"Fend off" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... toast, Senor Melinza, whichever way I construe it. The face I hold fairest here shall leave San Augustin the day that I depart; and, since it is the face of my promised wife, it needs no other sword than mine to fend off trespassers!" ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock
... might have hit the doll of dolls, and won francs and fame. Or, being a French-Flemish youth, I might have been drawn in a hand-cart by my compeers, to tilt for municipal rewards at the water-quintain; which, unless I sent my lance clean through the ring, emptied a full bucket over me; to fend off which, the competitors wore grotesque old scarecrow hats. Or, being French-Flemish man or woman, boy or girl, I might have circled all night on my hobby- horse in a stately cavalcade of hobby-horses four abreast, interspersed with triumphal cars, going ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... you shall accept from me a decent pension—enough, at any rate, to fend off want. We will not quarrel over the amount, up or down. Or, if you prefer, I will get the lawyers to look into this claim of your daughter-in-law's, and maybe make you ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... . what do you think I am going to do with the remainder of my days—crochet? embroider slippers for the curate? Trevor, you wouldn't like me to come to that in my old age, would you?" She spoke with gentle banter, as if to fend off something she feared. Had Torps known it, she was fencing for the ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... brought our boat into collision with the "White Rabbit" that we were getting out oars, to try to fend off, while those on board the yacht hastily took in their last sail. A few drops of rain fell at the same moment, but we hardly noticed them. In the midst of the confusion another voice arose on the other side of ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson
... razor-sharp, opened wide to take in the tarpon, which leaped wildly ten feet in the air, and turning, plunged head-down straight for Ned as he sat in the canoe, paddle in hand. Dick started up from his seat, while Ned tried to fend off with the paddle, but the hard, pointed head of the big tarpon tore through the bottom of the fragile canoe as if it had been paper. A minute later the shattered canoe was floating down the river, while everything sinkable ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... of no use," said Gerald, at last. "We shall have to go through; but that will do no harm if we can only manage to keep her from striking the piers. Take in your oars, boys, and let me pull her round so as to head down stream, and you stand ready to fend off when we are ...
— Rollo in Geneva • Jacob Abbott
... of hundreds of acres in most states in the Union, which are coining more millions with their propagation output, steps out and stands shoulder to shoulder with Edison in working to get the United States prepared to feed the world as well as to fend off any of that world that menaces it, the rest of us have got to get up and hustle, some with a musket and some with ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... the cruiser came smack up against the rocks with quite a little bump; and Giraffe, having failed to fend off in time, was almost toppled over, but he managed to clutch hold of Bumpus to steady himself, and that was like seizing upon the Rock of Gibraltar, because it would take a derrick to move the stout ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter
... a hundred feet distant. Old Trull and Bonney caught up the pike-poles to fend off with. "The Curlew" drove on. The vast shadowy shape seemed to approach. A chill came with it. A few seconds more, and the bowsprit punched heavily against the ice-mountain. The shock sent the schooner staggering back like a pugilist with a "blimmer" between the ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... Replied Abd al-Kaddus, "Fear not, O my son; we will continually succour thee and keep watch and ward for thee in this place; and whosoever shall come against thee from thy wife's father or any other, him we will fend off from thee; wherefore be thou of good cheer and keep thine eyes cool of tear, and hearten thy heart and broaden thy breast and feel naught whatsoever of fear, for no harm shall come to thee." When Hasan heard this he was abashed and gave the cap to ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... the memory of this exultant hour to fend off all shadows, did the midnight find him in his solitary hangar in the moonlit woods, a deeply desponding figure again. Beside him, swung the huge machine which represented a life of power and luxury; but he no longer saw it. It called to him with many a creak and ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... shield, screen, shroud; engarrison[obs3]; fend round &c. (circumscribe) 229; fence, entrench, intrench[obs3]; guard &c. (keep safe) 664; guard against; take care of &c. (vigilance) 459; bear harmless; fend off, keep off, ward off, beat off, beat back; hinder &c. 706. parry, repel, propugn[obs3], put to flight; give a warm reception to [ironical]; hold at bay, keep at bay, keep arm's length. stand on the defensive, act on the defensive; show fight; maintain one's ground, stand one's ground; stand ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... contingencies, I fain confront the fact, the need of powerful native philosophs and orators and bards, these States, as rallying points to come, in times of danger, and to fend off ruin and defection. For history is long, long, long. Shift and turn the combinations of the statement as we may, the problem of the future of America is in certain respects as dark as it is vast. Pride, competition, segregation, vicious wilfulness, and license beyond example, brood already ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... made. Francois paddled along in the lead, with Teddy holding a position in the bow, for Teddy had learned to swing a paddle fairly well on this trip. Of course, the one who sat in the stern manipulated things as he wished, being the controlling power. Teddy's duties would for the most part be to fend off from ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson
... spars, Watkins, and fasten them to float in front of her bows like a triangle. Matthews, catch hold of that boat hook and try to fend off any piece of timber that comes along. You get hold of the sweeps, lads, and do the same. They would stave her in like a nutshell ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... escalade, their friends backing them by shooting of arbalests from behind the remnant of the palisade. A ladder would be set against the wall, and we could see men with shields, or doors, or squares of wood on their heads to fend off stones, swarm up it, and axes flashing on the crest of the wall, and arrows flying, and smoke of guns: but the smoke cleared, and lo! the ladder was gone, and the three libbards grinned on the flag of England. So went the war, company after company ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... how we often are reminded of funny things even in the midst of danger? Bill, a cripple and unable to move about with the agility needed to fend off a cowardly attack by this miserable piker, showed the stuff he was made of when he burst out laughing, for he was reminded by this threat of that old yarn about a softy's threatening to break the umbrella of his rival found in the ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... surprise on his part, or as combination of them all, he turned abruptly off into a grassed side lane which ran up into the old Enders orchard and ended nowhere at all in particular. Once his back was turned to Mr. Stackpole, he blessed himself fervently. On his face was the look of one who would fend off ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... place where I was halting now the line of a jagged cliff seemed to cut the air, and fend off the light from its edges. You can only see such a thing from the level of the sea, and it looks very odd when you see it, as if the moon and you were a pair of playing children, feeling round a corner for a glimpse of one another. But plain ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... fend off the visitations of the devil." Ah Cum smiled. "After all, I believe we Chinese have the right idea. The devil is on top, not below. We aren't between him and heaven; he is ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... touch it. Only a few hundred yards separated the two vessels, yet the heat seemed almost beyond endurance, and the shade cast by the tall steel sides of the supply-steamer, when the boat reached it, was as comforting as a cool drink to a thirsty man. The oars were shipped, and one man was left to fend off the boat while the others clambered up the swaying rope-ladder, crossed the scorching decks on the run, and went below. In two minutes they were in the hold of the refrigerator-ship, gathering the frost from ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday
... intense patriot, passed many bitter moments. He, like others, felt that the hand upon the reins was not sure. Instead of finding the enemy and assailing him with all their strength, they were waiting in doubt and alarm to fend off a stroke that would come from some unknown point out ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler
... but the greatest of all was old Queen Eleanor, who survived her son Coeur-de-Lion, as well as her two husbands,—Louis-le-Jeune and Henry II Plantagenet,—and was left in 1200 still struggling to repair the evils and fend off the dangers they caused. "Queen by the wrath of God," she called herself, and she knew what just claim she had to the rank. Of her two husbands and ten children, little remained except her son John, who, by the unanimous voice of his family, his friends, his enemies, ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... manifest longing, every wrinkle and muscle of his broad face off guard. My tutor—somewhat affected, I fancy, by this display—turned to me with a little frown of curiosity, an intrusive regard, it seemed to me, which I might in all courtesy fend off for the future. 'Twas now time, thinks I, to enlighten him with the knowledge I had: a task I had no liking for, since in its accomplishment I must ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan |
