restraint. Leaping into the saddle, he spurred into the thickest of the fight ...
— Burgoyne's Invasion of 1777 - With an outline sketch of the American Invasion of Canada, 1775-76. • Samuel Adams Drake
... bridle, and rather less than an hour later faintly discerned a rattle of wheels that rose from a long way off across the prairie. Then he used the spur, and by and by it became evident that the drumming of their horses' feet had carried far, for, though the rattle grew a little louder, there was no doubt that whoever drove the wagon had no desire to be overtaken. Still, two horses cannot haul a vehicle over a rutted trail ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... export markets. Domestic consumption and investment have fueled strong GDP growth in recent years, but have led to large current account imbalances. Romania's macroeconomic gains have only recently started to spur creation of a middle class and address Romania's widespread poverty. Corruption and red tape continue to handicap its business environment. Inflation rose in 2007 for the first time in eight years, driven ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... to make this request if he had been left to himself. That was the difference in character of the two brothers. One was impulsive, ready to do anything on the spur of the moment: the other cautious, shrinking sometimes. He was just as anxious as Rex to extend the hospitality of the Pellery to their new acquaintance, but felt that he had not known the other long enough to ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.
... leave me alone to waste in bitter grief;— unless it so be that my father, the good Odysseus, out of evil heart wrought harm to the goodly-greaved Achaeans, in quittance whereof ye now work me harm out of evil hearts, and spur on these men. Better for me that ye yourselves should eat up my treasures and my flocks. Were YE so to devour them, ere long would some recompense be made, for we would urge our plea throughout the town, begging ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... will be the next to go, all deprive the ordinary mind of vital initiative. Having lost the active mental powers that a human being possesses, they are reduced to the level of machines. The officers and non-commissioned officers, on whom the responsibility of leadership rests, have that spur to maintain their equilibrium, but the private soldiers, who have themselves only to think of, are the most open to this devastating influence. If these machines are to be controlled, as they must be, by an ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh
... had only one idea: not to lose him. Not to lose him, she would have said anything, she would have done anything. She went to her table and wrote, under the spur of a tender, and plaintive violence, a letter wherein she repeated like a groan: "I love you, I love you! I never have loved any one but you. You are alone, alone—do you hear?—in my mind, in me. Do not think of what that wretched man said. ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... and editing mythical matter. This they more or less embroider, and arrive in due course insensibly at actual history. Both, again, thread their stories upon a genealogy of kings in part legendary. Both write at the spur of patriotism, both to let Denmark linger in the race for light and learning, and desirous to save her glories, as other nations have saved theirs, by a record. But while Sweyn only made a skeleton chronicle, Saxo leaves a memorial in which historian ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... American vessel was at the mouth of the Gironde, he sent off General Lallemand on the spur, to ascertain the existence of the vessel, and the sentiments of the captain. The general returned with all speed, to inform him, that the captain would be happy and proud, to extricate him from the persecutions of his enemies: but Napoleon, yielding, as it is said, to the advice of some ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... as she hunted for some article of dress or polished an ornament, buckle, or pin. The struggle of Aileen to be perfect was, as usual, severe. Her meditations, as to the most becoming gown to wear were trying. Her portrait was on the east wall in the art-gallery, a spur to emulation; she felt as though all society were about to judge her. Theresa Donovan, the local dressmaker, had given some advice; but Aileen decided on a heavy brown velvet constructed by Worth, of Paris—a thing of varying aspects, showing her neck and arms to perfection, and composing ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... task was before them. The cannon were to be dragged over the marsh to Green Hill, a spur of the line of rough heights that half encircled the town and harbor. Here the first battery was to be planted; and from this point other guns were to be dragged onward to more advanced stations,—a distance in all of more than two miles, thought by the ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... the deeps of her being. She felt her muscles relax, even as her spirit seemed to grow limp within her. She was in an agony of fear lest she collapse there under the eyes of the man who had so spurned her adoration. Under the spur of that fear, she moved forward a little way toward the window, the while Hamilton chatted on amiably with Mrs. Delancy, continuing to justify the position he had taken. As he paused finally, Cicily had regained sufficient self-control ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... all men believe he resides there incog, To give them by turns an invisible jog. Our bishops, puft up with wealth and with pride, To hell on the backs of the clergy would ride. They mounted and labour'd with whip and with spur In vain—for the devil a parson would stir. So the commons unhors'd them; and this was their doom, On their crosiers