"Grasp" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "it was. More dreadful than you people at home can ever grasp. But I want you to know this, Becky, that there isn't one of us who wouldn't go through it again ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... himself from the bed, seized Richard by the throat, and with all the strength he could summon did his best to strangle him. For a time Richard allowed him to spend his rage, then removed his grasp as gently as he could, and holding both his wrists in his left hand, ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... begin—here the gate where they had stood when he gave her his warning: "Whatever that future brings, Edith, don't blame me." No, she blamed nobody but herself; the happiness of her life had lain within her grasp, and she had stretched forth her hand and pushed it away. There was the open window where he used to sit, in the days of his convalesence, and amuse himself setting her inflammable temper alight. It was all associated with him. Then the house door opens, a tall, elderly man comes out, there ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... instant he had resumed his position behind it, and Calumet could tell from the rapidity of his movements that he had not been hit. He saw the rifle lying where it had fallen, and he was meditating a quick rush toward the rock when he saw Taggart's hand come out and grasp the stock of the weapon, dragging it back to him. Calumet whipped a bullet at the hand, but the only result was a ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... of the escaped prisoners, who, it will be remembered, was drummed out of his tribe and sentenced by the courts for the murder of a white settler last spring. Small outlying settlements will rejoice when this body of hardened desperate men are once more in the grasp of the law." ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... petticoats and fastened them together with a piece of string. And she advanced quietly into the water, taking the greatest care not to disturb it. When she was quite close to some tiny fish, that lay lurking between a couple of pebbles, she thrust down her bare arm, made a wild grasp, and brought her hand up again with nothing in it but sand and gravel. Serge then broke out into noisy laughter which brought her back to the bank, indignant. She told him that he had no business to ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... to understand," he answered, heatedly—"A clever little woman like you who writes books should not want any explanation. You ought to be able to grasp the whole position ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... the party descended. Now and then one of the lads slipped, but there was always a rock or a sapling at hand which they could grasp to steady ...
— Comrades of the Saddle - The Young Rough Riders of the Plains • Frank V. Webster
... fiercely at me that everybody round observ'd it and question'd me about it. I could only say what was so, that he was very drunk. When I got up, he seiz'd my arm as I pass'd him, begging me to shake hands with him. I extricated myself from his grasp and pass'd on; he soon after follow'd and began loudly reproaching me for my cruelty, and asking why I would not shake hands. I was extremely distress'd, but at last told him his own sagacity might explain to him why I never would, and that his conduct to-night did not tend to alter my determination. ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... North, of the free States, where some approximation has been made to securing God-given rights to all inhabitants. I think that it is wrong that the further a State recedes from common right and common justice the more power the oligarchy which controls it shall grasp in their hands; and I desire that this amendment shall be made so that it shall bear down upon that abuse with the crushing power of three-fourths of the ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... I have, chiefly by compression, put the utterance both of mother and of daughter into rather better logical form than they gave it; but the substance of it is thus only the more correctly rendered. Hester was astonished at the grasp and power of her mother. The child may for many years have but little idea of the thought and life within the form and face he knows and loves better than any; but at last the predestined moment arrives, the two minds meet, and ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... do quietly, before giving any general alarm, as that might not prove necessary, and also because I remembered an old Highland wisdom, "Never cry fire, unless you want the heather to catch." Its bearing, as you will grasp is on strifes and feuds set alive, not on the actual burning of heather, which is done to let grass, for the sheep beasts, grow without ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... more usual, if a narrower—sense of the historical method; and here, too, Carlyle was a pioneer. He was among the first in our country to grasp the importance of studying the literature of a nation, as a whole, and from its earliest monuments, its mythological and heroic legends, downwards to the present. The year 1831—a turning-point in the mental ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... was London. I stared out of the window and tried to grasp the tremendous, wonderful fact with all the power of my mind. Somehow or other it did not seem real, but I felt I could make it real by an effort of ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... two feet square, which was being raised to the upper storey of this building, got loose from the ropes and fell, crushing the baron's servant who was behind the cabriolet. A cry of horror shook both the scaffold and the masons; one of them, apparently unable to keep his grasp on a pole, was in danger of death, and seemed to have been touched by the stone as ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... the local Governments should have had some training at headquarters. It is much easier for an intelligent officer who has been so trained, to supply a lack of local knowledge, than for one who has been constantly employed in a particular province to grasp in a sufficiently comprehensive spirit the general interests of the Empire, and duly to appreciate the relative claims of its component parts. Already, among the high officers in the Provinces, there is a considerable disinclination to face ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... and sobbing; she had let go the uniform and tried now to release her son from the iron grasp. She probably did not herself know that she was hitting ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... informed me that the husband of poor Lavinia lies buried in yonder church-yard; and perhaps the very tomb which now glistens by the moonbeam is the one which consecrates his memory! That man was passionately addicted to literature;—he had a strong mind; a wonderful grasp of intellect; but his love of paradox and hypothesis quite ruined his faculties. NICAS happened to discover some glaring errors in his last treatise, and the poor man grew sick at heart in consequence. Nothing short of infallibility and ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... life as dearly as he could. He encouraged his men to arm themselves with their paddles, and defend themselves to the last. He instantly seized hold of Pascoe's wife, and with the assistance of another of his men dragged her from the fellow's grasp. Pascoe at the same time levelled a blow at his head with one of their iron-wood paddles, that sent him reeling backwards, and ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... We grasp one axe-handle to hew the other, and yet if we look askance from the one to the other, we may consider them as apart. Therefore, the superior man governs men according to their nature, with what is proper to them; ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) • James Legge
... our dungeon to the queen, and that afternoon, according to promise, Elizabeth gave orders for the release of John and his father. Sir George, of course, was greatly chagrined when his enemies slipped from his grasp; but he dared not show his ill humor in the presence of the queen nor to any one who would be apt to enlighten her Majesty on ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... for France!" he yelled. There was no danger of his not being able to shout this time! And then, before anyone there could collect his senses, the officers of justice saw their prisoner whisked away from out of their very grasp, and John was in France long before the executioner and the chaplain, the jailers and the crowd, had ceased gaping stupidly ...
— Cornwall's Wonderland • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... earth's autumnal taints of various landscape When the first ray of morning tips the trees, And fires the distant rock! I hear its voice When thy hand sends the sound along the gale, Swept from the silver strings or on mine ear Drops the sweet sadness! At my heart I feel Its potent grasp, I melt beneath the touch, When the tale pours upon my sense humane The woes of other times! What art thou, Beauty? Thou art not colour, fancy, sound, nor form— These but the conduits are, whence the soul quaffs The liquor of its heaven. Whate'er thou art, Nature, ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... of the army and navy, both in America and Ireland. Chatham now made another speech, in which he expressed great alarm as to the actual state of those two important fortresses, Gibraltar and Minorca; contending that they were not secure from the grasp of France and Spain. He also took occasion again to extol the Americans, and to plead their cause, still justifying their opposition to the mother country. The motion was ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Orators have appeared who have rivaled the great masters of antiquity. The doors of the American Parthenon are ever open to invite the humble but aspiring youth to enter and fill the loftiest niche. The highest dignity is within the grasp of all; for the lowly boy, born and reared in our own sweet valley of Cumberland, shall, when the spring comes round again, be clothed by the people with the first of mortal honors—that of guiding for a time the American republic upon her ...
— Phrases for Public Speakers and Paragraphs for Study • Compiled by Grenville Kleiser
... succeeded in eluding the grasp of her pursuer. But, alas! for Mrs. Mudge. In her impetuosity she lost her footing, and fell backward into a pail of water which had been brought up the night before and set in the entry for purposes of ablution. More ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... Youth;—the Heart's high prize, Friendship,—and all that charm'd us in the eyes Of yet unutter'd Love.—So pleasures past, That in thy crystal prism thus glow sublime, Beam on the gloom'd and disappointed Mind When Youth and Health, in the chill'd grasp of Time, Shudder and fade;—and cypress buds we find Ordain'd Life's blighted roses to supply, While but reflected shine the golden ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... hops, denotes thrift, energy and the power to grasp and master almost any business proposition. Hops is a favorable dream to all classes, ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... If we grasp this opportunity to build an age of productive partnership between the less fortunate nations and those that have already achieved a high state of economic advancement, we will make brighter the outlook for a world order based upon security, ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Dwight D. Eisenhower • Dwight D. Eisenhower
