|
|
|
More "Sheer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... showing that he could play in a way no one else could. Adolescence had turned his desire to play into a fury of passion for his art: he practised on single passages for ten or twelve hours a day, and would often sink in a swoon from sheer exhaustion. This deep, torpor-like sleep saved him from complete collapse, just as it saved Mendelssohn, and he would arise to go on ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... crowd, and the village denuded even of its old women and children. The traces were disentangled, and a few slaps on the nose forced the skewbald to draw back a little; after which the teams were straightened out and separated. Nevertheless, either sheer obstinacy or vexation at being parted from their new friends caused the strange team absolutely to refuse to move a leg. Their driver laid the whip about them, but still they stood as though rooted to the spot. At length the participatory efforts of the peasants rose to an unprecedented degree of ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... to have reached its culmination in Sargent, yet there are two other painters, who, if they fall below him in sheer genius, possess a charm and originality all their own. One of these is George de Forest Brush, who, somewhat after the fashion of Holbein, looks for a beauty of spirit independent of form or feature. He paints mothers and children not as young goddesses ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... appreciation of a very considerable industrial triumph. Old engineers, one of them an assistant on his own staff, had shaken their heads and declared that the running of a standard gauge railroad over Plug Pass was a sheer impossibility. Yet ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... can never be sure of men. They are about as uncertain calculations as the hatching of guinea eggs, or the sprouting of parsley seed. What is theirs can't be worth much; but what belongs to somebody else, is invaluable; moreover, they are liable to sudden tantrums of sheer obstinacy, that hang on like whooping-cough, or a sprain in one's joints. Did you never see a mule take the sulks on his way to the corn crib and the fodder rack, and refuse to budge, even for ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... wage-earning—that what is for its particular interest is, in a peculiar manner, for the general interest, so much as to justify favoring legislation or special exemption from the general law, or even sheer lawlessness. ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... of His puissance and that He is able to create the ens from the non-ens; nay, He called things into being, after absolute non-existence, for the elements which be the matter of created things were sheer nothingness. I will expound this to thee, so thou mayst be in no scepticism thereof, and the marvel-signs of the alternation of Night and Day shall make this clear to thee. When the light goeth and the night cometh, the day is hidden from ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... (remembering always what has been said in the last chapter) a period of decadence, and at its latter end it becomes very decadent indeed. Only in Ford perhaps, of our named and individual authors in this chapter, and in him very rarely, occur the flashes of sheer poetry which, as we have seen in each of the three earlier chapters on the drama, lighten the work of the Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists proper with extraordinary and lavish brilliance. Not even in Ford are to be found the whole ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... quivering with passion. A terrible loathing for himself, for his crime which had been the precursor of this terrible situation, filled his soul to the verge of sheer physical nausea. A red film gathered before his eyes, and through it he saw the grinning face of the inhuman monster who had planned this hideous, abominable thing. It seemed to him as if in the silence and the hush of the night, above the feeble, flickering ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... with a dangerous smile, that, if she met any one who bore that resemblance, she might be tempted to keep him with her,—a playfulness that brought the ready color to Rand's cheek. When she added to this the greater audacity of kissing her hand to him, the young hermit actually turned away in sheer embarrassment. When he looked around again, she was gone, and for the first time in his experience the mountain seemed ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... and the Foreign Office, however, through sheer weakness did nothing to prevent the insults to our flag and President perpetrated by the "League of Truth"; although both under the law and the regulations of the "State of Siege" this gang could not operate without the consent of the authorities. So far ...
— My Four Years in Germany • James W. Gerard
... might boast himself the first to smite, and he come second. And strong Diomedes leaped upon him with the spear, and said: "Stand, or I shall overtake thee with the spear, and methinks that thou shalt not long avoid sheer destruction ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... discounting all the "dust" they could lay hands on, and wishing him well out of the trouble he seemed bent on laying up for himself. Meanwhile they would take a holiday on the proceeds of their traffic, and, out of sheer good-fellowship, stand by to help, or at least ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... were still unserved. In nearly every dwelling, upstairs and down, from the roof to the cellar, there was a stunning tapping of hammers: coffins were being nailed down, and so many, so very many were nailed, that sometimes those who worked stopped from sheer fatigue. Then broke forth laments, heart-rending moans, despairing imprecations. They were uttered by those from whom the men in black and gray had taken some one to fill ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... impartiality afterwards, Scotland Yard decided that while Hilton could not hope that Robert would be convicted of the murder, the latter would assuredly be suspected of it, perhaps arrested and tried; and in any event his marriage with Sylvia Manning would become a sheer impossibility. ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... return in the shadows of the evening, while the prince gains the priory with a few of his followers, by sheer valour, while the rest are drowned in the river, or lost in the marshes—let us return to the place where Drogo de Harengod went ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... has opened 400 pieces of Artillery on them, and these go raging and thundering into the hem of the Wood, and to whatever issues from it, now and for hours to come, at a rate of deafening uproar and of sheer deadliness, which no observer ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... down, bewildered by the sheer beauty of a marvellous and incomparable sight. Above her head shone the Giotto frescos, the immortal four, in which the noblest legend of Catholicism finds its loveliest expression, as it were the script, ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... brought down in a continuous thread from the remotest origins of the nation to Milton's own time. The third was the long-meditated Body of Divinity, or Methodical Digest of Christian Doctrine. Here, surely, were three huge enough tasks of sheer hackwork hung round the neck of a poet! Milton's liking all his life for such labours of compilation, however, is as remarkable as his liking for pedagogy. Nor, though we may regard the tasks as hackwork now, were they so regarded by Milton. ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... gravely solemn he has you in fits of laughter again. His is really a book that belongs to world-literature; as good reading, for us now, as for any ancient Chinaman of them all. I think he worked more strenuously in the field of sheer intellect—stirred the thought stuff more—than most other Chinese thinkers,—and so is more akin to the Western mind; he carves his cerebrations more definitely, and leaves less to the intuition. The great lack in him is his failure to appreciate Confucius; and to explain ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... to bet anything in reason that if we could get to the bottom of his history it would be a most dramatic one. It regularly appeals to the imagination. I can quite believe our friend yonder has dragged himself out of bed by sheer force of will to keep some appointment whereby he can wreak his long ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... was even more obviously a monstrosity as he looked at it in the bright light of day. But now it was not alone. Beside it a white tower reared upward. Pure white and glistening in the sunshine, a bulging, uneven shaft rose a hundred feet sheer. It looked as solid as marble. Its purpose was unguessable. There was a huge, fan-shaped space where the vegetation about the rocket-ship was colored a vivid red. In air-photos, the rocket-ship would look remarkably like something from another planet. But nearby, ...
— Invasion • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... more upon the two knights, hurling themselves madly upon their sword-points; clutching, scrambling, biting, tearing, careless of wounds if they could but drag the two soldiers to earth. Sir Nigel was thrown down by the sheer weight of them, and Sir Bertrand with his thunderous war-cry was swinging round his heavy sword to clear a space for him to rise, when the whistle of two long English arrows, and the rush of the squire and the two English archers down the stairs, ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a stone's throw of the five cent baths in Rutter Street—and that was the nearest they ever got to bathing. Their suite of apartments consisted of one room, about ten by eight feet, which served as a dining-room, drawing-room, study, boudoir, kitchen, bedroom, and—from sheer force of habit, I was about to add bathroom; but as I have already hinted cold water on half-empty stomachs and chilly livers is uninviting; besides, soap costs something. Their furniture was antique but not massive; nor could any of it be fairly reckoned superfluous. All told, it consisted ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... not see that?' said Rollo, with eyes which seemed as if they would deny the fact by sheer force of will. ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... the first yelp of the outburst with which he had stormed into the room. Probably there was not another man in the State who could have prevailed by sheer force of dignity and carriage in that moment when the passions of his opponents were so white-hot. But he was, in intellect, birth, breeding, and position, above them all, and they knew it. There, boxed in that little room, they faced him, and ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... in a short time reached the crest. I sprang upon the summit, and another step would have precipitated me into an immense snow field five hundred feet below. To the edge of this field was a sheer icy precipice; and then, with a gradual fall, the field sloped off for about a mile, until it struck the foot of another lower ridge. I stood on a narrow crest, about three feet in width, with an inclination of about 20 deg. ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... beneath, instead of the formidable array of jaws and accessory organs commonly observed in most carnivorous larvae, we see nothing but a broad, smooth mask covering the lower part of the face; as if from sheer modesty our young Dragon fly was endeavoring to conceal a gape. But wait a moment. Some unwary insect comes within striking distance. The battery of jaws is unmasked, and opens upon the victim. This mask (Fig. 127) is peculiar to the young, or larva and ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... owing to restriction of site, Aristide conceived the idea of building a spacious and palatial hostelry in the new part of the town, which should allure all the motorists and tourists of the globe to that Pyrenean Paradise. By sheer audacity he had contrived to interest an eminent Paris architect in his project. Now the man who listened to Aristide Pujol was lost. With the glittering eye of the Ancient Mariner he combined the winning charm of a woman. For salvation, you either ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... inhospitable even in the sunlight. The rock walls rose sheer, the roofs slanted rakishly, the signs scratched on the rock by facetious riders were pointless and inane. Lone picked his way through the crooked defile that was marked MAIN STREET on the corner of the first huge boulder and came abruptly ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... lad's chief thought, but the building on which he stood went sheer down for a considerable way. Then on the north side there came out the sharp, high-pitched, tiled roof of the corps du logis; on the south, another roof, surmounted by a cross at the gable, and evidently belonging ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... who has been born to know of such matters, and reared in the knowledge of them. And, anon, I would look upward, and see the grey, metalled mountain going up measureless into the gloom of the everlasting night; and from my feet the sheer downward sweep of the grim, metal walls, six full miles, and more, to ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... poor mad old gentleman," thought Phoebe—"Oh, sir, had you not better leave alone playbooks, and think of your end?" uttered she aloud, in sheer terror and vexation ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... wanton, toss them high; Race about, you know not why. Now stand still, from sheer excess Of exhaustless happiness. I, meanwhile, on this old gate, Sit sagely calm, and perhaps relate Lore of fairies. Do you know How they make the mushrooms grow? Ah! what means that shout of thine? ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... With barbarous and insane fury, with sheer impotent folly, he swept a clawing hand for his gun. ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... killed the five sons which Draupadi had born to her five husbands, carried off their heads, and laid them at the feet of the mortally wounded eldest Kuru, who fancied at first his cousins had been slain. The battle ending from sheer lack of combatants, the eldest Pandav ordered solemn funeral rites, which are duly described ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... just here was like a trough, and the reef was very near, scarcely a quarter of a mile from the shore. The water did not shelve, it went down sheer fifty fathoms or more, and one could fish from the bank just as from a pier head. He had brought some food with him, and he placed it under a tree whilst he prepared his line, which had a lump of coral for a sinker. He baited the hook, and whirling the sinker round in the air sent it ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... so proud, I haven't any words strong and beautiful enough to half express my wonder and my admiration. How could you do it, Mac?" And a whole face full of smiles broke loose as Rose clapped her hands, looking as if she could dance with sheer delight. ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... where one has been tormented, hopeless, unhappy? Suddenly she stirred. Was she going to cross over? No. She turned and began to walk slowly close to the curbstone, reminding me of the time when I discovered her walking near the edge of a ninety-foot sheer drop. It was the same impression, the same carriage, straight, slim, with rigid head and the two hands hanging lightly clasped in front—only now a small sunshade was dangling from them. I saw something fateful in that deliberate pacing towards the inconspicuous door with the words Hotel Entrance ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... received orders from General Cronje to proceed with three hundred and fifty men to check the advancing troops. As I stood on the ridges of Magersfontein, I was able to look down upon the English camps, and I saw that it would be sheer madness to pit three hundred and fifty men against General French's large force. Accordingly I asked that one hundred and fifty more burghers and two guns might be placed at my disposal. This request, however, was refused, and so I had to ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... the chair, glanced once more at his wife, then let his head lean comfortably back against the chair's headrest. His hand upon his thigh felt the thin mesh that cloaked his body beneath his clothing like a sheer stocking. His fingers went again to the tiny switch. Again ...
— A Bottle of Old Wine • Richard O. Lewis
... platform in front of the tomb, the procession of mourners ranged themselves about it in a semi-circle. They stood with their backs to the edge of a cliff that rose sheer for sixty feet or more from the plain beneath, across which, but at a little distance from the foot of the precipice ran the road followed by the caravans of merchants in their journeys to and from the coast. Then, a hymn having been sung invoking the blessing ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard
... strip of open ground beyond, and found himself on the bank of a broad river, whose evidently deep waters rushed impetuously along their unobstructed channel. The bank at the spot where he reached it was a sheer precipice of between thirty and forty feet high. Glancing up and down the river he retreated a few paces, turned round and shook his clenched fist at the savages, accompanying the action with a shout of defiance, and then running to the edge of the bank, sprang ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... to me on the subject. Having repeated my wishes to him, he asked me several questions which seemed to indicate a prying disposition, and a curiosity as impertinent as it was inconvenient. In fact, I did not like his manner at all; but conceiving that his conduct might arise from sheer ignorance, and from no sinister motive, I still felt inclined to avail myself of his assistance to procure a messenger. Finding that he could not sift me, he at length said that he had no doubt a friend of his, whom he named Venturo, ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... engaged, over a kitchen fire, stirring some sort of porridge in a dish. Clearly, hers were spirits not easily depressed by her surroundings, for she whistled at her task,—as good as any boy could have whistled,—and now and again, from sheer excess of animation, she whisked away from the stove and danced about the old kitchen, ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... idiot. Each doctor would be mad on his own madman. One would have his eye on devotional curates; another would wander about collecting obstreperous majors; a third would be the terror of animal-loving spinsters, who would flee with all their cats and dogs before him. Short of sheer literal anarchy, therefore, it seems plain that the Eugenist must find some authority other than his own implied personality. He must, once and for all, learn the lesson which is hardest for him and ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... counting came dropping in. A big green-baize screen had been fixed up at one end of the large smoking-room with the names of the constituencies that were voting that day, and directly the figures came to hand, up they went, amidst cheers that at last lost their energy through sheer repetition, whenever there was record of a Liberal gain. I don't remember what happened when there was a Liberal loss; I don't think that any were announced ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... after Diego's return from one of his long absences was always a holiday for Juana, one of the mission women taking her place as teacher. Happy and gay she cleared away the breakfast, swept the room, and washed and dressed the baby, now and then bursting into song, from sheer excess of joy. It was toward the middle of the morning, when she heard a sudden cry from Diego. Springing up, she hastened out of the house, and ran to the spot where she had seen her husband at work a few moments before. It ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... evening or the coffee I had drunk, in any case I was not sleepy. I turned in, only to lie for an hour or more with my eyes wide open staring at a patch of moonlight on the ceiling. My old trouble of insomnia had overtaken me again. I finally rose and paced the floor in sheer desperation, and then paused to stare out of the window at the peaceful moonlit ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... the line, there's nothing like them. There may be pits, thorns, quagmires, spring-guns, what not, the other side of the hedge, but go off the straight track they will—and no dog can stop them. It's just the sheer love of straying. You may bark at them right and left; go they will, though they break their legs down a limekiln. Oh, men and sheep are wonderfully similar; take them all ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... into his chair from sheer inability to stand, and for several minutes after his cousin had ceased speaking, he still sat, with his elbows resting on the table before him, and his face buried in his clasped hands. At length looking up, he said, "Horace, let us burn this paper ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... din of battle I could catch the tones of her clear voice as she urged the soldiers on to victory. But victory was not yet. Wambe's soldiers gathered themselves together, and bore our men back by the sheer weight of numbers. They began to give, then once more they rallied, and ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard
... himself; he had been a fortunate man. She was at once conventional and an individual: Fanny never, for example, wore the underclothes of colored crepe de chines, the elaborate trifles, Lee saw in the shop windows, nightgowns of sheer exposure and candy-like ribbons; hers were always of fine white cambric, scalloped, perhaps, or with chaste embroidery, but nothing more. Neither did she use perfumes of any sort, there was no array of ornamental bottles on her dressing-table, no sachet among her handkerchiefs, her ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... For a week or more all three of them—Lucien, Berenice, and the invalid—were obliged to live on the various ingenious preparations sold by the pork-butcher; the inflammatory diet was little suited to the sick girl, and Coralie grew worse. Sheer want compelled Lucien to ask Lousteau for a return of the loan of a thousand francs lost at play by the friend who had deserted him in his hour of need. Perhaps, amid all his troubles, this step ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... in power from 1720 to 1742 by sheer corruption—there was no other way open to him. He laughed openly at all talk of honesty and purity, and his influence lowered the whole tone of public life.[68] But he kept in touch with the middle ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... repeated. "Just as cross as ever you like, so long as you don't keep it up too protractedly. It's the most engaging piece of flattery I've come across for a month of Sundays. Only you needn't worry in this particular instance, dear man, I give you my word you needn't. It's a sheer waste of feeling. For Fallowfeild's always been perfectly decent with me. I know people think him an awfully risky lot, but they're noodles. He's racketed in his day—of course he has. But if he'd been more of a hypocrite, people would have talked less. As the man says in the play, it's ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... she actually got—an education under false pretences—encouraged it. Everybody has read, some people have known, of young girls who have committed the most extraordinary impostures, or sustained the most infamous false accusations; their chief motive being often the sheer enjoyment of practising deceit. Of such characters was the character ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... I think, from us all—indignantly from Sophy, sorrowfully from Fanny, petulantly from Hatty, and from me in sheer astonishment. ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... it was that he had made a mistake, for during this same period the development of the older man had been far greater than his own. Covington to-day was, perhaps, as able a business man as Gorham had been when the Consolidated Companies was born, but Gorham in the mean time, by sheer display of extraordinary genius, had become an international figure. The business relations between the two men were closer than ever, but never once was there any question as to which was the master. Covington would not have been Covington had he not resented ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... differ; on the other, we are told they do not differ. Now which does Hamilton mean? If he insist upon the definitions as yielding a ground of conceivable difference, he must abandon the inconceivability; but if he insist upon the inconceivability, he must abandon the definition as sheer verbiage, devoid of all conceivable meaning. There is no possible escape from this dilemma. Further, two negations can never contradict; for contradiction is the asserting and the denying of the same proposition; two denials can ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... the edge of a precipice so vast, so stupendous, that no word can even dimly describe its depth; it was all illuminated with incredible clearness by the light which struck upwards from below. It was absolutely sheer, great pale cliffs of white stone running downwards into the depth. To left and right the precipice ran, with an irregular outline, so that one could see the cliff-fronts gleam how many millions of leagues below! There seemed no end to it. But at a certain point far down in the ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Jewel laughed too, for sheer happiness, though she saw nothing amusing about such an obviously good plan. "Aren't we getting well acquainted, mother?" she asked, nestling close to her mother's side and forgetting Anna Belle, who at once lurched over, head downward, on the grass. "Do you remember ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... and passionate being in the whole world. What is more, he throws money away as if it were dust. The day on which he gave the thrashing with blows like falling leaves and flowing water, he dragged (lit. pull alive, drag dead) Ying Lien away more dead than alive, by sheer force, and no one, even up to this date, is aware whether she be among the dead or the living. This young Feng had a spell of empty happiness; for (not only) was his wish not fulfilled, but on the ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... her in the High Street—smiled after the retreating figure in sheer delight at her. How fresh and bright and spontaneous she was, he thought, and how charmingly ignorant of the things which she prided herself upon understanding so profoundly! He laughed aloud as he recalled how very wise Elisabeth considered herself. And then he wondered if life would teach her ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... in rather sordid conditions, lift herself through sheer determination to the better things ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... had told me, rose sheer from the water to the height of at least twenty-five feet, bristling and formidable. Back of it pressed the volume of logs packed closely in an apparently inextricable tangle as far as the eye could reach. A man near informed me that the tail was a good three miles up stream. From beneath ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... scorching contiguity of the frantic thing, of which, for the time, it was no longer an integral. But as the mind does not exist unless leagued with the soul, therefore it must have been that, in Ahab's case, yielding up all his thoughts and fancies to his one supreme purpose; that purpose, by its own sheer inveteracy of will, forced itself against gods and devils into a kind of self-assumed, independent being of its own. Nay, could grimly live and burn, while the common vitality to which it was conjoined, fled horror-stricken from the unbidden and unfathered birth. Therefore, the tormented spirit ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... a United States army at his back, he kept down a rebel city in 1862. Massachusetts is not likely soon to stand in need of either of these processes. But he never has accomplished anything else of much importance when his point could not be carried by sheer blustering. The history of all his other attempts may be comprised in three ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... wept unrestrainedly. To tell the truth, I knew not what to do, and Pierrebon kept his head well to the front, looking neither to the right nor to the left. In sheer desperation I asked her not to weep, whereat she wept the more; and then I touched her shoulder with my hand, as one would caress a child; but she shook me off, turning a face that seemed scared with terror to me, and I could only stammer ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... uttering a deep sigh, or rather one of those exclamations which we cannot tell whether they arise from discouragement or simply from fatigue. His Majesty's countenance was sad and careworn, nevertheless he slept from sheer weariness for many hours. I awoke him to announce the arrival of M. de Rumigny, who was the bearer of dispatches from Chatillon. In the condition of the Emperor's mind at this moment he seemed ready to accept ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... made such little additions to his tale as I dared, but not all I wanted to. I promise you they set my miss to thinking, for she got very red and said it was sheer nonsense. She would ask you herself. She had a pretty picture to show me of Wyncote, and the present man was to be made a baronet. Can a good girl be captured by such things? But the man has some charm, Hugh. These black men"—so we called those ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... the spirit of religion. If one hasn't it——" He broke off, and added with a smile, "I think I have a certain amount of enthusiasm. But when one has seen a good deal of the world, it's so very easy to feel discouraged. Think how much sheer barbarism there is around us, from the brutal savage of the gutter to the cunning savage of ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... not for sheer hurry of business been able to spare five minutes to finish my letter. Besides my farm business, I ride on my Excise matters at least two hundred miles every week. I have not by any means given up the Muses. You will see in the ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... terminated abruptly, and with a sheer turn to the left, coming forth between two huge rocks. To all appearances, it ended at the high bank of a noisy stream, and was partly hidden by the overhanging cliff. The latter, devoid of path or chasm, now barred our progress, ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... the ear may be passive to the strokes of a hammer, and even endure them with some degree of equanimity, to music it cannot be passive. The noted author relates having sat through an Italian opera, till, from sheer pain, he rushed out into the noisiest places of the crowded streets, to solace himself with sounds which he was not obliged to follow, and thus get rid of the distracting torment of endless, fruitless, barren attention! According to his frank avowal, music was to him a source ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... back in his chair in sheer misery. "I would sooner have done the thing myself," groaned he to himself, "than Oliver." Then suddenly he added, "But it's not true! I'm certain of it! He couldn't do it! I'll never believe ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... articles for removal, when a sudden revolution occasioned the disarming of his Indian laborers, who for some time had served for a protection, and all further operations were suspended, as longer residence in that exposed region without arms was sheer madness. It was at that time that Dr. Le Plongeon wrote the following Memorial to the Mexican President, Senor Don Sebastian Lerdo de Tejada, which is given nearly entire, as it makes a statement of his claims and wishes, and ...
— The Mayas, the Sources of Their History / Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, His Account of Discoveries • Stephen Salisbury, Jr.
... the good souls could make of her restless agitation. She slept that night from sheer exhaustion, a deep lethargic slumber, apparently broken once or twice by troubled dreams. When she awoke in the morning at the first sound of the voice of the mooddin, the evil dreams seemed to be with her still. She appeared to be moving ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... masterly; which expression changed slightly as he stood there, the sound of the clock conveying to him (it may be) a sense of old buildings and time; and himself the inheritor; and then to-morrow; and friends; at the thought of whom, in sheer confidence and pleasure, it seemed, he yawned ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... was so utterly fatigued that she refused to wait for a belated breakfast, and insisted upon being at once directed to her room. There was a substantial bolt decorating the inside of the door, but, rendered careless by sheer exhaustion of both mind and body, she forgot everything except her desire for immediate rest, dropped her wraps upon the only chair visible, and flung herself, fully dressed, upon the bed. Her cheek had barely ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... the soured temper of the unsuccessful candidate who has never been returned since the year 1816. As to countenance—a wizened, wrinkled, sunburned face, and long, sleek locks of scanty gray hair; as to character—an incredible mixture of homely sense and sheer silliness; of a rich man's overbearing ways, and a total lack of manners; just the kind of husband who is almost entirely led by his wife, yet imagines himself to be the master; apt to domineer in trifles, and to let more important ...
— The Message • Honore de Balzac
... in sheer inability to find words that would express the hopelessness of retrieving his shattered fortunes. Dale was fidgeting, fingering taps and screws unnecessarily, but Medenham was pondering his former trooper's plight. He refused ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... strange thought floated across my brain. I repelled it at first as sheer madness; but remembering, within the field of my somewhat extended experience, certain facts that lent probability to that thought, I entertained it with a sort of cynical irony, and I was almost ready to admit it, as an ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... relates to secondary causes—upon purely scientific grounds, as he must do in any case. Perhaps, confident, as he evidently is, that his view will finally be adopted, he may enjoy a sort of satisfaction in hearing it denounced as sheer atheism by the inconsiderate, and afterward, when it takes its place with the nebular hypothesis and the like, see this judgment reversed, as we suppose it would ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... Kwasind made no answer, To their challenge made no answer, Only rose, and, slowly turning, Seized the huge rock in his fingers, Tore it from its deep foundation, Poised it in the air a moment, Pitched it sheer into the river, Sheer into the swift Pauwating, Where it still is seen ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... A fine but very fast rain was falling, which soon made her wet to the bones. The wretched little creature ran for some time, and at last stopped from sheer fatigue. The side wall of the road being low at that part, she sat down, and then began to feel the pain from the blows. She put her hands to her head, then to her face, from which she felt a hot liquid pouring ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... after him, all in view of an invisible future made visible by the trusted promise, a future culminating at last to his "eye of faith," so here we are solemnly assured, in the city of the saints, in the Canaan of the heavens. The same reliance on the sheer word of promise nerved him to the awful ordeal of the all-but immolation of his son. And that son in his turn, against all appearances, and rather bowing to the Word of God than embracing it, blessed his least-loved son above his ...
— Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews • Handley C.G. Moule
... able to lift themselves out of poverty and adversity by sheer force of will, unaided by any one. Such a character Herbert Randolph proved himself to be. For nearly three months he had faced the most discouraging prospects. With education, with a knowledge of accounts, with splendid intelligence, ...
— The Boy Broker - Among the Kings of Wall Street • Frank A. Munsey
... in fact, being enacted in Madame de la Baudraye's house, in harmony with her struggles over money matters and her successive transformations—a drama to which no one but Monsieur de Clagny and the Abbe Duret ever knew the clue, when Dinah in sheer idleness, or perhaps sheer vanity, revealed the ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... Odyssey, that of the Telemachiad, and that of the Book itself. We see them all gradually unfolding in due order under the hand of the poet, from the largest to the least. Now the reader should be informed that every one of these unities has been violently attacked and proclaimed to be a sheer phantasm. Chiefly in Germany has the assault taken place. What we have above considered as the joints in the organism of the poem, have been cut into, pried apart, and declared to make so many separate poems or passages, which different authors have ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... her stout resistance, and before John could climb aft and get at the main sheet, or do anything to relieve the boat, her stern was driven right under water by the sheer pressure of the storm. Slowly she turned over, leaving all of her occupants struggling in the icy water, for there were many pieces of ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... would have turned me back, except upon a thing of moment; and whenever I desired to be solitary, I was suffered to sit here behind my piece of cannon unmolested. The cliff went down before me almost sheer, but mantled with a thicket of climbing trees; from farther down, an outwork raised its turret; and across the valley I had a view of that long terrace of Princes Street which serves as a promenade to the fashionable inhabitants of Edinburgh. A singularity in a military prison, that it should ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... mighty leap and sprang clear of the net. The silvery flash, the sudden splash, startled the gods, so that they almost dropped the net; but it told them what they wanted to know—Loki WAS in the stream. Turning, they dragged the net down the stream, driving Loki nearer and nearer to the sheer drop of the waterfall, down which he dared not plunge. Desperate, he made another leap, and again he almost escaped; but Thor's quick eyes saw him, Thor's strong, iron-gloved hand gripped him. The great salmon struggled, but Thor held it ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... got into debt, it always seemed to him highly probable that something or other—he did not necessarily conceive what—would come to pass enabling him to pay in due time. And now that the providential occurrence was apparently close at hand, it would have been sheer absurdity to think that the supply would be short of the need: as absurd as a faith that believed in half a miracle for want of strength to believe in a ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... feat. And then his brains! He was so diabolically clever. John could always recall his face as he lay back in the chair in No. 15, sick, bruised, befuddled, and yet even in that moment of extreme prostration able to "play the game," as he put it, to defeat house-master and doctor by sheer strength of will and intellect. It was Scaife who had persuaded Desmond to smoke.... Caesar's voice broke in upon ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... "Do you know you have accused that young man of a villainy which must damn him for life? And now you tell me—" I broke off in sheer indignation. ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... one may as well take it fighting. Better, anyway, than scattering one's brains on that hearth-rug some morning in the small hours out of sheer disgust with the dead hopelessness of life. That's what it is coming ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... Indian hunter drew near on horseback, but Nakpa did not pause or slacken her pace. On she fled through the long dry grass of the river bottoms, while her babies slept again from sheer exhaustion. Toward sunset, she entered the Sioux camp amid great excitement, for some one had spied her afar off, and the boys and the dogs ...
— Indian Child Life • Charles A. Eastman
... Her throat swelled with joy, her breast heaved, and her eyelids fluttered. She was grateful for the darkness, which hid these outward signs of love from him. She blushed; she could feel the warm tide pulsing in her temples; and she laughed brokenly from sheer happiness. ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... incredible! You must have manufactured this riddle out of sheer wantonness, for in the indictment you charge me with reverencing gods! Can anyone believe that there are human affairs, or equine affairs, or instrumental affairs without believing that there are men, or horses, or instruments? You say expressly ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... things more repulsive than a military man bent on conquest, for lust of conquest brings a man lower than the beasts. The beasts eat for hunger. Condoulis wished to eat for sheer greed. May the day come when such men will be looked On as mad dogs to be destroyed painlessly before they have time to inflict misery ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... from halls of old Romance Strike through the clouds of clamor: who be these That, paired in rich processional, advance From darkness o'er the murk mad factories Into yon flaming road, and sink, strange Ministrants! Sheer down to earth, with many minstrelsies And motions fine, and mix about the scene And fill the Time with ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... course, some deviltry among cherry trees and apple orchards—some lawlessness born of sheer exuberance and superb health—some malicious trespassing, some harrying of unpopular neighbours. But not very ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... not speak two that are true, and impose upon these poor people. There are enough like them in the world, who take food from the mouths of the people by their impostures, as these worthies do. I often remonstrated with the people, telling them that all they did was sheer nonsense, and that they ought not to ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... shimmering in the morning light! There was Naples itself, like a string of its own pink coral, lying crescent-wise on the distant strand; there were the snowcaps fading on the far horizon; the bronzed fishermen and their wives, a sheer two hundred feet below him, pulling in their glistening nets; the amethyst isles of Capri and Ischia eternally hanging midway between the blue of the sky and the blue of the sea; and there, towering ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... bear evidence of great beauty in the architecture: light galleries, supported by slender columns, long cool arcades, screened squares and terraced walks, are the principal features. The rooms open out upon flat roofs, commanding views of the long endless table-land to the west, and a sheer precipice of 1000 feet on the other side, with the Soane, the amphitheatre of hills, and the village ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... snow and a blood-chilling blast, Sharp-throbbing hoofs like the heart-beat of fear, A halt, a swift parley, a pause—then at last A stiff, swinging figure cut darkly and sheer Against the blue steel of the sky; ghastly white Every on-looking face. Men, our duty was clear; Yet ah! what a soul to send forth ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... no ill-luck to-night!" continued Captain Monk as a grim joke, disregarding Harry's remark. "Perhaps they will, though, out of sheer spite, knowing they'll never have another chance of it. Well, well, they're welcome. ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... Spider, his square jaws immobile from sheer astonishment. "Say, you ain't crazy, are ye—I mean you ain't dippy or cracked in the dome, are ye? Because d' Kid's goin' ten rounds with Young Alf, d' ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... powerlessness; for he who knows the supreme causes, being no longer paralyzed by matter, becomes one with them and acts with them; and he who understands ends by approving, or else the universe would be a mistake, which is not possible. I do not believe that another sorrow of the sheer mind can be imagined. The only one which, before reflection, might seem admissible and which, in any case, could be but ephemeral would arise from the sight of the pain and misery that remain on the earth which we have left. But this sorrow, after all, would be but one side and ...
— Death • Maurice Maeterlinck
... the track, passing the boys—Wally riding hard on Nan, and Cecil sitting back on Betty with a pale face. Before him Bobs was galloping freely, Norah riding with her hands well down, and on her face a smile that was like a child's laugh of sheer happiness. Norah loved thunderstorms; they seemed to call to something in her nature that never failed to respond. She glanced up at Jim merrily as he ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... closing her door for a sleepless night, Locke to work far into the night in his laboratory until sheer exhaustion ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... been practising it all his life. To say that he has a genius for it, means that he has practised it, and concentrated his main force upon it, and that he has been driven irresistibly to do so by sheer bent of nature. It was so with Defoe and his power of circumstantial invention, his unrivalled genius for "lying like truth." For years upon years of his life it had been his chief occupation. From the time of his first connexion with Harley, at least, he had addressed his countrymen ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... angle between the creek and the open bay, beyond the end of the low sea-wall which has earlier been mentioned. The creek here turned in sharply toward the foot of the mountain, and across from where the boys stood a sheer rock wall rose several hundred feet. This shut off the view of a part of the bay on that side, but in other directions they could see the white-topped waves rolling, eight or ten miles across to the farther side, where there were many ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough
... little chapel one day, Francis of Assisi was exhorted by an old Byzantine crucifix: "Go now, and rebuild my Church, which is falling into ruins." In sheer loyalty he had a lamp placed; then he saw his task in a larger way, and an artist has painted him carrying stones and mortar. Finally there burst upon him the full import of the allocution—that ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... glairy creatures pick up this science? We are told that the Mollusc derives from the Worm. One day, the Worm, rendered frisky by the sun, emancipated itself, brandished its tail and twisted it into a corkscrew for sheer glee. There and then the plan of the future spiral ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... on, to find some way down into the valley. He found no path leading to the nullah. The drop from the edge was sheer, for some seventy feet; then came a ledge from which he thought they could scramble down to the edge of the stream, and thence to the opposite side, where he noticed a track. With this information, he went back to report ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... which was Hindhead, and listens to him praising the bean fields and the turnips here, and the oaks and acacias there, cursing the Wen-devils and place-men and pensioners, the reptiles, toad-eaters and tax-eaters, and yet the sheer honesty and affection of the man shine from every page. There never was such a mixture of execration and the scent of bean-blossom. But Rural Rides remains a book of the library ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... fine mountain scenery in it, and a curious fresh-water lake, the surface of which is only 50 ft. above sea-level, though it is 225 ft. deep in some parts. The finest mountain scenery is near Smergo, where the rock rises sheer from the water to the height of 1,000 ft. Here is the "Dirupo di Smergo," a cave with a domed top. At one time the sea broke into it, laying bare the interior, which is like a giant amphitheatre with ribbed roof and sides. ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... of imagination. In some people it is transcendent, in others it is only a sort of stupidity. If proper precautions were taken the need for courage would be much reduced—the "tight place" is so often the result of sheer muddle. ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... sprang forward and seized the poker. All the passion of her wild little nature was roused. She stole up behind him as he knelt before Tommy, and lifted the poker to strike. A pair of terrified blue eyes arrested her. Tommy forgot to cry, in sheer amazement at what she was about to do. Ashamed of herself, she threw the poker aside, and taking advantage of Mr. Stubbins's crouching position, she thrust him suddenly backward into the closet. The manoeuver ...
— Lovey Mary • Alice Hegan Rice
... foliage of a clump of pepper trees did not stir, so breathless would be the darkness warmed by the radiation of the over-heated rocks. Don Pepe would stand still for a moment with the two motionless serenos before him, and, abruptly, high up on the sheer face of the mountain, dotted with single torches, like drops of fire fallen from the two great blazing clusters of lights above, the ore shoots would begin to rattle. The great clattering, shuffling noise, gathering ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... Among other anecdotes, he related a curious incident that happened to him yesterday. He accompanied a party of Americans to Buyukdere, where they took a caique, and rowed alongside the Russian flag-ship. The sentinel at the gangway immediately ordered them to sheer off, and, on demanding the reason, they were told that they must not attempt to approach without the admiral's permission. Nothing daunted, they desired the man to ask the officer of the watch to allow them to inspect the interior of the vessel; but he flatly refused, ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... from childish tasks and childish troubles, to the barn chamber, a place so full of golden dreams, happy reveries, and vague longings, that, as her little brown hands clung to the sides of the ladder and her feet trod the rounds cautiously in her ascent, her heart almost stopped beating in the sheer joy of anticipation. ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... first blow I cut off his sword-arm at the wrist; my second I levelled at his head. I said that he wore a steel cap, with a gilt iron spike of six inches, and a hood of chain mail. I rose in my stirrups and delivered "ST. GEORGE;" my sword caught the spike exactly on the point, split it sheer in two, cut crashing through the steel cap and hood, and was only stopped by a ruby which he wore in his back-plate. His head, cut clean in two between the eyebrows and nostrils, even between the two front teeth, fell one side on each shoulder, and he galloped on till his horse ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Nisqually river, as far as the foot of its glacier. Crossing on the bridge here, you climb up and up, around the face of a bluff known as Gap Point, where a step over the retaining wall would mean a sheer drop of a thousand feet into the river below. Thus you wind over to the Paradise river and famous Narada Falls, switch back up the side of the deep Paradise canyon to the beautiful valley of the same ...
— The Mountain that was 'God' • John H. Williams
... with fear, it is hard to put into words—I felt come over me such a wave of contentment and happiness as made me close my eyes with the sheer relief and joy of it. All was well. The past was past, and out of its mistakes had come a beautiful thing. And, like the fear, this joy was not mine. It came to me. I picked it up—a ...
— The Confession • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Bergen was inclined to become pessimistic, the mate treated it lightly, for he feared the strong sailor would break before long from sheer homesickness. ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... said Mr Dombey, backing his chair a little, that he might the better gaze in sheer amazement at the presumptuous atom that propounded ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... gone, the miser hung Himself in sheer despair: Thus each the other's wants supplied, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 20, 1841 • Various
... rate, it will not explain away the exception I have taken to his verse. Had that been destined to exhibit the humanity which we seek, some promise of it would surely be discoverable; for he was a full-grown man at the time of that unhappy tumble on the ice. But there is none. It is all sheer wit, impish as a fairy changeling's, and always barren of feeling. Mr. Birrell has not supplied the explanatory epithet, so I will try to do so. It is "donnish." Cambridge, fondly imagining that she was showing right appreciation of Calverley thereby, gave him ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... took their leave of him, and Thady laid himself down on Meg's bed, and, after a time, from sheer fatigue and exhaustion, he ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... cup-bearing hand stood transfixed halfway from table to lip. The silver cup tilted part way over in sheer astonishment. Drip, drip, drip, dripped the contents down into Tot's scrap of ruffled and ...
— Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories • M. T. W.