to ride like a witch on a broom. Though they gallop'd so fast, on the road you may find 'em, And have left us but three out of twenty behind ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... oak vessels, the sight of which made the people tremble who lived on the shores of the North Sea and British Channel. Sometimes decked, these vessels, long or short, large or small, were usually terminated in front by a spur of enormous size, above which the prow sometimes rose to a great height, taking the form of an S. The hallristningar, for so they call the graphic representations so often met with on the rocks of Sweden and Norway, enable us to picture to ourselves ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... poor fettered tongue. Then, when she told me what my godfather required of me, I was not in any haste to obey, for, indeed, maidenly bashfulness and pity hindered me. Yet, whereas the brave old man nodded to spur me on, with his heavy head, still covered with a cold wet cloth, I called up all my daring, and before the lad was aware I dealt him a slap ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... run; and with the phial in his pocket and the loaf in his hands, he could run. Happily the farmer did not catch sight of him. His wife took care he should not. I believe, indeed, she got up a brand-new quarrel with him on the spur of the moment, that he might not have ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... stanzas, producing the effect of an improvisatore who stops rather from want of breath than from any other lack of inspiration. In this respect the ode is a rare poetical exploit; for all poems composed under the spur of the moment, upon some memorable incident that has just startled the world, must be more or less improvised, and must hit the right pitch of extraordinary popular emotion. It is the difficulty of turning out good work under such arduous conditions ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... this subject, the wider does the distance between mere sensation and the most simple knowledge become in our eyes; and it is impossible to conceive how man, by his own powers alone, without the assistance of communication, and the spur of necessity, could have got over so great an interval. How many ages perhaps revolved, before men beheld any other fire but that of the heavens? How many different accidents must have concurred to make them acquainted with the most common uses of this element? ...
— A Discourse Upon The Origin And The Foundation Of - The Inequality Among Mankind • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... remain behind. Then the blood crimsoned his cheeks, for the first time since the sound of the firing struck his ears; he felt that every eye in the Company was upon him, and that his ignoble desire had been read by all in his look of expectancy. Shame came to spur up his faltering will. He set his teeth firmly, pulled the tompion out of his gun, and flung it away disdainfully as if he would never need it again, blew into the muzzle to see if the tube was clear, and wiped off the lock with a fine white handkerchief—one ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... more difficult for an Englishman to come to the point, particularly the sort of point which American journalists are supposed, with some exaggeration, to aim at. It might be more difficult for an Englishman to ask a total stranger on the spur of the moment for the exact inscription on his mother's grave; but I really think that if an Englishman once got so far as that he would go very much farther, and certainly go on very much longer. The Englishman would approach the churchyard by a rather more wandering woodland path; but if once ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... for his manners' sake—he was never tired of watching how subtly the vagabond adapted his conduct to the conduct of his hosts, while keeping up his critical detachment—but because that critical detachment was a constant spur to his own vision, compelling him to analyse the life into which, he had been born and was about to marry. This process was disturbing; and to find out when it had commenced, he had to go back to his meeting with Ferrand on the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... occasion to use the spur," said the man with the lantern, "for he is wild, from having been three weeks in his stable." As the two speakers thus communed, they entered the second courtyard of the villa. Maulear had followed them thither, hidden ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... a sound night's rest, he began to take a somewhat more serious view of the situation. He began to realise that what these two powerful nobles had done was no hasty, ill-considered act, undertaken upon the spur of the moment, without thought of the probable consequences, but was doubtless the result of long and anxious premeditation; and, if so, they would surely have taken every possible precaution to guard ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... stern, accusing finger. Alvarez was as still as if struck by lightning. His great plan known to this man, this man who feared not even torture, or death, or the world to come! He shrank visibly both mentally and physically, but then his courage came back under the spur of ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... vertically up, with the projecting extremity of the young stem thrown a little on one side, so as to be out of the way; but the tendril bears on the inner side, near its base, a short rigid branch, which projects out at right angles like a spur, with the terminal half bowed a little downwards. Hence, as the main vertical branch revolves, the spur, from its position and rigidity, cannot pass over the extremity of the shoot, in the same curious manner as do the three branches of the tendril of the Echinocystis, namely, by ...
— The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants • Charles Darwin
... said his new friend. "I said yer wasn't a cart-hoss: one touch of the spur and up goes tail and ears, and then look out. Are yer ashamed to do any kind of honest work? I mean kinder pious work, that hasn't any smack of the devil you're so ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... Miss Porter's novels, they linger on your mind like perfumes; and they float down your memory—with the figure, the step, the last words of those young girls who raised them—like the types of some dimly shadowed but deeper passion, which is some time to spur your maturer purposes and to ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... himself upon the absence of anything whose present enjoyment carries the idea of delight with it, is that we call DESIRE; which is greater or less as that uneasiness is more or less vehement. Where, by the by, it may perhaps be of some use to remark, that the chief, if not only spur to human industry and action is UNEASINESS. For whatsoever good is proposed, if its absence carries no displeasure or pain with it, if a man be easy and content without it, there is no desire of it, nor endeavour after it; there is no more but a bare velleity, the term used to signify the ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... to hide 'im, Tess?" remarked Skinner, making the statement a question by the rising inflection in his voice. "It air jest like Andy says, if Burnett gits on 'is scent, he'll find 'im all right, all right, an' five thousand dollars'd spur any man on to hunt ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... appropriate in name, color, and form. Its name is suggestive of Columbia, and our country is often called by that name. Its botanical name, aquilegia, is derived from aquila (eagle), on account of the spur of the petals resembling the talons, and the blade, the beak, of the eagle, our national bird. Its colors are red, white, and blue, our national colors. The corolla is divided into five points resembling the star used to represent our States on our flag; ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... It means that competition will be stifled; that the cattle owner will be compelled to take what prices the buyers offer. It means that the incentive to raise cattle will be destroyed. It means the end of the open market—which has always been a spur to industry. It ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... It means labor and self-sacrifice, and frequently obloquy and misunderstanding. The reward of the reformer is usually a stone and a sneer, if nothing worse. But when a man's heart is in the work, stones and sneers seem only to spur him on. They are like wind to a flame, fanning it white-hot. And it is a wonderful commentary on the essential goodness of human nature that never yet, in the history of mankind, has a real and needed reform failed, in the ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... he took a pick and shovel and an old sack, and started out over the ridge, followed, of course, by his four-legged mate. After tramping some three miles he reached a spur, running out from the main ridge. At the extreme end of this, under some gum-trees, was a little mound of earth, barely defined in the grass, and indented in the centre as all ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... Act of 1903 was not, as some suggest, a short cut to the millennium, evolved on the spur of the moment, and translated into fantastic finance. It had two bases, the one practical, the other moral. In the first place, it was founded on the ripe experience garnered during eighteen years from the operation of preceding purchase Acts. In the second ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... muscles,—the latter attached to the basal disc. In all the pedunculata, I have reason to believe that these muscles are in constant slight involuntary action. This being the case, I conceive that the small, blunt, spur-like portion of the peduncle, descending beneath the basal rim of the lowest disc, would inevitably partake slightly of the movements of the whole distended animal. As soon as the Lithotrya has reached that depth, which its instinct points out as most suitable to its habits, ...