... time his grasp of things in general soon showed Totski that he now had to deal with a being who was outside the pale of the ordinary rules of traditional behaviour, and who would not only threaten mischief but would undoubtedly carry it out, ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Tom's hand; he closed his eyes, but still retained his hold; for in the gates of eternity the black hand and the white hold each other with an equal grasp, and softly murmured some words he had been singing that evening—words of entreaty ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... proud of his fame. He would not marry, would not burden his life with a wife who would be in his way, but then he might make love. He felt so sure of success that he sprang out of bed as though to grasp it on the spot, and he dressed to go and search through the town for rooms to ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... tips of my three longest fingers, my thumb and little finger not having been ordained by nature to meet the cordial grasp of men of this stamp, and having repeated his good-bye, he stalked out of the room in conscious ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... answered Brown, with a face of blank bewilderment. "The only thing I can think of.... Well, I never understood that Dreyfus case. I can always grasp moral evidence easier than the other sorts. I go by a man's eyes and voice, don't you know, and whether his family seems happy, and by what subjects he chooses—and avoids. Well, I was puzzled in the Dreyfus case. Not by the horrible things imputed both ways; ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... windmill, he would assuredly have concluded that a young one had escaped, and was walking in ever-narrowing circuits, round the field. The mist lifted further, and he saw the thing more clearly. Its great red arms swung dark against the sky, gathering the corn in a giant's grasp to feed its ravenous cutters. Round and round the field it went. Each time as it travelled to the distant corners the mouse dropped down to earth; each time as it thundered close at hand, he dashed like lightning up the stalk to look. Sometimes his wife came with him. Closer it drew and ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... back our existence almost to a point. Former time presents us with trains of thoughts gradually diminishing to nothing. But our ideas of futurity are perpetually expanding. Our desires and our hopes, even when modified by our fears, seem to grasp at immensity. This alone would be sufficient to prove the progressiveness of our nature, and that this little earth is but a point from which we start toward a perfection ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... to perform his part of the tragedy, and Lovel stood gazing on the evil of which he had been the active, though unwilling cause, with a dizzy and bewildered eye. He was roused from his trance by the grasp of the mendicant. "Why stand you gazing on your deed?What's doomed is doomedwhat's done is past recalling. But awa, awa, if ye wad save your young blood from a shamefu' deathI see the men out by yonder that are come ower late to part yebut, out and alack! sune eneugh, ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... gifted with a natural perspicacity that enabled him, as soon as he heard these remarks, to grasp their spirit. ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... this trial by fire! Forsake me not in this hour of extremity, but send Thy ministering angels to strengthen and sustain my spirit, that it faint not with the consuming flesh! And, oh, God! protect Thy persecuted daughter, and save, oh, save her from the grasp of the destroyer! Let not the wicked triumph! my God, let not the wicked triumph! but shield, oh, shield the innocent! Thou art He who canst do wonders; make known Thy power in the rescue and salvation of the afflicted ...
— Ellen Walton - The Villain and His Victims • Alvin Addison
... by elderly osteologists pursuing their studies in dinner society, Mrs Podsnap could dispense with her daughter. Mr Podsnap, for his part, on being informed where Georgiana was, swelled with patronage of the Lammles. That they, when unable to lay hold of him, should respectfully grasp at the hem of his mantle; that they, when they could not bask in the glory of him the sun, should take up with the pale reflected light of the watery young moon his daughter; appeared quite natural, becoming, and proper. It gave him a better opinion of the discretion of the Lammles than ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... enjoy at such times as the true and native form of experience; all organs, applications, and expressions of thought they deprecate and call accidental. As some pious souls reject dogma to reach pure faith and suspend prayer to enjoy union, so some mystical logicians drop the world in order to grasp reality. It is an exquisite suicide; but the energy and ideal that sustain such a flight are annihilated by its issue, and the soul drops like a paper balloon consumed by the very flame that wafted it. No thought is found without an organ; none is conceivable ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... first the mucous membrane of one cheek, near the corner of the mouth, as a dark, ragged, sloughing ulcer and spreads for two or three days before the substance of the cheek is infected. If you grasp the cheek between the thumb and finger you can then feel a hard and sensitive lump. The cheek may be eaten through by the third day, though a week generally passes before this happens. There is a burning watery discharge from ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... you a bit of our experience before closing this subject. For several years we were bound hand and foot by the hideous monster—Tobacco. We repeatedly tried to extricate ourselves from his iron grasp, but tried in vain. Resolution upon resolution was made. The plug was frequently thrown away only to be shortly afterward searched for or replaced by another one. How the devil's power ground me beneath his hoof of steel. Awful slavery, terrible ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... myself in the new. Nor did Marshall himself interest me as he had once done. To my eager taste, he had grown just a little trite. My affection for him was as deep and sincere as ever; were I to meet him now I would grasp his hand and hail him with firm, loyal friendship; but I had made friends in the Nouvelle Athenes who interested me passionately, and my thoughts were absorbed by and set on new ideals, which Marshall had failed to find sympathy for, or even to understand. I had introduced him to Degas and ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... steadfastly kept in mind the limitations of the student to whom chemistry is a new science. They have endeavored to present the subject in a clear, well-graded way, passing in a natural and logical manner from principles which are readily understood to those which are more difficult to grasp. The language is simple and as free as possible from unusual and technical phrases. Those which are unavoidable are carefully defined. The outline is made very plain, and the paragraphing is designed to be of real assistance to the student ...
— An Elementary Study of Chemistry • William McPherson
... were on the best terms, though she always took her aunt's part vehemently in any little dispute which arose, and sometimes even came to the rescue at the end, and recaptured the vanished sixpences out of the wrongful grasp which he generally laid on them the moment the old lady held out her hand and pronounced the word "game." One knows that size has little to do with strength, or one might have wondered that her little hands should have been able to open his fingers so surely one by one, though ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... answers to all questions! Believe me, you have no soul. So take what you can—a body! You certainly have that, one can see it—well, snatch what it can bring you, since you have not enough will to try for higher things. Grasp what you may, poor weakling. That is the wisdom sitting here for ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... wet with tears, wrung with a grateful grasp, He lightly felt upon his palm the Elder Brother's clasp; And when above the loathsome couch of woe and want bent he, A low voice thrilled his soul, "So have ye done ...
— Poems • Marietta Holley
... that in the beginning we aimed not at independence. But there is a divinity which shapes our ends. The injustice of England has driven us to arms; and, blinded to her own interest, she has obstinately persisted, till independence is now within our grasp. We have but to reach forth to it, and it is ours. Why, then, should we defer the declaration? If we postpone independence, do we mean to carry on or to give up the war? Do we mean to submit, and consent that we ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... true that he was narrower than he had been. He was a good, honest, religiously-minded lad, but with no great depth or grasp of intellect; Ursula Egremont had been his companion first and then his romance, and the atmosphere of the community in which he lived had been studious and intelligent. His expedition to Redcastle had convinced him that the young lady lived ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... such an extraordinary compliment that it really took me some time before I could grasp the meaning of it. It seemed that according to the social rules of Diamantino, Matto Grosso, no one could be considered fully dressed unless carrying an umbrella. Rain or shine, the people of Diamantino carried their ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... mystery so dear to the imagination of the youthful amateur! In some places the death of the vulpine robber of hen roosts is hailed with delight, and people are to be found even —oh, horror!—willing to grasp in friendship the hand of ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... of my ancestors I lost the right to grieve as a woman, and pledged myself to gird on the armor of manhood. Hitherto I have made it my pride to plan, to reign, to fight like a man. I have always feared that men might say of me that my hand was too weak to grasp the reins of power. But God, who perhaps gave me the head of a man while leaving me the heart of a woman, has punished me for my ambition. He has left me to learn that, alas! I am but a woman—with all ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... his shoulders: very handsome he was in countenance, and had beautiful fair hair. He was well armed; had a fine helmet, and ring armour; a red shield; a superb sword in his belt; and in his hand a gold-mounted spear, the shaft of it so thick that it was a handful to grasp. The man went before the king, saluted him, and asked if the king would ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... that these five cases I have recounted are not exceptional, though some of their sordid details may be specially disagreeable. Give but a moment's attention to the facts that stand out, and at once you will grasp what is wrong. We are demanding too much from these unmarried mothers, and, by leaving the full power of parenthood in their weak hands, are jeopardizing the child's safety; we are also encouraging conditions harmful to society. It is like leaving a loaded gun in the hands of ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... of the study, which was at the moment partly open, he saw the dress of a policeman within, and knew that the body of the dead man was still lying there. But he went by rapidly without a glance within, remembering the look of the man as he had last seen his burly figure, and that grasp of his hand, and those odious words. And now the man was dead,—having destroyed his own life. Surely the man must have known when he uttered those words what it was that he intended to do! When he had made that last appeal about Marie, conscious as he was that every ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... experiments of Dr. Louis Robinson showed that an infant three weeks old could support its own weight for over two minutes, holding on to a horizontal bar. "In many cases no sign of distress is evinced and no cry uttered, until the grasp begins to give way." This persistent grasp probably points back to the time when the baby had to cling to its arboreal mother. The human tail is represented in the adult by a fusion of four or five vertebrae forming the "coccyx" at the end of the backbone, and is normally concealed beneath the ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... as the other advanced, holding the stick in a strong grasp, while he kept his eyes steadily fixed on his opponent. He was cool, but his enemy was enraged, and rage ...
