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Pierce   Listen
verb
Pierce  v. t.  (past & past part. pierced; pres. part. piercing)  
1.
To thrust into, penetrate, or transfix, with a pointed instrument. "I pierce... her tender side."
2.
To penetrate; to enter; to force a way into or through; to pass into or through; as, to pierce the enemy's line; a shot pierced the ship.
3.
Fig.: To penetrate; to affect deeply; as, to pierce a mystery. "Pierced with grief." "Can no prayers pierce thee?"






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Pierce" Quotes from Famous Books



... that hour lay the fate of millions, rises from the group, standing slightly bent, forward, with one foot on the bottom of the boat, the other on the forward bench. His mild yet serious and commanding glance seems seeking to pierce the mist of the farther shore and discover the enemy, while intimations of the future grandeur of his country rise upon his mind. Nothing of youthful rashness appears in the expression of this figure, but the thoughtful artist has depicted the 'heart for any ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various

... yourselves, 'Our minister has ill chosen his time—now, with the enemy at our gates—to be preaching to us that we should be confirming what little hold we have on the divine purpose, to advance upon it; to counsel our striving to pierce further into the mind of God; when all the newspapers tell us that, for success in war, we should enter into ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)

... red with blood. Diaz shaded his eyes with his right hand, and tried to pierce the distant obscurity. All at once he perceived at the end of the luminous zone projected by the fires, the man he was seeking. He was making furious evolutions on his horse, and uttering shouts of defiance. Diaz remembered the speech of the haciendado ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid

... been used in reference to himself but in connection with a discussion as to the motives generally which influence men. But the words were made use of by the Spirit as arrows to pierce the ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne

... years he had served as a scapegoat for his cousins. They set a certain value upon him for his use in this respect. Ah, if only he had that keen, embarrassing eye of Bill Campbell with which to pierce to the guilty heart of the sheriff and make him speak! The eye of his uncle was like the eye of a crowd. It was an audience in itself and condemned or praised with the ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand

... began to croak, summoning so many companions that the whole land of Egypt swarmed with them. Wherever an Egyptian took up his stand, frogs appeared, and in some mysterious way they were able to pierce the hardest of metals, and even the marble palaces of the Egyptian nobles afforded no protection against them. If a frog came close to them, the walls split asunder immediately. "Make way," the frogs would call out to the stone, "that I may do the ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg

... comrade in arms, Gerier, Spurred at the Emir with levelled spear; Severed his shield and his mail apart,— The lance went through them, to pierce his heart. Dead on the field at the blow he lay. Olivier said, ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various

... sought an interview with Baron Maurice de Hirsch in May, 1895. He planned an address to the Rothschilds. He talked of his ideas to friends in literary circles. His mind was obsessed by a gigantic problem which gave him no rest. He was struggling to pierce the veils of revelation. He saw a world in which the Jewish people lacked a fulcrum for national action and therefore had to seek to create it through beneficence. He had a remarkably resourceful and ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl

... majority, however, desired some fair measure of self-government, and relief from economic and financial burdens, under the Spanish flag. The purchase of the island by the United States was proposed by President Polk, in 1848; by President Pierce, in 1854; and by President Buchanan, in his time. Crises appeared from time to time. Among them was the incident of the Black Warrior, in 1854. Mr. Rhodes thus describes the affair, in his History of ...
— Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson

... thine The softest passions to refine; Thy myrtle groves, thy melting strains, Shall harmonise and soothe my pains. Nor will I cast one thought behind, On foes relentless, friends unkind: I feel, I feel their poison'd dart Pierce the life-nerve within my heart; 'Tis mingled with the vital heat That bids my throbbing pulses beat; Soon shall that vital heat be o'er, Those throbbing pulses beat no more! No—I will breathe the spicy gale; Plunge the clear stream, new health exhale; O'er my pale ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson

... species of purification," said Solomon Eagle, who was present during these proceedings; "one that shall search every nook within it—shall embrace all those columns, and pierce every crack and crevice in those sculptured ornaments; and then, and not till then, ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth

... in the market-place at Altorf, before which emblem of authority he ordered every man to uncover and do reverence as he passed. The refusal of a peasant to obey this command, his arrest, trial, and condemnation to pierce with an arrow an apple placed on his own child's head, his dexterity in performing this feat, his escape from his enemies, his murder of the tyrant Gessler, the solemn compact sworn at Ruetli, and the revolutionary events ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... However fair thy youth's consummate glory Envelop thee from top to toe ... thou knowest Not much about my life, thou hast but seen A fragment of its shell, as dimly gleaming In shadows through the op'nings of a hedge. I wish thine eye might pierce the heart of it: As fully as the earth beneath my feet Have I put from me all things low and common. Callst thou that easy, since I now am old? 'Tis true, I've lost some friends by death ere this— And thou at most thy grandam—many friends, And those that live, where are they scattered ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various

... had dispatched Jonas to Abila, and he had returned with a number of cows' horns. Round the fire in the evening, the men had set to work to pierce the points with heated arrowheads, and had converted them into instruments capable of giving a deep, prolonged sound. On the return of the scouts, John set his men ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty

... Jamison to furnish Conard Shanks, whose son is in the army. Jonathan Davis to furnish Mary Stoker. Pierce Bayly do. wife of ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head

... Paul owes its commercial importance. With the same restless energy of the Northern American, its leading men have looked far into the future, and shaped their course for later times; railroads are stretching out in every direction to pierce the solitude of the yet uninhabited prairies and pine forests of the North. There is probably no part of the world in which the inhabitants are so unhealthy as in America; but the life is more trying than the climate, the constant use of spirit taken "straight," the incessant chewing ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler

... you could be tested," said Arthur, "you are such a slippery set. Now here is a book I have been looking over, called Annals of Salem, by Joseph B. Felt, published in 1827. On the 109th page it says: 'Captain Pierce, of the ship Desire, belonging to this port, was commissioned to transport fifteen boys and one hundred women, of the captive Pequods, to Bermuda, and sell them as slaves. He was obliged, however, to make for Providence Island. There he disposed of the Indians. He returned from ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman

... long trail of smoke was rising and the explosions became louder. We suddenly discovered the "Archie" in flames. It was in the courtyard and for camouflage had been covered with branches. It was mounted on an armored Pierce-Arrow truck. The "crump" had hit it, and gasoline, paint, branches, and hubs were supplying the fuel which was cooking out the ammunition, the crack, crack, being the report of single shells, whereas one ...
— "Crumps", The Plain Story of a Canadian Who Went • Louis Keene

... that opening admits A presence as much better than her dreams, As happiness than any longing seems. The king advanced, and, with a reverent kiss Upon her hand, said, "Lady, what is this? You, whose sweet youth should others' solace be, Pierce all our hearts, languishing piteously. We pray you, for the love of us, be cheered, Nor be too reckless of that life, endeared To us who know your passing worthiness, And count your blooming life as ...
— How Lisa Loved the King • George Eliot

... throws, While star-beams lull Vesuvius to repose: Girds the white spray, and in the blue lagoon, Weeps like a walrus o'er the waning moon? Who can declare?—not thou, pervading boy Whom pibrochs pierce not, crystals cannot cloy;— Not thou soft Architect of silvery gleams, Whose soul would simmer in Hesperian streams, Th' exhaustless fire—the bosom's azure bliss, That hurtles, life-like, o'er a scene like this;— Defies the distant agony of Day— And sweeps o'er hecatombs—away! away! Say ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... on the nails being driven low. They should pierce the wall not above an inch and five-eighths above the shoe. A nail penetrating the white line and emerging low on the wall destroys the least possible amount of horn, has a wide and strong clinch, rather than a narrow one, which would be formed near the point of the nail, and, furthermore, ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture

... expedition across the lower slopes of a mountain range—unmarked on any map, unnamed by any geographer—to the mysterious Simiacine Plateau. It almost seemed as if the wild, bloodshot eyes of their guide could pierce the density of the forest where Nature had held unchecked, untrimmed sway for countless generations. Victor Durnovo noted a thousand indications unseen by his four companions. The journey no longer partook ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman

... then, go, If thou wilt so, but be thy steps too late! Why can not I, too, arm me with a dagger, To pierce with stabs a thousand-fold the breast Of infamous Aegisthus! O blind mother, oh, How art thou fettered to his baseness! Yet, And yet, I tremble—If the angry mob Avenge their murdered king on her—O Heaven! Let me go after her—But who comes here? Pylades, and my brother ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells

... stopped like one who had unexpectedly trod with bare foot upon something sharp enough to pierce the flesh to the bone, and even to grate against it. There was a strong, nay, a fearful force of anguish visible in what she felt. Her brows were wildly depressed from their natural position, her ...
— The Dead Boxer - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... shall mind of man Descry Thy dazzling throne, And pierce and find Thee out, and scan Where ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth

... hills indicated a large number of white ant eggs thrown here in the wingara[146] by the Munga-munga women as they passed across the country. A solitary flat-topped hill arose to mark the spot where the Wongana (crow) ancestor paused for some time to pierce his nose; and on the second night we camped by the side of a waterhole where the same crow lived for some time in the wingara, and where now there are plenty of crow spirit children. All the time, as we travelled along, the old men were talking ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... man's first act would surely have been to switch on the lights. And an honest man would hardly have crept so stealthily. It became apparent to Jimmy, as he leaned over the rail and tried to pierce the darkness, that there was sinister work afoot; and he had hardly reached this conclusion when his mind took a further leap and he guessed the identity of the soft-footed person below. It could be none but his old friend Lord Wisbeach, ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... with the numerous rivers and conduits which form so many natural moats on west and east, the city soon becomes impregnable. To-day such puny efforts would be ludicrous, but in those times of cannon balls which could scarcely pierce a two-inch board, they more than suffice, did he for whom the work was done ...
— Oxford • Frederick Douglas How

... this puzzling text. Shao Yung, A.D. 1011-1077, sought the key in numbers: Ch'eng I., A.D. 1033-1107, in the eternal fitness of things. "But Chu Hsi alone," says a writer of the 17th century, "was able to pierce through the meaning and appropriate the thoughts of the inspired man who composed it." No foreigner, however, has been able quite to understand what Chu Hsi did make of it, and several have gone so far as ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various

... like a soul cast out and praying Vainly, prayers that pierce not ears when hearts resist: Now mine own soul sighs, adrift as wind and ...
— A Century of Roundels • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... away; I tuck up my robe, and am buskin'd soon, And tie to my forehead a waxing moon; 30 I course the fleet stag, unkennel the fox, And chase the wild goats o'er summits of rocks; With shouting and hooting we pierce through the sky, And Echo turns hunter, and doubles ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... the end of September; the wind blew violently. The faint glimpses of the pale moon, hidden momentarily by masses of dark clouds that were sweeping across the sky, whitened the gravel walks that led to the house, but were unable to pierce the obscurity of the thick shrubberies, in which a man could conceal himself without any fear of discovery. I hid myself in the one nearest to the path Villefort must take, and scarcely was I there when, amidst the gusts of wind, I fancied I heard groans; but you know, or rather ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... churches of England submitted to Rome, those of Scotland maintained their freedom. In the twelfth century, however, popery became established here, and in no country did it exercise a more absolute sway. Nowhere was the darkness deeper. Still there came rays of light to pierce the gloom, and give promise of the coming day. The Lollards, coming from England with the Bible and the teachings of Wycliffe, did much to preserve the knowledge of the gospel, and every century ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White

... and two strongly tempered pistols, narrow at the mouth, hanging from his saddle. And to get the barrels of their pistols narrow they pierce the metal which they intend to convert into arms. Further, every cavalry soldier has a sword and a dagger. But the rest, who form the light-armed troops, carry a metal cudgel. For if the foe cannot pierce their metal for pistols and cannot make swords, they attack him with clubs, shatter ...
— The City of the Sun • Tommaso Campanells

... whose elbow had been jogged while he was tracing it. His lips, which pouted almost like a negro's, disclosed teeth not unlike a stag-hound's and his double-chin reposed itself upon a white cravat, one of whose points threatened the stars, while the other was ready to pierce the ground. A torrent of light hair escaped from under the enormous brim of his well-worn felt-hat. He wore a hazel-coloured overcoat with a large cape, worn thread-bare and rough as a grater; from its yawning pockets peeped bundles of manuscripts and pamphlets. The enjoyment of his sour-crout, ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger

... office and title of a chief magistrate, be he emperor, king, or elected head of a republic. It sets him apart. Look at the crowds that swarm to get a glimpse of the President when he passes through, no matter whether it is George Washington or Franklin Pierce. ...
— Four Americans - Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman • Henry A. Beers

... A carpenter can do even as much. But it is a glorious and praise-worthy action with one lance to break and overthrow ten enemies. Therefore, with a sharp, stiff, strong, and well-steeled lance would he usually force up a door, pierce a harness, beat down a tree, carry away the ring, lift up a cuirassier saddle, with the mail-coat and gauntlet. All this he did in complete arms from head to foot. As for the prancing flourishes and ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... folks in the face, as much as to say, "Look at that, my lord; can any of you show me a woman like that?" She enraged some country ladies with three times her money, by a sort of desperate perfection which they found in her. Miss Pybus said she was cold and haughty; Miss Pierce, that she was too proud for her station; Mrs. Wapshot, as a doctor of divinity's lady, would have the pas of her, who was only the wife of a medical practitioner. In the meanwhile, this lady moved through ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... so much tenacity united with such fine confidence on one side, and such generous love on the other. It is a commonplace how much waste would be avoided in human life if men would more freely allow their vision to pierce in this way through the distorting veils of egoism, to the reality of sentiment and ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley

... the lonely sky, If I might lend their life a voice, Seem to bear rather than rejoice. And even could the intemperate prayer Man iterates, while these forbear, For movement, for an ampler sphere, Pierce Fate's impenetrable ear; Not milder is the general lot Because our spirits have forgot, In action's dizzying eddy whirl'd, The something that infects ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... at Stafford; Gully, Pontefract; Cobbett, Oldham; though I am glad that Cobbett is in Parliament. Gully's history is extraordinary. He was taken out of prison twenty-five or thirty years ago by Mellish to fight Pierce, surnamed the 'Game Chicken,' being then a butcher's apprentice; he fought him and was beaten. He afterwards fought Belcher (I believe), and Gresson twice, and left the prize-ring with the reputation of being the ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville

... silence. Sir Eustace looked hard and straight into the pale eyes, as though he would pierce to the soul behind. But though Scott met the look unwavering, his soul was beyond all scrutiny. There was something about him that baffled all search, something colossal that barred the way. For the second time Sir Eustace realized himself to be at a disadvantage; haughtily ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell

... to the forest of Nemea, where, having discovered the lion's lair, he attempted to pierce him with his arrows; but finding these of no avail he felled him to the ground with his club, and before the animal had time to recover from the terrible blow, {239} Heracles seized him by the neck and, with a ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens

... rage; when the Catholics are victorious, the retaliation is full of hypocrisy and greed. The Protestants pull down churches and monasteries, expel the monks, burn the crucifixes, take the body of some criminal from the gallows, nail it on a cross, pierce its side, put a crown of thorns round its temples and set it up in the market-place—an effigy of Jesus on Calvary. The Catholics levy contributions, take back what they had been deprived of, exact ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... right to say, that while this biography is so far sanctioned by General Pierce, as it comprises a generally correct narrative of the principal events of his life, the author does not understand him as thereby necessarily indorsing all the sentiments put forth by himself in the progress of the work. These are the author's own speculations upon the ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... my darling, dark-eyed Dolores! you, with your deep, unfathomable, glowing, soul-lit eyes that pierce to my inmost heart, and make me ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille

... it; and sail through witch-whales and icebergs to Iceland and Greenland, and the sunny lands which they said lay even beyond, across the all but unknown ocean. He would go up the Baltic to the Jomsburg Vikings, and fight against Lett and Esthonian heathen, and pierce inland, perhaps, through Puleyn and the bison forests, to the land from whence came the magic swords and the old Persian coins which he had seen so often in the halls of his forefathers. No; he would go South, to the land of sun and ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley

... more and more dismal nature—and at last they either succumbed and became despised tools and toys of the Mormons, or got scared and discomforted beyond all endurance and left the Territory. If a brave officer kept on courageously till his pluck was proven, some pliant Buchanan or Pierce would remove him and appoint a stick in his place. In 1857 General Harney came very near being appointed Governor of Utah. And so it came very near being Harney governor and Cradlebaugh judge! —two men who never had any idea of fear further than the sort of murky comprehension of it which they ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... obvious truth in this conjecture, that all eyes turned from the light and animation afforded by the decks of the frigate, to look abroad on the waters, in a vain desire to pierce the darkness, as if to read the fate of their apparently devoted ship from the aspect ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper

... we perceived the Island to be strangely overcast with Fogs, which no Brightness could pierce, so that a kind of gloomy Horror sat always brooding over it. This had something in it very shocking to easy Tempers, insomuch that some others, whom Patience had by this time gained over, left us here, and privily convey'd themselves round the ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... behind him and walked over to the negro, who was squatting in a corner with a rifle in his hands. Viola, left alone, crossed to the window and looked out. She was pale and anxious. Her wide, alarmed eyes tried to pierce the darkness outside. Suddenly she started back, pressing her hands ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon

... Westport and I sat with Lord and Lady Castlereagh. They were both young at this time, and both wore an impressive appearance of youthful happiness; neither, happily for their peace of mind, able to pierce that cloud of years, not much more than twenty, which divided them from the day destined in one hour to wreck the happiness of both. We had met both on other occasions; and their conversation, through the course of that day's pomps, was ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... did the terrified kavass bid the coachman turn and turn again; in vain did Paul, in agonized excitement, try to pierce the darkness with his eyes, and to distinguish the well-known face in the throngs that crowded the brightly lighted squares. At the end of two hours he began to realize the hopelessness of the search. Suddenly it struck him that Alexander might have found ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford

... the wood Know where the fatal arrows grow; They spring not by the summer flood; They pierce not ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... this day there was an increase of inflammation. From this circumstance, and from the neglect of the eschars for two or three days already mentioned, I suspected the formation of a scab under them. It was impossible to pierce the eschars by the penknife without breaking them, as they had become too hard and thick by delay and the ...
— An Essay on the Application of the Lunar Caustic in the Cure of Certain Wounds and Ulcers • John Higginbottom

... not with kindness, pardon me, but it has only been with cold civility. I am sure that if you only knew how my heart yearns for a gentle and hopeful word from your adored lips, how it bleeds and recoils within my bosom when your cold words pierce it as with an arrow, you ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison

... Charlemagne, Holger Danske—believed that in their country's need these would arise from the shades to lead their people to victory; and at Bideford one feels that, should any 'knight of the sea' return, he would find a town not strange to him, and, if the stress were sharp enough to pierce the thin husk that later civilization has added, a people who would understand and not ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote

... smoke with a lurid heart to it covered the flank. The beat of the sun from above and the swelter of dust from below were overpowering. Gun horses fell in the traces and died of pure exhaustion. The men, parched and silent, but cheerful, strained their eyes to pierce the continual mirage which played over the horizon, and to catch the first glimpse of the Modder. At last, as the sun began to slope down to the west, a thin line of green was discerned, the bushes which skirt the banks ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle

... leaped to his feet, and stood face to face with his preserver. The giant trees, towering up until they seemed to pierce the sky, half shut out the moonlight, but yet Sir Everard could see that it was a slender stripling who stood before him, a slouched hat pulled ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming

... Indian summer days which we sometimes have in late autumn. Everybody enjoyed each day as it came, and thought little about the coming cold. But one morning the sky was gray and gloomy, and the sun could not pierce through the heavy clouds. The air was cold and now and then a snowflake ...
— The Later Cave-Men • Katharine Elizabeth Dopp

... Thou hast a higher, and a happier lot! The prime of blessings, in a world like this, Is early transit to the realms of bliss: Thence thy pure spirit oft will charm to rest Those pangs of fond regret, that pierce my breast, When recollection mournfully surveys Unfinish'd products of thy studious days. Ah what a host of filial fair designs: Where, springing from the heart, the fancy shines, Thy enterprising mind had here bestow'd, To honour Felpham as thy sire's abode! All to thy mental ...
— Poems on Serious and Sacred Subjects - Printed only as Private Tokens of Regard, for the Particular - Friends of the Author • William Hayley

... hell my sorrows meet To multiply the smart; They nail my hands, they pierce my feet And try ...
— The Psalms of David - Imitated in the Language of The New Testament - And Applied to The Christian State and Worship • Isaac Watts

... But all would not do,—Though St. Megrin got through The window,—below stood De Guise and his crew. And though never man was more brave than St. Megrin, Yet fighting a score is extremely fatiguing; He thrust carte and tierce Uncommonly fierce, But not Beelzebub's self could their cuirasses pierce: While his doublet and hose, Being holiday clothes, Were soon cut through and through from his knees to his nose. Still an old crooked sixpence the Conjurer gave him, From pistol and sword was sufficient to save him, But, when beat on his knees, That confounded De Guise Came behind with ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie

... after pointing out the errors of others, to commit fresh mistakes of their own. In the skilful criticism of M. Renan's work on the Apostles, in No. 29 of the "Fortnightly Review" there is now and then a vulnerable spot through which a controversial shaft may perhaps be made to pierce. ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske

... one would be ready to suppose to be that of a pious and contrite man, but which is, in fact, that of a hypocrite. Girt with a poignard, he seeks the place where his perfidious arm can, with assurance, aim the blow with which he wishes to pierce the heart of his neighbour, his friend, and often his brother. By his uncouth sounds, he calls his people to come and range themselves under his banner, to hear the praises of the Prophet. They all ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard

... flowed against you? How are your eyes, after all the briny tears that have steeped them? How are your poor nerves, after all the shocks that have agitated them? All these things have been on my mind; but from my long silence, you cannot believe it. What are we all, but broken reeds, which pierce the hand when laid hold of for support? There is but one Friend to poor, fallen, miserable man, in the universe. He is mercy; he is goodness; he is truth; he is wisdom; he is unchangeable, and never will ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham

... no longer required, Pierre now departed. The sudden idea that three o'clock must have long since struck and that Marie must be waiting for him made him hasten his steps. However, whilst he was endeavouring to pierce the crowd, he saw the girl arrive in her little conveyance, dragged along by Gerard, who had not ceased transporting sufferers to the piscina. She had become impatient, suddenly filled with a conviction that she was at last in a frame of mind to find grace. And at sight ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... to pierce the inmost recesses of your very soul, yet when you tried, through them, to find a clue to their owner's thoughts, you were utterly defeated, for they became misty ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng

... much too thick," answered Barbicane; "we do not want a projectile to pierce armour-plate; it only needs sides strong enough to resist the pressure of the powder-gas. This, therefore, is the problem:—What thickness ought an iron obus to have in order to weigh only 20,000 lbs.? Our clever calculator, Mr. Maston, will ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne

... gazed into the gloom, spattered with a delicate radiance which did not pierce the shadows, but only made lively the darkness, she was suddenly conscious of the dull regular thud of horses' hoofs upon the veld. Troops of Mounted Infantry were evidently moving to take up a new ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... a gas. The gas requires more room than the powder and is further expanded by the heat released by the chemical change. The expanding gas frees itself by pushing the bullet out of its way. The bullet gets such a push through the exploding of the gunpowder that it may fly to a mark and pierce it. ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne

... only were visible upon the after deck; the one lay reclining upon an arm chest, muffled up in a dread-nought pea jacket, the other paced up and down hurriedly, and with an air of deep pre-occupation. At intervals he would stop and lean over the gang-way, apparently endeavouring to pierce through the fog and catch a glimpse of the adjacent shore, and, on these occasions, a profound sigh would burst from his chest. Then again he would resume his rapid walk, with the air of one who has resolved ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson

... to pierce the gloom, but the fog had settled down again, the night was dark, and the boy could scarcely see the waves breaking on the shore not ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... that it endowed the woman with such supernatural fortitude that her very form seemed to dilate, and her large eye and lovely mouth expressed—if it could be, in such a scene and such an hour—unutterable scorn. Antipathy, even as love, will pierce disguise; and that one glance, lit up with almost bewildering light, in the prisoner's mind, link after link of what had before been impenetrable mystery. Her husband's discovery of her former love for Arthur; his murder; the suspicion ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar

... your hands, or a modern one in which the early spelling is retained, what continual lessons in English might you derive from it. Thus 'nostril' is always spelt by him and his cotemporaries 'nosethrill'; a little earlier it was 'nosethirle'. Now 'to thrill' is the same as to drill or pierce; it is plain then here at once that the word signifies the orifice or opening with which the nose is thrilled, drilled, or pierced. We might have read the word for ever in our modern spelling without being taught this. 'Ell' tells us nothing about itself; but in 'eln' ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench

... a melodrama, I do. What's the use of clapping your gloved hands together at a melodrama? That doesn't express your feelings. I always want to put two fingers in my mouth and pierce the atmosphere with a regular gallery-god whistle when I see the villain laid low by the tow-headed idiot in the last act—but it wouldn't do in the orchestra. You might as well expect the people in the boxes to eat peanuts as ...
— The Bicyclers and Three Other Farces • John Kendrick Bangs

... arrived within fifty yards of the opposite side, and the dark forest was again before my face; but even at that short distance, the eye vainly endeavoured to pierce its sombre depths. I was congratulating myself, that I had passed the numerous logs that lay across the path, when yet one more appeared between me and the standing trees. It had been one of the tallest victims of the tornado; and now lay transversely to the line of the ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid

... elastic than the rest, which presented the texture and cellular structure of cartilage. This was neither the cartilage of the nose, nor the cartilage of an articulation, but certainly the fibro-cartilage of the ear. You sent me, then, the end of an ear, and it is not the lower end—the lobe which women pierce to put their gold ornaments in, but the upper end, into which ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About

... cannot pierce a wink beyond] That this is the utmost extent of the prospect of ambition, the point where the eye can pass no further, and where objects lose their distinctness, so that what is there discovered, is faint, obscure, and doubtful. (rev. ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson

... freedmen wait upon me in the morning. It is possible that the Republic may call for every man; and though I fear Titus Manlius Torquatus cannot strike the blows he struck in Sicily, yet even his sword might avail to pierce light armour; and he is happy in that he can give those to the State whose muscles shall suffice to drive the point through heavy buckler ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne

... with my friend Eddie Pierce." adding as the ceremony was performed, "Eddie keeps a good team, any ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... cleared immediately, now served as a bed on which to lay him out, and the four officers stood at the windows, rigid and sobered, with the stern faces of soldiers on duty, and tried to pierce through the darkness of the night, amid the steady torrent of rain. Suddenly, a shot was heard, and then another, a long way off; and for four hours they heard from time to time near or distant reports and rallying cries, strange words uttered as ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... feeling that so much depended on the result of this battle, that his eyes strove so earnestly to pierce the heavy clouds of smoke that overhung ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton

... power over me. I feel that if ever—if ever she should disclose herself to me, it would be the strangest revelation. Every woman wears a mask, except to one man; but Rhoda's—Miss Nunn's—is, I fancy, a far completer disguise than I ever tried to pierce.' ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing

... annoyed by its successes, partly from commercial and partly from pro-slavery considerations. The America which he remembered, and regretted that he could not still be proud of, was the America where Pierce and Buchanan were Presidents, where Jefferson Davis and John B. Floyd were Secretaries of War. He had, in short, become a Tory; for Toryism is regard for usages at the expense of men. He and the English Tory desired the triumph of Slavery, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various

... in the Iles Sainte-Marguerite and in the Bastille, the successive scenes of that long-protracted agony will give the prisoner a form shaped by his own fancy and a grief proportioned to his own power of suffering. How we long to pierce the thoughts and feel the heart-beats and watch the trickling tears behind that machine-like exterior, that impassible mask! Our imagination is powerfully excited by the dumbness of that fate borne by one whose words never reached ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... Pau in its beauty, winter must have given place to spring. When the grass once more begins to grow, the trees to unfold their tender leaves, the rivers to swell, and the birds to sing; while yet the sun's rays cannot pierce the snowy garment on the distant heights; then Pau is in her beauty. Passing—as we so often passed —down the Rue Montpensier and the consecutive Rue Serviez, into the Rue du Lycee, then turning from ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough

... made bowels trail; we are fifteen thousand young men untried, who should buy our praise and our honour, and seize and acquire strange lands, and kill and shame and grieve our enemies, cleave the bright helmets, pierce the shields, break and tear the hauberks of mail, shed blood and make brains to fly. To me a pleasure it seems to put on hauberk, watch long nights, fast long days. Let us go strike upon them without more delay, that we ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence

... it," replied the other; "to reach the cellar beneath the House of Lords we must pierce through the foundation. 'Tis of great thickness and the task will ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley

... trust you have not spared to break down my servants' rooms, and the stables as well as pierce ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson

... swords of those who surround me pierce my breast a thousand times if at any time I oppress the countries I now lead to freedom! Let the authority of the people be the only existing power on earth! Let the name of tyranny be obliterated from the language of the world ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell

... bulwarks. The fore-end of the brig was wrapped in a lurid and sombre mistiness; the sullen mingling of darkness and of light; her masts pointing straight up could be tracked by torn gleams and vanished above as if the trucks had been tall enough to pierce the heavy mass of vapours motionless overhead. She was beautifully precious. His loving eyes saw her floating at rest in a wavering halo, between an invisible sky and an invisible sea, like a miraculous craft suspended in the air. He turned ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad

... the evening of April 15th, 1914, a group of Catholics entered the Pierce Hotel in Denver, Colorado, overpowered a police guard and seized the Rev. Otis L. Spurgeon, an anti-Catholic lecturer. They bound and gagged him, took him to a lonely woods, and beat him to insensibility. The same thing happened to the Rev. Augustus Barnett, at Buffalo; the Rev. William Black was ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair

... would not hide himself.' This reflection reassured me. A man now advanced alone: it seemed to us that he quitted another group who were left under the shade of the trees. As he advanced, my eyes made violent efforts to pierce the obscurity, and I thought I recognized first the tall figure, then the features, of M. de Monsoreau. I now feared almost as much the help as the danger. I remained mute, and drew back from the window. Arrived at the wall, he ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas

... They pierce the hide of the thickest and dullest; they startle and bewilder the brains of the most crass and the most insensitive. And it is just because they do this that Wilde is so cordially feared and hated. It was, one cannot help feeling, the presence in him of a shrewd vein of sheer boyish bravado, ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys

... afternoon. Secretary of the Interior Lane, Senators Moses E. Clapp of Minnesota and Shafroth of Colorado and many other officials and prominent men and women had seats on the platform and a large audience was present. The Rev. U. G. B. Pierce, of All Souls Unitarian Church, gave the invocation. Dr. Shaw was in the chair and the speakers were Dudley Field Malone, Collector of the Port of New York; Dr. Katharine Bement Davis, Commissioner of Corrections of New York ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper

... stripped of these; for then he would be lower than the brute; but yet all these, since he is there, are by God improved against himself; or, if you will, the point of this man's sword is turned against his own heart, and made to pierce his own liver. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... gaze. As light eludes the eye which it illumines, if we would seize and contemplate it, we must have two things: we must have a special and a supernatural object. There must be light within you, and it must pierce the depths wherein ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various

... eternity, and we thought if we went on dreaming, we should find out what eternity meant. We were afraid to tell the dream, from a vague fear that it was wrong, that it might be thought we were trying to pierce into the mystery of God, and it was wicked in ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz

... "Frau Pierce will go with us," the chief said, closing his portfolio; and I understood that the revision was finished. "Frau G—— can stay here under ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce

... cost to burn the Opera House? If the price is reasonable have it done and send me the bill. . . . I wrote my two letters under the presumption (there being no paper on Wednesday) that the solid work of exposing their (Pierce and Gushing) perversion of history had of course been done by Hildreth. I should have dwelt with it even more gravely but for that. And now I see (the Saturday paper only got through last night) that you crowded out what little I did say to make room for Fry's eleven columns ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... ships had but one deck, or were nearly altogether open, and had but one or two masts with large square sails, being propelled in calms and contrary winds by long oars. For purposes of offence they were fitted with beaks or rams to pierce the sides of the enemy, and were provided with catapults or other engines for hurling missiles, and with tubes for projecting Greek fire to create smoke and set their opponent on fire. The main tactics of the time, however, consisted in grappling ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston

... let it lie in cold water for several hours before cooking—over night, if possible. Lay it in a kettle of cold water when it is to be cooked; bring the water to a boil slowly, and let it simmer until the tongue is so tender that you can pierce it with a fork. A large tongue should be over the fire about four hours. When it has cooled in the liquor in which it was boiled, remove the skin with great care, beginning at the tip, and stripping it back. Trim away the gristle and fat from the root ...
— Recipes Tried and True • the Ladies' Aid Society

... that stream, and were at their work on the eastern side. Letter after letter came from the sufferers, bringing such complaints as this: "We are in as bad circumstances as ever any poor Christians were ever in; for the cries of widowers, widows, fatherless and motherless children, are enough to pierce the most hardest of hearts. Likewise it's a very sorrowful spectacle to see those that escaped with their lives with not a mouthful to eat, or bed to lie on, or clothes to cover their nakedness, or keep them warm, but all they had consumed into ashes. These deplorable circumstances cry aloud ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... staggered in and laid the tall, majestic figure down. As they lifted the head tenderly and propped it by pillows, Draxy saw the pale, dead face with the sunken eyes and set lips, and gave one low cry. Then she clasped both hands tight over her heart and looked up as if she would pierce the very skies ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson

... watch the sun when we happened to be out hunting; for to be suddenly left in the dark while in the woods was very perplexing, as, although the stars shone with great beauty and brilliancy, they could not pierce through the thick umbrageous boughs that interlaced above ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne

... no stress of a reproachful mind. Unconscious of the others, even of the minister's solemn phrases, she seemed to be revolving truths of her own, dismissing a problem private to her own heart. To the man who tried to pierce beneath that calm gaze, the woman's complete ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... master, but it cost only another of those irresistible strokes to stretch Gaston beside Sir Reginald, and Eustace was left alone to maintain the struggle. A few moments more, and the Lances would come up—but how impossible to hold out! The first blow cleft his shield in two, and though it did not pierce his armour, the shock brought him to his knee, and without the support of the staff of the pennon he would have been on the ground. Still, however, he kept up his defence, using sometimes his sword, and sometimes the staff, ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge

... either purple or of the tone of a ripe filbert, so that the atmosphere, with the reflected dull golds and bluish-reds and reddish-blues, was in a swimming maze like that of a sunset distance, though the eye could scarcely pierce twenty yards into ...
— Schwartz: A History - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray

... traits survive in him so remarkably. General Butler's grandfather, Thomas Butler, was born 6th April, 1720, in Kilkenny, Ireland. He married there in 1742. Three of his five sons who attained manhood, Richard, William and Thomas, were born abroad. Pierce, the father of General William O. Butler, and Edward, the youngest son, were born in Pennsylvania. It is remarkable that all these men, and all their immediate male descendants, with a single exception, (who was a judge,) were engaged in the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various

... if one could learn the inner history of these abortive transactions. I have often tried, in vain. It is impossible for an outsider to pierce the jungle of sordid mystery and intrigue which surrounds them. So much I gathered: that the original contract was based on the wages then current and that, the price of labour having more than doubled in consequence of the "discovery" of America, no one will undertake the job on the ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... fripono. Picnic kampfesteno. Picquet (cards) pikedo. Pictorial ilustrita. Picture pentrajxo. Picturesque pentrinda. Pie pastecxo. Piebald multkolora. Piece (to patch) fliki. Piece peco. Piecemeal peco post peco. Pier (pillar) pontkolono. Pier (landing place) ensxipigejo. Pierce trabori, penetri. Piety pieco. Pig porko. Pigeon kolombo. Pigeon-hole (for papers, etc.) faketaro. Pigeon-house kolombejo. Pigmy pigmeo. Pike (fish) ezoko. Pike (tool) pikilego. Pike (weapon) ponardego. Pile ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... It is that of a woman who had herself consoled, and sending for a surgeon, ordered him to open her veins in a bath, that so, the blood running out more freely, she might sooner die. Also she bought poison, as the bleeding did not succeed, and procured a cobbler's awl wherewith to pierce her heart, but as the women with her were undecided whether the heart were on the right side or the left, she took the poison, ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould

... order of her work was solemn, steady, earnest, and in mighty faith; but when the struggle was over, the victory gained, sometimes that solemn countenance would become suddenly luminous and her shrill shouts would pierce the very heavens. These loud exultations, however, were indulged in in no meetings but those of her own people, and grew less frequent as age crept on, giving place to tears of joy and ...
— Elizabeth: The Disinherited Daugheter • E. Ben Ez-er

... bluff to allow of her guns being elevated sufficiently to throw their shot to the crest of the cliff, retired to a more favorable position. The Confederates wasted but few shot on her, knowing they would not pierce her armor. ...
— Life of Rear Admiral John Randolph Tucker • James Henry Rochelle

... must be her bag. Because who else could have left it here? Mrs. Pierce, the only other lady in the house, doesn't carry a youngish bag like that. She'd have a black leather bag, more likely, ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells

... Mr. Winthrop, so far as my eyes can penetrate. I trust that to clearer vision than mine what lies deeper than human gaze can pierce, ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter

... fast as it was possible it seemed but a snail's pace to Elizabeth. She could realize nothing but that her father was in danger. After hearing Nora's reasons for this sudden journey, she spoke no word but sat rigid, her hands clasped tightly in her lap. She was leaning forward, trying to pierce the darkness of the road before them. The rain beat into her face. Her cap and veil were drenched ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird

... comprehend that her marriage with Colonel Lennox was an event she had long wished for and now most warmly sanctioned; and she hastened home to convey the glad tidings in a letter to her aunts, though doubtful if the truth itself would be able to pierce its way through ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier

... for some seconds, then raised her hands toward heaven, and with uplifted eyes that seemed in their strained gaze to pierce beyond the veil, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... single square; Yet may these heroes, when they first prepare To mix in combat on the bloody mead, 110 Double their sally, and two steps proceed; But when they wound, their swords they subtly guide With aim oblique, and slanting pierce his side. But the great Indian beasts, whose backs sustain Vast turrets arm'd, when on the redd'ning plain 115 They join in all the terror of the fight, Forward or backward, to the left or right, Run furious, and impatient of confine Scour through the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith

... yet serving to pierce that temporary obscurity and horrible jangle of outer sounds, came the voice ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.

... opposites. For dulness is contrary to sharpness, since an intellect is said, by comparison, to be sharp, when it is able to penetrate into the heart of the things that are proposed to it. Hence it is dulness of mind that renders the mind unable to pierce into the heart of a thing. A man is said to be a fool if he judges wrongly about the common end of life, wherefore folly is properly opposed to wisdom, which makes us judge aright about the universal cause. Ignorance implies a defect in the mind, even about any particular things whatever, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... form of a hoe. . . . The edge is cut into sharp teeth or points . . . they dip the teeth into a mixture of a kind of lamp-black . . . The teeth, thus prepared, are placed upon the skin, and the handle to which they are fastened being struck by quick smart blows, they pierce it, and at the same time carry into the puncture the black composition, which leaves ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... in behalf of whom Charles X. had abdicated, and who was consequently now regarded by all the court party as their lawful sovereign, was carried in the arms of M. de Dumas, who was very apprehensive lest the bullet of some assassin might pierce him. The king sufficiently controlled his feelings to ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott

... we had come, San Francisco, marks the beginning of the Juan Villaverde trail from the Central Valley of Luzon through the mountains before us, to the province of Nueva Vizcaya. All day the chain we were to pierce had been in sight, and I for one had been wondering where we were to find a practicable entrance, so forbiddingly vertical did ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox

... Legg has investigated the subsequent history of this good Bishop Pierce, and shows how the Puritans when they were in power used this reply as a means of accusation against him, whereby they attempted to prove that "he profanely opposed the sanctification of the Lord's Day by approving and allowing of profane wakes and revels on that day," and was "a desperately ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield

... warrior hosts, arise! Now, in the flush of victory, pierce the skies With grateful outbursts of exultant praise. Such as victorious ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby

... W.H. Pierce, Larimore, N.D., a main line relay, a Waterbury lens and a fife with mouthpiece for $6 worth ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various

... lacerated with his own sorrows. "Daughters of Jerusalem," said he, to the sympathizing women, "weep not for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children." As though he had said, "You have a right to weep; weep, then, in that great catastrophe which is coming, when barbed affliction shall pierce your hearts, and the dearest ties shall be cut in sunder. Those ties are tender; those hearts are ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin

... to face, on the ground which Hector and Ulysses had meted out; and they brandished their spears, with wrath against each other. Paris drew the lot to be the first to cast his long-shafted spear; he threw it, and it struck the round shield of Atreides Menelaus, but did not pierce it; for the point of the ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various

... more than the point then," said Master Richard confidently, "and a point that will not pierce him, else what of the ...
— The History of Richard Raynal, Solitary • Robert Hugh Benson

... weight from the Western Front. We realize now the nobility of self-sacrifice that flung an army within reach of the jaws of destruction, that risked its annihilation to draw upon itself some of the sword-strokes that threatened to pierce to the heart of the West. Our national and natural instinct of admiration for a hard fighter, and still greater admiration for the apex of good sportmanship, for the friend or foe who can "take a licking," who is a "good loser," went out even more strongly to Russia in the dark days when, ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers

... tongue was licking his jaws. The hero, who saw him coming long before he was near, took refuge in a thicket and waited until the lion approached; then with his arrow he shot him in the side. But the shot did not pierce his flesh; instead it flew back as if it had struck stone, and fell on ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various

... Voisin, in her delirium of agony, has spoken the name of the Countess de Soissons, she shall become a fugitive from justice? No, mother, no! Remain to confound your calumniators, and, with the good sword of Right, and Truth, pierce the vile falsehood to its ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach

... women are graceful and almost pretty, slight in figure, and very fond of ornament. Indeed both sexes pierce their ears, noses, and lips, through which to thrust silver, brass, and gold rings, also covering their ankles and arms with metallic rings, the number only limited by their means. In the immediate neighborhood ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou

... the Vision of Pierce Plowman, by William (orRobert) Langland, who flourished about the year 1350, are as follows: [Iquote from the edition ...
— Cursory Observations on the Poems Attributed to Thomas Rowley (1782) • Edmond Malone

... hope," was all Rintoul's answer, and he again tried to pierce the mist with offers of reward. After that he became doggedly silent, fixing his eyes on the ground at his feet. I have a notion that he had made up his mind to confess the truth about Babbie when the water had eaten the island as far as the ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie

... The word seemed to pierce the girl. She stared out at her former mistress, who was again being soothed by the ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green

... was too much elated with the enjoyment of each new day to understand. The shafts of another's pain might scarcely pierce the bright armor of his gayety. He mistook the priest's exclamation for anxiety about ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister

... made me with my bloody dagger wound His guiltless son, that never 'gainst me stored; His father's body lying dead on ground To pierce with spear, eke with my cruel sword To part his neck, and with his head to board, Invested with a royal paper crown, From place to place to ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse

... to him with the care of a son, he dwelt with a melancholy delight on his revered features, and listened to his languid voice with those tender associations which are dear to the heart, though they pierce it ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... dint of swiftness and of brain; an eighty-pound collie has no chance against a six-hundred-pound pig. The pig's hide, for one thing, is too thick to pierce with an average slash or nip: And the pig is too close to earth and too well-balanced by build and weight, to be overturned: And the tushes and forefeet can move with deceptive quickness. Also, back of the red-rimmed ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune

... great saint, were never uttered in vain to the unheeding. Again and again St. Francis warned, but pride was still triumphant. One Sunday afternoon, after the usual meeting of the confraternity, the saint went to the alter of sodality; it was the altar of the Dolors. Seven daggers seemed to pierce the Virgin's heart. Ascending the altar, he cast a sorrowful glance on the weeping countenance of the Queen of Sorrows, and said: "Most Holy Virgin, this young man has been for you a most acute sword, piercing your heart; behold, I will ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly

... would, he and Tashi were unable at any point to pierce the cordon of guards along the frontier. Generally they got away unseen; but on one occasion they were discovered and had to flee back into British territory under a shower of arrows. Fortunately fire-arms are scarce ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly

... woman's eyes. They pierce you with their death.'" "Then falling tears shall make them blind That robbed ...
— The Fairy Changeling and Other Poems • Dora Sigerson

... presents itself in entering the southern mouth arises from what in America are termed snags, that is, large trees, the roots of which are firmly planted in the bed of the river, whilst the branches project up the stream, and are likely to pierce any boat in its passage down. These snags are however more to be feared at the time of high-water than at any other period, for they have generally become fixed upon shoals as they originally descended the river, and at low water ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey

... recognised the other; while his glance betrayed a hostility strong and fierce as that felt for either Florence Kearney or the Texan. A slight exclamation, involuntary, but telling of anger, was all that passed his lips as his eyes met a pair of other eyes which seemed to pierce ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid

... were the surgical cases with their blood-curdling array of glittering instruments, probes, forceps, bistouries, scalpels, scissors, saws, an arsenal of implements of every imaginable shape adapted to pierce, cut, slice, rend, crush. But there was ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola

... and editor. The bold, poignant and dashing talents he brought to bear, soon made the Plain Dealer widely known as a political journal and placed its editor among the foremost men of his party in the State. In 1853, he received the appointment of post master of Cleveland from President Pierce, which position he continued to hold till the Summer of 1858, when, owing to his refusal to advocate the infamous Lecompton constitution of Mr. Buchanan, he was beheaded with the scores of other martyrs who remained true to Senator Douglas and the constitutional ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin



Words linked to "Pierce" :   gore, poke, strike, pick, prickle, puncture, President Pierce, cut, transfix, United States President, lance, affect, sting, prick, Chief Executive, spike, stick, riddle, sound, president, impress, Franklin Pierce, punch, perforate, thrust, horn, tap, empale, President of the United States, tusk



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