— A Monograph on the Sub-class Cirripedia (Volume 1 of 2) - The Lepadidae; or, Pedunculated Cirripedes • Charles Darwin
... had the heart to turn any one from his door in distress, and so it frequently happened that his working-day was prolonged by the admission of people who unexpectedly intruded themselves upon him. Great ladies, more especially, often came to him on the spur of the moment, prompted to seek his solace by sudden attacks of the nerves. A lover had used them ill, perhaps, or a husband had turned upon them and had rent a long dressmaker's bill into fragments, without paying it first. Or the ennui of an exquisite life of unbridled pleasure had suddenly ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... was evidently of fine quality. There was little about his attire which would have attracted attention in a Northern city except, possibly, the wide-brimmed hat and the boots with high heels. He was about thirty years of age. In the shack shone a polished spur—there seemed to be nothing else of cowboy accoutrement. She could not make him out. He seemed taciturn at times ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... Sincerity they praised his noble and majestick Mien, his Affability, his Valour, Conduct, and Success in War. How must a Man have his Heart full-blown with Joy in such an Article of Glory as this? What a Spur and Encouragement still to proceed in those Steps which had already brought him to so pure a Taste of the greatest of ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... from New York, in which her husband had narrated his adventures so far. He had written from Southampton, but not after the revelation which had been made to him there as to the death of Ferdinand. He might have so done, but the information given to him had, at the spur of the moment, seemed to be so doubtful that he had refrained. Then he had been able to think of it all during the voyage, and from New York he had written at great length, detailing everything. ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... a moment," cried Nau-Kaou. "This person, full of vigour and resource, needed the spur of a most poignant hate to urge his trailing footsteps. Have you, O decrepit one, any such ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... The remaining three wheeled about, and taking to their heels, went off as if old Nick had been bringing up the rear. Then you might have heard the roar, and seen the dust, which dragoons can raise, when, with whip and spur and wildly rolling eyes, they bend forward from the pursuit of death. My charger being but a heavy brute, was soon distanced. But they could not distance the swift-footed Selim. Rapid as the deadly blast of the desert, he pursued ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... described in the treaty as the intended boundary between the two countries, the line as recently traced actually passes that latitude at an elevation of less than 10 feet above the level of the monument, and the greatest elevation encountered by this line in passing over any spur connected with Mars Hill is 63 feet above the level of the monument. In advance of this spur the line becomes again depressed below the level of the monument at several points before it ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... by the scaffold he prayed almost incessantly. There was sufficient spur for prayer in the menacing fortress before him with its hundred tiny windows, and the new scaffold, some five or six feet high, that stood in the foreground. He wondered how the bishop was passing his time and thought he knew. The long grey wall beyond the moat, and the towers that rose above it, ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... dunce? Can he keep things in apple-pie order, and do half-a-dozen at once? Can he press all the springs of knowledge, with quick and reliable touch? And be sure that he knows how much to know, and knows how not to know too much? Does he know how to spur up his virtue, and put a check-rein on his pride? Can he carry a gentleman's manners within a rhinoceros hide? Can he know all, and do all, and be all, with cheerfulness, courage, and vim? If so, we, perhaps, can be makin' an editor outen ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... taste of water-cress, with a degree of sweetness, which that plant does not possess, more particularly resident in the spur of the calyx or nectary; hence are sometimes used in sallads, and hence the plant acquires ...
— The Botanical Magazine, Vol. I - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... battle was on the whole admirably executed. The galleys of the various confederates were so studiously intermingled that each vessel was incited to do its utmost by the spur of rivalry. Vaniero and Colonna deserve their full share of the credit of the day; and the gallant Santa Cruz, although at first stationed in the rear, soon found and employed his opportunity of earning his share of laurels. On Doria alone Roman and Venetian critics, and indeed ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... narratives are historical, or at least no stories have been told for true that are deemed fictitious. Every means which the writer's literary experience could suggest has been used to make the stories engaging, in the hope that the interest of the narrative may prove a sufficient spur to exertion on the part of the pupil, and that this little book will make green and pleasant a pathway that has so often been dry and laborious. It will surely serve to excite an early interest in our national history by giving some of the great personages of that history a place among the ...
— Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans • Edward Eggleston
... progress is deeply indebted to a study of imperfections, and the counsels of despair, if not full of seasoned wisdom, are at least fertile in suggestion and a desperate spur to action. Sympathetic knowledge is the only way of approach to any human problem, and the line of least resistance into the jungle of human wretchedness must always be through that region which is most ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams
... applies to the militia of the lakes as well as to the militia of the seacoast—and certainly no greater tribute is necessary to pay to the lake militia. Many of these naval battalions are composed of men who would not enlist in time of peace, but who, under the spur of war, would serve in any position for the first few ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... Mountain driven the enemy in—that battle which came to us so welcome, the first victory after Pope's disasters, and the retreat from the Peninsula. The valley below us was Pleasant Valley. The opposite side to our tent was a short spur of the Blue Ridge; the southern extremity of which is the Maryland Heights, so well known in the history of the surrender of Harper's Ferry. The valley between is fertile and highly cultivated, full of mountain springs and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Comanches this would be the correct route, and was the same taken by these freebooters returning with the spoils of the caravan. But from the mouth of the Pecan Creek is one more direct, leading across a spur of the plateau itself, instead of ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... governors of the loyal States was to furnish their quotas under the first call for militia. This was easy enough as to men. It required only a few days to fill the regiments and forward them to the State capitals and principal cities; but to arm and equip them for the field on the spur of the moment was a difficult task which involved much confusion and delay, even though existing armories and foundries pushed their work to the utmost and new ones were established. Under the militia call, the governors appointed all the officers required ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... time practically alined with the North, continued its search for the real owner of the Laird rams. The "Southern party," however, had not quite given up hope, and the agitation to prevent the sailing of the rams was a keen spur to its flagging zeal. Furthermore the prestige of Lee never was higher than it was in June, 1863, when the news of Chancellorsville was still fresh and resounding in every mind. It had given new life to the Confederate hope: Lee would take Washington before the end of ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... Roman wheeled his horse between them. Antipater backed away, threatening with his lance. He shouted to his trumpeter, his troop being hard by, and quickly a call sounded. Then spur went to flank, and the followers of the Jew passed in a quick rush and went thundering off, Antipater at the head of their column. He rode to Athens in ill humor and was at Piraeus three hours in advance of Arria and Appius. The sun had set and the sea lay calm in a purple ...
— Vergilius - A Tale of the Coming of Christ • Irving Bacheller
... following the road, shaded by stately elms, which leads from Mongeron to the forest of Lenart, they reached Lieursaint; where they again halted. One of their horses had cast a shoe, and one of the men had broken the little chain which then fastened the spur to the boot. The horseman to whom this accident had happened, stopped at the entrance of the village at Madame Chatelain's, a limonadiere, whom he begged to serve him some cafe, and at the same time to give him a needleful of strong thread ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... population living in rural areas. Agriculture accounts for 31% of GDP and 90% of export revenues. The economy depends on substantial inflows of economic assistance from the IMF, the World Bank, and individual donor nations. The new government faces strong challenges, e.g., to spur exports, to improve educational and health facilities, and to deal with environmental problems of deforestation and erosion. Drought hurt the 1994 economy, with GDP down by 12.4%. Good weather and a strong tobacco crop resulted in an upturn in 1995. In December 1995, donors pledged $332 million in ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... spur brought my horse alongside his, and gave me a view of the whole surface of the glade. I looked in the direction indicated by the attitude of the hunter: for—apparently paralysed by some terrible surprise—he had neither ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... ferocious mob. Even such of the meaner classes as had up to this time been innocent of the murderous plot, were soon baying at their heels; some of these were hounded on by the conspirators; others saw only that disturbance was on foot, and the welcome knowledge of this fact alone served to spur them to a senseless frenzy of assault. The Roman soldiers were merely victims; there was never a chance of a struggle which would make the sacrifice costly, or even difficult.[1064] The citadel, in which their shields ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... play you, by doing them to wit of the tricks, which you, in like manner, when you are so minded, may play them? Wherefore 'tis my intention to tell you in what manner a young girl, albeit she was but of low rank, did, on the spur of the moment, beguile her husband ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... both in oils and in fresco, which are quite marvellous for the richness and beauty of the paintings. But seeing that Perino was not then giving much attention to the work, and wishing to make him do by the spur of emulation what he was not doing by himself, he sent for Pordenone, who began with an open terrace, wherein, following his usual manner, he executed a frieze of children, who are hurrying about in very beautiful ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 05 ( of 10) Andrea da Fiesole to Lorenzo Lotto • Giorgio Vasari
