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Guts   /gəts/   Listen
Guts

noun
1.
Fortitude and determination.  Synonyms: backbone, grit, gumption, moxie, sand.



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"Guts" Quotes from Famous Books



... have to be fast," Gresham told him urgently. "Look. I didn't kill Arnold Rivers. I hated his guts, and I think whoever did it ought to get a medal and a testimonial dinner, but I did not kill ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper

... up on Skid Row without a nickel in his jeans and the great-granddaddy of all hangovers. He comes to a decision. Either he could make a man out of hisself, or he could die. Right then, dying looked like the easiest thing to do, but it took more guts that he had to jump off a bridge, so he ...
— See? • Edward G. Robles

... others, the men of my mettle, the men who would 'stablish my fame Unto its ultimate issue, winning me honor, not shame; Searching my uttermost valleys, fighting each step as they go, Shooting the wrath of my rapids, scaling my ramparts of snow; Ripping the guts of my mountains, looting the beds of my creeks, Them will I take to my bosom, and speak as a mother speaks. I am the land that listens, I am the land that broods; Steeped in eternal beauty, crystalline waters and woods. Long have I waited lonely, shunned as a thing accurst, ...
— The Spell of the Yukon • Robert Service

... speaks well, of Sir John, Parson of Wrotham, in the History of Sir John Oldcastle; [Footnote: Collier, p. 125.] tho he swears, games, wenches, pads, tilts and drinks, and does things which our Reformers Guts are ready to come up at another time, only, forsooth, because he is stout; but 'tis indeed only because he is a Parson, and sullen, which he thinks wise, for he cannot endure that Copyhold should be ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet

... but preserves it. The victim is always stowed away with another one in an underground burrow. The wasp attaches one of her eggs to the body of a worm. When the egg hatches, the grub eats both of the worms. They're alive, but they're completely helpless to resist while their guts are gnawed away. Beautiful ...
— They Twinkled Like Jewels • Philip Jose Farmer

... touch that whip, and by God, I'll kill you!" He lent point to this threat by drawing and cocking his six-shooter. "If you men ain't had enough blood for one day, I'll let a little more for you." His words ended in a torrent of profanity. "Climb aboard!" he shrilled. "Who's got the guts to try?" ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach

... Old Heck exclaimed viciously, as he heard the shouts of derisive laughter. "I'm going to wipe him out on that race—if he's got the guts to come across and back up that Thunderbolt horse as hard as he ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman

... you with the fellow? Do you think I'm a blind dodderer? Do you think I haven't kept an eye on you? Haven't I seen you blowing as hot as you please? And now because he refuses to be a blinking idiot and have his guts blown out in this war of fools and knaves and capitalists, you blast ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke

... was one of the best control points on the James. It had been abandoned by the Indians; and it was a bit inland, hence somewhat out of range of the Spanish menace. Arable land on the Island was limited by inlets and "guts." The marshes bred in abundance, even the deadly mosquitoes whose forebears had been brought from the West Indies in the colonists' own vessels; and, with contamination so easy, drinking water was a problem. All of ...
— The First Seventeen Years: Virginia 1607-1624 • Charles E. Hatch

... rice with the excrement of rabbits. De Bry mentions that the negroes of Guinea ate filthy, stinking elephant-meat and buffalo-flesh infested with thousands of maggots, and says that they ravenously devoured dogs' guts raw. Spencer, in his "Descriptive Sociology," describes a "Snake savage" of Australia who devoured the contents of entrails of an animal. Some authors have said that within the last century the Hottentots devoured the flesh and the entrails of wild beasts, uncleansed ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... talking to himself. I asked him how he had broken away from it all. At that he laughed, a bitter, hard sort of laugh. 'By having the guts to break away from it, boy,' he said. 'It was I who made Victor Marbran come away with me. We worked our passages out to the Cape and made our way up-country to Matabeleland. That was in the early days of Rhodes and ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine

... barges, brigs, and steamers on the Thames, and it is perfectly amazing that huge masses weighing thousands of tons, and bristling with masts and spars, and rugged wheels projecting, should be every day led over miles of water in dense crowds, round crooked points, along narrow guts, and over hidden shoals while gusts from above, and whirling eddies below are all conspiring to confuse the clearest head, to baffle the strongest arm and to huddle up the whole mass ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor

... heed to the Provost, need you," Mr. Quinn retorted. "Is a man to run away from his country because a fool of a schoolmaster hasn't the guts to be proud of it? Talk sense, son! We want education in Ireland, don't we, far more nor any other people want it, an' how are we goin' to get it if all the young lads go off to Englan' an' let the schoolmasters starve ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine

... he is going home with a full ship, grease or no grease, that the hands may be ——, that they haven't the guts to get at the grease anyway, and that it isn't the mate's place to give him advice. So Garboy shut up, and we are bound north after the baleen. Well, I think Garboy is right, though he hasn't any business ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer

... much. Oh, sure, it's nice here. I like it real good. But I got along real nice for a long time before I picked you up, you see what I mean. You didn't do no good at all. Talent, you got. But brains? No, them they didn't give you. And they didn't give you much guts, either, Danny-boy. Them, ...
— The Best Made Plans • Everett B. Cole

... him for it. But the tension in the room released with a loud gasp of astonishment. It was unbelievable to those bullies that such an offer could be turned down. A sailorman refusing unlimited opportunities for getting drunk! "Gaw' strike me blind, 'e arn't got the guts for hit!" a voice cried at my elbow, and I found the Cockney openly ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer

... see, has not yet become, as it will (and does) in a few days, clear enough for you to know that the entire bed of the river consists of huge boulders, with manifold guts and hollows, all lovely abiding places for any well-disposed fish. You speculate on what you shall do if you do hook a salmon at this or that particular point. You scan the shore, mark the likeliest spot for landing, and mentally go through ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior

... blood must be stirred with a little salt till it is cold. Put a full quart of it to a quart of whole grits, and let it stand all night. Soak the crumb of a quartern loaf in rather more than two quarts of new milk made hot. In the meantime prepare the guts by washing, turning and scraping, with salt and water, and changing the water several times. Chop fine a little winter savoury and thyme, a good quantity of pennyroyal, pepper and salt, a few cloves, some allspice, ginger and ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton

... better, and that they had some hopes. What the use of that was I cannot conceive. And the occasion of her death is still pretended to be a secret: yet it is known that she had a rupture, and had it for many years; that she had imposthumes that broke, and that some of the guts were mortified. This is another mystery which I don't comprehend; for what does it signify what one dies of, except the pain it gives more ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... half-breed grinned. "A'm bor' dat hoss for com' 'long wit' you. Dat Fatty, she damn bad man. She try for keel you w'en you tak' de shot at de wheel. A'm com' 'long dat time an' A'm keek heem in de guts an' he roll 'roun' on de floor, an' A'm t'row de bottle of wheesky an' smash de beeg lamp an' we com' 'long out of dere." The cowpuncher tossed his cigarette away ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx

... laird had ta'en the batts, Or some curmurring in his guts, His only son for Hornbook sets, An' pays him well. The lad, for twa guid gimmer-pets, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... and your wife, Mr. Guts, may be one flesh, because ye are nothing else; but rational creatures have minds that must ...
— The Beaux-Stratagem • George Farquhar

... surprise he found that Tim was looking at him with undisguised admiration. "Lummy," he said, "you've got guts. Yes, that's right. 'Disreputable drunken loafer.' And if I came back now?" ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors

... have that of rebellion. Oh that I could but live to be governor here, to make your fat guts pledge me in that beverage I drunk, you Sir John ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden

... have intrusted me with, that I may think of airting them your way INSTANTER; and so setting you up in practice, so far as my small business or influence may go; and, doubtless, Alan, that is a day whilk I hope may come round. But then, before I give, as the proverb hath it, "My own fish-guts to my own sea-maws," I must, for the sake of my own character, be very sure that my sea-maw can pick them to some purpose. ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott

... dirk knife, and I know all the dirty, rotten things of life by direct contact. So when I disagree with the demands of the men who build my vessels I know why I'm disagreeing. And I usually do disagree ... because if they've got guts enough in them they'll fight. And I like a good fight. That's why potting clerks is such a tame business. It's almost as sickening as a ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie

... subjected to her unbridled temper. The old mistress is in utter consternation at the imminent loss of her two best helpers, Uli and Freneli; and new sorrow comes to her through the son-in-law, who guts the house of its stores on pretense of putting the money out at interest, and keeps a hawk's eye on ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various

... of foliage. Presently water appeared in the bottom, a good quantity; perhaps thirty or forty cubic feet, with pools and waterfalls. A tree that stands all along the banks here must be very fond of water; its roots lie close-packed down the stream, like hanks of guts, so as to make often a corrugated walk, each root ending in a blunt tuft of filaments, plainly to drink water. Twice there came in small tributaries from the left or western side—the whole plateau having a smartish inclination to the east; one of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... got him, Cal," he said. His voice was gloating. "I reckoned I'd got him; he tumbled sorta offish—like it had got him in the guts. That's what I aimed for, anyway. I reckon he done suffered some, eh?" ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer

... the ground, where his horns are also ready to do what in them lies to toss the dog; and this is the true sport. But if more dogs than one come at once, or they are cowardly and come under his legs, he will, if he can, stamp their guts out. I believe I have seen a dog tossed by a bull thirty, if not forty foot high; and when they are tossed, either higher or lower, the men above strive to catch them on their shoulders, lest the fall might mischief the dogs. They commonly ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams

... the bottom. "You've got some guts, anyhow; and once we're well into that undergrowth, your hairy friend may come after us with a Vickers and be ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming

... logical reason to hate your guts. By all the evidence I have, you are a group of the worst blackguards who ever existed; by all the evidence, I should be doing everything in my ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett

... exclaimed defiantly, "and it's a good crowd, too! A crowd that's got guts! We're going to have a look at ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson

... march,' and they were then marched for more than two hours. After that he saw them 'fall in three deep,' and were then told (by Captain Hanrahan) to prepare to 'receive cavalry,' and 'charge cavalry'—Poke your pike into the guts of the horse, and draw it out from ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello

... Death, Sir, Keep your Distance, or I'll write another Article in your Guts. (Lays his Hand ...
— The Busie Body • Susanna Centlivre

... "Sheer guts! He won't last, though. Harcourt'll start piling up the points in the ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie

... in a dog-cart all the morning—went to Hurley to make inquiries before breakfast, and all over the place afterwards. John's been telling me. He heard 'em talking when young Turnbull turned up at tea-time. He's got guts all right, that fellow. I believe he'd play the game fair enough if they tried to make her marry him. Besides, as I ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford

... to the woods. The arrows are made at the same time, pointed at the end with a sharp bone. The wood of which these arrows are made, as well as the bows, must have been dried at the mysterious fire, and even the guts of which the strings are made. But you are here to observe, I am speaking of an incident that happened some years ago; for, generally speaking, they are now better provided with arms, and iron, by the Europeans supplying them, for their chace, ...
— An Account Of The Customs And Manners Of The Micmakis And Maricheets Savage Nations, Now Dependent On The Government Of Cape-Breton • Antoine Simon Maillard

... Bucarest and the way we patted Rumania on the back—she was the gendarme of Europe then. 'Gendarme of Europe!' ... I tell you that any army that would do what the Rumanians did to Bulgaria has something wrong with its guts!" ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl

... then said, "Do you know, I have never read a word of that thing?" "Oh," cried I, "Thackeray! Why don't you? It is excellent! It would give you so much pleasure!" "My dear lady, I couldn't, I couldn't!" said he with tears in his eyes. "It would tear my guts out!"—which powerful English description of extreme emotion would have startled me less in French or Italian; "Cela m'arracherait les entrailles," or ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... worse than martyrdom to come with them. Had the Doctor taken my advice, he would have brought our own civil London coachman, whom we hired with his own horses by the job; but he said it behoved us to gi'e our ain fish guts to our ain sea-maws, and that he designed to fee Thomas Birlpenny's hostler for our coachman, being a lad of the parish. This obliged us to post it from London; but, oh! Miss Mally, what an ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt

... and more mysterious. They understood his care with the skins, these could be sold; but what did he want with the guts and all the flesh he cut up? That evening he lit the fire underneath the boiler, and he worked the whole night, filling the place with a disgusting smell of bones, meat and ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo

... he slowly. "You remember my nest, and what that bluejay did for it? And what you said? Well, I've looked about a bit, and I've seen the bluejay at work.... Oh, hell, I can't talk about this thing, but I've watched the putty-faced, hollow-chested, empty-bellied kids—that don't even have guts enough left to laugh.... Somebody ought to sock it to that brute, on account of those kids. He ought to be headed off ... make him feel he's to be shoo'd outside! And I think I know the one man that can shoo him." He paused again, with his head sunk forward. This was so new a John Flint to ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler

... having been prepared sometimes of the scombri, which were a sort of tunny-fish, and sometimes of the silurus, or shad-fish: nay, he observed that there was a third kind, called garum haemation, made of the guts, gills, and blood ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... with Thirst of Wealth? See he consumes his Money, Time and Health, In drunken Frolicks which will all confound, Neglects his Farm, forgets to till his Ground, His Stock grows less that might be kept with ease; In nought but Guts and Debts he finds Encrease. In Town reels as if he'd shove down each Wall, Yet Walls must stand, poor Soul, or ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin

... France to-day. They've cleaned out the kings—Louis's and Marie's heads have dropped into the basket. They're sweeping the dirt out of France; they're cleaning the dark places; they're whitewashing Versailles and sawdusting the Tuileries; they're purging the aristocratic guts of France; they're starting for the world a reformation which will make it clean. Not America alone, but England, and all ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... you ever show bones or guts, or any other charnel-house stuff. Teach your children to know the lark's note from the nightingale's; the length of their larynxes is their ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... straightening her dress and studied his lined face. "So you really were expecting an attack?" She shook her head in disgust. "I finally meet a man with some semblance of guts, and the only way he can think of to win his point is to let a goon squad ...
— The Deadly Daughters • Winston K. Marks

... up the fog with fire. A longer form of the curse lingers in the Vallee des Bagnes of the canton Valais. It runs thus: "Mist, mist, fly, fly, or St. Martin will come with a sheaf of straw to burn your guts, a great log of wood to smash your brow, and an iron chain to drag ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer

... then put in eight Eggs beaten very well, as much Cream as you think fit, one Nutmeg or more grated, some Pennyroyal and other Herbs shred small, good store of Beef Sewet shred very small, and a little more Salt, mix these very well together, and then have your Guts very well scoured, and scraped with the back of a Knife, fill them but not too full, then when you have tyed them fast, wash them in fair water, and let your water boil when they go in; then boil ...
— The Queen-like Closet or Rich Cabinet • Hannah Wolley

... Ohio Rivers, was then called the wettest spot on earth. Through its narrow streets strode loggers and raftsmen. Theirs was talk of cant hooks and spike poles, calipers and rafts. "You best come and have a drink down to Big Wayne's that'll put fire in your guts." The boss wanted his whole crew to be merry, so the whole crew headed for Big Wayne ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas

... the saint up and done a marvelous straange thing, for he flinged them feesh back in the well, just as they was, and began praayin' to the Lard to forgive his man. An' the feesh comed alive ag'in and swimmed around, though Barius had cleaned 'em, I s'pose, an' took the guts out of 'em an' everything. Then the chap just catched wan feesh proper, an' St. Neot ate en, an' grawed well by sundown. So he was a ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts

... painfully aware by bitter experience that I cannot give you any idea of the passion, the power, the—the essential guts of the lines which you have so foully outraged in our presence. But—' the note changed, 'so far as in me lies, I will strive to bring home to you, Vernon, the fact that there exist in Latin a few pitiful rules ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling

... a slender steel. Despised nature suit them once aright, Their body to their coat both now disdight. Their body to their clothes might shapen be, That will their clothes shape to their bodie. Meanwhile I wonder at so proud a back, Whiles the empty guts loud rumblen ...
— English Satires • Various

... well they wouldn't," Otway declared. "And they'd be helped to deny it, or to evade it, by the howl of laughter there'd be in the Commons if any one had the guts to get up and ask if we had any obligations. There's no joke goes down like that sort of joke. Well—" His manner changed. He tucked his stick under his arm and took out a silver cigarette case. "Cigarette? Well—they'll laugh the other side of their chuckle ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson

... in. He knew, then, that Horne and Silverman had not been insane. It wanted in and someday it would get in. When it did it would explode him and jerk out his guts and lungs. Not until that happened, not until the Nothing filled the bubble and enclosed his hideous, turned-inside-out body would it ever ...
— The Nothing Equation • Tom Godwin

... whiskey talk," answered the Texan scornfully. "Men who do the kind of things you have done don't have the guts to ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine

... ain't no picnic.... I tell you, buddy, if you take any prisoners"—he hiccoughed— "after what the Colonel said, I'll lick the spots out of you, by God I will.... Rip up their guts that's all, like they was dummies. Rip up their guts." His voice suddenly changed to one of childish dismay. "Gee, Chris, I'm going ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos

... concerned. The priests have been told to pass the word along. 'No obedience from priests, no priests at the coronation ceremony!—It's my belief from about two hours' observation that we've got a maharajah now with guts, if you'll excuse my ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy

... eyes, he added, "'Taint sech a bad sort o' blade eyther, tho' I weesh 'twas my ole bowie they took from me at Mier. Wal, Cap; ye kin count on me makin' use o't, ef 'casion calls, an' more'n one yaller-belly gittin' it inter his guts; notwithstandin' this durnation clog that's swinging at my legs. By the jumping Geehosophat, if I ked only git shet ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid

... were sinister incidents; but they were trifles compared to what Jurgis saw with his own eyes before long. One curious thing he had noticed, the very first day, in his profession of shoveler of guts; which was the sharp trick of the floor bosses whenever there chanced to come a "slunk" calf. Any man who knows anything about butchering knows that the flesh of a cow that is about to calve, or has just calved, is not fit for food. A ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair

... hundred and threescore veins, two hundred and forty bones and three souls [or natures], the animal, the rational and the essential or [natural], to each of which is allotted a separate function. Moreover, God made him a heart and spleen and lungs and six guts and a liver and two kidneys and marrow [or brain] and buttocks and bones and skin and five senses, hearing, seeing, smell, taste and touch. The heart He set on the left side of the breast and made the stomach the exemplar [or governor] ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous

... we can defend our bellies from hunger, and prevent a mutiny and civil war among the small guts there this winter, we shall make a glorious campaign of it, indeed—it will read ...
— The Fall of British Tyranny - American Liberty Triumphant • John Leacock

... got your choice. You've either got to let up on Standing or kill all three of us. Standing's got your goat. So have I. So has Morrell. You are a stinking coward, and you haven't got the backbone and guts to carry out the dirty butcher's work you'd like ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London

... Six years hiding in the Terran zone. Six years, and I gave you six months! If you'd had the guts to walk out after me, after I rigged that final deal to give you the chance, we could have gone after the biggest thing on Wolf. And we could have brought it off together, instead of spending years spying and dodging and hunting! And now, when I finally get you out of hiding, all you want to ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley

... drank the health of the King, which toast passed round till it came to Mr. Castles, who, having filled a bumper, substituted the following vulgar and sanguinary toast for that of the King—"May the last of Kings be strangled with the guts of the last priest;" a piece of brutality which had not even the miserable merit of being original, he having copied it from one of the French anarchists. This was a pretty specimen of the company that had intruded upon us! ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt

... night, next morning drain it, and boil it in a quart of sweet cream; and being cold put to it six eggs, of them but three whites, cloves, mace, saffron, pepper, suet, dates, currans, salt, sugar. This put in bags, guts, or ...
— The accomplisht cook - or, The art & mystery of cookery • Robert May

... "Let's finish the job!" cried a voice. The rope was placed about the neck of the logger. "You haven't got guts enough to lynch a man in the daytime," was all ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin

... dispose, To special friends, the knot or noose; For 'tis great grace, when statesmen straight Dispatch a friend, let others wait. His warped ear hung o'er the strings, Which was but souse to chitterlings;[2] For guts, some write, ere they are sodden, Are fit for music, or for pudding;[3] From whence men borrow ev'ry kind Of minstrelsy, by string or wind. His grisly beard was long and thick, With which he strung his Fiddle-stick; For he to horse-tail scorned to owe For what on ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart

... Smirna, Madam, instead of France and Italy, where I had like to have had a Scimiter in my Guts, by an impotent old Turk, that spy'd me glancing at his Wife, when he had a hundred and fifty besides, and was past the use of ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker

... Hillcrist, ye've not had occasion to understand men like me. I've got the guts, and I've got the money; and I don't sit still on it. I'm going ahead because I believe in meself. I've no use for sentiment and that sort of thing. Forty of your Jackmans aren't worth me ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... rather than be so blunt and so vulgar;" and then—by way, I suppose, of showing them how to be sarcastic without being either blunt or vulgar—he delivers himself of the following magnificent bursts:—"If guts could perform the function of brains, Greece's seven wise men would cease to be proverbial, for England would present to the world twenty-seven millions of sages.... To eat, to drink, to look greasy, and to grow fat, ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... regarded as a mere academic sentimentalist by a great number of Europeans. There is a very widespread disposition to treat America lightly and contemptuously, to believe that America, as one man put it to me recently, "hasn't the heart to do anything great or the guts to do anything wicked." There is a strong undercurrent of hostility therefore to the idea of America having any voice whatever in the final settlement after the war. It is not for a British writer to analyse the appearance that have thus affected American world prestige. ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells

... deserved she of all that live on ground. My soul deserves of this mischance the peril for to bear. I, wretch, have been the death of thee, which to this place of fear Did cause thee in the night to come, and came not here before. My wicked limbs and wretched guts with cruel teeth therefore Devour ye, O ye lions all that in this rock do dwell. But cowards use to wish for death. The slender weed that fell From Thisbe up he takes, and straight doth bear it to the tree, Which was appointed erst ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick

... radiation dosage like that." He looked down at Pendray. "His problem was easy, mathematically. But not psychologically. That took real guts ...
— The Measure of a Man • Randall Garrett

... Boche a coward, but undoubtedly an unexpected situation very often plays the very deuce with both his courage and his organisation. In his plans he allows for most possibilities, but he is nonplussed when the situation does not turn out exactly as it should on paper. Again, man for man, he loses "guts" in tight corners, because of this same lack of initiative. It is perhaps a temperamental failing. There have been moments in this War when only his incapacity to deal with a suddenly-developed situation has stood between him and ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones

... country without a king?" said another, with astonishment! No; not absolutely so, neither; for the Hottentots have a king; but he always keeps a number of ambitious and crafty men about his Court, who govern him; and those men, who are generally knaves, feed the people with guts, and entrails of beasts, give the king now and then a little bit of the main body, and divide the rest among themselves, their friends, their favourites, and sycophants. But I soon found, these were questions leading to ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, 1777 - Volume 1 (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse

... steer clear o' the grog-sellers' huts, For they sell you Fixed Bay'nets that rots out your guts— Ay, drink that 'ud eat the live steel from your butts— An' it's bad for the young British soldier. Bad, ...
— Barrack-Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling

... steaming drink in his hand, passed him a tray of small hot fried things that tasted crisp and delicious. Bart relaxed, answering questions. How old? Only seventeen? And you came all alone on a Lhari ship, working your way as Astrogator? I must say you've got guts, kid! It was dangerously like the fantasy he had invented. But Montano ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley

... Ye rigid guts of reapers!" I translate[iw] For the great benefit of those who know What indigestion is—that inward fate Which makes all Styx through one small liver flow. A peasant's sweat is worth his lord's estate: Let this one toil for bread—that rack for rent, He who sleeps ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... another, I merely told them I had seen water and natives, but that it was hardly worth while to go back to the place, but that they could go if they liked. Robinson asked me why I had ridden my horse West Australian—shortened to W.A., but usually called Guts, from his persistent attention to his "inwards"—so hard when there seemed no likelihood's of our getting any water for the night? I said, "Ride him back and see." I called this place Escape Glen. In two or three miles after I overtook them, the Petermann became ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... Ha! Anybody can talk any old way to a slacker he wants to and then not say enough. You ain't got no guts you—you're yellow, that's ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy

... sister, Blight her brow with blotch and blister, Cramp her larynx, lung, and liver, In her guts a galling ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps

... coming down the Powder River. A friend of mine passed through here yesterday; his herd was sold for delivery on the Elkhorn, north of here, and he tells me he may not be able to reach there before October. He saw your herds and tells me you are driving the guts out of them. So if there's anything in that old 'ship-fever theory,' you ought to be quarantined until it snows. There's a right smart talk around here of fixing a dead-line below somewhere, and if you get tied up before reaching the railroad, it won't surprise me a little bit. ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams

... doting family should have been posted by this highly entertaining personage en ville, whither he went as a trusted inhabitant of La Ferte to do a few necessary errands for himself; whither he returned with a good deal of colour in his cheeks and a good deal of vin rouge in his guts; going and returning with Tommy, the planton who brought him The Daily Mail every day until Bragard couldn't afford it, after which either B. and I or Jean le Negre took it off Tommy's hands—Tommy, for whom we had a delightful name which ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings

... I just told him I'd see him damned first. That was when he first saw that you can't make any man a slave—not even your own son—as long as he's got enough to eat. He couldn't starve me. It's starved men who are made slaves, Jenny. They've got no guts. Well, he threw me over. He thought I should starve myself and then go back to him, fawning. I didn't go. I was eighteen, and I went on a ship. I had two years of it; and my father died. I got nothing. ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton

... cry, and with that blow, The Turk upon him gan his blade discharge, He cleft his breastplate, having first pierced through, Lined with seven bulls' hides, his mighty targe, And sheathed his weapons in his guts below; Wretched Latinus at that issue large, And at his mouth, poured out his vital blood, And sprinkled with the ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso

... for curing that disease, by contrary operations from the same instrument. He had a large pair of bellows, with a long slender muzzle of ivory: this he conveyed eight inches up the anus, and drawing in the wind, he affirmed he could make the guts as lank as a dried bladder. But when the disease was more stubborn and violent, he let in the muzzle while the bellows were full of wind, which he discharged into the body of the patient; then withdrew the instrument to replenish it, clapping his thumb strongly against the orifice of then ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift

... being both superstitious and scrupulous, believed I should occasion some mischief to their voyage, if they received me: therefore, says one, I will knock him down with an handspike; says another, I will shoot an arrow through his guts; says a third, Let us throw him into the sea. Some of them would not have failed to have executed their design, if I had not got to the side where the captain was; when I threw myself at his feet, and took him by the coat in a begging posture. This action, together with the tears which ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous

... will go farther than my bond. Is it not matter of fact, that from the richest tradesman in all the country, I am reduced to beg and borrow from scriveners and usurers that suck the heart, blood, and guts out of me, and what is all this for! Did you like Frog's countenance better than mine? Was not I your old friend and relation? Have I not presented you nobly? Have I not clad your whole family? Have you not had a hundred yards at a time of the finest ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot

... his broth, or water they were boiling in; he took a dish, and gave me one spoonful of samp, and bid me take as much of the broth as I would. Then I put some of the hot water to the samp, and drank it up, and my spirit came again. He gave me also a piece of the ruff or ridding of the small guts, and I broiled it on the coals; and now may I say with Jonathan, "See, I pray you, how mine eyes have been enlightened, because I tasted a little of this honey" (1 Samuel 14.29). Now is my spirit revived again; though means be never so inconsiderable, ...
— Captivity and Restoration • Mrs. Mary Rowlandson

... saints in glory! Oh, there's bad language from a fellow that wants to pass for a jintleman. May the divil fly away with you, you micher from Munster, and make celery-sauce of your rotten limbs, you mealy-mouthed tub of guts." ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous

... Pietro's injunction had robbed him of a chance like that was enough to rankle in any man's guts and make him work up something pretty close to insanity. I marked it down in my mental files for the investigation I was supposed to make, but let it go for ...
— Let'em Breathe Space • Lester del Rey

... that in some braw new tongue, Ye wrote or prentit, preached or sung, Will still be just a bairn, an' young In fame an' years, Whan the hale planet's guts are dung About ...
— Underwoods • Robert Louis Stevenson

... angry with this young chap for something that he had not done, and called him a 'confounded young bear,' upon which the youngster runs to the jacob-ladder of the main rigging, climbs up, and as soon as he had gained the main rattlings he cries out, 'Well, if I'm a bear, you aren't fit to carry guts to a bear.' 'What, sir?' cried the master. 'Mutiny, by heavens! Up to the masthead, sir, directly.' 'Don't you see that I was going of my own accord?' replied the midshipman; for, you see, he knew that he would be sent there, so he ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat

... you abuse my father. A man, he was— No fonder of his glass than a man should be. Few like him now: I've not his guts, and Jim's Just a lamb's head, gets half-cocked on a thimble, And mortal, swilling an eggcupful; a gill Would send him randy, reeling to the gallows. Dad was the boy! Got through three bottles a day, And never turned ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

... wash him clean, and then take out his guts; and to that end make the hole as little, and near to his gills, as you may conveniently, and especially make clean his throat from the grass and weeds that are usually in it; for if that be not very ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton

... of the state of health in which he was?—Sometimes she has said he has been very well, sometimes ill. I remember I heard her say that my master complained of a ball of fire in his guts. I believe it was before the Monday he ate the water gruel. I cannot particularly say. I believe a fortnight before he died, then she said, Mr. Cranstoun had told her of that famous ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead

... and go ter a fish market and ask 'em ter give you a little fish brine; then go in the woods and get some poke-root berries. Now, there's two kinds of poke-root berries, the red skin and the white skin berry. Put all this in a pot, mix with it the guts from a green gourd and 9 parts of red pepper. Make a poultice and put to his side on that knot. Now, listen, your son will be afraid and think you are trying ter do something ter him but be gentle and persuade him ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration

... and that they had a name for it—Casentula. Now Aristotle, in a passage which I think has been much misunderstood (and which we must admit to be in part erroneous), tells us that the eel develops from what he calls γης εντερα {gês entera}, a word which we translate, literally, the 'guts of the earth', and which commentators interpret as 'earthworms'! But in Sicilian Doric, γης εντερα {gês entera} would at once become γας εντερα {gas entera}; and between 'Gasentera' and the modern Sicilian 'Casentula' ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... of the digestive apparatus of the ox, it may not be uninteresting to quote some of the quaint speculations of Nathaniel Grew on this subject, from his 'Comparative Anatomy of Stomachs and Guts.' ...
— Delineations of the Ox Tribe • George Vasey

... the jejunum, which is so called from its being generally found empty: the ileum is only a prolongation of the jejunum, and terminates in the first of the great intestines, called the caecum. The other great guts are the colon ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett

... the face of the Earth nor, possibly, a more fearful one. Fear that whatever decision you made would be the wrong one and the Promotion Board would pass you by. So you carefully avoided making any decisions at all. He had been the same way himself. You salved your lack of guts with the knowledge that once you made captain, things would be different and you could assert yourself, be the man you had always considered yourself to be. Only once you became a captain things ...
— Decision • Frank M. Robinson

... the Guts of Cam and Isis, May I be well in front to see you then Taught by immersion what the local price is To pay for being ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 29, 1916 • Various

... competition, the kind'earted Hinglish capitalists would be able to sell their goods and give us Plenty of Work, and if they could, I assure you that we should hall be perfectly willing and contented to go on workin' our bloody guts out for the benefit of our masters for the rest of our lives. We're quite willin' to work: that's hall we arst for—Plenty of Work—but as we can't get it we're forced to come out 'ere and arst you to spare a few coppers towards a crust of ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell

... to rave about pasture. In the pit for composts were heaped up branches of trees, blood, guts, feathers—everything that he could find. He used Belgian cordial, Swiss wash, lye, red herrings, wrack, rags; sent for guano, tried to manufacture it himself; and, pushing his principles to the farthest point, he would not suffer even ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert

... An' they had to swaller a lotta them hot an' hasty words—stuck heavy in quite a few craws, I reckon." Fenner grinned. "Only, th' Don, he's got agin him now a big list of little men who'd like to be big chiefs. Every once in a while they gits together an' makes war talk. Never quite got up guts 'nough to paint their faces an' hit th' trail, not yet. But did somebody like Bayliss look like he was beginnin' to make things move, then he'd have a lotta willin' hands to help him shove. Up to now Johnny's been their best bet at ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton

... matter of it, for they did never refrain any Company for it; none of our People caught it of them, for we were afraid of it, and kept off. They are sometimes troubled with the Small Pox, but their ordinary Distempers are Fevers, Agues, Fluxes, with great pains, and gripings in their Guts. The Country affords a great many Drugs and Medicinal Herbs, whose Virtues are not unknown to some of them that pretend to ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various

... best, my Americans were not mistaken. There are thousands fighting to-day who share his example. One is an ex-champion sculler of Oxford; even in those days he was blind as a bat. His subsequent performance is consistent with his record; we always knew that he had guts. At the start of the war, he tried to enlist and was turned down on the score of eyesight. He tried four times with no better result. The fifth time he presented himself he was fool-proof; he had learnt the eyesight tests by heart. He ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson

... would make a dog sick and his whole life he's been saving every cent he's made. He gives his wife one dress every three years till she died. That's how tight he is. But he's sure got the money. Told everybody his kid run off with all his savings. That's a lie. His kid didn't have the guts or the sense to steal even what was coming to him for the work he done for the old miser. Matter of fact, he's got enough coin saved—all gold—to break the back of a mule. That's a fact! Never did no investing, but turned everything ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand

... the burnt coal; so Euphues, which at the first increasing of our familiarity was very zealous, is now at the last cast become most faithless." Besides the fish Scolopidus, the favorite animals of Lyly's menagerie are such as the chameleon, which, "though he have most guts draweth least breath;" the bird Piralis, "which sitting upon white cloth is white, upon green, green;" and the serpent Porphirius, which, "though he be full of poison, yet having no teeth, ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... suld have done, —and that I suld have held up my hand to my brow, as if the grandeur of the king and his horse-graith thegither had casten the glaiks in my een, and mair jackanape tricks I suld hae played, instead of offering the Sifflication, he said, as if I had been bringing guts to a bear. [Footnote: I am certain this prudential advice is not original on Mr. Linklater's part, but I am not at present able to produce my authority. I think it amounted to this, that James ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... Valencia in a tragic voice: "Ea!" he added, cleaving the air with his knife. "Now let's see who are the men with guts!" ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja

... laird had ta'en the batts, [botts] Or some curmurring in his guts, [commotion] His only son for Hornbook sets, An' pays him well: The lad, for twa guid gimmer-pets, [pet-ewes] Was ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson

... though she had friends among the lawyers. So, being hard up, she became a monthly nurse, and lived in the Rue Barre-du-Bec. Well, she went out to nurse an old gentleman that had a disease of the lurinary guts (saving your presence); they used to tap him like an artesian well, and he needed such care that she used to sleep on a truckle-bed in the same room with him. You would hardly believe such a thing!—'Men respect nothing,' you'll tell me, 'so selfish as they are.' Well, she used to ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac



Words linked to "Guts" :   colloquialism, fortitude



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