— In A New World - or, Among The Gold Fields Of Australia • Horatio Alger
... from the shotgun. The troubles of the furry little chap were at an end. The kinks would straighten out of its small humped back, and, as a deft turn of the oars brought the boat alongside, the hunter's hand would reach over the edge, grasp the long, slim tail, and fling the body of the sleek little musquash ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... compositions that even if not wholly intended for display are primarily and principally projected for its sake. It is a well-known fact that few, even among gifted players, can sit down to play chamber music and do it justice. This is not because they cannot grasp or understand it; or because their technic is insufficient. It is because their whole violinistic education has been along the line of solo playing; they have literally been brought up, not to play with others, but to be ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... times long past, over which the twilight of uncertainty had already thrown its shadows, and the night of forgetfulness was about to descend for ever. With great solicitude had I long beheld the early history of this venerable and ancient city gradually slipping from our grasp, trembling on the lips of narrative old age, and day by day dropping piecemeal into the tomb. In a little while, thought I, and those revered Dutch burghers, who serve as the tottering monuments of good old ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... wrung And winds and waves a doleful requiem sung? There stood the husband whose protecting arm 'Till now had kept his lov'd ones safe from harm. Remorseless grown, the demon of the storm Swept from his grasp her trembling, fragile form. Vague fear o'er children's lineaments convuls'd, But selfish hands their frenzied cling repuls'd. When death's grim aspect meets the startl'd view To grovelling souls fair mercy bids adieu! And thou, sweet damsel! who ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... adventure had been rewarded even sooner than he could have expected. He felt assured that at last he floated on the stream destined to bear him to the sea. The key to the river system of the south-east portion of the continent was in his grasp, and all former fallacies and fanciful theories were answered for good. The voyage down the Murray, as this river was named, after Sir George Murray, then the bead of the Colonial Department, now continued free from some of the difficulties that had beset them in the Morumbidgee. ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... their principal settlements; that her ports and rivers, instead of affording a shelter to the extensive commerce of China, should at this enlightened period of the world hold out only terror and dismay to the mariner; and that all that she should have acquired from the deadly vicinage and withering grasp of Dutch power and dominion has been the art of more speedily destroying each other, and rendering themselves obnoxious to the rest of mankind. Now that her destinies are transferred to the enlightened heads and liberal hearts of ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... medic brought them down, curling inward, until he stooped and touched them to the ground. When he straightened once again the knife was in his grasp and he ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North
... which often it is not. Then interpose human Tempers, and Chills, and Heates, and Slyghtes fancied or intended, which make the vext Soul readie to wish it had never existed. How smalle a Thing is a human Heart! you might grasp it in your little Hand; and yet its Strifes and Agonies are enough to distend a Skin that should cover the whole World! But, in the Charities, what Peace! yea, they distill Sweetnesse even from the Unthankfulle, blessing him that gives more than him that receives; ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... disappeared like the crocodile from the Lower Nile. Finally, to conclude this rapidly outlined sketch, all at the present moment happily share the same fate; they are being robbed of their last mysteries; the veil of Isis is fast yielding to the white man's grasp. ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... horse continued to snort and back away from the object Tank Dysart became convinced of its reality. Still mounted, he passed close enough alongside for a grasp at it. The old red-flannel cape and hood disclosed a plump infant about ten months of age, whimpering and cruelly rubbing his eyes with his fists, and now bawling outright with rage; as he chanced to meet the gaze of his rescuer he paused to laugh in a one-sided way, displaying ...
— Who Crosses Storm Mountain? - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... failed him just as he seemed about to grasp it, and he was left wondering why the sound of that one voice had brought him a moment of radiant happiness in the midst of so much horror and pain. Meanwhile the answering voices went on, each time ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood
... says, "Precisely the same characteristics marked her, the same absolute religious consecration, the same heroic readiness to trample under foot the pains of illness, loneliness, and opposition, the same intellectual grasp of what a great reformatory work demanded."[19] Truly was it said of her that she was "the most useful and distinguished ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... now, however, the general practice to grasp the scrotum in the hand, between the testicles and the belly, and to make an incision in one side of it, near the bottom, of sufficient depth to penetrate through the inner covering of the testicle, and of sufficient length to admit of its escape. The testicle immediately bursts from ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... highly important for us to gain some notion, however imperfect, of the lapse of years. During each of these years, {288} over the whole world, the land and the water has been peopled by hosts of living forms. What an infinite number of generations, which the mind cannot grasp, must have succeeded each other in the long roll of years! Now turn to our richest geological museums, and what ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... sure of what they saw, then undoubtedly snakes have the power to draw birds within their grasp. I remember that my mother told me that while gathering wild strawberries she had on one occasion come upon a bird fluttering about the head of a snake as if held there by a spell. On her appearance, the snake lowered its head and made off, ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... squadrons of cavalry should have been able to ride around his army of 100,000 men and escape unscathed astonished and annoyed McClellan but he utterly failed to grasp the true purpose of this brilliant exploit, and Lee took the utmost care to see that his suspicions were not aroused. Stuart's information had convinced him that the right wing of the Union army was badly exposed and might be attacked with every prospect of success, but to ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... not displeased with his fashion of taking her chastisement, returned his grasp. 'Yes,' she said, 'you couldn't go on as you were. But all the ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... them so profoundly was the thought that a Forsyte should have let go her grasp on life. If one, then ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... terrible lunge, he pierced Buckingham's arm, the sword passing between the two bones. Buckingham, feeling his right arm paralyzed, stretched out his left, seized his sword, which was about falling from his nerveless grasp, and before De Wardes could resume his guard, he thrust him through the breast. De Wardes tottered, his knees gave way beneath him, and leaving his sword still fixed in the duke's arm, he fell into the ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... argument sound and well put, and results have proved its force, since the Salvation Army undoubtedly gets a hold of people that few other forms of religious effort seem able to grasp, at ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... concealed his brilliancy, and now once more the sky is shrouded in murky gloom—an apt emblem this of the over-changing state of man, who at one moment quaffs the inebriating cup of earthly joys, and yet a little, and it is dashed from his grasp; and sickness, sorrow and death are ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs
... terms of unwonted confidence. Little O'Grady himself was in such a state of irrepressible buoyancy that he left the earth and fairly sailed among the clouds. All this reacted on Dill. For the first time he felt the great commission fully within his grasp and the net profits as safely to be counted upon. He began to warm to his subjects. To him, who had learned a good deal in regard to shipping and the handling of water from lounging about the ports of Marseilles and Leghorn, had fallen the arrival of the first vessel: he would reconstruct ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... me, I think," the girl answered, laughing. "All suddenly—just in a flash. That's the way it must be with inspirations. This is one—I know it. It's all in the air—floating round me. But I shall grasp it soon." ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... To no such terminus does the greatest poet bring—he brings neither cessation nor shelter'd fatness and ease. The touch of him, like Nature, tells in action. Whom he takes he takes with firm sure grasp into live regions previously unattain'd—thenceforward is no rest—they see the space and ineffable sheen that turn the old spots and lights into dead vacuums. Now there shall be a man cohered out ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... that led us into the object's nearest neighborhood. Where direct acquaintance is lacking, 'knowledge about' is the next best thing, and an acquaintance with what actually lies about the 'object, and is most closely related to it, puts such knowledge within our grasp. Ether- waves and your anger, for example, are things in which my thoughts will never PERCTEPTUALLY terminate, but my concepts of them lead me to their very brink, to the chromatic fringes and to the hurtful words and deeds which are their ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... a more truthful idea of the nature of Greek religion and legend from the poems of Keats, and the nearly as beautiful, and, in general grasp of subject, far more powerful, recent work of Morris, than from frigid scholarship, however extensive. Not that the poet's impressions or renderings of things are wholly true, but their truth is vital, not formal. They are like sketches from the life by Reynolds ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... this work make it an invaluable book of reference to every student of Biblical Theology. If we were called to name any living writer who, to Calvin's exegetical tact, unites a large measure of Calvin's grasp of mind and transparent clearness in the department of systematic theology, we should point to this Princeton Professor. He possesses, to use the words of an English critic, the power of seizing and retaining with a rare vigour and tenacity ...
— The Cockatoo's Story • Mrs. George Cupples
... strength of heart and brain, and be the center of some widespread catastrophe; to put his fear in her soul just as it was in his own. How was she ever to comprehend the horror that held him in its cruel grasp, the thousand subtle shades of thought and feeling that had led up to this thing, from the memory of which he revolted! He turned his bloodshot eyes upon her, something of the old light was there along with the new; he had indeed loved her, but the fruit of this love had been rotten. ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... this class is a not inconsiderable of itself. The romance of the armed merchantmen affords material for many a vivid page, and when in its proper place in this volume it is set forth somewhat in detail the reader will grasp—if he has not already done so through perusal of the daily press—the fact that all the glory of naval service in this war has not resided within the turrets of the dreadnought nor on the deck ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry
... A grasp stronger than ever Austin Lovel's had been, dragged him to his feet, and half led, half pushed him into the nearest chair. He sat there, staring blankly before him. Clarissa had moved away from him, and stood amid the deep shadows ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... prospect did not cheer Gallagher. He tried to grasp Dr. O'Grady's arm as he passed him. But the doctor shook him off impatiently. He even attempted an appeal to Major Kent, quite vainly. The Major was still smarting under the rhetorical denunciation of landlords. He would not at that moment have gone a step ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham
... by its dense gloom. All at once, while gazing at a frightful creation of my distempered mind, I seemed struck with sudden blindness. I knew a candle was burning in the room but I could not see it, all was so pitchy dark. I lost the sense of feeling, too, for I endeavored to grasp my arm in one hand, but consciousness was gone. I put my hand to my side, my head, but felt nothing, and still I knew my limbs and frame were there. And then the scene would change! I was falling—falling swiftly ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... the first brilliant period of the leadership of the Iberian peoples was drawing to a close, at the other end of Europe, in the land of melancholy steppe and melancholy forest, the Slav turned in his troubled sleep and stretched out his hand to grasp leadership and dominion. Since then almost every nation of Europe has at one time or another sought a place in the movement of expansion; but for the last three centuries the great phenomenon of mankind has been the growth of the ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... small crisis, every time; but she's as afraid as any one else of the great one, and she's moreover, I write it with rapture, afraid of Eliza. Eliza is the one person in our whole community she does fear—and for reasons I perfectly grasp; to which moreover, this extraordinary oddity attaches, that I positively feel I don't fear Eliza in the least (and in fact promise myself before long to show it) and yet don't at all avail by that show of my indifference to danger to ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... week; and then I have the assurance to lecture you for gloomy forebodings, etc.! If you had only not spoken of the deadly fevers in your last letter. In the evening I am always excited, in the loneliness, when I am not tired. Tomorrow, in bright daylight, in the railway carriage, I shall perhaps grasp your possible ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... my infancy at my mother's knee came back to me; Kosinski turned his face to the wall and stood with bowed shoulders. As the words fell from my lips the dying woman clutched my hand convulsively and murmured some words in Russian. Then her grasp loosened. I raised my eyes to her face, and saw that all was over. My strained nerves gave way, and I sobbed convulsively. ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... To grasp the revolver it was necessary to stretch his arm full length, and he tried to do that slowly and imperceptibly, but his anxiety overcame his prudence and he made a movement that the watchful Grizzly detected. Instantly the bear pinned the arm with one paw, placed the other upon Brannan's ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... prayers of those who may derive benefit from our works when we are gone. Our landholders are good men, and will never resume the lands they have given us; and if the lands be sold at auction by Government, or transferred to others, we hope the certificate of the collector will protect us from his grasp.'[15] ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... if, not comprehending me, he supposed that I was backing up what I had said last with more of the same sort. But by the time I had finished he saw what I meant; his countenance altered and looked as if the evil spirit were about to depart from him; he held out his hand, gave mine a great grasp, dropped his head, went on with his work, ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... is not hard to grasp. Conservation is really but doing unto others as we would that others should do unto us—so living that other life also may have a fair chance. It was a child who ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... them but ill, we shall not be far from the truth in saying that our Revolution was a phenomenon equally misunderstood by those who caused it and by those who have described it. At no period of history did men so little grasp the present, so greatly ignore the past, and so poorly ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... means, of course, a continuing rise in prices, a continuing writing off of debt. If labour has any real grasp of its true interests it will not resent this. It will merely insist steadfastly on a proper adjustment of its wages to the new standard. On that point, however, it will be better ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... defy you to cite me a monastic order whose members practice the renouncement of worldly pleasures more absolutely and sincerely than the miser. And his renouncement is truly the more heroic, because he has within his grasp all the delights and enchantments of soul, mind and senses, and possesses the incredible courage to refuse them all. There is strength, there is the triumph ...