... down to the foot of the rocks. She was sitting in her favourite spot, a spur of rock overhanging a green nook in the broken ugliness of the cliffs, sheltered from the sea by an encircling arm of rock, and reached by a steep path down the cliff. Around her towered an amphitheatre of vast cliffs in which the sea sang loud music to the spirit of solitude. ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... chief,—as if my going would not have done that work, as short, as clean!—and waited last because of a sick woman's whim! If I had not let you go to Fontenoy, we might to-day have heard the rushing of a mightier river than the Rivanna yonder! Delay, delay, where haste itself should have felt the spur!" ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... from the Caspian oil field declined through 1997 but registered an increase in 1998. Negotiation of more than a dozen production-sharing arrangements (PSAs) with foreign firms, which have thus far committed $30 billion to oil field development, should generate the funds needed to spur future industrial development. Oil production under the first of these PSAs, with the Azerbaijan International Operating Company, began in November 1997. Azerbaijan shares all the formidable problems of the former Soviet republics in making ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... stole a horse and ran him away into another country, and the horse and the man became very intimate. Said the horse to the man, "I like your things to wear better than I do mine, for there's no whip or spur among them." "No," replied the man; "the fear I have when I think of the policeman and of the judge (sending or "transporting" man, or king's man) is worse than any whip or spur, and they would make me run my life ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... be the sole rule. "We are here," she said, "for the purpose of hearing you on both sides, and of considering the matter on its own merits. Therefore, reply to the speech of Sieur de Beze which you have just heard." "The speech was too long for us to undertake to answer it on the spur of the moment," responded Tournon, in a more tractable tone; but he promised that, if a copy of it were given to them in writing, a suitable refutation would soon be forthcoming on the part of the prelates.[1128] Thus the conference broke up ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... With this spur, Elizabeth was soon dressed, and then walked into Mrs. Haye's room. Rose apparently had had leisure for meditation and had made up her mind upon several things; but her brow changed as her cousin ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... to speak of," he muttered. "He wrote asking permission to sketch the house, and my father refused—just why I don't know; some business matter had vexed him that day, I fancy, and he dashed off the refusal on the spur of the moment. But a man does not commit a terrible crime for so slight a cause.... Oh, if only my head would cease throbbing!... Do as you like. Bates, see that every ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... mingled with the curses of Cadorna. She was cajoling now—telling the brute she'd go with him gladly if only he'd free her father; promising anything, everything, in the desperate attempt to keep him from discovering that his last henchman was out of the picture. But her words served only to spur Eddie to swifter action. He twirled the knobs of the dual control. The second robot was fading from view. He'd give Cadorna a dose of the thing he really feared. He eased off a little on the other control, releasing ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... of hair here shown is hereditary and has been traced back definitely through six generations; family tradition derives it from a son of Harry "Hot-Spur" Percy, born in 1403, and fallaciously assigns its origin to "prenatal influence" or "maternal impression." This young woman inherited the blaze from her father, who had it from his mother, who had it from her father, who migrated from England to America nearly a century ago. The trait appears ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... was the unidentified rider who now set spur to his horse and came on at a gallop ahead of the train. He rode carelessly well, a born horseman. In no more than a few minutes he could be seen as rather a gallant figure of the border cavalier—a border just then more martial than it had been before '46 and the days of ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... of the Nicaragua Transit Company, and is the Pacific terminus of the Isthmus portage-road. It consisted of half a dozen board hotels, and a litter of native grass-thatched huts, and lay at the foot of a high, woody spur, which curves out into the sea and forms the southern rim of a beautiful little harbor, completed by another less elevated point jutting out on the north. The country inland is entirely shut out by a dense forest, into which the Transit road plunges and is immediately lost. Whilst ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various |