... in greeting, as he reined in to a halt, if halt it might be called, with his tan-golden sorrel mare a-fret and a-froth, wickedly reaching with her teeth now for his leg and next for Graham's, one moment pawing the roadway, the next moment, in sheer impotence of resentfulness, kicking the empty air with one hind leg and kicking the air ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... agreed. So thenceforward, whenever they were abroad, which was for three or four months of each year, Phineas revelled in sheer idleness, nicotine, and the skilful consumption of alcohol, while highly paid professors taught Marmaduke—and, incidentally, ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... pond except by the entrance where the spent waves, after tumbling over the bar, spread themselves in long ripples, widening and widening until the edge of them melted and they were gone. The banks of the lake rose sheer from its edge, or so steeply that I saw no way of climbing them—walls you might call them, a good hundred feet high, and widening gradually towards the top, but in a circle as regular as ever you could ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the most magnificent views in this part of Bohemia. Long and toilsome was this ascent; for though the main road was still beneath our feet, so perfectly had its fabricators set the rules of their art at defiance, that it ran sheer and abrupt, with scarce a trifling deflection, from the base to the summit. The sun, also, beat upon us with a power which we found it extremely uncomfortable to sustain, and our thirst was excessive. And here it may, perhaps, be worth while ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... how it is that they forced me to pay thirty shillings for my ticket, instead of one pound. Although the price one pound is printed on the ticket, I couldn't get it until I had paid ten shillings extra. There was no time to get a proper explanation, so I want you to do so. Very likely it is sheer blackmail by that man in the booking-office, whom I never cared for. You had better ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 21st, 1917 • Various
... superiority of golden silence over silver speech as the text of endless bursts of jerky rapture, while a too constant invective against cant had its usual effect of developing cant with a difference. To the incorrigibly sentimental all this was sheer poison, which continues tenaciously in the system. Others of robuster character no sooner came into contact with the world and its fortifying exigencies, than they at once began to assimilate the wholesome part of what they ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... Samson; and the question was, what the devil to do with it? He could not raffle it over again; nobody would take tickets. He had half a mind to trundle it over the khud (Anglice, precipice) and be done with it; but then, again, he reflected that this would be sheer waste and might seem to indicate soreness on his part. It cost him a good many pegs before he thought the matter out in all its bearings, for, as has been said, he was a gunner, but as he sauntered away from the club in the small hours a ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... living generations of social and economic changes in decades, and naturally all the people do not keep an even pace. One may find culture that would grace a court alongside incredible ignorance; distinguished courtesy and sheer brutality; kindness and consideration of the rights and feelings of others together with cruelty almost unbelievable. In some sections are to be found machines belonging to the most advanced stage of industry, while nearby are in operation ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson
... was of the little streams trotting down to the valley below, or the distant hush of some thin waterfall, he reached a level, and came out of the woods. The path now led along the edge of a precipice descending sheer to the uppermost terrace of the valley he had left. The valley was but a cleft in the mass of the mountain: a little way over sank its other wall, steep as a plumb-line could have made it, of solid rock. On his right lay green ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... third had been unlucky with his speculations of late, which he attributed to having seen the new moon through glass, and therefore he declined to tempt the fates further. Mr. George R. Sims, the well-known "Dagonet," betrayed sheer fright, as the following ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... to the wall. But now-a-days our children sit on our heads. I gave my Milly all she has in the world—a house, a shop, a husband, and my best bed-linen. And now when I want her to call the child Yosef, after my first husband, peace be on him, her own father, she would out of sheer vexatiousness, call it Yechezkel." Malka's voice became more strident than ever. She had been anxious to make a species of vicarious reparation to her first husband, and the failure of Milly to acquiesce in the arrangement was a ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... nigger. Donkin started and sat down on a chest near by, out of sheer surprise. "We haven't kept pigs together," continued James Wait in a deep undertone. "Here's your tobacco." Then, after a pause, he inquired:—"What ship?"—"Golden State," muttered Donkin indistinctly, biting the tobacco. The nigger whistled low.—"Ran?" he said curtly. Donkin nodded: one ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... freedom, the strangeness of the avowal I have just made to you will remain in your memory, and then it is not impossible that after this long rejection you may end by desiring me. If that should happen,—if at the end of many sad deceptions you should return, in sheer remorse, to the religion of art,—then, then, supposing that long years have not made love ridiculous between us, remember this evening. Now, let us part; it is already too ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... grimace, which gave a leer to the remaining features. As the boy looked at it he laughed suddenly, and his voice startled him amid the droning of bees. Then he sat up and glanced at his brier-scratched feet stretched upon the slab, and laughed again for the sheer joy of discord. ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... day he lay in an extremity of weakness that was pitiable to witness; and ever, as time went on, seemed sinking slowly from sheer inanition and exhaustion. After all there must be some strange mischief at work, he said; but Dr. Martin was of ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... stopped first. It was an advantage in some cases,—for instance, when preceded by a good horse; but if the horse went further than our destination, one of us had to jump out and hold back the fiery and stubborn little brute by sheer force, till his sense of ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... surroundings. If they failed, there was the danger of being shot by the guards before an explanation could be made. If they succeeded, it must be through sheer good fortune and not through prowess of mind or muscle. Once inside the castle, how could they hope to follow the abductors at a safe distance and still avoid the danger of being lost or of running into trusty guards? The longer they lay there the more hazardous became the ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... defects? The question strikes at the root of many a social injustice. Perhaps it is only human nature to inflict suffering on anything that will endure suffering, whether by reason of its genuine humility, or indifference, or sheer helplessness. Do we not, one and all, like to feel our strength even at the expense of some one or of something? The poorest sample of humanity, the street arab, will pull the bell handle at every street door in bitter weather, ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... went into the little inner room and struck a match. In a moment a thrill of hope came to me, for the first object the light showed me was a big coil of rope conspicuous among the odds and ends of lumber in the recess. The idea of escape by the window had only occurred to me to be dismissed as a sheer impossibility; the height of the tower made that quite prohibitive, but here seemed a chance of it. If only the rope was ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... But I didn't like to refuse outright, so we left it to Mr. Stewart. His "Ye're nae gang" sounded powerful final, so the ladies departed in awed silence and I assumed a martyr-like air and acted like a very much abused woman, although he did only what I wanted him to do. At last, in sheer desperation he told me the "bairn canna stand the treep," and that was why he was so determined. I knew why, of course, but I continued to look abused lest he gets it into his head that he can boss me. After he had been reduced to the proper plane ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... admit, much as she loved Knight, that his daring, original nature (so she called it to herself) might enter into strange adventures and intrigues for sheer joy in taking risks. She imagined that some wild escapade regretted too late might have led him into association with the watchers. Maybe they had all three been members of a secret society, she often told herself, and ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... From heaven, they fabled, thrown by angry Jove Sheer o'er the crystal battlements; from morn To noon, from noon to dewy eve, A Summer's day, he fell; and with the setting sun Dropped from the zenith like a falling ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... Fernando had watched the whole proceeding. He could only hold on to a sail and, by the sheer strength of his hands and arms, save himself from being carried overboard, as sea after sea swept over them. He strained his eyes until it seemed as though they would burst, to follow the movements of that ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... relation to death that more than anything else has made it necessary that war should appeal to art, and take an aesthetic form, and without the aid of the aesthetic, war could not maintain itself in the world. As a sheer fulfillment of duty war could not survive. By the strength of its aesthetic appeal war must control and overcome ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... rock above it, and the other was the chasm by which I had once made entrance. Betwixt them, where the hills fell back, as in a perfect oval, traversed by the winding water, lay a bright green valley, rimmed with sheer black rock, and seeming to have sunken bodily from the bleak rough heights above. It looked as if no frost could enter neither wind go ruffling; only spring, and hope, and comfort, breathe to one another. Even now the rays of sunshine dwelt and fell back on one another, whenever the clouds ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... receives his appointment, he is not unfrequently the subject of a sharp canvass from one end of the Conference to the other, and after he receives it he is liable to find himself among a people, who had rejected him in the canvass, and now only acquiesce in the decision from sheer necessity. But if he escape Scylla in this particular, he is certain to drive upon Charybdis in another. Granting that his relations and labors may be acceptable, he falls upon the inevitable necessity of devoting his time and labor, during the vigor and strength of his ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller
... fight those fellows if they attempt to board us, won't you?' he said, going up to the skipper. 'If you will run all the guns over to starboard we can give them a broadside which ten to one will make them sheer off rather than get a further taste ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... the famous Groome Street Gang, the most noted of all New York's collections of Apaches. More, he was the founder and originator of it. And, curiously enough, it had come into being from motives of sheer benevolence. In Groome Street in those days there had been a dance-hall, named the Shamrock and presided over by one Maginnis, an Irishman and a friend of Bat's. At the Shamrock nightly dances were given and well attended by the youth of the neighbourhood at ten cents a head. All might have ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... is obviously desirable I can well imagine Broadly speaking An admirable idea In a literal sense By sheer force of genius You can imagine his chagrin I hazard a guess It challenges belief He has an inscrutable face Very fertile in resource I am loath to believe It is essentially undignified Example is so contagious I am not in her confidence Taken in the aggregate It is a reproof ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... rainy, raw day, fine, straight lines of persistent rain fell with a dreary drip on the snow's hard crust, pedestrians with their frozen umbrellas, slipped and slid along in ill-humor; shop-girls and others, who were out from sheer necessity, sped along with smileless faces, and frozen ulster-tails, sulking as they jerked from one icy elevation to another in the flooded slippery walk, and raising their upper lips in ungraceful curves, as their straightened curls stood out in painful stiffness, or fell in ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... raised me to your hand. I fancied I understood your looks, I rose, and then, without having done anything more towards you than love you yet more devotedly, if that were possible—you, a woman without heart, faith, or love, in very wantonness, dashed me down again from sheer caprice. You are unworthy, princess of the royal blood though you may be, of the love of a man of honor; I offer my life as a sacrifice for having loved you too tenderly, and I ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... captain as soon as he had come out on deck and taken in the situation. "Sheer off!" he yelled. ...
— The Rover Boys on the Plains - The Mystery of Red Rock Ranch • Arthur Winfield
... again, some people fall back on sheer submission and sitting still. Nature is going to do something some day; nobody knows what, and nobody knows when. We have no reason for acting, and no reason for not acting. If anything happens it is right: if anything is prevented it was ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... himself during this nonsense. He had been feeling an intense hatred of the two men, and was looking as gloomy as deep water. "All acting, sheer acting," he thought, and then he told himself that Glory was only worthy of his contempt. What could attract her in the society of such men? Only their wealth, and their social station. Their intellectual and moral atmosphere must ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... fostered by over-keenness, usually results in a blank score-sheet. Some men, like horses, are totally unable to do themselves credit on great occasions. They go off their feed, and are utterly out of sorts in consequence. On the other hand, sheer force of will has often enabled men to make a big score. Many a good batsman can recall occasions on which he made a mental resolve on the morning of a match to make ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... pursuit it was possible to plunge into the midst of the fugitives, but in combat every one had too much need for the next man, for his neighbor, who was guarding his flanks and his back, to let himself be killed out of sheer wantonness by a sure blow from within the ranks of the ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... concluded that it was uninhabited. They resolved to send a boat ashore to make observations, and leave a few hogs, which might breed and be afterwards useful. When, however, they were preparing to debark a strong contrary gale arose, which obliged them to sheer off and be content with the view already obtained. The islands were named by the Spaniards indifferently, La Garza from the ship and Bermuda from the captain, but the former ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II. No. 5, February, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... we reach the place on foot. I have meanwhile drunk three glasses of tea and annihilated several eggs; the efforts at getting warm have also so perfectly succeeded that I feel the need of fresh air. I should, out of sheer impatience, commence shaving if I had a glass. This city is very straggling, and very foreign-looking, with its green-roofed churches and innumerable cupolas; quite different from Amsterdam, but both the most original cities I know. No German guard has a conception of the luggage people ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... angle of the cataract, over which our boats had to be drawn, and dropped down, with great care and difficulty. A rounded, tall island lies, or rather stands, below the falls, towards the north shore, whose sheer escarpments and densely wooded top are very curious and striking. Two sister islands and another above the falls, all four being about a mile apart, stand in line with each other, as if they had once formed parts of an ancient marge, and, below the falls, the torrent ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... affair altogether at any price—evidences in black and white of my silly flirtation—and also to avoid any association of Raoul's name with the necklace, that I told the Commissary of Police the leather case had in it a present from my lover. I spoke impulsively, in sheer desperation; and the instant the words were out I would have cut off my hand to take back the stupid falsehood. But what good to deny what I had just said? The ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... that their faces too were touched with an almost startled reverence. He stepped into the carriage, signed feebly, but with determination, to the Arab coachman, and was driven away, followed by a parting "Oh, la la!" from the chasseur, uttered in a voice that sounded shrill with sheer amazement. ...
— The Mission Of Mr. Eustace Greyne - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... village. Behind it, rose another sub-range, wooded with a lower bush and already blue with air, whilst in the background towered range upon range, here rising abruptly into points and peaks, there ramp-shaped or wall- formed, with sheer descents, and all of light azure hue adorned with glories of ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... native levies special mention must be made of the Mooltani Horse. These men, Sikhs for the most part, had followed Nicholson from sheer personal devotion. They recognised no head but him, and, it is said, refused to accept pay from the Government. At his death they disbanded, returning to their homes on ...
— John Nicholson - The Lion of the Punjaub • R. E. Cholmeley
... detached localities where population occurs. A pleasure walk through one of these Tibetan towns means a climb by steep flights of steps hewn out of the rock, varied by a saunter up ladders, where the sheer face of a cliff must be surmounted to reach the houses on a ledge above.[1297] Pictures of these recall forcibly the cliff-dwellings of the Pueblo Indians. Even the important market city of Leh covers the lower slope of the mountain at an altitude of 11,500 ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... when I came to New York three years ago," she said somewhat scornfully. "For a time in Paris, I did things with little thought, and they took very well. I must have been happy. Then when I came here, all that period was gone. I was to be an artist—sheer, concentrated, the nothing-else sort of an artist. And things went so well for a time. That's queer when you think of it. The papers took me up. They gave me an exhibition at the Smilax Club, and not ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... rivalry between him and Master Francis!' said the Doctor, laughing. 'How he launched out against young men's conceit when Francis was singing with her. Sheer jealousy! He could see nothing but dilapidation, dissent, and dirt at Laneham, and now has gone and ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the British under command of Sir John French. There followed a retreat that for sheer heroism and dogged determination has become one of the great battles of all time. The British, outflanked and outnumbered three to one, fought and marched without cessation for six days and nights. Time after time envelopment and disaster threatened them, ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... Breathlessly the people watched as he climbed up the straight, sheer facade, catching now at a window ledge—now at a bit of stone ornamentation—and again, seeming to hold on by nothing at all—almost ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells
... under the full brunt of the enemy's fire. In a flash Desmond was out from under the rock he had just reached. He crossed that open space under a rain of bullets it made one sick to see, and got the poor fellow up in his arms. It seemed a sheer impossibility for him to get back under cover alive, hampered as he was by the wounded man, who—as you know—is a much bigger fellow than himself. I gave up every shred of hope as I watched, and one or two of the sowars ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... old man who poured me out my coffee under the trellis (it was full morning, the sun was well up, and the clouds were all dappled high above the tops of the mountains): 'Father, what do you call this hill?' And with that I pointed to a very remarkable hill and summit that lie sheer ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... assistants who were quizzing him industriously and obtaining an amazing amount of information about gang life and political corruption. In fact, like most criminals when they do confess, Dopey Jack was in danger of confessing too much, in sheer pride at his own prowess as a ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... precocious intellect. A boy of seven in the streets of a city is more developed in this respect than one of fourteen in the country—a development, of course, which is easily accounted for by the antagonisms with which the child has had to contend, and the devices which have been inspired by the sheer pressure of want. He has been pitched into the sea of events to sink or swim, and those sharpened faculties are the tentacles put forth by an effort of nature in order to secure a hold of life. And there is something very sad and very fearful in this precocity. The vagrant ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... nurse, and went down to dinner. If we only knew what was the matter! I argue with myself how much unnecessary misery I give myself by anticipating evil; but I cannot help it; and the weight on my mind grew heavier; half the night I lay awake, till at last, from sheer weariness, I fell into a sort of stupor of the senses, which fled from me in the dismal dawn, and the unmanning hideous fear leapt on me out of the dark, like a beast ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... summer of 1862 a very similar lair which Grettir inhabited a little later in the east of Iceland was explored by a farmer living near. This is his description of it: "The lair stands in the upper part of a slip of stones beneath some sheer rocks. It is built up of stones, straight as a line, four and three-quarter ells long and ten inches wide, and is within the walls seven-eighths of an ell deep. Half of it is roofed over with flat stones; small splinters of stone are wedged ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... he. "But the way to become so again isn't by waiting but by working." An expression of sheer wretchedness came into his listless, heavy eyes. "Urse, I've got to conquer my weakness now, or ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... his life, but in the straits to which you are reduced, your strength exhausted, deprived of succor and without hope of receiving any, would it be reasonable to sacrifice the lives of so many brave men out of sheer obstinacy? Submit in good faith to us and no harm shall come to you. We promise you still more; and that is to provide each and all of you with honorable employment. You shall have no grounds of discontent, for that we pledge you our ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... likely shows my meanin' when I sez he's that soft an' honest, an' yet crazy fer drink. You see, it wus this a-ways. I wus kind o' foreman o' the 'U bar U's' in Canada, an' Joe wus punchin' cows then. The boys wus sheer grit; good hands, mind you, ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... of Sir William was to initiate a broad and liberal line of policy in colonial affairs on principles which, it appeared to the government, would be adverse to the interests and subversive of the authority of the parent country. Mr. Gladstone was actuated by sheer party opposition. Only forty-two votes were found in ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... justice, confounding his luck and his enemies. He stopped it suddenly, for he had a way of regaining command of his threshing passions all at once. He did not have to let them thresh themselves out, as is the case with weaker men; but he gripped them, full-blooded, to quiet, by sheer will power and a turn of thought. The force of mastery was strong in Black Dennis Nolan's wild nature. When he wished it he could master himself as well as others. Now he sat down quietly beside his fire and lit his pipe. The evening ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... changed slightly as he stood there, the sound of the clock conveying to him (it may be) a sense of old buildings and time; and himself the inheritor; and then to-morrow; and friends; at the thought of whom, in sheer confidence and pleasure, it seemed, he yawned ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... seemed as though Brent's bombshell had been a dud. There was no comment from around the table—no sound of any kind. But each man was evaluating the information after his own fashion. The key thought, no doubt, other than a natural and instinctive moment of sheer unbelief, was that this marked a giant, forward lunge in world history. And also, no doubt, in this group of responsible men, there was a common question: It would appear that our world had at last come to grips with the universe around ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman
... chimneys and rude slate roofs overgrown with moss and fern, rising rapidly, one above the other, in the fast descending hollow, through which a little stream rushed to the sea,—more quietly than its brother, which, at some space distant, fell sheer down over the crag in a white line of foam, brawling with a tone of its own, distinguishable among all the voices of the sea contending with the rocks. Above the village, in the space where the outline of two hills met and crossed, rose the ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... my rides. Many a time have I seen poor little piggy carried down a creek by the current, squealing piteously, but it was evidently a case of "many waters cannot quench love," for a little further on piggy would appear, very much baked, but holding out gallantly, till sheer exhaustion compelled him to give in, when he would lie down under a tussock, apparently dying; but, as we were coming home in the dusk, Helen, my pretty bay mare, has given many a shy at piggy starting up from his shelter with gambols and squeals ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... cultivated and high-minded, exiling himself from his white brethren for a whole season, which he spent with a band of Algonquins, roaming the wintry forests with them, sharing their hunger and cold and filth, sometimes on the verge of perishing from sheer starvation, at other times, when game chanced to be plentiful, revolted by the gorging of his companions, at all times disgusted by their nastiness. "I told them again and again," he writes, "that if dogs and swine could talk, they would use just such speech;" a remark which shows, ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... the men down the cliffs, but not so easy for them to obey, for the rocks were almost perpendicular at the place, and descended sheer ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... down these coulees; one need only let oneself glide down, but it is more difficult to get up again; one has to scramble up by catching hold of the hanging branches of the trees, and sometimes on all fours, by sheer strength. A whole mortal hour passed and he did not come, nothing moved in the brushwood. The captain's wife began to grow impatient; what could he be doing? Why did he not call us? Did the shot that ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... important affairs intent, and carrying the cares of the family, she was not too absorbed to feel the glad impulse of the spring; and for sheer exuberance of life, she would go bounding over a stick or a stone as if it were a tree or a boulder. Though life was a serious matter, she was prepared to get out of it all the fun there was to ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... wounds, of uttering faint shrieks when hurt, of partaking of physical food and pleasure, it was perfectly natural to believe it susceptible of material imprisonment and material torments. Such was the common belief when the doctrine of a physical hell was wrought out. The doctrine yet lingers by sheer force of prescription and unthinkingness, when the basis on which it originally rested has been dissipated. We know great as our ignorance is, we know that the soul is a pure immateriality. Its manifestations depend on certain physical organs and accompaniments, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... Autumnal glories spread,— The flaming pageant of the ripening woods; The fiery gorse, the heather-purpled hills; The rustling leaves that fly before the wind. And lie below the hedgerows whispering; For meadows silver-white with hoary dew; For sheer delight of tasting once again That first crisp breath of winter in the air; The pictured pane; the new white world without; The sparkling hedgerow's witchery of lace; The soft white flakes that fold the sleeping earth; The cold without, the cheerier warmth within; For red-heart ...
— Bees in Amber - A Little Book Of Thoughtful Verse • John Oxenham
... influence on the parish at large is a far more delicate question. To the outer world a parish seems a sheer despotism. The parson prays, preaches, changes the order of service, distributes the parochial charities at his simple discretion. One of the great cries of the Church reformer is generally for the substitution ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... little is he disposed to caricature, that rather, it may be said, many of his traits are almost too nice and delicate for the stage, that they can only be made available by a great actor, and fully understood by an acute audience. Not only has he delineated many kinds of folly, but even of sheer stupidity has he contrived to give a most diverting and entertaining picture. There is also in his pieces a peculiar species of the farcical, which apparently seems to be introduced more arbitrarily, but ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... in Ian's heart! He would cheer if there were a cubic inch of air to spare in his labouring chest—but there is not, and what of it remains must be used in a tough pull to the opposite side, for the sheer given to the building has been almost too strong. In a few minutes his efforts have been successful. The house is bearing steadily though slowly down in ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... that have been are still extant. This destruction cannot, however, be reckoned as all loss; for had not the "cleansing fires" removed mountains of rubbish from our midst, strong destructive measures would have become a necessity from sheer want of space in which to store ...
— Enemies of Books • William Blades
... a session of football spectacular in the extreme, replete with thrilling plays, with sensational tackles, and blood-stirring scrimmage. The Bannister players, nerved by Captain Brewster's exhortation, by sheer will-power drove their battered bodies into the scrimmage. End runs, line-smashing tandem plays, forward passes, followed in bewildering succession, until the ball rested on Ballard's twenty-yard line, and a touchdown meant victory and the Championship for old Bannister, Another rush, ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... have not yet had enough of your second kindness. I was on the point of death from sheer tedium; then you came, just in time; and if you want to carry out your work of mercy you must tell me something about the battle where you were wounded, and who took care of you afterwards, and whether the women of Pannonia ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... them knew one side of a range from the other. And for Anne Brown to talk the way she did—saying I had always been crazy about Jim, and that she believed I had known all along that his aunt was coming—for Anne to talk like that was sheer idiocy. Yes, there was an aunt. The Japanese butler started the trouble, and ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... removal, when a sudden revolution occasioned the disarming of his Indian laborers, who for some time had served for a protection, and all further operations were suspended, as longer residence in that exposed region without arms was sheer madness. It was at that time that Dr. Le Plongeon wrote the following Memorial to the Mexican President, Senor Don Sebastian Lerdo de Tejada, which is given nearly entire, as it makes a statement of his claims and wishes, ...
— The Mayas, the Sources of Their History / Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, His Account of Discoveries • Stephen Salisbury, Jr.
... separating a little child from the habit of anger does fruitful work for him in the helpless time of his childhood. The work is not easy, but a little thought should make it easy for the elders to avoid the provocation which they—who should ward off provocations—are apt to bring about by sheer carelessness. It is only in childhood that our race knows such physical abandonment to sorrow and tears, as a child's despair; and the theatre with us must needs copy childhood if it would catch the note and action ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... his speech or attitude. He was not posing. He spoke of his necessity in the matter-of-fact way in which he had accepted it. It was necessary to earn the sheer essentials of life, in order to get a footing—to get sufficient capital to open up his office again. He would not have borrowed if he could, and a penniless lawyer in New York is in as bad a position as a penniless tramp. ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... highwayman, having mounted, gave us the word to proceed, Bentley and I riding first, then Raikes and the Captain, and last of all the fellow, pistol in hand. So thus it was, in the dusk of the evening, that we came into Tonbridge Town, with never a word betwixt us—myself silent from sheer amazement, the Captain for reasons of his own, Sir Harry Raikes for very obvious causes, but mostly (as I judge) on account of his chattering teeth, and Bentley because a man cannot whistle "Lillibuleero" beneath his breath and ...
— The Honourable Mr. Tawnish • Jeffery Farnol
... Wild and the Count La Ruse, in Fielding's narrative, took a hand at cards, Jonathan picked his opponent's pocket, though he knew it was empty, while the Count, from sheer force of habit, stacked the cards, though Wild had not a farthing to lose. And if in his uncultured youth the great man stooped to prig with his own hand, he was early cured of the weakness: so that Fielding's picture of the hero taking a bottle-screw ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... danger. But he did not care. When, as now, he was carried away by an idea, he cared for naught. And, moreover, he had the consciousness of being cleverer, acuter, than any of these ministers of religion, than anybody in the town! His sheer skill and resourcefulness in life had always borne him safely through every difficulty—from a prize-fight ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... high, I know," said Captain Leezur, "but I'm all'as willin' to sheer 'em with a friend. I ain't one o' that kind that's all'as ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... to me it was no less a thing—had come upon me so suddenly that I was fairly stunned. From sheer force of habit I went over to the church and knelt before the altar; but I could not pray; I could only kneel there dumbly. I heard the screech of the three o'clock express coming in, and, a few minutes later, its longer screech as it departed. He had gone, then! I ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... is so terribly in earnest. A humorous word will be little short of an insult, a jest but a proof of scorn. His vanity, if not his heart, will receive a wound that is not lightly to be healed. There are those who laugh from sheer nervous excitement; let them not lose the men they love by a lack of self-control that may be so ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux
... spirit-stirring example it has bequeathed to future generations of English soldiers, for its illustration of death-defying, disciplined courage; the great fight at Inkerman was only converted from a calamitous surprise into a victory by sheer obstinate valour, not by able strategy; and the operations that after Lord Raglan's death brought the unreasonably protracted siege of Sebastopol to a close did but evince afresh how grand were the soldierly qualities of both French and English, ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... boiling effervescence, and his tongue, with inconceivable rapidity, passed from subject to subject, but with an incoherence that was to me, at least, marvellous. For two hours he poured forth a verbal torrent, which was only suspended by sheer ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... homely table. Our cheerfulness, at first sheer reaction, became less forced as we ate great slices of bread from the granny oven back of the house, and drank hot fluid that smelled like coffee and tasted like nothing that I have ever swallowed. We found cream in stone jars, sunk deep in the chill ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... than ever fell upon the waiting negroes. Then—horror of horrors! a peculiar grating, rustling sound came from the vicinity of Ambrose—a slight creaking—and again silence. The investigators held hands of neighbours who trembled from sheer panic, whose breath came hard and panting ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... dirks,—what chance would they have among so many? There were scores of these sinewy sons of the Desert,—without counting the shrewish women,—each armed with gun and scimitar, any one of whom ought to have been more than a match for a "mid." It would have been sheer folly to have attempted a rescue. Despair only could have sanctioned ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... menagerie during a projected cruise of forty-odd days! "What philanthropy!" ejaculated the editor of The Gad. What a kindly old soul was the projector of this wonderful enterprise, that he should take a couple of tired old elephants off on a Mediterranean trip out of the sheer kindness of his heart! Was it not the acme of generosity for a man who had lately been so hard up that he had mortgaged his farm to go to the expense of building a huge floating barge on which the gorillas, giraffes, and rhinoceri of the land, ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... felt less and less hopeful with each failure, and presently began to turn off into diverging avenues at sheer random, in desperate hope of finding the one that was wanted. He still said it was "all right," but there was such a leaden dread at his heart that the words had lost their ring and sounded just as if he had said, "All is lost!" Becky clung to his side in an anguish of fear, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... great deal of perversion and misrepresentation; while Mrs. Evelyn listened and smiled, and half parried and half assented to his positions; and Fleda sat impatiently drumming upon her elbow with the fingers of her other hand, in the sheer necessity of giving some expression to her feelings. Mr. Stackpole at last got his finger upon the sore spot of American slavery, and pressed ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... laugh with sheer happiness, to throw open gate and door and usher her guest into the old room where Tesuque sat and the Navajo blanket still covered the couch as of yore, and nothing was altered except that now other rooms opened brightly on all sides, and in one a piano displayed ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead
... ingenuity and tact, officers and men adjusted themselves to their unusual surroundings, merging into the various billets allotted to them, along lines of least resistance. By nightfall Buddie owned the town! Meriting it by sheer force of good nature, gentlemanly deportment, and a willingness to follow the adage of the ancient poet: "Si fueris Romae Romano ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... The gaunt gray piles, the metallic surfaces, the homelinesses of Moussorgsky, are more virile, stronger, more resisting than Wagner's music. Only folk aristocratically sure of themselves can be as gay and light at will. If there is anything in modern music to be compared with the sheer, blunt, powerful volumes of primitive art it is the work of Moussorgsky. And as the years pass, the man's stature and mind become more immense, more prodigious. One has but to hearken to the accent of the greater part of modern music to gauge in whose ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... mere ball-room coquette; he had forgotten her as soon as if it had been a mere holiday fancy of a boy of fifteen. He had been completely infatuated, dazzled, blinded by a beautiful face. That it was sheer infatuation was now evident; for, absent from both Elinor and Jane, all feeling for the latter seemed to have vanished like a dream. It is said that love without hope cannot live: the question must be settled by those who have suffered most frequently from the wounds ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... answer to the Government, that England is now using in answer to Germany. I was distrustful of the quotations that were given to me and looked the volume up, and found that England was governed by much the same idea that Germany was—just sheer necessity. Of course, your answer is that we have traveled ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... quoit together!" Lazy Kwasind made no answer, To their challenge made no answer, Only rose, and slowly turning, Seized the huge rock in his fingers, Tore it from its deep foundation, Poised it in the air a moment, Pitched it sheer into the river, Sheer into the swift Pauwating, Where it still is seen in Summer. Once as down that foaming river, Down the rapids of Pauwating, Kwasind sailed with his companions, In the stream he saw a beaver, Saw Ahmeek, the King of Beavers, Struggling with the rushing currents, Rising, sinking ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... the morning we went to bed, and dropped asleep from sheer fatigue. At about four Kitty and I woke up and discussed the situation dispassionately. We got out of our beds and looked out of the windows. Rain was falling in sheets, and the world seemed a cold, cheerless, ...
— An Account of Our Arresting Experiences • Conway Evans
... constitution in which the reflective part is weak. There are the men who live on sensation, but who do so lustily, with a certain fulness of blood and active energy of muscle. There are others who do so passively, not searching for excitement, but acquiescing. The former by their sheer force and plenitude of vitality may, even in a world where reflection is a first condition, still go far. The latter succumb, and as reflection does nothing for them, and as their sensations in such a world bring them few blandishments, they are tolerably early surrounded ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... was a trying moment for Tad Butler, down there alone in the branches of the pinyon tree, with fifty feet of nothingness beneath him and a sheer wall that extended an equal distance ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Rockies • Frank Gee Patchin
... and men aft gang aglee," from sheer stupidity and pig-headed obstinacy. General Kirby Smith had publicly announced that Banks's army was too strong to be fought, and that the proper policy was either to defend the works protecting Shreveport, or retreat into Texas. ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... Dr. James declared, "it's just what I expected—sheer exhaustion, and nothing else. But she'd better be got out of this atmosphere ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... dress is not made of the finest of handkerchief linen, French nainsook or a very fine batiste is usually chosen. These are the soft materials, soft as well as sheer. They are the materials on which embroidery is done most successfully and the baby dress de luxe is always hand embroidered. It may have on it the merest touch of hand work—scarcely more than a few eyelets and a tiny ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... these cases obtain publicity through the columns of the daily press, although occasionally, in part from sensationalism, and in part from sheer ignorance, a case may be allotted to the category of sadism, which really has nothing to do with this perversion, or whose sadistic character is doubtful. This applies, for example, to the well-known Dippold case. Here, the sons of a wealthy Berlin family were mishandled ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... whose husband had been the Under Secretary, wrote and said she was longing to see the last Duggleton, and hinted that a Duggleton the more was sheer gain to This England which Our Fathers Made. His father put his name down that very day for the Club and met there Baron Urscher, who promised every support "if God should spare him to the time when he might welcome another Duggleton to these old rooms." The baron then recalled ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... experienced such open ridicule as when she came smiling up to the table, drawing back the sleeve of her gown from her delicate dimpled wrist. She wore a white dress, such as one never sees save in that Southern country, so softly sheer, falling in such graceful, floating lines, with a deep, plain hem and no touch of garniture save, perhaps, an edge of old lace on the surplice neck. The cut of the dress showed a triangular section of her soft white chest and all the firm modelling of her throat ...
— The Phantom Of Bogue Holauba - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... absence Stephen lived under alternate conditions. Whenever his emotions were active, he was in agony. Whenever he was not in agony, the business in hand had driven out of his mind by sheer force all deep reflection on the subject ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... strove. Twice I thought I had him, when my footing failed; and once he held me fairly uplifted from the ground, yet could not make the toss. 'T was a wild grapple, for when we had exhausted all the tricks we knew, it came to be a sheer test of physical endurance. Then, for the first time, I felt myself the master,—though he was a man, that gay French dandy, and never did my ribs crack under the pressure of a stronger hand. But I slowly pressed him back, inch by inch, struggling like a demon to the last, ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... licked sheer out of go an' grit, From the times of Pharaoh down to the Khe-dive; Till you 'ardly feel yerself one bloomin' bit, And I almost wonder you are left alive. But we've got you out of a good deal of that, Sir EVELYN and the rest of us. You foller; ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 14, 1893 • Various
... Simmons turned away in sheer horror of his wicked self, and for a moment thought of washing the tea-things over again by way of discipline. Then he made for the back room, but saw from the landing that the front door was standing open, probably the fault of the child downstairs. ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... house. A gust of rain blew swirling after him, and he turned, swearing, and shut the great door with a bang. It had not been a good day for sport. The ground had been sodden, and the scent had washed away. He had followed the hounds for miles to no purpose and had galloped home at last in sheer disgust. To add to his grievances he had called upon Lady Emberdale on his way back, and had not found her in. "Gone to tea with her precious Admiral, I suppose!" he had growled, as he rode away, which, as it chanced, was the case. The suspicion ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... came to the point, it was found that Dare could not go. Nothing short of force would have turned the unwelcome guest out of the bed in the blue bedroom, from which he made no attempt to rise, and on which he lay worn-out and feverish, in a stupor of sheer mental and ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... Tornado was running of falling on board the vessel was very great, and Jack was about reluctantly to give the order to sheer off from her, when he saw the remainder of those on deck prepare to make the desperate leap which would either terminate in their destruction or place them in comparative safety. Just at that moment, as his eye was fixed on the naval ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... incuriously, he was swiftly recognized for what he was by all who came in touch with the magazine. In the first place, interested in his progress, I had seen to it that he was properly introduced wherever that was possible and of benefit to him, and later on, by sheer force of his mental capacity and integrity, his dreams and his critical skill, he managed to center about him an entire band of seeking young writers, artists, poets, playwrights, aspiring musicians; ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... day, 1887, he laid down his pen to resume it again no more. He was forced to this by sheer exhaustion; his body was wasted to a skeleton, and it was clear to all that the end was near. Having suffered much for several days, but without a murmur, on the evening of Jan. 5 he requested all his family to come to his bedside, and while ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... naturally as though it really had been yesterday that we went fishing in the meadow. My heart beat quicker. I laughed aloud for the sheer joy of living in the same world with her. I vowed that I should be very nice indeed to Mrs. Bannister. Had Penelope asked me to be very nice to her friend Medusa I should have given her my pledge. Subtly, by her admonition, she had conveyed to me the promise that this walk was to be ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... I said, "that the heavy sea which, you told me, came aboard just then might have killed the man? I have seen the sheer weight of a sea kill a man very neatly, by simply breaking ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... tyrant. He also gave them many cruel beatings, cudgellings, blows and other kinds of cruelty every day and every hour. 16. It is told of him that he destroyed and burnt eight hundred towns in that kingdom of Xalisco: he goaded the Indians to rebellion out of sheer desperation, and after they saw such numbers perish so cruelly, they killed some Spaniards, in which they were perfectly justified, and then retreated to the mountains. 17. Afterwards, the injustice and oppression of other recent tyrants who passed that ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... surprise party for Bosambo, and took so much trouble with the details, that, because of his sheer thoroughness, he deserved to have succeeded. Lokali men concealed in the bush were waiting to announce the coming of the rescue party, when N'gori sent his cry for help crashing across the world. Six ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... done with theological refinements. There is an excuse for the Fathers, because the heretics forced them to define particular points; but every definition is a misfortune, and for us to persevere in the same way is sheer folly. Is no man to be admitted to grace who does not know how the Father differs from the Son, and both from the Spirit? or how the nativity of the Son differs from the procession of the Spirit? Unless I forgive my brother his ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... bargain of Dr. Cutler with Congress, the Associators prepared to migrate en masse to their purchase. What the hardy spirits among the country people of the South Atlantic States had been able to accomplish by individual initiative and sheer endurance, the town-dwellers of the North Atlantic States did more systematically and rapidly by concerted action. Organisation and government protection saved the Ohio Associators from such experiments of colonisation as had frequently led to Indian captivities and abandoned ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... for half an hour, when about a dozen of the Cavaliers raised a shout, and made a dash at where General Hedley was slowly retreating, their object being evidently to take him prisoner before, from sheer exhaustion, the ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... "It would be sheer madness," he said to himself, "and yet I have no doubt it will end in his doing so, but as he must know it is a piece of stupendous folly, I can understand his reluctance to risk my speaking to him on the subject. I am awfully sorry for him, but ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... trade my furs off regularly at the settlements on the islands and even along the mainland,—a month's work for a little flour or sugar. Ah, how I have labored! I have felt my muscles crack, I have dropped like a log from sheer weariness. Talk of tortures; which of them have I not felt, with the pains and faintness of exposure and hunger racking me from head to foot? Have I stopped for snow and ice? Have I stopped for anguish? ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... undecipherable. They are the same times which gave rise to every character of significance during the period before the war. Emerson is indeed the easiest to understand of all the men of his time, because his life is freest from the tangles and qualifications of circumstance. He is a sheer and pure type and creature of destiny, and the unconsciousness that marks his development allies him to the deepest phenomena. It is convenient, in describing him, to use language which implies consciousness on his ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... russet, speckled, grey, black-flecked, striped and spotted pigeons, doves, pouters—some cocks, the rest hens—a motley crowd all mixed up together. There were some that sat murmuring one to the other, softly—oh, so softly—and nodding their heads for sheer kindliness. Others cooed loudly, angrily or indifferently and tripped round one another. Others sat huddled, meditating, lonely and forlorn, blinking their bright little ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... expression changed slightly as he stood there, the sound of the clock conveying to him (it may be) a sense of old buildings and time; and himself the inheritor; and then to-morrow; and friends; at the thought of whom, in sheer confidence and pleasure, it seemed, he yawned and ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... of sunshine at the break of day! A stream of light in an obscured sky! Hope ever causes chords long forgotten to resound, and existence becomes once again pleasant as of yore. Such were the feelings which animated me during that night of happiness when, thanks to you alone, everything was sheer joy. Thy spirit lifted up mine out of sadness; never did an intoxication equal the one I ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... sermon. The fact is, I am. My mood is a severely moral mood. For when I reflect upon the difference between what books have to offer and what even relatively earnest readers take the trouble to accept from them, I am appalled (or should be appalled, did I not know that the world is moving) by the sheer inefficiency, the bland, complacent failure of the earnest reader. I am like yourself, the spectacle of ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... that can be read, my dear fellow. The last page looks like sheer delirium. She may well have told you that ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... dwelling, upstairs and down, from the roof to the cellar, there was a stunning tapping of hammers: coffins were being nailed down, and so many, so very many were nailed, that sometimes those who worked stopped from sheer fatigue. Then broke forth laments, heart-rending moans, despairing imprecations. They were uttered by those from whom the men in black and gray had taken some one to ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... with inimitable carelessness and, rubbing his eyes, somewhat noticeably in the manner of one who has snatched an hour of much needed sleep, took his place as if nothing in particular had happened. This, at first supposed to be a superhuman exhibition of sheer audacity, became but the more dumfounding when Miss Spence—looking up from her desk—greeted him with a pleasant little nod. Even after school, Penrod gave numerous maddened investigators no relief. All he would consent ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... hither and thither, observing the surgeon with languid interest. Another nurse, much younger, without the "black band," watched the surgeon from the foot of the cot. Beads of perspiration chased themselves down her pale face, caused less by sympathy than by sheer weariness and heat. The small receiving room of St. Isidore's was close and stuffy, surcharged with odors of iodoform and ether. The Chicago spring, so long delayed, had blazed with a sudden fury ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... man Jesus obedience to God was an act of humiliation? Surely there is but one explanation of such a statement. For all men but this one to be God's slaves is their highest honour, and to speak of obedience as humiliation is a sheer absurdity. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... easy and simple; but rouse it, and its exuberant strength rises in a paroxysm of rage, though its clumsy awkward blows, guided by mere cunning, fail to strike the slight and lissom foe who waits for and eludes the stroke, until his reason gives him the mastery over sheer brute force which has wearied itself ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... himself and enforce upon others as the first postulate of order, the prerequisite for all happiness in this life. In regard to the Visible Church he was a reformer, but no revolutionist; it is sheer ignorance to speak of him as if there were anything new or exceptional in his denunciation of the corruptions of the clergy. They were the commonplaces of the age, nor were they confined to laymen.[229] ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... strength, may, it seems to me, avail ourselves of the truth in Nietzsche, which, after all, is very much the same as my own theory of the selection of the fit for rule. The difference is, that we wish to use our power for the common good, whilst Nietzsche's teaching results in a return to sheer barbarism, the weak trampled because ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... liberal line of policy in colonial affairs on principles which, it appeared to the government, would be adverse to the interests and subversive of the authority of the parent country. Mr. Gladstone was actuated by sheer party opposition. Only forty-two votes were found in ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... part of those dark hours he spent in bitter reviling of Wilding, of himself, and even of his sister, whom he blamed for this awful situation into which he had tumbled; at other times he wept from self-pity and sheer fright. ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... may, reduce phrases and even clauses to a word. Thus the clause at the beginning and the phrase at the close of the following sentence constitute sheer verbiage: "Men who have let their temper get the better of them are often in a mood to do harm to somebody." The sentence tells us nothing that may not be told in five words: "Angry men are ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... Bumppo, cried Benjamin, your top-light frightens the fish, who see the net and sheer off soundings. A fish knows as much as a horse, or, for that matter, more, seeing that its brought up on the water. Haul oil, Master Bumppo, haul off, I say, and give a wide ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... He was as much merrier than you, for instance, as you are merrier than your father. Sometimes he fell, like a spinning-top, from sheer merriment. Have you seen a greyhound leaping the fences of the Gardens? That is how Peter ...
— Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... his own indirectness, he was conscious at once of the slight sign of reservation, and said: 'Tell me . . .' and swerved sheer away from his ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... she had awakened from her delusion; but what direction would her pride now take? Would she continue in the course she had chosen in sheer perversity, in sheer fidelity to herself? There was also the attraction of extreme opposites to be reckoned with, the fascination which a man of simple psychology, of strength and wholesome good looks, might possess for a woman of great subtlety ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... of her impelling presence, let come what might come. He could love her then; he could dare what he had never dared; he could surrender himself to the furious, insistent sweetness of a passion that was sheer bliss in its expression. He could imagine kisses on the red lips that ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... amorous, so toying and fine! and all for sheer Love, ye Rogue! Oh how she lookt and kiss'd! and sooth'd my Heart from my Bosom. I cannot think I was awake, and yet methinks I see and feel her Charms still— Fred.— Try if she have not left the Taste of her balmy Kisses upon my Lips— ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... further on, an Indian hunter drew near on horseback, but Nakpa did not pause or slacken her pace. On she fled through the long dry grass of the river bottoms, while her babies slept again from sheer exhaustion. Toward sunset, she entered the Sioux camp amid great excitement, for some one had spied her afar off, and the boys and the dogs announced ...