— A Cardinal Sin • Eugene Sue
... when he moved his head, over the surface of his cheeks. He was rather below the medium height, a bit round-shouldered, and so sturdy of limb that his clothes always looked a shade too tight for his arms and legs. As if unable to grasp what is due to the difference of latitudes, he wore a brown bowler hat, a complete suit of a brownish hue, and clumsy black boots. These harbour togs gave to his thick figure an air of stiff and uncouth smartness. A thin silver watch chain looped ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... attention; though had the conditions been different, the boy might not have had the slightest trouble about getting it free. The boat was pitching so furiously, that he could only use one hand, because it was necessary for him to grasp some hold, lest he be tossed overboard, as a bucking bronco hurls an unsuspecting rider from the saddle by a ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter
... down his battle-axe with such a strong blow that the private's spear was shattered and knocked from his grasp, and he was helpless ...
— Ozma of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... of the injunction, the man strove to grasp him; but Charlie at once let go his hold, and swam a pace back as the man sunk. When he came up he seized him again, ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... I have spoken already. The latter is every way the greater master, never indulging in the exaggerated color of Titian, and attaining far more perfect light; his grasp of nature is more extensive, and his view of her more imaginative, (incidental notices of his landscape will be found in the chapter on Imagination penetrative, of the second volume,) but he is usually too impatient to carry his thoughts as far out, or to ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... Hamlet was indeed advancing. Pinchas made a wild plunge forward, but Kloot's grasp on his ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... back among her pillows, her eyes leveled at the few stars beyond her door, opened to admit any cooling breeze. Her head ached. It was like the computations of astronomers; to a certain extent the human mind could grasp the distances but could not comprehend them. It was more than chance. Chance alone had not brought him to the crumbling ledge. There was a strain of fatalism in Elsa. She was positive that all these things had ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... grasp it, Iff shook it heartily. "Ah," he said blandly, "h' are ye?" Then he dropped the hand, thereby preventing the captain from wrenching it away, and averted his eyes modestly, thereby escaping the ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... propitious and the fruits of such endeavour—are difficult to fathom by all beings other than himself, whether gods or men, since those Vedas are divided into Rik, Yajus, Sman, and Atharvan; and being animated by infinite pity, tenderness, and magnanimity; with a view to enable his devotees to grasp the true meaning of the Vedas, himself composed the Pakartra-sstra. The author of the Stras (Vysa)—who first composed the Stras, the purport of which it is to set forth the arguments establishing the Vednta doctrine, and then the Bhrata-samhit (i.e. the Mahbhrata) in a hundred ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... magnify myself and, at this time of day, scarcely any reason, I am fain to confess that the reverse was the case; and that while no man ever did less to free himself than I did, my adversary retained his grasp to the end, and had surely, but for a strange interposition, effected my ruin. How relief came, and from what quarter, I might defy the most ingenious person, after reading my memoirs to this point, to say; and this ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... dead in the corridor above. A beautiful young woman, dressed in her night-robes, her feet in slippers, hair disordered and her eyes fixed with horror, gazed down at the lifeless shape. The stupor of sleep still held her in its dulling grasp. She could not fully comprehend the tragedy. Her ladies wailed about her, but she heeded them not. It was only when the captain of the military household approached her that she became fully aroused. She pressed her hand ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... stealthily towards the house. It was the work of a moment only to dash forward and seize him, to find himself engaged in a sharp wrestle, to half draw his pistol as he struggled with his captive in the open. But once in the clearer light, he started, his grasp of the stranger relaxed, and he fell back ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... offended me, as it offends me still, and Gaultier had then scarcely attained the full personal charm of his grave, subdued, and reticent style. But another book arrived from the same author, and yet another, and I began to feel the attraction of this new thinker and to grasp slowly his daring and elusive conception of the world. Here, one remarks, is where the stupid people who are slow of understanding have their compensation in the end. For whereas the brilliant person sees so much light at his first effort that he is apt to be content with it, the other is never ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... laughed when the coach gave him a chance on the scrub one afternoon and laughed harder when he at last got a chance to carry the ball and by clever dodging succeeded in making a twenty-yard gain. He slipped out of the grasp of Ned Stillson and nearly eluded big Tom Curwood, who covered Teeny-bits so completely when he finally had him down that ball and runner were almost ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst
... essential to him in his thorough and practical discussion of the all absorbing questions of the day.[102] This it was well known he could do, in dealing with these questions, not only on their own merits, but with the comprehensive grasp which his enlarged experience, intuitive clearness of perception, and naturally statesmanlike views on grave public questions, ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson |
