"Possessive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... poems. "The Night-Wind" is a delicately beautiful fragment of dreamy metaphor. There is probably a slight misprint in the last line, since the construction there becomes somewhat obscure. "My Love's Eyes" has merit, but lacks polish. The word "azure" in the first stanza, need not be in the possessive case; whilst the use of a singular verb with a plural noun in the second stanza (smiles-beguiles) is a little less than grammatical. "Longing" exhibits the author at her best, the images and phraseology alike showing the touch ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... coffee and sat beside him. Her face betokened satisfaction, and she looked at Gregorio with a possessive smile. She had gained her desire, and asked fortune ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... exception of the love of a parent for a child this is the only human love which is outward-looking and centrifugal in its gaze; and even in the case of the love of a mother there is often something possessive and indrawing. ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... we may make revolutions or wars, sending our armies marching through the countryside in creeping dusty columns, but we are only illusions on the page of history, shadows flitting across the face of the land; the rooks are perpetual, ineradicable, and possessive. They feed behind our plough; they flock in our green trees; they build in our valleys and in the shelter of our houses; summer and winter they are seen flying under our English skies; they mate and nest and bicker round ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... are two kinds of discontent— Malignant, and progressive,— The latter is the proper sort, Of it, be quite possessive. The former, born of parentage Whose motive powers are evil, Serves but one purpose here below— To aid ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... conscience is, like his understanding, a mere form or expression of his will. The will of ordinary men is addressed through their understanding and conscience. Mr. Johnson's understanding and conscience can be addressed only through his will. He puts intellectual principles and the moral law in the possessive case, thinks he pays them a compliment and adds to their authority when he makes them the adjuncts of his petted pronoun "my"; and things to him are reasonable and right, not from any quality inherent ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... when a possible, nay, a probable chance, might for ever have blasted his ambitious hopes, he for the first time spoke of France as his. Considering the circumstances in which we then stood, this use of the possessive pronoun "my" describes more forcibly than anything that can be said the flashes of divination which crossed Bonaparte's brain when he was wrapped up in his chimerical ideas ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... last one," said George, pushing his way through the crowd, and laying his hand on her arm with a possessive and authoritative touch. "Let me put you in, and then I'll ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... laying a strong accent on the pronoun possessive. "Only see what rights and privileges the gentleman is usurping! We live in a free ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... Tommy's opinion. In the Yorkshire dialect, when the possessive case is followed by the relative substantive, it is customary to omit the S; but if the relative be understood, and not expressed, the possessive case is formed in the usual manner, as in a subsequent ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... felt sure he must have known other girls. You didn't talk like that if you were new to it. She was again curious. Once she almost blurted out the question; but she stayed the words in time. It would have been a mistake to ask anything at this stage. It would have seemed possessive. It might have alarmed him. Anyway, she thought, if he has, what does that matter? To her it was an added pleasure, that he might be wise and experienced. It was a greater flattery; it called for greater resource ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... passed by, bringing to Guy Landers a new Heaven and a new earth. Already the prosy old university town had begun to assume an atmosphere of home. The well-clipped campus, with its huge oaks and its limestone walks, had taken on the familiar possessive plural "our campus," and the solitary red squirrel which sported fearlessly in its midst had likewise become "our squirrel." The imposing, dignified college buildings had ceased to elicit open-mouthed ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... watched her. His regard was disturbing. It had a quality of insistence. His eyes were cold yet devouring. They were possessive, not clear but opaque. They did not look at her as other eyes did. She felt the blood ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... Calendar," above mentioned. In the former he says uotan "is from the pure Maya root word tan, which means primarily 'the breast,' or that which is in the front or in the middle of the body; with the possessive prefix it becomes utan. In Tzental this word means both 'breast' and 'heart.'" It must be admitted that these explanations are apparently somewhat strained, yet it is possible they are substantially correct, ...
— Day Symbols of the Maya Year • Cyrus Thomas
... position of the possessive sign in such words as "men's," "writer's." If accurately placed, the writer may be presumed to understand punctuation, and will give evidence of it in ...