— Indian Child Life • Charles A. Eastman
... maze of these rooms the two boys wandered. Sometimes the floor under their feet would flame in brilliant patterns from lighting below, patterns of barbaric clashing colours, of pastel delicacy, of sheer whiteness, or of subtle and intricate mosaic, surely from some mosque on the Adriatic Sea. Sometimes beneath layers of thick crystal he would see blue or green water swirling, inhabited by vivid fish and growths of rainbow foliage. Then they would be treading on furs of every texture ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... doubt as to how to make his fight. The British regulars dwelt in a small fort at one end of the town, where they had two light guns; but Clark feared lest, if he made a sudden night attack, the townspeople and Indians would from sheer fright turn against him. He accordingly arranged, just before he himself marched in, to send in the captured duck-hunter, conveying a warning to the Indians and the Creoles that he was about to attack the town, but that his only quarrel was with the British, and that if the other ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... broke into a hoarse yell and dashed once more upon the two knights, hurling themselves madly upon their sword-points; clutching, scrambling, biting, tearing, careless of wounds if they could but drag the two soldiers to earth. Sir Nigel was thrown down by the sheer weight of them, and Sir Bertrand with his thunderous war-cry was swinging round his heavy sword to clear a space for him to rise, when the whistle of two long English arrows, and the rush of the squire and the two English archers down the stairs, turned the tide of ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... could hear voices over to the right as they silently slipped down. It was no easy thing to negotiate that stiff mountainside in the darkness, where a slip would have sent one of them rolling down into the sharp rock-slide beneath. Presently they came to a rockrim, a sheer descent of twenty-five feet down the ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... even wink at it," replied his foe. "Still further," continued the warlike mountaineer in sheer desperation, "you must ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... on "The Results of the Science of Language;" but you will easily understand that to sum up in one course of lectures the results of researches which have been carried on with unflagging industry by three generations of scholars, would be a sheer impossibility. Besides, amere detailing of results, though it is possible, is hardly calculated to subserve the real objects of academic teaching. You would not be satisfied with mere results: you ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... Berkeley, argumentatively. "She'll never do any better; Jim's a handsome fellow, as men go, brave, honorable and sweet-tempered. What more does she want? It looks to me like sheer perversity." ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... she answered, with withering scorn. 'But, then, I thought you were trying to catch him. He tells me now you won't have him, and you won't tell him where you are going. I call it sheer insolence. Where do you hail from, girl, that you should refuse my nephew? A man that any woman in England would be proud to marry! Forty thousand a year, and an earl's grandson! That's what comes, I suppose, of ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... the thoughts maturing in Rabourdin's mind ever since his promised place had been given to Monsieur de la Billardiere, a man of sheer incapacity. This plan, so vast apparently yet so simple in point of fact, which did away with so many large staffs and so many little offices all equally useless, required for its presentation to ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... or sat on the dead leaves which carpeted the ground. Cal suddenly realized he was glad to take the strain from his legs, as if he had been maintaining stance through sheer will. ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... sky before them as they silently trudged to the rock and from the top of the sheer cliff contemplated the smooth and steely-gray Hudson below. Nelly squeaked her fear at the drop and clutched his arm, but suddenly let go and ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... had only been there!" Walter exclaimed, when Stephen ceased speaking from sheer lack ...
— Neal, the Miller - A Son of Liberty • James Otis
... then, prior, who from sheer goodness of heart are undertaking to alter this fatal resolution? I admire your zeal, and I thank you for it; but I do not think there will be any need of all these negotiations. M. Jean de Mauprat claims his share of the inheritance; ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... better care of her—Oh! quaint injustice! as though Soames could possibly take more care!)—should be drawing to herself June's lover, was intolerably humiliating. And seeing the danger, he did not, like James, hide it away in sheer nervousness, but owned with the dispassion of his broader outlook, that it was not unlikely; there was ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... would begin to emit sparks. He was short in stature, much shorter than the hulking fellows who stood and surveyed him through the smoke of their pipes, but he had such a cocky little way with him that he overawed them much more than a big man would have done. Out of sheer dulness he ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... is but two stories high, and its spruce walls of Portland stone and ashlar work rise sheer out of the green sward; in front, Doric columns support a heavy entablature, and there are urns at the corners of the building. The six windows on the ground floor are topped with round arches, and coming up the drive ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... per se. All cases where beauty can be pointed to in organic nature are seemingly due—either to natural selection, acting without reference to beauty, but to utility; to sexual selection, acting with reference to the taste of animals; or else to sheer accident. And if this general conclusion should be held to need any special verification, is it not to be found in the numberless cases where organic nature not only fails to be beautiful, but reveals itself as the reverse. Not again to refer to the case of parasites, what can be more unshapely ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... one might have regarded as the most unlikely classes. Indian merchants whose interests would seem to be bound up with the maintenance of order and public tranquillity, Bombay Banias and Calcutta Marwaris, have thrown themselves into the "Non-co-operation" movement out of sheer bitterness and loss of confidence in British good faith, boycotting British imported goods and supplying a large part of the funds without which even a Mahatma cannot carry on ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... escape when the other is stormed by the fisher; whereas the crab is usually content, like the "rat devoid of soul," with a hole of only one opening; and, besides, gets so angry in most cases with his assailant, as to become more bent on assault than escape, and so loses himself through sheer loss of temper. And yet the crab has, he used to add, some points of intelligence about him too. When, as sometimes happened, he got hold, in his dark narrow recess in the rock, of some luckless digit, my uncle showed me how that, after the first tremendous squeeze, he ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... tired. Max walked with drooping tail, and Brenda was whining softly to herself from sheer weariness and weak-mindedness. The parrot alone was happy—or at least ...
— The Magic City • Edith Nesbit
... on terms of distant iciness, Valentine and Katherine constantly sparring over trifles, Fauvette preserving an attitude of martyred dignity, and Aveline, out of sheer perversity, striking up a friendship with Maudie Heywood, matters were not ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... treacherous, in league with her foe. It was endless. She prayed for dawn—yet with a blank hopelessness for what the day might bring. Could she hold out through more interminable hours? Would she not break from sheer strain? There were moments when she wavered and shook like a leaf in the wind, when the beating of her heart was audible, when a child could have seen her distress. There were other moments when all was ugly, unreal, impossible like things in a nightmare. But when ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... conditions as they are. The first of these conditions is that the United States is a world power neither because of its virtue nor because of its intelligence in the delicacies of the world politics, but because of the sheer might of ...
— The American Empire • Scott Nearing
... clear day, and, although of course in that latitude and at that season the heat was intense later on, it was cool and pleasant in the early morning. We sat on the forward deck, admiring the trees on the brink of the sheer river banks, the lush, rank grass of the marshes, and the many water-birds. The two pilots, one black and one white, stood at the wheel. Colonel Rondon read Thomas a Kempis. Kermit, Cherrie, and Miller squatted outside the railing on the deck ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... laughs and tells Frank that he is a good soldier spoiled, and that it is a pity a man should settle down as a doctor who had made his way in life "by sheer pluck." ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... The sheer impudence of the thing had astounded everybody. Young Kerry's treatment of his leading persecutor had produced a salutary change of opinion. Of such kidney was Daniel Kerry, junior; and when, some hours after his father's ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... of women who know just enough to appreciate their compliments—women who deprecate their "strong-minded" sisters, and are ready to agree implicitly with every statement that the lords of creation may make; but this readiness is due to sheer inability to produce a thought ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... more about him and his methods, succeeding by sheer brute force and shouting all opposition down. Don't you wish, Mamma, we had some like him at home to deal with the socialists? These men are the real autocrats of the world, even though America is a republic. But wouldn't it be frightful ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... I were just a sheer Machiavelli and didn't have any heart but had brains, I would say: "If you mean what you say and are fighting for permanent peace, then there is only one way to get it, whether you like justice or not." ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... pay 1s per head. Now, I think I could provide you with a sumptuous dinner at 3d per head, and I should want that allowance for a little tobacco. It is not, I can assure you, gentlemen, a question of wages, but one of sheer honour that prompts me to apply for the situation of master of the Keighley Workhouse. If this suits your notice, you can reply by return of post.—Your humble servant, Bill o' th' Hoylus End." But I was not appointed; and it is perhaps unnecessary to say that I did not intend to be appointed. ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... Kirk. To begin with, the very word 'free' has a fascination for the citizen of a republic; and then my theological training was begun this morning by a gifted young minister of Edinburgh whom we call the Friar, because the first time we saw him in his gown and bands (the little spot of sheer whiteness beneath the chin, that lends such added spirituality to a spiritual face) we fancied that he looked like some pale brother of the Church in the olden time. His pallor, in a land of rosy redness and milky whiteness; his smooth, fair ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... believe in myself, Lady Lawless. I have had to take my measure a good many times in this world. I never was defeated through my own stupidity. It has been the sheer ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... perched upon a log that spanned it ten or twelve feet above the water. The situation was all the more interesting because I saw no possible way to land my fish. I could not lead him ashore, and my frail tackle could not be trusted to lift him sheer from that pit to my precarious perch. What should I do? call for help? but no help was near. I had a revolver in my pocket and might have shot him through and through, but that novel proceeding did not occur to me until it was too late. ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... McQuarters of the Royal Artillery, Captain Barnsfair, a merchant skipper, with fifteen mates and skippers like himself, and thirty French Canadians under Captain Chabot and Lieutenant Picard. These fifty men had to guard a front of only as many feet. On their right Cape Diamond rose almost sheer. On their left raged the stormy St Lawrence. They had a tiny block-house next to the cliff and four small guns on the barricade, all double-charged with canister and grape. They had heard the dropping shots on the top of the Cape for nearly an hour and had been quick to notice the ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... death, all along of your cursed rump. Alas! how frightened I am! oh! I have no heart for jests. Ah! machinist, take great care of me. There is already a wind whirling round my navel; take great care or, from sheer fright, I shall form food for my beetle.... But I think I am no longer far from the gods; aye, that is the dwelling of Zeus, I perceive. Hullo! Hi! where is the ...
— Peace • Aristophanes
... is sadly wasting now," said Meliora. "She seems to be slowly dying, and I shouldn't wonder if it were of sheer starvation; those models earn so little. Yesterday she fainted as she stood—Michael is so thoughtless. He had to call me to give her some wine, and then we sent the maid home with her. She lives in a poor place, Hannah ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... waiter, and referred to successive tankards of bitter, with the superfluous rider that the man who said we couldn't drink beer was a liar. But indeed I never could myself, and only achieved the impossible in this case out of sheer sympathy with Raffles. And eventually I had my reward, in such a recital of malignant privation as I cannot trust myself to set down ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... application, evil may still result from the shoe itself being made too narrow. As a result of this, the branch of each side is set too far under the foot, with consequent injury to the sole. This is, of course, sheer carelessness on the part of the smith. When practised, however, it is not easy of detection, as in all cases the foot is rasped down to cover what has been done. In other words, the foot is made to fit the shoe and not the ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... remarkably picturesque. The maze of islands, hundreds in number, of the Alexander Archipelago (area about 13,000 sq. m.) are remnants of a submerged mountain system; the islands rise 3000 to 5000 ft. above the sea, with luxuriantly wooded tops and bald, sheer sides scarred with marks of glacial action; the beachless coast is only a narrow ledge between the mountains and the sea, and unlike the coast of Norway, to which in outline it is not dissimilar, is bold, steep and craggy. Through the inner channels, sheltered ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... from the trammels of etiquette was very complete. In theory—and he abounded in theory—his manners were purely democratic. It was by sheer habit and inadvertency that he permitted Firmin, who had discovered a rucksack in a small shop in the town below, to carry both bottles of beer. The king had never, as a matter of fact, carried anything for himself in his life, ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... precisely the kernel and the only touch-point of the whole question. No nation ever had the power of conquest that did not use it, or abuse it, at the very first favourable opportunity. All that is said of the magnanimity and forbearance of mighty nations can be explained on the principle of sheer inexpediency, as the world knows. The whole face of Europe has been changed, and the dynasties of many hundred years have been swept away within our own time, on the principle of might alone—the oldest, ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... though the roof still stretched above him; and before him lay the two abysses full of stars, for they cut their way through the whole Earth and revealed the under sky; and threading its course between them went the way, and it sloped upward and its sides were sheer. And beyond the abysses, where the way led up to the farther chambers of the fortress, Leothric heard the musicians playing their magical tune. So he stepped on to the way, which was scarcely a stride in width, and moved along it holding Sacnoth naked. And to and fro beneath him ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... plenty, and they afforded good sport to a First of September shooting party, provided with a setter. At length the poor quail had their quarters so thoroughly beaten up, that several, in attempting to escape from the island, were observed to fall into the water from sheer exhaustion. Nor did the birds receive all the benefit of the shot, for Captain Stanley, while observing with the theodolite, became unwittingly a target for a juvenile shooter; but, fortunately, no damage was done. ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... Rutowsky; who met it with creditable vigor, till relieved by the others. Comte Maurice, too, did a shifty thing. Circling round by the outside of the Wischerad, by rural roads in the bright moonshine, he had got to the Wall at last, hollow slope and sheer wall; and was putting-to his scaling-ladders,—when, by ill luck, they proved too short! Ten feet or so; hopelessly too short. Casting his head round, Maurice notices the Gallows hard by: "There, see you, are a few short ladders: ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... many Americans, both at home and abroad, that they want to be taken nationally, and not personally, by foreigners. Beyond any other people we wish to be loved by other peoples, even by others whom we do not love, and we wish to be loved in the lump. We would like to believe that somehow our sheer Americanism rouses the honor and evokes the veneration of the alien, and as we have long had a grudge against the English, we would be particularly glad to forget it in a sense of English respect and affection. ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... ever turned his heels to Salt Water, or run a moose down with sheer grit," supplemented Bettles; "but he's the prove-the-rule exception. Look at his woman, Unga,—tip the scales at a hundred an' ten, clean meat an' nary ounce to spare. She'd bank grit 'gainst his for all there was in him, an' see him, an' go him better if it was ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... to the barn with Duke. January as usual was idling. He had his fiddle and was playing "Dixie." Beth sat down on the hay near him, while the dog family frolicked around her. She was happy, so happy that from sheer light-heartedness she ...
— A Little Florida Lady • Dorothy C. Paine
... supreme, and Vrisha is said to mean righteousness. The illustrious God of gods, therefore, is called Vrishakapi. And since Maheswara by means of his two eyes closed (in meditation), created through sheer force of will a third eye on his forehead, he is for that reason called the Three-eyed. Whatever of unsoundness there is in the bodies of living creatures, and whatever of soundness there is in them, represent that God. He is the wind, the vital airs ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... fearing a visit from the police, the owner of the den, a strong, coarse Irishman, interfered, and dragging the women apart, pushed Mother Hewitt out, giving her so violent an impetus that she fell forward into the middle of the narrow street, where she lay unable to rise, not from any hurt, but from sheer intoxication. ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... Barney and shouted it into his ear: "Say, Barney, Barney Thayer, be you deaf? Thomas Payne has got—your—girl!" But Barney planted on; his nerves were quivering, the impetus to strike out was so strong in his arms that it seemed as if it must by sheer mental force affect his teasing brother, but he made no sign, ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... with ghost stories than true tales. Indeed we may say that four gloated over it, for Liffie Lee, unable to restrain her curiosity, put her head in at the door—at first with the more or less honest intention of asking if "hany think was wanted," and afterwards let her head remain from sheer ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... be? you will exclaim. A fall of sheer twenty feet, and upon loose rocks, too! How could he escape being killed, or, at the very least, badly bruised ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... allow himself to forget his skill in the use of the hammer, and to the last he took pleasure in handling it, sometimes in the way of business, and often through sheer love of his art. Mr Nasmyth says, "It was one of my duties, while acting as assistant in his beautiful little workshop, to keep up a stock of handy bars of lead which he had placed on a shelf under his work-bench, which was ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... had commissioned to "see as she went." Not that Joanna could really bring herself to believe that Ellen was truthful in saying she did not care about the show, but she thought it possible that sheer contrariness might ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... was better to conciliate than provoke those who even for an hour had felt their strength. The red rain made Wexford's harvest grow. Theirs was no treacherous assassination—theirs no stupid riot—theirs no pale mutiny. They rose in mass and swept the country by sheer force. ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... sink to the depths in which John B. Gough found himself at the age of twenty-five years. By sheer force of will he raised himself from the slough in which he wallowed, till he attained a position honored among men, and performed a service of exceptional usefulness ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... back against the steep side of the mountain as though half terrified at the hollow immensity of the welkin above, or the almost sheer drop to the valley five hundred feet beneath. A sidling mountain trail passed the front of its rail fence, and stones continually rolled from the upper to the ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... we all meekly acquiesce. In Europe we kill and maim people by the hundred thousand, not seriously and deliberately for any sacred ends that make Life more precious to us or the Mystery of Nature more intelligible, but out of sheer stupidity. We spend the half, and sometimes more than the half, of our national incomes in sharpening to the finest point our implements of bloodshed, not to the accompaniment of any Bacchic Evoe, but incongruously mumbling the Sermon on the Mount. ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... except Marlanx. The Iron Count was white with anger. He took the examination out of Lorry's hands, and plied the stranger with insulting questions, each calm answer making him more furious than before. At last, in sheer impotence, he relapsed into silence, waving his hand to Lorry to indicate that ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... cool enough to note him on his horse beside Forrest. Also, Graham realized that the turning of her head and the waving of her arm was only partly in bravado, was more in aesthetic wisdom of the picture she composed, and was, most of all, sheer joy of daring and emprise of the blood and the flesh and ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... laughed Ingred, "and if I drop down for sheer lack of breath, I shall expect you and Verity to carry me ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... far-away notes of a reed blown by a boy in the shadow by the sea, you land, and, following the path by the hillside, come suddenly on the little port with its few fishing-boats and litter of ropes and nets, above which rises the little town, house piled on house, from the ruined church rising high, sheer out of the sea to the church of marble that crowns the hill. Before you stands the gate of Porto Venere, a little Eastern in its dilapidation, its colour of faded gold, its tower, and broken battlement. Passing under the ancient arch past a shrine of Madonna, you enter the long ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... and she liked the Cowperwoods. Now she began to realize that there was something more than mere friendship here. This erstwhile boy was a man, and he was calling on her. It was almost ridiculous in the face of things—her seniority, her widowhood, her placid, retiring disposition—but the sheer, quiet, determined force of this young man made it plain that he was not to be balked by her ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... harbour people generally, she was so much the object of awe, that whenever the whistle sounded, it would darkly suggest the thought that another flogging was going to take place, and any boats that were near at the moment would sheer off to a more comfortable distance. There was just so much truth in all this that there was one very hot-tempered officer on board who was very much hated by the crew, and who had been unfortunate enough to single out for flogging just the man whom, if he had ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... lingerie; boys and servants, le pere et la mere Jaurion, Mlle. Marceline and the rest, looking towards Paris—all feeling bound to each other by a common danger, like wild beasts in a flood. Dear me! I'm out of breath from sheer ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... ceaselessly for good, he followed what was known as the path of dharma or righteousness. This ensured that at each succeeding birth he would start a stage more favourably off than in his previous existence till, by sheer goodness of character, he qualified for admission to Indra's heaven and might even be accounted a god. The achievement of this status, however, did not complete his cycle, for the ultimate goal still remained. This was the same as in earlier centuries—release from living by union ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... slight, and the gunners of the German cavalry divisions were sorry marksmen. Their projectiles always burst either too far or too near, too high or too low. And as soon as a hundred men had got across, and the first sharpshooters had clambered up the heights that rise sheer from the river and begun to debouch upon the plateau, there was a sudden silence. The enemy's cavalry had given way, and our corps d'armee was free to pass the Marne by the ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... peculiar as being the only fresh-water lake in the world where seals are found, about two thousand being killed annually. The shores are in most places extremely steep, precipices rising a thousand feet sheer up from the edge of the water, with soundings of a hundred and fifty fathoms a few yards from their feet. Fish abound in the lake, and sturgeon of large size ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... was perched on the seat of a bright red pedlar's wagon, above and behind a dusty, ambling, red pony of that peculiar gait and appearance pertaining to the ponies of country pedlars—a certain placid, unhasting leanness, as of a nag that has encountered troubles of his own and has lived them down by sheer patience and staying power. From the bright red wagon proceeded a certain metallic rumbling and clinking as it bowled along, and two or three nests of tin pans on its flat rope-encircled top flashed back the light so dazzlingly that Jedediah ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the schooner, without firing or showing any unfriendly disposition. As she drew near, I felt more and more convinced that she must be the Foam. She had a peculiarly long cutwater and a very straight sheer, which, as she came up to the windward of us, and presented nearly her broadside, was discernible. As she heeled over to the now freshening breeze, I fancied that I could even discern, through the glass, Captain Hawk walking the quarter-deck. When she got about a quarter ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... pinned on that narrow shelf of rock. Watching that holocaust below, Shann Lantee could not force himself to move. The sheer ruthlessness of the Throg move-in left him momentarily weak. To listen to a tale of Throgs in action, and to be an eye-witness to such action, were two vastly different things. He shivered in spite of the warmth of the ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... can be of no use to you: I swear that it will cost you nothing to give it to me. It has been sent to you out of sheer malice—solely to injure the ...
— The Man of Destiny • George Bernard Shaw
... either be the superior in civilization, or the inferior. Supposing it to be superior, it may either, through that superiority, be able to acquire ascendancy over the other, or it may be overcome by brute strength and reduced to subjection. This last is a sheer mischief to the human race, and one which civilized humanity with one accord should rise in arms to prevent. The absorption of Greece by Macedonia was one of the greatest misfortunes which ever happened to the world; that of any of the principal countries of Europe by Russia ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... arrayed his boys in two bodies: the diligent under the victorious standard of Rome, the idle as vanquished Carthaginians. Napoleon of right belonged to the latter, but he was transferred, not because of merit, by the sheer force ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... Louis, before the Supreme Court of the United States in the now celebrated Snowden case is universally acknowledged by lawyers to have been masterly, and reminiscent of the great names of the profession in the past. Mr. Erwin is not dramatic. He appears to carry all before him by the sheer force of intellect, and by a kind of Lincolnian ability to expose a fallacy: He is still a young man, self-made, and studied law under Judge Brice of St. Louis, once President of the National Bar Association, whose partner ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the critic. He stood at the end of the piano and morosely fumbled his beard. Again a wave of anxious hatred, followed by forebodings, crowded her alert brain. She desperately clutched her husband's shoulder; he finished in a burst of sheer pounding and brutal roaring. Then she threw her arms about him in an ecstasy of pride—her confidence ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... now beginning to tell upon the camels, which, weakened by fatigue and short allowance of forage, fell down in large numbers through sheer exhaustion, throwing the transport into ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... of the shortest," he said genially, when the maid, the witnesses, and I had reached the foot of the hillock, "but I have taken a liking to you and would fain do you a service. Moreover, I lack employment. The maids take me for a hedge parson, and sheer off to my brethren, who truly are of a more clerical appearance. Whereas if they could only look upon the inner man! You have been long in choosing, but have doubtless chosen"—He glanced from me to the woman beside me, and broke off with open mouth and staring eyes. There was ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... boy has once spoken so disrespectfully as this about his mother's conscience it is practically all over between him and her. Ernest through sheer force of habit, of the sofa, and of the return of the associated ideas, was still so moved by the siren's voice as to yearn to sail towards her, and fling himself into her arms, but it would not do; there were other associated ideas that ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... young man, of about Collingwood's own age, gave him the instant impression of being bored to death; the lack-lustre eye, the aimless lounge, the hands thrust into the pockets of his Norfolk jacket as if they took refuge there from sheer idleness—all these things told their tale. Here, thought Collingwood, was a fine example of how riches can be a curse—relieved of the necessity of having to earn his daily bread by labour, Harper Mallathorpe was finding life ...
— The Talleyrand Maxim • J. S. Fletcher
... proposition of the same kind to the Russian Commander at Trieste which had been rejected. There is not a syllable of truth in it. I have had no correspondence with Russia, nor anything happened that could have given rise to such a conjecture. It must therefore be sheer mischief. There are such diabolical spirits, who, incapable of good, cannot rest inactive but fester the world with their ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... from one to the other of the bystanders, doubtful at first whether or not they were all in a conspiracy to mock her. Her good sense told her that this was wellnigh impossible, and she finally came to the conclusion that sheer ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... boys this time had tackled a task that was beyond them. They struck out rapidly, as did the man to whose aid they had rushed, but the sheer weight of ...
— The boy Allies at Liege • Clair W. Hayes
... circumstances in which Gay himself and the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry, on his account, stood with the Queen. If it were not for the introduction of Lady Suffolk's name, I should have thought Pope's advice sheer irony, and a hint for a libel on the Court. The Duchess and Gay were offended at the proposition." It may be, however, that Pope thought it possible that such a poetical effusion as he had in mind might restore Gay to favour at Court. Gay, who received Pope's letter while he was on a visit ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... occurred to you what will happen when she is back in Haddo's hands?' cried Arthur. 'You know as well as I do how revengeful he is and how hatefully cruel. My heart bleeds when I think of the tortures, sheer physical tortures, which she ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... both boys had gone to New York in order to look the world over. By dint of sheer push, three-quarters of which Tom had supplied, the boys had secured their first chance in the New York offices of the S.B. & L. Not much of a chance, to be sure, but it meant forty dollars a month and board in the field, with the added promise ...
— The Young Engineers in Colorado • H. Irving Hancock
... for a moment believe that they fancied themselves understood, still, from a mixture of pride and perverseness peculiarly British, they continued their valuable discourse as if every word told, or, if not apprehended, was a striking proof of the sheer stupidity of their new companions. The noise became louder and louder, and at length Freeman ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... himself. And nowadays Tekla was surly toward him. She served him unwillingly and grabbed his occasional Trinkgelds with scarcely a thank-you. Had Rudi, with whom he had had hardly any contact, stirred her up against him out of sheer unjustified Satanism? ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... looked down, through the tops of the birch-trees that rose against the rampart, over the wild places of the Heath. There was another flagged terrace at the other end of the garden. The house rose sheer from its pavement, brown brick like the wall, and flat-fronted, with the white wings of its storm shutters spread open, row on row. It barred the promontory from the mainland. And at the back of it, beyond its kitchen garden and its courtyard, ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... during this day's journey, than buying bread and cheese from sheer hunger, at a little wooden tavern by the road-side, whose shelves were covered with glittering rows of bottles of brandy and mezcal. At some of the Indian huts also we bought various branches of pltanos, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... beginning of this curse. Though not altogether unskilful surgeons, the Maoris knew virtually nothing of medicine. Nor do they show much nervous power when attacked by disease. Cheerful and sociable when in health, they droop quickly when ill, and seem sometimes to die from sheer lack of the will to live. Bright and imaginative almost as the Kelts of Europe, their spirits are easily affected by superstitious dread. Authentic cases are known of a healthy Maori giving up the ghost through believing himself to be ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... and of the time are not understood. I am endeavouring to show how our fifty-year-old choristers are to be trained, and what they are to avoid. The opinion of the multitude about these matters is worthless; they who are only made to step in time by sheer force cannot be critics of music. 'Impossible.' Then our newly-appointed minstrels must be trained in music sufficiently to understand the nature of rhythms and systems; and they should select such as are suitable to men of their age, and will enable them to give and receive ...
— Laws • Plato
... were timid and shy. They hung to William closely for a while, with hazy notions only of what to do with themselves, and from sheer embarrassment rebuffing the kindly advances of Miss Whimple and the maid. They began to feel more at home when Miss Whimple suggested a tour of the grounds, and a visit to the barn to see the cows, two fine Jerseys, and presently ...
— William Adolphus Turnpike • William Banks
... bellicose, an' none of 'em ever faces any anamile more warlike than a baby colt or mebby a half-grown deer. I'm ridin' along the Caliente once when I hears a crashin' in the bushes on the bluff above—two hundred foot high, she is, an' as sheer as the walls of this yere tavern. As I lifts my eyes, a fear-frenzied mare an' colt comes chargin' up an' projects themse'fs over the precipice an' lands in the valley below. They're dead as Joolius Caesar when I rides onto 'em, while a brace of mountain lions is skirtin' ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... said, many of his traits are almost too nice and delicate for the stage, that they can only be made available by a great actor, and fully understood by an acute audience. Not only has he delineated many kinds of folly, but even of sheer stupidity has he contrived to give a most diverting and entertaining picture. There is also in his pieces a peculiar species of the farcical, which apparently seems to be introduced more arbitrarily, but which, however, is founded on imitation of some actual custom. This is ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... other side of the shingle rampart, which rose sheer behind them, the slow swells of the sea fell at distant intervals with solemn resonance, the only sound that broke the stillness of the night. This surge rising and falling on the land from out the great body of the sea was like a deep voice in the woman's soul, echoing her instinct ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... certain little wayside inn, at which in the days of leisure the coach must have stopt for lunch, and burnished pewters of rustic ale been tenderly exalted to "outsides" athirst with breezy progression. Here we stopt, for sheer admiration of its steep thatched roof, its latticed windows, and its homely porch. We allowed a couple of days to elapse in vague undirected strolls and sweet sentimental observance of the land, before we prepared to execute the especial purpose of our ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... absorbing work erases restlessness in mind and heart as effectively as a hot iron smooths out a rough-dried cloth. I urged her to further experiments and made a joke of her many mistakes, ofttimes when it was sheer waste of material. But what mattered that? Better to die softheaded, than hardhearted. I wanted the girl to be happy. Rather than be separated, I would let her make a bonfire of every bean, potato and barrel of flour in ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... risk of being pulled to pieces: and it is not so easy for a man to give his neighbour the slip without intending, whereas the scattered fragments of an army are apt to fall foul of one another, and to cause damage or incur it in sheer ignorance." To this Seuthes replied: "You reason well, and I will adopt your custom. I will furnish you with guides chosen from the oldest experts of the country, and I will myself follow with the cavalry ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... sperm spurted out: and only the last drop remained just as I buried my prick in her. Then instead of meeting her humid tongue with mine, I sank on her breast kissing, yet damning and cursing like a dragoon, at my spoiled pleasure,—I had spent out of sheer ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... Mildmay, checking the exultant cheer which rose to the lips of his companions. "Sheer as close alongside the barque as you can go, Sir Reginald, and give me a chance to get our heaving line on board. Then, as soon as I wave my hand, go ahead gently until you have brought a strain upon the hawser, when you may increase the ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... When Fred got into debt, it always seemed to him highly probable that something or other—he did not necessarily conceive what—would come to pass enabling him to pay in due time. And now that the providential occurrence was apparently close at hand, it would have been sheer absurdity to think that the supply would be short of the need: as absurd as a faith that believed in half a miracle for want of strength to believe in a ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... otherwise, were there all and more than the wit, and humour, and sarcasm, and pungent phrase, and graphic power, which may be found scattered through Mr Carlyle's best performances, there is here a substratum of sheer and violent absurdity, which all these together would fail to disguise or compensate. Certainly there are pages of writing in this Introduction which contain such an amount of extravagant assertion, uttered ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... piece with these modern ideas, that wretched woman's question! Six months ago Aglaya took a fancy to cut off her magnificent hair. Why, even I, when I was young, had nothing like it! The scissors were in her hand, and I had to go down on my knees and implore her... She did it, I know, from sheer mischief, to spite her mother, for she is a naughty, capricious girl, a real spoiled child spiteful and mischievous to a degree! And then Alexandra wanted to shave her head, not from caprice or mischief, ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... of sheer military genius and derringdo combined resulted in his all but single-handed winning of the fracas between Continental Hovercraft and Vacuum Tube Transport, and thus inflicting defeat upon none ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... then, someone will protest, this is sheer Unitarianism after all; you do not believe in the Jesus who is the object of the faith of Christendom, but in one who was only a man among men; you do not think of Him as very God of very God. Not so fast; we are busy with names again. Most of us have a tendency to think ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... it with fingers trembling with happy excitement. The coldness that had so often chilled her was all gone now from the dark eyes. Olga understood. Elizabeth had no more voice than a duckling, but she felt just then as if she could sing like a song sparrow from sheer happiness. It was such a wonderful thing to be happy! Elizabeth had never before known ...
— The Torch Bearer - A Camp Fire Girls' Story • I. T. Thurston
... with all their claws. We are throned on gold and founded upon marble. Death will some day find me, indeed, but I am young. Sire after sire of mine has died in Barbul-el-Sharnak or in Thek, but has left our dynasty laughing sheer in the face of Time from over ...
— Plays of Gods and Men • Lord Dunsany
... himself on the spot into a Prussian Field Marshal, declared himself organised to a pitch of organisation of which Jinks could form no idea, and swept Jinks' army off the earth, without using any men at all, by sheer organisation. ...
— Moonbeams From the Larger Lunacy • Stephen Leacock
... its work but partially; there remained the itch of something still to be desired, an elevation yet unattained, and Dennis saw no other way up the sheer height than by an appeal to the barman ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... was the Cold Storage Building, where a hundred tons at ice were made daily. Save for the entrance, flanked by windows, and the fifth floor, designed for an ice skating rink, its walls were blank. Four corner towers set off the fifth, which rose from the centre sheer to a height of ...
— Official Views Of The World's Columbian Exposition • C. D. Arnold
... work. She wrote, she travelled, she enlisted the aid of her numerous friends, she importuned the Executive, Heads of Departments, and members of Congress. She gave herself no rest, she flinched at no privations. She apparently existed by the sheer necessity of living for her object, and in almost total self-abnegation she encountered opposition, paralyzing delays, false promises, made only to be broken, and hypocritical advice, ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... a show, all right! It was impossible to fight the Earth ship. The enemy had to concentrate four magnetic rays on it to use their electric weapon, and they could only do that by sheer luck! ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... from sheer ignorance that you place yourself in such a position of danger. Sheathe your sword at once, sir, and let his Majesty pass. Do you not know that there are guards here at every turn? My royal master's guests will be well protected ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... turned to negotiation. Unhappily, M. d'Ivoy, in command of the Huguenot garrison, was not proof against the seductive offers made him. Disregarding the remonstrances of his companions in arms, who pointed to the fact that the enemy had from day to day, through discouragement or from sheer exhaustion, relaxed their assaults, he consented (on the thirty-first of August) to surrender Bourges to the army that had so long thundered at its gates. D'Ivoy returned to Orleans, but Conde, accusing him of open perfidy, refused to see him; while the Protestants of Bourges shared the usual ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... they 'killed' Him seems to give. How could death have power over the Prince of Life? That sounds as if, indeed, the 'sun were turned into darkness,' or as if fire became ice. That brief clause 'ye killed the Prince of Life' must have seemed sheer absurdity to the hearers whose hands were still red with the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... less with the events of the Saviour's life than with Redemption as a transaction between God and man; St. Paul and the Old Testament rather than the gospels were its inspiration. Moreover, the material was viewed not as penetrated by and revealing the spiritual, but as sheer impediment blocking out the vision of spiritual things. Hence the extremer Puritans were completely out of touch with the sensuous poetry of Christmas, a festival which, as we shall see, they actually suppressed when ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... he who knows the supreme causes, being no longer paralyzed by matter, becomes one with them and acts with them; and he who understands ends by approving, or else the universe would be a mistake, which is not possible. I do not believe that another sorrow of the sheer mind can be imagined. The only one which, before reflection, might seem admissible and which, in any case, could be but ephemeral would arise from the sight of the pain and misery that remain on the earth ...
— Death • Maurice Maeterlinck
... man replied, defensively assuming the burden of all civilization, "we wouldn't abandon it. After all, we hate leaving the world on which we originated. But it's a long haul to Alpha Centauri—you know that—and a tremendously expensive one. Keeping up this place solely out of sentiment would be sheer waste—the people would never ...
— The Most Sentimental Man • Evelyn E. Smith
... down the roughness romantically; because he is writing, or reciting, for people of much the same way of thinking as his heroes, who are fierce chiefs quarrelling over captured women; and the whole plot is developed by sheer pressure of circumstance and character. Then on the Trojan side we have the figure of Hector, the true patriotic hero, who is naturally displeased with Paris for the abduction of Helen, which has brought a disastrous war ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... certain. In South Italy, Hannibal had either detached Rome's allies from her or had impoverished them by the ravages of his army. If Hasdrubal could have done the same in Upper Italy; if Etruria, Umbria, and Northern Latium had either revolted or been laid waste, Rome must have sunk beneath sheer starvation, for the hostile or desolated territory would have yielded no supplies of corn for her population, and money to purchase it from abroad there was none. Instant victory was a matter of life ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... sacrifices, but also because he was supported by a body of the most remarkable men whom America has ever produced. Men who, though doubtless in a numerical minority, taking the country as a whole, by sheer weight of ability and energy, ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams
... past, when she had seen him go down that same walk, and, as she then believed, out of her life. On that dark rainy afternoon of the long ago she had felt only pity as she gazed after his retreating form. She had gone into the house and cried bitterly, out of sheer sorrow of the hurt which she had inflicted upon her childhood's friend. Now all was changed. Devoted love shone through the windows of the clear gray eyes that followed Tom Gray's tall, broad-shouldered ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... difficulty that the men forced their way through the bushes, but they had not gone far when their leader stopped before a sheer wall of earth and stone, covered with densely growing shrubbery. Here he groped in the dim light, feeling his way with his hands before him, while at his heels came his followers. At last he separated a wall of bushes and disappeared within ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... tended to give him an excellent opinion of himself,—and that he should possess one of the best and loveliest wives in the world, seemed to him quite in keeping with the usual course of things. The feeling that it was a sheer impossibility for her to ever believe a word against him, rose out of this inward self-satisfaction—this one flaw in his otherwise bright, honest, and lovable character—a flaw of which he himself was not aware. Now, when for the third time his fairy castle of perfect peace ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... Sometimes the mortification and rage at a failure so contemptible assured success on a second trial, with apparently less expenditure of exertion than at first. Occasionally, however, I was forced to call for assistance from sheer exhaustion. The bridling was comparatively an easy matter; with his head so closely tied to the manger little scope was left for dodging. In the irritable condition I was now in, the most trifling opposition made ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... began to die down through sheer exhaustion, and then those of us who stood next the windows were allowed to drink from the skins; after which we filled hats with the water and passed them into the back of the apartment. In this way every one obtained some, but no good effect ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... material; while those a little way off were rather firm, presenting the appearance of trees during heavy rain. Indeed that was the appearance of the whole scene—a country-side being drenched and rendered vague by a heavy downpour; but it was sheer heat that was descending, with never an atom of moisture ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... manner we progressed past Hincaster, Sedgwick, and Natland, and at about three o'clock in the afternoon reached Kendal, where the canal system curiously ends in a sheer wall. We were now practically of our destination, and after carefully bumping the nose of the canoe against the headwall of the canal, we ...
— Through Canal-Land in a Canadian Canoe • Vincent Hughes
... sat on the dead leaves which carpeted the ground. Cal suddenly realized he was glad to take the strain from his legs, as if he had been maintaining stance through sheer will. ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... by Bludson and others, now appeared, armed with pistols and cutlasses; but the door leading into the hold was already broken down. Scores of half crazy negroes swarmed into the gangway, bearing back the whites by sheer weight of numbers, notwithstanding the weapons of the crew. Revolver and cutlass played an active part, but the slaves seemed absolutely indifferent ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... nose of a greyhound is thrust out sniffing through a hole. Dickon, the said son, is delighted to undo the padlock for a visitor who is 'square.' In an instant the long hounds leap up, half a dozen at a time, and I stagger backwards, forced by the sheer vigour of their caresses against the doorpost. Dickon cannot quell the uproarious pack: he kicks the door open, and away they scamper round and round the paddock at ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... disgusting things that, unfortunately, were in English this time. Looking at him in the candlelight she felt terrified of him and utterly unable to treat him as a sick man and not a wicked one. As she stood there stiff, unable through sheer disgust to get any nearer to him, he clutched at her nightgown and drew her nearer. She felt frantic; her nails cut into her hands as she gripped them together as if for the comforting feel ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... was unlocked, and I alone knew it. The gay-cat and I begged for mercy. I joined in the pleading and wailing out of sheer cussedness, I suppose. But I did my best. I told a "story" that would have melted the heart of any mug; but it didn't melt the heart of that sordid money-grasper of a shack. When he became convinced that we didn't have any money, he slid the door shut and latched it, then lingered a moment ...
— The Road • Jack London
... League would not attack a writer or any other public man from sheer wilfulness, but it would probably have no difficulty in bringing down over-praised mediocrity to its proper level or in giving a helping hand to unrecognized talent. But unless its president were a man of unerring judgment and remarkable restraint, its sense ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... willingness of readers from around the world to share their observations and specialized knowledge is very helpful as we try to produce the best possible publications. Please feel free to continue to write and e-mail us. At least two Factbook staffers review every item. The sheer volume of correspondence precludes detailed personal replies, but we sincerely appreciate your time and interest in the Factbook. If you include your e-mail address we will at least acknowledge your note. Thank ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... infliction as an attack of millions of sandflies on a hot sunny day will appreciate my feelings. About one o'clock we got as a diversion from our tormentors a great fright. A boat's crew of a gun-boat lying about a mile distant from our retreat landed, and out of sheer idleness set fire to the grass about a hundred yards from where ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... picturesque village with many schooners and boats of different kinds drawn up on the beach and in every direction fish nets drying. Above and behind towered the ruined castle of Orgueil, rising more than three hundred feet sheer from ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... straight to the issue, thinking that surely Mr. Percy would betray something here; perhaps would refuse to come to Oakley. In such case, Lucian felt that he should be tempted to spring upon and throttle him from sheer desperation. ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... people generally, she was so much the object of awe, that whenever the whistle sounded, it would darkly suggest the thought that another flogging was going to take place, and any boats that were near at the moment would sheer off to a more comfortable distance. There was just so much truth in all this that there was one very hot-tempered officer on board who was very much hated by the crew, and who had been unfortunate enough to single out for flogging just the man ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... and happy, we glided along, enjoying, not entranced, comfortable, but not sublime, content to drink in the sunny sweetness of the summer day, happy only from the pleasant sense of being, tangling each other in silly talk out of mere wantonness, purling up bubbles of airy nothings in sheer effervescence of animal delight; falling into periodic fits of useful knowledge, under the influence of which we consulted our maps and our watches in a conjoint and clamorous endeavor to locate ourselves, which would no sooner be satisfactorily accomplished than something would turn ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... philosopher, and friend of a crew of pirates? Bob Singleton himself, who tells the story with a frankness of extraordinary charm, confessing his willingness for evil courses as readily as his later repentance, is no less striking a personality. By sheer imagination the genius of Defoe makes Singleton's adventures, including the impossible journey across Central Africa, real and credible. The book is a model of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... compared to our poor dear Cartref Pellenig, and was made with such rapidity, speed, and neatness, our clerk of the works fell into fits of envy and jealousy. We had visited it very often without being discovered; but the children, from sheer mischief, used to carry off things of all kinds back to our cavern, and we were unable to prevent them, as they almost considered it an act of duty to do so. I would not let them go; besides, we might have been discovered, as, through the loss of different ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... Francis. The citadel de Sao Miguel, lately blown up, has been restored; the extensive works of dressed freestone, carefully whitewashed, stand out conspicuously from the dark bush dotting the escarpment top. Here also is the Alto das Cruzes, the great cemetery, and the view from the sheer and far-jutting headland is admirable. A stroll over this cool and comparatively healthy escarpment ended by leaving a card ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... her ill-usage in childhood by the cousin who, though younger, was stronger than herself, never wholly trusted her. Besides, out of sheer modesty, she would never have told her domestic sorrows ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... castle of the uncourteous baron. His prowess asserted the cause of justice, and he bestowed the domains which he had won upon a nobler lord. For the sake of acquiring military fame he exposed himself to great dangers in the Holy Land, and, during his journey homeward, saved his life by sheer fighting in a tournament at Challon. At his "Round Table of Kenilworth" a hundred lords and ladies "clad all in silk" renewed the faded glories of Arthur's Court, and kept Christmas with great magnificence. ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... two methods of Yoga fall naturally under two of these heads. But what of the third? What of the will, of which Ahamkara is the representative in cognition? That certainly has its road, but it can scarcely be said to be a "method". Will breaks its way upwards by sheer unflinching determination, keeping its eyes fixed on the end, and using either buddhi or manes indifferently as a means to that end. Metaphysics is used to realise the Self; science is used to understand ...
— An Introduction to Yoga • Annie Besant
... is Mexico; carrying into the twentieth century the romance of the Middle Ages, tinging her new civilisation still with the strong passions of the old, and refusing—whether unwisely, whether wisely, time shall show—to assimilate the doctrines of sheer commercialism whose votaries are hammering at her gates. But it is time now to review the cities and homes of this ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... the books that have been are still extant. This destruction cannot, however, be reckoned as all loss; for had not the "cleansing fires" removed mountains of rubbish from our midst, strong destructive measures would have become a necessity from sheer want of space in which to store ...
— Enemies of Books • William Blades
... of marking negroes in the hand, I look upon it as one of the imaginary horrors of the times—delusion like spiritual rappings, got up out of sheer timidity of disposition, though I have heard of burning old women for witches in New England, and placing a scarlet letter on the bosom of some unhappy one, who had already sorrow ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... two or three miles further when on a sudden Clare became conscious of some vast erection close in his front, rising sheer from the grass. They had ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... like a trough, and the reef was very near, scarcely a quarter of a mile from the shore. The water did not shelve, it went down sheer fifty fathoms or more, and one could fish from the bank just as from a pier head. He had brought some food with him, and he placed it under a tree whilst he prepared his line, which had a lump of coral for a sinker. He baited the ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... to quote Carlyle, is a "mountain of misery towering sheer up like a bleak Pisgah, with outlooks only into desolation, sand, salt water, and despair." The camp is in a "Devil's Punchbowl," stiflingly hot during nine months of the year, and subject to alternations of sandstorm and Simum, "without either seed, water, or trees," as ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... the mishap to his brother coming at the very moment of the fight's beginning, unnerved Jess and threw him out of stride, so to speak. But the second was not in anywise to be explained excepting on the theory of sheer chance. The fact remained that it was so, and the fact remained ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... latter, judging from his barking, quite wild with the fun of it. Before the wind this sailing raft made good time, but as the craft refused to tack, the boys lowered the sail and poled back for another try, just as boys clamber up hill in winter for the sheer joy of ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... their hulking personalities, bare of all the iridescence of potentiality, which we could have cast about them. Something of this iridescence may cling to unmarried lovers, in spite of themselves, but wedded bliss is a sheer offence. ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... in my mind such thoughts awake, By lone Saint Mary's silent lake; Thou know'st it well,—nor fen, nor sedge, Pollute the pure lake's crystal edge; Abrupt and sheer, the mountains sink At once upon the level brink; And just a trace of silver sand Marks where the ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... sufficient to support the interior lining. Now that breech-loading and slow powders have been introduced, these conditions have been changed. The strains, though less severe, and less tending to explosive rupture, last longer, and are more fully transmitted through the body of the gun. Sheer strength of material now tells more, and signs have not been wanting that coils of wrought iron afford insufficient support to the lining. It becomes, therefore, advantageous to thicken the inner tube, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various
... told of her father's announcement that he had been converted and would have no more stealing done in the interest of the family larder. The fun became so fast and furious that it was obliged to end in sheer exhaustion; so when Tom came in an hour later, he was unable to revive it sufficiently to secure the stolen glass of beer which ...
— All He Knew - A Story • John Habberton
... on that part of the island to which this story refers is bordered by rocks and cliffs. The inland country immediately adjacent to the coast is level, flat, and bleak; it is only where the long stretch of dyke-enclosed fields terminates abruptly in a sheer descent, and the stranger sees the ocean creeping up the sands far below him, that he is aware on how great an elevation he has been. Here and there, as I have said, a cleft in the level land (thus running ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... past the raft, but a few feet from it. The bewildering glare had come from her roaring furnaces; and had not their doors been thrown open just when they were, she would have crashed at full speed into the raft, with such consequences as can easily be imagined. As it was she was barely able to sheer off in time, and a score of voices hurled back angry threats at the supposed crew of the raft, whose neglect to show a lantern had so nearly led ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... who from sheer ignorance add to the difficulties which the boy encounters in going to school. Failure to appreciate very small points may cause unnecessary suffering. To be the only boy in the school to wear combinations is not a distinction ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... cut off his sword-arm at the wrist; my second I levelled at his head. I said that he wore a steel cap, with a gilt iron spike of six inches, and a hood of chain mail. I rose in my stirrups and delivered "ST. GEORGE;" my sword caught the spike exactly on the point, split it sheer in two, cut crashing through the steel cap and hood, and was only stopped by a ruby which he wore in his back-plate. His head, cut clean in two between the eyebrows and nostrils, even between the two front teeth, fell one side on each shoulder, and ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of the force. The seventy-five Irishmen and Americans made as much noise with their guns as a Boer commando of a thousand men usually did, and the result was that the cavalry wheeled about and returned into Ladysmith. Botha and his men, dropping out of their saddles from sheer exhaustion and hunger, came up from Colenso a short time after the cavalry had been driven back and made their memorable journey to Joubert's new headquarters at Glencoe. It was one of the few instances where the foreigners were of any really great ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas
... window looked on the little back yard I have before described; there was no ledge without,—nothing to break the sheer descent of the wall. No man getting out of that window would have found any footing till he had fallen on the ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... way and I in mine. I have not the least intention of throwing up the game, but I know that I am a cripple and shall never be anything else. I thought, a little time ago, that my branches up there would turn into a new crown, but that was sheer folly. They grow and strut and turn green and that is all they do. And then, besides, I feel that ...
— The Old Willow Tree and Other Stories • Carl Ewald
... was abhorrent to him. Without the shadow of an assignable reason for it, he found himself blindly distrusting his wife's fidelity, and blindly suspecting Mr. Bashwood of serving her in the capacity of go-between. In sheer horror of his own morbid fancy, he determined to take down the number of the house, and the name of the street in which it stood; and then, in justice to his wife, to return at once to the address which she had given him as the address at which ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... legs with my stick from the sheer exuberance of living, and nearly cry out. I behave as though the burden on my back had no weight, taking needless leaps, and overexerting myself a little; but an overexertion to which one is driven by inner content is easy to bear. In my solitude, many miles from men and houses, I am in a childishly ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... is a regular lion! After all, you will admit that it is sheer folly to come and attack him in his cage and pull his whiskers through the bars. And that is what you are doing. To be in love with his wife and pay court to her in Paris, when he is a hundred leagues from you, is all very well, but to install yourself in his house, within reach of his ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Panhandle is remarkably picturesque. The maze of islands, hundreds in number, of the Alexander Archipelago (area about 13,000 sq. m.) are remnants of a submerged mountain system; the islands rise 3000 to 5000 ft. above the sea, with luxuriantly wooded tops and bald, sheer sides scarred with marks of glacial action; the beachless coast is only a narrow ledge between the mountains and the sea, and unlike the coast of Norway, to which in outline it is not dissimilar, is bold, steep and craggy. Through the inner channels, sheltered from the Pacific ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... balloon seemed to climb that sheer, chalky precipice, frightening the sleepy sea-gulls from their nests, but never grazing against the wall, as it seemed as if it inevitably must. Slowly it reached the summit, paused a moment poised over the edge, then swept landward ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... to seize the end of the broken rail. It held us for a moment, then gave, and for a moment I hung sheer ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... him and again coiled his rope. The big roan was once more surrounded by a crowd of his fellows, his ears erect, his long neck outstretched, his eyes watchful and distrustful. The man who was beginning to look upon lassoing as a sheer matter of sleight of hand made his loop again carefully, slowly, trying to convince himself that here was an easy matter, and that the next time he should succeed. And even as he began whirling it above his head, one half of both mind and ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... triumphant; but from sheer excitement she wept and sobbed through the greater part ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... shouted at the top of my compass; and like lightning the cords slid through our blistering hands, and with a tremendous shock the boat bounded on the sea's back. One mad sheer and plunge, one terrible strain on the tackles as we sunk in the trough of the waves, tugged upon by the towing breaker, and our knives severed the tackle ropes—we hazarded not unhooking the blocks—our oars were out, and the good boat headed ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... (taking off his hat with feeling). "God bless ye, sir, and send ye many happy days, and well spent, with the pretty lady I see alongside; asking your pardon, miss, for parting pleasanter company—so I'll sheer off." ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... do so, he related openly before the little congregation, that, having conferred with some ministers on this very same subject of praying to the Saints, which they made out to be sheer idolatry, he had decided on the following Thursday to return to their ranks (he was a recent convert to Catholicism), and to abjure the Catholic religion. But, he added, that the sermon which he had just heard had instructed him so well, and had so fully dispersed all his doubts, that he took ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... perhaps anywhere else, and it is to the home that revival first needs to come. Revival is desperately needed in the church—in the country—in the world, but a revived church with unrevived homes would be sheer hypocrisy. It is the hardest place, the most costly, but the most necessary place ...
— The Calvary Road • Roy Hession
... went, into the choir loft and then into the belfry itself. There they came to sheer hand to hand struggle. Kennedy tripped on a loose board and would have fallen backwards, if he had not been able to recover himself just in time. The crook, desperate, leaped for the ladder leading further up ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... watched the whole proceeding. He could only hold on to a sail and, by the sheer strength of his hands and arms, save himself from being carried overboard, as sea after sea swept over them. He strained his eyes until it seemed as though they would burst, to follow the movements of that boat on which their lives depended. It seemed but a mere speck on the waves. Suddenly ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... over range beyond range all covered with dark forest, that partly hides the inequalities of the ground, the trees in the hollows growing higher than those on the hills. On this side the rock is a sheer precipice, going down perpendicularly for more than three hundred feet; the face of the cliff all weathered white. The tops of the trees are far below, and as one looking down upon them hears the various cries and whistles of the birds come ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... This was sheer insubordination, no doubt; but he could not help that; it was not in his nature to be obedient. 'I know if I was chief, I would never employ myself, for I am incorrigible.' Decidedly, he was not afraid to be 'what club men call insubordinate, though, of all ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... apologetic, Pumblechook's indignant stare so taxed me with it. Wopsle, too, took pains to present me in the worst light. At once ferocious and maudlin, I was made to murder my uncle with no extenuating circumstances whatever; Millwood put me down in argument, on every occasion; it became sheer monomania in my master's daughter to care a button for me; and all I can say for my gasping and procrastinating conduct on the fatal morning, is, that it was worthy of the general feebleness of my character. ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... Peak of Rakata (2623 feet high) had been split from top to bottom, and about one-half of it, with all that part of the island lying to the northward, had been blown away, leaving a wall or almost sheer precipice which presented a ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... have won victories for their generals, but mine have invariably got me into scrapes. It is true that they have always fought gallantly and bravely, and have generally got themselves out of their difficulties by sheer pluck." ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... of ordinary courtesies between the two cousins. They now passed each other on the street without recognition. A year previously Mr. Shackford had fallen ill, and Richard, aware of the inefficient domestic arrangements in Welch's Court, had gone to the house out of sheer pity. The old man was in bed, and weak with fever, but at seeing Richard he managed to raise ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... blunders with gratification. Yet the worst historian has a clearer view of the period he studies than the best of us can hope to form of that in which we live. The obscurest epoch is to-day; and that for a thousand reasons of inchoate tendency, conflicting report, and sheer mass and multiplicity of experience; but chiefly, perhaps, by reason of an insidious shifting of landmarks. Parties and ideas continually move, but not by measurable marches on a stable course; the political soil itself steals forth by imperceptible ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... had not men sufficient to fight all the guns, I ran them all over on one side, in order to make the first broadside as formidable as possible. I hoped thus to sink or disable our antagonist, or to make her sheer off. Should she, however, venture to board, I had no fear, as I felt certain that my men would not fear to encounter twice their number. They were full of fight, and the way they went about their preparations gave me every confidence that we should succeed. The brig approached ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... or two as a shot was fired from a revolver, but the Scot and Brierly and two of the Americans joined him and met the first onslaught bravely. The handful of men was forced back against the wall by sheer weight of numbers, but they struck out manfully with their fists, with chairs, and with their feet, with any object that came to hand, and men went down with bleeding heads. Peter was armed but he did not wish to kill any one—his idea being to make a successful retreat to the office, where the telephone ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... Their head was like what a Chinese cap without bells would be; you might shake it, but it would not jingle. That which constitutes the essence of talent, the desire to show off one's thoughts to the best advantage, would have seemed to them sheer frivolity, like women's love of dress, which they denounced as a positive sin. This excessive abnegation of self, this too ready disposition to repulse what the world at large likes by an Abrenuntio tibi, Satana, is fatal to literature. It will be said, perhaps, that literature ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... auto' reached Ironwood Springs, where Rimrock had made his old camp, while the sun was still two hours high. From the Springs to the dome, that great "bust-up" of porphyry which stood square-topped and sheer against the sky, there was a single trail full of loose, shaly rocks that mounted up through a notch in the rim. They started up in silence, Rimrock leading the way and Hassayamp puffing along behind; but as they neared the heights, where the shattered base of the butte rose up from the mass ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... the adventure would have been one of sheer delight, for who would not have enjoyed exploring unknown land—probably land, too, where only the Indian's foot and the feet of the wild creatures of the ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby
... and bugles, Genappe was abandoned, and nothing thought of but headlong flight. The Prussians, under General Gneisenau, still followed and still slew; nor even when the Prussian infantry stopped in sheer exhaustion, was the pursuit given up. Gneisenau still pushed on with the cavalry; and by an ingenious stratagem, made the French believe that his infantry were still close on them, and scared them from every spot where they ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... A sheer, bald gratuity bestowed either upon States or individuals, based upon no better reason than supports the gift proposed in this bill, has never been claimed to be a provision for the general welfare. More than fifty years ago a surplus of public money in the Treasury was ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... and did, forgive the past but she herself could not, and between her and Charley lay a gulf, to be spanned over on earth no more. And yet—how beautiful and stately she looked in her little white widow's cap, her sombre dress, and the frill of sheer white crape at ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... spirit make himself withal a body? What reality can there be in his efforts and approaches? Would she be sinning in the flesh, if she allowed the intrusions of one who was always roaming about her? Would that be sheer adultery?" Such was the sly roundabout way in which sometimes he stayed and weakened her resistance. "If I am only a breath, a smoke, a thin air, as so many doctors call me, why are you afraid, poor fearful soul, and how ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... boy in the shadow by the sea, you land, and, following the path by the hillside, come suddenly on the little port with its few fishing-boats and litter of ropes and nets, above which rises the little town, house piled on house, from the ruined church rising high, sheer out of the sea to the church of marble that crowns the hill. Before you stands the gate of Porto Venere, a little Eastern in its dilapidation, its colour of faded gold, its tower, and broken battlement. Passing under the ancient arch past a shrine of Madonna, you ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... he said to me: "Come!" I longed to fly to Him with my body, but could not make up my mind to show myself naked. However, I was carried away by a force I could not control, I threw myself on my Saviour's neck, and felt that all was over between the world and me.' From that day, 'by sheer reasoning,' she has understood everything. Previously she thought that the religious life was a renunciation of the joys of marriage and enjoyment generally; now she understands its object. Jesus Christ desires that she should have relations with a priest; he is himself ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... struck me very forcibly. The first was the very large number of Belgian soldiers wounded only in the legs, and, secondly, many of the soldiers seem to have collapsed through sheer exhaustion. ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... seeing that Jesus from sheer exhaustion had again fallen, reached him a bottle, saying, "Here, strengthen thyself." Jesus took it, but ...
— King of the Jews - A story of Christ's last days on Earth • William T. Stead
... banks the last part of the road, from Albany, is carried. You are seldom out of sight of the Caatskill range—blue in the distance or dark in the foreground—but the crowning glory of the river are the old cliffs, where the rock soars up sheer from the water's edge, with no more vegetation on its face than will grow in the crevices of ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... in trouble is to leap the barrier, where he produces a lively moment among the water-carriers and orange-boys and stage-carpenters. I once saw a bull, who had done very little execution in the arena, leap the barrier suddenly and toss an unfortunate carpenter from the gangway sheer into the ring. He picked himself up, laughed, saluted his friends, ran a little distance and fell, and was carried out dying. Fatal accidents are rarely mentioned in the newspapers, and it is considered not quite good form to ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... a third on both. At last, and whether by design or accident, the bows of the Good Hope were liberated; and the ever-ready Lawless, who had maintained his place at the helm through all the hurly-burly by sheer strength of body and a liberal use of the cold steel, instantly clapped her on the proper tack. The ship began to move once more forward on the stormy sea, its scuppers running blood, its deck heaped with fallen men, sprawling and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Then some of the gentlemen remembered to have heard of cases when dogs addicted to sheep- killing had destroyed whole flocks, as if in sheer wantonness, scarcely deigning to taste a morsel of ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... expense of laundry cannot be met financially by saleswomen, it has to be met by sheer personal strength. One department-store girl, who needed to be especially neat because her position was in the shirt-waist department, told us that sometimes, after a day's standing in the store, she worked over tubs and ironing-boards at home till ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt
... doing the thing upon which MacKelvey would not count. Besides it was sheer madness to think of spending the night without shelter of any kind and he did not dare go immediately to Wanda's cave. Already he had come to think of that place, high above the treetops and as safely hidden as if it were below the earth's ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... was suppressing her gasp of sheer embarrassment, Sally admitted to herself that he was presentable, very presentable. His manner was altogether free from the self-conscious graciousness of an artist off-duty; moreover, he was very big, very comely, very much stamped ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... the place, making him think that the alterations were a matter of taste or of mere personal pleasure, he would probably have given his assent at once, thinking nothing of the money. But all this was sheer display. Then he walked up and saw the flag waving over the Castle, indicating that he, the Lord Lieutenant of the County, was present there on his own soil. That was right. That was as it should be, because the flag was waving in compliance with an acknowledged ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... tried to get some information out of the old Third, but he just chewed and spat. When I asked the Second he says, 'Oh Hell, I can't stop to show ye now. Take a hand-lamp and go and see the run o' the pipes yerself.' I was nearly dropping for sheer sleepiness, but I made up my mind I would not give in. At breakfast time the Chief said we'd missed a tide and couldn't get away till midnight, and I thanked God. But it's a funny thing about a steamer, that the more time you have the more work there is to do. We had stores to get stowed away, ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... discovered it. A wall built between it and the north would bar the sand and form a nook, wholly closed on two sides and partly closed at each end by stones. All this made itself plain to the mind of the young sculptor at once. With a laugh of sheer content, he turned to retrace his ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... development of the older man had been far greater than his own. Covington to-day was, perhaps, as able a business man as Gorham had been when the Consolidated Companies was born, but Gorham in the mean time, by sheer display of extraordinary genius, had become an international figure. The business relations between the two men were closer than ever, but never once was there any question as to which was the master. ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... gipsying, or picnic, had been that of loving Fancy too exclusively, and depriving himself of the innocent pleasure the gathering might have afforded him, by sighing regretfully at her absence,—who had danced with the rival in sheer despair of ever being able to get through that stale, flat, and unprofitable afternoon in any other way; but this ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... of the River of Shells—a tongue of land runs toward the sea between two long bays. Where the two bays join their waters, a mountain rises precipitous, its gray limestone rocks soaring sheer upwards, rugged and formidable. Within the shadow of the mountain is hidden a wonderful glen—a long tunnel between cliffs, densely arched over with trees and fringed with ferns; even at midday ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... developed so many more ideas than we could possibly use that the labour of deciding among them was the next thing to be done. Each of us stood out boldly for her own project,—even Francesca clinging, from sheer wilfulness, to her worthless and absurd itineraries,—until, in order to bring the matter to any sort of decision, somebody suggested that we consult Benella; which reminds me that you have not yet the pleasure of ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... ironical in our Ali Baba's cave to see sheer everydayness and hardness upon the screen, the audience dragged back to the street they have escaped. One of the inventions to bring the twilight of the gathering into brotherhood with the shadows on the screen is a simple thing ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... of a girl of the Michigan woods; a buoyant, lovable type of the self-reliant American. Her philosophy is one of love and kindness towards all things; her hope is never dimmed. And by the sheer beauty of her soul, and the purity of her vision, she wins from barren and unpromising surroundings ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... He was a great wit, and often said startling things. His religion sometimes bordered upon fanaticism. He was fearless and aggressive, and was no respecter of persons. It was not a rare thing for him to descend from the pulpit, and by sheer physical force subdue a disorderly member of his congregation. On one occasion, attending a dinner given by Governor Edwards, he requested the governor to "say grace," observing that the ceremony was ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... is compelled to go, the usual course is to write to his wife and tell her that she is free to look out for another husband. Having made up his mind that he will die, I have no doubt that he often dies through sheer funk." (R. Logan JACK, Back Blocks of ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... for ballad poetry (Spectators 70, 74, 85) was not a sheer novelty. He had a ringing English precedent in Sidney, whom he quotes. And he may have had one in Jonson; at least he thought he had. He cited Dryden and Dorset as collectors and readers of ballads; and he might have cited others. He found ...
— Parodies of Ballad Criticism (1711-1787) • William Wagstaffe
... the more influential Socialists anxious to make a clean sweep of private enterprise in industry. It is only the more important and fundamental industries, those which underlie all the processes of manufacturing, or furnish the sheer necessities of the people, that must necessarily be directly controlled by a Socialist society. "It may be granted," says Kautsky, "that small establishments will have a definite position in the future in many branches of industry that produce directly for human consumption, for machines manufacture ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... song of the wave, that rises to fall, Rises a sheer green wall like a barrier of glass That has caught the soul of the moonlight. Caught and prisoned the moon-beams; Its edge is frittered to ...
— ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS • WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE
... serve if need be the delicate little old lady who, with her gray skirts fluttering and the little shawl streaming out behind, was coming at her tottering full speed in that direction. In her hand she held carefully a bit of sheer, yellow, old muslin, and her bright eyes were beaming with delight as she met the ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... Brother Boche, who on the other side of that ring of star-shells is conducting a precisely similar undertaking, is able, with all his perfect organisation and cast-iron methods, to achieve a result in any way superior to that which Thomas Atkins reaches by rule of thumb and sheer force of character. ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... dear woman; I must not say another word, in honor. It was a most unfortunate affair—a sheer misunderstanding. He loved her all the time; I knew this, but you know her manner! He did not understand her flippant way; her keen, unsparing, and bitter wit; her devoted, passionate, proud, and breaking heart; and so there ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... uproar of hideous, maimed noises, and a tangle of harness chains, while Salty would sit on the high seat with the sun glare heavy in his eyes, dealing out curses of pacification in a level, uninterested voice until the clamor fell off from sheer exhaustion. There was a line of shallow graves' along that road; they used to count on dropping a man or two of every new gang of coolies brought out in the hot season. But when he lost his swamper, smitten without ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... in some dogged, submerged, and speechless way that it is not a true fear. And yet I want to move along the sheer edge of it all my life. I want it. I want all men to have it, and to keep having it, and to keep conquering it. I have seen that no man who has not felt it, who does not know this huge numbing, numberless fear before the crowd, and who may not know it again almost any moment, will ever be able ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... who know just enough to appreciate their compliments—women who deprecate their "strong-minded" sisters, and are ready to agree implicitly with every statement that the lords of creation may make; but this readiness is due to sheer inability to produce a thought of ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... who have reached the highest note in their compass, proceed to hum the rest of the air in falsetto, he had to be satisfied with murmuring, smiling the while, as if, after all, there had been something irresistibly amusing in the sheer beauty of the painting: "It smells all right; it makes your head go round; it catches your breath; you feel ticklish all over—and not the faintest clue to how it's done. The man's a sorcerer; the thing's a conjuring-trick, it's ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... how this quarrel came up," exclaimed Priscilla, "and I don't care to know. But it seems a trumpery quarrel,—as to who should beg each other's pardon first, and all that kind of thing. Sheer and simple nonsense! Ask him to let it all be forgotten. I suppose he ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... herself. If nobody cared about her, what did it matter whether she was a dunce or not? So she said boldly that she had been learning nothing; and then the two Enderby girls lifted up their heads and stared at her in sheer amazement. ...
— Hetty Gray - Nobody's Bairn • Rosa Mulholland
... manner. The number of shells—some of which were German make—the enemy wasted on that wood proclaimed an abundant supply of ammunition. To this persistent shelling we had nothing to reply, and at last from sheer exhaustion the enemy fire died down. With darkness he began again, and the feeble reply of three small mountain guns, which we knew were with the Runovka Cossack outpost, indicated that an attack was developing in ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... present time, they could be forgiven much because they were what they were. That is why, perhaps, the altogether fanciful picture of Penrose, propped on his pillows with his telephone at his bedside directing the embattled delegates at Chicago, who in sheer desperation turned to Warren G. Harding, is dwelt upon fondly by a ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... against the circumstances which had driven him into outer darkness, of bitterness against his wife for saving her own comfort rather than share his downfall. At times he was not far from that state of sheer distraction which Mrs Edmund Yule preferred to suppose that he had reached. An extraordinary arrogance now and then possessed him; he stood amid his poor surroundings with the sensations of an outraged exile, and laughed aloud in furious ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... and out of wildernesses of huge tree-trunks, many of which had great flat buttresses all round, which were difficult to climb over or round, while other trees seemed to be growing with their roots all above ground, green, snaky, twisted and involved roots, that necessitated sheer climbing before they could get by. Now and then they came to an opening where the trees had been burned down by volcanic fires, and here all was light and beauty in the evening sunshine. Again rocky crevices ran through the forest, ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... down to the church, but could only move it a very little way; they returned, therefore, and told how they had tracked steps as great as if a cask bottom had been stamped down, leading from the beaten place up to beneath sheer rocks high up the valley, and along the track great stains of blood. From this men thought that the evil wight which had killed Glam had got such wounds as had sufficed for him, but none ever ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... hour after hour, until the future, which had looked so beautiful in the morning, gradually became overcast with clouds, and the poor lad was forced to stop and rest from sheer weariness. ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis
... bridge the Langur monkeys (Semnopithecus entellus) venture out and in spite of vicious snaps secure a share of the booty. This picture of the monkeys securing a footing on the moving mass of turtle-backs is almost a diagram of sheer dexterity. It illustrates the spirit of adventure, the will to experiment, which is, we believe, the main motive-force in ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... he lived not long. Soredamors had such grief thereat that she could not live after him. For sheer grief she died when he died. Alis and Cliges both mourned for them as they were bound; but in time they ceased to mourn. For all mourning must come to an end; all things needs must cease. Ill is it to prolong mourning, for no good can come of it. The mourning has ceased; and for a long time ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes
... part of the week, people were compelled to be a little more quiet, from sheer exhaustion, but on New Year's Day, when there was a grand dinner at Rich Bar, the excitement broke out, if possible, worse than ever. The same scenes, in a more or less aggravated form, in proportion as the strength of the actors held out, ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... more desperate battle with herself than she ever had been called upon to fight before. She did not now believe that they would be rescued, but that did not prevent her keeping up the battle as long as a single vestige of strength remained. It was sheer grit that kept Harriet Burrell afloat during that long, heart-breaking swim among the Atlantic ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls by the Sea - Or The Loss of The Lonesome Bar • Janet Aldridge
... pillar, towering nearly twenty thousand feet into the sky, appeared to be a fairy vision, hanging between earth and heaven, and based upon the clouds. The solemn majesty and beauty of this white peak are together beyond the power of my poor pen to describe. There it rose straight and sheer — a glittering white glory, its crest piercing the very blue of heaven. As I gazed at it with that little girl I felt my whole heart lifted up with an indescribable emotion, and for a moment great ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... and there are times, as in The Snake Charmer when, as in certain pages in the work of Richard Wagner, it is so studiously laboured and so heavily charged with ornament and colour as to be almost pedantic in infelicity, almost repellent by sheer force of superfluous and elaborate suggestiveness. Last of all, in an epoch trained upon the passionate and subtle cadences of the Laureate and the large-moulded, ample, irresistible melodies of Mr. Swinburne, Dr. Hake chooses to deal in rhythms of the utmost ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... when a more progressive soul declared that in bran alone the true nutriment lay, and a host of would-be healthier people proceeded to eat bran and preach bran, there came a time when eating and preaching both stopped, from sheer want of strength to go on. The enthusiasts were literally starving themselves to death—for starvation is by no means mere deprivation of food: on the contrary, a man may eat heartily to the day of his death, and feel no inconvenience, so far as any protest of the stomach is concerned, ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell
... to a person in the sea, if he be struggling do not seize him then, but keep off for a few seconds till he gets quiet, for it is sheer madness to take hold of a man when he is struggling in the water, and if you do you run a ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various
... mice and men aft gang aglee," from sheer stupidity and pig-headed obstinacy. General Kirby Smith had publicly announced that Banks's army was too strong to be fought, and that the proper policy was either to defend the works protecting Shreveport, or retreat into Texas. People do not like to lose their reputations ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... several miles to travel, most of which was through the gloomy woods; but there was no hesitation on the part of Nellie, who, but for the sturdy teaching of her parents, would have crouched down beside the log and sobbed in terror until she sank into slumber through sheer exhaustion. ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... on the ground from sheer exhaustion, but Dick did not sleep long. He was awakened by a fresh burst of firing, and saw that it was still dark. He did not sleep again that night, although Albert failed to awake, and, asking for a rifle, bore a part ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... than given the extra thousand dollars the church insisted on paying him. The demands on him were so urgent, the perfect impossibility of providing men with work and so relieving them had been such a bar to giving help in that direction, that out of sheer necessity, as it seemed to him, Philip had given fully half of the thousand dollars reserved for his own salary. His entire expenses were reduced to the smallest possible amount. Everything above that went where it was absolutely ...
— The Crucifixion of Philip Strong • Charles M. Sheldon
... had to stop from sheer want of breath, and on entering the hut Kakaik informed us that it was through the exertions of Manilick that the fiddle had been recovered. He had paid half-a-dozen yards of cotton, the same number of strings ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston
... the work, while she stood around and gave directions. I don't see how she had the strength to do it! When it was all done, she locked the door, walked to the station, took the train for New York, and came to Mrs. Durand." Joyce paused in her recital, from sheer lack of breath, and Cynthia ...
— The Boarded-Up House • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... he had a kingdom indeed, but it was not of earth; and, in an hour of sheer cruel bodily pain, earth alone has ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... wounded lay along this ridge, which rises like the vertebrae of some great antediluvian reptile—dropping sheer down on the Gulf of Saros side, and, in varying slopes, to the plains and the Salt Lake on ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... army. At the first sound of the Prussian drums and bugles, Genappe was abandoned, and nothing thought of but headlong flight. The Prussians, under General Gneisenau, still followed and still slew; nor even when the Prussian infantry stopped in sheer exhaustion, was the pursuit given up. Gneisenau still pushed on with the cavalry; and by an ingenious stratagem, made the French believe that his infantry were still close on them, and scared them from every spot where they attempted to pause and ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... universal stir among all the older occupants. The dock-masters, whose authority is declared by tin signs worn conspicuously over their hats, mount the poops and forecastles of the various vessels, and hail the surrounding strangers in all directions:—"Highlander ahoy! Cast off your bowline, and sheer alongside the Neptune!"—"Neptune ahoy! get out a stern-line, and sheer alongside the Trident!"—"Trident ahoy! get out a bowline, and drop astern of the Undaunted!" And so it runs round like a shock of electricity; touch one, and you touch all. This kind of work irritates and ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... impersonation of chaos, the power of darkness and lawlessness, does not vanish from the scene when Bel puts an end to her reign, destroys, by the sheer force of light and order, her hideous progeny of monsters and frees from her confusion the germs and rudimental forms of life, which, under the new and divine dispensation, are to expand and combine ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... The squat little man rolled forward, affectionate concern on his great ugly face, and he set one of his podgy hands on his godson's shoulder. "Now listen to me, Andre," he reasoned. "This is sheer knight-errantry—moonshine, lunacy. You'll come to no good by it if you persist. You've read 'Don Quixote,' and what happened to him when he went tilting against windmills. It's what will happen to you, neither more nor less. Leave things as they are, ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... partly doubting their word, for the fountains no longer played, and partly ambitious of showing their superior courage, rushed to the Gothic bridge. Down came the drawbridge with a clang, and with it in sheer descent a torrent of water fit to sweep a regiment away, which shot along the stone bridge and dashed them from it bruised and bleeding, and half drowned with the water which in their terror and surprise found easy way into their bodies. Casper withdrew satisfied, ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... labor, I worked and I liked it. And so did my forefathers for generations before me. It is no job for weaklings, but neither was tree-felling, Indian fighting, road-making and the subduing of a wild continent to the hand of man as was done by the whole tribe of Americans for the sheer joy of ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... stopping her ears caused her inexpressible torture. The words of the young woman entered her mind, slow and plaintive, as an irritating ditty. At first, she fancied the murderers inflicted this kind of torture on her out of sheer diabolical cruelty. Her sole means of defence was to close her eyes, as soon as her niece knelt before her, then although she heard, ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... this morning. Don't do it. Women are the devil, whether they marry you or jilt you. Do you realise that women wear black evening dresses that have to be hooked up in a hurry when you are late for the theatre, and that, out of sheer wanton malignity, the hooks and eyes on those dresses are also made ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... to evict us from this packet, then all I got to say is that they're triflin' with death." (Here Mr. Gibney thrust out his superb chest and thumped it with his horny fists, after the fashion of an enraged gorilla. This was sheer bluff, however, for while there was not a drop of craven blood in the Gibney veins, he realized that his footwork, in the event of battle, would be sadly deficient and he hesitated to wage a losing fight.) "I got my ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... over with the sheer joy of living raised their voices in a swelling chorus and flashed their gorgeous colors as they hopped and flitted through the thick foliage bedecked with myriads of drops of water that scintillated like the rarest of gems. Their ranks had been augmented during the ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... Latin's sweet, abysmal ignorance, his infantile amiability, his artless ambition, and heathenish innocence started the natural gladness of Richling's blood to effervescing anew every time they met, and, through the sheer impossibility of confiding any of his troubles to the Creole, made him think them smaller and lighter than they had just before appeared. The very light of Narcisse's countenance and beauty of ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... incoherent, but, although nobody could understand a word, wild cheers greeted him at every pause in his discourse. He let loose a flood of eloquence, which being consistently endorsed by Judge Turner, was applauded until the speaker stopped from sheer exhaustion.[116] ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... a white middy blouse, and her brown, bare forearms flashed pleasantly in the spring sun. Her brown hair was disarranged by the wind that found a passway down the river, and her eyes shone with the sheer, unadorned love of living. Evidently she had just enjoyed a brisk paddle through the still stretches of the river. With sure, steady strokes she pushed the craft close to the little, board landing where Ben stood. She reached up to him, and in an ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... sat was a good instance of his taste. The silver-plate on it was really remarkable. There was a delightful Caroline tankard in the middle, placed there for the sheer pleasure of looking at it; there was a large silver cow with a lid in its back; there were four rat-tail spoons; the china was an extremely cheap Venetian crockery of brilliant designs and thick ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... The path had widened somewhat, and the dreadful sense of sheer depth below her was less insistent. Nevertheless, the way was far from easy, the steps being little more than deep notches in the cliff. It slanted inwards here however, and she set herself to achieve ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... me in continuous joy, as waters invest a fish. I woke from a high dream. . . . And then, but for the fear of seeming cowardly, I would have extinguished my life as men blow out a candle. Vanity preserved me, sheer vanity!" He shrugged, spreading his hard lean hands. "Belhs Cavaliers, I grudged my enemies the pleasure of seeing me forgetful of valor and noble enterprises. And so, since then, I have served Heaven, in default ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... a perfectly level surface; but it is a term used by shipwrights, implying the area or imaginary surface contained within any particular outlines, as the plane of elevation, or sheer-draught, &c. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... keeps quiet in the spider's web, may for a moment forget its situation; but the least effort to escape is apt to frustrate itself and again reveal the imminent peril. Thus he too "kicked against the pricks," hoped, feared, rebelled against his destiny, and again, from sheer weariness, relapsed into a dull, benumbed apathy. In spite of her friendly sympathy, he never felt so keenly his alienism as in her presence. She accepted the spontaneous homage he paid her, sometimes with impatience, as something that ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... at last it seemed to him that he had detected the error of his method. 'This,' he reflected, 'is an age of generous display: the age of the sandwich-man, of Griffiths, of Pears' legendary soap, and of Eno's fruit salt, which, by sheer brass and notoriety, and the most disgusting pictures I ever remember to have seen, has overlaid that comforter of my childhood, Lamplough's pyretic saline. Lamplough was genteel, Eno was omnipresent; Lamplough was trite, Eno original and abominably ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... after a great debate, been fixed upon at a point in the heart of one of the hills. This was singularly well adapted for defense The hill itself was extremely precipitous on all sides. On one side, it fell sheer down. A goat track ran along the face of this precipice, to a point where the hill fell back, forming a sort of semicircular arena on the very face of the precipice. This plateau was some two acres in extent. Here quantities ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... pumps; but weakened by disease and famine, and overcome with fatigue, they were soon obliged to give up the almost hopeless task. Three days of horror passed away without any ship coming near them, while several of them died from sheer starvation. Fortunately, at last they discovered some gunpowder which, being in tin cases, was not spoilt, and with it they managed to fire the guns which had attracted ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... I laughed aloud from sheer excitement and the relief of finding some tangible thing to go on, for the oculist's argument struck me as ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... Otway, of course it is literature, and of a very high order; even Shadwell and Mrs. Behn and Southerne are literature; Settle and Ravenscroft may pass as legitimate literary curiosity. But there are depths below this where there is no excuse but sheer collectaneomania. Plays by people who never got into any schedule of English letters that ever was planned, dramatic nonentities, stage innocents massacred in their cradles, if only they were published ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... or perish. Beside the cascade there was a broken angle of the rocks, by which, if she could reach it, she might at least, she thought, climb to the upper part of the gorge. But the nearest foothold she could discover was ten feet above the basin, in sheer ascent. The ledge was dank and slippery with the dashing spray. Gain the top of it, however, she must. She ran up the embankment under the cliff. Here a sapling gave her support; she clung to a crevice or projection there; a drooping bough saved her from falling when the soft earth slid ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... representation in public places of the people and their desires, if public officers are really the servants of the people, and if political promises and professions have any binding force, our failure to give the relief so long awaited will be sheer recreancy. Nothing should intervene to distract our attention or disturb our effort, until this reform is accomplished ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... Psmith. "He is now prone on his bed in the dormitory—there a sheer hulk lies poor Tom Jellicoe, the darling of the crew, faithful below he did his duty, but Comrade Dunster has broached him to. I have just been ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... an excellent workman, Mr. J. S. Lamson, at Bordentown, New Jersey. The boat was sharp at each end, and the lines from amidships to stem, and from amidships to stempost, were alike. She possessed that essential characteristic of seaworthiness, abundant sheer. The deck was pierced for a cockpit in the centre, which was six feet long and surrounded by a high combing to keep out water. The builder had done his best to make the Mayeta serve for rowing and sailing — a most difficult combination, and one ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... obtained no reward for his services, nor promise of further employment. No one in authority seemed to consider that he had been sent to sea in a rotten old ship, unfit for the service, and that she had foundered not from any fault of his, but through sheer old age and decrepitude. ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... "Now you're talking sheer rubbish," she said lightly. "You remind me of that absurd play, The Chinese Honeymoon, when the bride took her bridesmaids with her." She laughed; she took Christine's hand and dragged her to her feet. "You ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... had no fear. She laughed in sheer happiness when they told her again and again of the beautiful ...
— Stories of Birds • Lenore Elizabeth Mulets
... mental science. It may sound strange to say that monotony of its nature becomes novelty. But if any one will try the common experiment of saying some ordinary word such as "moon" or "man" about fifty times, he will find that the expression has become extraordinary by sheer repetition. A man has become a strange animal with a name as queer as that of the gnu; and the moon something monstrous like the moon-calf. Something of this magic of monotony is effected by the monotony ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... I thus attempt of my Oriental dreams, which filled me always with such amazement at the monstrous scenery, that horror seemed absorbed for a while in sheer astonishment. Sooner or later came a reflux of feeling that swallowed up the astonishment, and left me, not so much in terror, as in hatred and abomination of what I saw. Over every form, and threat, and punishment, and dim sightless incarceration, brooded a killing sense ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... articles were at times sensational in character, viciously abusing writers of known or suspected republican sentiments. From its pages could be culled a new series of "Beauties of the Anti-Jacobin" which for sheer vituperation and relentless abuse would be without a rival among ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... her behind, and she could see their very forms no more. Then she cried out in agony, and still, with that power of self-excitement, which her sex possess in an eminent degree, she struggled on and on, beyond her strength till, at last, she fell down from sheer exhaustion, and the snow fell fast upon ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... is sheer rubbish. Stay here, rather, and put such thoughts out of your head. None of what you suppose is true. I can see for myself that it is not. Whatsoever you lack here, you have but to ask me for it. Here you love and are loved, ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... parents as the one conducted by Reb Moshe, known by his piety and cabalistic knowledge, the favourite of the Rabbi. It must not be thought that Reb Moshe initiated his scholars into the first steps of learning; this would have been sheer waste of his capabilities—which ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... such a social condition the Latin stock in Italy underwent an alarming diminution, and its fair provinces were overspread partly by parasitic immigrants, partly by sheer desolation. A considerable portion of the population of Italy flocked to foreign lands. Already the aggregate amount of talent and of working power, which the supply of Italian magistrates and Italian garrisons for the whole domain of the Mediterranean demanded, transcended ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... same gathering mist Dimming the eye that would be keen as death; The same fixed longing on the changeless face. Over the edge he vanished—came no more: There, as in childhood's dreams, upon that line, Without a parapet to shield the sense, Voidness went sheer down to oblivion: Over that ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... Weakness, especially weakness in high places, is apt to fall back upon cruelty to supply false strength, and a government that found itself face to face with an entire country in arms, absolutely antagonistic to and defiant of its authority, may easily have felt itself driven by sheer despair into some such false and futile exhibitions of power. The chief sufferers by these statutes were not the inhabitants of the wilder districts, who, for the most part, escaped out of reach of its ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... Lord, it's so good that if a fellow had a few thousands just put around judiciously, he wouldn't be able to sleep nights for hearing it turn over." He kicked the gravel in sheer impatience. ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... a sheer mountain which in the beams of the tractor looked like a silver pyramid painted across ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... strong man made tender as a woman's by a power centering in her own humble self, and, being utterly without experience of the emotion even in its protective form of calf-love, which is the varioloid of the genuine infection, she imagined through sheer sympathy that she shared his passion. So she assented with maidenly reserve to his plea that she promise to marry him when he should return and provide a home for her. Her more cautious mother secured ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... girl who was probably going to make a failure of it. He asked himself what could have happened to her. Had she lost courage? Or had her physical strength, not yet fully renewed, given way under the stress? Or had she, in sheer disgust for the turn the affair had been given by that brute Bushwick, thrown up the whole business? He looked round for Mrs. Westangle; she was not there; he conjectured—he could only conjecture—that ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... delight of his life. Some birds have wings, others have "pinions." The buzzard enjoys this latter distinctions. There is something in the sound of the word that suggests that easy, dignified, undulatory movement. He does not propel himself along by sheer force of muscle, after the plebeian fashion of the crow, for instance, but progresses by a kind of royal indirection that puzzles the eye. Even on a windy winter day he rides the vast aerial billows as placidly as ever, rising and falling as ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... It was hollow, and within its shelter lived an old Vulture, named Grey-pate, whose hard fortune it was to have lost both eyes and talons. The birds that roosted in the tree made subscriptions from their own store, out of sheer pity for the poor fellow, and by that means he managed to live. One day, when the old birds were gone, Long-ear, the Cat, came there to get a meal of the nestlings; and they, alarmed at perceiving him, set up a chirruping ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... the water in the schooner's hold had so far lowered, as to leave a vacant space of quite a foot between the lowest part of the deck and its surface. Toward the two extremities of the vessel this space necessarily was much increased, in consequence of the sheer. Men were now sent into the hatchway with orders to hook on to the flour-barrels—a whip having been rigged in readiness to hoist them on deck. At the same time gangs were sent to the pumps, though Spike still ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... pleasing to me." There was plenty of wit dressed in rags drifting about the London of that day. Men of genius slept on bulkheads and beneath arches, and starved for want of a guinea, or haunted low taverns, or paced St. James's Square all night in impecunious couples for sheer need of a lodging, cheering each other's supperless mood with political conversations and declarations that, let come what might come, they would never desert the Ministry. But Goldsmith unearthed men of genius whose names nobody ever heard ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... Miss Warfield; and, landing, he spent the afternoon with others and saw nothing of her. But after dinner was over, he spoke to her, inviting her to walk; and she came, silently. A strange evening promenade that was: they took a path close on the sheer brink of the cliffs, so narrow that one must go behind the other. Pinckney had thought at first she might be frightened, with the rough path, and the steepness of the rocks, and the breakers churning at their base; ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... and by sheer force of will seemed to pull herself together. These nervous women have often an ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... presence of objects before he touched them. It was a pleasure to him to rock thus through a world of things, carried on the flood in a sort of blood-prescience. He did not think much or trouble much. So long as he kept this sheer immediacy of blood-contact with the substantial world he was happy, he wanted no intervention of visual consciousness. In this state there was a certain rich positivity, bordering sometimes on rapture. Life seemed to move in him like a tide lapping, and advancing, enveloping all things ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... In sheer mercy to the poor creature, Amelius refused to encourage her delusion. "Even supposing such a thing could happen," he objected, "how am I to know the lost girl? You can't describe her to me; you have not seen her since she was a child. Do you know anything of what happened at the time—I ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... drawn from every hole and corner in the barn and threshing-floor, but only two brown ones—and they were quite young still—and no mice. But, as soon as the rat-catcher had gone, the old tom-cat died of sheer old age and laziness. He was buried in the garden with great pomp and ceremony. But, even before he was committed to the grave, Jens brought a young cat over from the keeper's; and there was every reason to hope that she was of a different sort ...
— The Old Willow Tree and Other Stories • Carl Ewald
... some nine hundred beds, which were always so full that the last surgeon admitting to his wards constantly found himself with extra beds poked in between the regulation number through sheer necessity. It afforded an unrivalled field for clinical experience and practical teaching. In my day, however, owing to its position in London, and the fact that its school was only just emerging ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... westward. Beyond the water, on the opposite side, a chaos of rocks greater than any Enoch had yet seen, a pile huge as if a mountain had fallen to pieces at the river's edge. Behind the broken rock rose the canyon wall, sheer black, forbidding, two thousand feet into the air. Its top cut straight and sharp across the sky line, the sky line unbroken save where rising behind the wall a mountain peak, snow capped, flecked with scarlet and gold, towered in ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... four or five miles when the decision was reached, and they straightway turned back and raced into Dry Lake again, so that Andy might write the letter that clinched matters. Then, whooping with the sheer exhilaration of living, and the exultation of being able to ride and whoop unhindered, they galloped back to camp and let the news spread as it would. In a week all Chouteau County knew that Andy Green would ride for the ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... shadow: small wonder then if her nature was blighted and her view of life soured. Lady Gore smiled to herself, a little wistfully perhaps, as she tried to put herself in Miss Martin's place—of all mental operations one of the most difficult to achieve successfully. Lady Gore's sheer power of sympathy might enable her to get nearer to it than many people, but still she inevitably reckoned up the balance, after the fashion of our kind, seeing only one side of the scale and not knowing ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... MacRae and I scaled the steep bank at the west end of the cliff and threw ourselves, panting, on the level that ran up to the sheer drop-off. When we had regained the breath we'd lost on that Mansard-roof climb we drew near to the edge, where we could stare into the valley three hundred feet below while we made us a cigarette ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... of working-men, including the obstructionists, seemed stupified; they looked at one another with open-eyed and open-mouthed wonder, and whispered their amazement and perplexity. Then the vicar, struck dumb for the moment by sheer astonishment, after exchanging with his brother clergyman on the platform a glance of deep thankfulness, rose, and addressing William Foster, said, "I cannot tell you, my friend, how truly glad I am to find that you have ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... of genius that has been seen for many a day; so good, indeed, that most men are taken by it for the first quarter of an hour at the least. But for real unmistakable genius,—for that glorious fulness of power which knocks a man down at a blow for sheer admiration, and then makes him rush into the arms of the knocker-down, and swear eternal friendship with him for sheer delight; the "Biglow ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... yawned prodigiously where its rock gates stood open to grant the party admission to the sanctum of the hills. Sheer granite walls, austere and frowning, rose in sculptured immensity on either side, but the trail under foot was scored between some scattered wild-peach shrubs, interspersed with occasional bright-green clumps of manzanita. The air was redolent of warmth and fragrance that might ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... be uttered by a poor youth who had gone mad from love. Our misogynist—and may I venture to include the experienced married man?—will probably retort, that all love between young folks is not only folly but sheer madness; and he will be the more confirmed in this opinion when he learns that, according to certain grave Persian writers, Layla was really of a swarthy visage, and far from being the beauty her infatuated ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... addicted to gambling, staking everything they possess, and continuing at it night and day, until compelled to desist by sheer hunger, or by the loss of all. I could not understand their game; we, in fact, used our best endeavours to abolish the pernicious custom, and, to avoid countenancing it, were as seldom present as possible. It is played with a few small sticks, ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... abrupt mountain sides are honey-combed with tombs, villages and Buddhist lamaseries in the detached localities where population occurs. A pleasure walk through one of these Tibetan towns means a climb by steep flights of steps hewn out of the rock, varied by a saunter up ladders, where the sheer face of a cliff must be surmounted to reach the houses on a ledge above.[1297] Pictures of these recall forcibly the cliff-dwellings of the Pueblo Indians. Even the important market city of Leh covers the ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... the city, where everything is manufactured or sold ready-made, a person simply goes to the store and buys whatever he needs. In the country this cannot be done, and one is driven by sheer necessity to devise ways and means of supplying his needs, himself. He simply has to invent or devise a remedy. Necessity is ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy
... of every citizen. By some strange freak it spared the entire coast north of Santa Barbara. Whether it had some disinclination to approach saltwater—it had been notably slow in its original advance westward—or whether it was sheer accident, San Luis Obispo, Monterey and San Francisco remained untouched as the cities to the south and east were buried under grassy avalanches. This odd mercy raised queer hopes in some: perhaps their town or their ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... a narrow dike which he had walled across with lava blocks, a tunnel beneath this obstruction affording the only exit toward the mountains. On the ocean front he had also built his forts of stone, although the sea boiled five hundred feet below and the plateau ended in an almost sheer precipice. Deep ravines on either side of the stronghold bent around it to the rocky neck, thus making the place almost an island. In these ravines were narrow paths by which his people descended to their boats, secreted on the dark and winding ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... way, hastes night and day through rain and sunlight, careless of vigils or of dangers, but, safe at home and seated before the fire, is seized by extreme lassitude and can hardly drag himself to bed, so France, the widow of Caesar, suddenly felt her wound. She fell through sheer exhaustion, and lapsed into a coma so profound that her old kings, believing her dead, wrapped about her a burial shroud. The veterans, their hair whitened in service, returned exhausted, and the hearths of deserted castles ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... of the stricken poor. The mothers who slept exhausted while I watched beside their darlings' bedsides will never, I like to fancy, think over harshly of the heretic whose hand was as tender and often more skilful than their own. I think Mother Nature meant me for a nurse, for I take a sheer delight in nursing anyone, provided only that there is peril in the sickness, so that there is the strange and solemn feeling of the struggle between the human skill one wields and the supreme enemy, Death. There is a strange fascination in fighting ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... The raider tried to sheer Diablo off closer under the wall, to make the slope where his companion had escaped. But Diablo was uncontrollable. He was running wild, with breaking gait. Closer and closer crept that white, smoothly gliding, beautiful machine ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... is what you see: To mix, and sympathise, and to be free, Is the true sociality. These meet, like marbles mingled in a bag, And the net outcome, friend, is friction, fag, Boredom, and sheer banality. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 February 15, 1890 • Various
... to be the secret, then?" asked Charley, with a look half abstracted, half quizzical. "Terror—sheer terror. You startled the conscience. You made defects in the circumstantial evidence, the imminent problems of our own salvation. You put us all on trial. We were under the lash of fear. If we parsons could only do ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the box away with his foot, and the moment he did this I knew that my strength was not great enough to hold him; but I remembered that he had said I would not fail him, and I put all my grim vigour into my fibres and held by sheer will. Then the soul shouted to me to ...
— A Dreamer's Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... after long years of arduous preparation, had to be assumed by black men without personal or formal fitness. The stronger and more aggressive natures pushed themselves into these higher callings by sheer force of untutored energy and ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... from the English prayer meeting Sabbath evening, February 18th, in that desponding state that sometimes follows intense and protracted desire, when its object is not attained. At such times, the sensibilities seem paralyzed, and emotion dies of sheer exhaustion. The pupils had retired; so also had Miss Rice; and she was left alone. Her thoughts brooded over the state of her charge, but she had no strength to rise and carry those precious souls to Christ. She could not sleep, ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... introduced himself as Mr. Smithwick. He was not at all the kind of gentleman I had expected to see. By some perversity he had become fixed in my imagination as a very tall gentleman with fair curled hair. Now this was sheer foolishness, but it had a disastrous effect on the interview. My mind, instead of gathering itself up into an attitude for receiving information about the land question, would go off wool-gathering in speculation ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... fell in with them, and, getting into the midst of them, fired at a Moorish ship which was next him; but the men-of-war, taking the alarm, bore down upon Kid, and, firing upon him, obliged him to sheer off, he not being strong enough to contend with them. Now he had begun hostilities he resolved to go on, and therefore he went and cruised along the coast of Malabar. The first prize he met was a small vessel belonging to Aden; the vessel was Moorish, and ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... and it also involves some temerity. It is like gathering mushrooms; perhaps they are edible, perhaps they are poisonous; for the various fungi look very much alike. If it happens to be right, it is right; if it happens to be wrong, it is sheer disaster. ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... frigate we escaped with no more than a shot in our quarter. Then we was chased two days and a night by a French privateer, firing between squalls, and the dirty little English ten-gun brig which made him sheer off had the impudence to press another five of our men. That's how we reached to the chops of the Channel. Twelve good men pressed out of thirty-five; an eighteen-pound shot-hole close beside our rudder; our mainsail looking like spectacles where ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... lightly touched them as the three leaped chamois-like from one precarious foothold to the next. Dizzy and terrifying was the way that Om-at chose across the summit as he led them around the shoulder of a towering crag that rose a sheer two thousand feet of perpendicular rock above a tumbling river. And when at last they stood upon comparatively level ground again Om-at turned and looked at them both intently and especially at Tarzan ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... but much of it had an under-meaning, political or otherwise, which bars it from the field of sheer nonsense. ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... Mr. Jones," she said sweetly. "It was a sheer accident. He was taken by surprise. In his place I would have emptied ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... "It is sheer fanaticism!" said Mrs. Randolph. "I cannot let her encourage it. If I did, she would not be fit for anything by and by. She is ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... the bitch of ruin Unspoken and of voiceless death, kept watch; And she led thee away from the blue shore With lilies sown, to the salt marsh of terror And the sheer precipice of ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas
... and small shot charge him, board him thwart the hawse, on the bow, midships, or, rather than fail, on his quarter; or make fast your grapplings to his close-fights and sheer off' [which would tear his ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... time to see Joe's 'ead disappear. Then I nipped up, and arter I 'ad told 'im part of wot I thought about 'im I gave 'im the letter and told 'im to sheer off. ...
— Night Watches • W.W. Jacobs
... to his men the snarling and snapping of the demon wolves distinctly expressed laughter, derision of the most sinister kind. They were not only threatening him, they were laughing at him, and his bones continued to crumble through sheer weakness and fear. It was not worth while for him to fire at any of the sounds. The bullet might go through a wolf, but it would not hurt him, it would merely increase his ferocity and make him all the more hungry for the blood ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... every night, anywhere. It's worth being a tramp for that alone, to be able to sleep naturally, to know in the daytime that you will have it at night, and then to lie down and feel it stealing over you like the blessing of God. I used to wake myself at first for sheer joy when it was coming. And then to nestle down, and sink into it, down, down into it, till one reaches the great peace. And no more wakings in torment as the drug passes off, waking as in some iron grave, unable to stir hand or foot, unable to beat back the suffocating ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... of boat, called traineras, is built especially for taking sardine and anchovy, although in fine weather they often engage in the same fishery as the larger boats. The traineras are light and shapely vessels, with a graceful sheer and curved stem and stern posts. The keel is much cambered, and the bottom is flat and has considerable hollow. The usual dimensions vary between: Length, 38 feet to 42 feet; beam, 7 feet to 7 feet 6 inches; ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various
... stretched above him; and before him lay the two abysses full of stars, for they cut their way through the whole Earth and revealed the under sky; and threading its course between them went the way, and it sloped upward and its sides were sheer. And beyond the abysses, where the way led up to the farther chambers of the fortress, Leothric heard the musicians playing their magical tune. So he stepped on to the way, which was scarcely a stride in width, and moved along it holding Sacnoth naked. And to and fro beneath ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... proceed from the elves' Maypole—an orchestra in itself—and that was my sausage-stick. I never would have believed that so much could have come from it; but much, of course, depended on what hands it fell into. I became very much agitated, and I wept, as a little mouse can weep, from sheer pleasure. ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... and others, fourteen. But it were a great pity, that versification so faulty and unsuitable should ever be imitated. About half of the said lines, as they appear in the poet's royal octave, or "the First Complete American, from the Last London Edition," are as sheer prose as can be written, it being quite impossible to read them into any proper rhythm. The poem being designed for children, the measure should have been reduced to iambic trimeter, and made exact at that. The ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... exactly the right moment—before taking the trouble to read vol i. This, I say, is just permissible with a novel, where vol. iii. has a meaning, even for those who have not read the earlier part of the story; but with a scientific book, it is sheer insanity. You will find the latter part hopelessly unintelligible, if you read it before ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... up and, from the suzerainty of sheer height, looked down upon Miss Beemis there, so brown and narrow beside the ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... every grade of society carry activity and disseminate disease. Some prosper, some vegetate. Some have mounted the steps of thrones and owned islands and navies. Others again must marry for a livelihood; a strapping, merry, chocolate-coloured dame supports them in sheer idleness; and, dressed like natives, but still retaining some foreign element of gait or attitude, still perhaps with some relic (such as a single eye-glass) of the officer and gentleman, they sprawl in palm-leaf verandahs and ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... is a group problem. Considering the mutual interdependence and the diversity of activities in human society, to make the generalization that one sex is superior to the other is on a par with saying that roots and branches are superior to trunks and leaves. It is sheer foolishness. Yet oceans of ink have flowed in attempts to establish one or the other ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
... ears, hunting about for expressions she thought comprehensible to that innocent mind, Ruth explained the relations of the sexes—an inaccurate, often absurd, explanation, for she herself knew only what she had picked up from other girls—the fantastic hodgepodge of pruriency, physiology and sheer nonsense which under our system of education distorts and either alarms or inflames the imaginations of girls and boys where the clean, simple truth would at least enlighten them. Susan listened with ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... And, being espied by the enemy and pursued, from this danger he was rescued by a strong south wind, which sprang up and raised so high a sea, that the enemy's galleys could make little way. But his own ships were driving before it upon a lee shore of cliffs and rocks running sheer to the water, where there was no hope of escape, when all of a sudden the wind turned about to south-west, and blew from land to the main sea, where Antony, now sailing in security, saw the coast all covered with the wreck of the enemy's fleet. For hither the ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... stuff," David Linton said. "It's chiefly packing cases, truly, Jim. But we had plenty of time to plane it up and make it look decent. Bob ran an electric light into the workshop and we worked every night. I believe it's kept us from getting influenza from sheer boredom, with all you ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... perseverance, but in our short daily journeys we made but trifling way against it." The effects of severe toil were painfully evident. The men lost the muscular jerk with the oars. Their arms were nerveless, their faces haggard, their persons emaciated, their spirits wholly spent. From sheer weariness they fell asleep at the oar. No murmur, ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... Macias! I'm clean-shaven, eh? Not a hair on my chin? Do you know why? Well, I'll tell you! You see I get mad easy as hell; and when there's nobody to pick on, I pull my hair until my temper passes. If I hadn't pulled my beard hair by hair, I'd have died a long time ago from sheer anger!" ...
— The Underdogs • Mariano Azuela
... such glorious colouring; sand that is swept smooth by the wind into great banks and drifts with sharp edges like snow-drifts; past masses of plum-coloured rock sticking up out of it; past defiles of stony mountains falling sheer to the water; hiding here and there in their folds tiny villages indistinguishable from the rocks without glasses. There is hardly a shaduf to be seen and very little cultivation, it is either desert or stony hills on each side. Grand beyond ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... workhouse, to which the honest pauper may have recourse. Hence with tens of thousands it is literally a case of "steal or starve." I suppose that nine-tenths of the thefts and robberies, besides a large proposition of the other crimes committed in India, are prompted by sheer starvation, and until the cause be removed, it will be in vain to look for a diminution of the evil, multiply our police and soldiery ...
— Darkest India - A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out" • Commissioner Booth-Tucker
... steadily he regarded his position, the more was he appalled by the outlook. Why, this meant downright slavery! He had married a woman so horribly like himself in several points that his only hope lay in overcoming her by sheer violence. A thoroughly good and well-meaning woman, an excellent housekeeper, the kind of wife to do him credit and improve his social position; but self-willed, pertinacious, and probably thinking herself his superior in every respect. He had ...
— Victorian Short Stories of Troubled Marriages • Rudyard Kipling, Ella D'Arcy, Arthur Morrison, Arthur Conan Doyle,
... intelligent, he was disgusted with the sort of instruction there, which was served out in portions, like soldier's rations, and would have lost courage but for his little friend, Louise Gerard, who out of sheer kindness constituted herself his school-mistress, guiding and inspiriting him, and working hard at the rudiments of L'homond's Grammar and Alexandre's Dictionary, to help the child struggle with his 'De Viris'. Unfortunate indeed is he who has not had, during his infancy, a petticoat ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... tolerable if the power of Prussianism, run mad and murderous, held the world by the throat, if the primacy of the earth belonged to a government steeped in the doctrines of a barbarous past and supported by a ruling caste which preaches the deification of sheer might, which despises liberty, hates democracy and would destroy both if ...
— Right Above Race • Otto Hermann Kahn
... George Stokes had snored in that characteristic manner from boyhood, ever since he and George had slept in a hayloft together; and how he, kept wakeful and driven to distraction by George Stokes' nose, had been occasionally compelled, in sheer self-defence, madly to start up and hold that pertinacious alarum in tight compression between thumb and forefinger; and how George Stokes, thus severely handled, had burst his hold with a tremendous ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... guest. He had grown so indolent, and gave himself so many airs, that Moodie was heartily sick of his company, and gave him many gentle hints to change his quarters; but our guest was determined to take no hint. For some reason best known to himself, perhaps out of sheer contradiction, which formed one great element in his character, he seemed obstinately bent ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... "Better sheer off and give it a wide berth, then," counseled his chum. "If it were the captain or the chief, you would ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... and had prepared these articles for removal, when a sudden revolution occasioned the disarming of his Indian laborers, who for some time had served for a protection, and all further operations were suspended, as longer residence in that exposed region without arms was sheer madness. It was at that time that Dr. Le Plongeon wrote the following Memorial to the Mexican President, Senor Don Sebastian Lerdo de Tejada, which is given nearly entire, as it makes a statement of his claims ...
— The Mayas, the Sources of Their History / Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, His Account of Discoveries • Stephen Salisbury, Jr.
... soul ached with the futility of his labor. Waking, he never lost faith in the certainty of finding the place. He now knew the tramp well enough to appreciate that the other had not risked his own life and nearly killed one of his pursuers through sheer bravado, or fear, or personal hatred. Something more potent was beneath the tramp's motives—some incentive that was almost a religion. So far, Winthrop was correct. He erred, however, in supposing Overland to be obsessed with a ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... her dainty little white pumps until they were very nearly black, but she was so happy as to be absolutely oblivious of such trifles, while the awkward youths fell entirely under the spell of her sparkling, fun-filled eyes and the merry, bubbling laugh that seemed to overflow from sheer joy. ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... his eyes wearily, but by sheer strength of will Prince recalled him from the doze ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... dance and dinner lists are made out, there is always some thoughtless hostess—and sometimes a mischievous one; and the chances were that he and Mrs. Jack Ruthven would collide, either through the forgetfulness or malice of somebody or, through sheer hazard, at some large affair where Destiny and Fate work busily together in ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... lord, the devil a more nor less, and that the money you see here is no more yours nor it is mine! It belongs to the land it came from. Ay, ay, stamp away, and go red in the face: you must hear the truth, whether you like it or no. The place we're living in is going to rack and ruin out of sheer bad treatment. There's not a hedge on the estate; there isn't a gate that could be called a gate; the holes the people live in isn't good enough for badgers; there's no water for the mill at the cross-roads; and the Loch meadows is drowned with wet—we're ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... work, and have just been looking over it out of sheer curiosity, from a remembrance of the noise the book made, and the name it gave Lewis. But really such things can ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... back to look in sheer astonishment,—he could hardly believe the testimony of his own eyes. The figure which he took to be Hazlet hastily retreated, and Julian half-persuaded ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... attention to the dictates of conscience and by sheer force of will the Wang school of philosophers succeeded in reaching a standard of attainment that served to make them models for posterity. The integrity of heart preached by his followers in Japan has become a national heritage of which all Japanese are proud. In the West, ethics has become too ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... shouted Mildmay, checking the exultant cheer which rose to the lips of his companions. "Sheer as close alongside the barque as you can go, Sir Reginald, and give me a chance to get our heaving line on board. Then, as soon as I wave my hand, go ahead gently until you have brought a strain upon the hawser, when you may increase the speed to about twelve knots—not ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... the first, definitely. He didn't know he wanted the second. The fact that he didn't know it was Stella Kamps' fault. She had kept his boyhood girlless, year and year, by sheer force of her own love for him, and need of him, and by the charm and magnetism that were hers. She had been deprived of a more legitimate outlet for these emotions. Concentrated on the boy, they had sufficed for him. The Marvin girls ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... that I saw yesterday were remarkably clean and tidy; to be sure, it was Sunday. The whole day, till quite late in the afternoon, the house was surrounded by a crowd of our poor dependents, waiting to catch a glimpse of Mr. ——, myself, or the children; and until, from sheer weariness, I was obliged to shut the doors, an incessant stream poured in and out, whose various modes of salutation, greeting, and welcome were more grotesque and pathetic at the same time than anything you can imagine. ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... also he was the master, the conqueror, the proud, free, rich young aristocrat, for whom all the rest of humanity existed. And Jimmie Higgins was a poor little worm of a proletarian, with nothing but his labour-power to sell, trying by sheer force of his will to lift himself out ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... while the ear may be passive to the strokes of a hammer, and even endure them with some degree of equanimity, to music it cannot be passive. The noted author relates having sat through an Italian opera, till, from sheer pain, he rushed out into the noisiest places of the crowded streets, to solace himself with sounds which he was not obliged to follow, and thus get rid of the distracting torment of endless, fruitless, barren attention! According ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... self-acknowledgedly for the mere pleasure of grappling with the difficulties they opposed to me. Often, too, in the most terrific tempests, when sea and sky have met in one black and threatening mass, and when the startled fishermen have in vain attempted to dissuade me from my purpose, have I ventured, in sheer bravado, out of sight of land, and unaccompanied by a human soul. Then, when wind and tide have been against me on my return, have I, with my simple sculls alone, caused my faithful bark to leap through the foaming brine as though ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... daughters," returned the superintendent, and the expression of his face changed so swiftly and so strangely that Jessie did not feel that she could make any further comment upon the thought that had stabbed her mind. After all, it seemed like sheer curiosity on her part to ask the man about ...
— The Campfire Girls of Roselawn - A Strange Message from the Air • Margaret Penrose
... said, "sheer weakness. But I think it was pardonable. I saw, now that your sister was married, that the days of your old irresponsible flirtations were over, and that you would henceforth regard proposals of marriage as much more serious things than hitherto. Consequently you might marry any day, ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... this adventure from sheer lack of purpose. But whither was it leading her? She was a married woman, with her shackles heavy upon her. Yet she walked that night with a stranger, as one who owned her freedom. The silence between them was intimate and wonderful, the silence which only kindred spirits ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... to take up towards what he apprehends to be the divine—and you will remember that this was our definition—will prove to be both a helpless and a sacrificial attitude. That is, we shall have to confess to at least some amount of dependence on sheer mercy, and to practice some amount of renunciation, great or small, to save our souls alive. The constitution of the world we live ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... on up the ascent, at length coming into open light upon a small plateau marked by huge, rugged, weather-chipped stones. On the eastern side was a rocky promontory, and close to the edge of this cliff, an hundred feet in sheer descent, rose a gnarled, time and tempest-twisted chestnut tree. Here the borderman laid down his rifle and knapsack, and, half-reclining against the tree, settled himself ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... on, an Indian hunter drew near on horseback, but Nakpa did not pause or slacken her pace. On she fled through the long dry grass of the river bottoms, while her babies slept again from sheer exhaustion. Toward sunset, she entered the Sioux camp amid great excitement, for some one had spied her afar off, and the boys and ...
— Indian Child Life • Charles A. Eastman
... 194, 196. Here again we have followed the early Quartos in reading 'Brook' instead of 'Broome,' the name given by Ff Q3. That the former was the original name is proved by the jest in II. 2. 136, where the Folios make sheer nonsense. ...
— The Merry Wives of Windsor - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... mountains. Capable (somehow) of bearing that seed, yet oppressed by the energy of Rudra (for Agni is identical with Rudra), she failed to hold that seed longer in consequence of its burning energy. After she had cast it off, through sheer distress, that blazing seed having the splendour of fire, O perpetuator of Bhrigu's race, Agni saw her, and asked that foremost of streams, 'Is it all right with the foetus thou hast cast off? Of what complexion has it been, O goddess? Of what form does it look? With ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... what it all means, sir, and I am not at all astonished. You have wished to do something out of sheer goodness of heart, and you have ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... does not displease him. Lord Cedric says thou shalt talk to him the balance of his days." The maid shrunk further from him in sheer loathing. At the moment Janet entered, and the rough Scot turned upon her, and in ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... worth the living, a poor fame Scarce worth the winning, in a wretched land, Where fear and pain go upon either hand, As toward the end men fare without an aim Unto the dull grey dark from whence they came: Let them alone, the unshadowed sheer rocks stand Over the twilight graves of that poor band, Who count so little ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby
... was pompous and ponderous, lived in an expensive neighbourhood, and drove a handsome equipage. He wore mourning-rings left him by patients who never had anything particular the matter with them, and who, dying of sheer old age, or sheer over-eating, declared with their final gasp that Dr. Doddleson had been the guardian angel of their frail lives ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... don't pipe your eye and look squally when I sheer off as you used to, and that's a comfort. I like to leave port in fair weather and have a jolly send-off all round. Specially this time, for it will be a year or more before we drop anchor here again,' answered Emil, pushing his cap back, and glancing about him as if he loved ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... feminine grace, stirred his mind with the sense of a woman who was bright and who knew so much that he had never known. At the same time, there was no malice in it—just the delight in making a strong man discover a strength beyond his own, and in humbling a masculine pride by the sheer superiority of a woman who had neglected no opportunity to satisfy a hunger ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... get his boards, by sheer insistence. No doubt they were not very valuable, and without question he more than made up for them in my mother's bill. I also got something else of equal value to me at the moment,—the assistance of Grits, the contraband; daily, after school, I smuggled him into the shed through the alley, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the man in black, 'a dangerous personage; that poem of his cuts both ways; and then there was Pulci, that Morgante of his cuts both ways, or rather one way, and that sheer against us; and then there was Aretino, who dealt so hard with the poveri frati; all writers, at least Italian ones, are not lickspittles. And then in Spain,—'tis true, Lope de Vega and Calderon were most inordinate lickspittles; ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... swept along like bubbles in a flood. "Fair play, says we—English fair play—hurrah!" And those inside waved their hands, and those that were outside tossed up their caps, in sheer delight ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... all-consuming war; memories of many a careless hour treasured now as exquisite relics are treasured, of many a good fellow who would never again load his pipe from Paul Mario's capacious, celebrated and hospitable tobacco jar, as he, Don, was doing; of days of sheer indolent joy, of nights of ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... remedy. Fight he must. Rinaldo, desirous to make short work of him, took his station with fierce delight; and at the third sound of the trumpets, the Duke was forced to couch his spear and meet him at full charge. Sheer went the Paladin's ashen staff through the false bosom, sending the villain to the earth eight feet beyond the saddle. The conqueror dismounted instantly, and unlacing the man's helmet, enabled the king to hear his dying confession, ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... the quick-witted salvage in the doing, and wanted to cry out in sheer enthusiasm when it was done. Then, in the light from the furnace doors, she saw the face of the chief actor: it was the face of the man with the ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... way; and it presently happened that her lover sued for her, but was too poor for the proud wealthy father, who tauntingly dismissed him till the day when he too should be master of as large herds as the old herdsman. From this time forwards had the old herdsman no luck more, but sheer misfortune. Report ran that a fiery dragon was seen passing o' nights over his grounds; and his substance decayed. The poor swain was now as rich, and again sued for his beloved, whom he obtained. Upon the wedding-day a snake came gliding into the room, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... altitude, 1700 ft.; area, 87 sq. m.; maximum depth, 1020 ft.; mean depth, 660 ft.), are only inhabited by nomad Telenghites or Teleuts. The shores of the lake — reminding a visitor somewhat of the Swiss lake of Lucerne — rise almost sheer to over 6000 ft. and are too wild to accommodate a numerous population. From this lake issues the Biya, which joins the Katun at Biysk, and then meanders through the beautiful prairies of the north-west of the Altai. Farther north the Altai highlands are continued in ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... enemy in distress is due was that of a Georgian behind the wall. In one of the first charges made during the day a Federal had fallen, and to protect himself as much as possible from the bullets of his enemies, he had by sheer force of will pulled his body along until he had neared the wall. Then he failed through pure exhaustion. From loss of blood and the exposure of the sun's rays, he called loudly for water. "Oh, somebody bring me a drink of water!—water! water!!" was the piteous appeals heard ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... June 12, and for forty-eight hours there was no disorder. German siege guns were placed on the sheer precipice of East Rock, ranged alongside the grey shaft of the Soldiers' Monument, dominating the city; machine-guns were set up at the four corners of the Green, at points surrounding the college buildings, and at other strategic ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... mis-culture and perversity, which is just as bad or still worse. According to that system the best thing for a man to do is to marry of set purpose out of sheer obligingness and courtesy. And certainly for such folk it must be no less convenient than entertaining, to live out their lives together in a state of mutual contempt. Women especially are capable of acquiring a genuine passion for marriage; and when one of them finds ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... all parts of the book is manifest the agony it cost the writers to find two words that would rhyme—-more or less; and so often as this arduous feat is achieved, the poetic athlete appears to pause awhile from sheer exhaustion, panting heavily for breath. Let us now read, for our improvement, a part ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... there are along the neglected walls, and in a corner of one of them, by a brook, a mass of sweet currant which in blossom time makes all that bit of valley a bower of fragrance, I have gone that way often in spring for the sheer joy of the friendly odours I had across the ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... contest for the office, and, being defeated in the court below, appealed to the Supreme Court. He then became very much exercised over his appeal, because I was one of the Justices. There were not wanting persons who, out of sheer malice, or not comprehending any higher motives of conduct than such as governed themselves, represented that I would improve the opportunity to strike him ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... ranks with the sweep of a pivot gun, and then took up again in cutting, chilling, spaced syllables: "I have, in the course of my experience as a teacher, had to deal with imbeciles, had to deal with mere idiots; but for sheer, determined, monumental asininity I have never met the equal of this aggregation. I trust this morning's painful, disgraceful, disheartening experience may never, never be repeated. You ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... for that alone, to be able to sleep naturally, to know in the daytime that you will have it at night, and then to lie down and feel it stealing over you like the blessing of God. I used to wake myself at first for sheer joy when it was coming. And then to nestle down, and sink into it, down, down into it, till one reaches the great peace. And no more wakings in torment as the drug passes off, waking as in some iron grave, unable to stir hand or foot, unable ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... from shore to shore and the drop is sheer. With much excitement, the bowsman points out the channel that seems to him the safe one. No one speaks, and the big awkward craft is brought up for the jump. It is an elephant drawing his feet together to take a water-fence. ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... this policy he put off to the latest moment any decision as to the course which he should take with respect to the Bill when it came up to him for his sanction. As regards a dissolution, indeed, he felt from the beginning that it would be sheer folly, attended by no small risk. Was he to have recourse to this ultima ratio, merely because a parliament elected a year before, under the auspices of the party now in opposition, had passed, by a majority of nearly two to one, a measure introduced by the present ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... necessary to salvation—nothing more natural, if such a method is indispensable; for no effort, no trouble, ought to be spared for so exalted an aim. But if the only point is the establishment of one opinion in the place of another, then the travelling expenses of even one single Infallible are sheer waste. If you want to spare the two most valuable things on earth, time and money, make all haste to write to Rome, in order to procure thence a lawful decision which shall declare the unlawful doubt. Nothing more is ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... Leyden, however, General Fielding seems to have been unable or unwilling to pay his son's expenses, which must have been far less there than at an English University; and Henry's return to London in 1728-29 is said to have been due to sheer impecuniosity. When he returned to England, his father was good enough to make him an allowance of L200 nominal, which appears to have been equivalent to L0 actual. And as practically nothing is known of him for the next ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... and died—not from concussion, however, but from loss of blood, for the jugular vein had been cut open as though it had been done with a knife. So much for the head stroke, which is, I may say, exceptional. As a general rule I think the tiger bears down his victim by sheer weight, and then, by some means which I should hesitate to define, although I have seen it, the head is wrenched back, so as to dislocate the vertebrae. One evening two cows were killed before me. I was going to say the tiger sprang at one, but correct myself—it is not a spring, but ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... letters. I wish all my friends would come and live in town. Charles has been telling me even it is better [than] two months that he ought to write to your brother. [It is not] my dislike to writing letters that prevents my [writing] to you, but sheer want of time, I assure you, because [I know] you care not how stupidly I write, so as you do but [hear at the] time ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... no more yours nor it is mine! It belongs to the land it came from. Ay, ay, stamp away, and go red in the face: you must hear the truth, whether you like it or no. The place we're living in is going to rack and ruin out of sheer bad treatment. There's not a hedge on the estate; there isn't a gate that could be called a gate; the holes the people live in isn't good enough for badgers; there's no water for the mill at the cross-roads; and the Loch meadows is drowned with wet—we're dragging for ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... headmaster would have said, "mooning" by the gate, and looking into that enclosed and secret valley, it seemed to his fancy as if there were a halo about the hill, an aureole that played like flame around it. One afternoon as he gazed from his station by the gate the sheer sides and the swelling bulwarks were more than ever things of enchantment; the green oak ring stood out against the sky as still and bright as in a picture, and Lucian, in spite of his respect for the law of trespass, slid over the gate. The farmers and their men were busy on the uplands ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... among ourselves, who are fit for military duty, though they may or may not be actually organized and under arms. So that the Thousands of Indians in the secession papers, as figuring in the armies, are enormous exaggerations; and most of them sheer fabrications. ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... "'That's all a sheer fabrication,' says the Deacon. 'This land was never a part of what's now your farm, any more than it was ...
— The Man Who Stole A Meeting-House - 1878, From "Coupon Bonds" • J. T. Trowbridge
... that possessed her came of that lack, which she neither defined nor acknowledged. Or possibly it came of the night air, August though it was; or of sheer nervousness, or of the remembrance of Count Hannibal's smile. Whatever its origin, she took it to bed with her and long after the house slept round her, long after the crowded quarter of the Halles had begun to heave and the Sorbonne to vomit a black-frocked band, long after the tall houses ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... With a yell of sheer terror which came quicker than even his sense of pain, the man leaped back, dropping as he did so the rope which held back the iron door. I jumped for it, but was too late, for the cord ran like lightning through ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... Master Bumppo, cried Benjamin, your top-light frightens the fish, who see the net and sheer off soundings. A fish knows as much as a horse, or, for that matter, more, seeing that its brought up on the water. Haul oil, Master Bumppo, haul off, I say, and give a ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... shade stretched out on all sides of them into the dark unknown of Mid- Morgraunt; there seemed either no way or countless ways before them, and one as good as the other. They rested themselves in sheer bewilderment, ate of the bread and apples which Isoult had brought with her; then Prosper found out how tired ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... us, and bringing to, by mistake, just athwart our quarter, instead of athwart our stern, as he intended, we brought eight of our guns to bear on that side, and poured in a broadside upon him, which made him sheer off again, after returning our fire, and pouring in also his small-shot from near 200 men which he had on board. However, we had not a man touched, all our men keeping close. He prepared to attack us again, and we to defend ourselves; but laying ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... by the sheer weight of the native attack, the Heavies had never been completely broken up. They maintained their resistance to the end, jammed up as they were against and among the camels, and thus enabled the men on the two sides of the square to concentrate ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... impression. There was occasion for surprise. The lovers were now in an all but land-locked stretch of water, shut in by tall rocks or high ground. Before the water of the inlet could reach the sea, it would have to pass sheer, sentinel rocks which seemed to ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... often chose to call himself, an antiquary; he felt the appeal of all that was old and curious. But he was much more than that. The typical antiquary has his mind so thoroughly devoted to the past that the present seems remote to him. The sheer intellectual capacity of such a man as Scott might be enough to save him from such a limitation, for he could give to the past as much attention as an ordinary man could muster, and still have interest for contemporary affairs; but his capacity was not all that saved ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... 11th January, when in sheer desperation they started off, and in two days reached the Nile. Having no boats, they continued their march overland till 15th February, when the masts of Nile boats came in sight, and soon after the two explorers walked into Gondokoro. Then a strange thing happened. ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... sightless, deaf as she; The long slow hours passed over me. I saw Grief face to face; I know The very form and traits of Woe. I drained the galled dregs of the draught She offered me: I could have laughed In irony of sheer despair, Although I could not weep. The air Thickened with twilight shadows dim: I rose and left. I knew each limb Of these great trees, each gnarled, rough root Piercing the clay, each cone of fruit They bear in autumn. What blooms here, Filling the honeyed atmosphere With faint, delicious fragrancies, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... guidance,—he was driven in upon himself, and developed an intense self-will, which would endure no control. Unhappy will be the future of that man, however amiable, affectionate, and generous, who, whether from neglect in youth, like Byron, or from sheer wilfulness in manhood, determines to act as the mood takes him, because he has freedom of will, without regard to the social restraints imposed upon conscience by the unwritten law, which pursues him wherever he goes, even should he fly to the uttermost parts of the earth. No one can ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... mind," said the man; but Nic did not see the freedom from danger, and he involuntarily caught hold of a handful of twigs at the top of the nearest bush to steady himself, as he gazed away down into a mighty valley whose sides looked to be sheer and whose bottom was thousands of feet below. It was like looking down into an open country shut in by a perpendicular wall of mountains where a glittering river ran, and the trees were dwarfed into tiny ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... the Convent, and from sheer wantonness I was making my Waler plunge and curvet across the road as I tickled it with the loop of ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... and fruitless search for game, but late in the afternoon the youth came upon a slight, sheer descent, along the foot of which ran a shallow but broad creek, beyond which was a little grass-grown valley, where were feeding a fine herd of the little deer. They were feeding in the direction of the creek and the wind blew from them to the hunter, so that no rumor of ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... "Ironside Baptists," sometimes the "Hard-shell Baptists," having, as is usually the case with hard cases, hard names. I use the expression "once known," since, if I mistake not, the order has, in these latter days, deceased; dying of sheer decrepitude, with no weeping mourners around it, being intestate and insolvent, and is now to be numbered with the things that were—an old man's tale, the blunder of an hour.[3] That so broad and warm and genial a nature ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... with dainty pink and white paper. A bed of ivory white, with carved roses at the head and covered with a sheer embroidered spread, filled one corner; a tall chest of drawers stood opposite, and a dressing-table with a triple mirror was ...
— Phyllis - A Twin • Dorothy Whitehill
... which surrounded the little town pressed so closely upon it, that by sheer weight they seemed likely to crush its frail houses into matchwood. On one side mountains, some bare and rugged, some clothed with forest, rose behind the foot-hills, and behind them more mountains, which seemed to rise like the great green billows of an angry sea. On ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... all the vessels ran with blood, but at last the Black Galley succeeded in beating off her assailants; the Zeelanders, by main force, breaking off the enemy's bowsprits, so that the two ships of Spinola were glad to sheer off, leaving their stings buried ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Let us look at a few, taking merely those in one gallery, the Uffizi. The Virgin, in that superb piece of gilding by Simone Martini (did those old painters ever think of the glorified evening sky when they devised such backgrounds?), is turning away from the angel in sheer loathing and anger, a great lady feeling sick at the sudden intrusion of a cad. In a picture by Angelo Gaddi, she is standing with her hand on her chest, just risen from her chair, like a prima donna going to answer an encore—a ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... that held his prisoners in tow to an Armenian, and we climbed up together on foot. Around the corner of the spur, within fifty feet of where Will stood, was an almost sheer escarpment, and at the foot of that, a thousand feet below us, with ramparts of living rock on all four sides, crouched a little village fondled in the bosom ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... well nigh exhausted the slender stock of evidence with which he had started. For a few minutes longer he tried by sheer bluster to conceal the poverty of the case, and last of all he handed one of Cobham's confessions to the Clerk of the Crown to be read in court. It entered into no particulars, which Cobham said their lordships must ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... that a man with this attitude of mind would regard as sheer vindictiveness the adverse criticism of a book that he had written with such care, and so earnest an endeavour to maintain if not improve upon the standard created in a former work. It never for a moment struck him that the men who had once hailed him "great", ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... honourable gentleman, the late President of the Board of Trade, wonders that other nations consider our abhorrence of slavery and the Slave Trade as sheer hypocrisy. Why, Sir, how should it be otherwise? And, if the imputation annoys us, whom have we to thank for it? Numerous and malevolent as our detractors are, none of them was ever so absurd as to charge us with hypocrisy because we took slave grown tobacco ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the mountain side, and was approached by a winding road from the valley. A mere glance showed how strong was the position it occupied, and how difficult such a place would be to capture. On two sides the rock fell away almost sheer from the castle walls, whilst on the other two a deep moat had been dug, which was fed by small mountain rivulets that never ran dry; and the entrance was commanded by a drawbridge, whose frowning portcullis was kept by a grim warder looking fully equal to the ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Cambridge guard-ship, lying not far distant from the place where the Amphion blew up; who having a great desire to observe every thing relative to a profession into which he had just entered, was looking through a glass at the frigate, as she lay along side of the sheer-hulk, and was taking in her bowsprit. She was lashed to the hulk; and the Yarmouth, an old receiving ship, was lying on the opposite side, quite close to her, and both within a few yards of the Dock-yard jetty. The midshipman said, that the Amphion suddenly appeared to rise altogether ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... little here and there, for it is no one's business to repair it now, since the making of the railway has turned pilgrims into tourists. There was just room for man or beast to walk without danger, but so sheer were the descents below us, so great the drop, that a woman might have been pardoned a few tremors. "It's a good thing you're not a girl," said I to the Little Pal, across my shoulder, holding back a particularly obstinate branch which would have ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... up, shook hands awkwardly with Mrs. Ilbert, and made his farewells to Mary Gray. It was sheer ill-temper drove him out as soon as they had come. He had wanted to ask Mary if he might bring Nelly when she returned to town. He had wanted ... a good many other things. But now he stalked away from her presence with fury in his heart. If the Ilberts were going to take ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... Countess walked to the edge of the leads and looked down along the sheer declivity of the stone facade. Slender, exquisite, she stood there, a lonely shape against the sky, and I saw the sun glowing on her burnished red-gold hair, and her sun-burned hands, half ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... Dutch graveyard, with a few quaint English monuments in it, dating from the beginning of the century. The way was long and the road rough; but still we climbed on and on to reach the famous Sami Rock, which rises sheer from the sea, and is a sacred spot for Hindoos, who have come here by thousands to worship for many centuries. Behind the rock stands a small monument, erected in memory of a young Portuguese lady, who, having seen her lover's ship leave the harbour and disappear ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... they emerged, where the road stretched level before them, for a quarter of a mile. On one side rose the huge bulk of the mountain. On the other side the steep wall of the canyon fell away in impossible slopes and sheer drops to the torrent at the bottom. It was an abyss of green beauty and shady depths, pierced by vagrant shafts of the sun and mottled here and there by the sun's broader blazes. The sound of rushing water ascended on the ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... me in time to assist two more of the 9th who were struggling under their horses at the bottom of the ditch. Without a moment's hesitation, Adams jumped into the ditch. He was an unusually powerful man, and by sheer strength dragged the Lancers clear of their horses. The Afghans meanwhile had reached Bhagwana, and were so close to the ditch that I thought my friend the padre could not possibly escape. I called out to him to look after himself, but he paid no attention to my warnings until he ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... block will be cut out to this line and planed up as true as possible. The builder should then project the section lines with a set square on each side of the boat, mark off the profile from the sheer plan, Fig. 65, and cut the block to this line, ...
— Boys' Book of Model Boats • Raymond Francis Yates
... without firing or showing any unfriendly disposition. As she drew near, I felt more and more convinced that she must be the Foam. She had a peculiarly long cutwater and a very straight sheer, which, as she came up to the windward of us, and presented nearly her broadside, was discernible. As she heeled over to the now freshening breeze, I fancied that I could even discern, through the glass, Captain Hawk walking the quarter-deck. When she got about a quarter ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... girl of the Michigan woods; a buoyant, lovable type of the self-reliant American. Her philosophy is one of love and kindness towards all things; her hope is never dimmed. And by the sheer beauty of her soul, and the purity of her vision, she wins from barren and unpromising surroundings those ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... my bait pail in one hand and lunch basket in the other, I started on my tramp. It was a long four miles to Seabury's Pond, my destination, and Lute, to whom, like most country people, the idea of a four-mile walk was sheer lunacy, urged my harnessing the horse and driving there. But I knew the overgrown wood roads and the difficulty of piloting a vehicle through them, and, moreover, I really preferred to go afoot. So I marched off ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Legend," about grandparents and servants and neighbours, giving me time to rearrange the cushions and to settle the fur over her feet. And the other words, hard to pronounce (she must always invert, from sheer anxiety, the English th's and s's); I had to say them first, and once more, and yet again. And we laughed, and I kissed her beloved patient face and her dear young white hair. I don't think it ever occurred to tell her my intention of putting her name on ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... country. The strength of his habitation, however, and the nature of the ground by which it was surrounded on all sides, supplied what was wanting in the courtesy of his pursuers. The sides of the glen were broken banks of earth and rocks of rotten stone, which sunk sheer down to the little winding stream below, affording here and there a tuft of scathed brushwood or a patch of furze. Along the edges of this ravine, which, as we have said, was very narrow, but of profound depth, the hunters on horse and foot ranged themselves; almost ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... together, little harm was done. But when a more progressive soul declared that in bran alone the true nutriment lay, and a host of would-be healthier people proceeded to eat bran and preach bran, there came a time when eating and preaching both stopped, from sheer want of strength to go on. The enthusiasts were literally starving themselves to death—for starvation is by no means mere deprivation of food: on the contrary, a man may eat heartily to the day of his death, and feel no inconvenience, so far as any protest of the stomach is concerned, ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell
... people, and was nominated to that office for the year 631 in an elective assembly attended by unusual numbers. War was thus declared. The democratic party, always poor in leaders of ability, had from sheer necessity remained virtually at rest for nine years; now the truce was at an end, and this time it was headed by a man who, with more honesty than Carbo and with more talent than Flaccus, was in every respect called to take ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... much as sheer ignorance which kept the young girl silent; she had never heard of a painter's model; but the tone in which her new acquaintance spoke implied a compliment, and she looked more confused ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... be a traitor somewhere," Peter said upon the return of a party from an attempt which, although it promised well, had been frustrated, to carry off a number of cattle from one of the American depots. "It aint possible that this can be all sheer bad luck. It aint no one in our company, I'll be bound. We aint had any new recruits lately, and there aint a man among us whom I could not answer for. There must be a black sheep in Gregory's or ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... near—and then he was standing up, shaking all over, but free and a man ready to explain a number of very painful things to Paris as soon as he caught him. He took one step toward the dining-room, sheer rage tugging at his body as high wind tugs at a bough. Now that woman was ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... with wandering soldiers, some laden with more booty than they could well stagger under, others shouting drunk. None of them, when questioned, had the least notion of the duke's whereabouts; and, at last, it was by sheer good fortune that Dick found him, where he sat in the saddle, directing operations to dislodge the archers from ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... feats helped me to the subjugation of Nelly. Yet, after all, in sheer physical prowess, I could not really rival Fred, who stood a full head taller than I did. But I had a deal more of finesse than he had, made very much better use of my opportunities, and was a far more practised poseur. Fred was well supplied with self-esteem—a ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... boy-sailor scarce dared to speak above his breath. Rosita began to repent of having come near so horrible a place; and when she put her head out of her litter, and beheld herself winding along a ledge projecting from the face of a sheer precipice, she would have begged to go back instantly; but her husband spoke in a voice of authority which subdued her; she drew in her head into her basket-work contrivance, and had recourse to vows to Sta Rosa ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... across the road; the clematis, not content with that, going farther and embracing and tangling themselves up till rudely broken apart by the passers-by—notably by old Joe Daygo, when he went that way home to his solitary cot, instead of walking, out of sheer awkwardness, across somebody's ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... retained his grasp and found himself, when the wave receded, standing battered and breathless upon a small niche in the front of the rock which just gave him foothold. It was a marvellous escape, for looking on either side he could not see any break in the sheer declivity. ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Dogberry and Verges. Readers of the Spectator will remember how when Sir Roger de Coverley went to the play, his servants 'provided themselves with good oaken plants' to protect their master from the Mohocks, a set of dissolute young men, who, for sheer amusement, inflicted the most terrible punishments on their victims. Swift tells Stella how he came home early from his walk in the Park to avoid 'a race of rakes that play the devil about this town every night, and ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... time," she said; and, stepping carefully backwards after that first vain attempt, she slipped her feet clear of the snowshoes and went closer to the tree, so that she might try to lift him out of the fork by sheer strength of arm. But the snow was so soft that she sank in over her ankles, going deeper and deeper with every attempt which she made to ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... river are contracted within a narrow gorge, which in fact cleaves asunder the Carpathian range for a space of more than fifty miles. The limestone rock forms a precipitous wall on either side, rising in some places to an altitude of more than two thousand feet sheer from the water's edge. The scenery of this wonderful pass is very varied; the bare rock with its vertical precipice gives place to a disturbed broken mass of cliff and scaur, flung about in every sort of fantastic form, or towering aloft like the ruined ramparts of some Titan's castle. Over all this ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... out, for the amazed old gentleman was mechanically drinking his whiskey out of sheer fright. The rest had forgotten their drinks. "Not one swallow," the boy continued. "No, you'll not put it down either. You'll keep hold of it, and you'll dance all round this place. Around and around. And don't you spill any. And I'll be thinking what ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... gun-truck, all but toppling down the deck. Soon that would happen again which had happened for five days past. He would hear again the chattering of monkeys and the screaming of parrots, the mat of green and yellow weeds would creep in towards the Mary over the quicksilver sea, once more the sheer wall of rock would rise, ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... gaunt gray piles, the metallic surfaces, the homelinesses of Moussorgsky, are more virile, stronger, more resisting than Wagner's music. Only folk aristocratically sure of themselves can be as gay and light at will. If there is anything in modern music to be compared with the sheer, blunt, powerful volumes of primitive art it is the work of Moussorgsky. And as the years pass, the man's stature and mind become more immense, more prodigious. One has but to hearken to the accent of the greater ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... Moor took him aside and flogged him with a huge slave-whip until The Desert was literally filled with his cries! continuing to flagilate his bare body until he (Essnousee) was himself exhausted by administering the brutal flogging. The Arabs of our caravan, who were near, got upon their legs, from sheer annoyance at the sound of the whip and the cries of the slave, but, like dastardly wretches, contented themselves with looking on, silent and motionless. I felt, at the time, extreme contempt for what are called "the brave and gallant sons of The Desert." I was ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... mothers looked at their children with mingled sensations, in which the skepticism of parents toward their children and the habitual sense of the superiority of elders over youth blended strangely with the feeling of sheer respect for them, with the persistent melancholy thought that life had now become dull, and with the curiosity aroused by the young men who so bravely and fearlessly spoke of the possibility of a new life, which the elders did not comprehend but which seemed to ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... care of her—Oh! quaint injustice! as though Soames could possibly take more care!)—should be drawing to herself June's lover, was intolerably humiliating. And seeing the danger, he did not, like James, hide it away in sheer nervousness, but owned with the dispassion of his broader outlook, that it was not unlikely; there was something ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... sheer rubbish," she said lightly. "You remind me of that absurd play, The Chinese Honeymoon, when the bride took her bridesmaids with her." She laughed; she took Christine's hand and dragged her to her feet. "You might smile a little," ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... perspective of our happiness with their hulking personalities, bare of all the iridescence of potentiality, which we could have cast about them. Something of this iridescence may cling to unmarried lovers, in spite of themselves, but wedded bliss is a sheer offence. ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... when impulse rather than reason swayed the mind of a group. Such is the crowd that gathers in a moment of excitement and yields to a momentary passion to lynch a prisoner, or a revolutionary mob that loots and burns out of a sheer desire for destruction. Such a group has not even the value of a safety-valve, for its passion gathers momentum as it goes, and, like a conflagration, it cannot be stopped until it has burned itself out or met a solid wall ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... dispelled drunkenness; and his horse, a great African, coal-black save for one white hoof, seemed to partake of his master's frenzy. With ears lying flat along his head, and eyes that burned into those of Sergius, when he ventured to glance behind him,—glaring sheer through distance and dust like the very eyes of those demons his rider invoked,—the beast thundered on, equalling the speed of the light Asiatic chargers by ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... would rather cultivate their own potatoes than quarrel about vestments or the Trinity. Violently acquisitive, of course, like most southerners. I know a parish priest, a son of poor parents, who, by dint of sheer energy, has amassed a fortune of half a million francs. He cannot endure idleness in any shape, and a fine mediaeval scene may be witnessed when he suddenly appears round the corner and catches his workmen wasting their ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... Lady Beltham shadowed, but I do not mean to arrest her. You see, if I asked Fuselier for a warrant against Lady Beltham, a person legally dead and buried more than two months ago, that excellent functionary would swallow his clerk, stool and all, in sheer amazement." ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain
... As to vowels, he scarcely considered them at all. It seemed to him sufficient to use one symbol for each consonantal sound. This reduced the hitherto complex mechanism of writing to so simple a system that the inventor must have regarded it with sheer delight. On the other hand, the conservative scholar doubtless thought it distinctly ambiguous. In truth, it must be admitted that the system was imperfect. It was a vast improvement on the old syllabary, but it had its drawbacks. Perhaps ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... "What did he not say! He boasted of his rise, he bragged of his riches, and he blackguarded society for taking him up for his money and dropping him out of sheer pique and jealousy because he had so much. He mentioned names, too, with the most charming freedom, and swore he was as good a man as the Old Country had to show—PACE the Old Bohemians. To prove it he pointed to a great diamond in the middle of his shirt-front with a little finger loaded with another ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... secular arm, took many centuries to extirpate the open practice of pagan idolatry within its own fold; and those who have travelled in southern Europe will be aware that it has not extirpated the essence of such idolatry even yet. Mutato nomine, it is probable that there is as much sheer fetichism among the Roman populace now as there was eighteen hundred years ago; and if Marcus Antonius could descend from his horse and ascend the steps of the Ara Coeli church about Twelfth Day, the only thing that need strike him would be the extremely contemptible character of the modern ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... things were not consistent with murder! A man who painted beautiful pictures,—a man who wrote exquisite verses,—he could never be suspected of stabbing a helpless trusting woman in the back out of sheer jealousy, like a common hired assassin! No no! He could never be suspected! Why had he not thought of his intellectual gifts,—his position in the world of art, before? No one in their senses could possibly accuse him in the way he had imagined!—and ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... this painful state we were at last delivered by none other than our good old simple-hearted donkey; not, however, by the exercise of a praise-worthy quality, but by sheer stupidity. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... and half against her wish she now reined the ponies in and made room for him. There never had been a day in her life since she had known him when she was able to resist altogether the blandishments of this pleasant rogue, who made so many appeals to her interest. To-day sheer curiosity conquered her. She wished above all things to hear what he had done with the extravagant cheque ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... visit to the prison, Janet noticed that her mistress was restless; and that while she would say nothing of what was troubling her, and only bade her go to bed and to sleep, she herself would not go to bed. At last, in sheer weariness, the maid slept. ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... what was going on," replied Bryce, "so I took a look at you. And I fetched old Harker to take a look, too. We all watched you—the boy, Harker, and I—out of sheer curiosity, of course. We saw you get up the parcel. But, naturally, I didn't know what was in ...
— The Paradise Mystery • J. S. Fletcher
... has been stated, had for twenty years never ceased to hope that her prayers would procure for her the grace of bearing a son to her husband. Out of sheer weariness she had given herself up to all kinds of charlatans, who at that period were well received by people of rank. On one occasion she brought from Italy a sort of astrologer, who as nearly as possible poisoned her ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE COUNTESS DE SAINT-GERAN—1639 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... should at last get the property which he had so long been anxious to secure for her; but at the present moment it was a grander thing to have hit the exact spot in which the document had been hidden by sheer ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope
... cudgellings, blows and other kinds of cruelty every day and every hour. 16. It is told of him that he destroyed and burnt eight hundred towns in that kingdom of Xalisco: he goaded the Indians to rebellion out of sheer desperation, and after they saw such numbers perish so cruelly, they killed some Spaniards, in which they were perfectly justified, and then retreated to the mountains. 17. Afterwards, the injustice and oppression of other ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... sort of cognition, and that this leads into the unseen world. If this kind of cognition is held to be impossible, we arrive at a point of view from which any mention of an invisible world appears as sheer nonsense. But to an unbiased judgment there can be no basis for such an opinion as this, except that its adherent is a stranger to that other kind of cognition. But how can a person form an opinion about a subject of which he declares himself ignorant? Occult science must in this case ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... before you and our College, illustrious by its numerous body of learned individuals, I had less to fear from others. I even ventured to hope that I should have the comfort of finding all that you granted me in your sheer love of truth, conceded by others who were philosophers like yourselves. True philosophers, who are only eager for truth and knowledge, never regard themselves as already so thoroughly informed, but that they welcome further information from whomsoever and from wheresoever it may come; ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... suffered, that we came near perishing in a very singular and almost incredible manner: After having been in the water a sufficient time, as I thought, I discovered, on trying to get into the boat again, that I was utterly unable to do so, through sheer weakness. At the same time I observed Max making a similar attempt nearer the stern, with no better success. We were all in the water except Johnny; any difficulty in getting into the boat again had not been dreamed of; but I began now to feel seriously alarmed. My feet were drawn ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... eyebrows, wonder what he was smiling to himself about, and wish that he understood him better. It did not occur to him that if he had drawn him out, and encouraged him to chatter as he liked, he should get underneath the surface, and might learn something of the nature hidden there. It was in sheer desperation, at finding nothing to say, that he would often seize his hat and go out, when he had quite made up his mind to stay indoors ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty
... the south, the mountain rose abruptly, its face of sheer rock making a dark scar on the winter landscape, a scar crossed with long white bands and bars of ice which, glacier-wise, were creeping over the edge of the cliff as if seeking to veil its sinister face. Against the base of the mountain, close to the inky creek, ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... scouring the country for fowls, but when we went to look at the result this morning we found about a dozen miserable chickens, almost featherless, standing dejectedly in corners, and Mrs. Royle wailed, "We can't kill these: it would be a sheer slaughter of the innocents!" It isn't easy to get beef or mutton in this part of the world, and when a sheep is brought to Rika it has to be carefully concealed, or Kittiwake ties a ribbon round its neck and claims it as her own, and terrible is the outcry ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... whole of the frontage shaven sheer, The inside gaped: exposed to day, Right and wrong and common and queer, Bare, as the palm ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... clergyman, with many sighs and tears, she explained that Mr. Lezzard's character had been maligned by Mr. Blee, that before the younger veteran she had almost feared for her life, and been driven to accept him out of sheer terror at his importunity. But when facts came to her ears afterwards, she found that Mr. Lezzard was in reality all he had declared himself to be, and therefore returned to him, threw over Mr. Blee, and begged the other to forbid the banns, if as ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... enjoyed your letter very much, and am so glad you keep "office hours." It is very good of you not to be angry with my good advice! "Experientia does it," as Mr. 'Aughton would say.... I break down about once in three months like clockwork—from sheer overwork. I certainly am never happy idle; but I have too often to sit in sackcloth in the depths of my heart—whilst everybody is beseeching me to be "idle"—from a consciousness that, not from doing nothing, ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... poems in A Shropshire Lad illustrates better than any theory how poetry may assume the attire of reality, and yet in speech of the simplest, become in spirit the sheer quality of loveliness. For, in these unobtrusive pages, there is nothing shunned which makes the spectacle of life parade its dark and painful, its ironic and cynical burdens, as well as those images with happy and exquisite aspects. With a ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman
... Philip. "Do you suppose that any rambling Don is going to take up my time when by a sheer accident his verbosity has started me on a true scent? Out, Aristotle, out! Or, stay, take this note with you to the Captain of the Guard"—and King Philip hastily scribbled upon a parchment an ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... it is said that on the Desert of Sahara, the slope of Sorrento, and the marble of Fifth Avenue the sun can shine whitest? There is an iridescence to its glittering on bleached sand, blue bay, and Carrara facade that is sheer light distilled to ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... body; and, finally, the imperial horse-guard (/Hatschiergarde/) itself, in black velvet frocks (/Fluegelroeck/), with all the seams edged with gold, under which were red coats and leather-colored camisoles, likewise richly decked with gold. One scarcely recovered one's self from sheer seeing, pointing, and showing, so that the scarcely less splendidly clad body- guards of the electors were barely looked at; and we should, perhaps, have withdrawn from the windows, if we had not wished to take a view of our own magistracy, who closed the procession ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... He looked satisfied; indeed masterly; which expression changed slightly as he stood there, the sound of the clock conveying to him (it may be) a sense of old buildings and time; and himself the inheritor; and then to-morrow; and friends; at the thought of whom, in sheer confidence and pleasure, it seemed, ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... Livingstone was the first to see the Falls of the Zambesi, which he named the Victoria Falls, after her Majesty the Queen. The water at these falls dashes down in torrents, a sheer depth of 320 feet, the spray rises mountains high and can be seen many miles away, whilst its sound is like the ...
— Beneath the Banner • F. J. Cross
... invisible, for a hundred yards or so and came to the bed of a dry stream which issued from between two great rocks. Behind one of these rocks there opened out a grassy plot a few yards square, and beyond the grass a little lifted platform of rock against a sheer cliff. Here they camped, picketing their horses on the grass and cooking their supper upon the platform of rock over a tiny fire of dry twigs, for the wind was blowing down the canyon and they knew that they could cook their meal and have their smoke ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... more, he throws money away as if it were dust. The day on which he gave the thrashing with blows like falling leaves and flowing water, he dragged (lit. pull alive, drag dead) Ying Lien away more dead than alive, by sheer force, and no one, even up to this date, is aware whether she be among the dead or the living. This young Feng had a spell of empty happiness; for (not only) was his wish not fulfilled, but on the contrary he spent ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... her well glued down and prevented from spreading by a multitude of little defects, had been helped without her knowing it by his example out of many a pit of peevishness and passion. Who shall measure the influence of one kind and blameless life? His wife, in her gustier moments, thought it sheer weakness, this persistent turning away from evil, this refusal to investigate and dissect, to take sides, to wrestle. The evil was there, and it was making an ostrich or a vegetable of one's self to go on being calm in the face of it. With the ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... appear, Framed in goldsmith's forge with cunning hand; Yet goldsmith's cunning could not understand To frame such subtle wire, so shiny clear, For it did glisten like the glowing sand, The which Pactolus with his waters sheer, Throws forth upon the rivage, ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... hastily and went to the window to look out. This window was in a kind of circular tower projecting from the side of the building, such as one often sees in old Norman architecture;—it overhung not only a wall of dizzy height, but a precipice with a sheer descent of some thousand feet; and far below, spread out like a map in the distance, lay a prospect of enchanting richness. The eye might wander over orchards of silvery olives, plantations with their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... through the Princess some opening for their foreign trade, which would better enable them to dispose of their wines and help them to live. Mazarin kept down the local Parliament, and carried everything through sheer terror. Bouillon and La Rochefoucauld, the Princess's advisers, recommended that a royal envoy should be cut to pieces. Lenet dreaded lest such an act, somewhat over-energetic, might render his mistress less popular. Twice or thrice the populace were very nearly putting the Parliament to the sword, ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... were driven hard. He had drawn to Mr. Frost every splinter of power he could command by barter, and thrown in his own State delegation in the House by sheer stress of that machine which he had upreared for his own defense at home. It was not enough; even the subtraction of two State delegations from the standards of the foe, by the adroit scheme, applied to each delegation, of dragging ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... cliff down which George was slipping was not sheer all the way. It was steep; indeed, so steep that it was impossible for the frightened boy in spite of his desperate attempts to check his flight, to gain a foothold. In his descent some of the loose ground gave way and whenever he tried to seize a small projecting point that ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and Simon's Mine • Ross Kay
... his toes from sheer happiness, spread his chest with a sigh of full contentment, and leant back blissfully into the soft cushions. "What a day I'm having!" he said. "Let us ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... she declared. "While Aunty was alive, to paint seemed to be the only way to be free. It gave me the excuse for coming here, for getting away a few hours a day. Now—well, just to be free seems enough. I don't suppose a man knows how a woman hungers for that—for just sheer, ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... would she have treated me as this woman had treated me? Never! It was an injury to "Mary" to think even of that heartless creature by her name. Why think of her at all? Why degrade myself by trying to puzzle out a means of tracing her in her letter? It was sheer folly to attempt to trace a woman who had gone I knew not whither, and who herself informed me that she meant to pass under an assumed name. Had I lost all pride, all self-respect? In the flower of my age, with a handsome fortune, with the world before me, full of interesting female faces ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... mountains rose in two tiers before them literally into the clouds, for several of the lower clouds floated far below the highest peaks, and from the summit of the highest range a river, equal to the Thames at Richmond, dropt sheer down a fall of above two thousand feet. Here it met the summit of the lower mountain-range, on which it burst with a deep-toned, sullen, never-ceasing roar, comparable only to eternal thunder. A white cloud of spray received the falling river in its soft embrace, ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... which was at once sympathetic and exquisitely droll. His narrow world had widened; his neighbours had sprung alive. His heart was tickled with a genial laughter, and his mirth tasted sweet to him, like a mellow apple. He could have hugged the crowd for sheer delight. ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... spider's web, may for a moment forget its situation; but the least effort to escape is apt to frustrate itself and again reveal the imminent peril. Thus he too "kicked against the pricks," hoped, feared, rebelled against his destiny, and again, from sheer weariness, relapsed into a dull, benumbed apathy. In spite of her friendly sympathy, he never felt so keenly his alienism as in her presence. She accepted the spontaneous homage he paid her, sometimes with impatience, as something ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... and massive, at the first treacherous touch of the man's determined hand. His strength was so different from hers—quick, muscular, lambent. But hers was deep and heaving, like the strange heaving of an earthquake, or the heave of a bull as it rises from earth. And by sheer non-human power, electric and paralysing, she could overcome ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... dozen times he was assaulted by a lazy or cowardly temptation to give up the chances of the desert, push back to the Bernalillo route, leave everything to fortune, and take disappointment meekly if it should come. When the noon of night arrived, he had decided upon nothing but to blunder ahead by sheer force of momentum, as if he had been a rolling bowlder instead of a clever, resolute ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... black Flanders mares with tails that swept the ground; and to commemorate the origin of his greatness he had for a crest a fullblown cabbage painted on the pannels, with the pithy motto Alles Kopf that is to say, ALL HEAD; meaning thereby that he had risen by sheer head-work. ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... most picturesque place on the Albanian coast, surrounded as it is by lofty mountains, with trees almost hiding the minarets of the town, while, to the north, Spizza is perched on red rocks rising steeply from the water. There is a great waterfall, which appears to fall sheer into the sea, with a mill just at its foot. Budua, which is fifteen miles from Cattaro, is something like Arbe in situation, crowning a projecting peninsula, and with grey mountains towering above it. It was a Roman fortress, known as Buta, and one of the keys to the interior. It was sacked ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... swayed from side to side, rolled, dipped, and plunged, but Bill kept the track, as if, in the whispered words of the Expressman, he could "feel and smell" the road he could no longer see. We knew that at times we hung perilously over the edge of slopes that eventually dropped a thousand feet sheer to the tops of the sugar-pines below, but we knew that Bill knew it also. The half visible heads of the horses, drawn wedge-wise together by the tightened reins, appeared to cleave the darkness like a ploughshare, held between his rigid hands. Even the hoof-beats of the six horses had fallen ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... for a young American girl, who looks as most of my fair friends do look, to come down with her bright eyes and all her little panoply of graces upon an old fellow like me, and expect him to like a fashion merely because she looks well in it, is all sheer nonsense. Why, girls, if you wore rings in your noses, and bangles on your arms up to your elbows, if you tied your hair in a war-knot on the top of your heads like the Sioux Indians, you would still look pretty. The ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... hour; consequently, before Roland Yorke. Upon looking over Roland's work of the previous day, he found that a deed—a deed that was in a hurry, too—had been imperfectly drawn out, and would have to be done over again. The cause must have been sheer carelessness, and Mr. Galloway naturally felt angered. When the gentleman arrived, he told him what he thought of his conduct, winding up the reproaches with a declaration that Roland did him no service at all, and would ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... whip over Bengal's nose, the cruel lash cutting the tender snout with every blow. But he was not doing it from sheer cruelty, as many of the spectators who raised their voices ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... the rate she was now progressing she would only run from one little suggestion to another, and that he, either wilfully or in sheer simplicity, would take such suggestions simply as jokes; and she was aware that she lacked the skill to bring the conversation round gradually to the point which she was bound to reach. She must make another dash, let it be ever so sudden. Her mode of doing ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... in its fullest force, the practical difficulty in education which a mere student could never overcome; a difficulty not in theory, or knowledge, or even want of experience, but in the sheer chaos of human nature. Lord Russell's course had been consistent from the first, and had all the look of rigid determination to recognize the Southern Confederacy "with a view" to breaking up the Union. His letter of September 17 hung directly on his encouragement of the Alabama ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... Spaniards had almost spent their shot, so that they were obliged to load with hammers and the chains of their galley-slaves, yet, God be praised, the English received no more harm. At length, sore galled and worn out, the Spaniards were constrained to unfasten their grapplings and sheer off; at which time, if there had been any fresh ship to aid and succour the Centurion, they had certainly sunk or taken all those gallies. The Dolphin lay aloof and durst not come near, while the other two small ships fled away. One of the gallies from the Centurion set upon the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... trees would be about them, and the long vineyards watched over by the aristocratic cypress lifting its dark spire to the sun. But now the kingdom of the pine trees joyously held them. They were in the happy woods in which even to breathe was sheer happiness. Now and then they pulled up and looked back to the crescent-shaped plain which held a child instead of armies. They traced the course of the river marked out by the reeds and sedges. They saw the tiny dark specks, ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... beams of the tomorrow's sun touched, but failed to warm, the lifeless remain of the great War-President and Liberator, as they were borne, in mournful silence, back to the White House, mute and ghastly witness of the sheer desperation of those who, although armed Rebellion, in the open field, by the fair and legitimate modes of Military warfare, had ceased, were determined still to keep up that cowardly "fire in the rear" which had been ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... the stairs, step by step, supported by his servant. When he saw the closed landau, he wanted it uncovered. His wife opposed him: "It is sheer madness! ...
— Bel Ami • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... the League would not attack a writer or any other public man from sheer wilfulness, but it would probably have no difficulty in bringing down over-praised mediocrity to its proper level or in giving a helping hand to unrecognized talent. But unless its president were a man of unerring judgment and remarkable restraint, its sense of power ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... Fossiologist of the British Museum, says: "Nine-tenths of the talk of Evolutionists is sheer nonsense, not founded on observation and wholly unsupported by facts. This museum is full of proofs of the utter ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... degraded, but still in bondage to limited thought, bringing with them only the suggestion of a frivolous worldly life—in this way, by the natural operation of the Law of Suggestion, these different classes, either through remorse, or unsatisfied desires, or sheer incapacity to grasp higher principles, all remain earth-bound, suffering in exact correspondence with the nature of the suggestion they have brought along with them. The unchangeable Law is that the suggestion becomes the life; and this is equally ...
— The Creative Process in the Individual • Thomas Troward
... said this trapper was out a skin through sheer carelessness, for it is a slovenly way of trapping to let a nice mink like that get away. If you care to step this way with me I'll show you something which perhaps neither of you have ever seen before, and is ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... your guess may be correct and this fellow Haddon may be guilty of robbing Colby Hall. But it would be sheer foolishness to accuse the fellow unless you had sufficient evidence against him. This talk about horses and cattle may be a perfectly legitimate affair. However, when we get to the ranch we can look into the matter further and find out what sort ...
— The Rover Boys at Big Horn Ranch - The Cowboys' Double Round-Up • Edward Stratemeyer
... Antimachus and Pheres, twain which left Crete with Idomeneus. Agenor smote Molus the princely,—with king Sthenelus He came from Argos,—hurled from far behind A dart new-whetted, as he fled from fight, Piercing his right leg, and the eager shaft Cut sheer through the broad sinew, shattering The bones with anguished pain: and so his doom Met him, to die a death of agony. Then Paris' arrows laid proud Phorcys low, And Mosynus, brethren both, from Salamis Who ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... delight to repeat what she called a "lovely sneap" which Lady G—— had given to Mrs. Elton; nor did she forget to tell him that Emma Woodhouse was explaining to the Portuguese nun her reasons for deciding never to marry. 'Out of sheer astonishment she appears to become quite tranquillised,' said Madge, as if ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... only by a narrow dike which he had walled across with lava blocks, a tunnel beneath this obstruction affording the only exit toward the mountains. On the ocean front he had also built his forts of stone, although the sea boiled five hundred feet below and the plateau ended in an almost sheer precipice. Deep ravines on either side of the stronghold bent around it to the rocky neck, thus making the place almost an island. In these ravines were narrow paths by which his people descended to their boats, secreted on the dark and winding waters or hoisted on the ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... was probably going to make a failure of it. He asked himself what could have happened to her. Had she lost courage? Or had her physical strength, not yet fully renewed, given way under the stress? Or had she, in sheer disgust for the turn the affair had been given by that brute Bushwick, thrown up the whole business? He looked round for Mrs. Westangle; she was not there; he conjectured—he could only conjecture—that she was absent ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... fellow answered with his little chuckle: "Of course! Don't you see that he gets everybody to do what he wants? It's almost sheer will, ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... I was on the top of the berg at daybreak, and saw we had drifted into a big bay, and had grounded about midway. The cliffs in most places rose sheer up out of the water, but here and there there were breaks, and I could see that the land beyond was rough and desolate-looking. I ate my last half-biscuit, and then made my way down to the water's edge. The shore seemed to me about half a ...
— A Chapter of Adventures • G. A. Henty
... certainly correct in your opinion, Mrs. Creighton. Mr. Taylor is, no doubt, a clever man; and yet he takes delight in every piece of finery about his house. He is more possessed with the spirit of sheer ostentation, than any man I ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... for the inshore, but Runt rode their rumps alternately, the displacement lifting their heads out of the water to good advantage. When we finally landed, the two big fellows staggered out of the river and dropped down through sheer weakness, a thing which I had never seen before ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... occasionally putting the reins into his companion's hand, teaching him to perform some impossible movement with his third finger, and directing his attention to non-existent flies, which he professed to remove from the leader, out of sheer compassion, with the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... with withering scorn. 'But, then, I thought you were trying to catch him. He tells me now you won't have him, and you won't tell him where you are going. I call it sheer insolence. Where do you hail from, girl, that you should refuse my nephew? A man that any woman in England would be proud to marry! Forty thousand a year, and an earl's grandson! That's what comes, I suppose, ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... swords are made with a hilt so small that none save a Rajput of the blood could possibly use one; yet there is no race in all warring India, nor any in the world, that bears a finer record for hard fighting and sheer derring-do. One of the questions that occurred to King that minute was why this well-bred youngster whose age he guessed at twenty-two or so had not turned ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... legislative jumble is "the law", and this law, like Alexander the coppersmith, "hath done us much harm". Mr. Sauer carried his Bill less by reason than by sheer force of numbers, and partly by promises which he afterwards broke. Among these broken promises was the definite assurance he gave Parliament that the Bill would be referred to the Select Committee on Native Affairs, so that the Natives, who are not represented ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... said Jonas. 'What's become of him?' A very brief search settled that question. The unfortunate Mr Bailey had been thrown sheer over the hedge or the five-barred gate; and was lying in the neighbouring field, to ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... to live quietly without opening the front door again; but his good master begged him to marry to please him, assuring him that he need not trouble about his wife. So the good steward wandered out of sheer good nature into this marriage. The day of the wedding, bereft of all her reasons, and not able to find objections to her pursuer, she made him give her a fat settlement and dowry as the price of her conquest, and then gave the old knave ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... t'other car turned his head and looked. Then he commenced to sheer off to wind'ard so's to let us pass. But all the time he kept lookin' back and starin' and, as we got nigher, and I could see him plainer through the dust, he looked more and more familiar. 'Twas ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... proved usually sufficient to support the interior lining. Now that breech-loading and slow powders have been introduced, these conditions have been changed. The strains, though less severe, and less tending to explosive rupture, last longer, and are more fully transmitted through the body of the gun. Sheer strength of material now tells more, and signs have not been wanting that coils of wrought iron afford insufficient support to the lining. It becomes, therefore, advantageous to thicken the inner tube, and to support it with ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various
... captain's wine proved excellent. And his ruddy little face, beaming at the head of the table, wore an extravagant, infectious grin. His quick blue eyes danced with the light of some ineffable joke. He seemed a conjurer, creating banquets for sheer mischief in ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... said the willow-tree. "We all take things in our own way and I in mine. I have not the least intention of throwing up the game, but I know that I am a cripple and shall never be anything else. I thought, a little time ago, that my branches up there would turn into a new crown, but that was sheer folly. They grow and strut and turn green and that is all they do. And then, besides, I feel that I ...
— The Old Willow Tree and Other Stories • Carl Ewald
... officer who set on dishes and tasted them, Shaft-mon, handbreadth, Shaw, thicket, Sheef, thrust, Sheer-Thursday, Thursday in Holy Week, Shend, harm, Shenship, disgrace, Shent, undone, blamed, Shour, attack, Shrew, rascal, Shrewd, knavish, Sib, akin to, Sideling, sideways, Siege, seat, Signified, likened, Siker, sure, Sikerness, ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... of the thickness ahead loomed up a great black British freighter making for St. Petersburg, as the Prince supposed. The two steamers, big and little, were so close that each was compelled to sheer off a bit; then the Captain turned on the bridge and seemed for a moment uncertain what to do with his prisoner. A number of men were leaning over the bulwarks of the British ship, and it would have been quite possible for the person on one boat ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... unfortunate that the tale of these early years should assume so controversial a tone. But where all, or almost all, is sheer conjecture, it is inevitable that the narrative must rest rather on argument than fact. The precise moment when Claverhouse transferred his services from the French to the Dutch flag is, in truth, no more certain than ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... apart. She stared for a moment in sheer astonishment. Then she paled with anger. Drawing herself to her full height, ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... have to own, I suppose, that Master Ralph has made a mess of his money matters?" The parson, who couldn't deny the fact, hardly knew what to say on his brother's behalf. "I protest to you, Greg, that if my father were to tell me that he had changed his mind, and paid your brother's debts out of sheer kindness and uncleship, and the rest of it, I should be well pleased. But he won't do that, and it does seem to me probable that the estate will get into the hands of Jews, financiers, and professional ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... black windows. When Andrews stopped to look about him, he found the street completely deserted. The ominous stillness that had brooded over the city during all the walk from his room near the Pantheon seemed here to culminate in sheer desolation. In the silence he could hear the light padding noise made by the feet of a dog that trotted across the end of the street. The house with the mansard roof was number eight. The front of the lower storey had once been painted in chocolate- ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... Lambourne, "that shall take hedge and ditch with my Lord Duke's best hunters. Then I made a little mistake on Shooter's Hill, and stopped an ancient grazier whose pouches were better lined than his brain-pan, the bonny bay nag carried me sheer off in spite of the ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... with red, M. Beaucaire, wary, alert, brilliant, seemed to transform himself into a dozen fencing-masters; and, though his skill appeared to lie in delicacy and quickness, his play being continually with the point, sheer strength failed to beat him down. The young man was ...
— Monsieur Beaucaire • Booth Tarkington
... point falling backwards with his feet together and his eyes shut, with a semi-circular dotted line marking the progress of his flight and a few stars above his head to indicate moral collapse. There are no words that can adequately describe the sheer, black horror that froze the blood in his veins as this frightful ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... questions, perfectly content. The great city expanded before him. Streets became wider, carriages were more frequent, the faces of the people grew more cheerful. He laughed softly to himself from sheer lightness of heart. From down a side street he came into the Strand, and here, for the first time, he noticed that he himself was attracting some attention. Then he remembered his clothes, shabby enough, but semi-clerical, and he walked boldly ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... acquiescence of the other seamen in this act of retributive justice. Jackson, with a loud oath, attempted to spring into the boat, but was repelled by the seamen; again he made the attempt, with dreadful imprecations. He was on the plane-sheer of the brig, and about to make a spring, when a blow from a handspike (the same handspike with which he had murdered the unfortunate seaman) struck him senseless, and he fell back into the lee-scuppers. The boat then shoved off, and had not gained more than two ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... from his boot, as a result of which within ten days' time he found himself closely besieged by five hundred Roundheads under the command of one Colonel Playfair. The Castle was but ill-provisioned for a siege, and in the end Sir James was driven by sheer starvation to surrender. No sooner had he obtained an entry, then Colonel Playfair sent for his prisoner, and to his astonishment produced to Sir James's face his own ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... of reasoning to people who turn pale at the first word. On my word of honor, it is pitiable! But that's the way of the world, and I don't pretend to reform it. Your objection, Monsieur, is really sheer nonsense." ...
— The Illustrious Gaudissart • Honore de Balzac
... drive in their wedge, and to further shorten that line across which French troops must retreat if indeed the salient was to be evacuated. And towards the east, towards the apex of the salient, outlying advance-parties of the French had been driven in by sheer weight of guns and numbers, and were now back on the heights of the Meuse, their line drawn from that held by their comrades in the neighbourhood of Louvemont, close to the Cote du Poivre, round about Douaumont ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... we had a splendid view of the river, with the old-world towns and villages that cluster round its bank, the misty mountains that make early twilight upon its swiftly rolling waves, the castled crags and precipices that rise up sheer and majestic from its margin, the wooded rocks that hang with threatening frown above its sombre depths, the ruined towers and turrets that cap each point along its shores, the pleasant isles that stud like gems its ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... strength of will all combined to make him stand out from other men. And over it all, like a fire from within there played an overwhelming sadness that had a transparent kind of refining effect, as if a spirit dwelt there who by sheer force of will went on in the face of ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... "annihilating time and space" in the articulate intercourse of the human race will forever be associated with the name of Alexander Graham Bell, born in Edinburgh in 1847. By its means he has promoted commerce, created new industries, and has bridged continents, all the result of "sheer hard thinking aided by unbounded genius." To Dr. Graham Bell we are also indebted for the photophone, for the inductoin balance, the telephone probe, and the gramophone. During the war he designed a "submarine chaser" capable of traveling under water at a speed of over seventy miles an hour, ...
— Scotland's Mark on America • George Fraser Black
... see no rash matrimonial engagements; no penniless lovers selfishly and indissolubly linked together to propagate large families Of starving children. Ail the arrangements of the insect tribe, though prompted by sheer instinct are conducted with a degree of rationality that in some cases raises the mere instinct of the creeping thing above the assumed "reason" ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... altogether unlike the fire that quickens the fighter for freedom; and the destroyer of the evil may find himself assailed by an astonishing combination—charged with bad faith or treachery or vanity or sheer perversity, in proportion as those who dislike his principles deny his good faith; or those who profess them, because of his vigour and candour denounce him for an enemy within the fold. But for all that he should stand fast. If he has the courage so ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... brass plates. 'Pon my word, I had been walking that poop in charge of the ship, and I didn't know whether I was in the Indian Ocean or in the moon. I was crazy. My head spun round and round with sheer worry. I had made my last application of your chemist's wonderful stuff." (This to me.) "All the store of bottles you gave me got smashed when those drawers fell out in the last gale. I had been getting some ...
— Tales Of Hearsay • Joseph Conrad
... shut out all the neighbourhood. Even if they had climbed to the loftiest known turret, they would have found it swathed in a garment of clinging vapour, affording no refreshment to the eye, and no hope to the heart. There was one lofty tower that rose sheer a hundred feet above the rest, and from which the fog could have been seen lying in a grey mass beneath; but that tower they had not yet discovered, nor another close beside it, the top of which was never seen, nor ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... that she was never allowed to gratify. I think she secretly longed for the freedom that had been hers under the broader roof of her father's stately mansion on High Street. But she had, I suspect, neither the courage nor the force of mind to raise an issue, and from sheer inertia remained faithful to the life that ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... enemy could not be cleared out of their entrenchment by direct attack without entailing heavy loss, which I could ill afford and was most anxious to avoid. I therefore reconnoitred both flanks to find, if possible, a way round the hill. On our left front was a sheer precipice; on the right, however, I discovered, to my infinite satisfaction, that we could not only avoid the hill which had defeated us, but could get almost in rear of the Peiwar Kotal itself, and threaten the enemy's retreat from ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... the local autocrat, and the soured temper of the unsuccessful candidate who has never been returned since the year 1816. As to countenance—a wizened, wrinkled, sunburned face, and long, sleek locks of scanty gray hair; as to character—an incredible mixture of homely sense and sheer silliness; of a rich man's overbearing ways, and a total lack of manners; just the kind of husband who is almost entirely led by his wife, yet imagines himself to be the master; apt to domineer in trifles, and to ...
— The Message • Honore de Balzac
... broken, and, looking out of the window, I could see that we were travelling along the side of a mountain. Above us the slope was gentle and clothed with sub-tropical trees, while below it became a veritable precipice, in some places absolutely sheer, for the road was cut upon a sort of rocky ledge, although, owing to the vast billows of mist that filled it, nothing could be seen of ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... PHILOSOPHY: POMPONAZZO.—The freedom and even the audacity of philosophy rapidly increased. Learned and convinced Aristotelians were bent, either from sheer love of truth or from a more secret purpose, on demonstrating to what extent Aristotle, accurately read, was opposed to the teaching of the Church. For instance, Pomponazzo revealed that nothing could be drawn from Aristotle in favour of the immortality ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... let's have it, then. If I don't find out what's going on here, pretty soon, I shall jump into the fight in sheer desperation." ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Texas - Or, The Veiled Riddle of the Plains • Frank Gee Patchin
... jury-rigged, with one of my spars shot away, I should have dearly loved to have strapped on my hanger and come with you to smell gunpowder once more. I would do it now, timber-toe and all, were it not for my consort, who might claim it as a breach of the articles, and so sheer off. I must follow the light on her poop ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... opinion, described that hallowed spot in Bodenstown as one of the holiest places in Ireland to-day, from the nationalist standpoint, holding as it does the ashes of the man who, without friends, money or influence to help him, and by sheer force of character, intensity of purpose and earnestness, prevailed upon the greatest emperor-general the world has ever seen Napoleon Bonaparte, to make a descent on Ireland, in order to aid our starved, tortured, ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... second marriage, this second leap in the dark? No, she could not honestly pretend that she did; yet it had its sufficiently sinister side, its occasional admixture of sheer horror. But this was only when the mysteries which encompassed her happened to prey upon nerves unstrung by some outwardly exciting cause; it was then she would have given back all that he had ever given her to pierce the veil of her husband's ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... in this way children are enabled to interpret and enjoy other selections without the aid of the teacher. If the class work is for the most part of the intensive kind, the pupils will read the remaining lessons alone for sheer pleasure, which is at once the secret and goal of good teaching in literature. Moreover, they will exercise a discriminating taste and judgment in their choice of reading matter. To love good literature, ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... on every possible occasion by the sharp wits opposed to it; and the difficulty of conviction, unless the smuggler was caught red-handed, was very considerable. The following is a case in point, and for sheer impudence, it bears ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... centre beat: Closed in by men's vast friendliness, alone, Two can be drunk with solitude, and meet On the sheer point ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... interrupted the little man crisply, leaning against the straight chair back, which rose higher than his fragile head. "I shall never be arrested. The game isn't good enough for any policeman of them all. To deal with a man like me you require sheer, naked, inglorious heroism." Again his lips closed with a self-confident snap. Ossipon repressed a movement ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... than standing here. I don't think the cliff goes quite sheer down everywhere. Let us try, Dick; it would be a relief to ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... indescribable. The priests covered their heads and faces with their sacred kerchiefs and trembled with intense vehemence, some leaning against the posts of the sacrificial table, the high priest himself groveling on the ground on all fours, unable to arise from sheer exhaustion. When the death-blow had been dealt to the victim they broke into the mystic words, "tgud, tgud, tagan," with loud coughs at the end. These words were taken up by the bystanders and shouted with vehemence. Many ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... bare rocks here and there rising, went away above out of her ken; but the path she was upon turned round the shoulder of the mountain, and to the left, on a ledge of rock cut off apparently on their side by a deep ravine, and with a sheer precipice above and below it, stood a red stone pile, with one ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... demand pity from us and reflections from us.—This then extant group of Spanish Exiles was the Trocadero swarm, thrown off in 1823, in the Riego and Quirogas quarrel. These were they whom Charles Tenth had, by sheer force, driven from their constitutionalisms and their Trocadero fortresses,—Charles Tenth, who himself was soon driven out, manifoldly by sheer force; and had to head his own swarm of fugitives; and has now himself quite vanished, ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... castles and abbeys, or ancient but still flourishing cathedrals, the same invariable love of pilfering and mutilating is to be found: some knock off a nose or a finger, others deface a frieze or a mullion from sheer love of havoc, others chip off some unmeaning fragment as a relique or object of curiosity; but the most general taste seems to be that of carving names or initials, and some of the ancient figures are completely ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... a fight as this, Edmund," he said when the Danes had taken to flight. "You will need another four or five years over your head before you can stand in battle against these fierce Northmen. They break down your guard by sheer weight; but you bore yourself gallantly, and I doubt not will yet be as famous a warrior as ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... supreme King Exalted to such power, and gave to rule, Each in his Herarchie, the Orders bright. Nor was his name unheard or unador'd In ancient Greece; and in Ausonian land Men call'd him Mulciber; and how he fell 740 From Heav'n, they fabl'd, thrown by angry Jove Sheer o're the Chrystal Battlements: from Morn To Noon he fell, from Noon to dewy Eve, A Summers day; and with the setting Sun Dropt from the Zenith like a falling Star, On Lemnos th' Aegaean Ile: thus they relate, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... as singers who have reached the highest note in their compass, proceed to hum the rest of the air in falsetto, he had to be satisfied with murmuring, smiling the while, as if, after all, there had been something irresistibly amusing in the sheer beauty of the painting: "It smells all right; it makes your head go round; it catches your breath; you feel ticklish all over—and not the faintest clue to how it's done. The man's a sorcerer; the thing's a conjuring-trick, it's a miracle," bursting ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... she was so happy as to be absolutely oblivious of such trifles, while the awkward youths fell entirely under the spell of her sparkling, fun-filled eyes and the merry, bubbling laugh that seemed to overflow from sheer joy. ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... them) Mr Gordon had managed to tone him down to average respectability of execution. Still he was always uneasily aware that whenever his eye was not upon him, Jackson was doing what he ought not to do with might and main. Gordon had, indeed, kept him on from sheer necessity, but he intended none the less to mark his ...
— Shearing in the Riverina, New South Wales • Rolf Boldrewood
... of the winds as very thoughtful or deliberate powers. But hear Homer: "Then we came to the AEolian island, and there dwelt AEolus Hippotades, dear to the deathless gods; there he dwelt in a floating island, and round it was a wall of brass that could not be broken; and the smooth rock of it ran up sheer. To whom twelve children were born in the sacred chambers,—six daughters and six strong sons; and they dwell foreer with their beloved father and their mother, strict in duty; and with them are laid up a thousand benefits; and the misty house around them rings with fluting all the day ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... 6, 1882, that Roosevelt took the floor in the Assembly and demanded that Judge Westbrook, of New bury, be impeached. And for sheer moral courage that act is probably supreme in Roosevelt's life thus far. He must have expected failure. Even his youth and idealism and ignorance of public affairs could not blind him to the apparently inevitable consequences. Yet he drew his sword and rushed ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... and against, are neither conjunctions nor prepositions, but conjunctive adverbs of time, referring to the verbs which follow them, and also, when the sentences are completed, to others antecedent. The awkward addition of "the time when," is a sheer perversion. If after, before, and the like, can ever be adverbs, they are so here, and not ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... his horse beside Forrest. Also, Graham realized that the turning of her head and the waving of her arm was only partly in bravado, was more in aesthetic wisdom of the picture she composed, and was, most of all, sheer joy of daring and emprise of the blood and the flesh and the ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... put it, like nothing so much as a gigantic well or pit going sheer down into the bowels of ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... of this kind it is often the custom to begin by making apologies. In my case I feel it to be a sheer necessity. In the first place what is here printed is for the greater part copied word for word from private letters that I wrote in very simple language in Dayak or Negrito huts, or in the lonely depths of tropical ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... head. "So you come at last. A charming evening. I wish you as well of it as you deserve!" And turning his back, he began to limp away; but in a moment I was off my horse and, hastening after, ventured to touch his arm, then fell back in sheer amazement before the ferocious glare of his eyes; yet his voice was as politely modulated as usual when ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... demonstrations of affection, and that the whole household should be ordered to suit his lordship's convenience. Such men will protect their wives, give them money, make love to them, humor them, and honor them in public; and in return will expect something little short of sheer submission. Behind all this lurks the half-conscious idea that woman is man's inferior, and that idea really does remain hidden even in the minds of some who would repudiate it. The fact is that the ultimate value of marriage—the ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray
... "Perhaps! but you can never be sure of men. They are about as uncertain calculations as the hatching of guinea eggs, or the sprouting of parsley seed. What is theirs can't be worth much; but what belongs to somebody else, is invaluable; moreover, they are liable to sudden tantrums of sheer obstinacy, that hang on like whooping-cough, or a sprain in one's joints. Did you never see a mule take the sulks on his way to the corn crib and the fodder rack, and refuse to budge, even for his own ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... home to the Thames, A bruised and battered ship, all that was left, So said her crew, of Drake's ill-fated fleet. John Wynter, her commander, told the tale Of how the Golden Hynde and Marygold Had by the wind Euroclydon been driven Sheer o'er the howling edges of the world; Of how himself by God's good providence Was hurled into the strait Magellanus; Of how on the horrible frontiers of the Void He had watched in vain, lit red with beacon-fires The desperate coasts o' the black abyss, ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... in her life. After "puss, puss in the corner," came "blind-man's-buff;" and this was played with great spirit, the two most distinguished being Nancy and Dan Dennison, though Miss Fortune played admirably well. Ellen had seen Nancy play before; but she forgot her own part of the game in sheer amazement at the way Mr. Dennison managed his long body, which seemed to go where there was no room for it, and vanish into air just when the grasp of some grasping "blind man" was ready to fasten upon him. And when he was blinded, he seemed to know by instinct where the walls were, and keeping ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... a reluctant concession to wisdom and habit. Unwilling to thwart my purposes and collapse from sheer fatigue, at the dinner hour I went to a restaurant and ordered a meal in keeping with my appetite. I had never been so hungry. I almost wept with joy when the chicken and cranberry and potato appeared. Never was sauce ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... have been much easier to have gone around the mountain. But the Chasm was supposed to be like a huge cavity scooped out of the plateau beyond the mountain, rimmed with sheer cliffs a mile high. Only on the side next to the mountain was there a slope leading ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... rough one, and as he was sick all the way, he had scarcely strength to stand when he reached Allington, and only excitement and sheer will kept him up until he found himself in the cool, pretty room which had been prepared for him, and which it seemed to him he could never ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... "My position is nothing; it's the thought of my child, my wife's child. It's sheer pride; and I can't subdue it. I can't fight it down. God ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... other men their chance to gain an entrance at the rear of the wall in the garden, and creep up unawares. It was probably sheer accident that led all three of them along the far side of the house, but it was fortunate for Jeremy and me, for otherwise cold steel between our shoulder-blades would likely have been our ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... over the ship, and as I had not men sufficient to fight all the guns, I ran them all over on one side, in order to make the first broadside as formidable as possible. I hoped thus to sink or disable our antagonist, or to make her sheer off. Should she, however, venture to board, I had no fear, as I felt certain that my men would not fear to encounter twice their number. They were full of fight, and the way they went about their preparations gave me every confidence that we should succeed. The brig ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... a state of chaos—political and moral and social. Only very slowly was order emerging from sheer anarchy. We must remember this when we recall some facts which meet us in the story of Abelard ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... quashed all indictments. The presiding judge, with his spectacles on and a pile of books in front of him, threatened the informer with the penitentiary. The whole bar of Mariposa was with Mr. Smith. But by sheer iteration the informations had proved successful. Judge Pepperleigh learned that Mr. Smith had subscribed a hundred dollars for the Liberal party and at once fined him for keeping open after hours. That made one conviction. On the top of this had ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... the road climbed three miles up the opposite side—three toiling miles through the ambushes of highwaymen. There was the scene of many a hold-up. And to-day, at his age, he simply must not be robbed. It would break his heart. In sheer desperation he drew his six-shooter, examined it carefully, glanced at his fellow-passengers and ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall
... Italy, Hannibal had either detached Rome's allies from her or had impoverished them by the ravages of his army. If Hasdrubal could have done the same in Upper Italy; if Etruria, Umbria, and Northern Latium had either revolted or been laid waste, Rome must have sunk beneath sheer starvation, for the hostile or desolated territory would have yielded no supplies of corn for her population, and money to purchase it from abroad there was none. Instant victory was a matter of life or death. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... decorous, that he cannot walk all day without undue somnolence after dinner, or rush off after a heavy meal without indigestion. These are sad moments which we all of us reach, but which are better laughed over than fretted over. And a man who, out of sheer inability to part from boyhood, clings desperately and with apoplectic puffings to these things is an essentially grotesque figure. To listen to young men discussing one of these my belated contemporaries, and to hear ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... opinion about the question with Constable; if I carry it, as there is, I trust, much hope I shall, Mr. Gibson says there will be funds to divide 6s. in the pound, without counting upon getting anything from Constable or Hurst, but sheer hard cash of my own. Such another pull is possible, especially if Boney succeeds, and the rogue had a knack at success. Such another, I say, and we touch ground I believe, for surely Constable, Robinson, etc., must ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... Friars might still often seem what their predecessors had been, and might thus retain a powerful influence over the unthinking crowd, and to sheer worldlings appear as heretofore to represent a troublesome memento of unexciting religious obligations; "Preach ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... rocks, succeeds the open smiling valley, the verdant meadows, and the distant wooded hills, with all the soft and varied hues of autumn. Here we appear to be driving up the avenues of an English park; yonder, where the mountain sinks sheer into the river, the road must find its way along an open gallery, with a roof weighing millions of tons, projecting ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... weakest place, by reason of there being no ditch before it, and that the ground was level, or nearly so, for twenty paces outside. I did not think it in the least likely that our men could not hold off the two side attacks; for the stockade was well placed and high, and the ditch sheer-sided and deep. Take it all round, it was hard to see how Gymbert expected to take the place, or why he would try it ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... from Mrs. Knifton, which I always kept out of harm's way in my own bedroom. Most unluckily—as it afterward turned out—instead of taking the pocketbook to the tea-caddy, I went into my room first to take the tea-caddy to the pocketbook. I only acted in this roundabout way from sheer thoughtlessness, and severely enough I was punished for it, as you will acknowledge yourself when you have read a page or two more of ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... space, the scene was terrific. Brief as had been the onslaught the carnage was already unspeakable. By dint of sheer physical numbers, animated by a valour that seemed as the frenzy of madmen or the hunger of wolves, hosts of the Britons had crossed trench and stream, seizing with their hands the points of the spears opposed ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... known of crows pulling corn after the second hoeing, when the scare-crows had been removed from the field. The corn thus pulled had reached pretty good size. This pulling must have been done from sheer malice on ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... born in rather sordid conditions, lift herself through sheer determination to the better things for which her ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... to us M.D.'s is the way so sensitive a thing as a woman will hold herself in hand by sheer nerve force when it is necessary. You did not faint till ...
— Wanted—A Match Maker • Paul Leicester Ford
... survivors of the rigid Byzantines, Giotto—who thawed those fixed and puzzling figures, Orcagna, Simone di Martino, Taddeo Gaddi—all the very early painters—how much dexterous trickery do we find among the great painters, mimicking the religious note, and producing a deceptive imitation by sheer sham. ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... garden which was already, in that Cornish air, well filled with spring flowers. Towards this garden the window of the sitting-room fronted, and from it, according to Mortimer Tregennis, must have come that thing of evil which had by sheer horror in a single instant blasted their minds. Holmes walked slowly and thoughtfully among the flower-plots and along the path before we entered the porch. So absorbed was he in his thoughts, I remember, that he stumbled over the watering-pot, upset ...
— The Adventure of the Devil's Foot • Arthur Conan Doyle
... not know who sent me this paper or for what purpose; but let me say that it is sheer waste of postage stamps and material. I hope I am not intolerant of the opinions of others, but I confess that when people talk to me about reading the stars and the lines of the hand and things of that sort I shut up like an oyster. I do not speak of the humbugs who deliberately ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... interfere with my work, my desires, my career. You have lived for me—absolutely. I have lived for myself. True, we have loved each other tenderly; we have been immensely happy. But, all the while, the shadow of the Upas tree was there. My very love was selfish! It was sheer joy to love you, because you are so sweetly, so altogether, lovable. But when did I—because of my love for you—do one single thing at any cost to self? I was utterly, preposterously, altogether, selfish! You knew this. You knew ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay
... front rose three purple-brown mountains—the two supporters peaked, and Table Mountain flat in the centre. More like a coffin than a table, sheer steep and dead flat, he was exactly as he is in pictures; and as I gazed, I saw his tablecloth of white cloud gather ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens
... Kamares ware, immediately above the virgin soil; then glazed ware, with cloudy brown stripes on a creamy slip; then regular Mycenaean ware, with the familiar marine and plant designs; and, uppermost, bronze. The lower grotto has at first a sheer fall from the upper one, then slopes away for some 200 feet to an icy pool surrounded with a forest of stalagmites; and in this gloomy cavern the evidence was manifest of an ancient cult of a divinity to whom the Double Axe was sacred. There was a great mass of votive offerings of all sorts—engraved ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... the unions to a terrible perfection. It reached its greatest power in the decade between 1881 and 1891. Though it was aimed at a great variety of industries, it seemed to be peculiarly effective in the theater, hotel, restaurant, and publishing business, and in the clothing and cigar trades. For sheer arbitrary coerciveness, nothing in the armory of the union is so effective as the boycott. A flourishing business finds its trade gone overnight. Leading customers withdraw their patronage at the union's ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... time it was a knight on horseback, clad in sapphire mail, a white plume above his casque. Or a cathedral window with shafts of chrysophras, new powdered by a snow-storm. Or a smooth sheer cliff of lapis lazuli; or a Banyan tree, with roots descending from its branches, and a foliage as delicate as the efflorescence of molten metal; or a fairy dragon, that breasted the water in scales of emerald; or anything else that your fancy chose ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... the old nurse, and went down to dinner. If we only knew what was the matter! I argue with myself how much unnecessary misery I give myself by anticipating evil; but I cannot help it; and the weight on my mind grew heavier; half the night I lay awake, till at last, from sheer weariness, I fell into a sort of stupor of the senses, which fled from me in the dismal dawn, and the unmanning hideous fear leapt on me out of the dark, like a ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... state, of which I bear the remembrances on my back to this day upwards of fifty years since, we marched to Cadiz and encamped there, intending to embark for Lisbon, Sir John Moore's army having been by that time repulsed by sheer force of numbers, and himself killed at Corunna. On that night an English wine-merchant asked permission to give each man in our regiment a pint of wine and each woman half that quantity, with a pound of bread apiece; and accordingly we were all drawn up in line, and marched into a tremendous cellar, ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence
... thus disordered or there was not time to lay the guns properly after reloading, the two shots flew high and no harm was done. The Tennessee passed the next ship, the Lackawanna, also on the starboard side, but then made a determined sheer toward the line as though certainly intending to ram. Captain Strong of the Monongahela seeing this, headed for her, putting his helm to port and then shifting it so as to strike at right angles, but the Monongahela could not get her full speed, from having the gunboat Kennebec in tow alongside; ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... what of the third? What of the will, of which Ahamkara is the representative in cognition? That certainly has its road, but it can scarcely be said to be a "method". Will breaks its way upwards by sheer unflinching determination, keeping its eyes fixed on the end, and using either buddhi or manes indifferently as a means to that end. Metaphysics is used to realise the Self; science is used to understand the Not-Self; but either is grasped, either is thrown aside, as it serves, or fails ...
— An Introduction to Yoga • Annie Besant
... horse knows that he can manage himself better upon his feet than upon his breast or his side. It happens, therefore, that in nearly all serious diseases of the respiratory tract he stands persistently, day and night, until recovery has commenced and breathing is easier, or until the animal falls from sheer exhaustion. If there is stiffness and soreness of the muscles, as in rheumatism, inflammation of the muscles from overwork, or of the bones in osteoporosis, or of the feet in founder, or if the muscles are stiff and beyond ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... her arm, and I did the same. Back and forth we went from the clothes-line to the house, and from the house to the clothes-line, until the quilts were safely housed from the coming dewfall and piled on every available chair in the front room. I looked at them in sheer amazement. There seemed to be every pattern that the ingenuity of woman could devise and the industry of woman put together,—"four-patches," "nine-patches," "log-cabins," "wild-goose chases," "rising suns," hexagons, diamonds, and only Aunt Jane knows what else. ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... Greeks call [Greek: antitheta], as in them contraries are opposed to contraries, of sheer necessity produce oratorical rhythm; and that too without any intention on the part of the orator that they should ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... Tavistock, and lovingly described them in his verse. Frequently he indulges in descriptions of sunrise and sunset; they leave no vivid impression, but charm the reader by their quiet beauty. It cannot be denied that his fondness for simple, homely images sometimes led him into sheer fatuity; and candid admirers must also admit that, despite his study of simplicity, he could not refrain from hunting (as the manner was) after far-fetched ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... little body down to our house and we took the mother and followed. We put him in a dresser drawer and set to work to make clothes to bury him in. Ranger Fisk and Ranger Winess made the tiny casket, and we rummaged through our trunks for materials. A sheer dimity frock of mine that had figured in happier scenes made the shroud, and Virginia gave a silken scarf to line the coffin. Ranger Winess tacked muslin over the rough boards so it would look nicer to the young mother. There were enough of my flowers left by Dollar Mark ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... extent no doubt sheer love of adventure. I was a younger son, with very little income. There were then two lives between me and the estate, and the old Duke, my father, treated me like a servant. I always loved the sea, and at fourteen—to get me out of his sight, I think largely—was apprenticed ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... oh, yesh," was the response from the other vessel; and as it came floating down upon the wind the stranger took a broad sheer to port, showing herself to be a large lugger, and shot very neatly alongside the Aurora, the grappling-irons being cleverly hove into the barque's fore and main-rigging, as the two ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... facto assailants of Wakefield's theory usually assume that he wished to keep labour divorced from the soil and in a state of permanent political and industrial inferiority. That is sheer nonsense. There are few more odd examples of the irony of fate in colonial history than that the man who warred against the convict system, fought the battle of colonial self-government, was ever the enemy of the land-shark and monopolist, who ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... Young-Man-Afraid-of-His-Horses. At daybreak, having met no one, we hid our horses and climbed to the top of the nearest butte to take an observation. It was a very hot day. We lay flat on our blankets, facing the west where the cliff fell off in a sheer descent, and with our backs toward the more gradual slope dotted with scrub pines and cedars. We stuck some tall grass on our heads and proceeded to study the landscape spread before us ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... activity associated with the Atlantic Mid-Ocean Ridge Saint Helena: rugged, volcanic; small scattered plateaus and plains Ascension: surface covered by lava flows and cinder cones of 44 dormant volcanoes; ground rises to the east Tristan da Cunha: sheer cliffs line the coastline of the nearly circular island; the flanks of the central volcanic peak are deeply dissected; narrow coastal plain lies between The Peak ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... a moment believe that they fancied themselves understood, still, from a mixture of pride and perverseness peculiarly British, they continued their valuable discourse as if every word told, or, if not apprehended, was a striking proof of the sheer stupidity of their new companions. The noise became louder and louder, and at length Freeman ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... looked satisfied; indeed masterly; which expression changed slightly as he stood there, the sound of the clock conveying to him (it may be) a sense of old buildings and time; and himself the inheritor; and then to-morrow; and friends; at the thought of whom, in sheer confidence and pleasure, it seemed, ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... often mistake for hardness. Our great ammunition fire in the hollow of the hill burned merrily, and by-and-by a furious splutter of Mauser cartridges began, with every now and then the louder report of shells and great smoke balls hanging in the air. But sheer above all, above yellow veldt and ruined Boer laager, rose the hill, the position we had carried, grim and rigid against the sunset and all black. And, with the sudden sense of seeing that comes to one now ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... great castle-looking outline against the sky before her, standing out on the end of the mesa like a promontory above the sea, was Walpi? And if it was, how was she to get up there? The rock rose sheer and steep from the desert floor. The narrow neck of land behind it looked like a slender thread. Her heart sank at thought of trying to storm and enter, single-handed, such an impregnable fortress. And yet, if her friends were there, perhaps they would see her when ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... squat little man rolled forward, affectionate concern on his great ugly face, and he set one of his podgy hands on his godson's shoulder. "Now listen to me, Andre," he reasoned. "This is sheer knight-errantry—moonshine, lunacy. You'll come to no good by it if you persist. You've read 'Don Quixote,' and what happened to him when he went tilting against windmills. It's what will happen to you, neither more nor less. Leave things as they are, ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... untrammeled; there they found material for scholarly study of the Bible, and there they made and published a new version of the Bible in English, by all means the best that had been made. In later years, under Elizabeth, it drove the Great Bible off the field by sheer power of excellence. During her reign sixty editions of it appeared. This was the version called the Genevan Bible. It made several changes that are familiar to us. For one thing, in the Genevan edition of 1560 ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... air of custom with which she submitted to others' ministrations, brought her quick service, and in less than the guaranteed two hours she left Madame, whose very considerable fee she paid with gloved hands, thus, through sheer inadvertence, concealing the one trace of her identity—her massive and beautiful rings. For no one of Dr. Jarvyse's detectives could be expected to look at an iron-grey woman in black, when searching for a black-haired woman in blue plaid. And ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... construe, it would make your hair stand on end. Where on earth can they have come from? Unless they blunder on purpose, as I often think. Of course, I never look at a lecture before I go in, I know it all nearly by heart, so it would be sheer waste of time. I hope I shall take to reading something or other by myself; but you know I never was much of a hand at sapping, and, for the present, the light work suits me well enough, for there's plenty to see and ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... exclaimed the Spider, his square jaws immobile from sheer astonishment. "Say, you ain't crazy, are ye—I mean you ain't dippy or cracked in the dome, are ye? Because d' Kid's goin' ten rounds with Young Alf, d' East Side ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... have not for sheer hurry of business been able to spare five minutes to finish my letter. Besides my farm business, I ride on my Excise matters at least two hundred miles every week. I have not by any means given up the Muses. You will see in the third volume of Johnson's Scots songs that I have contributed ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... here must be hot passion, white of flame, Pure hate of this unutterable wrong, Sheer wrath for Christendom so sunk in shame, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 2nd, 1914 • Various
... poet Lucan. Lucius Seneca came to Rome at an early age,[137] and, in spite of the bad health which afflicted him all his life long,[138] soon made his mark as an orator. Indeed, so striking was his success that—although he showed no particular eagerness for a political career—his sheer mastery of the Roman speech wakened the jealousy of Caligula,[139] who only spared his life on the ground that he suffered from chronic asthma and was not likely to live long, and contented himself, therefore, with mordant but not unjust criticism ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... man must have his glass. Women of the lower and middle classes have a great deal to do with supplying customers to the public-house. Some of them drive their men there by nagging, but more of them lead a man on to drink by sheer indulgence. They encourage him to enjoy himself without thinking of the day when enjoyment will be impossible, and when they and their children will reach the lowermost rung of the ladder of shame and penury. The Wanderer went ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... money away as if it were dust. The day on which he gave the thrashing with blows like falling leaves and flowing water, he dragged (lit. pull alive, drag dead) Ying Lien away more dead than alive, by sheer force, and no one, even up to this date, is aware whether she be among the dead or the living. This young Feng had a spell of empty happiness; for (not only) was his wish not fulfilled, but on the contrary he spent money and lost his life; and was ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... Dresses.—If the baby's dress is not made of the finest of handkerchief linen, French nainsook or a very fine batiste is usually chosen. These are the soft materials, soft as well as sheer. They are the materials on which embroidery is done most successfully and the baby dress de luxe is always hand embroidered. It may have on it the merest touch of hand work—scarcely more than a few eyelets and a tiny blossom and stem and yet follow the ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... harpies that prey always upon such occasions had oppressed and disgusted him until he was glad to escape again to the clean freedom, the pure vitality and the unspoiled spirit of his everyday life and environment. In an overflow of sheer physical and spiritual energy he lifted his horse into a run and with a shrill cowboy yell challenged his companions to a wild race to ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... unless he was checked every day, find means to put down a 'dead one'; and that the milkman's chalk had got a notch in it, and would make two strokes instead of one. In short, that there was at the bottom of this best of all possible worlds a vast amount of sheer roguery. ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... had come across the travelling agent of the Patent Metallic Steel Furniture Company on the previous day, and finding that he was to be alone in London on this general holiday, he had asked him out of sheer good nature. Moulder could be very good natured, and full of pity when the sorrow to be pitied arose from some such source as the want of a Christmas dinner. So Mr. Kantwise had been asked, and precisely at four o'clock he made his ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... thirteen-sixteenths from the top at the end selected for the bow, and two inches and five-sixteenths at the stern; the stern-post (s t) is laid off, and the outer line of the stern (t f); and finally the curved lines a f and a v are drawn, completing what is called the sheer plan. ...
— Harper's Young People, April 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... moved a few feet down-stream and stood looking at the frothing cataract that dropped the great river a sheer two-hundred feet to ...
— Before Egypt • E. K. Jarvis
... of her love from his life her heart had never assented. While, in his eyes, she differed in no way in her relation to him from any woman, to whom a man, placed as he was, longs to say that she is what he wants most of all mortal things, but stickles in the telling of it, from sheer cowardice; who dares not risk the loss of what share he has in her in the attempt to get the whole. She grasped the whole position, ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... earned, many of them, but four or five dollars a week. What tempted Sally, however, was the knowledge that a strike at Marrin's would be the spark to set off the city and bring out the women by the thousands. It would be the uprising of the women; the first upward step from sheer wage-slavery; the first advance toward the ideal of that coming woman, who should be a man in her freedom and her strength and her power, and yet woman of woman in her love and her motherhood and wife-hood. ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... lashes shading the oval of her cheeks, while the young men's eyes—and one pair of them, especially—took in the black, braid-bound head and the small, Madonna-like face, faintly flushed by sun and wind, above the golden glow of the sheer frock. ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... doctrines of ethics are in disgrace with me, and I have long considered all the dramatic poets, in whose pieces virtue is rewarded and crime punished, as a pack of fools; for my pleasantest hours are all due to my worst deeds; and sheer annoyance and misery, to my best. No hyena can laugh more hoarsely that I now speak; some portion of me inside here, seems to have been turned into a hedgehog whose spines prick and hurt me, and all this because I allowed myself to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... in history. "For a hundred years," says Johnston, "slaves in Barbados were mutilated, tortured, gibbeted alive and left to starve to death, burnt alive, flung into coppers of boiling sugar, whipped to death, overworked, underfed, obliged from sheer lack of any clothing to expose their nudity to the jeers of the 'poor' whites."[133] And yet the owners of these slaves were English, of the same stock under which developed the mild patriarchal type of slavery of Virginia. The difference in the status of the slave in ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... clergy and the laymen, using the terms laity and laymen synonymously and interchangeably. See Bingham's "Antiquities," Blackstone's "Commentaries," Schaffs "History," and kindred authorities. It is sheer trifling for sensible males to talk about a distinction ...
— Samantha Among the Brethren, Complete • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... their hands whitened and creased with the constant exposure to damp and cold, yet the scars of frostbite were very few and this evil had never seriously assailed them. The main part of their afflictions arose, and very obviously arose, from sheer lack of sleep, and to-day after a night's rest our travellers are very different in appearance ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... three men—rather good catches, too—who, if they were encouraged—but what was there to any of them? Take Wilbur Smythe, now; he would by sheer force of persistent assurance and fair abilities eventually get a good practise for a country lawyer—three or four thousand a year—serve in the legislature or the state senate, and finally become a bank director with a goodly standing ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... campaigns are models of prudence and skill. To others, they are nothing but examples of timidity and want of resolution. Buonaparte's passage across the Noric Alps in 1797 may be made to appear the noblest resolution, but also as an act of sheer temerity. His strategic defeat in 1812 may be represented as the consequence either of an excess, or of a deficiency, of energy. All these opinions have been broached, and it is easy to see that they might very well arise, because each person takes a different view of the connection of events. At ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... character, I cannot refrain from a word of praise as to the energy and patience with which the German "under a cloud" in America bears his reverses, and works cheerfully and uncomplainingly, until, by sheer perseverance, he, in most cases, conquers fortune. In this respect the Germans, as a race, and I might almost say as individuals, are superior to any others on the American continent. And if I have jested with the German ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... only succeeded in showing Horace that it was hiding a sentiment of indignation against him. Each friendly face as it passed Horace in the street said, without words, 'There goes the youth who probably ruined his young stepbrother's life. And through sheer obstinacy too! He dropped the little darling in spite of warnings and protests, and then fell on the top of him. Of course, he didn't do it on ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... sort of thing she, having "advanced" views on musical matters, was generally inclined to sneer at or avoid. He had played two or three coon songs and a tango. But there had been in his playing a sheer "musicalness," as she had called it afterwards, which had enticed her almost against her will. And when he had sung some little Spanish songs she had been conquered, though she had ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... a bosom thus prepared, Its still small voice is often heard, Whispering a mingled sentiment, 'Twixt resignation and content. Oft in my mind such thoughts awake, By lone Saint Mary's silent lake; Thou know'st it well,—nor fen, nor sedge, Pollute the pure lake's crystal edge; Abrupt and sheer, the mountains sink At once upon the level brink; And just a trace of silver sand Marks where the water meets the land. Far in the mirror, bright and blue, Each hill's huge outline you may view; Shaggy with heath, but lonely bare, Nor tree, nor bush, nor brake, is there, Save where ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... anything less than eternity would be too short to allow him to complete. He was a small, thin-haired, squeaky-voiced bachelor of fifty, and as full of good intentions as the road to perdition. If Tommy Glass ever did any evil it would not only be without intent but from sheer accident. ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... to inflame his brain also, and it made him pass through great alternations of hope and fear. Now the army was going to sweep over the wooden wall in spite of everything. With sheer weight and bravery it would crush the French and take Ticonderoga. It must be. Because he wanted it to be, it was going to be. Then he passed to the other extreme. When one of the charges spent itself at the barrier, ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the terror and mystery of gray winter seas; in Tannhaeuser he turned to the conflict between the gross, lurid passions of man and the sane, pure side of his nature; and now, in Lohengrin, he was to give us an opera which for sheer sustained loveliness has only one parallel in his works—the Mastersingers. It is the most delicately beautiful thing he wrote; its freshness is the freshness that seems unlikely to fade with the passage of time. Curiously, too, while full of the spirit of Weber—it is the most ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman
... last very long, the opposing forces being so unequally matched; so, as soon as Frank and his coadjutors had been borne down by the sheer weight of numbers, their conquerors hustled them into the corner of the deck under the break of the poop, where the captain was still lying, throwing them down beside him and telling them they had ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... her plain black gown and cap; yet one could not precisely tell what gave her that unmistakable token of the lady; it was involuntary and concealed within herself, and she could not be blamed for it; only perhaps her bodice was a trifle nicer fitting than the others, though from sheer inborn taste, and showed to advantage her rounded bust and perfect arms. But, no! the mystery was revealed in her quiet ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... so much skill with your weapon, Sir Archie," Douglas said. "On horseback with mace or battleaxe it is mainly a question of sheer strength, and though you are very strong there are others who are as strong as you. Now, it is allowed that none of the king's knights and followers are as skilful as you with the sword, and even the king himself, ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... jerking stage until now in her chair, as she slipped a little forward, she experienced the sensations of the day. Many a time that day as the racing horses obeying the experienced hand of the driver swept around a sharp turn in the road she had looked down a sheer cliff that had made her flesh quiver so that it had been hard not to draw back and cry out. She had seen the horses leaping forward scamper like mad runaways down a long slope, dashing through the spray of a rising creek to ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... through the gates of Syracuse to swell the ranks of their enemies. In their own camp the state of things was growing worse every day, and even Nicias now became convinced that to remain any longer would be sheer madness. With the hearty concurrence of his colleagues, he gave his vote for immediate departure, and the order was secretly passed round the camp that every man should hold himself in readiness to go on board, as soon as ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... casements were fitted with the heavy, unwieldy shutters necessary in that climate, and held in place by massive iron cross bars. It would have puzzled you to find a more dilapidated house in Angouleme; nothing but sheer tenacity of mortar kept it together. Try to picture the workshop, lighted at either end, and dark in the middle; the walls covered with handbills and begrimed by friction of all the workmen who had rubbed past them for thirty years; the cobweb of cordage across the ceiling, the stacks of ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... Kladderadatsch, "Bien muss," ["The bee must"—referring to a joke in the German Punch (Kladderadatsch).] is, for ordinary mortals, much more applicable—and over this "bee must" one at last becomes quite idle from sheer weariness. ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... in the street were still unserved. In nearly every dwelling, upstairs and down, from the roof to the cellar, there was a stunning tapping of hammers: coffins were being nailed down, and so many, so very many were nailed, that sometimes those who worked stopped from sheer fatigue. Then broke forth laments, heart-rending moans, despairing imprecations. They were uttered by those from whom the men in black and gray had taken some one ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... apparently care little whether he were alive or dead. And still I saw that not yet even had he lost hope. He was having a sore fight with his pride, and he got body-worn and heart-sick over it. Of course he was worsted, and in the end, from sheer weakness, he went back ...
— 'Hell fer Sartain' and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... The tumulus stood out sheer and stark, a grim relic of a bygone age. There was a faint rustling through last year's wormwood. The air arose from the plains in a crescendo of quivering chords, gushing upward like a welling spring. There was the scent of decaying foliage. The sky beyond had darkened, charged ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... who invented quarantine, we held half a dozen mass-meetings and crammed them full of interrupted speeches, motions that fell still-born, amendments that came to nought and resolutions that died from sheer exhaustion in trying to get before the house. At night ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... did. Perhaps the worst torture of all was the great round cork life preserver in the form of a cushioned ring which they were obliged to wear night and day. A man could never lie down comfortably with it on, and if from sheer exhaustion he fell asleep he awoke with his back aching tortures. The meat and cabbage was varied twice by steamed fish served in its scales, tails, fins, heads, and entrails complete. All that they got which was really eatable was a small bun served in ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... a moment would be less faithful to her task of preparing breakfast. Mingling with the other outdoor fragrances, the odor of the coffee gave Tory a sensation of momentary faintness from sheer hunger. ...
— The Girl Scouts in Beechwood Forest • Margaret Vandercook
... like a cock of spirit, and declared that old Mrs. Scratchard was envious, because she had lost all her own tail-feathers, and looked more like a worn- out old feather-duster than a respectable hen, and that therefore she was filled with sheer envy of anybody that was young and pretty. So young Mrs. Feathertop cackled gay defiance at her busy rubbishy neighbour, as she sunned herself under the bushes on fine ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... my father than can easily be imagined. She was as timid, as he was bold, as controlled as he was spontaneous and as refined, courteous and unassuming as he was vibrant, sheer and adventurous. ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... was aimed mainly at the supposed or actual incapacity of the semi-classical occupants of our various literary thrones. Without the slightest mercy the pedants, [Footnote: Zopfe in the German text.— TRANSLATOR.] among whom Tieck for one was numbered, were treated as sheer encumbrances and hindrances to the rise of a new literature. That which led to a remarkable revulsion of my feelings with regard to those German composers who hitherto had been admired and respected, was partly the influence of these critical skirmishes, and the luring sprightliness of their ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... eight of the morning the three men, each brain teeming with its own ambitions and its peculiar appreciation of the mysterious Mother, started off for one of their habitual rambles. Ivan was in a mood whimsically frank, but changeful; and he blew the conversation this way and that out of sheer wantonness, till presently it touched a point on which Balakirev suddenly laid a detaining hand. Gregoriev had been analyzing the character of Ophelia—the delicate, fantastic disorder of her pathetic mentality; and something, some specially delicate comprehension ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... moments, the crew of the latter believed it was their own advance that brought them so rapidly near their object; and when the midshipman who steered the boat discovered his error, it was only in season to prevent the swift brigantine from passing over his little bark. He gave the yawl a wide sheer, and called to his men to pull for their lives. Oloff Van Staats had placed himself at the head of the boat, armed with a banger, and with every faculty too intent on the expected attack, to heed a danger that was scarcely intelligible to one of his ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... juggle, I tell thee; sheer malice of the enemy, fow' an' fause as he be." Here he spat on the floor to show his detestation and contempt; but George, either too ignorant or too idle to reply, took down a dried fluke from the chimney, and warming it on the glowing turf for a few minutes, was soon occupied in disposing ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... to whom the Christian doctrine of love is but the expression of his own experience. For a century or more our world, confident in its strength, its reason, its knowledge, has been undermining that doctrine with every possible heresy. In sheer wilfulness it has tried to empty life of all its values. It has made us ashamed of loving anything; for all love, it has told us, is illusion produced by the will to live, or the will to power, or some other figment of its own perverse thought. And now, as a result ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... Rembrandt such violent and yet attractive contrasts. Here everything is massive and dominating. The colors are vivid; the shadows are purple to blackness; the heights are towering; the depths are appalling; the sheer walls are as if poised in mid-air; the towers and temples dwarf into insignificance even the monster works of man on the Nile. Here are single mountains of erosion standing as simple features of the vast sight ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... this time managed to get the dinner on the table, and the other two men, out of sheer pity, were helping him. In fact, having enthroned Gail at the table, they were making a frolic ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer
... what might happen if he were to tell you that he too has been hit by one of Eros' darts. You may turn red and white, and look at me as if I were your enemy, and talking contemptible nonsense. I have seen many strange things, but I never saw any one before you who was a coward out of sheer courage, and yet of all the women I know there is not one to whom fear is less known than my bold and resolute Klea. The road is a hard one that you must take, but only cover your poor little heart with a coat of mail, and venture in all confidence to meet the Roman, who is an excellent ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... them in his verse. Frequently he indulges in descriptions of sunrise and sunset; they leave no vivid impression, but charm the reader by their quiet beauty. It cannot be denied that his fondness for simple, homely images sometimes led him into sheer fatuity; and candid admirers must also admit that, despite his study of simplicity, he could not refrain from hunting (as the manner was) after ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... the distance or the exact direction, and stopping occasionally to inquire the way, she plodded on, the exhaustion of hunger and weariness becoming more and more unendurable. All that she did now was done by the sheer force of will; but yield she would not. She would die cheerfully when she had attained her object, but not before. The winds became more wild and boisterous; they loosened and tossed her black hair about her wan face; they beat against ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... pleasing of the ear, from its random, but multitudinous summonses of the efferent activity, which at its vague challenges stirs unceasingly in faintly tumultuous irrelevancy. In this way, music arouses aimlessly, but splendidly, the sheer, as yet unfulfilled, potentiality within us." (W. Copies, The Process ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... row of the gallery sat five young men in the undress uniform of the hussars: they were Joe and his brother recruits come to hear the famous trial. At this moment Mr. Bumpkin in sheer despair lifted his eyes in the direction of the gallery and immediately caught sight of his old servant. He gave a nod of recognition as if he were the only friend left in the wide world of that ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... firmly over protest. At best she might wring from him a reluctant change of mind and an annoyed offer of company which she must from sheer pride decline. At worst she would be treated with a dignified silence—the peevish and exacting woman who could ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... pantoums (pantuns) after the Malay fashion. He published in 1872 a Petit traite de versification francaise in exposition of his metrical methods. He was a master of delicate satire, and used with much effect the difficult humour of sheer bathos, happily adapted by him from some of the early folk-songs. He has somewhat rashly been compared to Heine, whom he profoundly admired; but if he lacked the supreme touch of genius, he remains a delightful writer, who ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... coming, I bunted at it like Ty Cobb trying to sacrifice. It was the only thing to do. I choked my bat and poked at the bomb instinctively, and by sheer good luck fouled the thing over the parapet. It exploded on ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... integrity as a direct falsehood. Equivocation is often falsehood. Deception in all forms is opposed to integrity. Mock manners, pretended emotions, affectation, policy plans to secure attention and respect are all sheer falsehoods, and in the end injure her who is guilty of them. Respect and affection are the out-growth of confidence. She who secures the firmest confidence will secure the most respect and love. No love is lasting but that which rests in confidence. Confidence can ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... salve his conscience and make a definite course of action possible. Reggie was not one of those who feared his fate. He was always eager to put it to the touch. Inaction was abhorrent to him. To desire a thing and to do nothing to obtain it seemed to him sheer foolishness. Whether any amount of effort would get for him what he desired just now was on the knees of the gods. But it was the waiting that tried him far more than the uncertainty. He was not conceited. He was confident, ready to take risks ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... must have fallen from sheer weariness into a half-sleep. The next thing I remember was Monty's saying: "Look alive, Rupert! We're moving now." Glancing round, I saw that my company was the last left on the beach. I marshalled the men—twenty-eight ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... Street—and that was the nearest they ever got to bathing. Their suite of apartments consisted of one room, about ten by eight feet, which served as a dining-room, drawing-room, study, boudoir, kitchen, bedroom, and—from sheer force of habit, I was about to add bathroom; but as I have already hinted cold water on half-empty stomachs and chilly livers is uninviting; besides, soap costs something. Their furniture was antique but not ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... for on the following morning our anchor was at the bows, and the ships heading for Hakodadi. This town—the largest in Yesso—reminds one very forcibly of Gibraltar. There is a similar high rock standing sheer out of the sea—almost the same narrow strip of land connecting it with the main; whilst the town is built on the slopes of the eminence, and circling the bay as at Gib. The town is not over large, and commodities are very scarce, the only thing obtainable being ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... allowed an opinion, even a lost soul may admire the grand simplicity of Thomas's scheme. He swept away the horizontal lines altogether, leaving them barely as a part of decoration. The whole weight of his arches fell, as in the latest Gothic, where the eye sees nothing to break the sheer spring of the nervures, from the rosette on the keystone a hundred feet above down to the church floor. In Thomas's creation nothing intervened between God and his world; secondary causes become ornaments; only two forces, God and ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... a regular lion! After all, you will admit that it is sheer folly to come and attack him in his cage and pull his whiskers through the bars. And that is what you are doing. To be in love with his wife and pay court to her in Paris, when he is a hundred leagues from you, is all very well, but to install yourself in his house, within ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... are developing a similar class sense, or instinct. Uniting in the economic struggle at first, and then, in the political struggle in order that they may further their economic interests through the channels of government, it is easy to see that only one outcome of the struggle is possible. By sheer force of numbers, ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... interval, he found himself eating with zest; he was exceedingly hungry. He also began to feel mentally normal, although his thoughts were the reverse of agreeable. Days had, no doubt, gone by. He chafed at this enforced inaction, but sometimes through sheer weariness fell into a semblance of natural sleep despite the sitting posture he was obliged to maintain. On one such occasion he was abruptly awakened by a light thrown suddenly on his face. He would have started to his feet ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... it—why—this is a very sultry day, my friend." I returned directly to the old man and his son; and, let purity or motive go as it may, truth to tell, they were no losers by the priest's conduct; as I certainly slipped them a few additional shillings, out of sheer contempt for him. On tasting a little refreshment in one of the cabins, the son fainted—but on the whole they were enabled to accomplish their journey home; and the father's blessing was surely a sufficient antidote ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... story I had nothing to say. It was sheer madness; yet it was terribly suggestive, and showed how utterly hopeless was my effort to secure the assistance of such a man toward my escape ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... time avoiding the traps set for him. He is wonderfully expert in springing steel traps for the bait or prey there is in them, without getting caught himself. He will follow up a trap line for miles, springing all traps and devouring all baits as he goes. Sometimes in sheer wantonness he will throw a trap into a river, and again he will bury a trap in deep snow. Dead martens in traps are savagely torn from them. Those that can not be eaten on the spot are carried off and skilfully cached under two or three ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... find Madam gives herself any immoderate Airs at your Proposal, it will then be good to recede a little from your Undertaking, and to affect to sheer off: For many of them, according to ...
— The Lovers Assistant, or, New Art of Love • Henry Fielding
... well ascertained, numerous and widely known, connected with some other portions of the border-land of science that we have not yet looked into, though I have mentioned their names. He who would assert that spiritism, table-turning, spirit-rapping, and so on are mere idle talk, sheer impostures, is not well read in the literature of the present day. By denying all reality to these phenomena he strays as far from the truth as if he allowed himself to believe mere fabrications. They are not impositions, but they are worse; they are superstitions. ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... counselled to do by Lord George Bentinck on the 25th of April. It turned out exactly as Mr. Thomas Baring had foretold. It was not want of capital or deficiency of circulation which had occasioned these awful consequences. It was sheer panic, occasioned by an unwisely stringent law. No sooner had the government freed the Bank of England from that stringency, than the panic ceased. The very morning the letter of license from the government to the Bank ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli
... her eager eyes, shining, large, lustrous, and wistful, as they looked out of the white thin face, where the once glowing colour had dwindled to two burning carnation spots. It was so piteous a change that as he took her hand he was silent, from sheer inability ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... resembles a vast suburban development, for the smooth white highways which zigzag in long, easy gradients up the mountain slopes are bordered on the inside by stone-paved gutters and on the outside, where the precipice falls sheer away, by cut stone guard-posts. So extensive and substantial are these improvements that one instinctively looks for a real-estate dealer's sign: "This beautiful lot can be yours for twenty-five dollars down and ten dollars a month for a year." Climbing higher, the roads become ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... his shrine Brought not from this same block divine Inheritance, or hidden mine, Or luck at play, or any favour. Nay, more, if any storm whatever Brew'd trouble here or there, The man was sure to have his share, And suffer in his purse, Although the god fared none the worse. At last, by sheer impatience bold, The man a crowbar seizes, His idol breaks in pieces, And finds it richly stuff'd with gold. "How's this? Have I devoutly treated," Says he, "your godship, to be cheated? Now leave ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... incipient species. But he foresaw that the term which he was introducing into science would lose its philosophical and its only true meaning if it were to be used in its narrow sense only—that of a struggle between separate individuals for the sheer means of existence. And at the very beginning of his memorable work he insisted upon the term being taken in its "large and metaphorical sense including dependence of one being on another, and including (which is ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... Truinet conveyed to me. This was the first sign out of many which soon revealed to me the fact, that even in the circles of the operatic administration itself Tannhauser was already regarded as labour lost and sheer waste of trouble. ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... had descended twenty yards I almost repented having ventured. I had a capital guide, however, who went before and told me where to plant my steps. There was one particularly bad part, being little better than a sheer precipice; but even here I got down in safety with the assistance of my guide, and a minute afterwards found myself at ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... along gently sloping hill-sides, covered with farms, then it pierces the sheer rock, then again borders the cliff, fifty or one hundred feet from the lake below. The trees are in full leaf and some are in bloom. The grass is high where we walked, but up towards the tops of the mountains, the snow still lies. One of the strange sights is to see ...
— Story of Chester Lawrence • Nephi Anderson
... evils, while they tumble straight into real dangers. And for going off the line, there's nothing like them. There may be pits, thorns, quagmires, spring-guns, what not, the other side of the hedge, but go off the straight track they will—and no dog can stop them. It's just the sheer love of straying. You may bark at them right and left; go they will, though they break their legs down a limekiln. Oh, men and sheep are wonderfully similar; take them all ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... many's de day you bin a-knowin' me; how much er dish yer meat you 'speck oughter fall ter my sheer?' sezee. ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... ledge, the rocks tower skyward on one side of the track so close as almost to touch the passing train; and on the other is a sheer precipice of two thousand five hundred feet, where one can stand on the edge and see, far below, the north fork of the American River, which looks like a thread of silver laid along the narrow valley, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... Heathers could help asking them to tea at least once a year, when the garden was at its best. My cleaner's visit is always very delightful, because she makes the garden seem at least four times its usual size by sheer admiration; but this year, just as she was getting into her stride, it began to rain, and we had to seek refuge by ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 1, 1920 • Various
... bitterly to myself—"this is sheer foolhardiness! Keep this up for six weeks more and I'll find myself fallen away to a perfect three-ton truck. Keep it up for three months and I'll be ready to rent myself out to the aquarium as a suitable playmate for the leviathan in the main tank. I shall ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... child, but why had Lynda—? And with this thought such a wave of emotion swept over Truedale that he feared, strong as he was, that he was going to lose consciousness. For a moment he struggled with sheer physical sensation, but he kept his eyes upon the small, dark face turned trustingly to his. Then he realized that people were moving about; the body of the house was nearly empty; McPherson, while helping Betty on with her cloak, was commenting ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... By sheer force of will he put aside the insistent weakness, which he knew would get the better of him were he to resign himself to it. By the same force of will he injected into his being a degree of physical energy. But he was a white man, ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... in the field of dispute. They, therefore, resort to false accusations; and, unable to find any thing upon which to put a false construction, they have, at last, thrown aside all attempts to discover the means of misrepresentation, and have had recourse to open, unblushing, to sheer invented falsehoods. That love of fair play, for which all orders of Englishmen in all ages have been so famed, finds no place in the bosoms of these degenerate men.—They enter the ring with seeming bravery, but being, round after round, knocked down and crippled, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... Episcopal service is to be used, or any other service in which the bride and bridegroom kneel, cushions for their use should be provided. These are usually covered in white satin, with outer covers of very sheer lawn upon which ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway
... originated little, because there is little to originate, but we have unconsciously reproduced many of the discredited and abandoned systems of former ages and other countries—receiving them at second hand, but making them ours by the sheer strength and immobility of the national belief in their newness. Newness! Why, it is not possible to make an experiment in government, in art, in literature, in sociology, or in morals, that has not been made over, and over, and over again. Fools ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... checking the exultant cheer which rose to the lips of his companions. "Sheer as close alongside the barque as you can go, Sir Reginald, and give me a chance to get our heaving line on board. Then, as soon as I wave my hand, go ahead gently until you have brought a strain upon the hawser, when you may increase the speed to about twelve knots—not ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... fail him. But he had no remedy. Fight he must. Rinaldo, desirous to make short work of him, took his station with fierce delight; and at the third sound of the trumpets, the Duke was forced to couch his spear and meet him at full charge. Sheer went the Paladin's ashen staff through the false bosom, sending the villain to the earth eight feet beyond the saddle. The conqueror dismounted instantly, and unlacing the man's helmet, enabled the king to hear his dying confession, which he had hardly finished, when ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... is a combination of the single cane and bow system, and the horizontal arm training, which I first tried on the Concord from sheer necessity; when the results pleased me so much that I have adopted it with all strong-growing varieties. The circumstances which led me to the trial of this method were as follows: In the summer of 1862, when my Concord vines were making their second season's ...
— The Cultivation of The Native Grape, and Manufacture of American Wines • George Husmann
... by Luther to the lessons he learned in childhood from his experience of poverty at home, in his remarks in later life, on the sons of poor men, who by sheer hard work raise themselves from obscurity, and have much to endure, and no time to strut and swagger, but must be humble and learn to be silent and to trust in God, and to whom God also ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... bounding through woods (I who had long forgotten to ride) and galloping over open downs. If the animal had not been wiser and more sane than I was, we should have been dashed to pieces many times. And so by sheer exhaustion of body I deadened the misery of my mind, and looked upon their happy state with a kind of stupefaction. In a few days I found a pretext for quitting my home, and I never saw your mother again, for it was your mother, Mildred, ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... had a marvellous understanding of such contrivances. But these cares were a great hindrance to recovery. So at least I judged, and doubtless it had been thus in the case of most men. But the King was not as others, and, as it seemed to me, he drove away his disease by sheer ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... south-east, was partly in his favour. One of the disabilities which he, in common with all airmen, suffered, was the impossibility of ascertaining the velocity of the wind when he was fairly afloat. He had to make allowance for it by sheer guesswork, unless he was prepared to slow down or even to alight. He had reckoned that, even with the slight assistance of the wind, he could hardly hope to reach the head of the Persian Gulf before six o'clock, which would be past nine by the sun; but he ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... all these things barbers have to be highly educated. It is true that some of the greatest barbers that have ever lived have begun as uneducated, illiterate men, and by sheer energy and indomitable industry have forced their way to the front. But these are exceptions. To succeed nowadays it is practically necessary to be a college graduate. As the courses at Harvard and Yale have been found too superficial, there are now established ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... solemn premeditation, which tends, as Madame de Stael says, to bring more poetry into life, some women, in whom virtuous mothers either from considerations of worldly advantage of duty or sentiment, or through sheer hypocrisy, have inculcated steadfast principles, take the overwhelming fancies by which they are assailed for suggestions of the devil; and you will see them therefore trotting regularly to mass, to midday offices, even to vespers. This false devotion exhibits ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... connected with the corps was "a hell upon earth." Field days consisted of a long march, a sublime mix-up, a speech from Rogers, a bad tea, then a long march home. No one knew what was happening; no one cared. It was a sheer waste of time. Only Rogers ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... than the Americans; Butterfield says the reverse, but his account is untrustworthy on these matters.] After this they suffered little molestation, and reached Mingo Bottom on the 13th of the month. [Footnote: As Butterfield shows, Heckewelder's account of Crawford's whole expedition is a piece of sheer romancing.] ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... too bellicose, an' none of 'em ever faces any anamile more warlike than a baby colt or mebby a half-grown deer. I'm ridin' along the Caliente once when I hears a crashin' in the bushes on the bluff above—two hundred foot high, she is, an' as sheer as the walls of this yere tavern. As I lifts my eyes, a fear-frenzied mare an' colt comes chargin' up an' projects themse'fs over the precipice an' lands in the valley below. They're dead as Joolius Caesar when I rides onto 'em, while a brace of mountain lions is skirtin' ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... they could only be performed by Saxon religious in the times of Otho, or by marionettes in the more self-conscious life of to-day. Or, again, an Abbess, the protagonist of one of the great love stories of the world, by sheer force of personality, would compose letters to one—how immeasurably her moral inferior, in spite of his genius—expressing with an unexampled poignancy the most passionate emotions of the heart. Or, to take my third illustration, here are a woman's ...
— French Mediaeval Romances from the Lays of Marie de France • Marie de France
... day it was all over Philadelphia that I had cleared out John Guy's the night before, sans merci. True, I am not seven feet high, but some men (like stories) expand enormously when inflated or mad; so my denial was attributed to sheer modesty. But I recognised in the Charles Leland a mysterious cousin of mine, who was really seven feet high, who had disappeared for many years, and of whom I have ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... mind, having digested the necessary matter, always poured itself forth in writing so copiously that his revision was chiefly devoted to reducing the over-abundance. He never shrank from any of the drudgery of preparation, but I think his own part of the work was sheer pleasure ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... perilous accident. My conversations with Augustus grew daily more frequent and more intensely full of interest. He had a manner of relating his stories of the ocean (more than one half of which I now suspect to have been sheer fabrications) well adapted to have weight with one of my enthusiastic temperament and somewhat gloomy although glowing imagination. It is strange, too, that he most strongly enlisted my feelings in behalf of the life of a seaman, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... an accent of sheer incredulity, and added, "Well, there is no accounting for the ignorance of ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... the street, she started away at a quick walk; but her strength soon failed her. She heard the sound of the snow crunching under a heavy step, and knew that the pitiless spy was on her track. She was obliged to stop. He stopped likewise. From sheer terror, or lack of intelligence, she did not dare to speak or to look at him. She went slowly on; the man slackened his pace and fell behind so that he could still keep her in sight. He might ...
— An Episode Under the Terror • Honore de Balzac
... of remaining quiet under such an infliction as an attack of millions of sandflies on a hot sunny day will appreciate my feelings. About one o'clock we got as a diversion from our tormentors a great fright. A boat's crew of a gun-boat lying about a mile distant from our retreat landed, and out of sheer idleness set fire to the grass about a hundred yards from where we ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... Committee. An Ordinance to that effect had no sooner passed the two Houses,—carried in the Commons by a majority of 77 to 46 (July 22), and accepted by the Lords without a division (July 23), —than the City broke out in sheer rebellion. By this time there had been formed in the City and its purlieus a vast popular association, called "A Solemn Engagement of the Citizens, Officers, and Soldiers of the Trained Bands and Auxiliaries, Young Men and Apprentices of the Cities of London ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... to the depths in which John B. Gough found himself at the age of twenty-five years. By sheer force of will he raised himself from the slough in which he wallowed, till he attained a position honored among men, and performed a service of ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... and passed no more cheerfully than had the midday meal. The society of the old people was anything but enlivening for Ida May. In desperation she began to talk, and out of sheer perverseness she lighted upon the subject of the establishment of ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... Lincoln as a lawyer and a friend. With his enmity as to Shields, the friend promptly advised him to say "I did it!" This was, in fact, sheer justice, for it was Lincoln's wife who uttered the articles. And, by the way, their style and rustic humor were much in the vein of the "Widow Bedott" and the "Samantha" papers of later times. Mrs. Lincoln was not the ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... years. The willingness of readers from around the world to share their observations and specialized knowledge is very helpful as we try to produce the best possible publications. Please feel free to continue to write and e-mail us. At least two Factbook staffers review every item. The sheer volume of correspondence precludes detailed personal replies, but we sincerely appreciate your time and interest in the Factbook. If you include your e-mail address we will at least acknowledge your ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... I found altogether different. Where Sevcik taught his pupils the technic of their art by means of a system elaborately worked out, Auer demonstrated his ideas through sheer personality, mainly from the interpretative point of view. Any ambitious student could learn much of value from either; yet in a general way one might express the difference between them by saying ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... bone with all her might; and telling her to eat all that was left upon the dish, sat by, watching her with the utmost satisfaction in her countenance, though she certainly had not had a very capital dinner herself. Poor little Tibb! She looked as if she hardly knew how to eat, for sheer joy! However, she did finish at last; and then, running up to Friskarina, called her her only friend—her deliverer from starvation—and said many other very affectionate things besides. But Friskarina cut them short, by ...
— Tales From Catland, for Little Kittens • Tabitha Grimalkin
... Newton's vote outweighs all the other millions of men, and from the hour that Lincoln published this letter to Horace Greeley the people saw that Abraham Lincoln had the last fact in the case, saw the whole truth, saw it through and through. By sheer power, clarity of thought, strength of statement and fairness, Abraham Lincoln finally won over not only a lukewarm North, but a bitter South, until to-day he belongs to the ninety millions. If every ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... two or three hours, not the refreshing kind that results from clean sheets and soft pillows, but the sleep that comes from cold, wet, and sheer exhaustion. ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... window-casing for support, while he stood watching it. Just as far as he could see it his eye followed that hood, and when it disappeared from view, he turned from the window, deathly sick, and tottering back to his bedroom, vomited from sheer nervous excitement. ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... of the day rightly, in our opinion, described that hallowed spot in Bodenstown as one of the holiest places in Ireland to-day, from the nationalist standpoint, holding as it does the ashes of the man who, without friends, money or influence to help him, and by sheer force of character, intensity of purpose and earnestness, prevailed upon the greatest emperor-general the world has ever seen Napoleon Bonaparte, to make a descent on Ireland, in order to aid our starved, tortured, and persecuted people to shake off the shackles that kept them in slavery, ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... something like a reconciliation of the old feud of English and Irish, and something like a settlement of these ancient distresses, and there seems no power, no conscience, no sanity in any of us, sufficient to save it from this cantankerous bitterness, this sheer wicked mischief of mutual exasperation.... Just when Ireland is getting a gleam of prosperity.... A murrain ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... a sharp turn, and stood transfixed at the sight which met his gaze. He found himself looking out through a crack in the face of a sheer stone cliff that went straight down for a hundred feet or more ...
— Tom Swift and his Big Tunnel - or, The Hidden City of the Andes • Victor Appleton
... several times by each side, was taken and long held by the enemy's left; it was then retaken at about three in the afternoon, by a portion of the French reserve, Napoleon's "young guard." Thereupon, from the sheer exhaustion of both sides, the conflict ceased, nothing being heard but desultory discharges of artillery. The French were in possession of both Aspern and Essling. At seven the Emperor called a council of war; the generals advised recrossing the Danube and a retreat into Vienna. "You must ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... lifted her in his arms and the others supported her on either side, and they climbed slowly and gently up to the path, not by the sheer way of their descent but by a diagonal track that joined ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... said the doctor, 'and it's sheer folly to waste more money on him. Nothing can save him from ruin,' and so saying, the unhappy father ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... I couldn't. Why Tave here is threatened already with a quick decline—sheer worry of mind, isn't it Tave?" Octavius nodded shortly; "And as for Romanzo there's no telling where he will end; even Ann and ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... When I first saw him, in this fearful proximity, his broadside was nearly offered to the seas, and away he was flying, on the summit of a mountain of foam, fairly crossing our fore-foot. At the next moment, he fell off before the wind, again, and I could just see his tops directly ahead. His sheer had been to-port, our intention having been to pass him on his starboard side; but, perceiving him to steer so wild, I thought it might be well to go in the other direction. Quick as the words could be uttered, therefore, I called out to port the helm. This was done, ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... surface at the heels, and other conditions favourable to correct application, evil may still result from the shoe itself being made too narrow. As a result of this, the branch of each side is set too far under the foot, with consequent injury to the sole. This is, of course, sheer carelessness on the part of the smith. When practised, however, it is not easy of detection, as in all cases the foot is rasped down to cover what has been done. In other words, the foot is made to fit the shoe and not the ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... to me!" exclaimed Miss Inches one day. "If only I could have you for my own, what a delight it would be! My whole theory of training is so different,—you should never waste your energies in house-work, my darling, (Johnnie had been dusting the parlor); it is sheer waste, with an intelligence like yours lying fallow and only waiting for the master's hand. Would you come, Johnnie, if Papa consented? Inches Mills is a quiet place, but lovely. There are a few bright minds in the neighborhood; we are near Boston, and not too far from Concord. ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... higher, she took possession of a great, gray bowlder jutting like a giant table from the gravelly soil. She walked out upon it and looked down—a sheer drop of ten or twelve feet to the barren, ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... in the world an industry which, for sheer pictorial magnificence, rivals the modern manufacturing of steel. In the first place, the scale of everything is inexpressibly stupendous. To speak of a row of six blast furnaces, with mouths a hundred feet above the ground, and chimneys rising perhaps another hundred feet above these mouths, ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... Their greed was excited by thoughts of the nugget which our three friends had discovered, and their brains were busied with plans for obtaining possession of it. The chances didn't seem very encouraging. It was under strong escort, and it would be sheer madness for the two to attack an armed party. It would require a much larger force than they could command to make an ...
— In A New World - or, Among The Gold Fields Of Australia • Horatio Alger
... her eye to estimate the chances of his being brought into the fold of reform by properly selected oratory. That at least was the character of contemplation she intended, but though she was so young that she believed the enjoyment of any sensory impression sheer waste unless it was popped into the mental stockpot and made the basis of some sustaining moral soup, she found herself just looking at him. His black hair lay in streaks and rings on his rain-wet forehead and gave him an abandoned and magical air, like the ghost of a drowned man risen ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... appeal to curiosity. We had heard of the wild younger generation and were curious. His second book depends largely upon the craving for sex experience, in which it resembles Mr. Hergesheimer's "Cytherea," but also plays heavily upon the motive of escape, and upon sheer curiosity. "Miss Lulu Bett" was a story of revenge. Booth Tarkington's "Alice Adams"—to bring in a new title—is a good illustration of a story where for once a popular novelist slurred over the popular elements in order to concentrate upon a study of character. His book received tardy ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... from the matted tangle of trees and brush and great snakelike vines behind the town rolled the appalling roars of guaribas, raucous bird calls, dismal hoots, sudden scattered screams. And over all, whelming all other sound by the sheer might of its penetrating power, throbbed the rapid-fire ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... descended, and him round the waist I seized, giddy with the light and fresh air, waltzed him down the slope with the force of my impetus, and, tripping at the bottom, rolled over and over recklessly with him sheer into the arms of the gaping crowd below. Over and over we went into the thickest mass of bodies, making a way through the people, until at last we came to a stop in a perfect mound of writhing forms and waving legs and arms. When ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... Germans were pressed back, but they had concentrated their forces on that section of the line so that they outnumbered the Americans by two or three to one, and little by little, by sheer weight, they pressed their opponents back. And behind those immediately engaged, fresh forces could be seen emerging from the woods and coming to the ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall
... of four and twenty, a lot by no means ideal—a home in the depths of the country, among neighbors often uncongenial, and far from the intellectual pleasures she had tasted during her young widowhood in London. But out of this lot she made something beautiful, and all her own—by sheer goodness, conscience, intelligence. She had her angles and inconsistencies; she often puzzled those who loved her; but she had a large brain and a large heart; and for us colonial children, conscious of many disadvantages beside our English-born cousins, she had a peculiar tenderness, ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the ridges where the coast abrupt Dips greyly westward, Circe's strong-armed son Swept down the foam of sharp-divided straits And faced the stress of opening seas. Sheer out The vessel drave; but three long moons the gale Moaned round; and swift, strong streams of fire revealed The labouring rowers and the lightening surf, Pale watchers deafened of sonorous storm, And dipping decks and rents of ruined sails. Yea, when the hollow ocean-driven ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... the road for about a mile it became precipitous, and Wilbur could readily see where there was likely to be trouble. Shortly before they reached the place where the bridge was being repaired the bank on the right-hand side of the road gave place to a sheer drop forty to fifty feet high and deepening with every step forward. As the bunch neared the bridge Merritt and Wilbur, with the cowpunchers, slowed up until the steers were quite close. Then Grier and Rodgers went ahead over the bridge, while Merritt waited until about ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... question! Six months ago Aglaya took a fancy to cut off her magnificent hair. Why, even I, when I was young, had nothing like it! The scissors were in her hand, and I had to go down on my knees and implore her... She did it, I know, from sheer mischief, to spite her mother, for she is a naughty, capricious girl, a real spoiled child spiteful and mischievous to a degree! And then Alexandra wanted to shave her head, not from caprice or mischief, but, like a little fool, simply because Aglaya persuaded her she would sleep better without ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... harm in feeding the poor ill-nourished monk, so, spite of the refusal, we begged him out of sheer humanity to change his mind, and have some ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... more than twenty yards away, and could talk to us quite easily. But the water was deep; the islet rose sheer from I'm sure I don't know how many fathoms of sea; and we could neither of us swim. Charles stretched out his arms imploringly. "For Heaven's sake," he cried, "don't tell me you really ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... these, maddened to frenzy by the shooting and the flames, tore from one end of the enclosure to the other, crashing against the alternate walls with a noise which could be heard far out on the plain. Scores were trampled to death on each charge and finally the uproar subsided in sheer want of cattle left with energy enough to continue. When the corral was investigated the next day there were found the bodies of four rustlers, but ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... seem to matter to either of them that he's her husband. They've got into the way of looking at everybody as a case. They say it's not even as if Colin could be got better so as to be sent out to fight again. It would be sheer waste ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... each and every day, one saw the winsome maid beside the knight, when she should go to court to meet her kin. This service was done from sheer delight. A great rout of joy and pleasure was daily seen in front of Gunther's hall, without and eke within, from many a daring man. Ortwin and Hagen began to do great marvels. Whatever any wished to play, these lusty knights were fully ready; thus ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... placed more confidence in her husband than she had ever done before; and when he came in of an afternoon and sat by her side and talked of herself and of their little baby, softened in all the intimate fibres of her sex, she laid her hand in his, and sighed for sheer joy. The purpose of her life seemed now to show a ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... confirmed the one we had," exclaimed Sir Aymer de Lacy, who from sheer fury had been too choked to speak; "and I have done with waiting—already two weeks have been wasted. If the King want me let him send to Roxford Castle."—His hand was on the door when Ratcliffe seized ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... little wayside inn, at which in the days of leisure the coach must have stopt for lunch, and burnished pewters of rustic ale been tenderly exalted to "outsides" athirst with breezy progression. Here we stopt, for sheer admiration of its steep thatched roof, its latticed windows, and its homely porch. We allowed a couple of days to elapse in vague undirected strolls and sweet sentimental observance of the land, before we prepared to execute the especial purpose of our journey. This admirable region is a compendium ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... drove homeward, instead of the details of county business, the position of Delia Blanchflower, her personality, her loveliness, her defiance of him, absorbed his mind completely. He began to foresee the realities of the struggle before him, and the sheer dramatic interest of it held him, as though someone presented the case, and bade him watch how ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... transitoriness of such glories, more completely than anything he had ever seen or imagined in the world before. Beneath the battlements—they are choked above with jungle grass and tamarinds and many flowery weeds—the precipice fell away a sheer two thousand feet, and below spread a vast rich green plain populous and diversified, bounded at last by the blue sea, like an amethystine wall. Over this precipice Christophe was wont to fling his victims, and below this terrace were bottle-shaped dungeons where men, broken and torn, thrust in ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... refuge, while sometimes the more daring chiefs converted these detached peaks and masses of rock, numbers of which you can see as you come up the Ghaut by railway, into almost impregnable fortresses. Many of these masses of rock rise as sheer up from the hillside as walls of masonry, and look at a short distance like ruined castles. Some are absolutely inaccessible; others can only be scaled by experienced climbers; and, although possible for the natives with their bare feet, are impracticable to European troops. Many of these rock ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... voluntary enlistment. A people untrained to bear the burden of heavy taxes not only devotes to the public service sums gathered by private subscription that in any other country would be deemed fabulous, but by sheer force of public opinion compels its legislators to the utmost ingenuity and searchingness of taxation. What was uttered as a sarcasm on the want of public spirit in Florence ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... not only their own but his mother's choice. She was young, beautiful, deeply in love with him. He had long been in love with her. Doubtless they would be very happy, as they deserved to be. Margaret flared up again: "I believe he's doing it as he does everything else,—from sheer sense of duty, and that you advised him to." A random shot which went nearer the mark than the archer supposed, for Miss Loomis flushed in an instant, and made no reply. "Well!" said Mrs. Cranston, "she longs only to share the humblest cot, the rudest habitation with her beloved. We'll ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... be followed by every one; but it must be allowed that—at least as long as he was in his tree—he was neither dawdling, grumbling, spending money, nor otherwise harming himself, and perhaps his fellow-creatures, from sheer want of employment. ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... of the Grenadier Guards ceased to be objects of admiration, and the War Office would have howled with exquisite torture at sight of their hair and clothes. Speak of wrapping clothes around head or body to keep out the dust? It is sheer nonsense to prate so. Why it is hard enough to gape and gasp and catch a mouthful of sanded breath, without that added worry. There is nothing for it, but to grin and bear it and get through with the swallowing of that proverbial peck of dust in a life-time, ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... son's, the intermittent geyser of old Tom's wrath spouted up again with scalding steam, and in a manner utterly impossible to reproduce upon paper. Young Tom waited patiently for the exhibition to cease, which it did at length in a coughing fit of sheer exhaustion that left his father speechless, if not expressionless, pointing a lean and trembling finger in the direction of a ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... same business departed from the business rule of making all they could. In fact, men in the same business, I have since learned, were the first to sharpen their knives for him. He was establishing a bad precedent. I don't know but their attitude is sound, after all. In sheer self-defense a man must make all he can when he has a chance. You cannot indulge in philanthropy in a business undertaking these ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... unheard or unadored In ancient Greece, and in Ausonian land Men call'd him Mulciber, and how he fell From heaven, they fabled, thrown by angry Jove Sheer o'er the crystal battlements from morn To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve, A summer's day and with the setting sun Dropp'd from the zenith like a falling star On Lemnos, th' Aegean isle ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... I can swim across. And—listen, little river—again at the same old place I shall cut me the willow wand, and down the long slope to the certain place I knew I am going to hurry, running the last quarter of a mile in sheer expectation, but forgetting not the binding on of the tough linen line. And now I cast my gaudy float on that same swinging, wimpling, dimpling eddy, and let it swim in beneath the bank. And—No! Can it be? Have I here, now, ...
— The Singing Mouse Stories • Emerson Hough
... attended by two armed Dutch boats, waiting to receive us. On this we embarked, bidding farewell to our captors; but not until the white cliffs of Margate appeared on the western horizon did our Dutch convoy sheer off and leave us in English waters in undisturbed enjoyment of ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... changed Plan, a Discomfiture. Influenced by its like suit, a loss. By a Heart, a sudden Failure, a Doubt or Fear. By a Diamond, a Breach or Quarrel. By a Club, a sheer Folly, not to be warned away ...
— The Square of Sevens - An Authoritative Method of Cartomancy with a Prefatory Note • E. Irenaeus Stevenson
... in his speech or attitude. He was not posing. He spoke of his necessity in the matter-of-fact way in which he had accepted it. It was necessary to earn the sheer essentials of life, in order to get a footing—to get sufficient capital to open up his office again. He would not have borrowed if he could, and a penniless lawyer in New York is in as bad a position as a penniless tramp. Not only was he glad of this opportunity ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... what will happen when she is back in Haddo's hands?' cried Arthur. 'You know as well as I do how revengeful he is and how hatefully cruel. My heart bleeds when I think of the tortures, sheer physical ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... seem to the listening sisters. Eight, and no tidings; nine, the boys not come; Tom obliged to go to bed by sheer sleepiness, and Ethel unable to sit still, and causing Flora demurely to wonder at her fidgeting so much, it would be so much better to fix her attention to some employment; while Margaret owned that Flora was right, but watched, and started at each sound, almost as anxiously ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... reached Fort Sumter after a pull of about three-quarters of an hour.[46] This now celebrated fort is a pentagonal work built of red brick. It has two tiers of casemates, besides a heavy barbette battery. Its walls are twelve feet thick at the piers, and six feet thick at the embrasures. It rises sheer out of the water, and is apparently situated in the centre of the bay, but on its side towards James Island the water is extremely shallow. It mounts sixty-eight guns, of a motley but efficient description. Ten-inch columbiads predominate, and are perhaps the most useful. They ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... the scout decidedly. "Them critturs hev got to git around this way. They're on a line that'll strike Fort Randall, wi' a heap more military 'n they'll notion. They'll strike south an' sweep round sheer through to Wyoming. We're dead ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... some l8-pounders were carried to Samos, three quarters of a league from the town. Batteries were erected there, which fired before night on the man-of-war that had come to anchor opposite, L'Ance du Foulon, which was forced to sheer off." ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... I had bade Davis do, and to think what might happen because of it. I, Roscoe Paine, no longer even a country banker, was at the helm of "Big Jim" Colton's bark in the maelstrom of the stock market. It would have been funny if it had not been so desperate. And desperate it was, sheer reckless desperation and nothing else. I must have been crazier than ever, more wildly insane than I had been for the past month, to even think of such a thing. It was not too late yet, I could ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... pathos, invective, sublimity, and ingenuity which have been characteristic of the greatest advocates. Before a jury as everywhere else he was direct and simple. He awed and terrified jurymen; he convinced their reason; but he commanded rather than persuaded, and carried them with him by sheer force of eloquence and argument, and ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... Whenever you present the actual, simple truth, it is, somehow, always denounced as a lie—they disown it, cast it off, throw it on the parish; whereas the product of your own imagination, the mere figment, the sheer fiction, is adopted, petted, termed pretty, proper, sweetly natural—the little, spurious wretch gets all the comfits, the honest, lawful bantling all the cuffs. Such is the way of the world, Peter; and as you are the legitimate urchin, ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... went beyond. They were not a melancholy company; they had something of the lightness of the element in which they moved. Indeed, it would be difficult to find, in the world's history, any body of fighters who, for sheer gaiety and zest, could hold a candle to them. They have opened up a new vista for their country and for mankind. Their story, if it could ever be fully and truly written, is the Epic ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
Copyright © 2024 Free Translator.org
|
|
|