— The Detection of Forgery • Douglas Blackburn
... refused to recognise her seemed a matter of very small moment now that he had spoken to her again—scolding her and enforcing her obedience to his wishes in that oddly masterful way of his, which yet had something of a possessive tenderness about it that appealed irresistibly ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... until the very eve of their marriage. Then suddenly it seemed to her that all the people she cared for in the world were pushing her away from them towards him, giving her up, handing her over. He became—possessive. His abjection changed to pride. She perceived that she was going to be left tremendously alone with him, with an effect, as if she had stepped off a terrace on to what she believed to be land and had abruptly descended ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... smiled at nothing. Her aunt hardly noticed what was happening to her, but her father, who all her life had seemed hardly to take account of her existence, was interested. In her presence he began to feel like a young man. As in the days of his courtship of her mother and before the possessive passion in him destroyed his ability to love, he began to feel vaguely that life about him was full of significance. Sometimes in the afternoon when he went for one of his long drives through the country he asked his daughter to accompany him, and although ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... Perfected, he would never use them, and his sentences would flow untaught from his pen in absolutely clear reflection of his thought. As an example of what I mean by awkwardnesses, I would cite the use of "whose" as the possessive of "which." I know that adequate authority pronounces this correct, so it is not on that score I reject it. Moreover, I recognize that in myself the repulsion is somewhat of an acquired taste. When I began to write I thus employed it myself, but its sound is so inevitably suggestive of "who" ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... passionately being different from its companions), shame that may always be brought suddenly as a hindrance against them, so that, even under the most favorable circumstances, they live in danger; grow up sensitive and passionately possessive, because so many things all other children have by right, relations who really are relations, a father and the right to use his name, a birth-certificate that does not record their parents' sin, are demanded from them in vain, so ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... saddle, he leisurely looked her over with eyes that smoldered behind half-shuttered lids. To most of her world she was in spirit still more boy than woman, but before his bold, possessive gaze her long lashes wavered to the cheeks into which the warm blood was beating. Her long, free lines were still slender with the immaturity of youth, her soul still hesitating reluctantly to cross the border to womanhood toward ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... house," answered the Baron, taking his cigar from his mouth for the first time since he had lighted it, and holding it out at arm's length with a possessive sweep while he leaned back and looked at the ceiling again. "It all belongs to me," he said. "I took it for the ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... for number, person and case. There are two forms of the dual and plural in the first person. The following table shows the nominative and possessive cases: ...
— The Gundungurra Language • R. H. Mathews
... the beautiful in verse: most obvious in "Sordello," in portions of "The Ring and the Book," and in so many of the later poems. These inexcusable violations are like the larvae within certain vegetable growths: soon or late they will destroy their environment before they perish themselves. Though possessive above all others of that science of the percipient in the allied arts of painting and music, wherein he found the unconventional Shelley so missuaded by convention, he seemed ever more alert to the substance than to the manner of poetry. In ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... say to the Amiable Amanuensis and Adaptable Author, "you read your stuff aloud with emphasis and discretion, and I'll chuck in the ornamental part. Excuse me, that's my drink," I say, with an emphasis on the possessive pronoun, for the Soldierly Scribe, in a moment of absorption, was about to apply that process to my liquor. He apologises handsomely, and commences his recital. In the absence of a gong,—one ought never to travel without a gong,—I whack the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 11, 1891 • Various
... of thinking, this expression "my august confederates." Is there not something astounding about the use of the possessive pronoun in connection with the word "august," implying sovereignty? One wonders what part can they have to play, these confederates, led and dominated by a personality as jealous and self-centred as ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... them; taking angry, purpose-like possession. When she neared the house our sympathy abated; when she came to the broken chest I wished I were elsewhere. We had scarce a word in common; but her whole lean body spoke for her with indignant eloquence. "My chest!" it cried, with a stress on the possessive. "My chest—broken open! This is a fine state of things!" I hastened to lay the blame where it belonged—on Francois and his wife—and found I had made things worse instead of better. She repeated the names at first ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... silence she wrote again and again to Deering, entreating him for a word, for a mere sign of life. From the first she had shrunk from seeming to assert any claim on his future, yet in her aching bewilderment she now charged herself with having been too possessive, too exacting in her tone. She told herself that his fastidiousness shrank from any but a "light touch," and that hers had not been light enough. She should havekept to the character of the "little friend," ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... say Betty did not "waste" any time that night over home-lessons. How can the beginner of a great singer be expected to care whether the pronoun "that" in "I dare do all 'that' may become a man," is relative or possessive? or whether Smyrna is the capital of Turkey or Japan? or even whether the Red Sea has to ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... helpi. Helpful helpema. Helpmate kunhelpanto. Hem borderi. Hem bordero. Hemisphere duonsfero. Hemorrhage sangado. Hemorrhoids hemorojdo. Hemp kanabo. Hen (fowl) kokino. Henbane hiskiamo. Hence de nun. Henceforth de nun. Hepatic hepata. Heptagon sepangulo. Her sxin. Her (possessive) sxia. Hers sxia. Herald heroldo. Heraldic heraldika. Heraldry (science) heraldiko. Heraldry blazono. Herb herbo. Herbalist herbovendisto. Herbivorous herbomangxanta. Herd brutaro. Herdsman pasxtisto. Here tie cxi, ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... tongue, feminine; and ege, an eye, neuter. Like nama, the proper names of men ended in a; and we find such names as Isa, Offa, Penda, as the names of kings. Nouns at this period had five cases, with inflexions for each; now we possess but one inflexion— that for the possessive. —Even the definite article was inflected. —The infinitive of verbs ended in an; and the sign to— which we received from the Danes— was not in use, except for the dative of the infinitive. This dative infinitive is still preserved in such phrases as "a house to let;" "bread ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... lay around, very hot and shiny, and content. Large backsheesh was assured, and they looked up at her with pleased possessive eyes, as an achievement of their own; hardly realising how large a part her finely developed athletic powers and elastic limbs had played in the speed of ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... F, l, and s at the end of a monosyllable after a single vowel are commonly doubled. The exceptions are the cases in which s forms the plural or possessive case of a noun, or third person singular of the verb, and the following words: clef, if, of, pal, sol, as, gas, has, was, yes, gris, his, is, thus, us. L is not doubled at the end of words of more than one syllable, as parallel, ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... she was saying in a quiet, possessive sort of way. "I didn't think of coming when I jumped into the sea. I made up my mind afterward. I think it was because I met a little man with red whiskers whom you once pointed out to me in the smoking salon on the Nome. And so—I ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... flower-trimmed table. Worth's back was to the room; I saw them over his shoulder, in the lead a tall blonde, very smartly dressed, but not in evening clothes; in severe, exclusive street wear. The man with her, good looking, almost her own type, had that possessive air which seems somehow unmistakable—and there was a look about the half dozen companions after them, as they settled themselves in a great flurry of scraping chairs, that made ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... through alabaster—and the sweetness of the deep-set eyes. Moreover she had produced much the same effect on the bystander, as of a child of nature, a creature of impulse and passion—passion, clinging and self-devoted, not fierce and possessive—through all the more superficial suggestions of reticence and self-control. 'This little creature is only at the beginning of her life'—he thought, with a kind of pity for her very softness and exquisiteness. 'What ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... wish to mention That this erudition sham Is but classical pretension, The result of steady "cram." Yet my classic love aggressive, If you'll pardon the possessive, Is exceedingly impressive When you're passing ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... Saturday, February 17th, Chamberlain dined with the Prince of Wales. In noting the invitation in my diary I put down: "The Prince of Wales has asked Chamberlain to dinner for Saturday. I call this 'nobbling my party.'" But the possessive pronoun with regard to the party was not according to my custom. We always said that the party consisted of three in all—two leaders and a follower—and Dillwyn acknowledged Chamberlain ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... fool of herself by marrying a man out of spite. He felt that since an obstinate lover is apt to be an exacting husband, in the end the heavy predominance of Oliver might wring much sincerer tears from her than she had ever shed for himself. But that generosity was but the bright edge to a mainly possessive jealousy. ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... Proper Inflection Defined Number The Formation of Plurals Compound Nouns Case The Formation of the Possessive Case Gender ...
— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood
... the nurse's odd way of using the possessive pronoun, and dropped her eyes, as was natural on ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... at us through a small square window in the wall at one end of the veranda. Then he came round and once more vaulted the veranda rail, for he seemed to hold ordinary means of entry in contempt. His eye looked very possessive for that of one seeking employment as a guide, but he stood at respectful attention ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... answer in the same way that she had done when she was ill and asked if I liked bitters concealed. She waited as long without reply. The pause grew oppressive, and I spanned it by an assurance of individual possessive happiness. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... are not at hand, but these given indicate that, as in most Malay dialects, a noun with a possessive suffix is one ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... mind the general conclusions about the two great classes of mountain scenery which I have just stated, he will, I hope, at last cease to charge me with enthusiasm in anything that I have said of Turner's imagination, as always instinctively possessive of those truths which lie deepest, and are most essentially linked together, in the expression of a scene. I have only taken two drawings (though these of his best period) for the illustration of all the structures of the Alps which, in the course of half a volume, it has been possible ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... conditions, into whose and whom; but that and which always remain the same, with the exception of the possessive case, as noted above. ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... terms, how much more eloquent they would be! Another rule is to avoid converting mere abstractions into persons. I believe you will very rarely find in any great writer before the Revolution the possessive case of an inanimate noun used in prose instead of the dependent case, as 'the watch's hand,' for 'the hand of the watch.' The possessive or Saxon genitive was confined to persons, or at least to animated subjects. And I cannot conclude this Lecture ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... form of the possessive was in frequent use, especially after proper names ending ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... room emptied, and she was free to do so, Hepsey, accompanied by the possessive Jonathan, found her way over to the Maxwells. Before she started to tell them the results of the meeting she cast a glance of whimsical affection at her ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... tumult of the camp was to him but a holiday exhibition—the march of an army, the exhilaration of a spectacle; the court as a banquet—the throne, the best seat at the entertainment. The life of the heir-apparent, to the life of the king possessive, is as the distinction between enchanting hope and ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book II. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... and Omega-street. I am ashamed of myself when I remember the foolish cause of this elation of mind. I was going to Yorkshire, the county of which my Charlotte was now an inhabitant. My Charlotte! It is a pleasure even to write that delicious possessive pronoun—the pleasure of poor Alnascher, the crockery-seller, dreaming his day-dream ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... column," answered Banneker with perceptible emphasis on the possessive, "doesn't believe that ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... wretched, looking at the door which probably hid Gaga. Even the memory of last night's kisses was stale and unsatisfactory. As she drew her breath in a half-sob, Sally longed suddenly for Toby. She longed for his strong arms, his possessive air, his muscular strength. And as she thought of Toby a tear came to her eye, and she felt that life was not worth living. A consciousness of childish need for support destroyed all her confidence ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... Manethon and [166]Hellanicus, was called Ucsiris, and Icsiris; but by the later Greeks the name was altered to Isiris and Osiris. And not only the God Sehor, or Sehoris was so expressed; but Cnas, or Canaan, had the same title, and was styled Uc-Cnas, and the Gentile name or possessive was Uc-cnaos, [Greek: Uk-knaos: to ethnikon gar Chnaos], as we learn from Stephanus. The Greeks, whose custom it was to reduce every foreign name to something similar in their own language, changed [Greek: Ukknaos] to [Greek: Kukneios], Uc Cnaus to Cucneus; and from [Greek: Uk Knas] formed [Greek: ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... frequently found between words having a close syntactical relation, particularly if the initial vowel of the second word is in a constituent syllable. It may occur between the article and its substantive, the possessive adjective and its substantive, a preposition and its object, the negatives no and ni and a following vowel; and after the conjunctions y, que, si, and other words having a weak accent such as desde, coma, ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
... pride, it grasps in its conquering talons all that belongs to us; for we do not, in life, make any great difference between what is we and what is ours—an insult to our dog, our dwelling, or our work wounds us as much as an insult to ourselves. The possessive pronoun expresses both possession and possessor. In fact, we consider our body ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... extortioner, most decidedly!" she returned, without repudiating the possessive pronoun. "It doesn't follow that I think anything of him—apart from what you did between you ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... "The word chinuchi is a Mongol term derived from Mongol cinoa (pronounced cino or cono which means 'wolf,' with the possessive suffix -ci, meaning accordingly a 'wolf-owner' or 'wolf-keeper).' One of the Tibetan designations for the mastiff is cang-k'i (written spyang-k'yi), which signifies literally 'wolf-dog.' The Mongol term is probably framed on this Tibetan word. The other explanations ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... him on the street, asking for his affection. But he passed them by, for she was waiting for him and he was hungry for the possessive ...
— Life Sentence • James McConnell
... which one can exercise ownership can be conjugated by possessive suffixes for number ...
— The Gundungurra Language • R. H. Mathews
... listening, his eyes on that possessive, encircling arm of all his hostess's fairness, felt an awareness of hurt, and arose unsummoned the thought, to be dismissed angrily, ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... has come up to her by this time, and is holding out his hand: silently she lays her own in it, and colors treacherously as his fingers close on hers in a close, tender, and possessive fashion. ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... we call him, was in reality named 'Nicholas Gabrini, the son of Lawrence'; and 'Lawrence,' being in Italian abbreviated to 'Rienzo' and preceded by the possessive particle 'of,' formed the patronymic by which the man is best known in our language. Lawrence Gabrini kept a wine-shop somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Cenci palace; he seems to have belonged to ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... his face, and compelled himself to look bravely at it; but as he met the lovely eyes strange questions darted into his brain: whether he would not rather have been solely to blame; whether his all-possessive love of her would not be more flawless now if she had been a flawless eternal-feminine type, longing for motherhood, but denying it for his sake; whether he would not be happier now in looking at her portrait if some warm tint from a ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the addition of a syllable in the possessive case and the plural, and instead of saying that "some little birds had built their nests near the posts of Mr. West's gate," a Sussex boy would say, "the birds had built their nestes near the postes of ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... New York; likewise the people are different. And as every Woman-who-goes-hunting-with-her-husband is sure to go through a Yeddar experience, I offer a few observations by way of enlightenment before telling how I killed my antelope. (If you wish to be proper, always use the possessive for animals you have killed. It is a Western ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... name, I think; no, not my name, I feel sure.' He accentuated the possessive pronoun strongly, and then proceeded to explain the accentuation, smiling more and more amiably as he did so. 'No, not my name; my brother's—my brother's, ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... of resentment swept through her; the patronage in his tone, the indefinable suggestion of possession was, she thought, uncalled for. That he should approve of Frank in that possessive manner was not ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... the vehicle of its expression. Although our pronouns are still declined, the sole inflection of our nouns, with the exception of a few like ox, oxen, or mouse, mice, is the addition of 's, s, or es for the possessive and the plural. Modern German, on the other hand, still retains these troublesome case endings. How did English have the ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... creature with plaintive eyes and a fidgety frequent laugh. But she was more elaborately dressed and jewelled than the other ladies, and her elegance and her restlessness made her seem less alien to Undine. She had turned on Marvell a gaze at once pleading and possessive; but whether betokening merely an inherited intimacy (Undine had noticed that they were all more or less cousins) or a more personal feeling, her observer was unable to decide; just as the tone of the young man's reply might have ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton |
